 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 Saturday, May 13th. Hope everybody's having a fantastic beginning to their weekend and had a fantastic week. I'm looking forward to another great week ahead of us. So, yes, I'm in Rome as you know. I've been traveling around Europe on vacation and being in Rome. I arrived in Rome Thursday afternoon, Thursday evening. I've been here since then staying in Rome for another six days, so five days. So a significant amount of time in one city, a significant amount of time in Rome. I'm really looking forward to it. I'll tell you a little bit about what we've done so far. And then I go to two days to Amsterdam and then I'll be home next Sunday, Sunday following a week from tomorrow. I'll be back home and we'll start back on a semi-regular schedule because then I'm traveling again right after that. But yeah, I am in Rome and I thought that given that I'm in Rome, it would be a great opportunity to talk about Rome and the significance in Rome and the significance of Rome certainly within the context of western civilization. So there's I think there's a lot to talk about there and I think there's a lot of interesting things we can learn from the history of Rome and that are worth chatting about. So that is what we're going to do today. We're going to talk about the history of Rome and we're going to talk about the relation between Rome, the history of Rome and western civilization, what it is and how it's going. I know this is a bit of an odd time. It's 12 o'clock East Coast time and 9 o'clock 9 a.m. on the Pacific Coast. So I'm not surprised. We don't have a usual audience, you know, but it's kind of inevitable. Given the travel and given the time difference that this would happen. I'm trying to do the show now for an hour and a half and then and then go out to dinner by the time I get back from dinner. I'm just too tired to do a show, even though it's it's it's a more normal hour for for you guys. All right, let's see any logistics we have to take care of. I don't think so. I think we're fine. I just remind everybody we do have the super chat feature. It is available. You can use it as questions. You can use it in the comments. You can use it to support the show with a with a stick or something like that. And just just be there to support what we're doing on the book show value for value. I will probably do a show tomorrow. It'll probably be about the same time. So I think it'll be also no tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow either be earlier or later. So we'll see what we'll definitely try to do a show tomorrow. But dinner's a little early tomorrow because it's Sunday. So maybe I'll do the show after dinner, which will be later in the afternoon for you guys. We're just playing it by ear here as as we go along. All right. Yeah, if you guys have any questions about in particular about Rome or about the Renaissance and stuff like that, feel free to ask. But otherwise, I'll just I'll just get rolling. And if I say anything that you would like for the elaboration, please use the super chat feature or the or the comment feature to to talk about it. Let's see. It's always a little bit marginally more challenging to do these shows on the road because I've got a laptop got a small laptop screen with us at home. I've got 234 inch monitors in front of me. There's so much more real estate here. The real estate is very limited. And it's the capacity to use it is different. It's very the video is very pale. I think I think maybe it's because the light is behind me. Anyway, we'll manage. We'll manage with somebody's asking when I'm going to be home. I'll be on the 21st, which means I'll be home a week from Sunday, but it'll be late. So the first show back from Puerto Rico will be Monday, May 22nd. It'll probably be a news roundup, which I will then do every day during that week in addition to to the more in depth shows that we do. All right, let's let's talk a little bit about home. I'm here for today. I've been here two days. I'll tell you more about Rome or at least my experiences in Rome. As the week progresses so far, I haven't been here very long. So there's only so much I can tell you about my experiences this time. But I think we can generalize to to, you know, the city that is Rome and the history that is Rome. This is my third or fourth time in Rome. Last time I was here, I think was with my kids and my wife. So it's been a long time. Kids were relatively young. And another time I was in Rome was with an objectivist group, a conference that I was running. I think that must have been 1999 with Mary Ann Suarez, the art historian and a bunch of objectivists. We did a conference in Milan. We did art tours guided by Mary Ann Suarez here in Rome and then in Florence. So a really, really amazing, amazing trip. That was 1999. So I was with my kids in the 2000s. And yeah, I haven't been much to Rome. Rome is a big city. It's a city of four million people. I gravitate towards the more intimate, small, much more manageable Florence. Florence is, you know, it's just a beautiful place. You can walk everywhere. You never have to take a taxi. Everything is so manageable. Rome is a massive city. I mean, you're taking taxis all the time and just getting from place to place. And it's packed with tourists. There's a lot of people out there in the streets. The nice thing is that a lot of the places I go to, not necessarily the places the tourists are masked outside of. So let's start with just a little bit of a broad history of Rome. We're not going to get into any details, but just in terms of giving everybody a sense of the city's history, because I think the city's history is so indicative of Western civilization. This is such a core piece of Western civilization, at least up until our point. And then I want to talk about the art, and I want to talk about the specific experiences here in Rome, and particularly the role of the church here in Rome, because I think one of the things that you cannot avoid in Rome is the church, because the Vatican is here. But I haven't been to the Vatican yet. I'm going to the Vatican on Monday. There's churches everywhere, everywhere. Every corner has several, every major corner. And there's something important there. Also, once you enter the churches, there's really a lot to learn from going into these churches and observing. And we'll also talk about, again, the art. But let me just, let me just, a quick, like, back of the envelope, like, two-minute history of Rome. I think the most, maybe the most fascinating thing about the history of Rome is its kind of its population, the evolution of its population. I mean, Rome, in the pre-Roman Empire, was a small village. It became the capital of one of the greatest empires in all of human history, certainly one of the largest empires of all of human history. At its peak in the second century AD, Rome is supposed to have been somewhere between one to two million people, one to two million people, one to two million people. The largest city by far in the Europe-Africa Mediterranean area. I'm not sure about India and China, whether there were cities that were larger. But certainly in what we call the West, it was by far, and certainly I think Latin America or any other civilization, Rome was the largest city of antiquity. Over a million people, a bustling capital, a place from which an empire was ruled. And if you look at a map of the Roman Empire at its peak, it basically covered almost all of Europe, with the exception maybe of Russia and some parts of Eastern Europe. They did not rule Scandinavia, but all of Central Europe and up into England, didn't have Ireland and Scotland, but almost everything else. The Iberian Peninsula and then all of Northern Africa and most of the Middle East. Most of the Middle East you want back then. I mean, they did not have Saudi Arabia, but who the hell wanted Saudi Arabia back then, before Saudi Arabia had oil. Before oil was of value, Saudi Arabia always had oil. Saudi Arabia had no value. So it was this amazing empire, an empire built on open trade, an empire built on religious tolerance, an empire that allowed all the different sects and all the different religions and all the different nationalities to have some expression. As long as they stayed loyal to the empire, as long as they paid their taxes, as long as they listened to their local rulers who were ruled ultimately by the Roman emperor. So here we are at 200 CE, 280, between 1 to 2 million people. By the middle of the Dark Ages, so what, 4, 5, 600 years later, the population of Rome drops to 10,000 people. 10,000 people from a million to 2 million. I mean, I think that more than anything indicates kind of the fall and the significance of the Dark Ages. Now why do people leave Rome? Because trade breaks down, because industry breaks down, because civilization breaks down. And a city is a sign of civilization. A city is a hub of trade. Cities survive when individuals don't have to be subsistence farmers. They can sustain themselves through specialization and trade. And when specialization and trade are gone, because the civilizing force is gone, when specialization and trade is gone, because violence rules the world. When civilization is gone, and anarchy rules the world, trade disintegrates, specialization goes away, and people have to leave the cities and go back to farming. They either die, many, many died of starvation, or they die from wars, or they go back from where they came. And we all came, at the end, from either small farming communities or hunter-gatherers. So they go back to small farming communities, they go back to the small villages, they go back to cultivating the land, and they go back to barely surviving. Rome, at its peak, not only had one to two million people, it had running water, it had an unbelievable system of aqueducts that moved water throughout the empire. But in addition to aqueducts, they had pipes. They had pipes that brought water into people's homes or into public wash facilities. You can see that if you go to Pompeii, you can see those pipes. They literally had faucets. I mean, pipes that ran water with faucets, I don't think that existed again until the 19th century. All of that disappeared. They literally disappeared once the Roman Empire collapsed. The pipes disappeared, the aqueducts were destroyed, people didn't know how to use them, people didn't know what to do with them. The faucets disappeared. You can imagine just the deterioration and hygiene that resulted in that. I mean, there is a reason, in spite of the many, many people trying to rewrite history. The Dark Ages were dark. They were dark because in comparison to what had come before the Roman Empire and in comparison to what came afterwards from the Renaissance on, they were dark. They were dark in terms of quality of life. They were dark in terms of hygiene, in terms of the way people lived and in terms of the ability of people to specialize. They were dark in terms of the amount and quality of trade. They were dark in terms of the intellectual activity, the scientific activity. They were dark politically in terms of the way people were ruled and governed. I figured this out better. It was at dark ages. Smelly, yes, definitely smelly, dark and smelly. Jennifer says that she's absolutely right. Now, beyond that, all real specialization trade makes it possible for wealth to be creed. And wealth was created not on the scale of the 19th century or the 20th century, but on the scale of human existence up until that point, the Roman Empire created a lot of wealth. That wealth made it possible for some people to specialize in being artists, in education, in all kinds of fields that were not entailed in the direct production of the things that were necessary for you to survive. You know, on the spot. So what you had was, again, a descent into people being subsistence farmers, the disappearance of artists from the world, the number of artisans and the number of artists among the intellectuals, the number of writers and poets and authors disappears. And of course, you have much more authoritarian governance, and therefore you have a lot less political dissents and with less political dissents. Again, you also have fewer people engaged in the kind of activities that lead to political dissents. Let's put on a light here, maybe I'll put on the site. Hopefully that makes a difference. All right. So, you know, in Rome, you really see this. In Rome, you see the Roman Empire. I mean, you see the grandeur of it. We walked by, we didn't go into the Colosseum this time because I've been in the Colosseum before, but you walk by the Colosseum. I mean, what a spectacular building, the size of it, the magnitude of it. And you think that this is something that was built 2000 years ago, and that's just stunning. The reality is that nobody could build anything close to that, at least in the West, until well into the Renaissance. You go to the Pantheon, and the Pantheon has a dome on it that nobody knew how to recreate. Nobody knew how to recreate until in the Renaissance, and they finally figured it out with a Duomo in Florence. But they had no idea how the Romans built the Pantheon. They had no idea how the Colosseum were built. If you go to some of the ancient ruins, what you see is multi-story buildings. There were no multi-story buildings in Europe until well into the Renaissance and later on. And every dimension, you see this amazing civilization. They had a lot of corruption and a lot of problems in it, but in terms of technology, in terms of wealth, in terms of specialization, in terms of trade, wow. And in terms of construction, wow. I mean, they're just now, they're figuring out the secrets for the cement and the concrete that the Romans built because it is so long-lasting, and they finally figured out the combination that the Romans used in order to get that cement to work. But again, no multi-story buildings, no pipe snow, aqueduct snow, all of that goes away. It just disappears. And it's hard to believe that once you reach a certain point of civilization, it can indeed just disappear, but this city is a testament to it. Any way you dig in this city, you know, the building you're building or something like that, anytime they dig, they find Roman ruins because the fact is that the Roman city was massive. What we see today is basically a modern Rome built on top of the ruins of ancient Roman and in only some places where either the ruins were so large or they've excavated, do we see the actual ancient Rome? So, you know, Rome went from a million to two million to 10,000. And then by the time of the Baroque, which is a period where Rome is at the center of the universe, this is the 1600s, let's say, or the 1500s, late 1500s, Rome is now at the center of the universe because the pope is here, the Renaissance is happening in Italy, in Rome and in Florence and the rest of Italy, so the greatest artists are here, Galileo is here, you see in the beginning of science. But again, politically the pope is important and therefore he is here. The Roman city-states are relatively wealthy, we'll get back to that in a little while. Florence is a crucially important place, but Rome is really the most important city in the world. Again, at least in the western world. And at that point, and I was shocked to find out how many people do you think lived in Rome in this glorious period where, you know, this is the period where, I don't know, Michelangelo has already finished all his work, the Vatican is seeing its glory days with the Sistine Chapel and everything else that's going on, St. Peter's and everything else, and going into the Baroque with Bernini and just the beauty and the grandeur of everything that's being done in Rome. How many people do you think lived in Rome during that period? Only 50,000. So I was pretty shocked when our guide told us that the other day, only 50,000 people lived in Rome during the Baroque, which is really, in some regards, the most glorious times of modern Rome. Today, Rome has 4 million people, the consequence of capitalism, the consequence of industrialization, the consequence of the ability to create wealth and grow a population and the extension of life extension. And of course, Rome has never returned to its glory days of the Baroque. It stopped being the center of the universe, basically for two main reasons. One is the decline and the importance of the Catholic Church, the decline of the importance of the Pope with the Reformation, the center of gravity politically and the center of gravity wealth-wise, started shifting to the north towards freer countries that experienced the Reformation and then countries that experienced the Enlightenment. While there were a lot of Enlightenment thinkers in Italy, I think, was heard during the Enlightenment and then the 19th century from fragmentation, Italy was not unified as a country until late in the 19th century. And so it suffered from their fragmentation. It was a place that was constantly fought over, the Spanish, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the French all had pieces of Italy in different periods of time, so they all occupied different parts of Italy in different periods of time. But Italy also was, I think, held back by its commitment to the Church, its commitment to Catholicism, its commitment to the Pope and an inquisition that was started during the Baroque, which I think held back scientific inquiry. So while science was moved forward by people like Galileo and there was a real scientific community in Italy around the Renaissance, coming out of the Renaissance, science was found upon in Italy. There was an inquisition both here and in Spain and science started thriving in the north where it was left alone by the Reformation, by the Protestants, weren't that interested in science. In every respect, coming out of, let's say starting in the 17th and late 17th and into the 18th century, the focal point of art shifts north, it shifts to France, it shifts to the Netherlands, it shifts even ultimately to the Germanic state, Austrian-Hungarian Empire, wealth creation shifts north, industry shifts north and ultimately capitalism is a creation of northern Europe which Italy only much later catches up on and really is never caught on, never caught up, Italy still, even from a European perspective, it's not a poor country, there's a lot of wealth here, but relative to northern Europe it is poor. So it's gone through the Roman Empire peak, it really collapsed into the Dark Ages, it rise into the Baroque period, Renaissance and Baroque were the heyday of modern Rome suddenly and modern Italy, I'd say, and then continued wealth, continued growth of the city, continued modernization, but at a slower pace than the rest of Europe, particularly northern Europe, which ultimately made Rome into a second-tier city as compared to London, Paris, Amsterdam, and ultimately the German cities. So that's kind of a quick history. One of the themes that run through this, one of the themes that runs through this and some of you will despise what I have to say about this, but it is the reality. One of the themes that runs through this is the world of Christianity in all of this. I would argue, and I think many scholars have argued, that ultimately it is Christianity that was done during the Roman Empire, although the Roman Empire in many respects committed suicide, it embraced a Neoplatonic philosophy that ultimately led to cynicism and skepticism and just that very pessimistic view of the world and led to a lack of value and a descent into decadence and hedonism, which ultimately led, I think, to nihilism as well. You see that with some of the emperors. The hedonism and certainly the nihilism, Caligula and Nero who burns down Rome. You see that, but under it all is Christianity. Christianity eating at the foundations, eating at whatever it is that made Rome great and indeed Christianity feeding the Neoplatonism into Roman society and into Roman culture. The Neoplatonism was there through Greek philosophers that came over, they still had a choice though to go kind of a Neo-Ristatelian route, but they didn't, they chose the Neoplatonism, they chose this pessimism, they chose this, in a sense, darkness, this view of the inevitability of the decline of the Roman Empire. Beneath it all, because Rome was a society with aristocrats, with rulers and ruled. A new philosophy was spreading through those who were ruled, a philosophy of the ruled, a philosophy of the meek, a philosophy of the losers in society, the philosophy of Christianity. And Christianity was spreading and it was challenging whatever good Rome had. It was challenging some of the nihilism and hedonism, certainly the hedonism of the Romans, but it was also challenging many of the good things about Roman society. It certainly was challenging the science and the art and just the admiration of the human being and the admiration of heroes and the admiration to the extent that they had of the individual. So whatever positives were part of Greek, sorry, of Roman civilization, were undermined from below by the Christians until ultimately Christianity took over. It basically, we get a Christian emperor with Constantine who embraces wholeheartedly the Roman Catholic Church. But this creates doubts in the minds of the Romans and it creates a weakness in their commitment to the Roman civilization. And there is no answer to the kind of neoplateness among the Romans and to the neoplateness Christians. There's just no answer to this. At least they're not willing to embrace kind of an Aristotelian answer. And what you get is a society that turns more and more and more cynical and skeptical, what you get is a society that turns more and more into a society that is, that hates itself, that turns against itself, that ultimately life gains meaning from its hedonism and it's ultimately from its nihilism. And a society that decays and ultimately that's decay. That decay is what allows the barbaric forces from the North to basically sack Rome and destroy the civilization and marginalize it into what's left with the Byzantines in the Eastern Empire. Richard said, happy belated birthday. Thank you for all you do. Actually, my birthday is in 10 days. It's on May 23rd is my birthday. I did a show with a happy birthday thing but that was a birthday to the state of Israel because the show was in Israel. My birthday is coming up in 10 days. But thank you, Richard. That's $100. I really, really appreciate the support. Thank you. So where were we? Yeah, so Christianity basically undermines the Roman Empire and what happens, the Christians are then very effective in over the next thousand years really with the fall of Rome in converting the pagans and converting the barbarians to Christianity and aligning the barbarians, aligning them with Christianity. But together with that comes a real stagnation of all forms of human progress. There's not just stagnation. There's first day retrogation. Everything gets worse. If you look at art, you look at Roman sculpture and then you see, I mean Roman sculpture, I'm basically copying the Greeks, the real achievement is the Greeks. But copying great art is better than not having any art or not having the art of the Middle Ages. If you look at the Dark Age art, Middle Age art, again, these revisionist historians that would like to pretend that Christianity led to this golden age in the Dark Age and the Middle Ages are delusional. What happened in the Dark Age and the Middle Ages is a disaster, a disaster for human life. And the art of the period reflects it. It becomes ugly. It becomes depressing. It becomes dark. It is horrific. We go from the glorification of man with the Greek and Roman sculptures to man as a monster, man as a creature, man as a gargoyle. And art disappears. I mean, yes, there are specific great artists, particularly towards the end of the Dark Ages and into the Middle Ages and Dante. But the rare and even their art is while it's great art, it's dark and despairing and completely infused with a Christian soul in every aspect. And, indeed, Christianity dominates Rome. And the 10,000 people that are here, basically the Vatican and the people around, you know, servicing the Vatican, this becomes a religious place and you visit Rome today and there are churches everywhere. And what the church did back then and in its genius what it did in the Renaissance was it basically, it monopolized the time and the energy of the artists around it. And, you know, the art in the Renaissance with the rediscovery of Greek writing, with the rediscovery of Greek sculpture, with a rediscovery and an appreciation of the woman ruins, suddenly there's an awakening in Europe, in Renaissance. And this is, you know, comes to be because of Christianity's discovery, rediscovery of Aristotle, discovery of Aristotle, Aquinas is taking Anistar seriously and integrating Aristotle into Christianity and his teaching into Christianity and bringing this worldly attitude of Aristotle into the Christian church. And what you see is a rebirth of elements of that Greek and Roman civilization. You know, what you get is a rebirth of art primarily but also a philosophy, a rebirth of thinking, a beginning of a rebirth of science. You really don't get that flourishing until the 17th century and the 18th century. But you see in the beginnings of all that, the foundations are laid, a rediscovery of the individual, a rediscovery of happiness, a rediscovery of what's possible to mankind. And really the way this is expressed primarily is through the art. It's through the artwork because it's not yet expressed in its politics. The politics is still for the most part oppressive and authoritarian. It's not expressed in the standard quality of life, although that is rising slowly and people are starting to move into the cities from the countryside. And trade is being reignited and banking is facilitating some production and everything else. But as I said, even at the peak of the Baroque, post Renaissance, the population of Rome was only 50,000 so it's very limited. The wealth creation. Really where you see it is in the art. And one of the amazing things about Rome and one of the fun things about Rome and one of the things that, you know, why spending like a week in Rome makes sense is that you walk into almost any random church in Rome and the paintings and the sculpture are stunning. Now it is true, particularly in the churches that almost all of it is religiously themed. But so much humanity, so much emotion, so much drama can be conveyed even when the theme is a religious theme. You can extrapolate from that secular meaning. Religion is not something that is completely divorced from day-to-day life, otherwise it would have no meaning to people. So, you know, a pietà, which is basically Mary holding dead Jesus in her hands and there are gazillion different versions of the pietà, maybe the most famous and certainly the most beautiful. Maybe one of the, I don't know, ten most beautiful works of art ever done is Michelangelo's pietà, which is in the Vatican Museum, which I'll see on Monday. But that, in many respects, in so many regards, particularly the way Michelangelo makes it, that is any mother grieving over a fallen hero. Jesus in Michelangelo's pietà is a young man with the physique of a hero. Mary is a grieving mother. There are no crosses, there are no angels, there's no looking up into heaven. There's nothing but this emotion of immense grief and immense, you know, immense grief at the fall of this man, this son. And it's beautiful and touching and magnificent and so beautifully done. So, I mean, if you ever have an opportunity to get a book of, there are books of a pietà, there are these magnificent photographs that were taken, maybe in the 50s, 60s, of black and white photos of the pietà with dramatic lighting where they show all the details and the features. I mean, God, what Michelangelo could do with marble, just unbelievable. Anyway, so even though the art in the churches is religious, it's so moving and touching and beautiful and, of course, you can see in the progression of the art the progress from the Dark Ages to the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, there's a big step forward in the Renaissance to the Baroque and so on and towards a more secular view of the world. But you can see in the way human beings are portrayed, you can see it in the way... Perspective suddenly appears, right? In the Middle Ages there's no perspective. And suddenly perspective is discovered in how to paint perspective and the beauty of that perspective and how, in a sense, they ought to show off their ability to project perspective. It's fun and interesting to see, right? So you see the magnificence of Western civilization, the rebirth of Western civilization. So you see the magnificence of, in a sense, the first round of Western civilization which was the Roman Empire. The magnificence of that first round. I mean, it's the end of the first round because the first round starts with Greece and is transferred to Rome. And then you see the complete death of it. You don't so much see it. You see it somewhat in the art, but you see it in the fact that there's nothing here. And then you see the rebirth of Western civilization. What magnificence, the colors, the human figures, the movement, the emotion, truly striking and inspiring. You know, and at the same time, though, at the same time this has happened, you're seeing the forces of darkness, right? And I consider Christianity a force of darkness. I know this will get me in trouble and I probably just lost a number of subscribers. But you walk into these churches, there were built, I don't know, 15th century, 16th century, 17th century, but many of them 15th, 16th centuries. A time of, for the most part, people were very poor. Life expectancy was very short. Again, Rome had 50,000 people and you walk into these churches and they are magnificent. They are unbelievable buildings. You know, once European civilization figured out how to build, they built. Once they figured out how to emulate the Romans they built and they created. And these churches in Rome, the small ones, the big ones, they're just magnificent. The amount of marble they have in it, the different types of marble, the workmanship with the marble, the floors, the columns, the walls, the amount of sculpture and the amount of painting, the amount of people dedicated to making these churches magnificent is just stunning. And you think, where did this wealth come from? Well, there's only one place it could have come from. It was stolen from the peasants. It was stolen from people who had work. And you see how many churches there are. It's not one or two magnificent churches. There are hundreds of them, or at least dozens of them, dozens of churches with unbelievable artworks. It took, you know, artisans and artists and building, who built these cathedrals and who built these, you know, magnificent churches and decorated them. And where did this wealth come from? All of this had to be taken from somewhere. It wasn't created. The church doesn't create anything. So anyway, the church can get money is either by people voluntarily giving the money or by the church stealing it or stealing land and having peasants work the land and they're taking their money or by going to war and pillaging it because the Vatican did go to war back then. And a lot of it is, a lot of it's donation, granted. A lot of it is using the guilt that is inspired by Christianity to get people to give the church money. But when I look at these churches, and I see, and the same is true of medieval cathedrals in France and other places, and I look at the workmanship that goes into it and the energy and then you look at the pyramids. What's the difference? I mean, the people who worked in this were not that much better than slaves like it was in Egypt. These are monuments to, maybe not kings there, but the popes and to priests and to a god that doesn't exist. They could only be built on the backs of the labor of all these people. And while I go into these churches and they go, it's so beautiful, it's so amazing, I also think about the horror of what life must have been like for 99% of the people who had to break their backs to make these churches possible. So that beauty and spectacle is mitigated by my knowledge of what must have gone into creating these things and where this money came from where this wealth came from, where this authority came from. It came from this very, very authoritarian structure and how the artists and artisans were treated ultimately. As long as they did what they were supposed to do, they were treated well. But if they didn't do what they were told to do, they weren't treated that well. And in spite of that, the creativity is just stunning. Just amazing. So today we walked into a random church. In Rome, you see a church, you walk into it because you never know what you'll find. And we're walking in and my wife and I both recognized the sculpture and it looked super familiar and it's like, but we were blanking out because you'll see in a minute why. And we're like blanking out, we stand in front of it and it's like, yeah, we know the sculpture and I look closely at a little plaque that's in the dark that you can barely see. You can barely see this plaque. And the plaque says, Christo, Jesus Christ, it's a sculpture of Jesus Christ, Michelangelo. And it's like, yeah, of course, this is a Michelangelo sculpture. No signs, no lighting, no, when you walk in the church to highlight any different pieces of art, nothing about Michelangelo sculpture there. Like, Michelangelo doesn't have a lot of sculptures. He didn't produce that many. He left a lot of incomplete ones. This is a finished piece of Michelangelo. And a pretty beautiful one at that. And you can tell it's Michelangelo. And there's no sign. There's nothing. It's as if the church is saying, eh, we don't want to give Michelangelo any particular credit here because I mean, a lot of artists are on here and other stuff, there's some beautiful things there I mean, they're mediocre. When it comes to the Renaissance, this piece stands out. It's a Michelangelo. And you can tell. And I was just shocked. And people kind of look at the sculpture and once in a while somebody will lean in and see the name, oh, Michelangelo, whoa. And tell the fence and maybe a group will come and start taking photos of it and then disappears because people don't know it's Michelangelo. There's no signs, nothing, nothing to indicate that this is Michelangelo's Christo, Jesus rising with a cross, famous sculpture. Because this is Christian egalitarian thing, you don't want to overdo it, I guess. On the other hand, we want to see Michelangelo's Moses and that is advertised everywhere. Of course, we got there. First, we got there and the church was closed. And then the second time we got there, there was a wedding in the church. She could only see Moses from an angle, which was disappointing. But we will go back, we'll go back later in the week, sometime when it's open and get to see a proper view of Michelangelo's Moses, one of the great sculptures of all time. And it's right there and you can get very close to it and it's really striking and impressive and amazing. Anyway, so that was the Michelangelo experience today. A couple of days ago, we did a tour of Caravaggio. Caravaggio is a fascinating painter. He's one of my favorite painters in history. He is of the 16th century. He's post-Renaissance or the end of the Renaissance. He's appearing in Rome. The Sistine Chapel is already complete and you can see the influence of the Sistine Chapel in his painting. So he's already coming late. He's coming to Rome, if you will, late. And what's interesting about him is how dramatically he changes painting. He really is one of those artists that revolution, like Michelangelo and Raphael and Leonardo. This is a few years later. This is a new revolution, a new revolution in painting and in art. It's more realistic. He's portraying people much more like they are. But while he's using kind of realism, for example, to portray poverty or to portray filth, it's interesting. You can see in his paintings, sometimes you can see the feet of people. The feet are always dirty. They're walking barefoot on sandals on dirty streets. A lot of things like that. In old people's faces, the detail is unbelievable. But also, he brings a heightened sense of drama to painting, which just doesn't exist before then. His use of light is revolutionary. After Corovaggio, everybody uses light in dramatic ways. It becomes a main... well, not everybody, obviously, but a lot of painters use it because it becomes a main way in which to drive your eye to where the artist wants you to see, to create drama, to show the relationship between people. But he really... He's the first one to use light in this way, to drive your vision to the point where the artist wants you to look at it, to take you along, certain paths of vision, to dramatize. He brings... He uses black in unbelievably effective ways against the dramatized, the light versus the black in order to create drama, to create intensity, in order to create... In order to create... What do you call it? In order to create a... Yeah, somebody... There's a problem with my... Let me just... I'm going to fix this quickly. There's a problem with the podcast. It dropped a empty file into... Let me just delete it before lots of people get confused. Yeah, this one. Delete it. So, he uses light to create drama. He uses a black to create drama. His faces, the faces of the people in the painting are more expressive than you see in any painting before that. So, he's the first artist to really bring out the expressive. Yes, Rob Brea says, Chirascuro, which is the use of light to create this drama. I mean, it's stunning and amazing. He also brings out... Some of his paintings, not all of them, are very geometric. There's a lot of geometry in it. Again, he plays with triangles, with pyramids. Again, which helps draw your eye in particular directions, to particular figures, to particular actions, to particular faces. And his ability to create faces and realism and just to show the world what he can do. And it's stunning. Here's an artist, Caravaggio, who dies at the age of 37. Not sure if he's murdered or if he dies on malaria. There's conflict. His whole life is one big drama. But he arrives in Rome as a very young man, 18 from a small village in the north, and starts getting commissions and starts painting, discovered by Cardinal. His talent discovered by Cardinal, and then he gets commissions and he starts painting. And you look at the first paintings he paints in Rome, and just make an emphasis. One of the things I recommend when you come to Rome is to get a tour guide and have them give you a tour of Caravaggio. We went to three different churches. We saw five or six different Caravaggio paintings. And then when I go to the Borghese Gallery later in the week, I'll see another five, six of Caravaggio's paintings. But of course the ones in the churches are going to be the more religious themed ones. The ones at the Borghese Gallery are probably going to be, oh, I know, are going to be more of the secular themed. And of course this is also a period where secular themes come out. Caravaggio indeed is making the religious themes secular, partially by the clothes people wear. In his paintings, people are wearing 16th century clothing, not the clothing of Jesus Christ, not the clothing of the era of the story, but the clothing of the common era. When Mary is portrayed or baby Jesus is portrayed, they look like a woman, they look like a baby. Yeah, they have the halo because he's required to put that in. He wouldn't do it otherwise. But they look realistic from the period. They look like people who you could relate to, at least if you lived in the 16th century, oh, the 17th century, you could relate to them. And he brings this again, this realism, this drama, this intensity, this emotion to his paintings that is just stunning and striking. And very few artists in history have matched, very few painters in history have matched his ability to tell stories this way and to capture us and to stimulate emotion and to get out, get our gaze to go where he wants us to get us. But emotion, emotion, what it's all about, he really brings it out, getting you to feel something about what's going on in the painting. So, highly recommend Caravaggio. Again, a revolutionary figure, a figure that really transforms art and I think helps move it towards the most secular, helps move it away from kind of the classic religious themes that are kind of all the same. Like you go to, even in the Renaissance, there are other artists who are different but a cellist one. But a lot of the, there's Jesus and Mary and there's a Christian fiction and you can tell different artists have painted it but thematically in many respects they're the same. Here there's a real break from that and a real innovation that's going on. Again, the Caravaggios are in churches. You walk in and the one church, there are three big Caravaggio paintings that are just stunning. Beautiful, beautiful paintings, all three of them. Use of color. In the one painting there's a horse and the horse is so beautifully painted and I actually asked the guy why he spent so much time and part of it was to show your skill. I think there's a theme there but also partially it's marketing. So the artist is trying to survive. He's making a living. He's not doing this, it's not a hobby. He didn't have necessarily a patron who paid him money no matter what he did. You paint it to survive. So part of it is you draw a magnificent horse with great detail to show the world that you can paint a horse. You can paint anything. Please commission me to make a painting because I can do pretty much anything. I have the skill set and Caravaggio had the skill set. It's tragedy that he died as young as he did. His last painting I think is going to be in the future. I think I'm going to see it in the Uffizi Gallery. His last painting is stunning. It's a stunning painting and a disturbing painting but it's a stunning painting of David. After he's cut Goliath's head off he's holding Goliath's head in his hand. It's David with the sword holding Goliath's head and his blood dripping from the bottom of where the head has been severed. And the amazing, stunning thing about this is that the portrait that Goliath had, the portrait there, is Caravaggio. And basically he sent this to the Pope in an attempt to ask the Pope for forgiveness because Caravaggio had killed a man in a duel, maybe in self-defense, maybe not clear, but he killed a man. He was excommunicated. He had to leave Rome. He had to leave Italy. He was going to be jailed or executed and he's trying to come back to Italy. He's sending this painting to the Pope asking for forgiveness and he's including his head, his face on the head of the severed Goliath to represent his contrition and the Pope allows him back and he dies before he gets to Rome, sadly. He dies in a prison under God. It's not clear if the God's killed him. It's not clear if he dies in Malaria, but he dies. Anyway, just a quick story of Caravaggio. I'll just say, and then I... God, we still have super chat questions. Yeah, and I'm learning down on time. But I'll just say that... So any more super chat questions you have, please make them $20 or more than that because we're running short of time and I won't have an opportunity to do a bunch of... I'll just say that this is about Rome. I mean, really, this period of Caravaggio and then Bernini will talk about Bernini in a future show. So after I go to the Fitti Gallery where we'll see Bernini's magnificent sculptures, I think, second only to Michelangelo, we'll see some of the Bernini sculptures then. I'll talk about him. But this period of Bernini, Caravaggio's before Bernini and then Bernini, this is the peak in many respects of Rome's influence, Rome's power, Rome's importance, the importance of the Pope, the importance of Rome as a city. Rome declines after that. Not declines. It doesn't go worse, but again, it declines in importance and its progress is far less than Northern Europe. So Northern Europe becomes the center focus in terms of aesthetics, in terms of art. I will be late this week in Amsterdam to see the Vermeer exhibit. Vermeer, of course, is part of that shift, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rubens, part of that shift that's happening at this time towards the focal of the aesthetic world being Northern Europe. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that Italy remained religious, Italy remained enthralled with the Catholic Church, the Inquisition, and therefore this transition from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment to the Industrial Revolution, that happened far slower in Italy than it should have. It happened far slower in Italy because of Christianity, because of the Church, and the Reformation with all its problems and Protestantism with all its problems was less authoritarian and allowed for more freedom ultimately for individuals and for creativity. And because the anti-Reformation, the response of the Catholic Church to the Reformation was an Inquisition, that held Italy back and still, I think still Italy is hurting. It never caught up and Italy became the center of the world if you were for opera in the 19th century, but other than that, from an aesthetic perspective, Italy had great sculptors and great paintings during the 19th century. I've seen some of them, but it certainly was no longer the center of European, center of Western civilization. That shifted North to Paris, London, and Amsterdam. That became the triangle of the center. All right, we'll talk more about Rome after I go to Fittigale and after I go to the Vatican. So you can view this as to be continued, to be continued. I'll probably have different perspectives. And I certainly want to talk about Bernini because Bernini is important today. We talked about Kelloggio. All right, let's jump into the Super Chat. So thanks to all the Super Chatters and please, if you have questions or if you just want to support the show, please use the Super Chat feature to do so. Thanks, Fred Harper. Let me just thanks Travis. Really appreciate all of you guys supporting the show. Thank you, Daniel. And thank you for Stephen Harper. All right, Bradley says, do you have, well, let me, Wednesday, Bradley, we'll get to that. I'm Mika, just because it's about Rome. Hadrian was Rome's greatest emperor because he built a big, beautiful wall to keep those rapists and criminals, criminals out. All right, so I guess that's supposed to be a pro-Trump comment that, you know, what we need is a wall in the southern border to keep those rapists and criminals out. I think, you know, I don't know enough about the Roman Empire to speculate about who is the greatest empire or what made a particular empire great. I'd have to do a lot of reading on Rome to figure that out. I've looked at Rome from the perspective of ideas and perspective of what aided, but I don't really know the sequence of empires. I know a little bit about, you know, some empire empires, but I don't know enough to really delve into and comment on the greatest empire or whatever. Mika also says, the real reason Rome fell is that America didn't exist back then, so there was no one who would save them from the Germans. True, true. Although, you know, up until their fall, they had done a very, very good job of suppressing those Germans and keeping them in their place. The fear, of course, is that America is following the path of Rome in terms of decline and what will hold the barbarians out when America fails. We know what happened when Rome failed. The barbarians entered. It happened to be German barbarians, what happens when America fails? That is a live question and seeing Roman civilization go to zero, go to completely crumble, really, really has to cause you to think about, you know, the possibility of civilization declining, really declining. Somebody says that Hadrian's Wall was in England. That's right. So Hadrian's Wall actually kept those barbaric Scots out. We don't want those Scots. Those are the rapists and criminals that they were kept out. Hadrian might have built other walls. Who knows? Abri says, during the European dark ages, there were thriving civilizations in South America, India, China, and Muslim Caliphate. These civilizations all had strong religious systems. Is Christianity and especially anti-freedom? No. I mean, the reality is that I mean, Christianity is anti-freedom, but it's not especially. I'll comment on the Muslim Caliphate because that's the one I know. The Muslim Caliphate thrived in spite of its Islam. The Muslim Caliphate thrived because they had discovered Aristotle. They discovered Greek philosophy and Greek art. They had discovered Greek plays. They were translating the biggest libraries in Baghdad of translated works of the Greeks into Arabic. They had embraced western civilization. They had developed it and had philosophies and thinkers who completely embraced it. And they did this in spite of their Islam just like the Christianity of the Renaissance has a renaissance in spite of its Christianity. That is, it's the Greek elements that are winning out in the Muslim Caliphate Empire just like it's the Greek elements winning out in the Renaissance in Europe. And the Muslim Caliphate fails. The Muslim Empire civilization fails when it abandons the Greek civilization and embraces Islam fully and then it's gone. And the same happens with Christianity. To the extent that Christianity is fully embraced, is embraced fully, it collapses, that civilization collapses and disappears just like Islam would. I don't know enough about South American Indian and Chinese. Again, South American civilization thrived but it never reached the levels of Greece needed, India needed, China. And the fact that none of those reached the level of Greece meant that they never had what we achieved in the West. Renaissance, they never had the kind of achievement of the Renaissance and the post-Renaissance. But yes, they had amazing civilizations. They achieved what they could achieve and partially it's because they didn't have a very strict religion like Christianity. India, China and South America religions were a lot simpler and a lot less, I think, oppressive than Christianity happens to be. But again, I know less about those civilizations and those religions. Shabat says, I've heard some college graduates say they shouldn't have to work so they can pursue their hobbies instead. Is that a form of hedonism? It is, it's really a form of unthinking. It's a form of entitlement. It's just this taking civilization, taking wealth, taking progress, taking everything that's been created for granted and then wanting it redistributed your way. But the actual creation of it, not being interested in it, not caring, not where it comes from and not realizing because you don't think that if you start, if people don't work and they just do their hobbies, that all that wealth will disappear. The wealth is not just in the ether. The wealth has to be created by somebody and having zero respect for that somebody. Having zero respect for the creators of wealth. Shabat says, have you seen this short YouTube video? What if Michelangelo paid it to last up a note? That would be cool. That would be really interesting. Yeah, I mean, the difference between... Let me copy-paste that because I want to remember to try to find it. The difference between Michelangelo and Leonardo is fascinating. And yes, there would be a big difference, I think, in how the last up would look. I'd have to think about detail what that difference would be, but it would be definitely different. Let me see if there's anything else related. Michael says, buy yourself something nice at the Pope's gift shop. I don't think there is anything... Well, there might be little models of the pietà or other stuff. One of the great horrors of history is that the Pope owns probably the greatest art collection in all of human history. I mean, he owns the Sistine Chapel. He owns the pietà. He owns everything in the Vatican Museum, including... I mean, it's just horror all again on the backs of people, the backs of workers. What does Europe dominate their aesthetics compared to the U.S.? There's more beauty in everything they produce from fashion to cars, and they don't have the volume, but they do have the beauty. The culture seems more feminine. Why? I don't view it as feminine. I think that's a false view. I mean, you can't really think of Michelangelo as feminine. There's nothing in Michelangelo that's feminine. There's nothing in Bernini that's feminine. Beauty is not a... I don't think it's feminine. Michelangelo was probably gay, so you could argue maybe it is feminine, but I don't... It's not... I don't view it as a feminine emescalation. Why? Europe just has culture. Iron Man said, and I think she was right, that America never really had culture. America's culture, when it comes to the arts, is primarily second-handed. It's generally copying the Europeans. All the geniuses, when it comes to arts, were Europeans. The real American creation, when it comes to music, is jazz. There's nothing really in classical music that Americans do particularly new and astoundingly well. Painting, sculpture. I mean, they're good American painters. They're good American sculptors, but they're not revolutionaries like the Europeans. It's all in Europe. And that's because Europe is where culture is. In America, genius focused on business. And in Europe, genius focused on the creation of beauty and the creation of aesthetics. And Europeans are raised with beauty and aesthetics around them. They're raised with arts. Americans are unbelievably ignorant of arts. To them, art is, I don't know, the latest superhero movie. That's art. There is no culture of beauty. There's no culture of aesthetics. There is a culture of business, right? Yeah, I mean, American film composers are good and American, some movie directors are good. But there's no culture of... It can't compare to classical music composers, European classical music composers, as good as the film composers were. Again, it's oriented towards the business of it. But not towards art, for in a sense it's own sake, which is what European culture has been oriented towards since the Renaissance. And the church played a role here because the church understood the power of art, used the power of art to capture people, to entice you into the church. They got Bach to write a mass. They got Handel or Haydn to write a mass. They got the greatest composers in the world to write for them. They got the greatest painters in the world to paint for them. They got the greatest sculptors in the world to sculpt for them so that you wouldn't be induced to come into the church, to participate. So they understood the role of art. Americans have ignored art and do not understand the role of art. It's never been used by any part of American society. Business never really embraced it. It's focused primarily on material achievements. And if you look at beauty, yes, European cars, there's more design elements to it, and yes, but that's because they grow up surrounded by aesthetics, by art, by painting, by music, by these things that in America are just not viewed as important. America is, in that sense, more materialistic and focused on business, which is a good thing. But it's sad that there is this divorce of culture from business, that there is this divorce from... And it's sad that business doesn't use art and aesthetics more effectively. I think people like Steve Jobs understood the importance of it. That's why you get the focus at Apple and design, but most American businesses don't. Whereas in Europe, it's a big feature, and I wish you could combine the two and bring that culture from Europe and that focus on business and wealth creation that the Americans have, unite that and create the next phase of Western civilization. And that is the next phase of Western civilization. It's that symbiosis of the spiritual and the material. Bradley, do you have close non-objectivist friends? Yes, I'm struggling to get value from socializing with regular people and even longtime friends since objectives and I feel like I am in a different universe. Yeah, I think that's true, but you've got to find friends that were non-objectivist, maybe, who have particular interests with you and you might not be able to talk to them about certain things, you might not be able to talk to them about philosophy, maybe not even about politics, but maybe you can talk to them about art, about opera, about music, about the things, something that you love and that you're associated with. But yes, one of my best friends is non-objectivist. Now he is a free market guy. He does believe in free markets. It would be hard if he didn't. Politically, we're pretty aligned in terms of our views of politics, our views of politicians, our views of the future. Economically, we're fairly aligned, but philosophically, we're probably not. Aesthetically, we're probably not. So there are boundaries to the friendship in that sense, but that's okay. I mean, you focus the friendship on the things, if there's value in it for you on the things that you do share and on the places where you have shared values. Daniel, thank you. Let's see, Bonnie says, politics is okay, but love this show so much more. I'm really glad. It would be great if everybody loved this show so much more. Love the history art lessons. Appreciate that, Gail, thank you. Again, Enric, thank you. Appreciate the support. Bradley says, Steve Jobs combined art of beauty. Yes, he did. And I think he's unique in that sense. Michael asks, this will be the last question. Let's see. Would Nietzsche write that altruism is slave immorality? Yeah, I definitely think it is. Or is that a wrong way to formulate it? It's probably not an accurate way to formulate it, but I think it is a pretty good description. Fascists often cite Nietzsche's critique of altruism as justification for hierarchy. Yeah, because Nietzsche doesn't provide an alternative. He doesn't provide an alternative morality. He's right that altruism divides people into those who benefit and those who sacrifice. Those who sacrifice and those who benefit from the sacrifices take Christianity. It divides the world into those who sacrifice. And the church that benefited for centuries and therefore the church became unbelievably rich, unbelievably rich. Think about the property and the art and the wealth that resides in the Vatican. While the rest of the population suffered just horrific lives, horrific lives. So there's no question that altruism is a morality of the exploiters and the exploited. And Nietzsche points that out on each side with the exploiters. And what there isn't is an alternative morality. What there isn't is a morality that says neither exploiter nor exploited is right. And yeah, the fascist latch onto Nietzsche because they latch onto being the exploiters. There's many respects that you could argue that the Catholic Church in its hierarchy latches onto that as well. I mean, these priests abusing children, exploiter and exploited, they show no remorse or maybe they show in front of God but they certainly don't show in front of us. They show very little remorse. The church forgives them. The church turns a blind eye. Why? Because they're above the law. They're above morality. They're above all this stuff. In many respects, the Nietzschean. They are the deliverers of God message. They abuse a few kids here and there. So what? It's so disgusting. It's so despicable. I mean, I'm hesitant even to go to the Vatican because of it. I'm going to go because the value that's there is just too large for me to avoid. But I find the Catholic Church a despicable, disgusting, horrific organization and particularly because it stands as a representative of morality but it's exacted as morality of exploiter and exploited that it represents and it stands for. Okay, Frank says, if property rights were extended and refined wouldn't homelessness come in sanctions squatting an immigrant invasion south of the border be curtailed? Well, yes. I mean, certainly homelessness would but a lot of the problems causing homelessness would go away. Drugs would be legal. Rents would be a lot lower. Housing would be accessible. Charities could fill in whatever gaps were left. All of that could be easily taken care of. Homelessness would not be a problem in a truly privatized laissez-faire economy because many of the problems that created would not exist. I think, again, home prices, rents and the war on drugs are big parts of what create homelessness and that wouldn't exist. Beyond that, they couldn't just sit on your property. You'd kick them away so they'd have a strong incentive to find a home and to figure it out and to get their life straight because there'd be no way for them to be. Charities would have to deal with them. And then finally in terms of immigration that's more complex but there'd be more immigration but it would be more early and more organized and it would be through channels that were more logical and made more sense and it would be people immigrating who knew they could find work and who were motivated to find work because there would be no welfare. So yes, everything would be different if property rights were extended and refined. Alright, thanks everybody. I am going to continue my adventure in Rome. I will keep filling you in as we go along. I'm off to dinner now and then we'll see. We'll do a show tomorrow probably. We'll definitely do a show after the Borghese Gallery. I think I said Uffiti earlier. It's the Borghese Gallery. I want to talk to you about Bernini and after the Vatican Museum, again there's a lot of Bernini there but there's also the Sistine Chapel and there's Greek sculpture and there's Raphael and there's just so much in the Vatican Museum that I'd like to talk to you about and about its beauty and magnificence and one of my goals is to get you guys to come to Rome and to spend some time here and to go on an adventure, to go into the churches and to explore and discover new art and broaden your horizons and I know a lot of objectivists can't stand religious art but once you understand what it does and what it's conveying it goes far beyond the religious symbolism and the religious story that's in there. It has a universal human message. It has a universal human impact on us particularly when you see artists like Michelangelo or Raphael or Leonardo or Caravaggio. Michael says, and this will be the last question, is the West mass-producing Jealousburg Bratz? Yeah, I think that's right. I think we are producing our educational system. One of its biggest weaknesses beyond it not teaching kids to think is that it doesn't teach the kids to appreciate where the wealth that they're enjoying comes from. They basically, they encourage, not explicitly but implicitly, they encourage kids to take the wealth for granted and that's what kids do, they take it for granted. All right, have a great rest of your weekend. I'll probably see you tomorrow. Bye everybody and thanks to all the Super Chatters. Really appreciate it.