 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this January 17th, Tuesday, second show today. Hope everybody's having a fantastic... I guess today is the beginning of the week because yesterday was Martin Luther King's day. So I hope you're having a great Tuesday and a great beginning of a fantastic week. Yeah, Martin Luther King's day was interesting. Yesterday we did a show on that. We did a little bit on that sculpture that was revealed in Boston. That got a lot of attention and got a lot of views from my talk on modern art. So that was really good. That one, that segment on the sculpture is a great one to share. And the lecture that I gave in Scotland on art and how to evaluate art and modern art, on how to evaluate sculpture generally is a great one to share. So I'm hoping you continue sharing them in a sense it's evergreen. It's not of any particular time. It's not like these political topics or other topics. It's a topic that anybody can enjoy at any point in time, agree or disagree. Many I know disagree. So yes, I encourage you to share the shows I've done on art. And I think today's show will be a show that is eminently shareable. You know, if there's one thing that Americans unite around, around their love of, it is sport. Not just Americans, but people everywhere in the world, which is interesting. And we can talk about that. Why is it everybody? Well, not everybody. There might be even some people in the chat right now. But almost everybody on a global scale really, no matter if you will, the culture, no matter the place, the time, sport is something people love. They love to watch it. They love to be fans. They love to play. But from the perspective of fandom, which is what we're, you know, what you can get out of sport, what you can appreciate about sport, what value sports represents for you and how we can identify important objective values and support from that perspective. It's really interesting that everywhere, everywhere, different sports in different places for a variety of historical reasons, but maybe also issues of culture, of local culture. But everywhere, I don't know a country in the world where there isn't some, you know, both individual and team sport that people just love watching and engaging in. And there's not a country in the world it seems like that does not admire athletes. And of course the more, I'd say the more civilized, the greater the love. Now, in my view, sports to a large extent, sports is in some ways a replacement for art. We can talk about that, a replacement for art. It's because we're so poor, we're so primitive when it comes to the art that we have around us, the art that is presented in our culture to us. I think sports basically provides us with the need that we have for certain things. And so these are the kind of things we're going to talk about. I think also sports is a great place to model, to find examples, to find role models particularly for particularly good virtues. I think it's quite exciting. And I think athletes, particular athletes are particularly good at exemplifying certain virtues. So there's real heroic characters among the athletes and we'll talk about one example. Today's show is sponsored by Adam Campbell who is here. I saw him in the chat earlier so he's chatting around. So thank you Adam for making the show possible and for funding it so I really, really appreciate that. So the show today is a sponsored show but this is a topic I love to talk about so it is easy to do. I want to mention before we jump into it that the Iran Book Show is sponsored by VPN Express or ExpressVPN. You can go to ExpressVPN.com slash Iran and you can get an extra three months on a subscription there. ExpressVPN, I use it on my iPads and my laptop. I have it on my computer here. I don't use it very often on the computer here. Usually I tend to use VPNs when I travel to do financial issues also when I'm in certain countries and I can't get Netflix. If you set your VPN on the USA then you can watch your Netflix when you travel. So it's super convenient. ExpressVPN is particularly good. As I said I use my iPhone, iPad and my Apple laptop and it works seamlessly on all of them. So I encourage you to subscribe. And then finally, of course the Ayn Rand University is a sponsor. I'm also a professor, a lecturer, a something at the Ayn Rand University. So I'm going to be teaching a course on our communication. You can sign up for that. The details online or maybe they don't have the details yet because they're not ready yet but they will be available. The course will be in the summer. I'll be doing a beginners course and intermediate course on that. And you can audit that or you can take it for a grade either way. So Ayn Rand University is where you can really get an education on Ayn Rand's philosophy on objectivism. It's the only place where you can get that life from professors. The only place where you can get graded and submit work and as you'll see be brutalized by professors like me. If you audit the public speaking course, you'll see me brutalizing the ones who are not auditing are actually taking the class. It'll be a lot of fun. You should actually take the class. That way you'll get the most of it because I'll critique your actual speaking, public speaking. And it'll be a great opportunity to improve your public speaking, learn some principles and get to know a bunch of other people interested in public speaking and courses. So go to university.Ayn Rand.org and let them know you found out about the university from the Iran book show. All right, let's see. We're going to do super chat questions, but I'm not going to answer them until we finish talking about the sports. Of course, if they are sports related super chat questions, those will get priority. And if I see a particular question that fits into the content that we're covering, then yes, absolutely I will answer those. So feel free. You can support the show with stickers, but you can also do the super chat. But I won't do the super chat until the end of the show until we finish covering the topic that Adam has sponsored. All right, so an interesting phenomena is the fact that sports is so universal and that not only is the actual sport universal, but also particular athletes have universal, excuse me, a claim. That is we admire specific athletes and often people from very, very different philosophies admire the same athletes and admire them for the same thing. It is there's a sense in which even in a culture that has internalized altruism, collectivism, you know, in a variety of different irrational irrational values. There is a compartment somewhere. There is a compartment somewhere. And I think this compartment in their mind is what keeps them alive and what keeps them going professionally and what keeps them going and surviving, succeeding in life and whatever they succeed. But it is this compartment that I think responds to great sports to the whole nature of sports. Because what is what is the nature of sport? I mean, the nature of sport is, and here I'm talking about not the kind of sport you do for recreation. I'm talking about professional sport. I'm talking about sports that we watch for enjoyment. I'm talking about sports where professionals, usually professionals, actually compete at the highest level. So what is it that the sports provides people? Well, the nice thing about sports, I mean, there are a lot of things that are nice, but the thing I think people respond to in sports is it's competitive nature. The idea that there are actually winners and losers, and that's okay. It's, you know, there's a sense in which sport is a zero-sum game internally, that is, there's one loser and one winner. It's more than a zero-sum game because people enjoy and get immense pleasure from watching the competition and watching the process. The losers don't lose in the sense of other lose-lose kind of transactions like war where losing means dying or losing means poverty or losing means losing something substantial. Here, they're losing at a game, and I think that's important. You know, I think it's a sick culture where it enjoys competition where the loser loses its life. In Rome, in certain portions of the Rome, in certain eras in the Roman Empire, certainly, you know, Romans enjoyed in, I think, the height of their hedonistic and nihilistic period. They enjoyed blood sports. They enjoyed watching people die. They enjoyed the competitive zero-sum nature where people really, really lose. The nice thing about sports is there is a winner, there is a loser, but there's nobody dies. Nobody dies. And indeed, even if a player on the other team gets hurt, I think we all sympathize. Even if we're rooting for one side and a play, we don't want to see sports turn into blood sport. Now, we'll talk about blood sports and sports, boxing and other things. But in most sports, we're looking at losers and winners without this kind of extreme loss of life or loss of something really of survival value. There's winners and losers. The objective rules that everybody knows in advance that we can all follow for the most part. Sometimes in football, it gets pretty okay. Football, American football, or in baseball even. But we can all follow. And suddenly, the players on the field know the rules inside out. They're referees that we judge as objective. So there is a real sense of an objective reality. You know, it is what it is. And there is a judge of that reality, the referee. And of course, referees, since they can make mistakes now, we can use technology to improve on the referee's ability. You've got instant replays in football. You've got basically instant respells in basketball, even in soccer now. On certain calls, you have this. But there is an objectivity to sports to a lot of life, I think, particularly today. But no, in any era of human life is lacking. There's all kind of power structures. There's just kind of people who skirt the rules and seem to get away with it. There's politicians who use force against us. They change the rules periodically. They set up rules that are super complex. They're so complex that we have no clue what the hell is going on. In sports, the rules are pretty straightforward. 100 meter dash. You can only start running when they say go. You can't start running before that. Objective reality, objective rules set up and everybody follows them. And we complain when people cheat. And usually, in sport, when they cheat, they get caught. There are exceptions. Maradona's Hand of God is a good example of that. Those of you who follow soccer, I think this is the 86. It was in the final, the semifinal, where Maradona goes up and heads the ball into the net. But it turns out he didn't really had it, but he punched it with his hand. The referee didn't see it. There was no instant replay in those days. And I think later on, Maradona called it the Hand of God. He didn't do it. God guided his hand over there to land. There was, of course, the Lance Armstrong, a shocking cheating scandal. After years and years and years and years of denial, of insistence, of moral outrage, it turns out that he was cheating the whole time. So when somebody cheats, when somebody goes against the rules, they are penalized. Their medals are taken away. And we all know what those rules are. We can argue about whether the rules are good or whether they're bad once in a while. They're changed. But we all know what they are and the competitors know what they are. So in sports, there is a sense of clarity. There's a sense of objectivity. And I think in many parts of our lives, we don't really have. And people are not taught explicitly to value it. They value it in spite of themselves. That is, they value it in spite of their education. They value it in spite of the fact that it doesn't exist in the rest of their lives. And one of the sad things about sport, if you will, is that people then don't expect the same clarity, the same focus, the same objectivity in the rest of their life. I mean, imagine they did. Imagine we demanded of our politics. Imagine if we demanded of our businesses. Imagine if demanded even of the workplace. The same clarity and objectivity that sports provides for us. We don't, you know, again, sport seems to be a substitute for it. It's a place where we can get that. And it's important. It's so important for human beings. And this is, again, part of the importance of sport. It's so important for human beings to know that reality is normal, to know that there is a set of rules out there. There is a set of that reality is objective and understandable and knowable and that people are playing by some set of rules and they're winning for a reason, not randomly and arbitrarily. And I think they get that sense from sports. You can get that sense from a great painting. You can get that sense from a great sculpture. Every piece is what's supposed to be. There's a reason for it. It adds up to something. I think for art you need to have a much better connection to your own emotions, to your own values. You have to know something about art. You have to educate yourself. Sports, the nice thing about sports, it's very visceral. It's almost everybody. Because I think we grew up with sports. We grew up with a ball at our feet or in our hand or with a bat in our hand or something like that. So we all have the experience of it. So we know what it is. And as a consequence, it's an easy way to convey these kind of ideas. So I think the first value of sport is just its objectivity, its nobility, its reality orientation. It's reality orientation. And it's a great sense that you have of order, what's going on. There are sports in which I think people enjoy at least an aspect of it, enjoy the chaos of it. I don't know, the fights and hockey come to mind. But at the end of the day, I don't think that's what makes a sport. I don't think it can. If you love football, again, it's the strategy and the order and the fact that everybody's playing by the same rules and they're normal. So I think that's something admirable about sport and something that is an immense human value that almost everybody, all of us, gain from it. And it's one of the things that sports provide us. The other realm, and I've talked about this in the past, is the fact that sports is unapologetically, unabashedly about excellence. There's no mediocrity in sport. I mean, they're all mediocre players, but even mediocre players are really good compared to everybody else. They're just mediocre within the context of the game, the playing of the league that they're in. But they're not the ones that are adored, they're not the ones that are of interest. It's a one place where we can be, we can admire excellence without apology. We can revere talent without having to worry about the inequality police. It's the one place where it's clear that we're not equal. And everybody knows that and nobody challenges it. Nobody questions that Le Bon James, maybe not right now, but Le Bon James was the greatest basketball player of his generation. And everybody celebrates that and they enjoy watching him and they enjoy that fact. I mean, there might be some crazy nihilists out there who want to break Le Bon James' legs and penalize him and weigh him down with weights or do something to make him more equal to the other basketball players on the court. But that is such a minor minority. That is such a side show that that's not what millions and millions and millions of people around the world enjoy about watching Le Bon James. They enjoy his excellence. They enjoy the fact that he excels. It's a celebration of human ability. And even though I know I can't do what Le Bon James does, it's super thrilling and exciting that some human being can do it. And I gain immense satisfaction from what he does. Le Bon James is no dummy. He might be wrong politically, he might be, but he's no dummy. You cannot achieve. I mean, one of the things that I think is really important about sports is you cannot achieve the top. You cannot be the best in these sports if you're a dummy. It's just not possible. And again, I don't associate bad political ideas with stupidity. And a lot of people with decent political ideas who are really, really, really dumb. There's no necessary correlation there. But it is spectacular to see what human beings are capable of. You know, the extent to which they can excel, what they can achieve. The level to which they can rise to. And you don't get to this level without brains, without thinking. I'll show you some of this in a minute. I'm going to play you an interview with Kobe Bryant, which I think is very illustrative of all these things that we're talking about. But you can't achieve the kind of achievements these guys achieve without using your mind. And then working unbelievably hard and having an unbelievable willpower and placing your selfish interest first. We'll see that with Kobe as well. So sports is a place in which we celebrate excellence in which athletes want to be excellent, in which in a sense we celebrate selfishness. I know even in team play we celebrate selfishness, we celebrate winning. Winning is selfish. Winning is what is the achievement. Being great, being great is selfish. It's self-interested. It's about the joy and happiness and satisfaction that comes from that. And I think Kobe expresses this quite well in this interview. But I think if you talk to any athlete who's reached the top of his game, the same is true. So it's objective. It's a field in which excellence is embraced where nobody doubts it, where that's what we're going for. It's also a field in which we love the self-esteem that these players exert, manifest. They pride in their own success. They pride in their own ability. They pride in the hard work they put into achieving what they've achieved. It's rare to see such pride in the world in which we live. And it's rare even more rare to see such pride expressed and appreciated by others, not rejected, not found upon, not condemned, but embraced. Again, sports I think brings that out in us. We respond to it. We respond to these positive values because these are survival values. These are values within us. There's a sense in which we would all like to be like the top athletes in our lives. Nobody thinks that way. Most people give up. Most people forget about it. But the response, the emotional response is a response to that, to wanting that, even if you can't really, even if it's not conscious, even if it's not formulated as an actual value. So as a consequence, people don't actually achieve it. So it's objectivity, it's excellence. It really is from a human perspective, an objectivist perspective. Great athletes have, they clearly have values. They clearly know what they want. And they go out and get them. And they don't apologize for it. They go and get what they're pursuing in a single-minded way. That if anybody else applied it to their own profession, again, people would ridicule them. I mean, think about the students who work really hard to get great scores in tests and how ridiculed they are in school. But the athlete out on the court who plays every moment that he can to try to make his game better, people admire that. Which is kind of sad that they don't admire it in the student studying really hard. Or the business person who's striving to be successful and make more and produce more and create more and make more and more money and works long hours in order to achieve that, what we call them, what, workaholics and we scorn them and they're greedy and all of that. But the athlete, we accept it. So it's an area in which we're willing to accept this kind of selfish behavior where we're not willing to accept it anywhere else. And that's a hypocrisy worth pointing out to people. It's an illustration of what is possible to human beings. We also, for example, don't complain about the salaries athletes get. We complain bitterly about the salaries CEOs get. Another awful hypocrisy. You know, at the end of the day, CEOs are far more productive, far greater values, than any sports figure does and yet they are viewed horrifically whereas sports heroes are viewed in a positive, overwhelmingly positive way. All right, there's no, as I said, there's no other nice thing about it. If the real enemy, certainly the enemy on the left, if the enemy on the left today is egalitarianism. If you will, the philosophical enemy that we face every day is egalitarianism coming from the left. It's the idea that we're all equal, we're supposed to be equal. And if the idea is not just egalitarianism but all forms of altruism and if you think about intersectionality, intersectionality is this ranking of people based on how oppressed they are, the more oppressed you are, the more value you have and the more you should be given. Well, sports rejects all that. Sports says, nah, we're not all equal. Some people are better than others, some teams are better than others, the winners and losers. And you are no good at the sport, I don't care why, you're off court. You can't shoot a basket, I don't care why, you're off the court. Even if, I don't know, you just had a horrible thing happen to you, whatever, we might feel for you, your bad day, it's, I don't know, your wife is sick or whatever. It's really bad, but you're not playing. If you're not playing well, you're not playing. That is, there's no gold stuff of participation. You're either good or you're not. You're either doing your job or you're not. And if you're not doing your job, you're off the court and nobody, nobody says, no, no, no, no, let's say sorry for him, just because he's having a bad day, don't penalize him. You know, he's such a nice guy and he's so caring and he's such a sweet heart, put him back up, let him play. Nobody says that in sport, but in life, all the time. Give people second, third, fourth, fifth chances, no matter what. Give them a break, help them out, sacrifice for them. The fact, the fact that they're not performing right now, oh, it doesn't matter. There's no, it doesn't matter in sport. So you can see, you know, again, the rejection of egalitarianism, but really the rejection of altruism. There's no altruism in sport. There's no sacrifice in sport. Sport is about pursuing your values, the value of winning. And within the rules of the game at all costs. And nobody apologizes for them, which is pretty amazing and pretty exciting and fun to watch because imagine a world, imagine a world where that's how people were. They're stoked to be the best that they could be in everything that they do. They never apologized for their virtues. They never apologized for their success and they lived to the fullest. They viewed life, like these athletes, view their sport. All right, I'm going on and on. Let's watch this interview with Kobe because I think there's some really good stuff in here. And we can talk about it. And then we can make some additional points. We can make sure that we cover everything that I've got listed. All right, so this is a visit that Kobe Bryant made to the University of Alabama and Coach Seben. They have a little chat. Here he's actually talking to the football players for the University of Alabama. I think this is after the University of Alabama has won the national championship. Now, this is, I don't know, a couple of years before he died. Maybe more. I'm not sure exactly what date this is. Maybe somebody else knows when this was. But Kobe was one of the greatest players ever. Certainly top five players of all time. But he had, and you can see this, what I love about Kobe, I used to hate him. You know, because we hate the players of the opposition. He played against the Celtics. You know, Celtics won one title and Kobe won the other and beat the Celtics. But he's smart. He's articulate. And as you'll see, he's got some, I think, really good things to say about sports and about athletics and about life more broadly. So this is definitely worth listening to. It's about seven minutes long. We'll see. I'm hoping we get through most of it because there's a lot of good stuff here. Oh, let me get my headphones. So I can follow along as well. Oops, why can't I hear anything? Let's see. Oh, yeah, because I got emuted. All right, here we go. These are the football players. How you guys doing? Doing good. I know you guys start kicking things off again. There's a lot coming in different directions. Starting the new year. You guys obviously trying to defend something. And what I always found helpful, particularly when the season starts, is to edit your life. What's most important to you. When you do that, you do that exercise with yourself, things become clear rather quickly. Edit your life. There's Iran's rules for life we should add. Edit your life. It is part of Iran's rules. If you go back to Iran's rules, prioritize. Create a hierarchy of values. And that's what he's talking about. What he means by edit your life is figure out what is important to you. Figure out what you have to invest in making what's important to you achievable and get rid of the rest. Everything else, you don't want it coloring. You don't want it interfering. You don't want it a distraction. Focus, focus, focus. This is fantastic advice. It's advice everybody should take, no matter what you do. Prioritize your values. Go for the top ones. And the lower ones, they might still be values. It's not bad stuff necessarily. They might still be positives. But they're just less important and you don't have time. You have to focus on the things most important to you. And if some other things don't make it, then they don't make it. And for example here, it's football season. Football season lasts so many weeks. If you want to be a world champion, if you want to be the best in the world for those weeks, you better be doing football. Now, these are college students so they also have to do some exams and some classroom or whatever. I assume they still do that in Alabama. But beyond that, beyond the must do's, it's football. No partying, no romance, football. Because that right now is your top value and it requires, and this is the thing that they get in sports and we in the rest of the world and the rest of reality don't really get is that to be the best that you can be is something requires, if it's an ambitious goal. Requires your full attention. Requires your full focus. You know, it's not something that you can just dabble with. So I like this. Edit your life. Beautiful sentiment. Say I want to be the best. So I want to do this. I want to do that. And if things in your life don't line up with that, get rid of that. It's not important. Yep, that's exactly right. How do you improve? What do you study? When I watch film, I'm always looking at not just what's happening, but what could happen, right? Good and bad. If we did this, you know, that would be successful. Yeah, but what if the defense counted with that? And then... Think about the thinking that goes on there when they watch film, right? Not only am I watching to see what they do, but what could they do if I behave differently? And the contingencies, the different situations, what is possible, right? You know, this is real thinking. Real thinking, strategic, tactical. Real thinking about all the different possibilities so I am ready, not just physically, but I'm ready mentally for the game. Because during the game, you're going to have very little time to actually think. You're going to have to be able to respond fast. How do you get to the point where you can respond fast? The way you get to that point is by doing a lot of thinking in advance, a lot of thinking in advance, and by getting to the point where it's automatized. You play a lot, you think a lot, you train a lot, you practice a lot. You get it to the point where it is automatized. And what if we counted with this and what if we counted with that? It would take me four and a half hours to watch one game. Just because I was curious and trying to figure new things out. That's another thing, curiosity. Trying to figure things out. From a competitive standpoint, it's just really simple. I'm there to just absolutely demoralize and dominate the person that I'm playing against in the team. Now imagine in any other field somebody said I'm there to demoralize or to win or whatever in any other field. People would look at you like you're insane. But in sports, we accept it. Think of the pride that is involved to you. I want to be the best. I want to dominate. I'm playing against. When I play against somebody, and we line up and you guard me, my whole purpose was to get you to reconsider your life choice to play basketball. Right? So at the end of the day, you'd be like, you know what, maybe this isn't for me. You know, and that was my mentality going into every single game to absolutely obliterate this guy. You know, the fact of the matter is I'm still trying to get better. So if I'm playing against a weaker opponent and, you know, I start coasting, I'm building nothing but bad habits myself. You know, if you want to play at an excellent level, if you want to do something excellent, you have to be excellent all the time. It's a way of... Yeah, I mean, it's a way of life. He's saying, absolutely. I mean, this is the thing about coasting, right? When you coast, you pick up bad habits. The habit of coasting. You undermine the optimization. You undermine the hard work that you put in. So if you're going to really be excellent, you've got to put in the hard work regularly, constantly. You have to be always on the premise of I want to be the best that I can be. And that's to in sport and to in every aspect of your life. You've got to be on the top of your game. That means you've got to be thinking and you've got to be executing and executing. That life. It's not just I show up on Monday and be excellent. No, I don't work that way. You've got to be excellent across the board. That's how you build habits. When excellence becomes a habit, then that's just who you are. Habit is automatization, right? You automatize this idea of excellence. You automatize your dedication. You automatize it as your value and you're focused on it. And then it just becomes part of you. It becomes part of you. It's such a beautiful sentiment. It's such an amazing sentiment that you're not going to hear from anybody else other than athletes. I mean some, I'm sure, self-help gurus say stuff like this. But here the guy's done it. This guy was the best basketball player, again, of his generation. Right? So it doesn't matter if I was playing a game in Memphis or Sacramento and you're playing against, it doesn't matter to me. They're going to get the same result. But it was interesting hearing you speak today about your mentality as a player and how your work ethic, your perseverance gave you the confidence to be the kind of player that you were. And my comment about that is every great player that I've ever met, they all have that. Yeah, I mean, this is what it takes to be great. It's not even just in sport. This is what it takes to be great. What it takes to be great is that hard work, perseverance, thinking, commitment, focus, focus, focus. They all have talent, but they all have that. Yeah, talent is never enough. And it's not even clear what talent is. But it's not even enough that you've worked the previous 18 years. If you don't continue on it, if you don't continue the focus, continue the commitment, it'll go away. It won't last. It won't sustain itself. The process, loving the process, loving the daily grind of it and putting the puzzle together, it seems like this generation seems to be really concerned with the end result of things versus understanding, appreciating the journey to get there, which is the most important. The trials and tribulations that come along with it. You have successes, you have failures, but it's all part of the end game. What I see a lot of time from young players is, they'll try, they'll push, and all of a sudden they get hit with some adversity. Nah, let me do something else. Yeah, it's a difference between instant gratification, the need for instant gratification, the resistance to any kind of effort or pain or investment in a more distant future, thinking long-term, versus a real commitment to values which requires thinking long-term, which requires the understanding that sometimes you're not going to get the instant gratification, you're not going to get satisfied now, you're investing for a future, you're putting in the work for something that's going to come later. And that requires maturity. That's what it means to be an adult. Children have very... Children have a lot of difficulty with resisting instant gratification. Part of what adulthood means, part of what being rational means, of reasoning means the ability to project into the future, the ability to understand that you're investing in something that has greater value in the future than just whatever feels good in the moment. Instead of staying with it, you just stay with it. A lot of guys just kind of give up on it because it's not happening now. That's exactly right. Everybody wants to be the beast, but not everybody wants to do what the beast do. You've heard this. You've heard this before. Oh, yeah. And that's the challenge. But that's what I love about the process of being a coach. With my kids, we talk a lot about just teaching excellence. Because it translates, right? Whether it's football, basketball, baseball, whatever it is, once you learn what excellence looks like, you can translate that into any field. That's beautiful, right? Once you learn what excellence looks like, you can translate that into any field. You know, excellence is possible in any field. Excellence is also not a... it's the best that you can be. It's the best that you can achieve. And it's right in the life in general. That's what we translate into writing, or whatever the case may be. Once you have what that excellence looks like and the attention to detail looks like, you have a foundation that you can build anything on top of. We are sort of oriented toward helping people be successful and making the choices and decisions to be successful. And they say, well, if you go there, you won't have any fun. I gotta laugh. That's funny. That's so funny. That's such a... That's such a, like, um... It's a great answer. Average thing to say. I just don't... Have fun. The fun of it is, is knowing you did your best to do something very well. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, it's, again, the difference between real fun, the happiness that comes from achieving your values, the happiness that comes from knowing you did your best from really making an effort, from really achieving, from really striving, the joy and the happiness that comes from that, versus, again, the instant gratification, the feeling good right in the moment, which is superficial and dull and Kobe said immediately, that's just mediocre. Average. That's nothing. To be excellent, you have to appreciate that the process, if you are good, if you rise to the occasion, that's the real fun. It's the achievement you get from exerting yourself, from really putting the effort in. Right. Right. Being excellent is fun. Being excellent is fun. I love that. That's a great line. And so, I asked her just out of the blue, because I kept hearing people say this about her. She missed her childhood and all that stuff. How do you feel about that? She goes, I don't know what the hell they're talking about. I learned how to be the best in the world and I traveled the world and saw some amazing places. Most of my friends were being children doing what, hanging out at the mall and shopping? Well, they weren't hanging out at the mall shopping because they were in communist Romania. They were no malls and they weren't shopping. But the reality is that she got to be the best in the world. She got to do things no other human being has ever done, not a combination. She got to travel around the world, see the world. She got to experience the thrill of victory, the thrill of being the best that you can be, the thrill of being the best in the world. The thrill of doing things just physically that nobody else had ever done before. And people say, you lost your childhood? Well, but I gained so much more. So that's a great answer by an idea of a combination. And absolutely true. And again, this is the kind of culture of mediocrity that we have. We want everybody to have a childhood and have this and have that and all these middle of the road things. But to excel, to be great and to dedicate their lives and dedicate time and efforts and really strive towards something that's too bad they missed out their childhood. What's fun about that? I'm the best in the world. That's fun to me. But I think we live in a little bit more of where do I get my self gratification from. And do you really love the game and do you love doing the things you need to do to be the best? Or do you just want to get some better about what you did or how somebody else thinks about you? And I think that's not really good for developing self. That's great. Developing self. He's criticizing second-handedness. I mean, this is Cote Saban, right? And again, there's something in sport that is very selfish, that is very focused on self. That is very focused on self-achievement that is not as concerned about what others think of you as concerned about you and your ability to achieve. You're not. You're going to fake it. You're going to fake it until you want to go up against somebody that is not faking it. And they're going to call you bluff. And then you're going to be in trouble. And you're going to get exposed. You're absolutely going to be in trouble. I thought it was great that you said with patience, you have to be impatient. But you can't get frustrated. Because, okay, well, why am I not playing? What can I do differently? I have to be better. I have to be better. All right, well, then that's not good enough, then I have to be twice as good. Notice how objective he is here. I'm not playing. I'm on the bench. There's a reason for that. I'm not playing well enough. I have to get better. And the rest of this answer is really, really good. Right? And for me, it was a challenge of getting to a place where it's undeniable. I have to play because I'm that efficient. I'm strong at both ends of the floor. So it actually helped me. Because I was coming off the bench for the first two years. And it was like, okay, I have to figure this out. I have to be, right? So I use it as a source of motivation, not to get frustrated and complain and whine about it. But you were being responsible for your own self-determination. Being responsible for your own self-determination. I mean, these are sports guys talking. It's also the strength, too, of your friends to shut up. He is the second-handed to shut up. Right? It's not about you. Because, you know, they'll be like, oh, you should be starting. Oh, you should be playing. I don't know what they're doing. Shut up. If I'm not playing, I need to get better at this. I need to get better at that. These things I can control. But unfortunately, there's a lot of noise. A lot of outside noise from friends and, you know, former coaches and you have to be able to have the strength to edit that and say, no, uh-uh. I don't want to hear it. This is on me. Right. That becomes tough for young players. All right. So, yeah, I think that's just a sample of, I think, if you look for other videos of Kobe, you'll find other examples of this. You know, and other athletes, I think the way Michael Jordan talks about working hard and achieving excellence, I've never seen a documentary on Manute Ball, the 100-meter dash, greatest splinter of all time. If you see anything, Wayne Gretzky, any great athlete, it always boils down to the same thing. Personal responsibility, taking responsibility for your own life, focus. Michael Phelps and his swimming career. Now, it is true, somebody's mentioned they burn out, bad things happen to them. Yes. Because it is true that almost nobody teaches them and they don't internalize it and they don't know how to do it. They don't know how to extrapolate this to the rest of their lives. I mean, imagine imagine people living this, living like this, taking it responsibly, imagine living in a rational culture in which, well, yeah, of course, this is how people live and the athletes apply it to their sport, but we all apply it to whatever it is that we're doing. I mean, as a consequence of kind of the ideas that they've expressed here, they have a certain swagger, a self-confidence, a self-esteem, at least when it comes to their chosen central purpose, which is their sport. And it's beautiful to watch. It's what I think people admire about, let's say, Muhammad Ali, even though he's not a big fan of boxing, he had this confidence. He could take on anybody. He could beat anybody. He was ready. And we love that kind of confidence in athletes. It's sad. We don't love that kind of confidence in other people. Imagine a world in which that's the kind of confidence we aspire to, all of us, and the culture aspire to achieving. It's a completely, a completely different world. All right. Let's see. I mean, again, imagine this in business. People talking about the profit motive around stuff like this. I don't think you could believe that. Somebody says I invented my Muhammad Ali. I can see that because he had this unbelievable confidence, and he had a joy about it. It wasn't just in your face. It was in your face, but it was like with a smile, and there was a kind of playfulness to it. It wasn't mean. It wasn't nasty. It always came with a, you know, with a song, right? I mean, did he have something like a butterfly sting like a bee? I mean, everything about him was this excellence, hard work, commitment to being the best with the sense of I really love what I'm doing. All right. Let's see. A few other issues that I think sports brings out that is kind of cool that beyond just that personal morality. You know, just in terms of the workplace, right? They know, I mean, there's a union, but the union is not demanding equal pay. The union doesn't demand that all five players on Michael Jordan's team all get the same wages. The union recognizes, the union worries about some minimal level of play and some of the rules for trading players and all of that, but you know, if Michael Jordan can make a fortune and other people in his team are making a lot less, that's appropriate. He's worth it. So even the union is recognizes ability, excellence as the standard and that pay should reflect that excellence. There's no tenure in sport. You don't get tenure like academics or like certain union jobs where you can't fire them. No, if you're not a good coach, if you're not a good athlete, you're done. You're finished. You're not going to stay on the court out of pity or out of seniority or out of tenure. There's no seniority in basketball. Only to the extent that you've been around, you're really smart, you know what you're doing, you bring maturity to the team, but it has to be reflected in your play. Think about the fact that sports is one of the first places where we saw segregation fall apart. We admire greatness even if the person who's great has a different color skin than us. Even in a culture that was very segregated, there was a certain respect for great athletes. Jackie Robinson, I mean if you think about Jackie Robinson and how heroic this guy was, I mean, God, I mean the abuse he took, the abuse he took playing was truly unbelievable and it's hard to believe that America was that racist but it was just 60, 70 years ago. And he didn't waver and he didn't get, he didn't respond with violence or with antagonism, he kept his cool and what he did over time and quite, I think, relatively quickly is he proved to be such a great baseball player? Such a great baseball player that the racist went away or they changed their tone or they shifted and of course he proved to be such a good baseball player that he was not going to be the last black to play the game and of course today baseball is dominated by Hispanics and blacks and it's all about talent nobody cares and the same is true of basketball basketball, the funny thing is when you see somebody who's not black playing the game and doing well but people admire that and respect that or a Chinese player what was that, Lin there was this guy Lin there was a streak where he played phenomenally well and I think it was Chinese and everybody people just rooted for him even people who typically might be a little xenophobic or a little racist and it's a global game it's a game sports is global people admire excellence all over the world Jeremy Lin, yes thanks Ian all over the world they rally around the really superb athlete they don't care where he's from to some extent there's international rivals but at the end of the day nobody cares where Messi is from what they care about is how brilliant a soccer player is and the fact that he's originally from Argentina but he's lived really most of his life now or a big chunk of his life in Spain and now he plays for a French team and he's originally from Argentina and who cares he's just an amazing player or think about Pele who was you know black from Brazil and beat the Swedes and now there's still racist fans even today some of the black players in Europe are treated horribly in soccer but over time their excellence breaks that down over time it forces them to come to terms with the fact that human beings of all skin color doesn't determine your ability skin color doesn't skin color doesn't determine your worth skin color doesn't determine your talent and your hard work and the energy you put into it it's amazing you can watch any one of these games and you can see people from all over the world Japanese baseball players playing in the major league baseball and doing an amazing thing there's a guy now who both pitches and hits and he's brilliant at both pitching and hitting never the case just this amazing Japanese player and everybody admires him and respects him and the fact that he's Japanese is irrelevant so it's a leveler in terms of in terms of race it's a leveler in terms of nationality it's a sports has become a symbol of globalization both in the sense of the market that we're selling into why do players make so much money today it's because particularly in basketball and soccer it's because these sports are global and therefore the market is not just the local country the market is 8 billion people you can pay people a lot more when they're 8 billion people in one way or another buying tickets so I think sports is a great way to learn about life I think sports is a great way to learn about virtues and values most of life it's a great way to gain objectivity and to gain both personal but even political values like globalization and racism and some of these other and attitude towards profit and attitude towards employees and attitude towards inequality alright that is my hymn to sports we got a bunch of sports related questions was way way behind on the super chat I don't know we've got a lot of questions but they're all coming in at like 2, 5, 10 dollars so you know bring on the 20 dollar, 50 dollar, 100 dollar questions so we can make the 650 it is a sponsored show so Adam has already paid me for my time but this is what sustains the show ultimately is your support plus it's a great, I love questions so let's start with the sports questions and we got one from Brazil which is a haven of soccer Leonardo says sports in Brazil are stronger than religion a reason I am optimistic about Brazil's future despite Lula Bolsonaro also come back to Curibita do you think sports can save a nation from religion ideologies well I don't think it can save a nation from religion ideologies and then that they but I think it is a good distraction for religion and ideology and it's a good sign of a healthy culture that they take their sports more seriously than religion and I am hopeful about Brazil in spite of Lula and Bolsonaro I agree with you on that but I do think I think we need to help people see that embedded in their love of sports embedded in what they appreciate in sports is an entire life philosophy is much more than just sports and if we can do that then I think sports can become a dominant way to help shape a culture that will help make a culture better and I do want to come back to Curibita I am mispronouncing it again Curitiba I do want to come back to Curitiba I am going to be in Brazil in April and we can talk so drop me an email or something and let's talk about whether during my trip to Curitiba to Brazil I can come by if we can fit it in that would be great last time was fantastic thank you for organizing it it was an amazing event and the people were wonderful and you were a fantastic host so drop me an email and let's make it happen Andrew says what are your views on when athletes are condemned for being selfish as in there is no IN team I think it's horrible but more fundamentally it's a complete negation of what selfishness is and a complete negation of what the athlete is because of course the athlete is selfish you listen to Curibita and what's at his focus him being the best that he can be him beating other people and yes that requires a team he can do it one on one because he's part of a team so he has an interest in raising the rest of the team and making them better for the rest of the team to be good so that his team can beat the other team but it's all about his team it's all about him if he leaves the Lakers if he had left the Lakers and gone to play for another team he would have forgotten about the people he worked with at the Lakers and try to beat them every time he played and he would have promoted the other team why because it was his team his values, his victory his success, his excellence it's exactly the self-interest and think about what he said before about long term about planning long term about sustaining effort long term about focus long term about achieving long term values all of that is the essence of self-interest versus the instant gratification that is the opposite of that you cannot sustain sports on instant gratification but you cannot sustain sport on altruism on self-lessness on self-less I don't want to win today we never won in a long time give them a win that would not be sport and we would not watch it we'll get to racism in a little while Paul let me look for let me look for other sports related questions I just remind everybody we've got another $482 to make it to the $650 so think of questions or just express your support okay, Michael asks do you admire Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali even though you're not a boxing fan I don't admire Mike Tyson because I found Mike Tyson to be the opposite of Muhammad Ali there's a viciousness to Mike Tyson there's a you know biting somebody's ear there's a willingness to skirt the rules to do what's necessary I'm not objective I admire Muhammad Ali but I don't have a full admiration for them because I don't like their sport but I like the character of Muhammad Ali much more than I like I don't like Mike Tyson he strikes me as a violent person Muhammad Ali strikes me as the opposite of a violent person in real life and that's part of what I like about him let's see there's Busta Douglas versus Mike Tyson a triumph over adversity against one of the most intimidating fighters ever again I'm not a fan of boxing I don't like violent sports any violent sports it's violence I don't like turning violence into a sport Michael H asks thoughts on gamesmanship using the rules to your advantage while not cheating breaking the rules knowing the rules was very helpful yes I mean I think as long as you go within rules I'm fine with what you do Michael H also asks why don't you like boxing it has been unique in the amount of opportunity it has given people to raise themselves up from obscurity and poverty it also has so many great heroes like Ali and Joe Lewis I mean the number of people raised out of poverty and obscurity is much greater in places like basketball even football and baseball almost all the players in those sports have come out of obscurity all the stars in those sports grew up poor read about how Michael Jordan grew up or LeBron or any of these guys they have tough childhoods who's the guy I was reading about rather than come from broken homes and look what they achieve I don't like violence I abhor violence period violence is only appropriating self-defense boxing is a violent sport it is about beating somebody up and drawing blood and I don't like that I don't like martial arts mixed martial arts in a cage where people try to beat the hell out of each other I know there's skill involved I'm not challenging the fact that there's skill there's skill in shooting people there's skill in war and I like football a lot less now when I know that it's causing real physical damage how many of those boxes have suffered real brain injuries real cognitive injuries that crippled them for life how many football players does that happen to and sports that do that sports that people do things detrimental to their own mind to their own brain to their own ability to live I'm not a fan of and again I used to love football and I'm much less of a football fan now than I used to be because of that Frank says what do you think of teams tanking planning to lose in order to obtain a top draft pick I see it as dishonorable embarrassing stealing fans money I mean I don't know if it's stealing fans money because if they get a draft pick then the fans will really love it that next year they're a much better team or there's a much more fun player I don't think I think it's it's not fun it's not nice, it's not honorable teams that do it for part of a season I can't really blame them for it of course sometimes they don't even get that draft pick that they really want because there's an element of luck there's a lot of re-involved but I'm not as offended by it as some I guess because it is a strategic play to make yourself better in the future and I think the fans support that overall alright we have $120 question I'll take that from Paul and then we've got a bunch of $5 and $10 if you are going to ask a question in the remaining time make it a $20 or above a question again Adam thank you for the sports topic oh there's Adam helping us get to $650 even though he's already contributed Adam says thanks thank you as always Iran until I am a more seasoned objective one of my goals is to sponsor this relatable content that can be shared as an intro to the broader philosophy please like and share yes please like and share this show again I think sports is a good way to get people interested to concretize certain of the values and virtues to concretize for example self-interest and to show how Kobe is super self-interested and why that is a virtue why that is good and why that is what makes it possible for him to win he would not win if he was not focused on himself that's what it means to win and athletes the difference between athletes and everybody else is that they can get away with it culturally and that it seems like nobody else can really get away with being as assertive about their self-interest as athletes can and I think they get penalized by the culture for it ultimately and that's part of the burnout it's part of it is once they leave they don't feel comfortable having that same self-assertive because they can't broaden it they can't extrapolate from it to the rest of their lives by the way if you're interested in my favorite teams or anything like that I see people asking that's what the super chat is for it really is what the super chat is built for asking me questions alright Paul what is racism a substitute for hatred of different cultures that people come from I think it's much more basic and foundational than hatred of cultures because I think I think people hate the other people who look different from them before they know anything about the culture so there's something very tribal primitive, barbaric in racism that is pre-culture in a sense you hate the other tribe because they're the other tribe not because the other tribe has a culture that you don't like but because they're the other tribe and you hate somebody who looks different than you because because they look different from you and because you it's a form of pseudo self-esteem to elevate yourself as if you're superior and now the more you know about them the more it gets intermingled with the hatred of different cultures but there are lots of cultures that I hate I don't hate the people and I don't hate the people because they're you know because they grew up in that culture I don't hate the people because of the way they look so I think the two are related but in some sense the more fundamental is the racism the tribalism the hate the determinism that is associated with a particular genetic makeup and then oh yeah and their culture their culture is pretty bad I don't like their culture but then there's again determinism is just the only culture they can have is because they have a particular skin culture they can adopt a different culture they can integrate into a different culture they can assimilate into a different culture so you can hate a culture and not hate the people because you know that they're individuals they have a mind they have free will and they can change their culture culture is changeable your genetic code is not alright we now have five and ten dollar questions so I am looking for another four hundred dollar super chat questions yeah that's right alright helper Campbell I'm ambitious what can I say I'm ambitious for you do you think objective is that too quick to accuse people of nihilism or is it they really that much of it around us I think we're probably too eager to call it I think you have to be careful I think there are a lot of motivations for people a lot of people just second-handed a lot of people just follow a crowd they just do what other people do see you know generally attributing motives is very difficult you know unless somebody has actually stated written discussed their motives it's hard to tell what they are so I think we probably often are guilty of ascribing to people motives without really knowing them fully behavior can be nihilistic even though the motivations might not be again the motivations might be irrational in some other way nihilistic behavior is always going to be motivated by something irrational but it might not be particularly nihilism Liam when you go on a first date and don't feel a spark but she wants a second date how much effort should you put into discover if you'll experience a spark with a person in the future I mean I don't I think you should be very careful about over emphasizing sparks sparks are not well defined you don't really know what causes them you don't know exactly where they come from unless you're super integrated and super introspective and you know exactly what they mean if she was an interesting person if you enjoyed spending time with her then absolutely take a second date because sparks can build it's not zero one it's not you either have it or you don't you can have a little bit and it can grow and it can intensify and it can be much bigger than you could ever imagine as you get to know her you're not when it's possible but not all love is at first sight not all love is at first date so it's always it's always you know you have to know a person you have to know their values you have to know their character you have to know their personality and you can't know all that in a first date and if there's reason to believe that this person is a good person and there's some connection that you can have with them if there's some emotional spark then you should follow up on it I think we over you know gut feeling sparks we play way too much into it and it borders on emotionalism and you have to be very careful I mean at the end you have to be sexually attracted to somebody and you have to have a real emotional connection but that can build that doesn't necessarily have to happen on a first date the master do you think it's worse for a dangerous sport to also be a blood sport rather than just be a dangerous like motor racing even if the chances of being hurt are the same in each yes I think there's something wrong about a blood sport no matter how dangerous or not dangerous it is I think bloods anything that involves violence and blood I just think there's something off in that in supporting that I'm against violence I don't like violence relegated to self defense right and yes you want to train to be really good at something but if it involves beating somebody up seriously it's not a sport it's not entertaining and I don't want to watch it in terms of a dangerous sport well it depends on how dangerous and again the more dangerous it really is the more objectively dangerous it is the less likely I am to watch it if people are really putting their lives at stake I am not interested in watching life or death battles I want to see excellence and I want to see excellence on display but not at the price of people's lives but I'd rather take a dangerous sport than a blood sport okay thoughts and professional wrestling while predetermined it's a simulated competition that when done right can portray virtues much like a film it saved television in 1950 and is a truly American creation yeah I mean but it's a little ridiculous because it's staged it has superficial really really shallow heroes and villains it's a cartoon it's a particularly gross not in disgusting but gross in terms of rough cartoon cartoon image of good versus evil it's violence it's stage violence sure it's for kids I never liked it because I knew it was stage and it was just violent and the character seemed stupid and if you wanted that kind of drama movies cartoons comics books adventure books adventure novels plenty of much much much much more fulfilling places things to enjoy and to benefit from in the professional wrestling I mean I wouldn't spend a second of my precious time alive engaged in something like or watching or participating in any form in something like professional wrestling it is not to America's credit to have invented it it's just the essence of superficiality Mark just became one of my one of my private live Q&A one-on-ones on on YouTube says greetings you're on want to know what's your schedule for one-on-one Q&A session as this quarter and how to get in touch with you regarding them the latter continued membership here on YouTube in addition to Patreon Mark the best way to get a hold is to email email Angela or email me youron at youronbrookshow.com and I will forward it to Angela and then what she will do she has my schedule and she will schedule our one-on-one she will schedule that for you know I'm traveling this week I'm traveling next week but the week after that I'd say sometime sometime early in February we should be able to we should be able to get together so yes email me and once you know she should have you on her radar anyway because of the level that you're at so she might be contacting you anyway but suddenly you can initiate by sending me an email alright let's see Michael under an objective is government is it proper for the government to recognize famous people like Mark and Luther King by exclaiming a special day for them seems status yeah it's very statused it's inappropriate government should not be doing this you should have Independence Day and basically that's it Independence Day should be the only national holiday you know maybe certain traditional holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas but other than that there should be no holidays that the government recognizes the government's not it shouldn't be in the business of assigning holidays or elevating certain people at other people's expense I don't think there should be national statues national monuments I think that should all be private all be private Angela is not here so if you email me I will fold your email to Angela and that way you guys can communicate directly Michael Sanders asks is Micho Kaku a quack I don't know who that is you'll have to elaborate Michael says are stewards really cheating why is it illegitimate to have an athletic organization that allows its athletes to take stewards I don't think it is illegitimate it's just a question of what are the rules of the game if the rules are that stewards are cheating then stewards are cheating and I have no problem with an athletic organization saying everybody can use steroids whatever but that needs to be the new set of rules so you know there are rules of the game and you go from there but you don't get to make your own rules that's part of what sports is it's got an objective set of rules part of those in today's world there's no steroids I don't know if that's a good rule or a bad rule but it is the rule and people should follow it to the extent that it is the rule alright we have we've passed a halfway mark to get to our goal so that's a good thing for a while there wasn't even sure we would make it this far but you know we can still do better than where we are today and we don't have a lot of live viewers of course if I was doing something on the vaccines or if I was doing something on I don't know on Trump or Biden or something like that we'd have over 100 live views but I'm doing something on sports and values and virtues people aren't interested it seems so it's a bigger challenge to get to our numbers but we're slowly chipping away thank you Richard Richard says the NFL schedules about 15% of its games with teams in the same division rank from the previous season which makes for better matchups parity one GM called it creeping socialism what do you think no I think it's a recognition of the fact that those games are more entertaining more competitive they also get better TV spots the TV stations pay better to the NFL for doing that that provides more motivation for the teams because they get paid on how much TV revenue there is to get better so I have no problem in using past rankings to because football is unique in that there are very few games every season right in baseball every team plays every team several times in football you don't pay every team you only play some teams so they have to have some standards I don't have a problem with that standard I think it's ridiculous to call it socialism or egalitarianism it's just a way to make the game more interesting and more entertaining okay so Mark says it's pronounced Michio Michio Kou Kou Kou Michio Kou Kou didn't know who that is still don't know who that is did somebody explain it I don't see anybody also Michio Kou Kou is famous American astrophysicist who is involved in popular science I think I've said in the past astrophysics not my thing just not that interested in it and I don't know I don't know what I don't know I know it's amazing how much I do know I guess alright Michael says is it better that the founding fathers thought rights came from God rather than thinking rights are granted by society on mistakes like that what have brought time well I think this idea of not so much of a God certainly not of a Christian God but of some kind of deity or of what do you call it you know natural rights, nature yeah all of that is helpful I mean if the founders had been religious fanatics if they had been devout Christians who thought rights came from God in kind of a Christian kind of sense it wouldn't have survived it's because they were secular that they could get away with a creator a deity just so we can get the concept of rights but God the deity the religion played a minor role in the whole articulation of the thing Michael asks how low could California's taxes have to go before we consider moving back or is it more about the regulatory burden and for me at this point in my life it's mainly about the taxes because you know I'm not going to have taxes in California that is going to be burdened by regulations and I'm not going to employ people probably and I don't have kids who have to go through the educational system there it would be exposing yourself to the craziness of California politics I don't know how low they would go but a lot lower well the problem is not California the problem is the federal taxes if I moved to California I'd have to pay federal taxes so California could lower it to zero I still have to pay federal taxes so I still wouldn't move to California if California and Florida both had zero taxes and I had to move to one of the two I would move to California easily over Texas, Florida California if they all had the same tax regime at this point in my life I would move to California the weather's better the quality of life I think is better weather plays a big role in my view of the quality of life and as I've said many many times it's an incredibly pleasant place to live Michael says having intellectuals given up on consistent authoritarianism yeah I think they at least consciously have you know until consistent charismatic authoritarian comes around and they all rally behind them so I don't think they've given up on principle but they they don't hold it I don't think intellectuals hold it we need a consistent authoritarian I think very few intellectuals ever hold that but I think they're easily seduced by that because the philosophy they do hold is ultimately consistent with that so when the time comes they can't resist it they can't fight against it all right we need what 10-20 dollar questions well really 15 but 10 would be good Michael are second-handedness and narcissism the same thing no not at all second-handedness is caring what other things not just about you but about anything second-handedness is about other people as a standard for what you believe what you think for the truth narcissism is what you care about is what other people think about you and you want everything is about you not in a healthy kind of way but unhealthy kind of way and you want every you want the full attention of everybody whether you deserve it or not you want the full admiration whether you deserve it or not you want everything to be about you whether you deserve it or not Michael says do you ever rewatch any of your shows or interviews debates or read the comment section I read the comment section I don't rewatch anything that I do not in many years I used to to get better at speaking I used to watch my talks but I don't know I don't watch it I don't have time I mean I do eight shows a week when am I supposed to watch them when people read I ran and nothing clicks or resonates with them does that mean they haven't developed any serious types of soul a sense of life I think they have a bad sense of life I think in some sense they're not value is and they haven't they haven't developed a serious serious soul if nothing really clicks with them you know I think it's pretty sad it's pretty sad I mean I think it can be more complicated than that and they can be reasons why it doesn't click in spite of them having some positive values but that's a longer discussion and what that means whoops Michael says why do you think most PhDs are idiots yet so highly regarded in our society well I mean clearly they're not idiots if what you mean by idiots is kind of what people talk about intelligence or IQ or whatever you know to get to a PhD programs you have some what you are is the reality and you're the reality because that's what they extend teach you in a PhD program is you know that's the philosophy that's what philosophy believes in order to know the truth you have to detach yourself from reality so they are incompetent they are stupid in that sense in the sense of dealing with reality but not in the sense of the war hust power that they have they're probably smarter than most people they're just wrong on almost everything and the more they study in school the more they get and the more stupid they get or idiotic they get or whatever but it's not about their war intelligence it's about again they disconnect from reality and they're highly regarded in society because society has set education as the standard by which we determine knowledge and smarts and ability and so on and you know they are the ones teaching us so of course we highly regard them they're our teachers they're our teachers Michael says you say Ayn Rand was inappropriately modest but she didn't seem that way on her Phil Donahue interview would you have Phil Donahue on the show to discuss his two interactions with Ayn Rand is Phil Donahue still alive he's alive he's super old I mean if I could get him and he was still you know interesting and yeah I would have him on the show Rafael says here on London this week any good recommendations for someone that loves Rand sorry for not using the super chat but it gives me an error well I mean great art museums National Gallery the Tate English not the Tate Modern the Tate English it's a great art in both those museums London is just a magnificent city just a walk around the different neighborhoods go to different places great restaurants but yeah the art museums are great Victorian Albert is also great museum with a lot of history and a lot of art that's definitely worth going to see Victorian Albert British Museum there's a good one the British Museum particularly there's a room there that it's like the library of kind of a Renaissance man of enlightenment man man woman primarily it was man back then and it would be truly that was a truly magnificent room and super interesting exploration science literature so British Museum those are some but and then just walk and enjoy just the different neighborhoods in London it's a magnificent city Apollo what about even Knievel Deeper petite devil devil so people enjoy watching I mean I get it it's just didn't even Knievel die didn't he die in one of his crashes I mean I don't like sports where you can die I mean not where you can by a fluke die but where yeah high probability you're going to die I mean it's obviously these people have amazing skill and talent and so on but they're putting their life at risk for what I mean it's serious risk I don't talk about skydiving or something which is pretty low risk I think about evil Knievel pushing the envelope to get to the edge of death and then going over that edge so I'm not a Frank says Robbie Knievel just died of cancer anyway I'm not a huge fan of dead devils again it's just you're playing with death you only have one life we talked about this in the Iran rules for life you only have one life live it don't live it on the edge and raise your probability that you lose the one life that you have alright guys thank you I appreciate the supports I appreciate all the superchatters thanks for all the questions thanks for all the support I know I did it was fun to do thank you Adam again for the sponsorship hopefully we'll get a lot of shares please like the show before you leave if you liked it of course but click that like button it helps the algorithms if you can think of a sexier snazier title then explaining values and virtues through sports that might get people's attention and might increase viewership so thanks happy to do that and I will again I'm not sure about the schedule for the rest of the week because I am traveling I'll be in New York tomorrow but what did I want to say stay tuned I'll probably be doing shows from the road the only day I know that I will not be doing a show is Friday but other than Friday I'm going to try to do a show tomorrow I'm going to try to do something on Thursday and I'll see you all and if I don't catch you tomorrow Thursday I'll catch you