 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brook Show on this Tuesday, March 7. It's 8 p.m. over here, and I am officially suffering from jet lag. Barely keep my eyes open. So bear with me. I'm a little slow tonight, so no tough questions. Actually, ask away. Now's your opportunity to catch me off guard. Ask anything. But yeah, big mistake to try to do two shows today, but I promise I'm doing it. Got home last night. Slept pretty well, but still. I'm dragging. Oh wait, I'm dragging. What can I say? Let's see, going west is easier than going east. Given that I, every trip I do both. Yes, well, it depends on the flight. It depends on the, you know, I travel business class, so it's a little easier going east. I try to get very late night flights, sorry, I try to sleep the entire flight. The flight yesterday was not good going west. It just, it dragged, and I don't know, it just, it was one of the least fun of the long flights I've had, and then I'm definitely, I'm definitely slow today. But I will recover. I'm good at this. I do this all the time, and I will recover, so I'm not overly worried. All right, so I was gonna do the show just on teen depression and smartphones. We'll get to that, but I don't know, I'm a glutton for punishment, and I figured why not make sure that I lose a few more subscribers today. So I figured I'd talk about Ateca Carlson and his rewriting of history with regard to January 6th. I've already got people upset at me just for the title of the show. I'm getting people on Twitter getting really pissed off. I've seen videos all day of, no, no, it was the cops' fault, the protestors, these were peaceful protestors, or as Ateca likes to say, just tourists, just tourists, wanting to see what the chamber was like, you know? And yeah, you know, that was it. So, but you know, I have to comment on it. So I have to comment on it, and of course I already lost a bunch of people this morning because of my comments about Trump, so that resulted in a number of unsubscribes. But this is gonna be, it's election season, and the Republican Party is worse than it's ever been. Democratic Party is always bad, but the Republican Party is worse, I think that it's ever been. It is filled with lies, lies, lies, and distortions, and we're gonna call them on it. We're gonna call them on it. You know, we're gonna call the left on it too, but the left everybody calls, I mean, you don't need me to call the left on, it's easy, you can see it yourself. I'm your protection, trying to be your protection against the craziness on the right, and as I said, we'll be doing a lot more shows about the right. All right. Well, I don't think everybody knows my views on Trump, right? People, new people show up, new people subscribe. They don't necessarily know, maybe they think I've changed my mind, maybe they think I've come to my senses, maybe some of them are young, and they didn't listen to the show a year ago, five years ago, when I talked about Trump. So who knows? But the reality is that every time I say something negative about Trump, I lose subscribers, and I can give a cheese, saying something negative about Teca Carlson. Oh my, and Trump, at the same time. I'm asking for trouble. So I don't know if you've seen the video. This is, I talked about this on one of the news briefing shows, but Kevin McCarthy decided to take all the footage from January 16th, and there's a huge quantity of footage from all the cameras inside the Capitol. And he decided to take all that footage and release it to the media. But he decided to give Teca Carlson exclusivity for a few weeks or a few days, I don't know, but for a while, so that Teca Carlson can tell his story. And then, and only after Teca Carlson edits the video, released the rest of it to the rest of the media. And I think he did this supposedly as part of the deal in order to become speaker, that he cut with some of the opposing House members who are even more Trump, even more supportive of Trump than Trump himself, even more supportive of Trump than Kevin McCarthy is. And part of their commitment was to do whatever they could to whitewash the January 6th events. So look, I said this from January 6th. I mean, I saw the video live. I saw people breaking into the Capitol. Don't tell me the doors were open to them. I'm sure some doors were open, but I saw people breaking in. I saw people climbing up the walls. This, the video is now showing people climbing up the walls. I saw people beat up cops. I saw people break down barriers. This is not a few demonstrators walking around and then the doors happening, you open so they meandered in. Even the people who meandered in saw other protesters breaking in, saw other protesters. rioters really beating up cops. And they decided to just stroll along into the House of Representatives and into the Senate chamber. And, you know, they just happened to be chanting something about hang, you know, hang Mike Pence as Mike Pence was inside there. They just happened to try to break into the chamber where the Senate was discussing certifying the vote. It's just an accident. They were just tourists. They had to see Washington, DC. I mean, give me a break. I've been to the Capitol. I've been to the tunnels under the Capitol. I've roamed around the corridors of the Capitol, not as a tourist, but meeting people. And getting in, you go through security, you go, I mean, it's a whole process. You don't just meander in. So if they were allowed to meander in, it's because the cops were afraid of them. And you can see cops being afraid of them. You can see cops being chased. We saw the videos. So don't believe your eyes. Believe Tucker Carlson. Don't believe your eyes. Believe the editing of Tucker Carlson. And people defending this, it's just unbelievable. I mean, Fox has basically become a network that doesn't even try to pretend that they are seeking facts. I mean, they always were biased. But now they're just lying and embracing the lie and doubling up on the lie and reaffirming the lie. They're taking hours and hours of video and screening it down to a few people meandering down the corridors, not doing anything nasty. Well, evading, evading, not ignoring, evading everything else that's on those videos and selling this as the truth, as the official story, as the non-democrat story or the non-mainstream story or the non-establishment story, and therefore the correct story because anything that's anti-establishment is correct. A crazy man. A crazy man is walking around with a whole getup and the cops are watching him. But generally the cops are not engaging with these people but they're watching you because he's a nutcase walking around the Capitol inside the building, yelling and chanting. And how is it presented by Tucker Carlson? They're escorting him. They're showing him around. They're being tour guides. Just like, I mean, when I went to the Capitol, I was shown in and five or six policemen just showed me around. Escorted by security, give me a break. This was clearly a riot. This was clearly an attempt to intimidate my pens, congressmen, senators into reversing an election. This was clearly violent. And if this had been staged by Antifa or the left, the same people today saying, oh, they're just tourists would have demanded the death penalty for treason for every single one of them. And here we go. The people accusing me of TDS. This is so predictable. I said it at the beginning of the show. So predictable. So, I mean, just think about what would have happened if these were leftists. Not in terms of the cop's response, but think about what would have happened if these were leftists in terms of the way Fox would have covered it. Wake Tucker Carlson would have covered it. He would have edited it to show exactly the opposite. This pure partisan, tribal lying. And this is a network now that now is so, has to please a subsection of the Republican faithful. A subsection that wants them to lie, that rewards them for lying, that increases the readings for lying. And it's just, it's stunning. It's stunning how bad Fox has become and how disgusting it is and how this is a network I used to watch. I think a lot of us used to watch. And we have a lawsuit now against Fox by Dominion. The material coming out from Discovery, I've talked about it on the show, is unbelievable in terms of the double-faceness, obvious dishonesty and obvious lies that Fox was telling. Fox is now basically an arm of the Republican Party. And not just of any Republican Party. It is an arm of, I think, the worst elements within the Republican Party. It is an extension of, Trumpism, it's an extension of Trump. You know why anybody watches this network, I have no idea. I don't understand. It is lost all credibly. You know, I, granted, there's no news. Do you know who the most, this is funny, actually funny. So the survey is now about the American people's distrust of the media and they ask them, you know, do you trust this? Which networks do you trust? And basically, American people don't trust any of them. I mean, NBC, CBS, ABC, Dubeada, then Fox and CNN and MSNBC and obviously all those. But what network do you think, what news show do you think is trusted the most by Americans? Just shows you how dumb people are. NPR is not trusted. NPR is, again, way down. It's below NBC, CBS and ABC. It's down. I don't have the actual list right in front of me, but it's down there. I noticed that. But what is number one? That I noticed. Do you know what number one is? Like 46% or maybe it's 51% of Americans trust this network, not CNN, CNN is way down. 46, 51% of BBC. Man's a God of Right. Man's a West God of Right. BBC, the BBC, the British broadcasting service. Now, let me just be clear. The BBC is super leftist. It was leftist before MSNBC was ever invented. It's been leftist forever. It is basically, it's funded by the British government. It's dominated by the left. It always has been. It's awful. It's horrible. And yet, Americans are so disgusted by their own media that they're willing to accept leftist propaganda from the Brits because they have a great accent, because it's not American. And they lie in more subtle, British, sophisticated ways. Anyway, you know, it's been a, I have thought Haka Karsan was beneath contempt for a long time and he's only sinking further into a swamp of Fox News own making. You know, we kind of expect this kind of stuff from the left, but now the right is exactly the same. There's no difference between, I mean, CNN is better than Fox. Fox is basically MSNBC. MSNBC and Fox are both in the gutter. They're both just propaganda arms of their political parties. And I think they should be viewed for that. And remember, Fox is not the most consistently crazy right network. There's a whole bunch of networks to the right of Fox. What we're really missing in the US is a kind of a center right. What Fox used to be, a kind of a center right. It's interesting that Murdoch, I don't think, is anywhere near as crazy as Fox is. Murdoch is actually turned away from Donald Trump and is not, I don't think, well, back Donald Trump. The New York Post, which is a Murdoch newspaper, has turned away from Trump, is clearly endorsing DeSantis. But Tucker Carlson is all in, all in on the crazies, all in on the nutcases. Now I've had white hair for a long, long time. You can find videos of me. And it's never been black. Never had black hair. Always had brown hair. Trump did not cause this. Trump is the least of my problems in life. My grandfather had white, white hair and complete head of white hair. But no, Tucker Carlson is beneath CNN by a mile. He is, he is, what's the woman's name in MSNBC, the propagandist, the leftist propagandist? I would watch CNN any day over Tucker Carlson. But what's the woman, what's the woman, you know, I've showed videos of Tucker Carlson and his complete and utter nonsense. Yeah, he's Rachel Maddow. He is the moral and journalistic equivalent of Rachel Maddow. That is, that is the reality, which I know you guys don't want to hear and you don't want to believe and you will stick to your right wing propaganda no matter what. And you know, you cannot even, you cannot even entertain in your mind the possibility that the right can be as bad as the left. I mean, you're so enamored with this that it's, but yes, you know, this is the Tucker Carlson that said that what made America great was beautiful scenery and God and faith. That's the Tucker Carlson. And yep, yeah. And it's the most popular political TV show. It's, I think, the most popular TV show in the United States. This is where we are. I mean, partially that's because the left has so many fragmented TV shows, it all gets fragmented. But yeah, I mean, because Tucker Carlson has this unbelievably dedicated, blind, obedient audience that will take anything from him, anything. And the fact that he is the most popular TV talk show host today. I mean, I used to think Bill O'Reilly was awful and terrible and a pragmatist in the middle of the road, nothing. And he makes Tucker Carlson. I mean, now I miss Bill O'Reilly. Where's Bill O'Reilly? And Bill O'Reilly was horrible. And he had the biggest show on television. Bill O'Reilly was by far the biggest show on television. I actually appeared on the show a number of times. A number of times. And yeah, Bill O'Reilly never sunk to the lows that Tucker Carlson has sunk to. And Bill O'Reilly had me on. Tucker Carlson has not. So there you go. Bill O'Reilly was nuts. What does that say about Tucker? And Bill O'Reilly was just huge, huge at the time. So the size of the audience does not impress me. It more is an indication of the state of America and what Americans value and what Americans want to hear and what interests Americans, much more than what, yeah, than the other way around. So to me, the fact that so many Americans listen to Tucker Carlson says a lot about America, state of America, and the state of kind of, and again, what Americans are looking for in their television. All right, let's see. OK, so again, I mean, there's no question what happened on January 6th. Some people only evaded Tucker Carlson being one of those. And so be it. All right, let's see. Are there any Tucker Carlson questions? Vadim has a movie review for me. I'm way behind a movie review. So I apologize to everybody for whom I owe a movie. But he wants me to review Whiplash, which will be my pleasure. I've talked about Whiplash in the past. I've seen Whiplash, but I will watch it again and give you a review of Whiplash. Thank you, Vadim. That's $500. OK, let's see. All right, let's see. Cook says, but the left lied about the Antifa riot. So it's OK for Tucker to frame January 16th as a peaceful protest. At least Tucker Carlson isn't the left, except for how he frames politics through the lens of class warfare and agrees with Elizabeth Warren in economics. I mean, people forget that. If you want, I can pull up the old episodes of Tucker Carlson saying he basically agreed with Elizabeth Warren's economic program when she released it, when she was running for president. Just in case you don't believe me, or just in case you forgot, I will deliver the episode. So yeah, Tucker Carlson is a leftist. But yes, Cook, you're absolutely right. Let's see. Oh, and by the way, Elon Musk today, just further deterioration in Elon's Musk capacity. Elon Musk today fully supported Tucker Carlson, all in on January 6th being a peaceful protest, all in on thumbs up on Tucker Carlson's video and on the fact that January 6th was completely distorted. I mean, Elon Musk is now completely losing it and becoming another political hack. The worst thing that happened to Elon Musk was taking over Twitter. And I don't know, somehow surrounding himself with the echo chamber of right wing weirdos. OK, Jacob says, Tucker used to be normal a decade ago. He was hiding his true self. Then a power-lusting now. I think he's power-lusting now. I mean, we've seen some of his texts about the fraudulent elections where he basically says that he doesn't believe any of it, that he basically believes that Trump lost, but it didn't stop him from saying what he said on television. Just recently, I think yesterday or the day before, he basically said that we'd been lied to about the election of 2020. So he's doubling up on the same claims. He won't mention Dominion voting machines because he's already being sued. But basically, Tucker is being completely and utterly corrupted by power-lust. He realizes that in order to stay the most popular person on television, he has to accept the conspiracy theories, the lies, the distortions, the evasions that his listeners believe in. He is not guiding them. He is feeding them red meat. He is reinforcing their existing beliefs. And that's, I guess, how you make it in the media today. So he was more, he wasn't just normal. He was a libertarian. He considered himself a libertarian. He used to wear bow tie, kind of a libertarian-looking bow tie. And he was very, very free market. He's completely, thoroughly abandoned the free markets. He's become thoroughly right-wing in the worst sense of that term. And he has been captured by his audience and will basically won't disagree with him. Won't disagree with him. Robert says, Robert Nayser says, keep it up, Iran. We, Trump, his enemies take him literally but not seriously. His fans take him seriously but not literally. Now, Fox fans are giving the news station the same infinite sanction. Yes. Yes. And some of them are here in my chat. But some of them also unsubscribed students, so that's OK. All right. Let's jump in on teen depression, because this is a topic, it's a serious topic. It's a topic we should all be concerned about. It's a topic that affects, interestingly enough, a topic that affects girls much more than affects boys. That is a depression. But it is rising. It is intensified. And you can't just blame COVID, because it was growing well before COVID. Indeed, suicide rates among teenagers peaked, well, at the highest level ever in 2019. Now, that's, it's interesting. Boys commit more suicides to girls. Girls attempt suicide more often than boys. So girls don't just don't do it well, because they might be using it to seek attention versus actually committed suicides. Boys succeed. Boys actually commit to suicide. But teen suicide was at the highest in 2019. And supposedly in 2020, I couldn't, 2022, I couldn't find data, because 2020 suicide rates went down. And I couldn't find data, but 2022, they were up. I don't know if they were up higher than 2019. But clearly, we've got a generation of teenagers with real issues. And a lot of people on the right talk a lot about the crisis in boys. And it clearly is a crisis with boys and a crisis of manhood. But there's maybe even a bigger crisis among teenage girls. And again, depression rates, mental health problems, the highest level they've ever been recorded among teenagers in the United States. And it's interesting. It's not just an American phenomena. This phenomena of depression is all over the world when measured. It's in some places worse than others. But in many, many countries, particularly in the West, but also it's very, very high. And it's been increasing. So the phenomena is this. And this is a statistical phenomena that a lot of people have written about just recently. They've just been this flurry of substacks and articles and papers written about this. Phenomena is that since 2010, since about 2010, teen depression and, again, mental health issues have been increasing dramatically into 2022. And depression was high in 2020 because of COVID. And it's still high in 2022. So it's just been a 12-year phenomena of increase. And this same phenomena has been documented in many other countries, in most European countries. There are few exceptions. The Netherlands, you don't see that pattern. South Korea, you don't see that pattern. And there's one or two other places. But in most places, most places around the world, cross-sectionally, you see a dramatic increase. You see an increase in suicide. You see an increase in self-harm. And of course, you see a dramatic increase in major depressive episodes. I mean dramatically higher than rates in pre-20, 10, 2011. And social scientists are engaged in kind of this question of what is going on? What is going on? What changed in 2010, 2020 in Melbourne? And there were a number of theories being proposed for this. And it seems like one theory seems to be dominating others. But there were a number of theories being proposed for this. So let me go through some of the theories being proposed. And let's get to the main one that everybody seems to be coalescing around, or most people seem to be coalescing around. Let me also say there have been other studies. Well, we'll get to that as well. So some of the proposals have argued that what has happened is that life just sucks. Life is much more difficult today. People are struggling. People are hurting. They're struggling financially. There's a lot of uncertainty about the future. It's just objectively a bad time. It's objectively a bad time. And therefore, as a consequence of the fact that things are bad and that people are struggling, people are depressed. They're depressed about their prospects for the future. They're depressed about maybe their parents working hard and barely making a living. We'll get to some other things they're depressed about. But one argument is, look, it's just hard. It's just since 2010, financial crisis, post-financial crisis, things have gotten worse economically for the American families. The problem is that the data doesn't support any of this. First of all, it's not that bad. Things from a financial perspective, from an earning perspective, from an income perspective, are actually better today than they were back in 2010. And better than they were pre-2010, things have improved. Wages, standard of living quality of life has actually gone up over the last 12 years. And most economists and most social thinkers actually agree with this and see this. So yes, they might be struggling out there, but the other interesting thing that really flies in the face of this interpretation is that the wealthier the family is, or the more prevalent depression is among teens. So the more comfortable they are, so this depression among teens is more common among upper middle class than it is among people who are relatively poor, which you wouldn't expect if this was driven by economic uncertainty. You wouldn't expect if this was driven by economic angst. These are typically teenagers who are doing fine in school. Again, primarily girls doing fine in school. They'll go to good colleges. Their parents have money. They're pretty comfortable. Nobody's living in fear of bankruptcy. And it's been shown that, for example, the adults in such families are doing fine. They're pretty happy or pretty satisfied since I don't trust the happiness measurements. They're pretty satisfied, they're pretty content. It is the teenagers and the pre-teens. Well, primarily teenagers, depends when you define teenagers, but 13 and up, where the real mental health issues are. And the question is why? What is going on with them? So one explanation is economic difficulty doesn't really pan out. The second explanation I think is more interesting. And interestingly enough, the second explanation is presented by people who are progressives. But these people on the left are arguing, blaming themselves in a way, and saying, look, since 2010, the progressive movements, we, have become more and more catastrophizing. We have painted the world in a darker and darker way. We have painted the economic situation of the United States in a more and more depressing way. But more importantly, we've darkened the future. We have said, and this is true of the left's agenda, that there will be no economic growth in the future, that we have reached peak growth. We have said, they say, that climate change is going to destroy the planet, that the climate crisis is just devastating. We have told young people that America is a place that is dark and depressing of systemic racism and discrimination, a horrible place in which to live. And these kids are buying it. They're buying woke. They're buying critical race theory. Who wants to be alive? And if the place, if we have systemic racism, and you can't get rid of, and we're also telling them that they're guilty, particularly if they're white, and these depression is much more likely among middle class white teenage girls. We've told them that they're guilty because they're white. We have told them that there is really no way to get rid of that guilt, except by them sacrificing. We have told them that the world is going to end and deserves to end for all the sins of humanity. So I found it really interesting that some leftist commentators are willing to say, look, we're a depressing bunch. We have told our kids really depressing stuff about the future. And as a consequence, surprise, surprise, they are depressed. Now, I actually think, although there's no real empirical evidence to show that this is the case, I actually think there's a lot of truth to this. Some of the counters to this, some of the arguments that this might not be the case, is that other countries, where there's less of this, for example, there's no wokeness in Sweden. There's no wokeness in most of Europe. The only exception is England, and even then, it arrived there late. Didn't start with political correctness quite as early in 2010-11 that it did in the United States. So it's difficult to explain why you're seeing similar patterns in other places around the world that don't have quite the same level of panic and hysteria as the United States does. Now, it is true that when it comes to climate change, that unifies. That is kind of something that has been made a big deal out of everywhere in the world. Greta, after all, is not an American. And Greta, God, how can you not be depressed after listening to Greta and thinking that she's one of your co-hosts and believing what she says? So I think this has some explanatory power, some explanatory power. But the explanation almost everybody gives, and what it seems like most thinkers out there agree on, is an explanation that I think Jonathan Haidt, the sociologist, has been promoting for quite a while now. And that is that the cause of all this, that the cause of teen depression is social media. And ultimately, the cause of teen depression is, where's my iPhone? Is the smartphone. An idea is that social media, particularly in places like Instagram, reinforces all the kind of bad habits or bad attitudes or bad inclinations that teenagers already have. In particular, again, teenage goals. Teenage goals seem to be particularly concerned on how they look. Teenage goals seem particularly concerned on how they look relative to other teenage goals. Instagram provides input instantaneously. Pictures of gorgeous women everywhere in Instagram, gorgeous classmates everywhere in Instagram. And everybody is constantly comparing everybody to everybody by pictures on Instagram. People are liking, not liking, commenting, not commenting, commenting nicely, being nasty on the comments. And instead of just magazines with models, now it goes your age from your school on your phone. And people are liking their photos and not liking your photos. And everything reinforces this second-handedness, reinforces the shallowness, reinforces this kind of rivalry. And now, on social media, the goal is to get likes and be offended when you get dislikes. And it's why, by the way, the dislike button, while you have the thumbs down still on YouTube videos, it doesn't show how many thumbs down have actually been clicked. I mean, I have a place where I can go to find it. But I have to make an effort to go look for the thumbs down because if I see that a bunch of people gave me a thumbs down because of what I said about Tucker Carlson, I might be upset and I might be unhappy and YouTube doesn't want that. YouTube's been told that that is not good. People believe, social sciences today believe that happiness is a consequence of social interaction. Phones have, in some way, connected us more, but in really, really important ways, disconnected us more. There's less face-to-face. There are all these studies that show that American kids today hook up, not hook up, hook up is bad connotation. Meet up, hang out with friends, far less than they used to. Even in the days of video games, kids used to have to go and get together and play video games together. Today, you play video game in your own home against somebody playing video games in their own home because of the web you don't actually have to meet. And with phones, with texts, with video chats, with social media, people don't meet anymore. They don't hang out together anymore. They're lonely. And lonely people tend to be more depressed. And indeed, there's a bunch of studies, all kinds of studies that show, for example, that if you take the phone away from teenagers for like two weeks, they report higher satisfaction, life satisfaction, after those two weeks. That is that phones have a, and particularly social media, have a detrimental impact. You can see when Facebook launches, or Instagram launches, or particular areas suddenly get high-speed wireless internet rates of depression go up among teenagers. So it definitely seems to be a connection, empirically, at least in the data, between depression and phone use, and particular social media use. Social media is shallow, and social media encourages shallowness. But there's just another element of this that goes back to a previous explanation we talked about. Social media constantly feeds you the news. And this is something all of you could learn from too. Social media constantly feeds you the news. Your phone constantly is telling you what is going on. It's constantly telling you the headlines. And look, we all know, and we all know, that all the headlines are negative. All the headlines are bad. Bad news sells. Good news doesn't. So you constantly, whereas in the very old days, you'd sit down in the evening and watch TV, and you watch a half-hour news show. And that was it. So if half-hour, you got all the bad news, and that was it. But now, it is literally a constant stream of bad news, all day long. And if your social media constantly, and social media heightens those bad news and expands on them, you constantly bombarded with bad news. How much news feeds do you have that have good news on them? I have a few, but it's rare. I look for them. So you've got a combination of a lot of bad news being promoted by the left and the right these days, but originally by the left, with the rise of political correctness coming out of 2010, 2011. Just a constant bombarding of climate change, and guilt, and woke, and horrible people, and everybody's bad. And then the right coming on and saying, everything in the left is bad. They're all crazy, and they want to turn all your kids into trends, or they're going to distort and pervert, they're grooming your children in school. Just bad news from every direction. You, a teenager, you're being groomed for who knows what. And now kids are getting it. They're bombarded with it. They don't have the tools to deal with it. We'll get to that in a minute. And it's scaring them. So add this idea that social media reinforces kind of the worst second-handed traits that people have with the fact that it scares the bejesus out of them and tells them they should be depressed, because the world is a depressing place. And everything is in terms of conflict and abuse. I mean, go to Twitter and see. There's no nice discussions on Twitter. There's no debates, civilized debates. There's no disagreements that we're going to resolve, and we're going to figure out and look for the facts. There's yelling at one another. There's insults. And this is a culture that they're constantly exposed to at age 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. This is what they're getting from their phones. It's not the phone's fault, of course. It's what we're delivering. So that's kind of the explanation. I think the explanation, to a large extent, makes sense, except for one issue, which the mainstream commentators evade because they don't know how to deal with, and they don't know what to do with. And you could argue that this is something that hasn't really changed. It isn't worse now than it was 20 years ago, although I fear that things, if they don't get better, they get worse. They don't just stay static. And I think that the thing that everybody's missing and the thing that under my underlies, I think that the problem with boys not just with girls and the broader problem with manhood is the lack of values, is the lack of education towards values. And it's not that we need to teach people about values. We need to teach people to be values, and we need to teach people to teach people to be values by teaching them how to think, by teaching them to use their reason, their mind, by teaching them to know reality and gain efficaciousness and confidence in their ability to know reality. And if they know reality, if they understand reality, if they're efficacious with regard to reality, then I think the next step is valuing and becoming valueers, and therefore not being second-handed, not caring what other kids look like, what other kids think of you. Not caring necessarily about just the constant stream of BS news, but being willing and able to maybe engage in this wonderful tool called the internet and getting a wider perspective on the world. If we taught our kids to think, to think, to think, if we taught our kids to be independent, independent thinkers, if we taught our kids how to use the web, the amazingness of the web, the amazingness of this phone, and we taught them what an amazing thing this was and gave them an appreciation of it. If we taught them how to use it in order to discover new information, how to debunk the myths, how to expand their knowledge, how to learn new things, then they would see that the opposite, they would see that they don't need to be depressed, quite the opposite. They would see the vast possibilities that exist for human beings in the world in which we live. I don't think you teach kids the values to value, but you embrace the fact that they value and you encourage their valuing and you give them the skills so that their valuing is efficacious, so that their valuing is meaningful. It's not just detached. I want, I desire, I feel. That's the world in which we live today. We live in a world of feelings. We live in a world of emotions. And yes, if you're a kid and all you have are your emotions, your feelings, then social media can be very destructive, can be horrific. And all this information and knowledge and news being thrown at you can be very disorienting and can be very scary and you don't have the tools because you haven't been taught the tools. And more than ever today, more than in any period in human history, we need to teach our kids to think. We need to teach our kids to use reason. Why? Well, because 500 years ago, it didn't matter. They were going to be slaves to the land. They were going to be farmers. They were going to be whatever, tool makers or whatever. They didn't need to use their mind that much. But this is identified, I think, truly as the knowledge economy. This is a world in which it's all about your mind. It's not about muscle. It's about your ability to think. And particularly for girls, this is a world in which girls can achieve anything. Because in the world of the mind, they are not inferior to men. Maybe in the world of muscle, they are. But in the world of the mind, they are not. And yet we still treat them as mindless and encourage them to be mindless. I mean, that's the real tragedy of this, is that girls have now realized that the world is opening up to them in ways that even 20 years ago didn't exist. The more and more and more jobs are in their, quote, service sector. The more and more and more jobs are in the knowledge sector, in the brain sector, in the sector that requires thinking, using your mind, the more opportunities they have. And the less important it is what they look like. And the more important it is that they think about learning math and science, which they seem to be very good at in pre-high school, and then all drop off during high school. Because it's not the thing girls do. I mean, it is unbelievable. It is unbelievable that so many people here who listen to your own book show support somebody like Andrew Tate, who wants to turn women and girls into just material objects, sexual objects with no content. And how many men are in disarray and in crisis? Because, whoops, women don't want to be looked that way anymore, or treated that way anymore, at least some of them. So why are girls depressed? Why are teenagers depressed? Because they're not taught to use the tools that they have. They're not taught to use their minds. They're not taught the amazing opportunities that they have. They have not absorbed the right kind of values. They've not, sorry, not absorbed, embraced the right kind of values. And by not embracing the right kind of values, they are now susceptible to the bad news that the progressives and everybody else throws at them. They're now susceptible to the bad reinforcement that social media and these phones provide for that and for all the other bad. And there's something to this. It's better to be with people face to face than it is over video and stuff. And I think people are going to adapt to that. One other aspect of this that I think is interesting that people have commented on. It takes people a while to adopt a new technology, adapt to a new technology. And I think that's true of the phone. I think that's true of social media. I think it's true of parenting. You know, there are always screen time limitations on TV. There were screen time limitations on the internet in the early days of the internet. I don't know that they've had screen time limitations on phones. I don't know that little kids should be just given a phone and left alone with it. And I don't know that parents are doing enough to encourage people to actually go out and play with other kids. But I think we will adapt. I think all of those adaptable, those are fixable. And indeed, you know, there was always the panic of television is destroying our kids and heavy metal is destroying our kids and video games are destroying our kids and internet is destroying our kids and us, the phone is destroying our kids. We will adjust to the phones. But will we adjust the values? Will we teach people, will we embrace an actual education, an education of reason and education of thought and integration of using one's mind to know reality, understand reality? That's the challenge. And then having real values around what kind of life you want to live. And you know, we're the teenagers with ambition who want to change the world, who want to live a great life. But we live in such mediocre times, boring mediocre times. And I think it's the mediocrity which is depressing as much as anything else. We don't frame the potential that human beings have with the right kind of passion and in the right kind of context of values for teenagers. So yeah, our teenagers are depressed. The solution is teaching them how to be valueers, how to be rational values, how to use their mind to value. And teaching them how to deal with technology and the value of real human exchange. All right, let's see. We have a bunch of super chat questions. I see we've met our goal primarily because of Vadim's movie request. So it's kind of cheating. We're way behind the goal without Vadim. So I don't know if anybody wants to help Vadim out and get us to a higher place, but we have made $650 goal. And I do know I owe an episode of MASH, two movies, not well now, three movies. One episode of MASH and three movies. I do feel guilty about it. If that makes anybody feel any better, if Charles Bott feels any better because of that, I do feel guilty for not having done it. But I will work on it maybe next week. I'll maybe this weekend I'll try to catch up on some of these. All right, Nat, your average algorithm asks, why haven't any objectivists been anywhere near as successful as Ayn Rand in terms of popularity and growth? It's not like Ayn Rand was that charismatic. Oh, yeah, she was. I mean, she was super charismatic. She was in her way. She was sharp and quick and unflinching and unbelievably articulate. She was also an originator of a philosophy which interests people versus people who are kind of applying somebody else's philosophy. So she was a celebrity. She was huge. People would fly out of the country to come and see her once a year at photo forum. People would try to see her from anywhere. So she had a huge amount of charisma. I mean, you think of charismatic as somebody on stage, but that's not charisma. She had much more charisma in those eyes and her genius and in the fact that she was the originator of the ideas than anybody else. And the reason nobody's achieved that kind of popularity is primarily because she was the originator, but also because she wrote novels. And it's the novels that gained her the mass of popularity. So we don't have a novelist. We don't have anybody close to that. And we don't have anybody at the level of genius that she had. But we don't have a novelist of that level and we don't have a genius. But we're chipping away. We're chipping away. Wes, thank you, really appreciate the support this morning. And now, thank you, really appreciate it. Liam says, teens are depressed because we live in vicious nihilistic times where people will make fun of you for anything as long as you take it seriously. These are almost no role models for happiness and long range achievement of values. I think that's right, although I don't know. I mean, when I was a teenager there were people like that as well. I think it's worse today. I think it's more part of the culture today. That is, it's not just a bully. It's not just the mean people in the school. But I think it's much more ingrained in the culture. It's much more prevalent. It's much more everywhere. It's on the left and the right. So yes, I think the nihilistic, vicious nature of the times. And the problem with a lot of, and it's on left and it's on right and it's on both sides. And I think the problem with most the commentator in this is the academic commentators, they don't have any way to measure that. They don't have any way to measure that. Hoppe Campbell, you say inequality is a feature of freedom, not a bug. But aren't class systems, why is being a leadist of staying in your economic or educational class necessary, necessarily this nasty thing people make it out to be? I don't understand the question. Well, staying in your economic or educational class, what do you mean staying in it? Not having ambitions to rise above it. I think social mobility, having ambition is a feature of freedom and essential for freedom. I think people rising and falling from their various levels of wealth and income is again a feature of freedom, a feature of a dynamic, exciting culture. I'm not sure why this idea that you, yeah, I guess I don't really understand the question Hoppe, sorry. Vikram, twice in one day. Wow, sitting in India, I've caught two live shows within 12 hours. Thanks for answering my question on success of Indians in the last show, I think you are right. But it's tribal how in India, every Indian name in the news, even second generation ones are adulated. Yes, there's definitely a strong tribal element in India, not just in India and some other places as well. Israel, for example, a strong tribal element of kind of tribal pride that one of our tribe made it or succeeded. Thanks Vikram, thanks for the support. All right, we got, those are pretty much all of our 20 plus dollar questions. Now for the five and 10 dollars, although you still have an opportunity to ask a question or to contribute. All right, Michael asks, why are we so unaware of our insecurities? They often only rise to focal awareness when we are stressed or enraged. Well, I think we get lack of introspection, a lack of actually observing our own behavior and observing our own emotional state. Again, while we're taught to emote, we're not taught to understand the emotions, we're not taught to reflect on their emotions. So I think that is the issue. Valdrin, what value did Musk create? Core cause, he couldn't have reusable rockets without his genius. He's certainly deceptive and sincere and opportunistic. I mean, yes, from everything I understand, he really is the driving force behind the success at, what do you call it, his space, SpaceX. He does drive, he does have ideas and he is the driver of, he set an ambitious goal. I think just setting that ambitious goal is exciting and pretty impressive. He's not really the mind behind PayPal. I mean, he merged his company into PayPal. He's not a founder of PayPal in and of itself. Not clear how much input he had in creating real value in PayPal. He added value and he created a company that became part of PayPal, but I don't know how much value he had once PayPal was an established entity. You know, electric cars, a lot of people value them. It appears, although a lot fewer would value them if they weren't so heavily tax advantaged and subsidized and hyped. But he does drive the technology, but he also has been quite deceptive about his future. So again, I have this love-hate relationship with Musk. I didn't like him for a long, long time. And I didn't like Tesla for a long, long time. I then, during COVID, I think, shifted my position about him because he said a few really good, great things. You know, shaking your fist at the sky. All kinds of tweets that he made that I thought were really, really good. And then I liked him. And then recently with his basic support for Russia and, you know, his now support for Tucker Carlson and his support for all kinds of weird conspiracy theories in between, I've lost a lot of that respect for Musk. Wesley says, why is post-apocalyptic science fiction so popular nowadays? I don't know that it's nowadays. I think it always has been popular. I mean, Soylent Green, you remember Soylent Green for way back. I think they've been post-apocalyptic movies since the beginning of time. What was the famous Fritz Lang kind of, not post-apocalyptic, you know, kind of dystopian movie? But I, you know, Mad Max, you remember Mad Max? Mad Max 1, 2, and 3, that was post-apocalyptic and that was what, in the 80s. So I don't know that there's more of it. But again, we have Metropolis, yes, Metropolis. Beautiful movie, amazing movie. But dystopian, amazing dystopian futuristic movie. I guess it wasn't post-apocalyptic. But they've always been post-apocalyptic. Zombie movies go back, way back, all kinds of horror movies go back. There was The Postman, there was Waterworld, Kevin Costner's, Jennifer's Twilight Zone episodes. So I don't think it's new. I do think that the more we talk about apocalypse, the more we're convinced that the world is coming to an end, the more we think it's a disaster, the more we obsess about it, and the more we're curious about the end. I don't know how many of you are watching. The Last of Us, is it called The Last of Us? Something like that by HBO. I will review it. I actually think it's a really good show. This is the latest post-apocalyptic zombie movie. I usually hate zombie movies. I don't watch zombie TV series and zombie movies. But I really like this one. I was encouraged to watch it by my son. And this one is, I think what makes it really good and is that it is fundamentally character driven. The action is not what drives it. It's not what's important, what's really important about the show is other characters. And it does a good job presenting different types of people, different situations, what they do, how they respond. And particularly the two main characters are really, really good. And now I understand it's based on a video game, but I think the critics, I don't know the video game, but the critics are saying that the TV series is better than the video game. So The Last Among Us, I'm recommending it. I think it's worth watching it. Even if you don't know anything about the game, which I don't know anything about the game. Is the profit motive destroying media? They give people what they want, outrage, most engagement, more money, and there's no money in nuanced reporting. Yeah, if you lose your integrity, then profit can be corrupting. And journalism is supposed to have integrity. Media is supposed to have integrity. They've lost that integrity. And they now have just become, and I think particularly Fox, I don't think the other networks just have been captured by the audience. They're just biased by the fact that the people there are biased. But Fox has clearly gone from being a right-wing alternative to CNN and MSNBC to being completely wacko and completely in the lap of the Republican Party as a captured and willing to lie because that's what this audience wants. So I think when you lose your integrity, that's what happens. It happens in every network, every newspaper, every way. Then what have you got? Oh, you've got his profit. You can have integrity and make money. And you can see that on some of the substacks that where people are making money and they're keeping their integrity. Fox has chosen profits over integrity. Jake Kovach says, I think teenagers are struggling to form their sense of identity and insane sea of perverted standards and expectations that developed from social media over the last decade. Yeah, I'm not sure what those standards are, but yes, I think everything is heightened. Social media heightens them. So they always had insane standards, but now they're heightened in everybody's face. Luis Filipe Noel asks, hi, what is the opinion about the direction Canada with Justin Trudeau? I mean, it's gone crazy left. Justin Trudeau is one of the most crazy left governors, you know, what do you call it? Prime ministers or presidents in the Western world, in the world really. It hasn't gone full authoritarian, but it has gone a long way towards leftist policies. I think it's a shame, because in many respects Canada was doing really well in the early, in the 2000s. And I think the shift to the left is really hood Canada. While I wasn't a big fan of the truckers, the way Justin Trudeau dealt with it was completely authoritarian and horrible. And unfortunately I think a way in which even more authoritarians in the future will deal with all opposition, freezing bank accounts, you know, freezing financial assets, just horrible. I mean, one of the worst things anybody's ever done. And Trudeau generally has been embracing, woken, embracing all that. I mean, even him and that woman in Scotland has been some of the worst. She's resigned, maybe it's time for Trudeau to resign. Jeff says, I just clicked thumbs down to test that, strange. We have a 99.9 thumbs up consensus here, don't we? Happy to be a member for 12 months. Thanks, Yuan. Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for testing out the feature. By the way, we only have 58 likes, got 100 people watching. We should have 100 likes. There've probably been 200, 300 people watching right now. So please consider liking the show before you leave, giving it a thumbs up before you leave. It helps the algorithms a lot. So click those thumbs up buttons before you leave. I would really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can still ask a super chat question, or you can still support the show if you want to. Particularly if you're willing to do a $20 above question, that would be great. Hunter Hunter says, I'll be meeting my soon-to-be wife's family for the first time in Israel this summer. Anything I should definitely see while I'm there. Oh wow, I don't know, it depends what you're interested in. I mean, there's so much to see in Israel. Depends how long you're staying, but you've got to go to Jerusalem. You've got to go to the old city and see all the touristy sites. Go see Masada in the desert. If you've got the time, you should go to Golan Heights and the Galilee. Haifa is my favorite city in Israel. I'll definitely spend a few hours there if you can. Party in Tel Aviv, and again, if you've got time, Elat at the southern tip of Israel is a beautiful place. And then if you're interested in meeting objectivists in Israel, drop me an email and I'll connect you with the thriving and growing objectivist community in Israel. Andrew said, cynicism doesn't just protect oneself from being fooled, it blocks oneself from values. Thoughts on the false economy of naive versus cynicism. Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, cynicism is part of our culture, much more part of a culture than it used to be. Again, another reason to be depressed. I mean, I think all the successful TV shows of the last 20 years have been shows that have elevated cynicism and have thrived on cynicism. The Simpsons and South Park are just two examples of shows that are just anti-values. South Park's not for anything. Simpson is not for anything. It's just anti-everything. Anti-good values, anti-bad values, anti-everything. And that's the environment in which a lot of kids have been raised over the last 20 years. Family guy, I'm sure I've never watched it, but many of the others, it's just ugliness, ugliness and cynicism and stupidity. And I think that that has had a profound impact on the culture. It doesn't happen all the once, so many of these shows started 20, 30 years ago. It takes time and they become all-encompassing. They become everywhere. Everybody sees them. Everybody knows them and that cynicism breeds kind of the nihilism and everything else that I think ultimately results in teen depression. All right, again, let me remind people that there's great value in you guys giving us a thumbs up. It increases the algorithm. It helps with the algorithm. The all-powerful algorithm. Mr. Muffin, what do you think of the stories coming out of Twitter files, COVID, government interference? None of them surprise me. None of them shock me. Look, government interferes in media all the time. I mean, what is it? What do we call it when Donald Trump tells Fox to do X, Y, Z, and then Fox does X, Y, Z? And of course, what do we make when the Biden administration goes to Twitter and says X, Y, Z, and Twitter does X, Y, Z? There is no separation in America between the media and politics and politicians and political parties. And that's true in the mainstream media. That's true with Fox and CNN and so on. And it's true in the print media and it's certainly true, certainly true in social media. But why does any of that surprise anybody? Now, what we need is to advocate for separation of government from news, from government from media. Government should have no say in Twitter. Government should have no say at Facebook. Government should also have no say at Fox. But right now, Fox is doing the bidding of Trump and did the bidding of Trump when he was president. And took phone calls from Trump who told them what they shouldn't do. So I think it's awful that the government has so much say in the media. I think it's a violation at the end of the day of the First Amendment, but it's not new and it's only getting worse. And I don't think the Twitter files revealed anything that we didn't know was happening. And now the question is, will we do anything about it? And it doesn't look like we will. Because nobody has any sense to do anything about it. Republicans pretend to care. Republicans want to have the same power when they were in office. And indeed, according to Twitter files, the Trump administration used to call them up and ask them to do certain things. They all want it. They all want that power. Who doesn't want the power over the media? So Republicans are not going to do anything about it. And Democrats are not going to do anything about it. So who's going to do anything about it? Kim asks, how do you maintain peak productivity every day and throughout the day? Well, you can't maintain peak productivity throughout the day. You have to be able to rest. You have to recognize the more productive periods. You have to be able to motivate yourself. But the way you maintain it is by focusing, by making the mental effort to focus, setting clear goals and driving yourself towards those goals. And yeah, you know, so, and then recognizing when you need to rest, recognizing when you need to step back a little bit and so that you can re-engage, focus, re-engage your peak productivity when you need it. Staying in good health, staying in good shape, exercising, all of that helps you stay peak focus, peak productivity, able to do that. Adam says, for inspiration, see ASML secret on YouTube. Yes, go see ASML secret on YouTube. ASML is an amazing company and just a symbol of integration and a symbol of, you know, what is possible? What technology makes possible? Andrew, example of an objective is to attitude re-self-esteem versus the new rights. Rand's response to a letter from a male friend who asked how to find a good woman was, in essence, find a woman who likes to work. Oh my God. I mean, imagine if she said that to Walsh, Matt Walsh would freak out. No, you have to find a woman who likes to cook and take care and make you happy. That's what you need to do. Frank says, just like W.R. Dahl, you think Rand's publisher could change her writing because she used the word subnormal for certain children. No, I don't think they can. It boils down to what kind of agreement the publisher has. Now, when the book's going to the public domain, then anybody can change anything, right? So when the book's going to the public domain, it's gonna be a lot harder to maintain it, but that's why the Inran Institute is so important. That's why what you want is to support the Inran Institute into the future. So when the book's going to the public domain, there will always be copies of the books as Inran wrote them, published and produced and made sure to go to the public and buy the Inran Institute because the Inran Institute is always going to preserve Rand's legacy in spite of forces like the publisher wanting to make changes. Maybe they will, but it will be a different addition to the actual, no sound. What do you mean no sound? Oh, okay. Whoops, Hunter Hunter says, look forward to seeing you at Ocon just signed the scholarship agreement. My wife and I will be attending immediately following a honeymoon, I think we'll be off to a great start. That's fantastic. By the way, most of you who applied for scholarships, I understand, not all of you, because I think there were three who may be applied late and it was already the scholarship allotment and being filled, but I do think that most of you, almost everybody who applied for a scholarship through the Inran book show is getting a scholarship to Ocon. So next time when I say apply for a scholarship, you can go to Ocon for free. Everybody should apply. I mean, God, we should have the entire Youran book show entourage at Ocon next time. So it is actually happening. I'm looking forward to seeing you all at Ocon, those of you who are coming. All right, I am off to bed. I am, as Bonnie says, I am dragging and I need to go to sleep. I need to regain my strength so I can do another show in the morning, another news briefing. Please, we're going back on our regular schedules. I know because I'm out of schedule, we're getting fewer people watching live because we got into our pattern and then I disrupt the pattern, but we're gonna be in a pattern for the next two, three weeks. We're gonna be doing shows pretty consistently. I hope we can get a significant number of people watching the shows live. So please, please think about that. I'm not sure exactly when the show, the morning show will be tomorrow. It might be a little later than usual because I've got a doctor appointment in the morning, but we will be doing a show tomorrow. Then Thursday, there'll be two shows in the morning and then I'll be interviewing my business partner, Robert Handershot in the evening. You'll really enjoy that one. I think it'll be fun. So please join us for that. And remember, there's an ongoing competition on who can raise the most money. I think Alex is in the lead right now. And then there'll be a show on Friday morning and Saturday. There'll be a show at 2 p.m. East Coast time. And then following week, we'll carry out pretty similar schedule. We might shift to Thursday show to Wednesday just because I've got something going on Thursday night, but we're gonna try, and I think I might be interviewing Peter Schwartz that week. And then we'll see who else we've got a whole schedule of interviews going on. All right, remember, if you wanna support the show monthly, that would be ideal if you get on a program. You can do that on a Patreon or on Subscribestar and you're on bookshow.com slash support. That is an incredibly valuable for me and the show. Way to support the show, because it's predictable. I don't have to bug you for money. You just make a contribution, set it up, and it just charges your credit card on a monthly basis. You can do it at $2, $5, $25, $100. And a few of you actually do $500. All of that is incredibly valuable and makes the shows possible. So thank you to all the supporters. Value for value. That's what the Iran book show is about, win-win relationships.