 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Brookshow. Everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow. It's having a great weekend. Over here, it is truly beautiful. And things are quiet, although, let's see, I'm just trying to get everything lined up. All right, everything seems to be working. All right, again, thanks, everybody, for joining me today. We're going to talk a little bit about climate change. I'll do that at the beginning of the show. We'll talk about that. And then we've got kind of an open Q&A. So hopefully, you guys have brought your questions. We'll do a super chat, open Q&A. We've got our AMA with $100 or greater supporters. So far, only Jennifer's here, so we'll see. Jennifer has a few questions. We'll take those, but we'll also take advantage and let you guys ask as many questions as you want on the super chat. Ali is, what's happening? Ali's electricity is out in Venezuela still. So I'm not sure what's going on there. We do have a fill-in. Catherine Mendez is filling in for Ali, so she is here to prod you along as we try to get to $600 on the super chat. So pay attention to Catherine there on the chat. She is our stand-in for Ali. Hopefully, Ali will get back. If you want a sample, an example of the evils of communism or socialism, what's going on in Venezuela right now and the fact that you can't even get on the internet is a good illustration. And don't let anybody tell you it ain't, Venezuela is not socialist. It is socialist in every characteristic that is important. So no question at all that it is. OK, let's see. All right, as I mentioned, feel free to use the super chat. $20 a mole, get priority. And we should have plenty of time to think your questions. So keep them coming. I wanted to quickly address this issue. It's top of the news everywhere, of course. Biden is in, where is he? Oh, in Glasgow. Glasgow, I don't know if you guys have been to Glasgow. If I've been to Glasgow, I don't know if I've been to Edinburgh. I'm not sure now I've been to Glasgow ever. I know I've been to Edinburgh. Edinburgh is pretty cool. Edinburgh is where Adam Smith was and where much of the Scottish enlightenment happened. But maybe I've never been to Glasgow. Anyway, as you know, President Biden is in Glasgow to meet with the other leaders of the, I don't know, the developed world. And it is a climate summit. They are discussing climate. You know, John Kerry, who is President's Biden's special climate envoy. So he is the expert on all things climate. John Kerry has stated that this summit is the last best hope for the world to get its act together. Implying by that that if we don't get our act together now, I guess the world comes to an end. The oceans rise and we all drown or maybe just it gets so hot. We all just melt away. But it's that kind of hysteria that I think this credits and disqualifies the whole agenda. Sadly, it's it is it's it really is it really is pathetic. Look, it's it's very, very likely. It's very, very likely that the world is warming, that there is warming going on. Right. And so so that's likely. But the idea that, you know, the idea that this is catastrophic, the idea that this is going to wipe us all out, you know, it's true some places will could maybe flood. I don't know the science. I'm not an expert in the science of climate change. I don't pretend I don't completely trust the scientists that are advocating for this. But you know, maybe maybe maybe some of the some areas will flood. People have to move insurance rates will go up as long as the government doesn't subsidize them on coastal areas or low, very low places. I mean, if you live in Florida, maybe some of you should be worried, probably not everybody, but a few people, maybe maybe some cities, maybe Miami will have to invest in some flood mitigation technology and holding back the oceans. I don't know. But, you know, there are going to be some disruptions. But according to the United Nations itself, right? If global economic growth from now until 2010 is just average, just just leave it at average, right? Then, you know, the average person today, the average person in the world today will be 450% richer than he is today. Just if we do nothing, right? If assuming, which is ridiculous because things are not going to stay static, but assuming economic growth continues at the same pace it's going in, which is not very high. If we do nothing about climate change, that will reduce, according to the United Nations, I have no idea what the real number is, according to the United Nations, that will reduce the amount of growth that an average person in terms of his wealth will see from 450 to 434. So all of this for 16% difference in relative wealth. I mean, that's nutty. And of course, what they're proposing to do will probably reduce economic growth globally, dramatically. If we went off of fossil fuels quicker rather than slower, that would dramatically reduce economic growth in a global sense. So and if we institute policies that were pro-capitalist, 450% strikes me as really super low between now and 2100, you know, if the globe, oh, God, let's see if I can run the calculation pretty quickly. If the globe grew at 5% to the power of how many years are left until 2100, that's what year are we at? That's 78, 70, 78 years, something like that. Oops. Yeah, that's OK. That's the 450%, that's average growth. Add one or two percentage growth to that. I mean, it's hard to imagine. And you know what 450% means? No, it's much more than 450%. There's no way it's only 450%. 450% means 4.5 times, right? Yeah, 3.5 times. Anyway, 100% would be double. 200% would be triple, 400% would be OK. So it's five times. No, if economic growth was significantly was God, why is this so hard? This is math. This should be simple. Jennifer, help me here. 1.25 to the power of 78 equals 44.9. 44.9, right? That's 44 times, right? So economic growth could be much higher than 450%. I'm going brain dead here. Maybe I've lost a few IQ points over the weekend. I don't know. But the whole thing is just absurd. And what we really need to combat the real problems in the world is more economic growth. What we really need is more freedom. What we really need is more capitalism. The problems in the world have to do with the fact that there's still a billion people in poverty. How do you get them out of poverty? Capitalism. Problem in the world is that we just had COVID that, depending on how you count it, maybe killed 5 million people worldwide. How do you solve COVID? Not by reducing client, but by so-called by reducing use of carbon fuels. You do that by freeing up medical technologies. The problem in the world is maybe growing authoritarianism in China. How do you deal with that? By getting much, much richer. No, it's not 3.5. 100% is double. Yeah, so 3.5 times. Yes. Yeah, exactly. 4,400%. Thank you. Yeah, they missed the zero. If the world economy grew at 5% a year, for the next 78 years, it would grow by 4,400%. 4,300, because you have to take one off. So 4,300%. That's right. Not 450%. Is 5% possible for economic growth globally? Absolutely. That's what capitalism would bring us. What we need today is not a program to reduce carbon fuels, which is creating a real crisis in Europe. We'll see how many people die this winter in Europe because they don't have enough heating. What we need is massive investment in fracking so we get more natural gas. What we need is massive investment in freedom and a reduction in state intervention. We are safer today from climate than we've ever been. A few people die from climate events. There are not more storms, natural disasters of all kinds killed about half a million people a year a century ago. 500,000 people died a year of climate-related, weather-related natural disasters, not earthquakes, just weather-related natural disasters. Half a million people. This year, we're on track to have about 6,000 deaths, 6,000 down from 500,000. 5 million people died from COVID. Where should we be investing? It's just so nutty, the hysteria, right? Yeah, I mean, by their own estimates, it was case scenario, sea rise is seven meters. The seven meters in Puerto Rico would make, you know, a lot of the beachfront properties would flood. All right, people would have to move away from the beach. They'd have to go to the new beach, which would be a few meters behind the old beach. Why is the whole world apoplectic over the factor? We have to move a little bit away from the beach. So anyway, this is theater, this is hysteria, this is, you know, another millennial cult out there advocating for the end of the world. And, you know, we need to pay attention to it because what they want to do is sacrifice us today for some theoretical threat in the future, for some ridiculous threat in the future. You know, somebody's mentioned Venice, the master's mentioned Venice. Venice is sinking right now because nobody has invested new technology into the preservation of Venice because of what? Because of environmentalists, won't let them. So a hundred years from now they might not be Venice, but that has nothing to do with climate change, has everything to do without unwillingness to use technology to save Venice. I've been to Venice where they, and there's a museum there where they show you a number of different proposals on how to save Venice. And they're not that expensive of them, not that complicated, they're not that difficult. Nobody will do it because of the environmentalists. You can't mess with nature, but the only way human beings survive is by messing with nature, is by changing nature to fit our means. All right, Jennifer. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. In regards to when William Shatner went up in space, do you think that... I wanna say that William Shatner's been in space for a long time. Yeah, I know. Put that aside here. Do you think that how someone reacts to that, you see two basic reactions. Some people say, oh, that's cool. Captain Kirk finally got into space and of course, you know, Bezos did it, it's not him. It was Bezos that accomplished it. And that's really cool. I think it's cool. Or people who think, oh, that's ridiculous. You know, they should spend the money on the climate change or whatever, it's stupid. Do you think that reveals something about the person's sense of life? Oh, absolutely, absolutely. You know, I think it's a pro-life, anti-life response. People who resent it are envious and anti-life and the collectivists sacrifice Shatner's happiness for the sake of the planet or the sake of the spotted owl or the sake of, I don't know, whatever the gender is on any particular day to help with what Bezos wants to do or what Shatner wants to do or what any particular individual wants to do. The only thing that's important is some collectivistic goal that they want, right? I mean, Shatner's going into space is pretty amazing on a number of things. One, it's Captain Coke finally making it into space. That's cool. But it's also like Shatner's like 99? I don't know how old he is. 90. He's 90. He's 90. I want to be able to go into space when I'm 90. I want to be able to walk when I'm 90. Yeah, he can still stand up. Yeah, I would think if I could stand up at 90. If I could stand up at 90. This guy went into space at 90. I mean, that says something about longevity and being able to stay. I mean, I think the guy lost his mind. If you ever heard, did you ever hear Shatner? He put out like albums of him, quote, singing way back. I think he lost his mind, you know, back then. Like the guy was insane and not completely here. You know, when he was young, nevermind now. But yeah, the fact that you can stay healthy and robust and in a position to take a spaceship into space at age 90 is pretty amazing. I don't think I want to go to space, but I want to be in a physical condition to be able to go into space when I'm 90. So I think it's super cool. I think it's super cool. Thank you. All right, Debbie's joined us. Hey, Debbie. Can hear you, can we say something? Hi, everyone. Oh, there you are. I just connected my earpiece, so I've lost for a minute. You're there. So speaking of health, I enjoyed the rules for life with the health and pleasure. And I also, I remembered you mentioning a weightlifting routine that you like to do, but you haven't been able to do it in Puerto Rico because you don't have, it requires special equipment and a trainer and so forth. So I wanted to know if you've ever heard of something called body pump. Body pump, no. Okay, that's what I do for weightlifting. It's like a barbell, but it's higher ups and low weight and you don't need anyone. I do it in my house with the Les Mills app. Like I watched, because it's made by a company called Les Mills. And I just put the video up and it's an hour of different tracks for different muscle groups. And I love it. And it doesn't require anything but a barbell set and one of those like plastic step things. That's like what acts as a bench. You don't even need a proper weight bench. So I thought I'd mention that in case it interests you because I just like life wouldn't be quite as good without weightlifting. And it did, yeah, so. I don't get that, but let me, let me, let me just, you know, I don't want to ruin this for you, but let me just give you an argument against that exercise routine. Oh, okay, sure. I think high rep exercises routines are tricky because they tend to create joint problems over time. We're not built to do, to repeat the same motion over and over again, many, many, many times. So my exercise routine is the exact opposite of that. Super low reps, typically don't do more than six. And, but super heavy weight and very, very slow. And this is why it requires special equipment because it's dangerous otherwise. So you're isolating the muscles and then you're trying not because the heavy weight you're trying not to put pressure on your spine or anything like that. And really do the reps very, very slowly at very, very high weights. So that's why I can't find anybody. So I do do relatively low, high repetition, low weights in pilates. So that's how the pilates does that, but. Not the same though, cause it's just your body weight. No, cause sphinx, you use sphinx and pilates. Oh, okay. You got the reformer then. Yes, I use a reformer. Okay, okay. So yeah, so you definitely use sphinx and I use for the legs, at least all the sphinx and it's still not very heavy weight. It's pretty light, it's pretty light, but, but yes, I like what I, the routine I liked and the other advantage I liked about the routine that I do is that all you do is like 40 minutes a week. So in terms of the muscle that's all the muscles need is to be dramatically stimulated once a week with this routine and they do really, really well. Anyway, that's what I was longing for and that's what I miss. You can do it, and I do it a little bit, what you can do with, you can do it a little bit with body weight is you can like do a pushup. So instead of doing a regular pushup, what you do is you do them really, really, really slow. So 10 seconds down and 10 seconds up. So that, and the idea is that your muscles are underweight for two minutes, some way between a minute and a half and two minutes and it's really, really hard. I mean, people who can do 40, 50 pushups have a hard time doing six really, really, really slow. That's what I do. I do very, very, very slow pushups, but the other muscle groups, I don't get the very, very slow stuff. It's harder to do with body weight alone. Okay. You can do it with the squat. You can squat 10 seconds down, 10 seconds up. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. You could get a barbell, like a 71 is where I'm at right now with my squats, but like a 71 pound barbell. Just do it really slow. Do the same thing, but really slow. So. Yeah. So those, so the ways, the ways to do it. I'm also, when it comes to working out, I'm really lazy. Oh, yeah. I just love it. I get that way. This is why I do once a week, 40 minutes and it's over. Yeah. For me, that's a minus, not a plus. Cause I like to do a lot, like as much as I possibly can. It's like, oh, damn it. My muscles are sore. I can't do as much as I want to today. Yes, I know. I, if I, if I didn't never had to exercise, I would be quite happy. Frank, father asked what's the most, I, what's the most you lift? I don't know if this is for Debbie or for me, but what exercise? Yeah, depends on the muscles. I don't know, I don't know how much, what the most I lift. I wouldn't even know how to start the question. All right. Let's take some super chat questions. Let's see, Michael, do you think the reason leftist intellectuals can't allow themselves to take values and absolute seriously? It's because taking anything seriously is a fundamental assault on their worldview. I mean, there's something there. I think it's true, but there's a way in which we need to figure out what they mean or what you mean by taking something seriously, right? So I don't know, you know, they obviously take their socialism seriously, you could say. They take their, you know, some of them in some realms of their life might take stuff seriously. So I don't know, and I don't know that they don't take value seriously. You know, I'm sure they are leftist intellectuals who love classical music and take that very seriously and pursue it and study it and are very good at it and know it very well or have certain hobbies that they really like. I think it's dangerous to say leftist intellectuals, they're bad, you know, they're bad, yes. And then they're bad in everything and there's no values there and there's nothing. I don't know if you can say that. Now, they don't take absolute seriously because they hold the absolutes don't exist. And the reason for that is is that they're so if we're thinking moral values and we're thinking philosophical values and philosophical absolutes, remember they hold an ideology, altruism that you cannot practice as an absolute. It's a disaster as an absolute. So they've given up on absolutes because they realize that it's not consistent with the rest of their ideas. You cannot be an absolutist when it comes to altruism if you are death is what you're really asking for, right? So they abandoned absolutes because they realize the things that they care about like altruism cannot, it's not doable if you will is not sustainable as an absolute. All right, let's see. Michael, as we might have our wealth confiscated and property controlled through regulations but I don't see the first or second amendments going anyway, they're too entrenched. Well, I mean, I don't know. The first amendment already doesn't is only narrowly applied. For example, you don't have first amendment rights when it comes to business. So commercial speech, what the Supreme Court calls commercial speech is not protected, for example, under the first amendment. And right now, political speech I think is entrenched in the courts. So I think the Supreme Court would uphold it but you're seeing definite disdain for the first amendment among politicians. You can see it in the calls to regulate Facebook and social media. And you're seeing disdain for the first amendment among the American population. Survey after survey asks people whether they think things like hate speech or whether they think the speech of the opposition, the left vis-a-vis the right, the right vis-a-vis the left should be banned or censored or eliminated. And a majority say yes. And so I'm not sure it's as entrenched as you think it is. And our savior for the first amendment right now are the courts. It isn't entrenched in the court, particularly the Supreme Court. For now, we'll see how long that lasts. In terms of the second amendment, yes, I think for the most part it is entrenched again in the courts in a significant minority of Americans it is. Maybe it's a significant majority, I'm not sure. But that could change fairly quickly under the right circumstances with the right leadership and the right demagogue. It could change. Jonathan says, thank you for being part of ARC UK. My pleasure. Thanks you for being part of ARC UK and thanks ARC UK for doing everything that they're doing. There's a lot of content being produced by objectivists these days. The competition is intense. They're trying to take all my listeners. No, I'm kidding. I mean, the competition is great. It's great to see so many different avenues in which you can consume objectivist content. So thank you, Jonathan, for being part of it. Daniel asks, you mentioned a top secret project to remake the Republican Party. How is it going? P.S. not sure, I agree. Most runners have stronger bones than lifters. The repeated pounding are good for them. I'm not an expert though. All right, the project to remake the Republican Party failed completely. It basically completely imploded from within. There was not agreement on what it would look like and how to do it and who to approach. And it didn't go very far past the elections. So even though I think it was needed more than ever, I wasn't a moving shaker there. I was just a consultant and it basically went away. So, and I think most of the projects, there's still projects out there, there's still people working on it. But the one I was a consulting on didn't last very long. I didn't expect it to last very long. Jonathan says the pie gets bigger. Of course it does, right? I mean, competition is good for all of us. And the more outreach we do, the more people we bring in, the more we in a sense help you guys get more engaged with objectivism, the more the better the movement will be and the bigger the movement will be ultimately. All right, Alex, well, let me take Michael's first. Prove them wrong. They claim that absolutes don't exist. If a majority of people are on this delusional premise, how can we ever win? I'm beginning to think it's dishonesty, not delusion. Yeah, of course it's dishonesty, because okay, so you claim absolutes don't exist. Well, is that an absolute? I mean, do you absolutely know that absolutes don't exist? How can you know that? Absolutely, right? I mean, every single day left us claim absolutes. Climate change. Are they absolutely convinced the climate's gonna change? Sounds like it. They wanna change all of our lives based on the absolute knowledge that it's gonna change. How do they? No, I mean, they use the term only when it's convenient for them. They use the term only to further their own cause. And then they say, no, no, it's a probabilistic thing. Well, okay, what's the probability? When does the probability become high enough for you to act on it? Well, all the absolutes we're claiming have a higher probability than that. So, okay, even in a probabilistic world where they're no quote, 100% absolutes, you know, are we on Zoom right now? Yeah, that's an absolute 100%. Who's denying that, right? No, no, it's a fake Zoom. It's actually, you know, we're being, I don't know, we're in the matrix. I mean, there's no way to get around the fact that there's a vast amount of knowledge in the world that everybody lives by which absolutes. And the only way you can reject that is by rejecting your senses, rejecting reality. And the only way you can do that is by being delusional. And that requires dishonesty, right? So they're dishonest, and that's what leads to being delusional. Alex asks, having trouble understanding Dr. Pieckoff's argument against God in the problem of infinite regress, if the point of God is to be the beginning, unmoved mover, what is the question of regress matter? It doesn't, the question of regress answers a different argument for God. The different argument for God is, well, somebody had to create the universe. I hear that all the time, right? Where did the universe come from? Somebody had to create it, but that's, you know, but you could make exactly the same argument for, well, somebody had to create God, where did he come from? And if your answer is God has always been here, well, then you've acknowledged the potentiality of something always being here. And therefore that's the argument I have for the universe. I don't need God for that. I just say, where did the universe come from? Who created the universe? Well, nobody created it. It's been here, it's always been here. So there are different arguments for God. I don't think the infinite regress argument, I don't think the idea of an infinite regress is trying to answer every argument for God, just the argument for God that says, well, somebody had to create it. No, nobody had to create it any more than anybody had to create your God. It could have been here forever. Well, the universe could be here forever. It's also, you don't have to prove that there isn't God. Like the argument against God, the way that frame kind of implies to me that we have it there, we've got to deal with it and we've got to prove it's not true. Otherwise, maybe it's true or we're not sure. And that's because it's arbitrary. Arbitrary, absolutely. You can't do that. You can't just assert something and then say, okay, well, prove it's not. So Leonard's argument is in the face of an argument that says, well, the universe couldn't have been here forever, therefore we have to have a God that created it. One way to address that is to say, well, then who created God? That's the infinite redress. And if the comeback is God is the beginning and he's always been around, well, the universe has always been around. Right, right. So it's undermined the argument. All right, Michael's $20 question and then we'll go back to Jennifer and Debbie. Can you do a show on pinpointing when someone is either evading delusional dishonest or just honestly confused but wants to know the truth? No, I can't do a show like that. Because how would you know? I mean, you often can't know. There are some principles you can have for that. So of course, the more knowledgeable they are and the more the knowledge is easily accessible, the more you can conclude that they are evading, right? And there's no difference between dishonest and delusional. Delusional is, I don't know what delusional means, right? Delusional is detached from reality and they're detached from reality either because they're evading or because they're dishonest. So there's only two options. They're only two options, Michael. You're either evading or you're honestly confused or ignorant. You could include confused or ignorant, same thing, right? Delusional and dishonest come from evasion. What does it mean to be dishonest? Not to accept certain facts. Why are you not accepting them? Because you're not willing to look there. You're not willing to embrace them. Why? Because you're evading. So evasion is the source of the dishonest. I guess you, I mean, you could recognize the fact and then exclude it. Maybe you could be straight on dishonest but how would I tell what's the difference between the two? You can't. But I would just categorize two different categories of people. People who are evading and dishonest and people who are honestly confused, honestly ignorant. And I think it's very difficult to tell. But generally, the more intellectual somebody is, the more the issue is in their field and the more the truth is out there, the more you know that they're evading and dishonest. So for example, for Richard Wolff, who's an economist, been around for a long time, to say Mao Zedong was not responsible for the death of 40 to 80 million people is dishonest because this isn't hard. Books have been written about this. It's pretty commonly acceptable. It takes massive rationalization and evasion to believe otherwise. And he's smart, he's an idiot. And he's been around and he's knowledgeable and it's his job to know these kind of things. So he's just immoral and evasive. If some 18 year old student comes and says, yeah, I don't think Mao is responsible, then you give him the benefit of doubt and say, he's probably just confused, he's just ignorant. If 10 years later, he still thinks it, even after you've given him all the data and information, he's evading and he's a bad person. Lee says he's evading trick-or-treaters. Yeah, I get that. I have no option but to evade trick-or-treaters to say I live in a 10th floor and a condo building and there's no way for them to get up here. They'd need a special code on the elevator to find me. So they need a pod to get the elevator to come up to my floor. So no way for the trick-or-treaters to come too. I guess there's one other condo on my floor that theoretically they could figure out a way to sneak in but no trick-or-treaters here. All right. Okay, Jennifer. You think it would be a good analogy for Anarchy to say that it would be like a football game where there's either no rules at all or where there was all these referees and each one of them had different rules and the chaos that would ensue if you tried to- Yeah, different teams paid different referees. Now, Anarchists would say, no, well, the problem with that is it's too easy, right? So Anarchists would say, but look, they want to play football. So they would sit down and negotiate one set of rules, right? But the point is that they'd still each have their own referees. So what if the game-winning touchdown is questionable? How would they determine who won, right? If two, the two referees disagreed and then disagreements. And now allow the referees to carry weapons and tell them that at the end of the day they are the arbitrate of all force and the deciding factor, then how do you prevent it tuning into a bloodbath, right? So there has to be a dispute about a call because you could set up the rules, you could agree, but then this is the point. As well as you set up rules, they are conflict. You could have contracts with partners and a deal and everything. And then there's a disagreement about the contract. Happens every day. And this is why you need an objective arbitrate and an arbiter that has the ability to enforce the law. And that is what the state is. Yeah, but yes, that's a good analogy. If you carry it forward. Cool. William, thanks for the support. What is ZAR? What currency is that? All right, Debbie. Speaking of the referee analogy that made me think of that brilliant essay from Ayn Rand, the letter to Boris Spasky. Yeah. She makes an analogy between the rules of chess and like the polylogism of the Marxists. And I thought that that was, that was really clever. Yes, she puts out a little anti-chess there, right? She really does. And not just there, there's a couple other instances where I heard a remark about chess and was really not a big fan of chess. But actually fun fact about that. She also mentions the Bob about Bobby Fisher, you know? Yeah, he's not perfect either. He subscribes to this mystic sect even though he's got this brilliant logical mind. He follows the edicts of a mystic sect. That mystic sect was the worldwide church of God. That's the church I was raised in. Oh, wow. Yeah. So there's my little- When did he, was he always part of the church? I don't know. I didn't even know he ever was until I read that essay from Ayn Rand. Cause I wasn't like, I guess he was probably involved with like the inner circle of the leadership. And you know, it was kind of a quasi cult. And so I didn't ever meet him or get exposure to him. But I thought like, oh, that's not fun. That's the same, the church that I went to. So yeah, unrelated to that though, is my question about you inspired me during your talk at Ocon about that you had gotten together with people and had OPAR reading and discussion groups. So I'm planning to get something like that going on Clubhouse. And I have a couple of questions. Like, for example, did you have someone like Leonard Peacoff to sort of curate and guide the discussion? Do you need sort of someone who's more knowledgeable? That would be cool to have Leonard Peacoff do that. No, there was no, you know, I didn't know Leonard. I met him once, but I didn't know him. This was 1990. This was when the book came out. It was early 1992. The book came out, I think in late 91. No, I mean, I ran it. I was pretty young. Oh, I was 30. But- I was pretty young. I was pretty young. Suddenly seems young today. Yeah. I remember when that was really old, but- I used to have photos of me when I was about that age. Yeah, I was about 29, 30. God was I young. I actually had brown hair, believe it or not. Not a single white hair was on my head. It was weird, weird seeing the photos. So what were we talking about? That you organized it. You didn't have an expert guide. I didn't. I'm trying to think that I think they used to be like a study, like a book of questions for each chapter. I don't think I used that in 81, but I think somebody ultimately developed that. You might want to look online if that exists. I'll try to look and see if I've got it on my bookshelf. I think I might have, there's a study guide to OPPA. I don't know if you just Google that. Probably, yeah, it's probably available. I didn't know about it, but- Doesn't that would help because that sets up questions. I don't think the questions are great. What do you call it? Yeah, I was written by Gary Hall and it was, the questions were a little simplistic. It went really deep, but it might be a good beginning. Depending on the group, depending on how active they are, you might need it, you might not need it, but it might be a good start. For me, questions always come. I don't need questions. I need answers. What I perennially get stuck on is pre-will, like at the very bottom level of that that you can't explain where it comes from, really. That it's like a fundamental type of cause. And that just makes me kind of woozy and I don't know how to process that, even though in my everyday experience, I do experience myself making choices and having free will. And then of course Sam Harris would say that not only is that an illusion, but the illusion of free will is an illusion. And actually I appreciate listening to him talk about free will because it helps me to kind of parse out, like, really challenge it and develop my own understanding of it. And I'm still not all the way there, but hearing the best possible argument against it, sometimes that's kind of helpful to be a devil's advocate guide you're thinking, like what do I really think free will is? And is that, how does that stand up to these challenges that he's making, which seem to be made in good faith? But that's a bit of a tangent because we were talking about OPAR. But that's one thing. Yeah, good arguments about free will. I mean, it has excellent arguments about free will. So I think that's a good starting point. It would be a good session to have that discussion. I'm looking here at, there's a website for OPAR. I'm not sure who created this website, but I'm trying to see if there, it doesn't look like there is, that the study guide is available there. But you might wanna check out the, maybe there's other content here that would be helpful. But yeah, it's always good to have somebody in the group who's maybe a little bit more knowledgeable, who can help, who can help. It's interesting that you're using Clubhouse. Not yet, but that's my plan. Yeah, but then you can get people from all over the world. So you'll definitely get, you could get people who are much more knowledgeable about it, but that'd be great. Yeah, let us know how it goes. Yep, we'll do. Good. Yeah, and what you should probably do is, when you get it launched, let me know and we can announce it on the show. Oh. So that people can join it. And if you have a regular time or however you do it, but we can announce it on the show and some people can participate. Thank you. Yeah, I'll definitely take you up on that. Cause I think it'll be more fruitful for me if there's more people there and good for everybody really, who cares about objectivism. If more people are talking about OPAR and going through it. Absolutely. All right, let's see. We got one $20 question. Daniel says, I'm re-listening to your Middle East lectures. It's very good. Bravo. Thank you. You mentioned one author a lot. Do you know his name? Well, I think I mentioned him in the course. What was his name? Any good sources on what an objectivist form policy would look like? I don't know. Didn't I mention it in the course? Can't you go back in the course and find it? I can't now recall which author I mentioned. I think I know who it would be, but I can't bring it to memory. This is the problem of not being 30 anymore. I can't bring up names from memory. It's a really interesting phenomena. And it seems to affect names more than anything else. Yeah, so I don't remember, but it's in the course. So if I remember, I'll let you know, Daniel. Any good resources on what an objective form policy would look like? Yes, I mean, the many talks that I've given on form policy, the many shows I've done on the Iran book show on form policy, all of those would be good. Why would Don Watkins know? He's younger than me, but he wasn't involved in the Middle East lectures. Ilan Jona would know. Daniel Pipes, I don't think that's the author he's talking about, because Daniel Pipes has not really written books on the history of the Middle East. I know the author, but the name is a tip of my tongue, it's just not coming forward, but it's in the course. I mentioned the name in the course. Form policies. I would suggest winning non-winnerable war. All of my lectures and my writings on form policy, and then many of them, I do a lot of shows on form policy here. And then the other person I would encourage you to read. Oh, Leonard Picov has done some talks on form policy. Americans versus America is one. They might have been some others. And then of course, there is a book by Peter Schwartz on form policy. So look for a book. It's probably on Amazon. If not, it's certainly on Ironman bookstore. Peter Schwartz on form policy. Go to the Ironman bookstore or the Ironman Institute and search form policy, and you'll find all the content that others have produced on form policy. Ilan Jono has done a bunch of stuff I've done. Peter Schwartz has done a bunch of stuff, panels, talks, and some books. Is it Robert Spencer, you're wrong? The author that you're trying? It would be Robert Spencer. Robert Spencer writes about Islam. And I do quote him. No, he's definitely got a Jewish name. You know, and he's an old guy. He might have died recently. He's an oldest scholar, very much kind of a scholar-scholar from way back. And I read a lot of his work after 9-11, a lot of his books after 9-11. It will come to me, maybe somebody here, maybe somebody here would remember who he is. Well, drives me crazy. I used to, and I'm not sure if I have his books anymore because no, it's not Hyman Roth. I cleaned out so many of my books when I left California. I still shipped 70 boxes of books, but that was after probably two thirds of my books were donated. Okay, Jennifer, I don't know if you have a third question. How come when regards to cronyism, they always blame the government, or no, they always blame the business for taking the cronyism, but they never blamed the government for offering it. They didn't offer it that it wouldn't happen in the first place. Well, it's more than offer. It's the threat the government imposes, right? The fact that the government has power and the fact that the government is always a threat against businessmen. It's because they hate businessmen, right? I mean, and this is true of the libertarians. It's true of the conservatives. Deep down, they're suspicious of businessmen. They don't like the profit motive. They don't like, they might understand it intellectually. They might understand its role in, it's the incentives it provides. They might understand the role that it provides that it's involved in producing values and all of that. But they don't trust it and they don't like it. And they don't like businessmen because they're selfish bastards. And therefore, oh, thank you, Christopher has it. All right, I'll get to it as a second. So that's the cause, right? It really is this fundamental distrust of self-interest. And particularly as it manifests in business, they don't like, you know, intellectuals generally don't like businessmen because businessmen are richer than they are. And they've done stuff with their life and intellectuals are like, they don't make a lot of money, most of them. And they think they're the smartest people in the world and they're not. By the way, I highly recommend this book. I think I mentioned it the other day, The Code Breaker. It's about a scientist. I can't pronounce her name, but she was the woman who, I'm not gonna say discovered because very much was a team effort, but she was the woman who led the research that ultimately brought us, Christopher, the gene editing technology. She's amazing. She's- Jennifer Doudna. That's the name I couldn't pronounce. Anyway, Doudna, you know, the book is terrific. She sounds like she's just an amazing woman and just a love of science. And you get from the book, you get this love of science. But then later, like in her midlife crisis is that she now wants to apply the science. And a lot of that is how she started companies. And, you know, she's got, she now is part of a bunch of biotech companies out there and really applying the CRISPR technologies to all kinds of things and building tools for CRISPR. So I highly recommend it. It's by the same guy who wrote the book in Steve Jobs. And of course, the other book I've highly recommended by him is the one on the Leonardo da Vinci. That one was one of the best books, one of the best biographies of every read. Part of the Leonardo da Vinci is like such a larger than life character. He's so amazing. So I recommend both of those books. The one on Doudna called the Code Break Patent and the Patent Disputes and it's really, really good. And I learned a lot. I still don't understand CRISPR. Let's be clear. I still don't get it. I need pictures. I need somebody to draw this for me. But in terms of telling the story and how it worked and giving you a sense of how the science works, it's pretty amazing books. I recommend it. All right. Oh yes, we had the name of the person. Yes, Bernard Lewis. Bernard Lewis and Christopher says he doesn't sound Jewish. He might not sound Jewish, but I'm pretty sure he is. And Bernard is a, well, I don't know. Bernard Lewis was the scholar. I'm not sure Bernard Lewis is still alive, but he wrote a number of excellent books on the Middle East and Middle East history. Again, a real scholar, scholar. And if you want to learn a lot about the history of the Middle East, you should read him and listen to my course. I definitely think I add value because I've been the objectiveist kind of perspective on what makes civilization civilization, but Bernard Lewis is a great source for a lot of the information about what actually happened. Thank you, William. William Hyman. More money from South Africa. Rans, we're getting Rans. Not as valuable as they used to be, unfortunately, but I appreciate the support. All right, Debbie. So I want to talk about one constantly hears about stress in our culture. Modern life is just, we're all stressed. We're all maxed out with stress and anxiety, stress, stress, stress. I don't experience that. I mean, I have stress, but it's not like the thing in my life that's just driving. It's not killing me. It's not crippling me. I have some stress. It's more or less healthy stress. Like I'm meeting with resistance in the face of pursuing values, like having to push through things, which is actually good for you, I think, to build that muscle of not just folding when you run into resistance, but of finding a way to push through it and overcome it. And I'm confident that I can and I don't experience that, but it's constantly, it's around us. And I see it in people. There's no question in my mind that they are experiencing it. So you attribute this to the anti-intellectual nature of our culture that people are essentially abandoning their rational faculty and they're not thinking in principle and not being able to differentiate and parse the onslaught of information or what do you attribute this epidemic of stress to? Yeah, I mean, I definitely think it's a cultural phenomena that is based on the irrationality of people and that the fact that they can't, they don't have a high care values. They've never really thought about what a high care values looks like. They are chasing stuff that doesn't really give them satisfaction. They're constantly feeling like they're not doing the right thing because they're not satisfied. They're not happy. They don't know why. Maybe it's more money. So they worry about money. Maybe they worry about their job. They worry about their family. They worry about this, but they don't, they've never really thought about it systematically, rationally in the context of a hierarchy of values. And they also don't think about it in the context of selfishness. They think about it in the context of outside of morality, because morality is this thing that you're supposed to sacrifice. I don't wanna go there because I know I'm not doing that. So I don't even wanna go there. And that blinds them certain aspects of their life. So they constantly bombarded with stuff. They also, there's also this view that I've called quite a few times this garden of Eden view of life, right? There is this view that's somehow a perfect life, an ideal life is a life with no stress, is a life sitting under the apple tree, not eating from it, because God doesn't allow it, but sitting under the tree with animals, everybody's happy and no effort, no stress, no worries, no work, no efforts, just, you know, it's Marxist utopia, it's a Christian tradition's utopia. It's a paradise, in paradise, you don't work, in paradise, you don't have stress, in paradise, everything's just there, you just have fun all the time. They have that view of what life should be like. And life's not like that, it can't be like that. That's an unhuman life, right? For human beings, life cannot be like that. So they stress because it's not like that. They're disappointed in their life because it's not like that. They think that if they get a lot of money, they can create that, but they can't. And so it's a constant challenge for them. And then, of course, there's a notion that modern times there's more stress than ever. And well, it's just bizarre because you would think there was a lot more stressful when you weren't sure if you'd have food or not. You think it would be more stressful when you weren't sure if a child, both you were gonna die or not die, or whether your children would live to be age 10 or not, or whether the harvest would come in, or whether it would rain. I mean, that was life before the Industrial Revolution was a lot more stressful than it is today. Today, things are relatively calm because we have control over nature so we can control our fate to some extent. And even if you lose your job, you're not gonna starve to death. I mean, it's just people have no context. Yeah, maybe that's part of why it bothers me because it's always brought up as this is a uniquely modern thing that people are so stressed. And I do think there's a grain of truth in that there's so much more cognitive load. There's so much more information that one needs to process. And we've had those tools to do that taken away from us. But in general, no, that is not where, I'll take that. I mean, I'll take that over having like 10 kids and half of them die before they're five and we're starving all the time and I have to work like manual labor for 12 hours a day. And we're actually, no, because I'm a woman, all I can do is stay home and take care of the kids and hope they don't die. Yeah, and you live a boring, unfulfilling life. I mean, and that's what 90% of humanity lived. And even worse, maybe you know, you have some talents. Like there were a number of women artists who were really good, but couldn't, they did a little bit of art and then they were discovered and they were shut down. And imagine living a life where you know you could be talented. You know you're better than those guys over there and you're not allowed to do it. So no, we live in, in many respects, we live in the best of times or among the best of times. Certainly if you're a woman or a minority or gay or something like that, you're definitely living in the best of times. But you do bring up a good point that is the information overload is definitely an issue. Yeah. It's definitely a fact. It's definitely the case that people don't know how to deal with a lot of information. We don't have, we don't teach people how to do that, how to think properly, how to condense that information down. That's what the objective is. Pistomology teaches us to do, how to deal with information, how to condense it into concepts, how to condense it into principles, how to use principles in life so we don't get over. But you can imagine that somebody who doesn't have that would live a constant, constantly in the state of information overload. And uncertainty and not knowing how to deal with all this stuff. So yes, our cognitive skills are more necessary than ever. And yet we don't have an educational system geared towards supporting those cognitive skills. When we were farmers or whatever, we didn't need the cognitive skills that much and we could survive by muscle and muscles develop as you work, as you work, right? They just get, you get strong. Mental muscles need more than that. They need some knowledge about how to do it and particularly if the educational system is teach undoing it, right? So people can think pretty well in a sense intuitively. It's not really intuitively, but the nature of our consciousness is such that we form concepts even unaware of the methodology. But then when the methodology steps in and our educators step in and teach us bad epistomology, bad stuff, how not to think in principle, you shouldn't think in principle. What was it? You can't think of absolutes. They are no absolutes. Concepts are subjective, they're not objective. Then they undo all mental capacities and then you get more anxiety because you just don't know how to cope and that's the fault of educational system. You know, it's just, there's so many times, so many things where it's like there's some malady out there. And if only people had access to objectivism and understood what it had to offer, that they could benefit so much from it. And I mean, it doesn't, like I'm not perfect, I still get stressed and things like that, but to a very large extent, it inoculates me against a lot of those things and it just drives me crazy that so many people are focused on politics, objectivism as applied to politics and just it's all about the politics. And when there's so much value in the broader philosophy of the epistemology and that could benefit, benefits me so much and can benefit other people so much. Yeah, and I think we should be clear. Stress is not a bad thing. Stress is something that tells you, there's a lot going on, you know, you know, you're worried about something, figure it out. It's just a body indicating to you, the subconscious indicating to you that you've got some work to do, but it's not in and of itself bad. No. Yeah, and I think even that, just knowing that, that when you get stressed, you're not gonna go to some metal level stress of, I'm stressed because I'm stressed because I don't think I'm supposed to be stressed. Yes, exactly. All right, Richard, thank you, really appreciate the support. Yeah, I hope to see you at Xavier. That'll be great. If you can come, I think you have to register in advance to check that out. There was some, I just saw that today. There's something you have to do in order to get, to come to the talk at Xavier University. All right, just a reminder to everybody, I will be seeing Jennifer in Michigan on Tuesday. You guys can come as well if you're in the area, will be in Midland, Midland, Michigan or close to Midland. What's the name of the university, Jennifer? I keep forgetting. Northwood, Northwood University, the talk is at 7 p.m. And then I'll be at Michigan State in East Lansing for a lunchtime talk for the Federalist Society on Wednesday. On Monday I'll be at Cornell and on Thursday I'll be at Xavier. All right. All right, Catherine reminds us that we're $247 short of the goal. So, you know, you don't want Catherine on her first day as chewing you on not to achieve for goal. That would not be good. So, you know, let's see some $20, $50 questions and we can make it to the goal. Okay, Daniel asks, when is the balcony show? I like some motivation to get rich now and then. I mean, the balcony show will be once my condo is fully, we're finished with the renovations. And at that point I will try to do a show while showing you around the condo. We'll see how we can do that. We'll have to connect the camera to my laptop and walk around the condo and you'll see it. But it's gonna be a few months still because I want the pictures to be up on the wall as well. I want you to get the full effect. I don't want you to get it. Right now it's still a mess. So, we can do it on the balcony right now and the views, you'd see the views but I want you to get the full effect of what a beautiful home could look like with the right amount of thought, the right amount of focus on making it beautiful and the right amount of money. So yes, it will be a motivation to get rich, relatively rich, I don't consider myself rich rich but relatively, this is a very expensive condo. You know, I've mortgaged my children's future for this. So, but what the hell, you only live once, right? And, you know, after your kids are out, you don't owe them anything. You know, I've funded their education. I've funded their life. I don't owe them an inheritance. So it's all in the house. Of course, since I bought this house by some measures, I've almost doubled my income in double the value of the home in less than a year. You know, I'm not selling, so it's meaningless but Puerto Rican real estate prices have gone like that since I bought. So they were going up before and then they just spiral and the more Joe Biden talks about this is where I'm conflicted, right? This might be why I was so, you know, I was never pro Biden. But so the more Joe Biden talks about raising capital gains taxes or raising personal taxes on the wealthy, the better, the higher the real estate values go in Puerto Rico. Because the more people move here to escape, the more billionaires come here and billionaires, you know, my condo is nothing for them to spend that kind of money. So they can afford to pay me double or triple or whatever than what I paid. But I'm not selling because where would I go? The only place on planet Earth where I can escape confiscatory taxes. All right, Noel, thank you for the support. Really, really appreciate that. Applejack, thank you. Go Catherine, he says. Theme asked, oh, we've got, oh, I have to open the database for that. Oh, all right. So I'll open the database in a second for that. He's asking for my top five Westerns. All right, I've got a top five Westerns some way. Oh, I have to find the database. All right, one said, Scott, thank you, Scott. That's very generous. Just finish your latest rules for life. Great show, thank you. Could you talk about how living by principles contrast with pragmatism? Thank you for all you do. Yes, I mean, that's a great question. And I realized when I finished the show that I didn't, there were some issues that I didn't really cover. And this is really one of them. In a sense, what does it mean to live by principles, right? How does that affect your day-to-day life? What does that mean in terms of living? And given that's your rules for life, I should have covered that. It makes life relatively easy. It makes tough decisions easier. You don't negotiate with evil. So you don't negotiate with evil. So you don't, you just say, no, I'm not negotiating. You don't deal with bad people. Once you discover somebody's bad, you don't deal with them anymore. And you don't have to worry about them, think about them. You don't have to think about it anymore. You just don't do it. You don't lie. You don't have to think about it every time. You don't have to worry about it. You don't have to stress about it. You just don't. And if somebody can't handle the truth, tough, their problem, not mine, my responsibility is not for them to be able to handle it. My responsibility is to the truth to objective reality. You don't worry, you know, the flip side is, if you're focused on the truth and you're focused on principles, you don't worry about other people criticizing you because if they're true, if they're right, then you've learned something. And if they're wrong, it's their problem, right? Somebody else being wrong is their problem, not yours. So again, reduce the stress. So all the virtues, if you live by them, if you've proven to them, it just makes life so much easier, so much straightforward, so much less stressful, which is exactly the point, less stressful, right? It makes it smoother and easier to make decisions. Now, I mean, I have to admit that the times that I have felt bad where the stress has gotten to me where I was not particularly happy was at times where I didn't, you know, just didn't take my principles seriously. So like gave somebody a second chance and a third chance and tried to negotiate and try to do this and try to do that and try to, that, it just reinforced the fact that that doesn't work and it just makes you miserable. You gotta, you know, and I should have been much more, draw the line, that's it's over, go on, right? And anytime that's happened, and it's most difficult in personal relationships to do it, but it's, that's the place where it's most important to do it. So lots of examples, living by principles, if a principle, you know, again, all the ethics makes it easier. Now, take pragmatism on the other hand, living by pragmatism is, well, maybe I should lie this time, you know, maybe to work now. I don't want to hurt their feelings. I don't want to risk the relationship. I don't want to, and you're constantly bombarded with that. Constantly bombarded with maybe I should lie. Maybe I should cheat. Maybe I shouldn't be productive today. Maybe I should be, I don't know, whatever. Maybe I should not follow my principles today. Maybe I should give this person a third or fourth or fifth. And it's just, it's draining, it's exhausting. It fails, it doesn't succeed. And then what, right? Then you're drained because it didn't succeed. So pragmatism is, is a disaster. And of course, if you do it, you know, a lot of the corporate fraud that is, that it gets a lot of visibility out there is usually a consequence of pragmatism, not of committed fraudsters. So for example, all happened at a company and this happens at the individual level as well. I don't know, this quarter, the numbers are not as good as I promised investors. So I'll just lie this time because I'm sure next quarter will be much better. You know, and I'm not trying to steal their money. I just think they won't understand the reality why these numbers are not that good. So I'll just fudge them. Okay, you fudge them. And sometimes the next quarter is much, much better and you can kind of even it all out and you get away with it. But then a quarter comes and you fudge it. And a quarter afterwards is much worse. And you fudge it again. And then the next quarter is even worse and you fudge it again. And then you can't fudge it anymore and you're going to jail because you committed massive fraud. And that's world calm. To some extent, that's Anron. A lot of corporate fraud that we've seen over the decades is just a consequence of just a little, just a little bit, you know, and I'm not trying to, it's not that I'm trying to take your money. It's just, I just don't want to report bad earnings. You might not understand what they mean and so on. Theranos too, your own, what's that? Theranos as well. Theranos. There was a lot of really deliberate action towards the end but I don't think at the outset that her plan was just to dupe a bunch of people and take them. No, I agree with you completely. And Theranos is actually, God, I wish I had more time. You know, life is way too short and there's not enough time. I want to read up on the trial because it sounds like it's been really fascinating psychologically and just how an evasive mind works. And it just sounds like it's just, because she's an extraordinary woman who just took, just started evading and took this wild wrong turn at some point and just became one of the great frauds of the last 20 or 30 years. But the process, she didn't set up to do that. That wasn't the purpose. She was trying to be productive and she was amazing and charismatic and what happened. And I think it's a fascinating story and I don't know if there's a book out yet about it. Maybe there will be after the fall. Not about the trial per se, there's a book called Bad Blood about the history of the company. And I have a lot of direct one-on-one interactions with Elizabeth when I was working there. And I agree. There was a lot of, I mean, if you want to sometime pick my brain about that I can definitely concur that it is very fascinating from a psychological standpoint and certain things that I've seen her say and do that I was just, wow. I mean, like blown away by the evasion. I think it's fine. I'm curious if there's gonna be a post-trial book because a lot of stuff has come out in the trial that might not have been known in the past. So it's interesting when productive creative people go bad, it's very interesting to figure out what happened. I think it teaches you a lot. And that's the consequence of primarily a consequence of a pragmatism. I will say principles. I don't think her initial goal was to be productive. I do think she wanted to have a product but my take is that her initial goal she wanted to be successful. And she didn't know what it meant. She wanted to be famous, she wanted to be rich. She wanted to be a big deal. Yeah. And she thought the way to do that was with this path of coming up with some kind of innovation. It doesn't really matter what it is just as long as it's something that can get big and get her big. And she did wanna actually deliver that. I believe that she really wanted it. I don't think anyone would go into it saying like, so my options are to just totally deprave people and take their money and line up in prison or to make something and be famous and loved for it. And I think that that was what she wanted. That, yeah, so for what it's worth. But still there was a slippery slope that you were getting at with the course of the fraud. It was still the same type of mechanism. Yeah. All right, let's see. Katherine, where are we with the super chat? And let's see, Action Jackson reminds me to remind you, I'm doing one of these new front row event where we'll do a small group like 20 people to talk about one topic and we'll probably do it on how to fight socialism. The latest newsletter has information about how much it costs, the date. I think the date is in December and sign up and all that information. So check out the latest newsletter for the Iran book show. And if you're not on the newsletter, then go get a monthly subscription and that'll automatically get you on the newsletter. So we'd be good. All right, let's see. Now we've got a lot of super chat questions. So let me run through them. Oh, I was gonna look up, I have to look for the movie database. That wouldn't be it. Yeah, I have to know about this in advance because I think this is it. It's an Excel spreadsheet. Okay, we'll get to the top five Westerns in a minute. Let's do some of these other super chats first. Let's see, all right, from the top. Stefan asks, do you plan on reviewing the movie Dune? If I say yes, then you won't pay me a thousand bucks to do it or 500 bucks to do it. So I have no incentive to say yes. I'm going to watch it. And if it's interesting enough to review, I will. Part of the problem with Dune is this is just a part one. And you're not gonna get much out of Dune without seeing both parts. I didn't like the book if I remember right particularly. So I can't imagine I'm gonna really love the movie, but I've also heard that it's beautifully made. So I'm definitely gonna watch it because of how well it's made. And by the way, I'm watching Foundation. I don't know if anybody's watching Foundation, the TV series, this is the Isaac Asimov, famous science fiction, Magnus Hopus. I mean, he wrote, there were several books on it and it's been produced by Apple on Apple TV as this multi-episode series. And so far, it's beautifully done. It's very well acted. It's just gorgeous. I'm just the visually it's very, very well done. It's super confusing, but I think there's no way around that because of the story which bounces around through multiple timelines. And over long periods of time, but it holds my interest. It's not great, but I would definitely recommend it. It's a fun watch. All right, Dave asked converting the high IQ leftist in urban areas who dictate the course of history is our only path to victory. Yeah, you either convert them, which is unlikely or you replace them. That is what we need is lots of high IQ objectivists who we need thousands of them, millions of them who start populating those urban areas. I'm not sure how convertible many of those leftists are. Will stem cells eventually be able to regrow human lives in organ? Yes, there's already, I mean, I think they've already doing it. And there's this researcher at Harvard who wants to grow a woolly mammoth from some frozen hairs that were found of a woolly mammoth. So from that DNA, he wants to grow a whole animal. So certainly you should be able to grow human lives in organs. So yes, a lot of exciting stuff happening on the stem cells gene editing front. It's very, very, very excited. By the way, we're about $78 short of the goal. Shouldn't take much to get a 78 bucks so we can make another $600 short. Stefan asked, if the evidence for flooding was imminent, wouldn't insurance companies have stopped insurance houses on the beach? Yes, the problem is mixed economy. The problem is that a lot of homes by the beach are not insured by private companies. They're insured by the government or the government has guaranteed the insurance and their flat rates. A lot of homes and flood zones is insured by the state, not insured by private, but generally, if flooding was imminent, insurance generally would have increased dramatically. And because so much would change and businesses would be affected, that would affect business insurance. And we haven't seen the kind of insurance increases that you would expect if flooding was imminent. Adam just put us very close to $600 target. So we're just 30 bucks, 30 or something bucks short. So thank you, Adam. Had an opportunity to invest in Theonos at the start. I looked at the board of directors, they were government and nonprofit figures. No chemical engineers or entrepreneurs or STEM physicians in practice. Should this have been obvious to others? Yes, I think generally, the more the executives and or the board of directors are composed of politicians and political light academics and nonprofit people, the less likely it is I would invest in a company. I want a company to have massive business experience and if it's in science, massive science experience. And yeah, you probably want one or two who can navigate regulations and navigate that kind of world but you don't want that to be the primary focus of your board of directors and if it is, don't invest. Thank you, Adam. Good point. Let's do, Jennifer, do you have a question? No, I'm done, thank you. Debbie, otherwise I'm gonna run through a few of these and call it a day. I was just reconnecting my audio. No, I don't think I have any more questions for today. Okay, let me run through these then. Thank you, Jennifer, thanks Debbie. Theme asked, I actually thought Venice was fine but thanks for the info, Venice is not fine. Venice is definitely sinking. You can go there and you can see it and you can actually see where the level of the water was and where it is today. Florida Henry asked, I started the 3X band system a month ago and recommend it so far. X3 band system, all right. I've done bands. I like bands, they're cool but it requires too much work for me. I need something that doesn't require me to exercise particularly to grow muscles every day. It's too much work. Alex asked, do you sell about Halloween? Do you dress in costumes? Do you like this like that stringing costume in general? I do not. I do not like dressing in costume. I see no, I've never liked it. I just, I don't know. I just don't like it. I like when kids do it. I think it's cute. I think it's kind of fun. I don't like Halloween though. Halloween is like, what's the point? It's like scary. Celebrating the rational, celebrating monsters and witches and, you know, I don't like horror movies. I don't like Halloween movies. I don't like what it does to TV. Suddenly everything on TV is horror. And I don't like the idea of trick or treat. It's like, you know, it's like a threat. You either give me your candy or I'm going to do something horrible to you. And we emboldened kids to go around everybody and threaten them. I don't, so I don't like that. So there's something about it that I don't like. You know, I like the fun of the kids getting dressed up in these cute little kids coming around and asking for the candy. I think that, you know, I love kids. So that is super cute and super, super fun. But Halloween qua holiday is not a good holiday. I don't like what it represents and the trick or treat aspect of it. Just me. We had a dressing up holiday in Israel, which was Purim, which is a great holiday. First of all, it's fun. It's celebratory. There's no trick or treating. It's just, you know, you're supposed to drink a lot. I think it's your commander to get drunk or something. But you know, the ultra orthodox all get drunk, but you're supposed to have fun with it. And it's to celebrate. It's based on a great story, which is the celebration of how this really, really smart Jew outwitted the evil people in ancient Persia who wanted to kill all the Jews and he managed to, you celebrate the hanging of the evil guy and how the Jews were all saved. And it's just, Jews have all these holidays celebrating freedom or the conception of freedom, right? And the conception of kind of a liberty. And this Purim Passover is a celebration of, you know, freed of slavery from Egypt. Hanukkah is celebration of the victory of the Jews over the Greeks. Now granted, I'm always pro the Greeks. So to me, it's not a happy holiday, but you know, imagine if the Greeks would have won, there'd be no Jews today and there wouldn't have been a Holocaust. And you know, who knows what would have happened. But you know, I'm pro Greek civilization, but they have these holidays that are all about, I don't know, doing something that relates to overcoming some obstacle and overcoming some political obstacle and achieving some kind of freedom, at least within the perspective of this particular tribe. I mean, think about Christian holidays. We have to, we celebrate the crucifixion. How do you celebrate a crucifixion? Do you celebrate a resurrection? No, that's like, I don't, it's all mystical, right? Jewish holidays are fundamental. Yeah, they all have miracles associated with them, but the fundamental thing you're celebrating is the good part of it. I don't remember what Shavuot and Sukkota about, but they're mainly about the harvest and things like that and like they're more pagan in that sense. You know, what is with like Easter? Like what are you celebrating at Easter? And why are there bunnies involved? It's just, Christian holidays are very confusing to somebody like me, right? You know, an atheist, you just don't get the Christian holidays, right? Because it's a mixture of Christian mysticism with no originality. So they stole all the interesting stuff from the pagans. So you're celebrating a crucifixion, but there are bunnies running around and you're celebrating, I don't know, that's the birth of Jesus. I can't remember which is which. Oh, no, Christmas is the birth of Jesus. You celebrate the birth of Jesus and there's a tree involved, you know, in presence and presence I get with the birth of Jesus, but a tree involved. Why is there a tree involved? Why are they light? So it's Christianity is a very confusing and unoriginal and formal mystical religion than Judaism is. All right, that was a long answer to a very simple question. All right, Brie asked, I just made the first test part of my new labor reducing process. I don't know what this means. I am the only one, the labor shortage will produce increased productivity. We'll get reasonable growth despite the government. Yeah, I mean, business will evolve. Business will adjust to the labor shortage and create ways to increase productivity. But all the things that are reducing the labor, all the things that are causing the labor shortage are also causing other forms of lack of productivity. Business will figure this out, but it's still an inferior result to the result if we didn't have a labor shortage because we didn't have the government policies causing the labor shortage. You'd have a massive boost, for example, of productivity and economic growth if you allow immigrants in, for example. All right, I'm gonna leave the Western question for last because I have to do some things to get it. I used to be a little bit, I used to lie a little bit to not hurt people's feelings. Of course, it always failed. I now tell the truth just for me, selfishness, of course. Absolutely, it's good for you and ultimately it's good for the people around you. Stefan says, on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David seems to be torn between selfishness and altruism surrounding him, which he succumbs to. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, one of the things Larry David does on Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is so refreshing and funny, is he points out the absurd hypocrisy of altruism. Many of the shows are about the stupidity of lying or the stupidity of altruism or the stupidity of our current kind of moral system. The stupidity of the habits that we get into, the traditions that we have, the norms that we possess, right? And almost every episode takes some norm, many of the moral norms and makes some of them. Now he doesn't have an alternative because Larry is a jerk, right? So it's not like Larry is the symbol of rational, long-term self-interest, but he at least is making fun of and ridiculing the pathetic nature of what we have. All right, Catherine is, she's resorting to begging now. She's looking for 33 bucks, 33 bucks so we can make the goal. Come on, somebody asked a couple of $20 questions and we're done, right? All right, Frank. There's a guy on the chat here who loves communism because it helps the homeless and people have food and healthcare. Is he right? Yeah, I mean, no, he's not right. Communism makes everybody homeless and it makes everybody have bad food. It makes millions of people starve. Watch Mr. Jones, the great, the movie I've recommended over and over again that you can get now I think on Netflix or some way. And nobody has healthcare. People just die. That's okay. Now, let's assume the communism helped the homeless, gave people shelter, food and healthcare. I'd still be against it. Who cares? I don't believe in a political system because it helps the poor. I'm from a political system that helps the able, the moral. Capitalism is the system of morality. Morality is not helping about helping the poor. Morality is about being productive, being honest, being rational. And if rationality is punished by your system then I'm against it and communism punishes rationality. All right, there we go. Kiro from the Czech Republic, I think says, I just got done watching. Why should one act on Prince of Babylon in a pick-off? I enjoyed it a lot. Thank you for recommending it. Excellent. I'm so glad you watched it. Everybody should watch it. And you should watch everything. The land of pick-off is done. Shah's bought for $33. This is one for communism is good. I am giving this money to the channel in his name if that's okay with you. Absolutely. Oh, communism is good. It's still going, he's out there. That's his handle. If people get police protection no matter what, someone has to, yeah. So look, I am not in this to help the poor. I think the poor are better off under capitalism but I don't support capitalism because the poor are better off. I support capitalism because the moral are better off. Poor, middle-class are wealthy. And the email are worse off. Poor, middle-class are wealthy. That's why I support capitalism. All right, thanks Shah's bought. I think we've reached our goal. Thank you all of you. All right, five favorite Westons. Let me just, I have to find them. Where's my Western category? I have it somewhere. Now, granted, I haven't looked at this list in a long time. This used to be my top Westons. Where is it? I just saw it. I think I still stand by this, but let's see. Westons, here we go. All right, let me just do this. Tools, data, sort. I have to sort it by column D. Okay, all right, here we go. I've actually got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven Westons that have received my five out of five stars. All right, here they go. The big country. The big country with, I hate this because I can't remember names. Some, a couple of great actors and a really good movie about force, when it's force appropriate, what does peace mean? It's a fantastic movie. High Noon, High Noon, right? Which has no plot, but is a great movie nonetheless. Anthem, by the way, has no plot. So you can write, you can have a great story with no plot. So High Noon, everybody should watch High Noon, right? Tin Star, Tin Star with Anthony Pookins. Anthony Pookins and Henry Fonda, I think. Tin Star, right? That's three. Big country, High Noon, Tin Star, Shane. I love Shane. I love the book. I love the movie. It's with Glenn Ford, is that his name? Glenn Ford, just a great Western, just a good story, great story. Here's one you probably are not familiar with, The Plainsman. I think it's a C.C. B. DeMille movie, if I remember right, The Plainsman. The Searchers, which is a John Ford movie. It's the only one with John Wayne that reaches this level. It's an excellent movie about a young girl that's taken by the Indians and her uncle goes out in search of her and he basically intends to kill her because he thinks, you know, he's a racist. And she's basically now that she's been tainted by the Indians, she is no good anymore. And his, you know, the evolution of that, great story, just great, very dramatic, very, I think it's John Ford's best Western and he made a lot of Westerns. And then one of my favorites that nobody knows is the Unforgiven. The Unforgiven and the big country have the same actress. God, now I'm gonna have to look it up because it's not, I can't say that and I'll tell you her name. I can see her face. She's one of my favorites, big country. No, it's not a rock band or something like that. Give me a break, it's a movie. What comes up, okay, I have to put movie. What comes up is a rock band, shows me the priority people have, rock over great movies. All right, this is embarrassing. Oh no, it's not the same actress, sorry. All right, big country is Gene Simmons who's fantastic in it and Gregory Peck, Gene Simmons and Gregory Peck, right? Unforgiven is with Burt Lancaster. Make sure it's the Burt Lancaster one, not the Clint Easton one. The Burt Lancaster one is the great one, right? And it was, wow, how do you, there it is, 1960s, the Unforgiven and it's with Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn. Audrey Hepburn, that's who I was looking for, Audrey Hepburn. So those are my seven, right? Big country, Hainoon, the Plainsman, the Searchers, Shane, Tin Star, Unforgiven. Those are my favorite seven Westerns. No good, bad, and ugly, sorry. The Manusart Liberty Valance is a great one. It was, it got four out of five. Unforgiven with Eastman and Hackman, I think got a two or three. So you've got to see Unforgiven with Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn and Audie Murphy, even Audie Murphy. You know, notice that they're all black and white. I'm pretty sure they're all black and white. Yeah, I mean, no Western made after 1960 is any good. That's not true, but no Western made after 1960 is worthy of the title best Western of all time. So they were all from the 50s and 40s because the sense of life completely changed the whole idea. There were a lot of great Westerns. Tombstone is a good Western, a lot of great Westerns. Spaghetti Westerns are nice, but you know, Destry Right again, Destry Right again, the Alamo Manusart Liberty Valance, my darling Clementine, Rancho Notorious, Red River, Rio Grande, Chihuahua Yellow Ribbon, Union Pacific, Western Union, the Westerner, Winchester 73 are just some of the ones that come in at four out of five. And this list is not comprehensive to a lot of others. And of course, this is what I like. Doesn't mean these are the best objectively. All right, guys, thank you. We made our $600 goal. Thank you, Jennifer, for all the support and for the great questions. Debbie has left us. Thank you, Debbie. I will see you, Jennifer, in a couple of days. Look forward to that. And thanks, everybody. Have a good rest of your Sunday. And I'll see you all when I get back from this trip, either Friday or Saturday. Bye.