 The radical. Fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Brook Show on this April 17th. It's a Wednesday. Second day of our new format. So please let me know what you think as we go through the week and into next week, whether you like the new format, don't like the new format. Give me some feedback. I'm not saying I will abide by your feedback, but feedback is always good and yes, my goal is to constantly improve the show and play around with formats and whatever until we get it optimal. All right, today's show, two hours. I've got a hard stop at 4 p.m. east coast time. So two hours and so please ask questions. May you know support the show in various ways however you want to. Silvano, thank you for that sticker. I know Zach Zion has not become a member of the show, so thank you Zach. So yeah, please find ways to participate. Talk about in the chat. Like the show. Share the show. Let people on Twitter know that it's going on right now and that they should come over and participate. All of that. So Andrew is on a flight to Chicago and he's listening to YBS. That's pretty amazing. That is streaming on the plane I take it. That's that is very cool that that capacity is available. Okay, some quick updates and then we'll run through a bunch of stories and news and we'll talk about and we'll talk about in the second half we'll talk about NPR and journalism. Although the first half might bleed into the second half and you know, we'll see how it all plays out and how we slice it all up. A lot of these stories can be quite quite challenging. I'll also say this that I've got some good news stories towards the end of the news section. So those of you who have a very low tolerance for good news and who don't believe in good news and who don't want to hear anything positive about the world, you might want to tune out as we get close to that because this is going to be really bad good news. I mean really good news for and good news the kind of good news that yeah you won't believe. You can't believe because Biden's president there can't be any good news. So you know if this was if Trump was president you'd be. Anyway, I'm just warning you good news is coming. Israel, no good news there, still dithering. I like that word, still dithering. It seems like the choices between going all out and going after Iran or trying to appease and abide by and play into this so-called new coalition that the new allies that Israel has. So it's either Israel doing what's in Israel's best interest on Israel's time on Israel's ideas or you know listening to what the Saudis have to say and basically adjusting whatever it is that they want to say that whatever they want to say to the Saudis, the Emirates, Dubai, the Jordanians, the Americans, the British, the French who also wants to join the coalition. Israel is so eager for love. It's so eager to get affirmation from the Arab world that I think to some extent it's willing to sacrifice its own interest in order to get that affirmation. So I think that's what's going on. That in my view is what is going on. Some rumors suggest that Israel is going to wait until the Passover to actually attack Iran. That would make it early May. So a Passover ends on April 30th in order to give Israeli citizens residence respite during the Passover week. I don't know. I have no insight into the dealings on the inside of the Israeli cabinet. But that is what I've read in some places. So nothing's happening is the bottom line. The rumor is that Israel will respond but not overwhelming force. It will be more symbolic than anything else. It will represent Iran, give Iran a sense of what Israel is capable of without fully showing Iran what Israel is capable of. And it will be done on Israel's timing, which might be after Passover. It might be tonight, who knows. And that it will be done with plenty of notice to its new best friends, coalition members, and everybody else. Everybody will know what's happening, except the Iranians. But then again, we're getting all kinds of conflicting information because the reality is that the Israeli government is split on this. There's huge disagreements. There's huge fighting involved inside the cabinet. And all we're getting are people leaking stuff information. So you've got people disagreeing and then leaking various things about it. So in other words, we don't know anything. We don't know anything. All right. What do we know? Well, we do know that Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, is getting ready to propose finally his bills, foreign aid bills. And that, based on the fact that he was in Mar-a-Lago on Friday and did a thing with Donald Trump, he has Donald Trump's support, even though Donald Trump doesn't seem to support any specific one of these bills. He does have his support as maintaining his position as Speaker of the House. Anyway, it appears that he is going to propose four bills, four bills. And then, of course, they have to be reconciled with the Senate. But anyway, he's going to propose four bills, one supporting Israel, one supporting Taiwan, and one supporting Ukraine. The Ukraine bill will be structured as a loan with a bunch of accountability. The news story has it in quotes. I don't know what that means. A bit of money measures. And that one's going to go up online very soon. So you'll be able to read it. We'll be able to read it and figure out what's in there. A fourth bill, I suppose the all three of those, Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine will go up online. A fourth bill is going to pull together a bunch of different scrappy measures. One forced to sale of TikTok. I mean, that is always the top priority, I guess, of our politicians. Let's just sell, get rid of TikTok because of the national security threat of those of those one minute. Anyway, I don't even get me started. Anyway, then it's going to involve the sell off of seized Russian assets. And I'm not sure what then is done with those assets once they're sold off. Maybe that money could then be used to support Ukraine. And maybe that's what they're proposing. We'll see. And then sanctions and sanctions on Russia, China, and Iran, all of that together, TikTok, seizing Russian assets and sanctions. That bill will be ready to be posted, I guess online later today, so late today. All those four bills will move together. So procedurally, they'll move together. They'll be voted in one after the other, I think at the same time. And then there'll be another bill with the core components of the Republicans border policy bill. Of course, they had a border policy bill in the Senate, which Republicans killed for no reason other than they don't want to actually solve this problem before the election. They want us to hang over Biden's neck. That bill will be introduced later and separately. And the language of that is not being published yet. It does look like Johnson will have to get some Republican, some Democrat help to get these bills to a vote. There are going to be some procedural votes. These are the kind of votes that say, how do you vote about voting on this thing? And the worry is that enough Republicans will say, no, we don't want to vote on any of these things. We want the status quo that it will never come to a vote because a lot of these are going to require some Democratic votes. So Johnson is going to require some Democrats to vote on the question of whether to bring these to a vote, which is the procedure bill. If he does, then every one of these, Taiwan will probably be easily bipartisan. Israel, there'll be a lot of Republicans and a lot of Democrats voting against it. So again, it will be bipartisan Ukraine. There'll be a lot of Republicans voting against it. Almost all of Democrats will vote for it. And then TikTok, Russian assets, that stuff, I don't know, probably bipartisan. I don't know who's going to vote against that one, but maybe a few people. Anyway, all of them are going to require Democratic votes in order to get through. So this is not going to be a clear Republicans vote this way, Democrats will that way, except for the border bill, which will require all the Republicans to vote for in order for it to pass. But then it'll get stuck because it's not going to go anywhere near the Senate. So that bill is a symbolic bill. It's not an actual real bill, right? It's not an actual real bill. All right, so that's what we are. We'll be talking about this. I'll keep you updated on how the vote actually goes. The expectation is that this all will be voted on in, all will be voted on over the weekend. So over the weekend, we'll get the votes on those bills. Remember, Congress is going on holiday next week. I don't know what holiday Passover maybe. I have no idea. I think it's Passover next week. So Congress gets Passover off, they get Easter off, they get, I mean, they have more vacations than government school teachers. All right. So Biden, Biden, President Biden, President Biden, you know, another one of these presidents who have, you know, specialized in, in their economic knowledge. Anyway, Biden is proposing raising tariffs by, what is it, you know, by a significant amount. He's like, once a triple them or something, once the triple tariffs on, so, so they'll go to 25%. I think right now they're under 10%. They go to 25%. On certain, notice the certain, Chinese steel and aluminum products, certain Chinese steel and aluminum products that, you know, the US is, the US is probing this. There's also, he will announce that the US is going to launch an investigation of China's shipbuilding industry, shipbuilding industry, because that is, that is very big. And then Biden is going to announce all, of course, in Pittsburgh, for no particular political reasons, just he happens to be in Pittsburgh today. Pittsburgh, of course, is the home of US Steel and it's the home of steel manufacturing. He will also announce that he is opposed, opposed to a US Steel being sold to the Japanese country, a company for, for, for maybe national security reasons. Maybe not. Japan is not an enemy. For, I need to buy the votes of the Union's reasons. I need to, I need to make sure Union's are there. Jay Luther says, our core is also in Pittsburgh. Now it turns out, it turns out that, you know, these tariffs on steel and aluminum, they're coming in from China. You would think these would be, everybody's worried about this. This is really bad for the economy. It turns out, and not so much, right? Biden has chosen products and, and a country that will have basically no impact on the US economy. Why is that? Because we don't import steel and aluminum from China, or very, very, very little of the top 10 countries from which we import steel and aluminum. China is number not in the top 10, not in the top 10, right? So even when Trump, you remember Trump's tariffs, Trump presented the Trump tariffs as if they were against Chinese dumping, but China was not a top 10 importer even back then. Now the accusation was that they were exporting to Canada, and then the Canadians were dumping, or they were exporting to Brazil. The Brazilians were dumping, but that, just nonsensical. And of course, what, what Trump did was put tariffs on steel and aluminum from lots of countries, including many of our allies. And it had nothing to do with China. But you emphasize China, even though they're not a top 10 importer, to, to pretend that this has to do with national security, and oh, we're going after those Chinese. We ate the Chinese. The Chinese are bad. We'll get to another story about the Chinese in a minute. And, and we got to get the Chinese. So this is the story. It's not effing the, you know, it's not, this is not, I don't believe the unit is for this. This is just theater. This is political theater, political theater by Biden. It was political theater by Trump. And it's disgusting. It's dishonest. And it's part of the course for our politicians who have zero understanding of economics and, and, and believe, unfortunately, maybe correctly, that we're all idiots, that the American public and voters are idiots. It turns out, I have said this before, this is not news for today, but that the tariffs that Trump put on, on aluminum and steel that Biden continued, never did away with, actually reduced US manufacturing investment, output and employment, reduced employment in manufacturing, and did a lot of harm to the US economy. Multiple studies now have come out documenting this. And of course, the things that we could do to actually improve manufacturing, improve jobs, raise wages, like increasing free trade in the world, maybe even participating in the Pacific trade deal, God forbid that Trump took us out of, maybe initiating immigration reform, permit and licensing reform, maybe really, really fundamentally relooking at our tax policies. And, you know, as Scott Listicum says, and don't even get me started on the Jones Act, you know, just simple things that we could do that would have massive, I mean the Jones Act, probably of all the things, little, almost no downside, almost nobody actually loses from it, and the gains are just astronomical. And even that cannot be done, cannot be done. It's, it really is, it really is insane. Biden, of course, out there tripling tariffs. He's going to be a hero. Everybody's excited. To Bloomberg's credit, who a lot of news outlets publish this, this goes to the story we'll talk about later about journalism. This is a good example. A lot of the news stories published, oh, Biden's going to triple tariffs on Chinese aluminum and steel and they go on about, you know, what this is all about and what's going on and all that. And they don't mention that China doesn't really export steel and aluminum to the United States. Bloomberg's credit basically said, this is a non-event, you know, China is an insignificant player in this market. Why get excited about it at all? So journalism, they're supposed to give us the facts. Nope. No, no, no, no. We don't get the facts even on a simple story like this. Okay. All right, let's do a little free speech issue. So you guys know, I've talked a lot in the past about the National Conservatives. I've been a huge critic of national conservatism. I have debated the, maybe the founder of the National Conservative Movement, Jorm Khazoni, and we've debated formally at the University of Texas. We've also kind of debated informally on the Alex Friedman show. And so, you know, I've critiqued the National Conservatives' statement of principles and all that. Anyway, the National Conservatives have regular meetings, both in the United States and in Europe. I think they were growing movement. I think they are increased in influence and potentially political power with the rise of kind of the rights in Europe and potentially have a significant influence on a future Trump administration. You know, they're not the most out there of the new right. Certainly the Treadcons, the integrationists, the Catholics are much worse than the Nat-Cons, but the Nat-Cons are really, really, really bad. And, you know, I think that. Anyway, this year, the National Conservatives are holding their conference, held their conference, are holding actually right now, their conference in Brussels, in Europe. So this is the European version. They usually have one in the United States as well. And they have, for example, Nigel Farage speaking there and they have a bunch of other UK politicians speaking there. And, you know, I don't know how big of a conference. I don't know how many people are participating. I didn't see any data on that. But yesterday, just as I guess Nigel Farage was speaking, the Brussels police showed up and they announced that they were shutting down the event. They were shutting down the event on an order from the local socialist party mayor, Emile Kerr, who tweeted that far right is not welcome. And he explained that he banned the conference to ensure public safety. The conference was running along pretty smoothly, pretty quietly. Nothing was going on, nothing unusual. But the police said there was fear, fear. They were going to shut down this conference because there was fear that some leftists were going to show up and protest and maybe engage in violence, maybe even engage in violence. Now imagine that. They're willing to silence people based on a fear that maybe some protest would come up and maybe those protesters might become violent. Any specific evidence that any of this happened? No. How about your First Amendment responsibility? Now there's no First Amendment in Brussels. So, but assume this was the US. How about your commitment to free speech which would actually entail the police protecting the neocons from protesters who might use violence? How about the police coming out there and making clear that they will protect the conference from being shut down by a violent protest? That's what it means to protect free speech. It means protecting people from violence, protecting their right to speak from people who might use violence to silence them. That's the point. That's what the police are for. But that's what they're there for? No. Because of the fear that maybe something will happen, they're going to shut down the conference instead of actually dealing with the threat. Now this happens all the time. In the UK a few months ago, Douglas Maui was, his event was canceled, where he was going to talk about Israel. The event was canceled out of fear that protesters were going to show up and disrupt the event. So the police shut down the event. I mean this is turning the First Amendment upside down. The job of the police is not to silence people who have unpopular views. The job of the police is not to shut down events that might cause upset with some people. The job of the police under a regime of free speech is to protect those who have controversial views. It is to protect people from others who might use violence to silence them. Anyway, you know at the end the police I think felt a little embarrassed by the fact that they really had no case and had no justification of shutting down this event. Since then they decided that they would stand outside and prevent people from entering the event, entering the hall. Now this of course prevented anybody at the event from leaving because they couldn't come back again. They could leave but they couldn't come back again. It prevented anybody from coming to the event to see the latest speakers after the police showed up. So it clearly was still a violation of free speech. But at least they didn't shut down the event and the event continued. At the same time the NatCons filed a motion with a local court with a Belgian justice system. And I guess this morning, first thing this morning, the court basically said that the police and the mayor were out of line that this was in violation of whatever first amendment for whatever free speech protections exist in the European Union. And they forced the police to walk away and to let the event go on and the event indeed is going on. According to the court, quote, no official should have the power to shut down free and peaceful assembly. Merrily because he disagrees with what is being said. How can Brussels claim to be the heart of Europe if its officials only allow one side of the European conversation to be heard? Okay, that wasn't the court. That was the executive director of, I guess, the ADF International, which is the entity that sued on behalf of the NatCons. NatCon conference included UK parliamentarian Miriam Cates, former UK housing secretary, Suella Braveman, and a German cardinal, Lugren Muller, as well as Nigel Farage. Of course, all this did, all this did, action by the city mayor, all it did is bolster and give justification to the claims of the National Conservatives that the left is using the state to silence them, that the left is using the state to take over, that they must have this power instead, and that this is, you know, so it played into all the worst fears that people have about the European Union and it played into it and it, you know, it's just going to increase support for them, not anything else. It increases support for them, because these leftists are indeed nuts, and even though the court ruled against them, the very fact that a mayor thought he had the power to do something like this, you know, suggests that, you know, suggests how bad things are in Europe. This is on the court, the court reasoned that, quote, it does not seem possible to infer from the contested decision that a peace-disturbing effect is attributed to the Congress itself. So where's the, where's the disruption? The decision notes, the threat to public order seems to be derived purely from the reactions that its organizers might provoke among opponents. Yeah, that is, that is all good. Very disturbing in terms of what is, but not surprising. I mean, the European Union has so many, and European countries now have so many of these hate speech laws that it's not difficult for them to shut things down that they don't like. I mean, you can see that. I mean, we talked about that with Tara Smith about the law in Scotland. Ireland has a very similar law, but mainland Europe generally has a lot of these really, really horrible hate speech laws that are pretty, pretty nasty. I don't know if you saw this, but Dubai has been flooded, heaviest rainfall in 75 years. I don't know how they measure that. Do they measure rainfall 75 years ago? I guess so. Anyway, 75 years, the streets are flooded, the airport is flooded, the city is basically shut down. At least one person has died, but passengers are at the airport, walking through deep water, and the city streets are just rivers, cars are abandoned in completely flooded waters all the way to the top. It's a complete disaster in Dubai. They weren't ready for once in every 75 year flooding. So this Dubai, which so many people view as some kind of paradise out there, I'm very, very skeptical, is struggling with this. Now, one explanation for this interestingly enough, you'd expect everybody to blame climate change on this, but no, the actual blame is not on climate change, but on other man-made activity that is cloud seeding. Cloud seeding is a practice all over the Middle East. It doesn't almost ever rain in places like Dubai. And in order to have any kind of rain, any kind of precipitation, to grow anything, you need to seed the clouds. So they take clouds that normally don't produce rain, and they put a chemical in them, and that causes these clouds to actually drop some water. And the problem is that it seems like they were seeding clouds that already were likely to produce rain, but now overproduction, right? It turns out that since the 1950s and 60s, cloud seeding was something that was being done, but anyway, who knows? I don't know what caused this. It could be that they made a mistake with the cloud seeding. Cloud seeding is necessary, again, in this kind of part of the world, so they can't undo it. I guess some of the news stories are blaming climate change, human-caused climate breakdown. Breakdown, not just change, it's not just a breakdown. The climate is breaking down, and the consequence of the breakdown is we'll get massive floods and other extreme events. So God, it flooded. Give me a break. Floods happen. I know they're not supposed to happen in Dubai because Dubai is this special place. Talking about the Gulf State, Dubai is a part of the United Arab Emirates, well, Microsoft signed a deal yesterday to invest $1.5 billion in a company called G42, which is the United Arab Emirates' top artificial intelligence company. I mean, I'm not sure about top AI, maybe only AI, but anyway, it's a top AI company. So Microsoft is investing $1.5 billion in this company, and what does Microsoft get for this? The deal offers potential access to the huge wealth of the Emirates. I find it fascinating because it's not much about the actual commercial benefits of Microsoft for investing in G42, but it is access to the Emirati wealth. I guess who the chairman of this company is, the chairman, is Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Zayed. He happens to be the Emirates National Security Advisor. National Security Advisor, chairman of an AI company in Microsoft investing $1.5 billion. He also happens to be the younger brother of the country's democratically elected constitutional respect. Oh, no, sorry, one country. To the country's ruler, Sheikh Amir, right? So the Amir is, this is his brother. So a lot of good connections Microsoft is making here. So G42, I think you'll be shocked. The G42 is deeply embedded in their Emirati security state. In other words, G42 is embedded in spying on people who go to Dubai, on vacation, and people who go, who work in Dubai, and people who live in Dubai, and all the other United Arab Emirates, right? G42 is also focused on biotechnology. It's focused on AI. It's focused on surveillance and using AI for all of this. Several, you know, several of its executives are also associated with a company called Doc Matter, which is an Emirati cyber intelligence and hacking firm that employs a bunch of former spies. Anyway, this is an interesting company. Why did Microsoft invest $1.5 billion in it? It can't just be because of all these connections. Now, this is going to allow G42 to use Microsoft products, to use Microsoft AI. Microsoft, which is, of course, open AI's massive investor, is investing huge in AI, but it's hard to believe that an Emirati, you know, sorry, but it's just hard to believe that the Emirati company has that much to offer Microsoft. Indeed, Microsoft is going to give G42 permission to sell Microsoft services that use powerful AI chips, which are used to train and fine tune generative AI models. In return, G42, which has been under, you know, skipped that, will use Microsoft cloud services and a C to a security arrangement, a security arrangement with the US. So the reality is when you look at this deal, Microsoft does very little to gain from this commercially. There's almost nothing here. It's all about what do we call it? Coneyism? It's all about power. It's all about connections. It's all about money. It's all about who these people are and what they are doing and the Microsoft ability. But more importantly than that, the real motive behind this deal is not Microsoft's interest in the Emirates or G42's importance. The real motive behind this is the Biden administration. This is all about US policy. So G42 was getting very, very close to Chinese. It had Chinese investors. It was forming alliances with Chinese. It has brought in Chinese equipment and this raised a red flag within the national security apparatus in the United States. They don't want AI companies, particularly not in countries that are supposed to be our allies, working closely with Chinese. They also fear that China putting equipment in companies like this would actually give them access to, you know, secrets, American secrets as part of this. So it is indeed the government that has approached Microsoft and basically coordinated this deal, coordinated. That's a nice word. This is about the US government's concerns about protecting national security, protecting IP that's related to AI and preserving, most importantly maybe, presuming its influence on the UAE versus growing Chinese influence. China, by the way, has put a bunch of telecommunications equipment in the UAE so the Chinese can follow everything that's being said and communicated. G42 uses Huawei telecom equipment and that can be used to hack into American communication systems by the Chinese intelligence agencies that have it back door. There's a lot of stuff here that's murky but this is basically an attempt by the United States to halt the influence and impact of the Chinese government on, again, what is perceived to be whether they are not is a separate question, a perceived to be ally to the United, to the United States and this is all supposed to be a win for national security but, you know, what we're actually seeing is, I mean this is bizarre, right? If you really cared about national security, if they really cared about national security and the importance of technology for national security then wouldn't the number one priority of the United States would be to stop all the, what do you call it, the antitrust lawsuits against big tech, big tech including Microsoft which is essential for American national security because we need innovation and we need progress and we need growth and big tech is or generates much of that even when they buy smaller companies who are potential competitors they capital flows into those companies that allows for more growth. All right, warning, we are moving into good news territory. The first good news story is not going to offend you but the second one, oh my god, you guys are going to go nuts over this good news one so I'm just warning you because I know how sensitive you are and I believe in, in, you know, doing what do you call it, warnings just in case of microaggressions for some of my listeners you are going to get massive brook derangement syndrome for this one. Not from this one, for the next one. This one is again I think pretty tame as compared to the next one. More and more people are using something called Grail which is a product, a blood test by a company called Gallieri. This is a blood test that actually identifies, identifies a cancer. It identifies the proteins that cancer cells attend to emit. This is a particular, you know, this test is particularly useful for silent cancers that don't cause symptoms and or they do cause symptoms only when you're pretty much going to die when it's too late to do anything about it like pancreatic cancer or variant cancer and other cancers. This is a blood test. You can get it done today for I think something like 800 bucks, 900 bucks, something like that. They look at 50 different cancers and they let you know if you are susceptible. One example I just read about is a woman who did the test. She found out that she had a very small tumor. She got positive on the test then they did scans to find the cancer. She found out she had a very small tumor in a groin and the diagnosis of a mantle cell lymphoma which is a rare but very aggressive form of cancer. She was treated and she's in remission. If they'd waited she would be dead. So this is this is amazing technology that's only going to get better. I for one, I just got my first one. I used this a few months ago. It's called Grail. The company is called Gallieri You should definitely consider doing this. So what the blood test does is it identifies I said proteins, it's probably not proteins, biological substances that are shed by cancers. For example fragments of a tumor's DNA. And of course if we can identify cancers early almost all cancers are pretty well treatable if they're going to cancel if they're called early. Indeed you know if they're called early you know we could probably reduce the death rates from cancer dramatically, dramatically. This is of course only the first test. They're going to be others. They're going to get better. There's still of course the fear risk of false positives. You could get a positive result from the test and it turns out you don't have cancer. Those do exist. They exist in any test. I think it's worth it if you can't tolerate a first positive because you'll freak out. Don't do it but they're going to happen. But the value of identifying cancer early and treating it early I think far exceeds the risk of the false positives. So highly recommend people use this. There is a phenomena right now of increased cancers among young people in their 30s and 40s. So if you can afford to do this even in your 30s and 40s not a bad idea. It seems like a no-brainer at less than $1,000 again if you can afford it to do this to make it part of your annual checkup. Just to be sure. Suddenly I think once you reach the age of 60 or so again this should be part of your annual checkup. Here's the one that will trigger you guys. By the way big story about this in the Washington Post today if you want to find it you probably need a succession to post but under innovations they've got a big story about this test. As I said I've already used it and luckily I came out completely negative but I'm a big fan. All right. So this is from the Economist today. I think it's today. Yep it's an Economist today. Yesterday sorry. Economist yesterday. And this is the headline and I know this is particularly going to surprise some of you young people. It says Gen Z between right now I think between 15 and 24. 15 and 24. So young adults and late teens right. Gen Z is unprecedented rich pretty much every pretty much every other cohort. Baby boomers gen X's and millennials were not as wealthy as Gen Z is at this age adjusted for inflation of course. And the numbers are quite startling because they're completely unexpected and and of course nobody nobody nobody thinks this is true. All I hear from Gen Z's and millennials and we'll get to millennials in a minute. All we hear from Gen Z's and millennials is how they're screwed how they're worse off how they're going to be worse off than everybody else. How Gen X is so much better off how the baby boomers are so much better off. It turns out based on now a number of studies looking at this that it's just not true. It's just not true. This is the generation that of course Jonathan Haidt has labeled the anxious generation. This is a generation that is less likely to form relationships than younger generations that are less likely to have sex than sorry other generations than they're less likely to drink than other generations and much more likely to be depressed much more likely to be depressed than other generations. So a lot of bad stuff going on here. Gen X's and yet and yet in terms of wealth and income wealth and income it's richer than any other generation in American history that is at this age they're doing better than everybody else. And this is taking into account the cost of housing which is ridiculous for Gen Z's and it's taking into account student debt. In other words it's taking into account the balance sheet not just the asset but also the liabilities that Gen Z has. So Gen Z's are working at this points in their life at higher rates than other generations in terms of just the unemployment among them or the labor participation rate is actually higher than it was at this rate for others. They have benefited from the very tight labor markets of wages among this group has gone up significantly and this is true not just in the United States. This is true in the US and Europe and the UK. So hourly rates are up significantly 13 percent year over year compared to 6 percent for workers 25 and 54. So 16 to 24 year olds seeing their wages rise at a much faster rate than 25 to 54 year olds. Last year people 18 to 21 so average hourly pay in Britain this is in Britain rising by 15 percent which outstripped pay raises of any other age group. This is true for example New Zealand even where 20 to 24s increased by 10 percent compared to an average of 6 for all other age groups. So there's strong wage growth boosted by you know which has boosted this generation's income. You know they've got money they've got wealth they have high incomes and they're doing much much much better than others. Now it's true again they don't drink they don't have sex they don't engage in social activities they don't and they're probably going to marry even later than millennials right and they it turns out produce fewer innovations. So they're less likely to file a patent than they were in the recent past so that's worrisome very worrisome and they're you know they're less likely to be at some of the top of their fields right. I mean for example music popular music is usually a young person's field Gen Z's are not doing very well in that they're being outpaced by millennials for example in that. So not all good news but from an economic perspective taking everything into account including housing and everything else at this age and nobody's ever done better than Gen Z's have done and this again is both true of income and wealth. You know there's a the strongest aspect of this probably the thing driving this more than anything else right now is the fact that unemployment is so low that is that they have they're driving wages up by the very fact that there's a shortage of employees there's just a shortage of America and in Europe even in spite of all the immigration there's just a shortage of employees right now particularly given baby boomers retiring baby boomers leaving the jobs go semi-retiring whatever it happens to be there's just not enough young people filling up all those jobs this does not have anything to do with minimum wage a minimum wage would not affect wealth in any kind of significant way. All right on top of that that I was expecting just to talk about that but then just a few minutes before the show started so I haven't read this in full detail Scott Linsikum put out a piece today called Cheer Up Millennials are you millennials out there about how millennials are doing you know fantastically well then in spite of all the economic problems millennials are doing dramatically better than gen X's and dramatically better in terms of wealth and income and in terms of net wealth taking into account liabilities than gen X's or baby boomers now first the bad news the bad news is housing is very expensive so it's very it's very difficult for uh for millennials to own their own home home ownership is down by age but part of that is also the fact that people are people are forming families forming families creating families bunching up as families anyway they're having babies a lot later which makes them eager to buy homes later so the fact that home ownership is not as high for millennials as it is for other groups it has to do more with the fact that they form households later and therefore the urgency of buying a home becomes later and they're likely buy a home so we're likely to see this change over the next 10 years as millennials start getting married having kids and buying homes so but it is true that home prices have increased dramatically and this is a double it showed a sword on the one hand it uh if you already own a home the fact that home prices have gone up has increased your wealth significantly if you don't own a home yet it's a negative so it was a positive there it's a negative in the sense that it's very hard to afford a home given how high home prices are so no question that millennials are challenged by by the by home ownership it is true the millennials have rapidly accelerated home buying in recent years and from particularly from 2016 to 2021 you've seen a significant increase in home buying by millennials again as they start forming households as they start getting married and having kids and everything else so but when it comes to wealth but millennials own stock stock market has done very well for them those who own homes homes have done very well for them incomes for millennium in real terms have gone up significantly uh for millennials so the bottom line is that and again multiple studies not one study not biased academic from think tanks a bunch of different things and the reality is that millennials wealth has increased particularly in the last few years and they at the age of 29 so forth if you're a millennial at 29 you're significantly richer than gen X was at 29 and that baby boomers were 29 so this idea that kids have a higher whatever than than every generation seems to be continuing in America part of that American American dream both median and average net worth of Americans age 35 to 44 mostly this is mostly older millennials is the highest it has ever been again adjusted for inflation adjusted for everything this is true of income as well income and wealth so overall the news is good if you want to delve into the numbers and the graphs and everything else um then feel free to check out uh scott lynsicum's paper it's up on the dispatch uh it oh i did my email earlier today it's excellent scott lynsicum is one of the best um policy economists uh in the in my view in the world today he he does sound the best most valuable work on these kind of uh on these kind of things uh whether it has to do with income and wealth or whether it has to do with tariffs and trade policy or whether it has to do with industrial policy uh really you should all be following scott lynsicum i really do think if you value economic liberty he's the guy at the front lines actually fighting for this um in a in a significant way you can get all the data i mean i've just given you highlights uh but it's all the data and um the details and the graphs and all the cool stuff on scott's um in scott's um blog whoa that took an hour wait a minute that was just the news all right i'm gonna have to maybe reconfigure this the way we do the shows again you gotta get you guys input about uh whether you like these shows and and whether you like uh the mix of of topics and how long the news segment is it's getting longer because i feel like i have more space so it's getting longer whether that's good or whether that's bad uh whether you like the second part which is more doubling deeper into a topic which we're not gonna have that much time to do but we'll do a little bit of uh or or whether you want to you know or how you would like to see it i'm curious to know from you guys the best way to articulate that is dropping email at your on at your on bookshow.com or a super chat would be another way to do this uh really really uh really really nicely we are way behind on the uh on the financial support though so please take that into consideration uh also uh what did i want to say yes i want to remind you uh of um i want to remind you of the fact that this show is made possible from listeners like you can't do it without the support you guys provide for the show whether you do it monthly on your on bookshow dot com slash membership or membership or whether you guys do it on patreon or whether you do it here on the super chat uh super chat is great because you get instant feedback i get questions i get the feedback you get the feedback we get to interact so um and you get to shape the direction of the show i can actually uh you know address issues that are of concern to you so please consider participating you can also support the show with the super chat without a question like west just did with $50 sticker so stickers are great west seems to be here on pretty much every show doing something like this so thank you thank you to west i would also say um i would also say that the uh that i have two sponsors two main sponsors the ironman institute that is currently uh encouraging people to 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flourishing orient perspective than alex provides the whole climate change environmentalism and energy debate or discussion or propaganda out there uh you can sign up for alex ebstain dot substack dot com alex ebstain dot substack dot com all right um what i think i'm gonna do given where we are is i'm gonna cover the npr story and then i'm just gonna take questions so then we're gonna do the questions i do have a hard stop at four so if there are questions i don't get to then uh we will just uh do them tomorrow but i think i'll be able to get to all of them i don't think we have to spend a lot of time on npr particularly given that i went over time on some of the other news stories um also uh you know feel free to continue asking questions particularly if you can do it at the twenty fifty dollar level i i see a lot of one to ten dollar questions um but it would be great if we could get some uh some twenty fifty hundred dollar questions to kind of get us a little closer to our goal you know we should we should be doing at least two hundred fifty dollars an hour uh so another two fifty for this hour would be terrific so about a week ago about a week ago um a form uh you know and a comment npr uh public radio um uh what do you call it senior what is he a senior editor um i think is a yeah senior editor on the business desk wrote an article for the free press that has created a big stone as as you probably know no as you probably guys don't know but as some of you know those of you been following for a long me a long long time going back to when i lived in california when i lived in california i was when i used to drive uh before i got into books on tape and and podcast i was an avid npr listener i listened to npr pretty much every day um npr is always always since i've been listening to it being unbelievably biased leftwards but i knew that the bias was kind of obvious and it was manageable and what i did find is that npr covered stories nobody else does and npr was interesting the stories were covered in an interesting way and i could adjust for the bias and if something particularly interested me i would of course check out other sources right other sources um so i knew npr was leftist but it was far more interesting and far more informative than uh other biased news sources certainly on the left and and and on the right which i find all of them just not interesting and and just not covering news stories that have have an interest right have an interest anyway it turns out that since i stopped listening uh over the last few years according to ui burlina who is uh the author of this piece in the free press the uh the npr has taken a dramatic shift further left it was already unbelievably biased already unbelievably biased but now it way it's gone all the way to being committed woke now i know this is like this is like scott and richard and abey and all the uh you know all the uh brook the arrangements syndrome people uh is what dream you on admits that he listens to and reads leftist media and finds it interesting oh my god everything we thought about you honest true he's just a leftist who's pretending god that's pretty pathetic um anyway that over the last few years certainly since blm but even before that um but but certainly starting in in uh during the trump presidency npr has taken a dramatic turn leftward and has become according to ui burlina who is a democrat leftist always has been his stories have always been biased leftwards it has taken a massive turn leftwards this is of course true of uh the new york times here we go scott is going afterwards oh new york times the atlantic the dispatch the bulwark all of them center left publication dispatcher center left it just shows how ignorant uninformed and illiterate some people are uh dispatcher center left that that is that is a that is a new one scott lynsicum is center left i'll have to let scott know that he's that he's center left i have to let know jonah goldberg is center left i mean god you people are unbelievably stupid and ignorant and again the only thing that unites the dispatch with the atlantic new york times is they hate donald trump and now now scott uh you know scott has you know revealed himself again as a you know as a brainless trump supporter as he always has been uh in spite of his pretense of oh i support desantis he's a brainless trump supporter who if you oppose trump you're part of the new york times you're the same as the new york times there's no difference anyway not talking about not not not addressing the uh the comment section anyway so uh npr has become uh really uh really woke and in particular during blm you know and blm accused everybody of systemic racism accused the country of systemic racism as a billionaire says i mean this would have been an opportunity to investigate is is the country really systemic racism this is good for investigative journalism this is what you do basically uh npr leadership basically came down and said no no no guys systemic racism is a fact uh we need to apologize for it we need stories that expose it we need stories that manifest it we don't need journalism we don't actually need to look for uh facts or any any counter facts over the years since then race and identity have become paramount in every aspect of the workplace i'm reading from uh this article this is by the way somebody who is part of npr still is at npr uh journalists are required to ask everyone we interviewed they race gender and ethnicity uh and we have to enter it in a centralized tracking system this is all new and this is over the last few years at npr a growing dei staff offered regular meetings imploring us to start talking about race monthly dialogues were offered for quote woman of color and men of color non-binary people of color were included too of course right intersectionality is is very important in these things uh they got a grant a one million dollar grant from npr foundation uh to cover the expenses associated with all this woke uh identitarian uh staff and uh this these efforts got a huge amount of of of funding and support from upper management uh it also then included uh employees creating affinity groups and in a sense encouraged to create affinity groups around identity this is the this is the identitarianism that's infecting and destroying and you know organizations like npr new york times and everything who were always left but are now insane uh they included uh this identitarian groups mgi poc you didn't know there was an mgi poc which is a marginalized genders and intersex people of color mentorship program me genti this is a latex employees at npr npr noir this is black employees at npr southwest asian and north africans at npr uma for muslims identifying employees muslim identifying employees you don't actually have to be a muslim to identify as a muslim i guess women gender expansive transgender people in technology throughout public media the jewish heritage and culture at npr the npr pride which is just lb gt q i a employees at npr i get to quote from him all this reflected a broader movement in the culture of people clustering together based on ideology or characteristic of birth if as npr's internal website suggested the groups were simply a great way of meeting like-minded colleagues and help new employees feel included it would have been one thing but the role and standing of affinity groups including some those outside npr were more than that they became a priority for npr union and for npr npr management the current contract intersection on dei requires npr management to quote keep up to date with current language and style guidelines from journalism's affinity groups and to inform employees if language defers from what these groups dictate in other words you know npr brought in to the identitarian agenda 100 percent now this was published about a week ago since then the author of the article is being on a variety of different media appearances talking about this and and explaining all this npr also has a new ceo who was hired i think he was she was hired at end of last month she came to npr from wiki from the organization wikipedia and we'll talk about her in a minute anyway npr's unhappy about this you know he has an employee complaining about npr in a in a competing publication and uh you know he uh so he has been suspended uh he has been suspended for five days many npr employees are saying they will not work with him when he comes back and uh that npr you know that that npr is uh is um you know it's going to be interesting to see if he has any future in the organization but there's been a huge backlash all over social media all over the press including in leftist publications multiple stories in the new york times about this multiple stories elsewhere about this and how npr has been completely captured by the most radical worst elements of uh of uh the left uh it's also uh it's also the case uh that of course what makes this all much much worse uh is the fact that npr is funded with taxpayer money that is a small percentage but still a percentage of the money that goes to fund npr is provided by government i mean one of the things that most has most astounded me over the decades is the fact that even when republicans had the house the senate and the presidency they did not defund npr even when it was clear years ago that it was uh it was tilted to the left they kept on funding it they have never actually defunded npr and you know what hold does npr have on republican senators and congressmen that makes it possible for clearly unequivocally leftist organization to get money from the government when just on a principle whether the biased left or biased right they shouldn't get a dime from the government and should never have received a dime from the government and yet the trump administration did not defund npr the bush administration did not defund npr i assume that npr was around when the reagan administration and they didn't fund now reagan didn't have a republican house and senate bushed it trumped it for two for two years and yet didn't defund it it's pretty stunning pretty stunning uh that this uh did uh did not happen uh you know also worth adding it used to be that npr had a fairly balanced listener base so in surveys that they did uh it was always tilted left in terms of but there was a significant number of people who consider themselves conservatives who listened to npr uh about 30 of its base listeners were npr about 30 percent were independents and about 40 percent were um were leftists uh democrats in um you know in uh today you know it's less than 20 consider themselves conservatives uh and uh in the leftist over 60 percent now so the the the station has also now shifted its attraction now part of that is that uh you know people like ken and scott and richard they can't tolerate hearing somebody who disagrees with them they would never listen to npr because oh my god uh you know who can listen to leftist stuff they only listen to the echo chamber they only listen to the people who reaffirm well give them instructions about what to say and what to think and reaffirm the things that they already think and the things that they already say um but part of it is as npr has gone crazy left uh i think a lot of seen people have have dropped it uh from the coverage now it turns out the new ceo of um uh it turns out the new ceo of uh npr uh is even worse uh the new ceo of npr has uh you know treated about trump being a racist uh you know treated a bunch of woke stuff in her past before she was the ceo um is is about as rapidly left wing woke identitarian as you can get she is clearly even though the position of the ceo of npr is primarily fundraising there's no question that this is uh that this is a huge um uh you know that they have an impact on the kind of the editorial slant of npr as well um so uh maho who is the new chief executive of npr um is a um you know it's clearly come down ideologically on one side you know chris rufo who usually does this uh who's a conservative has brought up a bunch of her tweets uh which reveal the extent to which she is part of the far far left uh i thought the most interesting thing i saw about her was a ted talk that she gave a while back um and and i don't know who this person who's i guess this is uh this is from um i don't know who ian myles cheng i don't know who that is anyway this is on twitter uh he put up this a ted talk of hers and in the ted talk this is while this is before she came on to um uh this is before she came on to uh npr um anyway she was uh she did this ted talks about her experiences as ceo at wikipedia and uh here's here's a quote and and i think this quote represents everything you need to know about her and about just the state of the state of journalism uh in the world in which we live quote our reverence for the truth might be a distraction it's getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done i'm gonna say it again because it's complete nuts right uh oh it's ian myles chong is a white wing nutcase anyway it doesn't matter he posted this it came up on my feed um you know the quote is still an accurate quote for the new ceo of of of npr but this is not this is before she became ceo this is from when she was uh when she was um at wikipedia quote our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that's getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done i mean she sounds exactly like scott right scott is given up on the truth um in because it's a distraction from getting stuff done and and getting finding common ground and and building a big umbrella right so it doesn't matter if you're left or right the the sentiment is exactly the same uh you know you don't care about the truth you don't care about reality you just care about hating the left and forming coalitions and having having a big tent that's the only thing that matters and that that's exactly a it's getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done there's not that big of a difference between the left and the right it turns out there isn't neither of them respect the truth that is the fundamental so um here's what we have today is we're basically what we're seeing is you know the the journalism falling apart uh mainstream media for the most part has becoming is has been taken over by the fall left npr being maybe the latest victim but uh but new york times is right there with them and you know not not we shouldn't forget that the free press which is a barry weiss publication is a is a former and former new york times reporter who resigned because the new york times was going too far left mary allene says that ui bill liner has just resigned from npr so he resigned today from npr i guess my stories was still before his resignation but it doesn't surprise me because nobody would work for him so where did he have to go maybe he got an offer from uh from um barry weiss to come and work for the free press so what you see is the mainstream media basically uh either fall for the crazy left or become completely politicized like fox which is part of the mainstream media and is basically just a fundraising and advocacy arm for the republican party msnbc which is the fundraising arm and the advocacy arm for the democratic party and cnn which is just a soft msnbc but still part of the democratic party uh newspapers are basically new york times watching posts there's almost no newspaper that isn't quite left um but basically the the what what's always been mainstream media journalism has become and has succumbed to identity and politics and and much and or again right wing politics and much of uh you know just just left wing or right wing propaganda i mean it's not even journalism it's very difficult to see a news story on tv or in the press whether it's fox or whether it's new york times without checking the references without going and actually reading the quote without figuring out what's going on the challenge with this of course is that these are the only places that have journalists there are very few journalists out there who do not work for these large news organizations uh and we're talking here about a about journalists not about commentators not about people who use journalism to express their views we're talking about people who actually go out to find what the news is now even now we know that all of that is tainted by their own biases and those biases are significant they're dramatic you we again see that with apr we see that with the new york times um what is the alternative where are the journalists who are not how do we actually get news news not commentary not opinion not conspiracy theories not made up stuff but actually news about what is going on in the world fox is the worst it's completely biased it's a complete vehicle of the republican party you don't get any unbiased now you do have journalists fox does send reporters out there it does provide journalism but it's tainted just like there's no difference between fox and cnn the difference is the bias but they're both biased so the only alternative we have is to watch a lot of different news it's to listen to npr at least in the old days i'm not sure if that's valuable anymore to listen to fox and to listen to cnn and try to triangulate what you think is actually happening but it's hard journalism is a crucial function in a free society it is crucially important to know what's actually going on what the truth is in spite of npr's CEO saying it doesn't matter what the truth is all the matters is finding common ground no what matters the only thing that matters is the truth that's a job of journalism it's the discovery of truth and report on the truth but how do we as consumers find that truth it's becoming harder and harder i don't think you can do the job without reading the new york times i don't think you can do the job without reading right more right wing publications fox i don't think you can do the job without the wasty journal mainstream media you've got a they are the only ones who have journalists i mean i'd say the one one you know new development which i think is very exciting is the creation of alternative journalism but real journalism journalism in a sense of not just commentary but actually having reporters i think barry weiss has done an unbelievably unbelievable job at the free press in not just having commentary which is how she started basically started out as a place that provided commentary and it did very very well but she expanded she grew she grew to add journalists jay mo keef doesn't do journalism god this is the problem you guys don't even know what journalism is and and and then what you're talking about is marginal it's at the margin we're talking about the big news stories what do you know happening in the Gaza Strip how do you know what's going on in the Gaza Strip who do you know it from who reports on it not james o' keef how do you know what's going on in the u.s economy how well or poorly it's doing how do you know any of these things without actual journalists you don't if you don't read blamboga wasty journal publications publications like this you don't know anything about the economy all you hear is interpretations of economy by political hacks who have an incentive to promote a particular view so a lot of kudos go to free press for trying to be journalistic and i would say the same thing about the dispatch again both of them still have a lot of commentary but the both of them are striving to establish themselves as journalistic enterprises they're striving to hire actual reporters to hire actually journalists and put out the news and to the extent that they're being successful and they have been successful they both I think make money at least I know the fee press does to the extent that they've been successful is to that extent you know this will encourage others to do the same thing and you know you can start seeing the day where alternative forms of journalism do arise alternative forms of reporters being funded in different ways and you know being compensated in different ways do you know arise and start providing us with with better journalism better news better reporting more objective truth truth seekers is what we need in journalists not people just to tell us to reinforce what we already think we need people actually seeking out the truth yeah adi off says that he he remembers he's old enough to remember his dad being enraged by nbc abc and cbs or destroying barry wall the gold waters campaign absolutely I mean this idea that didn't use today in some way is more biased although maybe now with woke it's taken it to a whole new dimension but the reality is that ronald reagan's faced basically nbc cbs and abc those are the only channels on pbs i guess and in pr those are the only channels and they were all anti goldwater anti nixon anti reagan it's only in the 80s that talk radio come about so the conservatives had some voice somewhere in the media indeed there's more variety today of opinion than ever before less journalism than ever before more opinion less journalism that's the world in which we live today all right um let's see all right thanks to all the superchatters i appreciate it uh let's do uh let's do clock who did 50 thank you clock last year you gave an odd answer to a super chat question about being a nice guy as a life strategy is somehow not is somehow not self-interested i have found being nice outgoing and benevolent has made life far better and being calculated and standoffish okay so yeah maybe maybe my answer needs clarification um it depends what you need by nice sky i mean the context of the way the question was asked and maybe maybe this is maybe i misread it but my is that nice sky meant compromiser it meant in a sense willing to sacrifice not standing up for your own interests not asserting not being self-assertive and i think that is very dangerous and that you really have to watch out for and that can be very uninteresting that is uh unself-interested being a pushover as jennifer puts it right so i but i absolutely agree with you that for the most part you should be nice in as long as it's not sacrificial you should be outgoing and benevolent as long as that doesn't involve uh sub you know uh undermining your own values undermining your own opinions and uh and and uh not pursuing your own goals so yeah i'm i hope i think i'm a nice guy uh it's just a question of how does that niceness manifest itself don't be a pushover don't sacrifice to get along don't dismiss the truth to get along right the truth which is what npr has abandoned now officially uh don't dismiss that in order to get along be a truth seeker and be self-interested pursue your own values your own ideas and you know so uh in that sense don't sacrifice be selfish uh john has a quote from dalton from roadhouse quote be nice till it's time to not be nice i think that's right i'm benevolent until i discover that that is hurting me i'm nice until i discover that's undermining me now generally i'm nice i'm certainly benevolent and i'm outgoing but up to a point up to a point like i'm not nice to some of these people in the chat all right michael you know the quote the happiest people aren't the takers but the givers in reality the happiest people aren't the givers or the takers but the traders yeah and i would even say i would add to that in reality the happiest people aren't the givers or the takers but the producers and the traders the producers and the traders in order to trade you have to have produced something and ultimately what what leads to happiness is production. So in reality, the happiest people are the producers and the traders. Thank you, Michael. Liam, is it possible Iran could send thousands or 10 to thousands of missiles and drones that would simply overwhelm the Iron Dome and air forces? I don't know how many they have. Drones, yes, pretty much. But they could send enough to, in a sense, overwhelm the air defense systems that Israel has. This is the advantage of having the US. The US, by the way, as we're speaking, beefing up its air defense systems in the Middle East. Really, learning from this, the crucial nature, the crucial need for good air defense systems. And I think the Pentagon is investing more in these maybe than they have in the past. If they're overwhelmed, then Israel will take a hit. It will take a big hit. And of course, that's the real risk with nuclear weapons, is that you can shoot down 80%, or even 90%. But it's that all it needs takes is one nuclear bomb to fall and you're finished. Here, if missiles drop, if some missiles drop, there'll be damage, but it won't be existential damage. This is why it's so, so, so important, and has been so, so, so important for years, to annihilate Iran's nuclear capabilities and do so at whatever the cost. Eric, Biden's response, actions with Iran, is so treasonous, traitorous, or treasonous, that I have to vote against Biden. Trump, terrible as he is, seems way less dangerous than someone that actively protects and funds the enemies of America thought. I mean, I get it. I understand that perspective. I still think that Trump wouldn't be acting a lot differently today. I don't think that Trump would unequivocally support an Israeli attack on Iran. I think Trump would have to be listening very carefully to what the Saudis tell him. I think Trump is as sensitive, if not more sensitive than Biden is to the Saudis, particularly in an election year. I think Trump would be just as sensitive to that as Biden is, if not more so. I just don't trust Trump. Who knows what he would do? He's completely unpredictable. He could be anti-Israel by the time he gets in, or at some point within his administration. He's certainly turned against the Kurds in Turkey and basically the Kurds were the strongest ally in Iraq. Not in Turkey. In Iraq, he basically turned his back on them. I mean, yeah. OK, so on this issue, Biden might be marginally better than Trump. And he moved the embassy whoopee, whoopee. Let's go and solubate and forget everything else that Trump stands for, represents, does, says, behaves. He moved the embassy. OK, he must be a good guy. I'm voting for him. So, Eric, we're talking about choosing between two very big evils. And I still think the long-term Trump is the great evil. On any particular issue, Trump could be better. But he's not good on pretty much any issue. Andrew, what is the epistemological standard for those who eject objective truth? There are truths of those just the product of their moral whim. Yes, at the end of the day, it's a product of their whim, not moral, but whim. It's a product of what works. So they're pure pragmatists. What she just said, what that quote that I read you actually represents, is pure pragmatism. That is, it doesn't matter what the truth is, what matter, what works. For who, what works is getting along. This is Trump's view. This is why I said the right and left are not different. This is Trump's view. Truth does not matter. I mean, he basically said this. What matters is if it works. That is pure pragmatism. That's what they go for. Long-term principled action doesn't matter. Truth doesn't matter as long as it works in the short run. And so Trump and the left are the same on this issue. And they don't care about the truth. What's going on is, you know, there is no truth. Your truth is not my truth. So what's important is we have a dialogue. We can somehow find common ground on the truths, unless, of course, you're extreme left. And then I don't want to hear your truth. And we don't want to find a dialogue or extreme right. And I don't want to hear. So we take everybody in the middle, everybody who's, well, it depends who's talking right. And can't we all just get along? Can't we all just compromise with the facts and figure out what's actually going on? So look, Palestinians, Israelis, what's the truth? It's complicated. You have your truth and I have my truth. Why don't we just split the difference? We'll just establish a Palestinian state and give them statehood and recognize them. We'll also support Israel. And we'll give them weapons and stuff. And that's the new truth. That's how we all get along. That's the epistemological standard. Of course, it blows up in your face after October 7th. It blows up in your face when it doesn't achieve the peace that you expected. But that doesn't prove anything about the past because principles don't matter. So now you start from that point on and you think about, OK, well, what now can I do to bring us all together to somehow get along to whatever it is that you're trying to achieve? This is pure pragmatism. And it's basically the only epistemology out there because what theory of epistemology is there? Any theory of epistemology that actually provides truth is being rejected by these people. Michael, the basic idea of the left is that every single person is a malleable widget. Basic premise of the left, basic idea of the left is that every single person is on. I don't know if that's right. Because it's worse than that, in a sense. What they want is to turn us all into malleable widgets. They don't think we are. Some of us are superior and they have to knock us down and some of us are suffering and we have to sacrifice to them. So they want to turn us into malleable widgets. That's what they want to turn us into. Jeffrey, thank you for the sticker. That was his 20th Super Chat contribution. Thank you. YouTube lets me know about certain milestones in terms of the number of contributions. RDF, thank you for the sticker. Mike, thank you for the sticker. Enric, and yes, and Jeffrey, thank you, guys. Really appreciate it. All right, John. Hey, sorry I missed a teresmas interview. I had a free speech question. Protest at the block streets of violating individual rights. But what actions are appropriate for the victims to take? And he continues, I've seen videos of people moving and sometimes even hitting them. Can something like that be justified if you had a life of death emergency and needed to be get by? Absolutely. That is if the police are not doing their job. If clearly the police are not doing their job. And you have a life of death emergency, then absolutely you have to take things into your own hands. You have no choice. Again, particularly if it's a life of death emergency, I would argue that it's reasonable if you can do so with minimal force to clear it out even if it's not a life of death emergency. These people are violating your right. It's just like somebody breaks into your home. What are you supposed to do? Can you use force against them? Yes, you can. It's an emergency. Until the police get there, you have to defend yourself. Here, when the police are clearly not willing to do anything, it's time for individuals to do something about it. And to do something about it as quickly as they can. Quickly as they can. With minimal violence. Minimal violence. By the way, I think I told you this, but my debate with Safadin Amos on the Israeli-Palestinian issue is now available on Robert Breedlove's website. It's already got, I don't know, 7,000, 6,000, 7,000 views, 7,000, I think. So feel free to watch it. If you can't comment underneath, that would be great. Leave a comment. And yeah, I hope you enjoyed. I hope you find it interesting. Let me know what you think. I'd be curious. I'd be curious. Oh, people are talking about Jordan Peterson. Zika Reza says, I kicked ass in the debate. Yeah, I think mostly I did. Yeah, Jordan Peterson, by the way, awful debater. You saw him defending capitalism. That was the worst defense of capitalism against Zizik I've ever seen. He was terrible. And half the time in other debates, he'd done what he's talking about. All right, J.J. Jigbyz, you're on. I've come home. I managed to catch a flight out of Tel Aviv on Tuesday. Good for you. Your commentary on Saturday helped me get through the night. Thank you. Absolutely. I was glad to be of help. I'm glad you found it valuable. Gail, I agree Israel has Stockholm syndrome. Yes. I never debated Jordan Peterson. So I was on stage with Jordan, but it was a big panel thing. I didn't think that went well. But I've never debated Jordan Peterson. And it would be tough to debate Jordan Peterson, because we don't have epistemologically. We're not on the same place. Much of what he says is meaningless epistemologically. So debating Jordan Peterson would be interesting. It would be great to be interviewed by Jordan Peterson so that I could get my ideas across. But actually debating him. If it was on capitalism, I could do it. If it was inequality, I could do it pretty easily. But on anything more philosophical, he's so mushy that it's not, you know, it's hard to pin him down. It's hard to grab onto anything, because he's such a plateness. He really is this real epistemological plateness. And that's very difficult. I've done Weinstein. I've debated Eric, not Brett. I've debated Eric. I debated Eric, what's his name? I mean, it wasn't a formal debate. It was more of a conversation. But that happened with, what's his name? God. Reuben. Reuben, we did that in Chicago in front of a live audience. So you can find it. The video's up. It's on my channel. You can just put your own book, Eric Weinstein. And you can find our discussion. I thought Eric was, I mean, interesting in some parts and terrible, terrible, terrible in other parts. Very, almost disgustingly elitist. Michael, Israel still has not attacked Iran or Afa. What does the dam hold up? You tell me. Fear, conformism, irrationality, disagreements within the government? I don't know. Jejjejigbis. It seems to me that Iran clearly meant to avoid any civilian casualties and that the attack was posturing. No 48-hour notice, attack in the night when everyone is at home, close to their safe rooms. No, I mean, I absolutely disagree with this. I answered this question yesterday. You know, I think they did want to avoid civilian casualties. I think they wanted to have the upper hand in a sense of not. So they clearly targeted military bases. Khizballah, of course, doesn't do that at all. But Iran wanted to do that as an official government thing. But they thought they would be able to overwhelm Israel's defense systems. They thought they would be able to cause significant military casualties. They think they thought they would be able to show that Israel was weak when it comes to missile defenses and the ability of these missiles to come in and actually cause real damage and real harm. So no, this was not just a charade. You saw the missiles above Jerusalem. It's not clear where these were heading. But yes, I think they wanted to hit maybe the Knesset, maybe the Israeli parliament. They wanted to hit a, but how accurate are they? Could they have easily hit civilian casualties? So no, I don't think that. But yes, they gave notice to not to the US to not to Israel, to the Arab countries who then transferred that intelligence on. But they thought they would overwhelm. They thought they could give the notice and still overwhelm the system. Again, as I mentioned yesterday, the Russians do the same thing in terms of the quantity of missiles and drones. And they're very successful with it in Ukraine. And I think Iran thought they would be just as successful in Israel. Mary-Elene, China does export steel to Canada. And Canada buys steel from the United States, companies. Tariffs made, make so many products more expensive for buyers in the US. Tariffs are unjust anymore, absolutely. And by the way, the tariffs that Trump put on and that Biden has not taken off also affected importation from Canada and Brazil and the European Union and a lot of other places. So they had nothing. I mean, the point is that all of these tariffs that Trump and Biden threaten and have imposed have nothing to do with China. They have everything to do with economic ignorance and trying to buy votes. And it seemed tough. Hopper Campbell, truth is always considered hate by those who hate the truth. Sure. Hopper Campbell, does truth always heal? No, truth can open a wound. But truth is always, truth is always a plus. It always moves you in the positive direction. I would love, I've asked, I asked, I think Richard is asking about Eric Weinstein replay. I asked, what's his name? God. Lex. I asked Lex, who's a friend of Eric's, I asked Lex, a friend of Eric's, to arrange for me and for Eric to do something. Eric's not interested. So, I mean, I would do a thing with Eric anytime. Brett, I'm less interested in, I find him to be there. But Eric, I would do anytime. I think it would be great, but he's not interested. Would you ever sublet your condo to cover the cost of a long vacation like you're doing this summer? No. And it's not a vacation. I'm not going on vacation this summer. I'll be working throughout my time away from home. But no, I would never sublet my place. My wife would never sublet the place, but that's because I have a lot of stuff in my place and a lot of it's very valuable and a lot of it's arts and stuff like that. And I have no interest, no interest. Alan Dushiewicz said on his podcast, this is Mary Eileen, that Biden is the Neville Chamberlain of our time, comments. Yeah, I mean, he certainly is, but I think they all are. I mean, who is not a Neville Chamberlain of our time? It appears that Netanyahu is. It appears that, what's his name? Rishi and Cameron in Britain are. And it appears that, and I haven't heard Donald Trump say anything different. So, we live in a culture that is a lot more Neville Chamberlain than Churchill. We just don't have Churchill-like leaders and the culture doesn't want Churchill-like leaders. We don't have a culture that wants to stand for the truth. We don't have a culture that is willing to go to war in self-defense. We don't have a culture that is willing to actually fight. We have a culture of wimps. We have a culture of people who would sell their soul to the devil just to get along, just so there's no conflict. We have a culture that hates conflict, that despises conflict. Andrew Trager, why do you think the interests of the consumers are ignored as against producers in the discussion of tariffs? Oh, well, it's not in the interest of producers. It's in the interest of some producers, of other producers. It's all theater. So, it's theater. So, it's a question of what does the theater serve? And so, first, if you remember, Trump said, oh, no, no, the Chinese pay for tariffs. Prices don't go up. Taxes don't go up. You don't pay the tax. You don't pay the tariffs. So, again, Trump has learned, like many on the left, that if you repeat a lie over and over and over again, if you just say it and say it and say it and say it, then people buy into it. And then the other thing he did was, oh, I'm being tough on China. America first, I'm protecting our interests. Again, lie, lie, lie, lie. So, he's not putting one group in front of the other. He's framing it as if he's protecting Americans, all Americans, producers and consumers alike. And he's doing it by lying. He's doing it by being a mercantilist, even though Adam Smith refuted that a long, long time ago and every decent economist, even semi-decent economist, has understood the benefits of free trade since then, which far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far outpace, far better than that. I disagree with Seoul on scarcity. Yes, so did Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand disagreed with Seoul on scarcity. Seoul is absolutely unequivocally wrong. And by the way, almost all economists, 99, even many Austrian economists, view scarcity as the issue. And they're all wrong. They're all wrong. And Ayn Rand is right. Julian Simon is right. Julian Simon, the great economist, is right. They're all wrong. Yeah, and you think Rand would lose to Seoul, you do not have a clue, Ken, not have a clue. All right, Lone Decentre, you seem to be shot out of a cannon with this new format. Keep it going. Schedule consistency is super important on YouTube. But put in a couple of breaks. You're on news, you're on Brook Network, when? Maybe, maybe soon, we'll see. I mean, that's, maybe that's the longer term, that's the longer term challenge, is to find other people who can do this all day and they can do shows all day at the right kind of level. But you've already got the equivalent, right? You've got the Ayn Rand Institute doing YouTube shows. You've got ARC UK. I mean, there's a ton of stuff going on, some better, some not as good, but it's all out there. You get to choose. Marilyn, thank you for letting me know. WCZN, thanks for the positive news. All right, so thank you. As you said, this is the new format and I'm gonna keep it going in the new format. I will remind everybody and we'd have to investigate what exactly is going on. But in order to keep the new format going, we do have to keep the contributions towards the format up to target, which is about $250 an hour. It is very, very, it's gonna be very, very difficult to keep this going if we can't get $250 an hour on the super chat. And don't forget to like, share. We did get a lot of views yesterday, so I am encouraged by the fact that the new format, at least the first show, got a lot of views and we got a lot of financial support. So hopefully we'll get a lot of views in this one. Please share it, please like it. And please comment on it. If those of you are watching it not live, if you like it and you would like to support us financially, you can do an applause, which also allows you to give support through YouTube. Today's show is only two hours. Most of these shows will be close, somewhere between two to three hours. But today I have some hard stuff at four. We'll be covering news, we'll be coming other issues as well. Richard said, voting with dollars for the new schedule. Thank you, Richard. So that $20 really helps. Thank you, Richard. Appreciate it. And yes, so I will see you guys. The nice thing is, just at two o'clock tomorrow, it's just, we're gonna be steady. We're gonna be, other than when I'm traveling, which granted is a lot. It's just gonna be $20. It's just gonna be 2 p.m. East Coast time every day, except for Monday and no shows on Saturday and Sunday, although I might make some exceptions, particularly this month. But thanks, guys. Abu Yen says I should do a three-hour show and make it about Trump, at least two-thirds of the entire show. Trump's not that interesting. And I basically said everything I wanna say about Trump over the last, how many years? I've been talking about Trump since 2015. So it's a little boring. Trump is generally a little boring. So, all right, everybody. I will see you all tomorrow, 2 p.m. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for supporting it. Thanks to all the superchattas. Thanks to the sponsors. You can check them out below. And yep, I'll see you soon.