 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Thursday. I'm still getting used to the idea that it's 2023, but we will get there. All right, I'm excited about today's show. We have Nikos, who just goes by one name. There is no other name. He's like Pele and Wollandino and Messi and people like that. Nikos, did you enjoy the World Cup? Of course I enjoyed it. I was heavily supporting Argentina, but Messi goes with his first name, Leo Messi. So I'll stick with the Brazilian examples. Yeah, we'll stick with that. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. It was a good World Cup. And of course, the final was best game. I mean, one of the best games I've ever seen. It was amazing. Nikos is a huge football fan. Mostly basketball, but also football. Greek basketball. Yeah. The last team that beat Team USA for many, many years. You see, here it is. I know Happy Avocado. It has to be you on a time because you know what the first comedy makes? Let me guess. Talk about the conference in Athens. No, no, no. It doesn't give up the confidence in Athens. The suit. Yeah, of course. Nikos looks much better than you are. Look at Nikos. He's wearing a tie. He's got like the thing. I don't know what it's even called because I've never worn one in my life. A waistcoat. A waistcoat. He's got a waistcoat. I've never worn a waistcoat in my life. And he's got the whole, he's got the look going. Anyway, Nikos is a fellow. Visiting fellow. Visiting fellow. I have no idea what that means. It means he's in Athens. Nikos is a visiting fellow at the INREN Institute. He was a professor at York University until about a year ago. York turned on. Yes. You know, when he moved to permanently to the INREN Institute, he is in Athens. So it's midnight right now in Athens. I'm trying to do the math on this. It's midnight, but I had a good Greek frappe, the original one, not what they sell at Starbucks. So I'm good. Yeah, the real Greek frappe at night, but Nikos has coffee at night all the time. I know because I've traveled with him and doesn't affect his sleep anyway. So Nikos is in addition, so he teaches at the INREN University. We'll talk about that in a bit. He's also doing a lot of work with INREN Europe, given that he is based in Athens. He travels quite a bit about Europe speaking. He has been my sidekick at a number of events when I was in Europe. And yeah, all, so this is great. Great having you on. Thanks for joining me. Thank you for having me. Sure. All right. So I wanted, I want to talk a little bit about before we get to kind of the heavier stuff. We've got a conference coming up in Athens. And not enough of the Euronbrook show listeners have signed up for it yet. And many more of you guys need to sign up. So tell us a little bit about the conference. What's planned? What are we going to be doing? What is everybody going to be doing there? Talks, events? So the important thing is that this is more than a conference. Usually in a conference, what do you do? You go in a venue, you are within four walls, and you watch some talks. Imagine that for this conference, the whole of Athens is the venue. So the actual venue is Zappion, one of the most historic buildings in Athens, which is five minutes walk from Aristotle's Lyceum. So picture this. You're in one of these very beautiful buildings for some talks. And then you go to the Lyceum for a talk by Gregsard Mary or by someone else who is an expert in Aristotle, like Robert Mayhew. And you walk literally in the fields where giants like Aristotle walked. So this will be the conference. It will also have, we're going to immerse ourselves in the culture of Athens. We're going to have great food. And there's also the extra for those who want it, which is a couple of extra days with excursions in places that have a tourist interest with other objectives. So it will be very exciting. So for people who want just, if you just Google iron run con Athens, it will lead you to the page. And I think I've given you also the actual address, which is events.ironed.org. But just Google iron run con 2023 Athens and you will get to the page. Also, if you're a student or a young intellectual, try your luck with getting a scholarship. We have a lot of applications. There's a lot of interest. Time is running out particularly for the scholarships. So I would encourage people go now and apply. There's nothing to lose. Try your luck. You might get a scholarship. If you don't want to go for the scholarship, or if you just want to register, go where it says register now again, events.ironed.org or just Google iron run con 2023 Athens. So it's an experience which is going to be different from your average conference. And you won't want to miss it. Yeah, you're making me look bad. I mean, even Jonathan Honing is on the super chat saying, Nikos is very dapper. Nikos is elevating the look of guests on the Iran book show. Jonathan, if you were doing your job, you would have that link up on the chat right now. I don't know. And actually in a super chat to make sure that it's kind of highlighted. I think for at least 30 share kid. So come on, do your job. Let me just say that I think this is going to be a terrific event. I think for a lot of you, not only is Athens an amazing city. I've been there many times. A couple as Nikos is guest. It's an amazing place. It's beautiful. You really have that sense of Aristotle Plato walked here. And it's pretty stunning and amazing. If you've never been to Athens, this is the opportunity to go. Right. If you saved up money and you want to do a trip. This is a great trip to do. You're going to, you're going to have the experience of Athens plus be with a bunch of objectivist plus have all these speakers. But I'll add one thing to that, which I think is going to make this particularly exciting. I think they're going to be a lot of young people there. Right. I mean, we've got, we've got 150 scholarship applications. 200 almost almost 200. And I expect we'll reach by the time I'm done, we'll reach over 300 because I still have a tour of Europe to encourage more people to apply. So we might have three different applications. I don't know how many, how much budget the AOI has to give for these applications. But I think we hit 300. They're going to prove a lot. They're not going to, they're not going to turn down an overwhelming majority of these. They're going to be a ton of young, energized kids there who are excited about learning about Iran. And they're going to come from all over Europe. You'll get a real sense of how international this is. I know we're going to have a bunch of kids from Israel. We're going to have a bunch of kids from Georgia because I know we've got a lot of applications from there. Well, but we'll have from central, central Europe will have from, from the UK. We might even get some from Italy, from Spain and France, which we normally don't get anybody. I just to be in that environment. I think is going to, is going to be super exciting for everybody. So, and also the, we're talking the dates are seven till 11th of April. If you also take the tour or the conference seven till, till the 10th. And it's going to be on the Mediterranean. This is exactly. It's not hot. It's not like, you're not going to be sweating, walking around. Great time to be in the Mediterranean. Mediterranean is beautiful. It's usually calm in April. It's gorgeous. And it could rain, but it's typically dry around that mostly trains in March. By the way, we didn't pick the dates by just by luck. We checked the trajectory and the statistics of when it rains. And this is the weekend. It's almost never rain. So that's why we picked it. So if the Greek gods are with us, it won't rain. The Greek gods are definitely with us, particularly Apollo. Apollo is good. Okay. So we will have great weather. All right. So you should go guys. It's not that expensive. It's not that expensive to get to Greece. So it's hard. It's far. So it takes a long time to get there. And you should arrive at least a day or two early, but, or you can stop in London for a couple of days before you go to Greece or in Spain or something. But it is very much doable. It's a great way to bring your friends, bring your kids, make a vacation of it. If you're really going and you, you have the time and you have the resources, take a Greek island cruise right after, go see Ephesus, go see Santorini. I think the most beautiful, one of the most beautiful places on planet earth. And, and, you know, get a sea, get a sea, the place. So really, really exciting. And I, I, I hope more people sign up, more people sign up to go, you know, it'll be great conference, no matter what, because we'll have a lot of students, but it'll be great if we had a bunch of adults as well. Ephesus these days is in Turkey. So, but plenty of other good places in Greece, although it's an ancient Greek city. You can still do it. Ephesus is still on the road. All the cruise ships stop in Ephesus. And it's in Greece. It might be geographically in Turkey, but it's ancient Greece. Everything around is ancient Greek. So when you go to Ephesus, you don't mistake it for any other culture. This is ancient Greece. And, and really some of the best, maybe the best preserved ruins, ancient Greek ruins from the originals, you'll see anyway. It is truly magnificent and beautiful. I, I've been there twice, once with a bunch of objectivist on a bus with a bunch of objectivist with the Turkish bus driver taking the windy curves. And the joke was that the, the fate of Western civilization was in the hands of this bus driver, of the number of objectivist intellectuals on that bus. So I'll tell you what people. Yaron has been telling me stories about his trip to Santorini with Dr. Picoff, which happened what 30 years ago. So think how many memories you will create by coming to Athens this April. 1997. Leonard Picoff was on that bus to Ephesus, but what was, was in Santorini. We had an argument in Santorini. We disagreed. He was right. I was wrong. Not surprising. And, but it was, yeah, we had a fantastic experience on the, on those Greek islands. The boat we were on was left a lot to be desired. So that's one thing I wanted to remind everybody on and to, to really emphasize and get you guys excited about, and hopefully many of you will come. It is, again, I think I did a Yaron's rules for life, travel, travel, travel, and Greece is one of those places that you just have to go and see. All right. I want to also talk about Ironman University, partially because Ironman University is a sponsor of the Yaron book show. So they are paying me to, to, to highlight them, but of course, but also you're an instructor there, but I'm also an instructor then I will be teaching classes on public speaking in the summer. So you can sign up for those as auditors, by the way, if any of you want to be, want to take those classes as auditors, you can sign up. You can also apply for the university to be a full graded student. I think, I think there's a registration coming up in April or something like that. So the deadline. And even earlier. So here's the, here's the thing. Most universities, they start in September, they finish in May, not the Ironman University. So the Ironman University has four quarters and some modules run, for example, from quarter three to quarter four, quarter three starts right now. So if you want to take Yaron's course on public speaking, which I could talk for 10 minutes, why you should take that course. So this starts in Q4. This is in somewhere in June. So I would encourage people, again, our producers have the links. Just go to university dot iron, run dot org. And there you will find the courses. And for example, you can see oral, the oral communication course, which is run by Yaron. And it starts on July 14th. And I don't even know that nobody told me this. Yeah, that's good. Well, it's on the, it's on the website. Even the time is there. But here's the important thing. You can take it out. If I'm available, nobody's told nobody's told me what days. I'm sure they can change the program for you. So and here's the important thing, people, you might say, I don't want, I don't have time to write essays or to have people give me feedback on my assignments. But although I think the best experience, if you take it as a student, you can also take it as an auditor, which means you're just there and you observe. You can participate, you can ask questions live in class, but you don't, you're not assessed. Also on the public speaking class, an auditor would not actually present. We're not, we're not getting a direct critique from me, but you can watch me embarrass all the other students. Yes. Actually, this is a, this is one of our favorite things in the Institute. So before a big conference, we do a rehearsal, let's say, of the presentation in front of Yaron. Now allegedly, this is a roasting experience, but it's the experience that every time we look forward to it, because it's so useful. And the other thing our friends can do, you can apply as an auditor for all the courses. So you pay a particular amount of money and you can audit any course you want. And just to give you some name for the courses, this is the order of communication, introduction to writing. So you might be a professional, you want to improve your writing, or there's another one, philosophy, work and business taught by Onkar Gaten, Charles Fanny, or another one, it's about philosophy, Thomas Aquinas. So whether you like philosophy, science, give luck, it gives courses on physics. So no matter what your interest, you can find a course there. And also you can find my course on critical race theory, 16 weeks discussing the ideas that have shaped the culture in which we live today. So check it out. Hopefully someone will put it in the chat. university.inrend.org slash courses. You can find all the courses and where there you'll see a frame which is audit or pass. And you can find more information about how you can audit. Of course, scholarships are available for a promising students. So you can try your luck with the scholarships. Nothing to lose there. Yeah, definitely. This is the best place in the world today to get live instructions on objectivism. I encourage everybody to listen to everything and read everything by Ayn Rand and Linda Peacoff. But then if you want to go beyond that in a sense of actually having your stuff graded or your stuff reviewed, the Ayn Rand University is the way to go. And for the audit is just another way to engage in this content and engage it in a very deep way, in a very enhanced way. So I actually want to talk to you. So I think we should start, you know, we're talking about your course on critical race theory. So, you know, as Nico said, it's a 16 week. So the 16 class, this is a deep dive into critical race theory. This is not a superficial overview. So first question is why, I mean, and why 16 classes? I mean, God, I mean, these people, idiots, this is a stupid ideology. Why do you need 16 classes to understand it? The way the reason we need 16 classes is because critical race theory came from somewhere. And these ideas are everywhere. They're in business boardrooms. They're in universities. They're in your local bookstore. They're in sports. And the problem is that most people either accept them uncritically because it's the current thing, as they say, or the people who oppose them have zero idea. A, what these ideas say and how to oppose them, which means they don't impose them successfully. They don't oppose them efficiently. So whether it's intellectual curiosity or whether it is how to navigate the world today or how to understand it or how to fight these ideas, whichever your motive is, this course offers you, first and foremost, a good understanding of these ideas. So we want to be objective and fair. See, are there any merits? Are they supposed to correct any actual injustices? Do they have any good points? So we start from that. And then we examine all the history of these ideas from the Frankfurt School, the so-called quote cultural Marxism, to postmodernism, to Foucault, to environmentalism, to the New Left, to postcolonialism. So all these buzzwords that you've heard and either you think they're all the same or you have no idea what they are, we go through all of them. And we don't do this just out of academic interest. Every week we see how do they apply today? Every class has a section which is called I've Heard This Before. So we take an idea by a philosopher, by a thinker and we see how it applies today, how it applies on things that you've definitely have heard or that you've definitely have seen, even if you haven't studied the philosophy or political theory. So in a way we trace back how the world in which we live, the culture in which we live became what it is. So give us a quick, and I know you spent 16 weeks on this, but give us a quick overview on what is it that's made Critical Race series so successful? And they clearly, as you say, they dominate, I don't think they dominate, they don't understand the aspect of the culture, they dominate the elites, they dominate much of the universities, they dominate kind of people who think they're really cool and smart, all insist on mouthing these ideas. How did they get to be as dominating as they are today? So they did something very simple. They took the five biggest philosophical bromides that are out there, and they put them under one umbrella. So how many times have you heard, for example, that, well, this idea of universalism, that all human beings have an essence, we think in a particular way, that this idea is bogus and it's western century. Critical race theory has taken this idea. Or how many times have you heard that reason is inadequate, that we cannot understand the world only with the use of our mind? My reason is not the same as your reason, or it's not the same with the black reason or female reason. Critical race theory takes this as, yes, indeed, you understand the world based on the group you are. So most people were ready for this idea because they've heard it so many times that our mind is determined based on the group we are. How many times have we heard that capitalism is the system where the strong oppress the weak? And things like, quote, objective law or rule of law is just a tool of suppression of the strong to the weak. Critical race theory takes this and says that the law is a tool for racial suppression. Or how many times have you heard the idea that change is impossible, humans don't have agency, and when we try to fix things, we mostly screw things up. So critical race theory takes this and tells you that any development you've seen in racial relationships, the Civil Rights Act, the first black president, all this is just the white majority and the white elites throwing you some crumbs on the table so that you think things have changed, but actually things have not changed. Or how many times have you heard that the core of the United States is rotten? The United States is a nevel society beyond redemption. So critical race theory takes these bromides and puts them in one narrative, and puts them in one story. And it tells you for every bad thing you see out there, for example, the merger of George Floyd, here is a story that will explain it to you. And in a way, it was a story that many people wanted to listen. Many people were ready to listen. So in one sentence, critical race theory is a Frankenstein created by the philosophical monsters of the last decades. It's these bromides put in under one roof. To what extent? I mean, as James Lindsay has popularized the notion, the critical race theory is just, it's Marxism. There's nothing new here. It's just Marxism applied to fill in the blank, identity politics, or it's Marxism applied to culture. And the whole idea, and this comes out of the Frankfurt School, of cultural Marxism. Is there such a thing as cultural Marxism? Is that a legitimate, does it do justice to Marx? So in my view, if you tell me that critical race theory is just a new version of Marxism, it means that you don't understand Marxism, and you don't understand critical race theory. So for example, Marxism was or wanted to be, claimed to be a universalist ideology. What does this mean? It means that all proletarians have common consciousness or common interests. Critical race theory tells you that, because it's based on what is called intersectionality, it tells you that every single person, based on their identity, have a different way of viewing the world and a different way of navigating this world. So how can you say proletarians of the world unite, which was the slogan of Marxism, if you cannot find five people who can unite based on their identity, since there are so many different identities. That's the one thing. The other thing this Marxism told us, capitalism has given you all this, but you can have more. Capital and Marxism celebrated production, celebrated the idea of the factory, critical race theory believes that all these are western-centric things and you could be better off, potentially, without this materialism, without this alienation. And also Marxism had a political program. It said, come together in a political party and take power and then socialize the means of production. What exactly is the proposal of critical race theory? I haven't figured that out. What exactly is its program? What does it tell you to do? This is very unclear to me. So no, Marxism is not... Critical race theory is not a new version of Marxism. Actually, it's the verification that Marxism is defeated. It's the result of the defeat of Marxism. This is not to say that we should miss Marxism, but we should understand that critical race theory is the aftermath of the historical defeat of Marxism, more of the project of communism. So isn't it historically the fact that this comes out of kind of a post-modernist which was an attempt to solve a certain agenda as Marxism was discredited and Marxism came to a dead end? Well, yes. So most of these people had the reference to Marx. But the fact that they had the reference to Marx does not mean that anything that comes out of them is Marxism. I mean, think about it this way. Think what would happen if we, the faculty of the Iron Run University, then would go to completely different routes and because at some point we were objectivists, we would say, oh, this is quote, neo-objectivism. How silly would it sound to say, I'm a neo-objectivist, but I don't believe in the law of identity. I don't believe in rational selfness and I don't believe in capitalism. Oh, but I'm a neo-objectivist. It would make no sense. So critical race theory, we could find many, many reasons why it's bad. But not everything that is bad is Marxism. It goes back to this idea that I have that people somehow need to aggregate things into twos, right? They need to have only two options. So all bad stuff is Marxism and then all good stuff is, I don't know, they're not quite sure. But I think it's an insult to Marx because Marx was, I mean, it's bad of a thinker Marx was. I think he was better than these guys and he had eyes. So I give a lot of credit to Marx for actually looking around the world and seeing the value of capitalism in raising standard of living and something that when you read the critical race theories, guys, they give zero credit, zero to capitalism and they place no value on the improving life standards and improving quality of life. I had a Marxist professor at Kent's who used to read the first pages of the manifesto and he would say, find me one liberal, Mises or Friedman, find me one who praised capitalism in the way that Marx praised capitalism in the opening of the manifesto. Of course he had the red-eyed rant, but you get the point. And of course, Marx was praising capitalism in order to undermine it. That was his goal and purpose and ultimately he was a hater but he didn't evade reality to the extent that these people do and this idea that we lump, that Marx was the first philosopher or first thinker that was worried about oppression is funny because much of religion, much of Christianity is built around saving their oppressed and many, many philosophers dealt with oppression before Marx. He has no monopoly over that or any other thing. So what is your sense of critical race to where it goes from here? That is, is this, it seems like it is a dead end as well. I mean, in a dead end, certainly in the context of human life, but it seems like it's a dead end as a project. It doesn't lead them anyway because it is so nihilistic, you know, essentially. So what happens to it? How does it evolve? What's your sense of its growing influence? Does it become more influential, less influential? And how does it morph from here? Because of course, critical race theory is these ideas morphing over a century now. Exactly. So to understand where it goes, first we need to understand how fast it entered the scene out of nowhere. So when I was preparing the course, I can see it from here. I have a huge self in my library with social sciences books. So I would go there and I would go to the table of contents. There was nothing on critical race theory. Most of these books were circa 2012 to 2016. Even I would go in the index and many of these books had nothing from critical race theory. So that's why I told you that it's these bromides, philosophical bromides, that when the time was right, or Trump is a white nationalist, or George Floyd was murdered by white supremacy, then this narrative became quite successful. So there's a good possibility. Yes, and it was like it did exist as a theory within the kind of the legal profession primarily. Yes, from the 80s and from late 80s, it gets recognized with a name as critical race theory. It was quite obscure at that point. It was quite obscure and most people didn't know about it. Even social scientists didn't know about it. But here's the thing, even if within two, three years, critical race theory stops being the fashion. The ideas behind it unfortunately are here to stay. And here's something even worse. The ideas behind critical race theory, the central ideas are shared by people who never suspect that they would share these ideas. As for example, some modern conservatives or so-called dissident rightists. We can discuss this later. So even if you vote a politician who says, I ban the teaching of critical race theory from schools. You don't do anything because the building blocks of critical race theory are everywhere. They have spread everywhere and they have spread even in the political right. So you will see politicians posturing tough guys, no more critical race theory in Florida, the Sandys would say. And then you would see the same politicians supporting ideologies that if you see their fundamentals are quite not miles away to put it mildly from critical race theory. And we can explain later why. I'm talking about you national conservatives, by the way, but. No, I mean, and if you remember, I mean, we're going to talk about Dugan later, but Dugan explicitly says, you know, postmodernism has a lot of good things in it. And you know, in a sense, I'm a postmodernist. And let me explain to you because this idea of the universal is the first thing they reject, right? The universal and it lumps people together by different criteria instead of by race. It lumps them by nation or by ethnic group or by history, but it's the same thing. It's exactly the same thing. So how do you feel Trump supporters that you the strategies of your homeboy Steve Bannon admires a philosopher who openly says. I'm a postmodernist. So you think you fight quote postmodernist neo Marxist and you sleep on the same bed with proud postmodernist and who is the philosopher? Steve Bannon and he's who admires Dugan. Oh, Dugan. Yes. No, Dugan is a Dugan is explicit about his belief in postmodernism and his rejection of universality as all as you know, in terms of rejection of universality. That's one of the principles of the national conservatives. We're going to get there. Let's let's finish up on. So tell me again, looking forward. So it's every way that the building blocks have a critical race theory and maybe give us a couple of examples, the building blocks of every way. But in what sense, but where does it go from here? Because you know, at least to many Americans, it's so it's got to the point where it's so absurd. It's so stupid. It's so ridiculous that the population has rejected it, even if even if Steve Bannon has a completely, but you know, population has rejected it. How does it? How does it evolve from this point when it seems to have reached kind of a climax of absurdity, just like the new left did in the 1960s, right? And it disappeared for about 20 years as a consequence of that was soundly rejected. It didn't have a political agenda that was even mildly palatable for Americans. So it just went away. So yeah, before that, you said something important, which is, okay, where do we concretely see critical race theory? Two examples. How often have we heard the idea that the fact that we don't see explicit races, we don't see Ku Klux Klan lynching people? This doesn't mean that racism is not there. So a central tent of critical race theory is that racism is everywhere. That racism is a form of power, as Foucault would say. And with power, you don't need a guy with a week. Power happens whenever two people interact. So when you interact with a person of color, there you have racism reproducing itself, even though you might be literally a social justice warrior, your interaction with a person of color perpetuates racism. Why? Because we live in a racist society. And notice how impervious they are to the idea of change. They say in the textbook of critical race theory, even if we gave a pill, a magic pill, that you would swallow and you'd stop being racist. So every single person would not be racist anymore. Racism would still apply. How is this possible? We never know. But they say that even without a single racist, this society would still be racist. That has to do with the perspective on power, because you mentioned power before, and this is an important concept that kind of predates CRT. What is this idea of power? Because first of all, they conflate economic and political power, but they conflate race with political power. They conflate everything with coercion, with the ability to enslave, with the ability to coerce people to do your bidding. Advertising power, right? Whoops. Looks like something happened to Greek internet for a second there. No, we are back. I can see you well. So the idea is that power is not coercion, says Foucault. What is power? Power is my ability to make you do something. So for example, when my boss tells me at eight o'clock I want you in the factory gate, this is power. But power can also be even more invincible. For example, the way you carry yourself, or the way you lower your head when you see a group of people who might, you know, your black, their white. So everything is power. Every, the way you, even the way you walk is a result of power. So for these people, any human interaction, it's like a magnetic field, has some form of power. And this means also it's impossible to fight it because something which is everywhere, how do you recognize it and how do you find it? So this is one example. The other example where we see a critical race reaction is how often have you heard someone telling you, look, you cannot judge this phenomenon for example, because you are white. Let me give you an example. People would say, okay, the George Floyd's death is tragic. The police officer horrendous, but he was not racist. It was proven in court. And then they would say, yes, but who says this? You're a white person and you cannot make this argument or a man discusses with a woman. And the man says, look, I don't think we live in a rape culture because rape statistics go down. If I make a rape joke, my career is over. Therefore, are you sure we live in a rape culture? And says, look, you're a man and you cannot make this argument. What's the underlying thinking of that? That the way you think is based on your chromosomes or your genitals or whatever. And therefore it's as if we live in different realities. There's one reality for the way your mind works and another reality for the way that my mind works. So this is why I said that critical race theory in its premises is already everywhere. Now where it goes, it's impossible to predict. It's become way too, I wouldn't say toxic, but too hot for example, even for the Democratic Party, because then you ask questions. Why is the president a white guy? So it's the example you gave with the new left was quite good. In a way, it ran a bit faster than the time allowed. It went a bit too far. It went a bit too far. But I wouldn't be surprised if it comes back in a different form, now having gender at its core or maybe some mix with environmentalists which is already, I think, the environmental justice movement, but the premises, the anti-humanists, the anti-individual premises are there and are here to stay, unfortunately. But it's fundamentally a disintegrating ideology because again, it's not just that you have a way of thinking because you're white, you have a way of thinking because you're Nicos and you see reality differently than anybody else because you're Nicos. Now part of that is you particularly Nicos see reality in a particularly distorted, provoked way because you happen to be white, heterosexual, and what else? And male, of course, and Greek. So you haven't been oppressed enough. So that kind of the intersectionality. But you see reality in a completely different way. There's a sense in which it's a perverse kind of, it's not individualism, but it's a perverse view of complete subjectivism as applied to metaphysics and to individuals. Because each individual sees reality completely different. So it's not just has different values. It's like we live in a tower of Babel that we cannot communicate and there's no way that we can talk to each other. In that sense, I don't see how it can go further. So this is it. This is the ultimate culmination of complete disintegration. All it could do now is morph into a variety of different ways in which this can be applied. But intellectually, it's dead. It's a dead end. It's a complete dead end. The left will have to come up with something different if it wants to, I think, achieve anything or sustain anything. And you say these things are part of the culture, but it's interesting. I would argue most Americans, when you say something like this, look at you say, you know, that's a stupid, you know. And, you know, not if they're maybe not in the workplace, maybe not at certainly not at university, but most people out there in what's called flyover country, look at stuff like that and go, come on, that's just stupid. And that's why they can't attain political power with this kind of stuff, because it's too obviously. Crazy and nuts, right? By the way, if people want more of a deep dive on the phenomena that we're discussing, this is my book on tribalism that you can find on Amazon at a very reasonable price. We did a whole year on Brook Soul last year, last January on the book, so you can check it out. It's still available out there. We did. All right, so these are the ideas that dominate the non-political left. I'd say these are the ideas that dominate the kind of intellectual left, the cultural left, and the wacky left in the activists. You know, let's talk a little bit about the right before that. Let me just see. There's two questions here. Let me just do those, because they relate to this and the $20 or more. All right, so Ian says, isn't he because familiar with Noah Smith's writing on, quote, Walkness as an old-time American religion? No, but I'm familiar with the guy. I think we've been together on a panel before he was famous. But thanks for mentioning this. I'm not familiar with that, but I can check it out. Yeah, you should check it out. Walkness as old-time American religion. Ian says, seems like more reasonable theory than this critical race theory is the same as Marxism claims in terms of, all right. And then Rob asks, Rob from Australia asks, what does Nikos think of James Lindsay's work? Is he on the right track? Seems he flirted with Christian nationalism, but is backed away. Objectivism might prove his true philosophical home. Okay, that's a very interesting question, because I give James Lindsay a book, the one he wrote with Helen Plakros. He wrote the text books on the module, but I always say students keep in mind that this guy has changed from the time he wrote that book. So we will discuss this when we talk about the right. The problem with the right is that if the left has tribalist, the right these days are two times tribalist. So the way they view the world is they see, what does the left say? And then they go and say the opposite. An obvious example is the vaccines or the war in Ukraine. So their point of reference is less and less reality. And it's more that whatever my enemy says, I have to say the opposite. And unfortunately James Lindsay has fallen in that category. The book itself, Cynical Theories, that he wrote with Helen Plakros, it's quite a good book. It does justice to these ideas, and it helps you understand them in a clear way. So I would encourage people to check his book. But again, in the last couple of years, his intellectual journey is one that I'm not convinced that it's very intellectually productive. And he has become a big promoter of the idea of critical race theory as just being a version of Marxism. I mean, I get his emails and that's all over his email. Marxism, Marxism, Marxism. Yeah, his new book is about that, literally. Okay, let's see. How are we doing super chat-wise? Eh, not great. Come on people, it's post-midnight. A lot of like $5, $5, $2. We did just get $50 from Fendt Hopper, but to really make a dent in this, we need a few more 50s, 100, maybe a 200 thing. We need some big wheels to step in here. Here's again a Greek asking for money from the West. Oh, what's new? Fendt Hopper says, cheers to weekly guests, news updates, weekly, that'd be YBS fan. Best time to be a YBS fan. And cheers to Nico. It's one of my favorite voices on New Idea Live. Thank you. Ism for believing social classes determine all outcomes. Genus of CRT plus Marxism. So say that again, I didn't get it. Is there an ism for believing social classes determine all outcome? That's Marxism. So then he says, genus of CRT plus Marxism. What is the broader concept under which Marxism and CRT fall under? Well, I would say definitely collectivism. And yeah, I can't think of anything else at the moment. We could also claim that Marxism has tribalistic elements. But the main idea is that I see you as a person of a group. And also by seeing the world through the prism of the groups, I don't recognize the individual capacity of every person to take the reins of their life in their hands. What is missing from Marx is the idea that of human creativity that he talks about the wonders of capitalism, but they came here somehow. He talks about the means of production, the machines and the miracles that they brought. How did they come here somehow? And they still do it. And they still do it. I mean, most economists that I know left and right, it just appears. I mean, and there's a fallacy even among libertarians, right? I mean, Adam Smith has an invisible hand. And Hayek, when I say this libertarians freak out, but Hayek has spontaneous order. And if you listen to I-Pencil, Pencil's just come into existence through spontaneous order. And in both cases, there is no recognition of the entrepreneur and there's no recognition of human reason. Indeed, Hayek speaks negatively of human reason because it's obviously flawed because he can't do central planning. So, you know, there's no recognition of human reason or human mind in action. Mises doesn't make this mistake and neither do other Austrians, but certainly Hayek makes this mistake and Adam Smith does. I can forgive Adam Smith a lot, given that you wrote in the 18th century. Once you get into the 20th century, it's hard to forgive anything, anybody, of anybody, right? All right. Let's see. All right. So let's draw a few parallels. You've been doing a lot of reading on the right. So you like these intellectual extremes, extremes. Yeah, extremes is an okay word in this context. In, you know, these collectivistic people pushing the collectivism both left and right in different directions. And so you did critical race theory, did a course on that. You now have immersed yourself in some of the writings of the right, the right collectivists. Tell us a little bit about that. I'm also curious whether that's going to become a course or not and whether that's going to conflict with my wanting to do a lectured Ocon on the dangers of the right. So it's not because the earliest it will start is next year and it's not officially approved yet. So what happens here? You talked about disintegration. People see this chaos and they say we need someone to bring order. So conservatives have understood this. And what they're trying to do now, they're trying to create their own ideology. They understand, for example, that, you know, young people get inspired by ideas. So what is our answer to this? And one of the answers is, for example, national conservatism, very popular among very significant people from Rob DeSantis to Peter Thiel and an ideology led by intellectuals like Yoram HaZoni whom Yaron has debated in the Lex Friedman show and I encourage people to go check it out. And yet, although you might think that this is the opposite, the other extreme from critical race theory, you soon realize that these people share some very strong anti-individualistic tendencies. For example... So let me ask you this. Of the five, you laid out five foundations of critical race theories. How many of those are shared, you think, if you put those five up? Definitely the first one. Definitely the first one. The first one says... The first one says, there is every human being is capable of thinking and therefore there's something common in all humanity. This is what we can describe as universal, universal human in different ways to put it. Why is the national conservative a nationalist? First of all, they're a methodological nationalist. What does this mean? They say we need nationalism because we need to have some point of reference on what is truth and what is not truth. If we let every individual think for themselves, we're going to end up with a chaos. They end up with critical race theory. They literally say that, right? This is the consequence of letting people think for themselves. Exactly. So we need the protection of our forefathers and of tradition to make sure that we don't make the mistakes that the hubris that we think that we can think for ourselves will lead to. This is what we're dealing with. This is what we're dealing with earlier with the founding heads. The national conservatives are the dean from the first scene who has a discussion with Rourke. They're the people who are telling you how dare you think for yourself. Now, it is true that people can make mistakes. Actually, people make mistakes all the time. But this does not mean that the way to correct these mistakes is to just say, let's rely on tradition. Our tradition, the tradition of the Taliban, the tradition of the people in the jungles, the tradition of ensign Athens, of ensign Sparta, which tradition? So the answers they provide are definitely not satisfactory because they find themselves in this. Then they will say, well, we know that some traditions are better than others. How? Either intuition or God told us so. Yes, but what if my God told me something different from your God? Then we don't get an answer. So for national conservatives... You have your country and I have my country. You listen to your God. I'll listen to my God. And we'll deal with it, right? I mean, explicitly say that. It's why I think so many on the right are not criticizing Iran. How can you criticize Iran based on what? Only if you have an objective, universal, universally applicable standard. Can you say this is bad? It's bad because of this and this and this. And they're listening to their God? Yeah. And what could be more true than listening to your God? Another area very closely related where they meet each other is their skepticism to put it mildly for reason. So the national conservative will tell you reason makes you think you're a God. Reason will lead you to hubris. Reason will lead you to disregard of everything else. Everything that has happened till now. And it's like saying reason will make you a God of your own life, a God of yourself, a God of your own destiny. And for national conservatives apparently this is not good. And here's another area of agreement which is the most easily observable and the biggest reason to the idea of freedom. For national conservatives, freedom is at best a tool which we can use sometimes. It's like a suit that you can put when the weather is good, only though in service of a higher cause which is the common interest of the nation. So for example, are you going to open a factory and give us cheap cars? Then your freedom is okay. But then if you want to move your factory to Bangladesh, then your freedom is not okay because now you do it for yourself. You don't do it for your community. Go and listen people, the talk of DeSantis who for many of you, he's this new hope for freedom, listen his talk in the National Conservatives Conference. He says, we don't have a country to have an economy. Sorry, we have a country, not an economy. And he says that the economy is a means towards strengthening our country. Does this mean that I have to compromise my freedom quite often? Yes is the answer. And this becomes more and more often when you read under the surface. So go and read Hassan's book. He says, for example, that when your freedom goes against the proper morality, then your freedom must be curtailed. So for example, you want to create pornographic material, tough luck that goes against the morality. You might want to do economic transactions that are good for you, but bad for the guy next door. You might, your freedom might be curtailed. So freedom applies with many, many asterisks and conditions. To cut a long story short, they're not defenders of freedom and your freedom is not in good hands if you trust these people. And as I think the listeners of this show know, I think they're much more dangerous than CRT because well, CRT is so easily nuts and people react to it visually negatively. The common man, the common man would ultimately is the majority of people. National consumerism, you know, sounds reasonable. And it sounds reasonable because it is, it has an integrating ideology. Whether it's religion or the nation, it has an integrating principle. It's a wrong integrating principle, but it is one. But also because it Hawkins back to a sense of history, a sense of tradition, America was good, America was good, you know, make America great again, right? So America was great once all we have to do is resurrect the values that were great back then and they don't quite get those values right, but who is there to correct them other than us? So it's much more dangerous, much more appealing, much more seductive, I think, long run. If they can get the messaging right and if they can find a messenger who is charismatic and can deliver the lines. And it's interesting to see how Hazoni, again, the intellectual leader, let's say, of this movement, how he views American history. So in a way, there's nothing special about American. Everything which is good in American history has come from the continental tradition of the British and anything that has to do with what we would consider, for example, the principles of Thomas Jefferson was just a deviation that would lead to anarchy and luckily at some point he says we let Jefferson go and we stuck with the conservative principles of Burke and of more British conservative. So in a way, for them, there's nothing special in the United States. The only special thing is that they stuck with the proper British traditions. And I think what makes them more dangerous than past conservatives is the extent to which these guys are intellectuals. That is, it's not just a political agenda. It's not even mostly a political agenda. They have some politicians. DeSantis might be one of them. But that is not the essential. This isn't essentially an intellectual movement and they're not even the most radical. That is, I don't know how much you've read of the integralists who are even worse than the conservative, than the nationalists. Patrick Deneen, who's famous and Vermeul and Sahabamari. I mean, these guys are vicious authoritarian. And the national conservatives, they talk about religion, but it's a little soft. It's there. We see it. And it's dangerous and horrible. The integralists don't have any problem saying what they want is in a sense of theocracy. Well, Sahabamari, his biggest beef is with the free market. His biggest beef is with freedom. Because he's against the free market, but he's also against pornography, he's against anything that where individuals actually get to make choices which he doesn't like. He's against gay marriage. He's against gays. Generally, you know, he's against people having the ability to live their lives as individuals. Let me just, before we do have a $50 contribution for somebody with a Greek name, which is unusual. Tasos, I can't pronounce it. Sorry. Thank you, Tasos. I don't know. Thank you, Tasos. Great. And then, Merlin, thank you. Also $50 and Carolina from Mexico, 250 Mexican pesos. So thank you, guys. Thank you. Yeah. So here's the thing. You should only trust the politician if he tells you that my standard is individual rights. So the standard on which decision I will take is does this decision protect or does not protect your individual rights? The national conservatives openly, openly tell you that I have a different standard. My standard is they give different names, but it's basically either tradition or the cohesion of the nation. What does that mean? Common good is the big one. Common good conservatism. Common good constitutionalism. So he believes the constitution should be interpreted not as an originalist or individual rights. He doesn't believe individual rights exist really. It should be interpreted from a common good perspective. Yeah. Good luck protecting your rights with that. Yes. Yes. Go ahead, I'll catch you off. No, no, that's what I'm about to say. And they're explicit about this. It's not that we're reading under the lines. They tell you, look, freedom is overrated. And actually, Hazone says the biggest mistakes the conservatives have done is being fellow travelers with liberalism. Liberalism in the classical sense. So they say this has been a historical mistake. Okay, we won the Cold War, but we lost our souls while doing this. So it's time to correct this mistake. So we want conservatism without liberalism, which is another way of saying traditionalism. And some people in my chat think we should be fellow travelers with the national conservatives. What for? Seriously, what is to be gained? What is to be gained? I'm very curious to hear what these people would have to say on that. Feeding the left. I mean, you know this, right? The only thing that motivates the only thing that actually, you know, that actually inspires people these days is defeat the left. And this is the sense in which the right is almost completely reactionary, a reactionary movement today. It's the left. The left gets to set all the terms and then the right takes those terms and integrates them into something that they have been holding for a thousand years because they can't think of new thought if their life depended on. And how pathetic that they apply things in big issues like the war in Ukraine, for example, they say, oh, my enemies like Zelensky. Therefore, I'll be the useful idiot for Putin. I mean, that's pathetic. You give up your mind in a way you give up your mind to the left. You are telling to the left. Tell me who you hate so that I like this guy. Well, it's more than that, of course, right? Because Putin is the embodiment of what they really admire. Right? So when you read the National Conservatives and you read these people and they describe their idea leader, Putin is a good match. And we know he's inspired by people like Dugan, who are the philosophers who these guys love. So I don't think it's just that they reject the left. I think one of the things, if you listen to Jordan Peterson, what does he like about Putin? Why does he think Putin? Putin actually is fighting for the West. He thinks the war is wrong. He thinks Putin shouldn't have gone to war. But Putin fundamentally is on the side of the West against the enemies of the West who are the left. The left. Which happens to be the EU, right? The EU is the left. Ukraine is represents the left because it represents Europe. And therefore it's not just that the left hates Putin. It's that Putin represents the anti-left agenda. He hates gays, right? He believes in national, you know, in a fascist economy. Every respect he represents is their ideal. Here's the joke for the people who think that Putin is going to save the West. Who is one of the ideological expressions, let's say, Putinism for lack of a better term? Dugin. What does Dugin take on the West? I quote that the West and modernity and enlightenment have been the biggest disasters in human history. So Dugin sees the human history and his conclusion is for everything I've seen through these hundreds of thousands of years, the worst thing that has ever happened to humanity is the industrial revolution and the enlightenment and what we call today Western civilization. And he's explicit about that. He uses the term civilization. So you people who want to save the West, you are hand in hand with someone who says, I think that the West is the worst thing that has ever happened to humanity. So well done for picking such a good ally. Fellow travelers, us and Dugin and Hazoni and as long as they're not the left. By the way, even some libertarians like Dugin, I couldn't believe this. I had to double check it five times because this cannot happen. He's been recently in Libertarian podcast and one of his books is The Forward is written by one of the most prominent paleoconservatives with strong links with a very prominent paleo-libertarian institute. Who is this? Name names. It's good to name names. Okay. So he was in Thaddeus Russell's podcast, but notice, not because Thaddeus Russell wanted to criticize him. He was like, oh, that's so interesting news. And one of his books on Heidegger, the introduction was by Paul Gottfried. And of course, again, Steve Bannon, the chief strategist of God Emperor Trump, very bright, only very good words to say about Dugin, about the guy who says I'm a postmodernist, about the guy who created a political movement called National Bolsheviks, and about the guy who says that the Western civilization is the worst thing that has happened in history, worse than fascism, worse than communism. Remember that Hoppe, a hero among Libertarians, is, you know, freezes the Middle Ages and kingdoms and city-states. I have the book somewhere there, the book for the New, I think it's for the New Libertarian. One of his books in the front page is very interesting. It has a field with a small house in the field. So he's like, hmm, that's an interesting choice for a front page in one of Hoppe's books. And so many Libertarians I meet are Hoppe fans. I mean, he's not a minor figure within the Libertarian movement. He has a major figure within their movement. And it's, so I'm not surprised, going from Hoppe to Dugan philosophically, I don't think is that big of a jump. Well, yeah, America is the Satan, so they agree on that. Yeah. And they, you can add what about in on that. All right, let's, so we're doing pretty well in the super chat. We're doing pretty well. So I've got a competition going a little bit with all my guests on who can generate the most super chat. And I think, I think Nicos is getting very close to winning this. I mean, he's very, he's, you know, with a few more super chats, he can overtake Don Watkins. Really, if he achieves the 650 goal for each one of these shows, he will definitely take the lead and a commanding lead. We'll see. We've got, you know, we're going to be doing these every week. So we'll see how long. If you're watching, send supershots and I will buy you nice gearos when you come to Athens. There you go. Maybe, maybe, maybe the Greek, a Greek friend, maybe there's some tribal sympathies there. All right, let's see. All right, Shozbot asks, so first, Robert said, he posted this before the show started. He said, due to the schedule clash, life on Earth with Robert Neisser, I think I got that right, would like to apologize in advance for stealing all of your life viewers. That's why he was up now because that show is over. But I'm sure that, like me, they will watch afterwards. And Robert is here in the chat, so he's obviously. Yeah, so Robert, this is a show in Iron Run Center, UK on which every now and then I also, and it was my first objectivist home, so three tiers for ARC UK. Sorry. And then, you know, how, how exciting is it that more often than not, there are two objective shows running simultaneously. I mean, so often on the weekends, I'm running into Harry. I'm running into you guys in ARC UK all the time. It's pretty amazing. You know, again, I remember the days where there was nothing. You went to Fort Hope for him to see Leonard Pickoff speak. This is post Iron Man. And then in Ocon, those were the two events a year that you had. There was just nothing else. So let's support all these people who create good, activist content. Absolutely. Has anyone told Nikos that he's the splitting image of Oscar Isaac as he appears in the movie Dune? Is this a coincidence? Oscar Isaac in Dune. Do you know the movie Dune? Yes. Okay. I'm checking this guy. Whoever said this, this is a huge compliment. So I take it with a lot of, with a lot of pride. Shazad, Shazad is good. I mean, he, he elevates us. Kay fact just came in with a hundred bucks. I think you've, I think you've taken a solid lead here. Nikos. I'm always here for Nikos and Nikos's commentary on an analysis of contemporary philosophy. Thank you very much. Thanks. Justin from Australia, 50 Australian dollars. How do you guys deal with the argument? Welfare such as healthcare, unemployment benefits and the free education is an investment in individuals and in the economy. An investment by whom? I'm not even sure how to invest in my future two years from now. And so who is investing and with whose money it's like telling you, Hey, I have a good investment for you. Let me take your money and I'll invest in the way I want. So it's, first of all, it's, it's not an investment. So you could say that, yes, if in a country people are well educated, you might have a, you might have some benefits, but this doesn't mean that you have a right to, to, to take someone's money and do as you wish with it because someone thinks it's a good, it's a good investment. So I think it's a very poor argument. And actually practically, we see it very often that this is not the case. See how much money, for example, many countries are spending on, on education without any good returns. Or you mentioned health. Notice that the chaos that the national healthcare system is in the UK and they will let, they will have you believe this is austerity. And then you see health expenses per person or as part of GBDP, it goes up and up and up and up. So it's not an issue of, that it's an investment to anything. No, certainly. And you can't make that argument about welfare. You know, welfare is a disinvestment. You're not investing. You're actually encouraging people not to work, not to better themselves, not to advance. And you're taking capital away from people who might invest that capital and, and giving it to people who are going to consume it and not get that much out of it. Healthcare, it's not, you know, it would be like saying, you know, I'm going to make an investment in, in, in technology. We're going to nationalize Apple, Google, Amazon and YouTube. We're going to nationalize them all. That's an investment. You would all go, I mean, everybody in the culture would go, no, no, no, keep the government hands off my iPhone. I don't want to go healthcare is much more important than your iPhone. And yet you're allowing. So it's a disinvestment. It's exact opposite. The only one that has a semblance of reality. There is education. And Nicos is absolutely right. What you get is a negative. And if it's an investment, if there's real value to education, well, then what do we need the government for? I mean, that's the thing about these things, right? If they're really a value. If you can imagine an investment in them, then I'm willing to invest, let's go invest stuff, right? The investment means there's a turnoff of it. So the market takes care of investments really, really well. What do we need the government to step in and screw it all up for us? Perhaps in the worst article in the history of humanity, there was an article in the Guardian that the guy didn't like the new star that used to be the favorite or it was the yeah, the star was replaced with a heart. And he basically said that Twitter needs to be nationalized. I kid you not, because he didn't like the chain. And also there was an article in the Jacobin that also says that Twitter should be nationalized. Yeah, it's a public square. Let's just nationalize it. But actually the worst article ever was the one I read from this morning, which was the one about this, the best school in the United States, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Astounding kids go there and they go on to MIT and it's all merit-based admission. The smartest kids in the country move there so they can go to the school and get admitted to it. They're changing the standards of admission, CRT. They're going to make them race-based. There are too many Asians and they don't want merit. Merits shouldn't be characteristic. And then they stopped, you know, these kids were taking exams to get special scholarships and stuff. And they didn't let the kids know when they excelled at these exams so that they couldn't take advantage of it when they applied for college because they said that they focused on the individual not on his achievements. This is the answer to the people who think that these people actually care about human well-being and human flourishing. And this is an example of investment, right? If you really cared about educational investment, wouldn't you put more resources into the smart kids? Wouldn't you emphasize merit even more? Wouldn't you misallocate resources so that, you know, disproportionality so that the smartest would get the most? But it's not how our educational system works. We know that. Alright, you're like, Nico, you're $13 away from making the $650 goal. I mean, that's pretty amazing. Alright, Raymond. Thanks, your honor. Nico, let's keep up the excellent work. Thank you, Raymond. Volta, Volta who changed his name so I could actually pronounce it. Thanks, Volta. Good night. I have to go. I've got a question for later. What do you want and Nico's think about? One of our favorite people. Varoufakis. What do we think about Varoufakis? I'll let you know more about Varoufakis than I do. The tragedy with Varoufakis is that he's not a stupid guy. No, not at all. At least he has read his hyac. He has read his liberal economists. So here's before he became a politician, Varoufakis had great ideas about Greece. He said, we should give the trains to the Chinese so that they would create a Maglev trains. These are the super fast trains. And he went from that to what he later became a boring leftist with environmentalists in his party and everything wrong. I think it's a tragedy because that guy had a way better potential and also he's a good writer. At least he's a good speaker. And he's a good speaker. So I liked him in my transition from Marxism to let's say the free economy. I liked Varoufakis because he could make you understand economics in a good way. After that, no. I liked him once and he described himself as a Marxist libertarian. So he viewed himself as, you know, so he's like more of an arm Chomsky, I'd say, and he's developed into more of an arm Chomsky type than a traditional, you know, regular kind of leftist Marxist. He's, you know, I think you would agree with kind of the cynical syndicalism, which is kind of an anarchy that is an ideal that Chomsky presents. Of course, when he became fine and ministered, he was the typical boring Keynesian, which basically said, give us money. And he still, when he talks about economics, he's still boringly Keynesian. He actually moderated a debate I did with James Goebbeth at the University of Texas in Austin years ago. And he was quite friendly, quite friendly. I've tried since then on many occasions, and he goes knows this to debate him, to get his attention and to actually have us debate. And he's indicated he would do it, but he always backs out and he always, he always disappears and nobody hears from him. And so it always goes to zero. So his credit, he was in an event in Athens where Deirdre McCluskey was also there. Think 2014 by, by a liberal think tank or by the network, something like that. That was still relatively early. Okay. Fendi Hoppe, this is, this is, this one is mostly support, but if Nicos can answer, are there any objectives you work with that enjoy anime and talk about it openly and philosophically? Lots of virtuous heroes in anime, romantic realism, anime are really good. I'm really sorry that I'll disappoint you. I've never watched anime in my whole life. And I cannot relate. I don't know because it's a topic which is so out of, I have no idea about it. So thank you so much for the superset, but I have zero, zero idea. But if someone knows, put it on the chat so that they can get in touch with our friend. Yeah. I can ask around the institute to see if there's anybody there who has kind of any appreciation for anime or drop me an email and I'll, I'll also ask around. All right, Rob C. Ginger, thank you for the support. John, thank you for the support. John was also there this morning or wasn't there this morning, but still contributed. That was amazing. Rob says, my son starts schools this year. I know he'll be subjected to a lot of bad ideas. Home schooling is not an option. So I need to prepare him as best I can. Any tips for arming a five year old with good philosophical foundations? I have no idea. And this is too important for me to answer without having an idea. So I'll leave it to you at all. I mean, I would just say, when he comes home with some of the crazy ideas. So first, the way to arm anybody well is with reality and particularly a five year old. You know, ask him always, you know, if he comes up with a crazy idea, how does he know that idea? What, what evidence? What, what does he see around him to suggest him to that? What are the, so, so always link. Don't criticize it because he won't have any context for the criticism. Having him realize that he doesn't really know it because it's not connected to reality. And the most important thing you can teach a child is that knowledge is connection to reality. Knowledge is the knowledge of reality. There is no knowledge other than the knowledge of reality and you should be able to reduce everything to reality. And at age of five, everything they learn, and I'm literally everything that they learn should be connected within a couple of steps to reality. If the teacher is teaching them anything that is not within a few steps connected to reality, then he's doing a lousy job and the kid needs to understand his teacher doesn't know what she's talking about or he doesn't know what she's talking about because they don't have the mental capacity yet to form grand abstractions that are distant from sensual experiences, from sense data. All right, Eric says, I'm increasing my monthly donation. Thank you to support the new news update and with no ads in the podcast. All right. At some point I'm going to have to cancel these ads. So many of you are doing that. Okay. Is there a best platform to use to maximize your profits? If no, I will do YouTube. Thanks again. Please have you seen the imitation game? I have seen the imitation game. What was it? Was it about the magicians? I think it was about the magicians. I haven't watched it. I really enjoyed it. It was really good. I watched Glass Onion and it was so, so, so bad. It was perhaps the worst film I've watched since Don't Look Up. Don't Look Up was really, really, really bad. Although I did see theocracy. Shusbot paid me to see theocracy, which I hated. I don't know if you've seen it, Nicos, but thanks for telling me about it because I was tempted to watch it because of the actors. I'm sure you'll get someone who will donate for you to watch it because I'm very curious to see what you'll have to say about it. Imitation game is the one about Alan Turing. Yes, that's a fabulous movie. I really, really like that movie. Oh, is it the one where he breaks the code? Yes. Oh, I've watched it. Actually, I was working in the cinema that was playing it. So I watched it while being the cinema aster. Yes. It's an excellent movie. I enjoyed it a lot. It was a history. I didn't really know that well. I don't know if you have Alan Turing because of the Turing test, but it really didn't know the whole story about what he did in World War II. So I thought it fascinating. I also thought the way they dealt with homosexuality, I thought was really good and interesting. So generally, I very much enjoyed the movie, whether it's historical accurate or not, I don't know. And for that matter, I don't really care. I don't go to movies to learn history. I go to movies to be entertained. I go to movies to be inspired. And I thought that movie was inspiring. And it was a testament to the greatness of the human mind. So in that sense, it was a good movie. And Keira Knightley was great. And Keira Knightley was good. Yes. Eric, the reality is that the worst platform you could do it is on YouTube. YouTube takes the most money. The best platform for me is either Patreon or Subscribestar or even PayPal. Those three platforms take a lot less money than YouTube. I mean, YouTube is super convenient. And I love super chat and everything, but it's definitely the platform. YouTube does well from the Iran book show. And maybe they don't sell ads on my show, because if you've noticed, none of my shows, only the short videos, none of my shows have ads in them, but they make money off of the cut of the, whoops, you lost your video there, the cut of the super chats and your memberships. So if you really want to maximize my dollar, bang for the dollar, then one of the other platforms is better. Okay, happy avocado. We know that is, Nikos looks much better than Iran. Why is this a mystery? We always knew Nikos looked a lot better than me. Let me tell one thing to people. I'm not selling my looks. It's not what I'm asking for super chats for. People should try and check out the photos from last talk on the last night when Yaron wears a black shirt and a black suit. I've tried to persuade him to, like, do you know the manager Diego Simeone, who works black on black? You should do the same. It's so cool. It's so, it's very cool. But you know, that's how I travel, right? I mean, and Nikos has often commented on my, when I travel, I'm wearing a black, a black, what do you call it? Not T-shirt because it's long sleeves. Yeah, it's blouse. Let's see. It's black and a dark suit and the same, the same pants. And it's very, you know, I look pretty good when I travel. I should lecture that way. You know, I should break with the habit as a uniform. I should just do it as a uniform. No, not a turtleneck. I don't like turtlenecks. Anything that rises into my neck, I hate. Yeah. I have childhood. Yeah. I don't, don't get me started on all my, my problems with clothes, why I hate ties. I hate, I hate turtlenecks. Yeah. I just, I need to have a Steve Jobs look, not exactly like Steve Jobs, but a Steve Jobs like look, right? That's, that's what I need. I think the look I have is I come up on stage. With a jacket and within the first five minutes, take it off and hang it on the chair. That's kind of the ritual that everybody's noticed that I engage in because I get hot. I'm on stage. I need to get comfortable. See my, my emphasis on comfort. That's my standard. Mico's does not approve. I know. Michael asked, why do Protestant populations have an easier time embracing capitalism than Catholic populations? I have an answer to this. I'm curious what Mico's thinks. Don't tell me the protestant ethic, because I don't think the protestant ethic is too as compatible with capital as most people think. No, it's not that. It's the answer. It's the hatred of this world. So the Protestants are much more explicit about the fact that this world is grubby, horrible, materialistic, disgusting. You're predestined anyway, whether you go to hell or to heaven. So what differences make what you do here? The Catholics actually have a view of trying to be virtuous in this world. Protestantism, you know, is preached by Luther. And I think many of his disciples, it doesn't matter what you do in this world. And, you know, as Luther explicitly said, there's no usury in heaven. There's no capitalism in heaven. But here, in this world, who cares? It's not that they love it. They just don't care. Wait, didn't our friend tell us that protestantism is more friendly environment than capitalism? So they don't care. So go do whatever you need to do in order to make money. And that's why they're more friendly towards free markets. It's disgusting. It's immoral. But, hey, that's life, right? You know, it's the only way to get material goods. And here in this world, material goods are valuable. In the next world, you know, there's no capitalism in heaven. Heaven is a communist Marxist utopia. But in this world, go for it. And it's that sense of it doesn't matter that allows people to be free. And it's why Protestants have a much more attitude about laissez-faire, you know, just do whatever. You know, walk a damn, walley model, or flawed. Catholics take this world much more seriously. They're much more serious about this world. Yeah, and you have those two huge outliers, which is Italy and Spain, that skew a bit towards anti-capitalism. But, yeah, the sample is small, I would say. But Italy is Catholic. So Italy would be anti-capitalist. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But also it happens to be, or maybe it's not a coincidence, that you have fascism there. You have the communist party in Europe. But that's Catholicism because they focus on virtue. So they focus on applying the ideas of sacrifice consistently. So it's completely consistent with Marxism, completely consistent with fascism. It just replaces God with something else. It's the Protestants that have this kind of messy, call it messy freedom, a little bit of freedom, not too much. It's messy. They're no real principles because they're not interested in virtue. They're not interested in virtue. The Protestants are not that interested in virtue in this life. They're interested in the afterlife. And, you know, it's out of the Protestants that you get, you know, God wants you to be rich. You know, it's anything goes. Protestants is really anything goes. Whatever they think will attract an audience and fill their coffers. Yeah, if you're rich, because God wanted you to be rich. So, yeah. It's so harder for a rich man to get into heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Yeah, Jonathan said that. Al says, no question. Just a monetary thank you. Thank you, Al. Appreciate that. Whoops, I skipped that one. Justin says, what do you think about Andrew Tate? Is it dangerous that young men are following him? Okay, it's too late. So probably I won't get canceled. So I think the average young person is in such a lack of anyone to give him some motivation that you can do things in life, that anything they find is probably better than the default position that they find themselves in. Now, having said that, once you get to the specifics of Tate, he's proudly rational. He's the guy who says that two plus two equals five. If I threaten to punch you. So in a way, he's also a postmodernist. But the mere view that someone looks up to someone who is good-looking, successful, and looks happy. There's something healthy in it, but it becomes unhealthy when you get to the specifics of Tate. So it's a longer discussion, but that's my... So I'm not that worried when young people get excited with Tate. Because who else is out there for them to get excited to? That's the real tragedy. So I am, I have a much more negative view of this. People are excited about Hitler, and he got people excited about being healthy and fit and good-looking and dressed smartly and wear uniform. I'm not comparing Tate to Hitler, but I'm saying the fact that he gave them a role model and you could argue a positive role model. I think when people get hooked on the superficial, the materialistic superficiality and particularly Tate, the ugliness, the ugliness of... It's not arrogance. It's the narcissism. I mean, he's a narcissist. And that is a very, very bad model. And what it leads to, because ultimately Tate is a pragmatist philosophically, I mean, it leads to pragmatism, and therefore it leads to doing things that are going to really, really hurt you. And then you associate being hurt and doing bad stuff with self-esteem, and I think that is very bad. So to the extent that people think Tate has self-esteem and don't see that he doesn't, but think he has self-esteem and legitimate self-esteem, it's very damaging to young men. And given that he made most of his money, it looks like other than the fighting, but after that, that he made most of his money after running a porn ring or not exactly the most virtuous way to make money, but he has made money. And we'll see how the court case in Romania goes for him. And the other thing is that Tate is not really selfish the way we objectively would call him. Because if you think about it, he's a second hander. What does he say? He says, I like entering a club with nice women around me and I want everyone to see that. Why do you want everyone to see it? I mean, it could be cool. Maybe you enjoy the company of these women, but why do you want everyone to see them? And why do you want people to be afraid of you? So there's some second hand. Actually, there's some serious second handiness going on there. Yes. I mean, it's a fake self-esteem and a fake selfishness, and it's, I think in that sense, very damaging to young men. I mean, what's sad, and this I agree with Nicos is that they don't have alternative models of masculinity. That is, there are no positive masculine role models out there. Almost all the role models for masculinity today are either wimps or these kind of materialistic superficial false, second-handed kind of narcissistic types. Even in sports, it's difficult to find masculine models compared to the past. They're great achievers, but they're not great role models. I mean, anyway, too many. Yeah, they whine and complain. And you see that, you see it in basketball and the NBA. I mean, I don't remember in the 80s, Larry Bird or Magic. Any two referees about calls. I mean, you know, and Boston Celtics is good. Tatum is a great player. Half the game, he's complaining to the referee about a call from, I mean, who cares? Just get on. And the physicality that they played within the 1980s. I mean, play against the Detroit Pistons. The bad boys. The bad boys in the 80s and 90s. I mean, those were brutal. I grew up with the 90s New York Knicks. And because I was with the underdog, I wasn't with the Chicago Bulls. I was Knicks. Oakley, Mason, Ewing, Starks. These were these and Pat Riley. Talking about someone. I hated Pat Riley because of how he dressed. I still hate Pat Riley because of that. It drives me nuts. You're in a basketball court. Loosen up. Oh, come on. It's the opposite today. Have you seen them today? They wear this hood. It's like, come on. Don't wear a hoodie. You wear a T-shirt. You're good with the T-shirt. It's sports. You're not at it. You're not at it. You're not at a wedding or funeral. Don't dress like you are. And Nikos and I, there's a real schism brewing in objectivism about dress codes. Yeah, because I see the potential. You look so good with when you wear suits and black on black. Black on black. I don't mind. It's comfortable. All right. Let's see. Colt Savage. Colt Savage. There's a name for you. There's a model for masculinity. Colt Savage says Nikos looking fresh with these little emoji with cool sunglasses. He's got you, Nikos. Thank you, sir. All right. Rob says, thank you, your honor, Nikos. I hope one day to see you both in Australia. This country badly needs effective objectivist communicators like you. That's why there's so many YB fans here. Great. I mean, you guys need to get organized and invite me to come. I mean, it, you know, it takes a lot of money, but it doesn't take a lot more than that to get me to come to Australia. I'm eager to do it. Or get that. What's this quasi libertarian Institute in Australia, which makes some big events. There's a number of them. And there's the one in Perth is one that's very friendly towards objectivism. And they know me and they're very friendly towards the Institute. They used to send us. They went in Perth on the western side of Australia. All right. Let's see. Justin says, can you talk about the relationship between nationalist new rate and the manosphere? New rate politicians seem to talk about masculinity a lot. There's a whole chapter in the book about the manuscript into relationship with the right. So here's a short story. Unfortunately, what happens is people see a bad phenomenon. They say, oh, feminist has gone too far or the left has gone too far. And the reaction is not to spot what exactly is it in that movement that has gone too far, but to create a different tribe. So for example, they say the manosphere says feminism is bad, but why it's bad? It's bad because it's collectivistic. It's deterministic. It doesn't really believe in free will. And it sees women as victims. Notice, though, how these tropes repeat themselves quite often in the manosphere. And something similar happens in politics. The left is bad. So we're going to throw away any principle and we're going to do whatever is going to piece off the left. And by doing so, you end up giving up on reality altogether because your point of reference is not what do I see with my own eyes. It's what is my group, which is opposed to the left or to the feminist are doing. So that's why you find them in the same in the same circles because they're reactive movement. They haven't got something positive, something new to offer. We hate these people, so we're going to hate them all together. And these people are the establishment. So whatever is anti-establishment, that's what we are for. Anti-vax, anti-Ukraine, you name it. All right. Justin Ose asks, his hypergamy, biologically real, do women chase high status men? Okay. So there's a rational case to be made for quote hypergamy that doesn't involve any biological thing. It's that people like people who are valuers who go after value and who go after things in their life. It's not about money. Do you think that all women just dream of, I don't know, Mark Zuckerberg, no offense to Mark? No, there are many other things rather than money. So you could make a case, a non-deterministic case for quote hypergamy, which is women like people who go after, I mean, I like men also like people who go after value. I was going to say, doesn't it work for men as well? Sexually it works in a different way. Yes, in a different way. Yes. But it works. We admire this type of men who get after it, who achieve things. So it's not hypergamy. So it's not status. It's not status. And the way they frame it, right? Because status is a second-handed. It's achievement. It's values. It's success. Yes. I, you know, we attracted to successful women. We might measure success differently from men and women, maybe depending on the context. But it's success. It's achievement. It's values. So people in the manuscript have made the case that Atlas Rag, the dog, me goes through a hypergamous trajectory. But if you think about it, none of these is deterministic or biological. There's a reason why she falls in love with Reagan. There's a reason why she breaks up with French. Okay. Spoilers alert. And at the end, with whom she ends up, no spoilers. There's a very good reason why she gives up on Hank. And Hank is not her final choice. I mean, a reason that it doesn't need any biological determinism, which is a big part of what people mean by hypergamy. Volta says, what does it mean to be an auditor in those classes? It means that you can participate in class. You are there. So you don't know who is auditor and who is student. It just means you don't have to submit an assignment every week and you don't need to do a normal presentation or whatever that module means. So it's, it's a lighter option, less commitment. Marilyn says, Nico says a phenomenal public speaker. Yes, he is. He's very good. Thank you very much. Michael says, you have called the GOP pathetic. And I used to disagree. However, with what is happening in the house, the GOP has never looked worse. The Democrats look competent. Lincoln must be rolling in his grave. Yes. And not surprising. But yeah, anyway, Jacob Collins says, hi from Stebro, Colorado. Oh, it's beautiful. Great skiing weather out here. You're on. What is your favorite vacation spot and activity beside Michelin restaurants? Wow. I mean, that's really hard because I live on a tropical island. I have the ocean right in front of my window. It's hard to seduce me to a beach somewhere. Although that used to be among my favorite places to go visit a beautiful results on beaches. So I would say that my favorite vacation spots would be today. If it's not food, then it's art. So I'm planning a trip for a week to spend in Rome. I've spent a lot of time in Florence. I just came back from Madrid where there was food and art. And so it's, it really is Paris, of course, London. I love London partially because phenomenal museums and it's so much going on. So always there's always stuff going on. Paris is the same way. Those are probably my vacation's favorite vacation. The other kind of vacation spot I like, and then we'll go on because it's late, is unusual places. I like going to Asia partially because it's so different than what we have here. It really is interesting and fascinating, but it's completely different. It's clearly a different culture. There's no mistake about it. And that's fun. I find that enjoyable and interesting. The people look differently. The way that the language is different. Signs are not in a woman, alphabet. And the food is different. It's just visually. You get this dissonance, which I find enjoyable and interesting. Anyway, that is, do you have any favorite, favorite vacation spots? I'm going to sound so much cliche. Oh, I work too much. I don't go to the vacations, but because I was living for so long abroad, I've missed a lot on vacations, but I would say the Greek mountains and the Greek countryside, not necessarily the islands, because you get in the boat, you get in the boat, you get in the boat, you get in the boat, you get in the boat, you get in the boat, you get in the boat, it's too crowded, somewhere where I can drive with my car, Greek mountains or Greek seaside, in the island, you have to go off season. Yeah. Andrew says, Matt Gaetz is passionately praising Trump and nominating the SOH. I'm not sure where SOH is. They have always been wing nuts in Congress. Are they going outside as a continuation of the past, or is it a political fringe today different in some ways? I think it's different in some ways and I think it's different in the way that Trump was different. I think they are narcissistic in a way that they haven't been in the past. Maybe that's partially the social media world in which we live. They're narcissistic in a way and they're pragmatists in a way. They don't pretend to be principled anymore. The best politicians in the past, even the wing nuts, let's say, I don't know, who would have been a wing nut? Pat Buchanan. That's who I thought, yeah. But even worse than him, who came from the South, who still were racist or whatever, they had some love of the founding fathers. They had a certain love of the system of government or at least not that they loved it. They presented themselves as loving it. They presented themselves as loving the founding, loving America, loving certain principles. They considered American principles. These people have nothing. They're zeros. They're empty. Matt Getz is a slick, horrible, disgusting, little, skirmish individual and he's nothing. He really, really, really represents nothing. This guy who just got elected as a Republican and it turns out that everything in his resume, everything in his resume was a lie. I mean, he even claimed to be Jewish at some point and he's not Jewish at all. Anyway, no, I think this is much worse. This is what you get for electing Trump. Let's see. Michael asks, what exactly did Rand hate about Kant? God. You know, it's 1.45 a.m. in Athens right now. Nikos is running here on fumes, caffeine. No, no, no, no. I'm enjoying it as much as you can imagine. I know his ideas and reality is irrational and crazy. But what exactly did he say or write that was evil? Do you want to take this? Do you want me to take it? Absolutely not. That's yours. I mean, I don't know what exactly said because I don't understand anything he said. So I can't read Kant. I've never been able to. I've tried. I failed miserably. I don't have the mind that can comprehend because I've read secondary sources, not just objective secondary sources, others too. Basically, what Kant says is that we don't have direct contact with reality. Indeed, we don't have connection with reality at all. That our senses in a sense are feeding us something that might or might not be related to what's actual reality. And we have no means by which to know what that actual reality is. So that's irrational. But more than that, he then says, you cannot, since that's the case, you cannot get morality of reality. He wants to avoid saying you get morality from God because he's trying to ground his morality on quote, what he conceives as reason, which is a floating abstraction, a complete detachment from reality. So what he says is morality is just imprinted in our minds. We have categorical imperatives. It's just there. We all know it. We just have to find it in ourselves. It's intrinsic to our nature, how he explains the people who are evil and so on. They didn't try hard enough, I guess, or something. But note that that leads exactly to the CRT. In a sense, CRT is much more Kantian than it is Marxist. Because what that means, the next innovation beyond that is, yeah, it's in our minds. But our minds are different. So we each have different immoral standards. We each have different categorical imperatives. It depends on our race, depends on our gender, depends on our power relationship with other people. So there is no one morality. So Kant opens up the door to every subjectivist and intrinsicist evil out there. So he can be the father of, in a sense, Karl Marx and Hitler. He can be the father of Dugan and in some senses, the post-moderns and the CRT. He is the father of all of it because he opens it up and gives you no standard by which to judge. One of the reasons, this is an interesting point, I think, one of the reasons the white cannot answer the left and therefore has to basically take their philosophical premises is because there are no other. That is Kant is basically eradicated whatever good was in the Enlightenment. He's eliminated reason as a standard by which we can challenge what the left is saying. So all it's left is my emotion versus your emotion. So I'm against your emotions. That's what the right is against the left's emotions. And therefore, let's do our emotions. And our emotions have a bigger history. I emotions go back to and Kant would be proud of that because ultimately he was a Christian. So that's a little bit of it is duty ethics, the fact that he viewed self-interest so negatively. If you had a bit of self-interest in what you were doing to help the others, it's not Marvel anymore. You could go on and on and on with how evil his Marvel code really is. If our friend is interesting, you can check in the Iron Run Campus, not the Iron Run University. Iron Run Campus available to anyone. There's a course by Leonard Picoff, The History of Philosophy. There's at least two lectures on Kant so you can find more there. I think they have the last lectures in that course. I think it's right at the end because I think the course ends with Kant. Okay, Philosophical Zombie Hunter. With Jordan Peterson and Tate, it seems that men are looking for a work hard and improve your self-message. What do the left have in this regard? What does the left have in that regard? Does it appeal at all to people trying to self-improve in any kind of sense? No. So here's the thing with the left. They give you all this, oh, we want to raise women, but it's always through quote empowerment, which empowerment makes no sense. No one can give you power to do something. So with all its flaws, with all its problems, at least this world of self-development or this world of quote, the red pill, however you want to call it, it has this kernel which tells you you can be better. It has this kernel that says life is in your own hands. And then it gets lost in determinism and bad ideas, but at least there's this. It says you can do something better. You can be something more. So that's why I say, particularly if you have the context to tell the BS from the good stuff, I find it more, I find it healthier than the nihilism which says, well, don't bother. All right, let's see. Ryan says, hi guys. Just joined the show. Is cultural appropriation an anti-concept? How does it distract from the real discussion about good and bad aspects of culture? Well, a way to test an idea is to try to think what would be its logical conclusion. Cultural appropriation in its logical conclusion would mean none of you people should follow the law of identity because this is Aristotle, so this is my culture. So you see that it makes absolutely zero sense. It's a way to put people in identity groups. It's as racial as it gets. Actually, the Nazis used to literally do this. They would say this is Jewish art and actually Carl Schmitt, one of their ideological gurus, would say, you can say there are even good Jewish ideas, but these are other ideas. So the point is not whether they're good or bad. They're other. They're at a different box. Therefore, he would say, don't, he wouldn't use the term cultural appropriation, but at the end of the day, that's what it is. Your ideas versus my, your culture versus my culture, no communication. It's literally segregation. It's cultural segregation institutionalized. Paulo Zeus, thank you. Let's see, Michael asks, are Greek intellectuals today, mostly Kantians and Marxists, would Aristotle be walling in his grave? They are Marxist or those who are not Marxist are Rollsians. So if you're a Greek liberal, Rolls is your guy, unfortunately. Matthew, more traditional lefties like Spiked and Brendan O'Neill, real against CRT, but all they seem to dislike is the way that the new left is dividing society rather than the fact of division. So the way they're dividing it rather than the fact that they're dividing thoughts. So Spiked was the, was my escape vehicle from Marxism. I know Brendan, I've written for, for Spiked, particularly when it comes to the criticism of identity politics, I think they're quite good. So there are other areas where I disagree with them, but their criticism of identity policy is quite good. And again, it was a turning point for my life. So it's difficult for me to, to, to find much, which is wrong with it. Having said that, I'm not a regular reader of Spiked. So our friend might have seen something that I haven't. And, and are they still Marxist, essentially? No, but they take, supposedly the human is from Marxism. So the young Marxists who thought that history is an open field that human action can change history. But Brendan is very anti property rights and things like that. That's true. Unfortunately, they, they defend free speech, but they don't understand that property rights is the sine qua non condition for free speech. Yeah. So they, they want to nationalize Twitter. For more Brendan O'Neill with your own last year, we did a series your own debates Europe, there was an interesting discussion between your own and Brendan, I think on social media. No, I don't think we ever got Brendan on that one. Are you sure? We got somebody, we got Toby. Oh, anyway, go take that series anyway. It was an interesting series. But we did do an event with Brendan O'Neill in London a few years ago on, I can't remember what it was on. It was, it was on a topic we agreed on. So we, we ended up agreeing, but then the issue of property rights came up and we, there was a sharp disagreement between us. Nicos, Frank asked, what is this concept anti-racism and being an anti-racist? Do countries dominated by blacks like Haiti and African regions practice this? No, they don't. But the point is we cannot criticize this according to critical race theory because, and this is something that Duggin would agree. There is no outside from which to criticize it. There is no universal or objective standard for this. Therefore, you have no right to say what Haiti or Iran is doing. Now, their understanding of anti-racism means that since so there are two scenarios. One is that you're a racist. The other scenario. So let's say you see an injustice, a black person making less money than a white person. The two possible explanation is either the white person is more clever than the black person, in which case you're racist, or the other scenario is that you're a racist. The other scenario is you have to fight it directly. And this is why CRT says the only alternative is racist or actively anti-racist. Of course, it's a false dilemma. So you could say it even becomes an anti-concept. It's definitely an anti-concept. Ryan, just giving money to celebrate human excellence. Thank you, Ryan. Michael, will you have Andy Bernstein on again? Maybe. Richard, Nicos looks sharp. $5 for beard care tips. No need to actually read. I'm just contributing. Thank you, Richard. Thank you. Key facts. I heard an argument that CRT is Marxist in a sense because the race consciousness is analogous to class consciousness. And therefore, CRT has an element of the dialectical materialism thoughts on this. No, it's even, it's way more simplistic. So Marx doesn't say that if you're a worker, you think in a particular way. It's a bit more complicated than that. She says that under a particular system, everyone has false consciousness, whereas critical race theory tells you that we have different consciousness, not wrong, different. And at least Marxists say in a society where we overcome the division in their relation of production, we're going to get to proper consciousness. With critical race theory, there's no hope. We are destined to be in a tower of Babel. Michael says, thanks for all you do. Would you have an objective law professor, philosopher to discuss? Objectivism would be transferred to the legal system. I'm going to have some lawyers, absolutely. So what's that? Oh, Tara Smith. And Tara Smith, we didn't talk a lot about philosophy of law, but she's of course an expert in philosophy. But I will have had a master fund soon, and he's a kind of a puppy rights expert. Mark Thomas, for Nikos, what work of yours would you recommend for someone who is new to you? And as an author, what objectivist events will you attend later this year? Okay, so when it comes to content, I would say the daily objective or the new idea life. Mostly, though, my talks in the iron-run con and inocon because I put too much prep for that. If you like reading books, it's out of focus to be a court. Yes. So it's a small book, but it gives you a good understanding of cultural wars. It was, I was even more of a newbie as a student of objectivity. So cut me some slack maybe on some things. Or just follow me on Twitter and you'll get updates from there. But thank you for the interest. Yeah, Nikos is a good Twitter. So you should follow him on Twitter. And check him out on YouTube. His talks, I think Iron-run Institute put out his talks at the iron-run con and inocon. You can catch them there. And also I have a TikTok channel and my rule is I cannot post videos longer than one minute. So everything I post on TikTok or on YouTube has to be shorter than one minute. The ones I was referring to on YouTube are the long ones. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I have like a Nikos or Tiracopolis channel, the longer ones you can find it in the iron-run institutes and also in the iron-run center UK in the daily objective every now and then. I don't recommend anything that's a minute long, even your unbroke video shorts. But you are also on TikTok. You know that, right? I prefer to evade that fact. Okay. Yes, I am on TikTok. I, my representatives put me on TikTok, but I don't like one minute videos, but you need to do them. They need to be done. Good marketing. Okay, Joe says, for Nikos, what's the intellectual culture in Greece like any more or less chance of it swinging heavily towards a more free culture compared to other places you're familiar with? It's as bad as it gets because the two biggest influences is the left for historical reasons and orthodox church in the culture. So my talk in iron-run con Europe is going to be anti-American is in Greece and why a Greek culture is so anti-American. And my biggest worry is that if I tell you some stories, people are not going to believe me. If I tell you, for example, how Greek society reacted to 9-11, people are going to say, you are making these things up and what are you telling us? So it's bad. Yeah. And my experience of going into university in North Thessaloniki was the only university I've ever gone into where there were literally red flags with hammers, sickles, explicitly communists, not socialists, not social democrats, communists, Stalinists and presented that way and proudly so and only place I've been to anywhere in the world. You wouldn't see that in Russia in not in Russia. You would see that in Russia actually, but you wouldn't see that in China. You're much more likely to see it in place like Greece than you are in former communist places. So Greece has a communist party which is an orthodox communist party. So which means they believe that the biggest mistake in Soviet Union was distalinization. And there are some elections where they fled with double digits like 10%. Okay, Mike asks, what is your view of West Roberts as an economist? I mean, generally positive. I don't know him that well as an economist. I mainly know him as an interviewer of economists. And he's very good. And his channel is definitely worth listening to. He interviewed some of the best economists in the world. And generally, he's pretty good. I don't always agree with him. He won't interview me. So I guess I'm offended by that, but I'm not exactly an economist. So maybe that's the reason. Maybe not. Maybe she doesn't like objectives. Dave asks, Nikos, are you still training Brazilian jiu-jitsu? And what belt are you currently? You, me, and Alex, should do a jiu-jitsu exhibition for the Okon talent show. So in Okon, I rolled with Aaron Fried. And I'm very proud that he didn't talk to me for something like 45 seconds. Of course, he did within a minute. So no, there's nothing near where I live. So I'm training these days in boxing, but I'm trying to incorporate some self-defense on it. So I'm doing more of striking because of the geographical locality. We discussed this with Don in New Year's resolution. If you want to set a habit, make it easy. If you have to drive 40 minutes to train jiu-jitsu, you're not going to do it that often. Pick something else which is closer at home. So it's just big in objectivism. I didn't know that Fried was doing it as well, right? Yeah. Aaron is a blue belt. And Alex is? Black belt in Gracie Baja's jiu-jitsu. All right. PBE says, my sis mentioned to me she took kids to help clean public park and meet local politicians. I said she'd have asked politicians why the park wasn't clean already paid by taxes. How would you have approached that point? Well, there's an argument to be made that if it's your local park, there's a very selfish reason to clean it. And, you know, someone has to do it if the people who have to don't do it. But I mean, it's such a mess. Where do you start with what the state should do and what you should do about it? Do whatever is going to make your life better when it comes to your local park. It's difficult to give a principled answer. Don't you think there are better things your kids could be doing? Well, it depends how important it is for you, your local park. And then why meet with politicians? Because they're there. Just, no, I think this was a civics lesson to meet the politicians. Okay, last two questions. Then we'll let Nikos go to sleep. Justin says, many young beautiful girls who don't go after values and have little virtues are chased by high status men. Is that hypogamy? Well, I have my views on that. Okay, let's start with your own views and then I'll give you my opinion. I mean, that's just superficial stupid men. I mean, sorry. But it's not a man that you value, somebody you would value. You're not going to value a man who just goes sleeping around with pretty girls. If you're not, you know, think about the novels, think about the men in Ayn Rand's novels who you admire and the kind of women they seek. And that's the standard you should have. Now, it doesn't mean you're at their level of the women you seek are going to be at the level of Dagny. But that's the kind of relationship you want to seek women of values. We live in a very superficial materialistic culture in which men are attracted to beautiful women for no other reason than the beautiful women. So the question is, why would you do it? Why would you go after them? If there's some way that you find value in it, then I could discuss it. But if you do it because this proves something or because then you can brag or even worse if you consider it your duty as a man. So I know people who consider that they have to do it or maybe at some point in our lives with people did it because we thought, oh, that's what men do. But the question is, if it leaves you empty, then you are doing something which is literally a sacrifice, which is weird. I mean, love and sex is so nice, it should be anything but that. So my biggest problem would be it's not selfish enough with the true meaning of the word. And Rand talks about this. It's men seeking full self-esteem. She talks about the playboy mentality of achieving a full sense of self-esteem through conquest of meaningless sex, conquest of beautiful women and meaningless sex. It's not an ideal to strike towards. Agreed. Buzz says, oh, God. Buzz is in the same thing. He has the same question of everyone in my guests. Tips for burned out parents of seven month old baby. I mean, I've been getting this question since the baby was three months, I think he keeps asking. Then, then, since this is a $4.99 question, he also says, also, your opinion on Bitcoin, NFT, Elon Musk, drug crisis, economic predictions for 2022, I think he means 2023. This is part of the problem with the burnout and any promising politicians out there. Now, he has to have a Smith's. He has done Watkins' this. He's going to be asking this. So pick and choose. Do you have tips for burnout parents? No, but I see my sister and I would just say try not to try to anyway. Who am I to give advice? I enjoy it. Try to get the most out of it. Okay. Well, you have my admiration. That's all I'm saying. I'm rooting for you. Okay. Bitcoin? No idea. NFTs? Even more no idea. I was going to say Elon Musk, I want to read his biography. Instinctively, I like this guy. That's it. Drug crisis? Drug crisis. It's a drug crisis in the United States. It's sad. Economic predictions for 2023? Oh, drug crisis. Legalize it, but criticize it. Economic predictions. If we have Yaron here, it's like having me here and asking basketball questions to someone else. Like me? Yes. I know a little bit of basketball. My basketball. My team. I have one team. That's all I follow. All right. Any promising politicians in Greece? Absolutely not, unfortunately. All right. Nikos, bedtime. It's 2.08 a.m. Well, I'm going to have a Dakos. You know, this thing with the tomato and the, because I lost intellectual energy because this was so fun. So first the Dakos and then I'll go to bed. Sounds good. All right. So Nikos has set a new bar for all interviews. First of all, he's gone two hours and eight minutes. So that's a record. And we're at 700, you guys contributed $783 to the Iran Book Show during this episode. So the competition will continue. We've got 97 likes. I think that could go over 100. Come on, guys, before you leave, don't forget to like the show. And of course, if you like what I'm doing, please use the link to my website or Patreon or subscribe. So some mechanism to become a monthly contributor. That is incredibly valuable. Nikos, I will see you. Are you hanging out with me during my Europe trip? Well, it depends on Jonathan, who is the master of our speaking phase. But just to say a huge thank you, not only for today. You know you are, anyway, you don't need me to tell you are my role model and all that stuff, but you know you are. So thanks for everything. I appreciate it. Last time I was in Georgia, I'm going to Georgia again. I'm going to see our friends at Georgia. Nikos was with me. We had a good time in Tbilisi. So I'm heading back there. All right. I mean, I'm doing it in February, so it's probably too cold for you. Nothing is too cold. I live in a house where it's so expensive. That's why I wear this. It's basically without heating here. That's why I wear this in a barefoot in the shorts because I don't need heating here. All right, everybody. I will see you all tomorrow morning, and then there'll be a show on Saturday, and that'll be it for the week. That's eight shows in a week. I'm doing eight a week, just me. Well, I had a hope from Nikos today. All right. Thanks, Nikos. I'll see you, I think, at OConn if I don't see you before then. Hopefully before that, hopefully before there. All right. Bye, everybody. Have a great night, and thanks to all the superchatters.