 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rocks. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Wednesday afternoon. A little bit of a different time for Iran Book Show, but we will go with it. I'm not sure what's happening here to the app that's supposed to record my podcast. We'll see if it actually lands up recording anything. There we go. We're live now. Okay. Hi, everybody. All right. So, yes, it is a weird hour, but I figured better late than never this morning kind of disappeared on me. All right. A lot to cover today. You're probably all following the news of the submarine. This is, I guess, a tourist submarine that was going down deep to look at the Titanic. To look at the Titanic, you know, what's left of the Titanic at the bottom of the sea. The submarine has disappeared. They've got probes and ships and submarines looking for it. But the reality is the odds of finding them alive, at least, are pretty bleak. I think they've got less than 20 hours left of oxygen if the submarine hasn't been breached. I just think of the horror of sitting. I mean, the whole idea of a submarine, I don't know, thousands of meters under the sea, little spooky, like a little submarine. We're not talking about a nuclear big submarine of the Navy. Even that is a little spooky. But being in a submarine like that is spooky to begin with. And then being then just sitting around waiting to die, knowing your oxygen is going to run out. Yeah, one of the worst kind of feats you could imagine. It's a horrible, really tragic, sad. They're still looking. There's still, I guess, some possibility that we'll find them in time. Assuming the submarine hasn't been breached, but unlikely. One other quick story, and that's we've talked a bit about China and Blinken going over to China and China in Cuba and all of that. Well, Joe Biden, in one of his moments of what is it, half consciousness or half focus, which is pretty much all the time, right? You just see pictures of him. It's not clear that he's not completely there. Anyway, in one of these moments where he wasn't completely there, Joe Biden actually called Xi Jinping a dictator. You know, sometimes when politicians are not completely in focus, they actually tell the truth. Now of course Xi Jinping is a dictator. By every definition of the term dictator, Xi Jinping is a dictator. He's an authoritarian dictator. I don't know how else you could conceive of what he is. He's not elected democratically. He's not chosen by the people. He's a dictate. And anyway, Joe Biden said this by accident, I'm sure. And you know, China's offended. China's upset. And I'm just telling you about this just because this is just an illustration of how pathetic and weak and ridiculous American foreign policy is. I mean, the idea that it takes Biden calling Xi a dictator for Xi to realize, huh, they think I'm a dictator. I mean, shouldn't that be the centerpiece of America's foreign policy vis-a-vis China? Hey, you're a dictator. We don't like dictators. We might continue to trade with you, but you're a dictator and we morally condemn you for being a dictator. Shouldn't that be the centerpiece of American foreign policy vis-a-vis China? I mean, that's what it would be in a moral, rational world to this shock and surprise and insult that the Chinese are taking at this. And Biden accidentally, once in a while, says the right thing, but it's got to be completely accidental. I mean, everybody knows Xi Jinping is a dictator, but everybody knows you're not supposed to say that. And Biden knows he's not supposed to say it, but he forgets. Oh, he just doesn't think about it. You know, that's Biden. All right, so that just a couple of side things. All right, so let's get to some of the serious stuff. So it turns out, I don't think too surprising, it turns out that math scores and reading scores of middle school students in the United States are plummeting. They're going down dramatically. And this is the case that up until about 2012, scores had been going up pretty systematically. Scores had been improving for American students, both in reading and in math, across various ethnic groups, across various social economic groups in a variety of different schools. Generally reading scores and math scores were increasing. And then somehow something happened in 2012, starting in 2012, scores started to decline. And in, you know, in the last couple of years, scores have just plummeted. The decline in math scores last year was the biggest decline in 50 years. And, you know, if you look at average math scores for 13 year olds, they declined 19, nine points between 1920 to 2223. Average reading score for 13 year olds declined four points between 1920 to 2223. And, you know, scores are declining across all groups, urban, rural, every ethnic group, every type of school. And fewer students are reading for fun. Enrollment in algebra has declined significantly. So it used to be in 2012, 34% of all 13 year old were enrolled in a class that taught algebra. In 2023, that number dropped to 24%. So pretty much in all of this, we are seeing kind of a long term declining, a long term decline. It started somewhere around 2012 and we get to 2012 because 2012 represents declines in other areas as well. And at the same time, but the big declines, the really massive declines have happened post COVID. So a number of things to say here, one is, yeah, COVID really hurt kids. The COVID response, the insanity of closing schools, just the insanity of closing schools. And we were saying this, I was saying this, Amish was saying this really from the beginning that schools should not be closed. Children are not susceptible to getting COVID. And we knew that from the data coming out of China, and we knew that from the early data in the US. I mean, maybe it may tend to, you know, keep kids from school in the first few weeks when people weren't sure. But once we had the data, it was pretty clear COVID doesn't really hurt kids. It's still true, doesn't. And yes, you can find the anecdotal case where it does. But you don't base policy on anecdotes. You don't shut kids out of school because some kids in very, very rare cases get it. And even when they get it, it's almost always, almost always, literally almost always very, very mild. The severe cases of COVID among children are extraordinarily rare. Again, not such that you would guide policy period. And yet, shutting them away from school for two years in some places has a huge impact. And yeah, they studied by Zoom or whatever, not the same, not the same. Now, you could argue in some cases it's better for them to be kept home because what they're learning in school is so bad. But probably not in middle school, probably not math and reading. Probably, you know, they still got value from math classes, still got value from reading classes. So there's no question COVID policy has just been a disaster. A disaster that you cannot quantify. You cannot put a number on it. And look, one of the great tragedies, because I'm getting, you know, dozens of people unsubscribing to me. I'm getting, you know, harangued on Twitter and everywhere else because of the show I did on RFK Junior. One of the great tragedies that was so of the conspiracy theory about everybody's dying because of COVID vaccines, is everybody's focused on that instead of focusing on the real tragedy of COVID. And the real tragedy of COVID is lockdowns and that nobody's learned a lesson and that this could happen again. Just scare the population enough and it'll happen again and people will go with it again. And maybe even a bigger tragedy than the lockdowns was the shutting down of schools. Again, that in some places lasted for two whole years. And the damage done to kids as a consequence, a whole generation to a whole class. You know, the knowledge lost, the connections lost, everything. This plunge in scores is a direct consequence of the fact that schools were closed for so long. So stop with the conspiracy theory nonsense and let's focus on the real tragedy, on the real evil here. Because the conspiracy theories are nonsense. This is real and this has clearly caused sustained damage. Now the question of why are reading and math scores declining since 2012? Now that's probably a more complex question and the surprise I guess is that reading and math scores were rising before 2012. And that's where somebody needs to do a really good analysis. On what was being done right before 2012 and maybe it wasn't even been done right but done a little bit better. And what has changed, what changed in 2012 in what is being done in the schools in terms of reading and writing. As we'll get to almost everything regarding children is now blamed on social media. But it's too simple, too easy and I don't see how it affects particularly math. Maybe reading you can argue, they don't spend enough time reading, they spend it all glued to their phone. But that shouldn't affect math scores, shouldn't affect algebra. It shouldn't affect these kind of things and you really need to think about what happens, somebody needs to study it. I don't have the answer but something shifted in 2012 and it's not just scores. Something shifted in the whole everything that was going on in school because the other issue that is big now and I've seen a number of stories in the press and in Twitter around this is young kids depression and stress. Now I'm going to show you this graph. Now I want to make lots of caveats about this graph. This graph comes from the work of a woman by the name of Jean Twenge, I don't know how you pronounce it. You'll see it on the screen in a minute. I cannot verify the numbers. She is an academic. She's at the University of San Diego. She's written a lot of books. She's written a lot of articles. But I don't know the methodology. So caveats on everything. Caveats on everything. There's a lot of other data that suggests that something like this is going on. These numbers look super scary. Super alarming and super scary and I'm not endorsing this graph but this is an indication. This is 8th, 10th and 12th graders in the United States. This is about depression. This goes back to 91 and what it's measuring is three lines. I can't do anything right. My life is not useful. I've got a lot of questions about that. Useful to whom and for what? Useful. That's a horrible, horrible way to present a question to an 8th grader. My life is not useful. How is an 8th grader's life useful? Again, to whom and for what? That's a real problem. And the third one is I do not enjoy life. And look, we've got systematic philosophical problems in the culture. So you'd expect these numbers to be relatively high relative to our rational normal culture. You'd expect this to be significant because of all the problems in the culture. But why? What happened in 2014 in this case? To see it explode like that. I mean, look at those numbers now. Again, in particular, you're seeing the increase there during post-COVID. There's a huge increase at the tail of this. That increase starts in 2014. Looks like 13, 14. I mean, this chart is one of the most depressing charts that you'll find anyway. It's one of the most depressing things, particularly I do not enjoy life. I mean, I get it. High school period for all of us was pretty traumatic. High school sucked. I'm sure this is the experience of girls. I can tell you as a boy, it sucked. A lot of stuff is going on in your life and you don't get it. You don't understand it. Your parents are no help. Your teachers are no help. Girls are no help. And I'm sure boys are no help for the girls going through this. Other girls are not help. It's difficult. It's a difficult period. But this, I can't do anything right. I mean, that's a real self-esteem issue. My life is not useful. That's a really deep philosophical problem just in the way it's phrased. And I do not enjoy life. That's, God, that is depressing. Look at those numbers. Almost 50% of kids, eight, 10th and 12th graders, this is up until 20, this year, say they don't enjoy life. So there's a lot going on here. The conventional wisdom, the thing that everybody uses to explain this is social media. Social media makes girls in particular depressed because of self-image problems. You know, there's a lot of people, a lot of kids depressed because of all kinds of, you know, comparing yourself to what's going on in social media and being depressed by the negativity of social media. Huge issues and problems that are being reinforced by social media. Also, social media brings immediacy to all the problems in the world. It's oriented towards negativity and it's constantly hopping on that negativity. So certainly you've got problems relating to that. What happened to my other one second? But that's, you know, that's too easy and it can't just be or it's very unlikely to only be social media. So what else is going on? What else has happened since 2014 to, you know, to young people? You know, it's, you know, people are so, you know, if parents used to be worried about teenagers, sex, drugs and awkward role, now it's all about anxiety, depression and suicidal intentions. That's scary. Sex, drugs and rock and roll is at least more fun than anxiety, depression, suicidal tendencies. And a lot less deadly. It has its own problems, particularly the drugs part of it. But now part of it is you could all give video games and social media and the internet and all that. But we always blame everything on tech. And there's probably something there, particularly with social media and the availability of the iPhone. But I don't think it's just that. What else is going on here in the early, you know, in the early 2020s is interesting, right? So one hypothesis that I found interesting was that kids are feeding off the fact that their parents are depressed and anxious and stressed. Now I'm ignoring here for a minute all the philosophical issues. You know, oh, there's one other issue. Let's just do this issue before we get to the parents. One of the issues particularly with boys is that they have been, they are increasingly and particularly over the last 10 years, increasingly not allowed to be boys. You know, there's a lot of less physical activity in schools, recess has been curtailed, physical education has been curtailed. You know, more and more the focus is on having kids sit quietly and listen and be told, be passive. Boys are increasingly being drugged. I mean there's a massive increase in the amount of drugs being used on children, particularly again boys, you know, for, I don't know, hyperactivity. As somebody who is a hyperactive child who I'm sure would be drugged in today's world. I know there are a lot of you who would like to be drugged right now, but that ain't happening. But you know, you've got a real challenge with boys, but this isn't just boys. This is girls and its entire generation and it's spiking. So there are probably a lot of things going on here is my point. But one of them is this phenomena about parents. If parents are depressed, if parents are stressed, if parents are angry, if parents are spiraling down some conspiracy theory rabbit hole, if parents are addicted to Facebook and Twitter and so on, then I think that resonates with the kids. And look at the dates. The dates are right there. 2014, 2012, 2013, 2014. This is a time of increased political angst. This is a time of dramatic increases in what are called deaths of despair. I mean dramatic increases in death of despair. And the deaths of despair during this period are primarily focused on one group. Men, often fathers, but 45 years old to 55 years old, so parents have children, teenagers, who are dying deaths of despair. Now, those are the people who are capturing because they commit suicide or they overdose on drugs or they basically drink themselves into oblivion by ruining their liver. But it can't just manifest itself in death. This means that they're depressed. This means that they're stressed. So imagine if so many people actually dying, how many people in that age group are not dying, but are still unbelievably depressed and stressed and angry and hateful of the world out there. And this is much of the culture that we today have. It's caused by many, many things. I've talked about it many, many times over the years. It's caused by, I think, the mixed economy at the end of the day. It's caused by political nuttiness. It's called by this political polarization and political obsession of so many people. But more than that, it's caused by false expectations about jobs, about income, about wealth. It's about having to move, about change, about... And whatever the causes are of adult depression stress, whatever the causes are about deaths of despair, are having a massive impact on our children. And by the way, the deaths of despair, drug overdose and stuff like that, only increasing post-COVID, not decreasing. And then you've got children who are suffering as a consequence and part of the suffering manifests itself in them themselves being depressed, being stressed, being anxious. We've got to figure out how to fix this. Now, you're not going to get a fix from the government. You're not going to get a fix from the authorities, from above. This fix has to happen intellectually at the level of the culture. And the fix can only come when people regain their self-esteem. The fix can only come when people regain a respect for their own lives, a desire for happiness, a belief that it's attainable. It can only happen if people regain focus in their lives, a focus, purpose in their lives. I mean, one of the problems is that many people in middle ages are losing their jobs and then they lose purpose. They are not motivated enough to find a new job, to get retrained, to do something exciting and fun that's new. They fixated on a path that now doesn't exist and that causes them depression and they're out of it. There's no, that American spirit of dynamism of, okay, this didn't work. I go to something else, of accepting failure, of moving forward, of always progressing, of always learning, of always changing. I think to a large extent that has gone. And I've talked about this before on previous shows. 9-11, the financial crisis, have decimated this country's spirit, have decimated the American sense of life. And I think what we're seeing now is other consequences. The consequences of that kind of spirit, of embracing change, of boldly facing the world, of being positive and inspired, of that dying, will with it go our children. It can't be, you know, it really has consequences. How we of adults respond to the world has real consequences and how our kids respond to the world. Now, of course, a whole educational establishment, how they're taught, how they're educated, the values that are conveyed to them. The fact that, you know, we're not teaching kids to think. We're not teaching kids how to, you know, embrace, discovering facts, integrating those facts, thinking. Using conceptual, using, you know, concepts and using their minds to actually figure stuff out. I'd say the right learning or no learning. So, yes, everything about our educational system seems to be rotten. And the kids are the ones who are suffering. But more broadly, everything about our culture, or much about our culture, seem to be rotten. And our kids are suffering from a rotting culture, from, you know, really through and through a culture that is rotting out. And did it start in 2014? No, but it's accelerated. And it's accelerated with our political craziness, with the nuttiness that is our politics, and the nuttiness that are the conspiracy theories and the political, you know, passions. It's exploded because of the obsession parents have with social media, less so than with kids. It's exploded because people are losing their belief, they're losing confidence, they're losing understanding of what America is and what life, what is possible in life. Of course, you know, commentators, you know, David French kind of had this idea of this is all caused by the parents. And, you know, the explanations are, yeah, it's because of the decline in Christianity is part of that, right? The more secular would become, the more depressed would become. I'm skeptical, very, very, very skeptical that that is the cause. I think politics has a lot more to do with it. But I think sense of life, sense of life has even a bigger part of it. And I think the sense of life is also why so many Americans are jumping on the conspiracy theory bandwagon. All right, that was, that was a lot. But it is, it is worrisome. Okay, quickly on abortion. I read the story, I found it interesting that there was a new legal strategy that the pro-abortion side has that that might be quite interesting. What we're seeing is Jews, Episcopalians, Unitarians and even Satanists suing the government, saying that the ban on abortion at the state level is actually interfering in their ability to practice their religion. That is, since their religion does not ban abortion, since their religion allows a woman to have an abortion, restricting her ability to have it. Is there a restriction on their religious, on their religion and religion practices? And I think this is geared, this is actually going through the courts now. So these arguments are a number of lawsuits that are going through the courts over this. I mean, this is geared towards the Supreme Court's inclination so far to be very, very, very pro-religious liberty, religious freedom. That is, you know, if you're a baker and you don't want to bake a cake for a gay couple, okay, if you're Christian, that's fine. Of course, if you're an atheist and you just don't like gays, that's not good. But for this, it's fine. So I found this interesting. I think it's going to be, what's really going to be interesting is how the courts deal with it. It's probably a stretch. It probably won't succumb. But what they're arguing is imposing a particular Christian idea of when life begins over the beliefs of other denominations, threatens their ability to practice their religion. Why not use the courts' preference for religious liberty against them? Or for liberty, for real liberty. Let's see how this progress. I like it. I'm all for any way we can try to regain rights in the area of abortion. Richard, did $100. Thank you, Richard. Really, really appreciate it. Yeah, these are the topics that you get covered on the Iran book show. All right, one last topic. Maybe there'll be two. The FDA and the Department of Agriculture and I don't know, whatever USDA, the USDA, all of them, the US regulators are basically approved for sale. For the first time, what's called cultivated meat. This is meat basically grown from cells, from stem cells of animals. There are two companies in California, but there's a bunch of companies in Israel. There are companies in Europe. There are companies all over the world now that are working on this. The two companies in California are upside food and good meats. They're going to be able to serve their food initially in restaurants, you know, because they've got the government stamp of approval. Aren't you all relieved now that when you buy a cultivated meat, the government has authorized it for use? It's cool. So far, it's quite expensive, but of course the companies are working to make it cheaper. So it's a fairly high-end restaurants. Two restaurants in particular are going to be serving it soon. One is Bar Cren in San Francisco, which is one of the top restaurants in San Francisco. Cren has Michelin stars. I don't know if Bar Cren has the Michelin stars, but they have it. And then the other one is in a Jose Andre restaurant in Washington DC, again a high-end restaurant. My assumption is it's only being sold there because it's expensive. But given the amount of venture capital that's flowing into this industry, given the amount of capital that's flowing into it, the price will come down. The idea here is to create beef and lamb and whatever from beef and lamb, from their cells, stem cells, that can be curated in terms of health because they can determine how much fat is specifically. But also, ultimately, we'll save the slaughtering of cows. The animal people are big behind this. But really, the big push behind this is climate change. That is, if we can eat lab-grown meat or factory-grown meat because it'll have to be in factories, it'll have to be in scale, that means that we can get rid of all the cows and we can get rid of all the animals that are farting methane into the atmosphere. So, you know, that would reduce climate change. But even more important than the methane is that we can get rid of all the crops. I mean, the amount of crops that we grow in order to feed the cows is unbelievable. And we can get rid of growing all those crops. Now, I don't know if crops are bad for climate change or good for climate change. Yeah, I don't know. Somebody will have to research that. Probably bad for climate change because that's what these people believe anyway. Anyway, you know, I don't exactly buy this climate change thing, but I think it's cool if they can grow meat to my specification and to my taste, if I can actually get personalized meat in some distant future, that would be pretty cool if I can order online Iowa meat that has marbling just like this and I want it to taste just like this and maybe we can even create new forms of meat. We can combine, I don't know, beef and lamb. I don't know. But what this is is really biotech because it does involve real biotech. It involves taking stem cells and really manipulating them and growing them. Maybe we could get, you know, wagyu without having to massage the cows. You know, wagyu beef is cows that are massaged every day and they're fed beer. Maybe we can get wagyu beef without the massaging. Maybe ultimately the price will be cheaper. I don't know. But already they're also doing this with chicken. I don't know the chicken has been approved in the United States, but in Singapore it's been approved. One of these companies is selling chicken in Singapore. Basically chicken that is not chicken never was alive. It's just chicken meat grown in a lab. I mean, isn't science pretty cool? I think it's really cool. I think all this is really cool. So it's an amazingly complex process. This is real science and real biotech innovation. And now the question is can they do this at scale? Can they industrialize this? Can they make it so it's available in our supermarket and all of us can buy it? That is the next step and that'll be cool. And again, ideally the end result is personalized meat. That's my dream. Homegrown meat. Not homegrown. I don't want to grow it at home. I want to be able to go online and order it. And it just arrives. Also, the other thing about this meat, I forgot to say, you know how when you buy meat, particularly ground meat, but even a steak, you need to cook it, right? Meat can have parasites in it. It can have bacteria in it. You can get food poisoning from meat. Particularly ground meat, you really have to cook. I mean, a hamburger, most people recommend you have a hamburger medium because ground meat is particularly susceptible to bacterial infection because of its exposure. This will have no parasites. No bacteria. It will basically have what the lab pretending. Now, again, industrialization is not easy. But how do you make it in a way that is, you could make it bacteria resistant, but you make it in a way that's shielded from, certainly from parasites and probably from bacteria, and therefore it's also less risky. So there are all kind of cool benefits, I think, here that are kind of interesting that could come out of this healthier, customized, and then, I mean, the most important thing is, really, the most important thing is taste. It needs to taste good. That's the thing about the stuff so far, beyond meats and the others, they don't really taste like meat. They pretend that they taste like meat, but they don't really taste like meat. This should taste like it because it's meat. It's from meat cells. Anyway, something to contemplate. All right, one negative piece of news. That was a positive, well, end with this. On Wednesday, as of today, it was reported that the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC, has filed a lawsuit against Amazon. You know Amazon, that company that constantly exploits you and takes your money and provides you with nothing in return. And in particular, the lawsuit is targeting the prime subscriptions, claiming that prime, I mean, I assume most of you have prime, prime subscriptions have tricked people, have tricked unwitting consumers into being locked into, you know, to Amazon. Because I don't know, we're too stupid. I guess the people who filed the lawsuit have never used prime and don't know that prime actually gives us lower prices, no shipping costs, and much faster delivery. It also gives you access to a prime video, which is a Netflix competitor, which I've watched a bunch of series on prime, and it cost me nothing because I have an Amazon subscription, Amazon Prime subscription through Amazon. I get everything free shipping, fast shipping. But no, in the name of protecting me and you, but certainly me. The FTC is now going after Amazon's prime subscription because it's exploitative and it locks us in. You know, once you sign up, pressing that cancel button, very difficult to do. Very, very difficult to do. I mean, these antitrust people in the Biden administration are nuts and scary, really scary people. And, you know, prime is one of the great innovations in retail over the last 50 years. One click is another one. The one click button, it used to be called one click, where you buy everything with one click. That was a massive innovation. Everybody tried to copy it. Prime is another massive innovation. And these people want to crush innovation because they think they're smarter than anybody else and they think we're too stupid to take care of ourselves. Sad and pathetic, really. All right, cool. That is it for our news updates. We've got a few superchatters. We're about $44 short of our goal. So maybe $220 questions would get us there. Thank you again to Richard, who got us much closer to the goal with his $100 contribution. All right, let's start with Michael. Michael said, if you had to live in Israel again, which city in Israel would you choose? I'd still want to live in Haifa. Haifa is my favorite city by far. It's quiet. It's pretty. It's got amazing views, some of the best views anyway. You know, if you want to get the excitement of Tel Aviv, it's an hour drive away. But that's where I would live. I wouldn't live in Tel Aviv or the center. It's too busy, too noisy, and not pretty. There's nothing pretty about it. And the other option, if you didn't want to live in a city, would be to live somewhere in the Galilee. But that's a little removed from civilization. Haifa is just right. Of course, I'm not going to live in Israel again, so it's a complete hypothetical. All right, let's see. Hopper Campbell says, how much is depression actually curable in an irrational, nihilistic world? And most psychologists today are leftist subjectors. Look, I don't think the politics of a psychologist is necessarily going to make them a bad psychologist. I'm sure there are a lot of good psychologists who you and I would not agree at all on their politics. People can compartmentalize. People do it all the time. And to condemn a professional just because you don't like their politics and don't agree with their politics, I think is a mistake. And I would be very, very cautious of doing that. So you can ask Gina Golan when she's on a next show, if she finds that all the psychologists that she thinks are very, very good are attuned to her politics. I doubt that that's the case. So I think you can find a good psychologist today. I don't think, you know, not as good and not as prevalent as they would be in a rational, free society. They'd be less needed in that kind of society. But there's still good ones too, right, that I think you can do. Itai Hopin says that television is beautiful. I don't think television is beautiful. Television is just a flat. It's not pretty. It's exciting. It's fun. I don't think it's pretty. The beach is nice. But even the beach kind of crowded. I like Haifa Beach. It's, you know, I like the Haifa Beach. It's more rugged, rugged. Anyway, but depression is certainly curable. It's curable. Some people cure it with drugs for some people that's appropriate, but others with good psychologists and they are good psychologists. So I don't think you should dismiss the field of psychology, the field of psychiatry. I don't think you should dismiss the work that's being done to help people out of depression. I think people are helped out of depression every day today. And maybe Newellink, we will see. Hasn't yet. Alright, Robert says the victim is the sanction. The victim is the sanction. Giving gloom, doom and evil far more weight than it warrants. And objectivism, objectivists lately are not immune to this. Everything's getting worse. End of the world dystopianism. Yeah, you know, I think objectivism has always been susceptible to this. It's always been in the movement. It's really interesting what is the movement? Who is an objectivist? What are the people out there? I mean, again, this conspiracy theory stuff is really interesting. How many people come to objectivism because of a certain political affiliation and then they get attracted by, I don't know, others, but it doesn't really go deep and it doesn't, you know, the ethics and epistemology never really resonate and never really understood. How many people really understand? How many people are therefore easily distracted? But yeah, you know, if you know the ethics, then your whole focus in life should be, as I've tried to emphasize in the Iran rules for life, on living the best life that you can live for you in the most constructive way and, you know, trying not to obsess about the political and nonsense and the things really you can't do much about that are happening out there in the world and not get caught up in, again, conspiracy theories and different, you know, trains of ideas that are going to lead you to a dead end and just misery and dystopianism. So yes, here in the Iran book we try to combat that. We try to combat the idea that everything is getting worse. Hey, soon you're going to have customized meat or that the end of the world is coming. There are real depressing and bad things out there in the world and they need to be challenged, they need to be fought. And hey, the world might end. I'm not saying the world won't. There's no point in being polyannish about this either. There are real, real challenges and real, real problems in every aspect of what is going on in the world right now. But, oh wait, let's deal with it and let's focus on our own lives and how we can make our own lives better. Paul says, do you think the number of mass school shootings affects the issues of youth depression? I mean, yes. There's no question it should. I mean, if you're seeing this, if you know that this is happening, I think it's a, you know, why are they, first of all, I don't know the empirics to what extent there are more school shootings. I don't know. I'd have to research that. But there's no question school shootings have to have a negative impact on kids and their attitude towards life. The question is, has it really gotten that much worse over the last 10, 11 years? And I don't know the answer to that. Maybe, maybe that's a piece of it. Also, but of course it's a feedback, right? Why are they more school shootings? Because they're more kids that are depressed. And some of them are so depressed that they, and so stressed and so upset at the world that they become, you know, complete, nutty, psychopathic nihilists and they go out then and just shoot people. I shouldn't use the word psychopath because I don't know if they're psychopaths. Evil is a better word. Jeremy says it's the education system that's causing all this depression and young people and parents are depressed because they want, they went through the same education system earlier. I mean, there's a sense in which that's true, but then the question is why are there changes, right? Yes, we're all much more depressed than we should, than we would otherwise be. But what happened in 2014 to make it so much worse? Something is happening. I think what some people have described as the war against boys is part of it. Again, I think politicization of our entire lives is part of that. I think social media, amplifying all of that is part of it. I think it's a complex issue. But yes, at the core, at the core, it's philosophy. It's the core, it's lack of self-esteem. That's at the core of it. But why the big changes? What happened to generate those? And you can see the big changes over the last three years. That we know. Shutting down schools, locking people up, keeping them at home, lying to us. All of that. All of that is it, right? All of that is it. And yeah, and Scott mentions Obama getting re-elected in 2012. That had a big part of it. Among certain Americans, there was a real sense of depression when Obama, in spite of the fact that Obamacare was so unpopular and despite the fact that the Tea Party had been so energized and so energetic and there was so much passion. The fact that Obama won, I think also set us up for Trump, because I think the right was so ready for Obama to lose and so many people that I knew were convinced to the last minute that Obama didn't have a chance, that Obama was going to lose the election, that Romney had it. I wasn't, but people out there were. I mean, Romney is actually a Republican I voted for. But, and when they lost, it was truly traumatic. It was truly traumatic to many people on the right. And it created the kind of political atmosphere that we have today. You know, the left came to worship Obama to some extent the way the right worships Trump to some extent. And the right came to despise Obama with a kind of virulent hatred that I've never seen before and I don't think has existed really in American politics. So, yeah, it became, it definitely caused a lot of the kind of the political angst that exists in the country today. Michael says, some people don't want to be fixed because being broke gets them attention. Yeah, that's probably true. That's probably true. Michael says, is humidity worse in Miami or Houston? You know, I don't know exactly. I'm going to guess that it's worse in Houston. I'm also going to guess that it's just, it's in Houston for more of the year. But I don't know. I mean, you can look it up on the Weather Channel or something. I'm not sure. I think Houston is more like New Orleans. And I think those two are kind of the worst. But maybe not. Maybe Miami's just as bad. Richard said, didn't COVID school lockdowns expose education system flaws and indoctrination? Could that have accelerated students and parent despair? Yes, I think that definitely is, I don't think students knew that it was flaws, but I think certainly parents became more despaired. I wonder how much of that is still around. One of the things that happened after COVID, a positive, if you will, is that a lot of kids were pulled out of some of the worst schools and put into homeschooling, accelerated private school enrollment, accelerated. So public schools were hurt by kids going home and parents suddenly realized what they were studying. So definitely public schools got beaten down by COVID and that is a positive. Whether that, it'd be interesting in two, three years to see whether that has sustained itself, whether parents kept that attention, kept that focus and are still homeschooling, they're still sending their kids to private schools or have they returned to normal kind of and sending kids to public schools? Have they forgotten is the question. Michael asked, it doesn't matter what you say is super controversial. It's the truth. Your low subscription numbers suggest most people are dishonest or unfocused. Well, it's just something, but yeah, I'm not going to stop saying stuff that's super controversial if I think it's the truth. I could be wrong. I could very well be wrong, but I try not to be. I make a real effort not to be. And so I think the stuff you get here is the truth to the best of my understanding. All right, we're $12 short. If somebody wants to jump in with a question just to get us over the target, we're done. So I've run out of questions. No, so tonight there will be a show tomorrow morning and Friday morning and there will be show tomorrow night. Tomorrow will be a show with a Ben Ben Bear. Ben is going to come on and talk about altruism, in particular altruism in the context of Christianity and religion. So we'll have a conversation about that. I think it's going to be fascinating. We've talked a lot about altruism, but you can never talk enough about altruism. It is the plague killing our culture. It is the plague at the end of the day. You can link it up to all this depression numbers and all this stuff. So join us tomorrow, 8 p.m. East Coast time for a conversation with a Ben Bear philosopher on altruism at Christianity. And of course he will answer your questions about other stuff. Paul says, thank you, Paul. You got us over the threshold. He says, see, Bradley Thompson has written about white children are depressed today. Yes, I mean, Brad has written extensively about the evils of the modern education system and about the destruction kind of a boyhood. And for the most part, I agree with Brad. I've had him on the show to talk about it as well on a couple of occasions. So yes, I don't know if it's how it maps onto kind of the worsening state and the pivot, the changes, but it's no question the fundamental here is the growing progressive, the growing decline in education in America. You know, one of the things that's hurting girls is the trans issue. The trans issue particularly affects girls. More and more girls are suddenly deciding their boys and they want to become boys. And it's become a fad thing and that has to be part of the depression thing. It has to increase stress, increase depression, increase lack of enjoyment in life, everything when you think, when somebody else, when the environment around you, when the world around you somehow causes you to think that you're not who you are. Usually that passes, but right now I think there's a big push socially to be trans is to be cool, particularly for girls, and that's just really, really, really bad. Adam, pessimism is just complaining. Objectivists can not only appropriately point out the negatives in society, but often alternative philosophy that could easily combat many issues simply by changing one's mindset. I agree completely. Objectivism is the answer. It's the answer to all these issues. It's philosophy. It's a philosophy of self-esteem. It's a philosophy that focuses on the attainment of self-esteem and on pursuing the pride that is necessary for self-esteem. We'll talk about that when we do the Seven Deadly Sins show, which we'll do on next Tuesday, a week from yesterday. By the way, I think that this Sunday we're going to do a member's only show. I'm trying to figure out a topic. If anybody has an idea for a topic for the member's only show, please email it to me, but I'm thinking of doing the member's only show this coming Sunday. So we do that once a month. You can become a member too. Just click on the Join button below. We've got about 209, I think, members. We should have 1,000 members. So click on the button below. Become a member at the minimal rate. If you want to give more money, give it through Patreon or through PayPal. But it is, by joining as a member, you do get access to the member's only show. And that will be on, hopefully, on Sunday. All right. What's the deal with Amy Peacuff and RFK? I think you should ask Amy. I don't know. I haven't talked to her about it. But Amy was advocating for some of the, I think COVID vaccine, you know, I don't know, conspiracies. But I don't know. It seemed that way. And some of the, I even mecked in, and some of the, I had a chloride or whatever. But you need to ask Amy. I shouldn't speak for her. So you can ask her and get her to answer. I don't want to speak for what's up with Amy. All right. Thank you. We made our goal. Thanks to all the superchatters. Thanks for everybody who asked the question. Somebody, everybody who just supported the show. Who do I need to thank specifically? Who supported the show without asking a question? Wes, thank you, Wes. I really appreciate it. All right, guys. I will see you all tomorrow morning.