 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Saturday, January 7th. I hope everybody's having a fantastic weekend and enjoying the first week of 2023. Pretty exciting. It is. I'm still, Kevin, completely integrated the fact that it's 2023, but so be it. All right, thanks for joining me today. We've got two topics today. We're going to be talking about euthanasia broadly, but in the context of the Canadian euthanasia laws and the expectation that they will be expanded in the near future. So euthanasia, is it moral? Should it be legal? Is it right? Is it wrong? What do you guys think about euthanasia? So let me know. The chat is open. Those of you who are here live. Scott still writes checks. I mean, there's something very primitive about that. Who the hell writes checks anymore? I haven't written the check in years. So yes, right in on the chat. Of course, we've got super chat questions available, but we're going to spend a little bit of time on the whole topic of euthanasia. Not the most exciting, not the most what do you call it, entertaining, but I think important. So we'll talk about that. There's a lot of press about it. There's a bunch of pro, including a whole long article in Barry Weiss's publication against it. We'll talk about it. All right, so that's topic number one. We'll see how long that takes. And then I'm going to try to do as many of the music. You know, you guys sent me a bunch of asks in terms of reviewing music. So I will try to do as many of those as I can. You sent me a lot. I've listened to them and I've got views about them. I'll say this again later, but this is the problem and maybe you shouldn't be asking me to review music. I mean, there are a few problems with this. One is I'm not a musician, so I can't give you any kind of professional views on the quality of the music, anything like that. So anything I say is going to be, to some extent, subjective. It's just my opinion. There's nothing that makes me a particular expert on popular music. I don't know much about popular music at all and I have my tastes. So really what we're valuing here is my taste. I can make some social commentary about the music and some, I think, some comments about the trajectory of the music from over the last, let's say music changed in the mid-1960s and from the mid-1960s on to today. I do have an opinion about the quality of popular music relative to classical music, but I guess I'm not sure what your motivation is. I'm not sure what you expect me to say. I think with movies, I know we disagree a lot about movies and I go to disagree about movies, but I think I can be more objective about movies. I can tell you why. It's a story. I think I have a lot more experience with movies. I understand, I think, what makes a good movie and a bad movie much better. But with music, it's very difficult for me to be able to describe what it is that I like or don't like. I don't have the vocabulary partially because I am not a musician. I'm not a filmmaker either, but film is an easier medium to talk about because music is the hardest because it deals with something that is the most abstract. So anyway, I'll do my best to describe this and we'll see where it goes. I'll say all this again as we get into it because I want to emphasize, I want to make clear that this is indeed the case. I don't want anybody to think. And certainly, I don't want anybody to think that my views on popular music are objectivist in any kind of way. The objectivism's view on popular music, that would be insane. Objectivism doesn't have a view on popular music. And I've had views on music and we can talk about those. But even she, when it came down to really understanding music, said that we just don't have the knowledge yet. It's hard to be objective about these things. All right, let's see. So where do we start? We're starting with Canadian euthanasia. Somebody said that sounded like a song. That says a lot about the quality or the directionality of music in the last, what is it, 50, 60 years is that death is a big part of the vocabulary of music. Well, that's true in the past as well. Death is a part of human experience and we like to sing about that. All right, let's talk about euthanasia. So euthanasia is the practice of basically being assisted in committing suicide. And it's the idea that if one is desperate to kill oneself, particularly if one is in pain, or you have a disease that's killing you anyway, or I don't know, I could imagine at the beginning stages of Alzheimer's where you know your mind is going. A lot of people make the choice that they would rather die than continue living because life, the quality of life is so deteriorated. And indeed, so that can be an incredibly rational decision to make, but it's very difficult to execute on it. I mean, I've been getting older, so I think about these things. As you get older, you start thinking about things, particularly when you start seeing people around you who are much older, parents, friends of parents, more and more people are living well into the 80s and 90s. You encounter more people who are clearly in pain or you encounter people who have lost their minds in a variety of different ways. And you start projecting about what that would be for oneself. What's the quality of life living that way? Do I want to live when I've lost certain functions, functions of the brain or functions of the body? Living is about living well. It's not about living for the sake of living. It's not about just surviving, not about having a heartbeat. It's about living quite human being, which means having a functional brain and being able to biologically take care of oneself. And it's yet on the other hand, okay, so you can kill yourself, but killing yourself is hard. It's hard. It's messy. I mean, what do you do? You jump off a bridge. I mean, you put a gun in your mouth. I mean, that's pretty messy. Jumping off a bridge, pretty scary. You know, take a bunch of sleeping pills. You don't actually know if it's going to kill you or not or how sick you're going to feel if it doesn't kill. I mean, it's just a messy process. And I, for one, would like to have the option of being able to get a pill for my doctor that I can take with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee or glass of water or whatever and take the pill and just never wake up again. And that to me sounds like a dignified, honorable way to go where it's not messy. You don't put other people that have to clean up your mess in a sense. You don't have to be particularly brave. I think jumping off a bridge requires, I don't know, I don't know that I could do it. And when you're old, you have to climb over the fence. I mean, it's, and if you jump off a building, again, messy. So it strikes me as something that would be fantastic if it was available. And I mean, why isn't it? Why can't I ask my doctor for that? Now, granted, my doctor might now want to give it to me because, you know, some people commit suicide, call it prematurely, commit suicide when they don't really intend it. Some people commit suicide to try to gain attention or attempt suicide to try to gain attention. Some people commit suicide in a moment of depression. But, you know, my doctor probably knows my medical condition. He knows my mental state. I don't think a doctor is interested in killing off his patients or allowing his patients to commit suicide for no reason. But why can't I just get, why shouldn't I be able to just get a pill and take care of this? And of course, it's illegal to sell me such a pill. It's illegal to give me such a pill in most places. And I think that's an incredible tragedy, a horrific tragedy. And yet, we now see an alliance, both on the left and on the right, of people that are arguing against it. Yes, you could kill yourself by putting carbon monoxide, all kinds of ways of doing it, but none of them are particularly appealing. You could sit in the bathroom and cut your wrists. There are lots of ways you can do it. Why not simplify it? And after all, if we have a right to life, if we have a right to life, which means the way to use our mind to make judgments about the values that we pursue, about what we're going to do with our life, don't we also have a right to say, it's over. There are no values to be pursued. I just want a quiet, simple death to have it over with. It strikes me that you have such a right. I mean, it's funny that a lot of states and a lot of places, most countries in the world, I think, have laws against suicide. I mean, who are you to tell me that I can't end my life? It's my life. That's the whole point of being my life. I can live it as I see free and I can end it. That's what it means that it's mine. That's what it means to use my mind, my judgment, to pursue my life or to end it. We are in a country, particularly the United States, where this is strongly opposed, this idea. Now, there are 10 states today that have assisted suicide laws. It's not easy in those states, either. But, you know, the United States, there are a number of countries around the world that have made it a lot easier, Canada, being one of them. Let me just find this article. What is it? Where did I lose it? I lost it somewhere. Yeah, I mean, Canada has probably the world's most permissive euthanasia laws. It allows adults to seek either physician assisted suicide or direct euthanasia for many different forms of serious suffering, not just terminal disease. In 2021, over 10,000 people ended their lives this way, just over 3% of all deaths in Canada. And they're contemplating expanding this to include mental health conditions, mental health conditions and possibly euthanasia of what they call mature minors. Minors who can make their own decisions about this. But these kind of things. Other countries have euthanasia laws. Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands. You know, I'm not sure which other countries, but those are countries that come to mind. Australia, New Zealand, Spain. Sounds like the UK from what I hear. The United States, only 10 states. And again, even there, it's somewhat restricted. And there's a huge backlash, particularly in the US, against euthanasia laws. You know, there's both from the right, it's not your life to make a decision about this. In that sense, you don't have a right to your life. God has a right to your life. And God will decide when you die. Nature will decide when you die, not you. Suffering is just part of life. Accept it. Live with it. Don't complain. And all the way to the left, which says, yeah, the state will decide. Don't complain. No, nature will decide. But the left, a lot of the opposition on the left is poor people don't have the same options as rich people. So poor people are more likely to ask for euthanasia because they have fewer resources to cope with the suffering, to cope with life, with horrors, I guess, of having a horrible disease of suffering from great pain. The argument is that if you're homeless and so on, you're much more likely to seek euthanasia than if you're comfortable and have a jet and can go to the Fiji to relax and to try to mitigate the pain or you can afford more drugs or whatever. Again, that is, of course, the reality. Yes, having money makes decisions generally easier and expands the number of options you have. The poorer you are, the fewer options you're going to have. But it is truly amazing how many people, and then both again on the left and right oppose this. I mean, I was surprised to find a lengthy article on Barry Weiss's site, Barry Weiss's site. The free press, it calls itself now. A lengthy article about the horrors of Canada's assisted suicide program. And here, like all stories, they bring out the anecdotes that might horrify you, that might upset you. And the article focuses a lot on the economic issues. It focuses a lot on the idea, even though there are no facts to suggest this is true. The idea that with Socialized Medicine, the government gets to make the decision about whether to accept. You have to still apply. The government can't initiate a process of euthanasia. The government can't initiate to kill you. But you can apply and, you know, what the article is arguing is, you know, to reduce health care costs. The government has an incentive to approve more of the applications. Yeah. But again, why is the government involved? The only role of the government, what should be the government's role in euthanasia in a truly free market, in a free, private health care system? What would the role of government be in euthanasia? To make sure that it was a murder. To make sure that it was voluntary. To make sure that the person who wanted to die, you know, made that decision and nobody made it for him. That there's no coercion involved. Now, if a doctor actually assisted somebody in committing suicide, then I can imagine that the medical profession would have guidelines about when it was appropriate for a doctor to facilitate something like this and when it was not. But the help in and of itself, I don't see what role the government has, you know, I guess, unless it's coerced, as long as it's voluntary. The government has no business in telling me how long I should live and what conditions I should live. I don't think doctors should be helping people commit suicide unless there is a good reason for the person committing suicide, a health care reason. That's what we have doctors for. It relates to a health care reason. So a doctor should help if a patient wants, should help somebody who's terminally ill, should help somebody who's in massive pain, should help somebody who just has no future because of health care issues. And again, this is something that's both a left and a right objective. It is something that both on the left and on the right, they view it as not the purview of the individual to make decisions for himself, but the purview of the state or doctors or specialists to make decisions for him. So, you know, I'm in this basically because I believe in individual choice. I'm in this because I believe that this is the only moral answer to people who struggle with pain, who struggle with disease, who struggle with loss of mind. I think it's the only moral answer is to allow them to end that life and to make it easy for them to do it. To make it easy for them to do it. Now people come and say, oh, it's a slippery slope. You allow this. And then, you know, we're killing off children who happen to get the flu. Really? I mean, there's very, very, there's no evidence of these laws being used. And Europe now has a long history of using euthanasia. So places like Belgium and Netherlands. There's no evidence of a slippery slope. There's no evidence of these things being kind of misused. Actually, oops, that was a wrong article. Let me just find this. So there's an excellent article which I want to recommend to everybody. It's a writer by the name of Richard Hananya, who I've mentioned in the past. We've talked about a number of his articles. I think two or three of his articles in the past. Richard Hananya. I don't agree with him on a lot of things. But I tend to agree more than I disagree on many of the things that he writes. He comes at things from a, I don't know, a, I don't want to call him, he's not conservative or libertarian. He's not quite a libertarian. But put it this way, I think all of his writing is interesting, even when I disagree with it. He comes at things from a very, you know, from a fact-based reality orientation, which is of course a major compliment from an objectivist to give somebody. He is affiliated with the same center that Greg Salamiere is affiliated with, the Salem Center at the University of Texas. But again, I don't think Richard is not an objectivist and certainly wouldn't call him an objectivist. But he certainly is one of the more rational thinkers out there. And he has something about Canada's euthanasia law. Canada, Canadian euthanasia has more progress in his later sub-stack. A sub-stack I encourage you to sign up to. I think you'll get a lot of value out of it. It's always provocative. It'll always get you thinking. It'll always get you thinking. As Hananya says, as Richard says, you know, Belgium and Netherlands have had permissive assisted suicide laws for two decades. And none of the horrors that people say, you know, that people are going to be killed, people are going to be in spite of their wishes, going to be euthanized, or that this is going to encourage a massive increase in euthanization. I mean, right now with the Canadian government, there's about 10,000. It's grown over the last three years quite a bit, but that's because it's a relatively new law. And when it came into being, it was new. And it turns out that there's a lot more demand for this kind of service. And as people discovered that this was available, a lot more people are using it. I don't see that as a negative. I see there's a positive. I mean, the horrors of people having to live with these kind of diseases in spite of the fact that they would rather die but being forced to live because the legal system won't catch up to it. In the United States, that happens every single day. So in the U.S., you have to travel to Switzerland or you have to go to Oregon. I'm not sure Oregon is allowed to do unless you're a citizen of Oregon, unless you live in Oregon. So in the United States, you're really screwed. And I think the big reason for this is that we are a Christian nation. We are a nation that believes that, you know, it's okay to suffer. Suffering, you know, this comes directly from Christianity. Suffering is a good thing, not a bad thing. And since your life ultimately belongs to God, you'll die when you're supposed to die. Anyway, if you're interested in the topic, I would definitely read this article by Hananya. I think it's excellent. He has a vast discussion, an extensive discussion of this, an extensive critique of the critics of this, of the various arguments against this. People, you know, people almost always use anecdotes in order to combat this. A lot of times the anecdotes are just not true, just false. They just make them up or they misrepresent the facts, not make them up. They misrepresent the fact, which is super sad, because there is no real argument against this. There is no argument against this. And indeed, Hananya makes the case, and I think he's right, that if there is a slippery slope, the slippery slope is towards not allowing euthanasia. I mean, there's a bias in our culture towards trying to prevent people from killing themselves, not encouraging them to do so. There's a bias in our culture, do everything to prevent people from ending their lives and in viewing the idea of ending life as a negative. Now, I think a lot of this is going to change with the baby boomers now, getting to the ages where a lot of them are going to be considering this. A lot of them are going to get really, really sick. A lot of them are not going to want to have to go through some of the horrors of cancer treatment. A lot of them are not going to want to get into the Alzheimer's and all of that. And there's going to be, I think, much more pressure on politicians to prove euthanasia laws. As I get older, I view this as a more and more of an important issue, one that is worth fighting for, and one where I'd like my politicians to be on my side. The sad thing is, of course, this is one of those issues where you're more likely to get support from the left than you are likely to get support from the right. And it's, again, you're torn between, you know, you might be in a position in life where your values have shifted, where what's important to you right now is something that the left is advocating for rather than what the right is advocating for. So it is interesting that given the way our political parties are split, there's horrors on both sides and there's a few sprinkles of good on both sides. And there's nobody you can actually embrace, there's nobody you can actually support full-heartedly at all. All right, so I'm going to leave you with a recommendation. If you're interested in the topic, we've got, I think we've got a couple of questions around this. Armin, thank you, Armin, $100, we really appreciate that. Armin says, seems like an individual right to self-terminate. Yeah, I mean, what does it mean to have an individual right to life if you don't? If that doesn't include the right to decide what you do with your life, what happens to your life, including ending it. There's absolutely an individual right to do that. And therefore there's no right to force the doctor to give you the pill. Doctors should be able to make a choice about this. Doctors should have their own standards. Medical professional organizations could have their own standards for when it was appropriate for a doctor to help somebody commit suicide and when it was not. But today, if a doctor gave me a, I don't know, a sign-out pill or whatever these pills are, they would go to jail. Even if I asked for it, even if I left a letter, even if I consented, even it wouldn't matter. They would lose their license and go to jail. And that's just wrong. And it creates this massive burden on all of us to try to figure out if you're going to end your life how to do it. And it's unfair and wrong. Morally wrong. You know, think about the real suffering. Think about the suffering to the person. Think about also, I mean, think about the suffering to the family members who have to take care of somebody. You know, the children that often have to, you know, put their life on pause to take care of an older parent. Not out of a sense of altruism, but still. Even when it's rational, they want to take care of them. When it's a dead end, when there's nothing, and when it's all about pain and suffering and no dignity and no dignity in life, no values in life, then why? Why not? Not only are you inflicting this horror on yourself, but you're inflicting on your kids, on your spouse and other people who might be caring for you. So I think it's time that the United States passed a law that just made euthanasia legal everywhere, made it relatively easy. I have a lot more trust in the American system to administer this than a Canadian system or a European system where they have socialized medicine. But look, even there with socialized medicine, there's no evidence, no evidence that this is being abused. Again, because I think doctors, doctors are not evil people, doctors are not there to get rid of people. There's always going to be rotten apples, but that's not what they are. And again, the presumption is towards life, not towards increasing death. And of course, if there is a conflict between socialized medicine and euthanasia, then the solution is the same solution as any conflict between freedom and force. And that is get rid of socialized medicine. The evil is the socialized medicine. The evil is not the euthanasia. All right. I mean, yes. So it's an extension of the individual right. It's an extension of the right to life. Hopper Campbell, we have this view of suicide like it's something that must be stopped. If you tell your therapist you want to kill yourself by law, he has to report you. Is this a frozen abstraction? They equate suicide with cancer, something we have to fight and never surrender to? Yeah. I mean, it's again, it's this life isn't really yours. It belongs to God. It belongs to society. It belongs to the state. It belongs to others. And therefore we can pass laws against suicide. Now, I do think that if somebody is committing suicide, you should try to save them the first time, the second time. But then you shouldn't. You should respect their wishes. And to a large extent, because again, there are all kinds of psychological issues that cause people to commit suicide in the moment that they might regret later on. And to the extent that you can intervene and allow them to have that second chance, it's a value. And I wouldn't encourage, I don't think doctors will ever be in a position where there will be therapists and doctors giving out suicide pills to anybody who requests it because they're having a bad day. Or for just simple, pure psychological problems. I think there would be standards. The standards should be done, I think, at the professional organizational level, not at the state level, not at the government level. I just don't think the government should have any say in how I choose to live or how I choose to end my life. So it's not an issue of the government. It shouldn't be illegal. The government's interest, again, I'll repeat this, the government's interest is to make sure it's on murder, to make sure it was done, you know, the full awareness of the person and their voluntary consent or demand, request. And that, you know, so basically that's it. And to the extent that doctors should be restrained, it should be restrained by their own code of ethics and they should be restrained by maybe professional organizational codes of ethics. But the state has no business here. All right. And look, suicide can be a cancer. That is, if you live in a culture in which healthy people are committing suicide, you got to wonder about what the hell's going on. Right? If you live in a culture, so there is a sense in which it is a philosophical cancer, it's a psychological cancer. It is a sign of something really, really unhealthy. Right now in America, suicides are up. Right now in America, death by alcohol and death by drugs is way up. And that is a real indication of a real cultural problem. It's not something you have to pass a lot of stop, like banning alcohol or banning drugs or banning suicide. But it is an indication that something is very, very wrong in our culture. And if our culture is shaped by our ideas, then in our ideas, and if it's motivated by people being depressed and people being psychologically screwed up, then why do we have so many people who are psychologically depressed and psychologically screwed up? Where does that come from? And why is that happening? And that should trigger lots of alarm bells and we should treat it like a philosophical, cultural, ideological cancer and deal with it. It's not like suicide is a sign of a healthy culture. It's only, suicide is a sign of a healthy culture, only in the context of people committing suicide when there is truly objectively no way to live, no way to live because of something that they cannot control. Like cancer, disease, you know, something like that. So it has to be, you know, suicide is justifiable when it's objective. When it's objective that life has no further meaning, purpose, values cannot be achieved. And those are unusual circumstances. Those are not prevalent circumstances. But we live in a culture where people commit suicide on a wide, much wider way and where people commit slow suicide by having a horrible life. What was that line from Shawshank? Get busy living or get busy dying. But there's a lot of people in our culture who are busy dying. And that is the cancer that needs to be dealt with. But that's a question of ideas. That's a question of philosophy. That's a question of what kind of culture we live in. And maybe what kind of music we listen to. Because, God, if I had to listen to some of the music you guys wanted me to suggest. If I had to listen to that all day long, I'd be prone to suicide. All right. Michael, it's $200 question. Wow, thank you, Michael. I'll take this one and then I'll look and see if there are any other related to euthanasia. And then we'll go on to the music. Michael says, we, yesterday's show, lefty parents are egalitarian until it comes to their own kids. Yes. Same goes with defunding the police. Once it affects them, they turn ship. Some of them do. The biggest hypocrite narcissist incapable of the slightest self-reflection. Fortunately, this narcissist can actually buy us time. But remember, that happens, the same thing happens on the right, right? The same thing happens with the Christians. Christianity is one big hypocritical religion, right? Oh, your life belongs to God. Oh, your sacrificial life to God. Oh, you should give up your life and go to Africa and help the poor. How many of them do it? How many of them do it? How many of them want it for their own children? Oh, you know, it's hard for a rich man to get into heaven and a camel to go through and I have a needle. How many of them don't want to be rich? How many of them don't want the kids to be rich? Oh, you should, you know, give everything charity, spend all... I mean, just think about all the... I mean, altruism by definition, left or right doesn't matter, has the result in hypocrisy because it's not doable. Not doable. You can't live it. And most people don't want to live it. They believe they should but they don't want to. That's the guilt. That causes the split within them. Thank you, Michael. That's very generous. Appreciate it. Let's see... Frank says, Recall the scene in Soil and Green when Edward G. Robinson goes to end his life. He was not in pain. He just was fed up with living in a hopeless future. Yes. But there, you don't want a society in which people just encourage to end their life because this future is hopeless. You want a society in which there's a beautiful future. But you can still end your life when circumstances such that you can't enjoy that future. This is somewhat related. Cook says, Do you think the right in America is a ban on the ballot over socialized healthcare? They won't admit it, but yeah, basically. When was the last time you saw a proposal coming out of the right? Even when they were trying to repeal Obamacare, there was no such proposal to actually liberalize, free up the healthcare system in the United States. They want to deal with Obamacare but keep everything else. When was the last time a Republican argued against Medicare and Medicaid? When was the last time a Republican argued against, I don't know, the law that was passed under Reagan that forces emergency rooms to treat everybody who shows up? And you could go on and on and on. The right is given up on that battle. And partially because it never really believed it was always pro-socialized medicine because it has to be because of altruism. It has to be. It's just a matter of they're arguing on the edges. How much? Let's see. Fendt Hopper says, Our culture acts like death is forbidden, cling to life at all costs. Yes. That is sad. All right. Let's see. What do we have? Okay. Music. So I've got a lot of these because it seems like for the new years, you guys loaded up on songs. Some of you did this more than others. I've got it on the one computer. Let me just do something here. I need to send this file to my computer for some reason. My cloud is not syncing these files. It's not good. Let's see. Should have been synced. So we've got a bunch of music. I have listened to all of them, most of them more than once. And I've tried to read the lyrics to most of them. Some of them are more meaningful or more complex than others. But I haven't read all the lyrics. Partially because after a while I just gave up. So I'm going to go over this. As I said before, I'm not an expert of music. I don't know much of the music theory vocabulary. I just don't know it. I don't play an instrument. I don't compose. I'm just a casual listener of music. The only music I have listened to seriously in my adulthood has been classical music. So I've not listened to much popular music and certainly not seriously listened to popular music since I was a teenager, since maybe my early 20s. I have certain tastes in music that might be yours or might not be yours. We might agree or might not agree. I will try to convey what I believe is objective about my views about the music that we'll be talking about. But I can't defend that. I can't tell you what's objective about it because I don't have that vocabulary. To some extent there's a sense in which nobody has that vocabulary. Now some people have more of that and can explain more of it. But there is no yet aesthetic theory, objective aesthetic theory of music. Objectivism has an objective aesthetic theory of literature. It has maybe an inkling of an objective theory of painting and sculpture. Certainly not a worked out theory. Again, it has touches on poetry. It has touched on what am I missing? Movies, theater. No, there's nothing. So if you're an objectiveist, young philosopher interested in aesthetics, what a great time. I mean there's so much to do. There's so much work to be done in terms of trying to come up with real understanding and a real theory of what makes great fill in the blank. Great painting. What makes a great painting? What makes a great sculpture? And of course I think we can learn from existing ideas about aesthetics and certainly from practitioners and people who paint, sculpt and so on. But in terms of the actual theory, we need philosophers of aesthetics and we need these ideas and we don't have them. I don't know of much work being done in any of these realms and of all of them. The one that is most difficult, the one where we know the least, the least is music. And the one thing we know about music is that counter to everything else. Music goes directly to your emotions. It passes through an evaluative state. That's why you get the emotion. But that's all automatized. It does not go through a conscious thought in a painting. You recognize something. There's a conscious recognition of beautiful woman, man kissing a woman, maybe he's going off to war. And then that evokes certain things. You do get kind of the immediacy of color, composition and so on. But even that, the more you analyze the painting, music, there's some of that with the lyrics, of course, because the lyrics are conceptual. But that's why I don't think lyrics are important to music. I don't evaluate music based on lyrics at all. I mean, lyrics usually almost always detract, particularly in modern music. They can add, but they usually detract. I don't find that, I don't find lyrics that important. If music is going to be great, it should just hit me. It should just impact me. I should just feel. One of the reasons I love music in foreign languages is I don't understand the lyrics. I love Brazilian music, Bossa Nova, and it's kind of a jazz. And one of the reasons is I don't understand the music. I'm not sure I'd like it as much if I understood all the lyrics. Now some of them are fun and love songs and beautiful and so on. But I can project my own vision on it. And that's the same often with opera. It's better that you don't understand what they're singing. A lot of it doesn't always make sense. It certainly doesn't make sense in the context of our value system today. What is universal about opera, for example, is not the lyrics which are universal about opera and will survive the test of time in opera. It is the music. It's the emotion. It's the expression. The stories themselves are of their time. They made sense at the time. They had deep meaning at the time, I think. And the more you understand the context of the time, the more meaningful the story becomes to you. But it's of the time. Yeah, I never listen to. You can't listen to opera in English. I mean, it's hard enough to listen to opera in German when it has to be in German. Opera needs to be in Italian, maybe French, sometimes German. German for Wagner. Wagner is a very Germanic opera. All right, so all you're getting is my tastes. Let me say one other thing about popular music. Popular music, which I think is usually mostly, almost all. And certainly I think almost all the music you've asked me to review I think falls into this category. And I know some of you will not agree with this, but this is my view. Popular music is of the time it is made. I don't think anybody's going to listen to 99% of popular music that was written in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s and 20 teens in 100 years. Even today, the amount of music we'd listen to from the 60s is very, very narrow. Few popular songs from the 60s have actually survived. And will survive kind of as a cultural phenomenon. There are few Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan. But much of that music of that era will just disappear over time. And I think that's true of whatever era. And partially because it is very much of the time. You can tell some of the music, two of the songs I had here were from the 80s and as soon as it came on, they were from the 80s. And they're not going to survive. Neither one of those songs will survive very long. They're pleasant. They're nice. But they just don't have that universality of values. So none of this, I don't think, with maybe a couple of exceptions, is great art. The other thing about popular music is that we very much, it's very much associative. That is, a lot of the emotion it evokes are associated with memories of the time you heard the song, usually when you were a teenager. Most of the music we love, popular music, is from when we were teenagers. I think the best popular music, I don't really think this, but I'm going to say it anyway, the best popular music ever written was in the 70s. That's when I experienced it. That's when it was part of the vibe. That's when I remember sitting alone in my room or sitting with friends in my room or going on a date or whatever. It's directly associative or driving in a car and a particular thing happened. And it's directly associative. Again, very difficult to be objective about it because it is so connected. The music so throws you back into that particular place that you were in childhood. And I think I got this idea from Leonard Tepicoff. I can't remember if he presented it to me or I asked him about it and we had the same thought. I can't remember exactly. I mean, Abba is nice and catchy, but it throws you back to those high school days. And it's fun and it's great, but will Abba survive in the late 21st century? Will Abba be a thing? No. Will Beethoven be? Yes. See, Beethoven will always be. As long as human beings are alive, Beethoven will be important. Beethoven will be listened to. Will Abba? No. As much as I like Abba, although I get bored with Abba very quickly, I never get bored with Beethoven. I can listen to Beethoven anywhere, anytime, anything by Beethoven and I get enraptured. I listen to Abba a song, two, three, four, enough. Maybe a week for now, maybe a month for now, maybe a year for now, I'll listen to another three, four songs. And I think that's true of almost all popular music, of all popular music. There's a limit. It only goes so far. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've hit a nerve with Abba, but no, I don't underestimate Abba. I grew up in the Abba area. I didn't particularly like Abba back then because I thought it was shallow and superficial and not very deep and I still think that. I think I appreciated more today than I did back then than it was much more associated with disco or with a particular culture which I didn't particularly like. But I remember, I remember watching on the television when Abba won the Eurovision with Waterloo, the song Waterloo, that's when it first Abba came to consciousness. So I like Abba, but small quantities, small quantities. All right, it's all pop music, that's right. So with that given and all those caveats, oh, let me also say, there's almost nothing I like in music that's been written in the last 20 years. I don't like rap. I barely consider it music. I don't like hip hop. I don't like the ugliness of it. I don't like, I think music is devolved into rhythms and beats and being sophisticated by rhythms and beats and that's all. Melody is out the window, clever melody, complex melodies out the window. I can't stand any rap. I don't care who you present with. You know, Don thinks Kanye is a musical genius. I have my disagreements in music with Don, but it just doesn't make any sense. So the classical music of today is not, of today maybe, but there is no, the classical music of the classical era is still with us and will always be with us as human beings. So I, you know, it's my, you know, call it a bias. Maybe if I'd grown up 30 years later, I would like some of this. I don't know. I don't think so. But I just, I don't like anything about rap. I don't like their attitude. I don't like, I don't like the language and I don't like the lyrics and I certainly don't like the musical aspects, which I think are lacking. There's just very little musical aspects to it. Now I know, again, people think that this stuff is amazing and brilliant and I just don't see it. I don't see it. And that brings me to Ego by Tyler the Creator. I was asked to review the entire album and I listened to it. I listened to it twice. I don't know if I listened to it. I tried to listen to it. I mean, I did. I listened to it. I don't get it. I don't like it. Nothing about it appeals to me. Here and there, there's some nice melodies here and there. There's some voices that are appealing, but usually there's some scratching noise going on in the background that is just irritating. Music should be beautiful in some real sense. Now, I don't know how to define what that means, but there's nothing beautiful about this. It's ugly. It's disjointed. There's other thing about it. It's very disjointed. There's no, it doesn't flow. There's no flow to it. And that's part of this rhythm and beat. It's all about a rhythm and beat and there's no, there's nothing, it doesn't connect. It doesn't coalesce around something whole. I don't understand the lyrics. The lyrics are, I mean, they strike me as mostly infantile. The ego theme is repetitive. Writing around town. They're going to feel this one over and over and over again. Got my, got my, got my, got my eyes open over and over and over again. Uninteresting. And, and, and I'm, you know, and, and what's common to a lot of, of popular music is particularly the, the, the, the, the more, I'd say both, both some of the hip hop and some of the, some of the metal is the anger is the disgust. It's the, it's the, you know, being upset at the world out there. I mean, there might be great poetry in hip hop. I don't know. I'm not an expert on poetry, but looking at ego, the creator, again, I, I don't see it, you know, for real, for real this time, for real, for real this time, for real this time, for real this time, bitch, I cannot fall short for real, for real. I mean, I get it. Writing around your love be shaking me up and it's making my heart break. Sounds pretty cliche to me. I'm with, with a kind of modern language that, as you know, I don't like, but so I, I, I don't get it. Let me see what else that I write about it. I don't like it. I don't see the point in it. It doesn't evoke any emotion in me other than two. Basically, I find it boring and I find it annoying. I mean, it's, it's really annoying. There's a lot of noise. There's no, I mean, again, pieces of melodies floating around and there's nothing beautiful about it. There's no, there's nothing where I can, there's no joy, enjoyment, not about joy, but enjoyment. It's annoying. I'm annoyed by it. And there's a constant beat all the time. It varies somewhat some, and again, some of these songs, it varies more than others. And it's long. It's a, it's a, it's a long album. So I don't know. I don't know. I mean, maybe, maybe, you know, I'm not sure exactly what you're expecting by paying me to review these songs, but I did say I was going to do it. So, so I am. And I know the other thing, I mean, the thing about my audiences, you guys are significantly younger than me, most of you. Most of my audience, well over 50% of my audiences is 25 to 44, with the next largest cohort being 18 to 25. So between 18 to 44, which is quite a bit younger than me, that is, I don't know, 70% of my audience, 80% of my audience. I'm not surprised that you have very different tastes in music than I do. Even when it comes to popular music, we'll get to some of my tastes in popular music later on, because somebody did ask me to review a song I actually like, that I liked even before I was asked to review. All right. The next song was Be Strong and Hit Stuff by Jeff Williams. This is, I guess, from an anime series. It's, you know, it's about being strong in the face of monsters and beating up, you know, and so on. It's got nice lyrics, but it's very dynamic. It's very fast. The female voice is very impressive. There is beauty in that voice. The lyrics are pretty good for a show, you know, given that this is in the context of something like a TV show or a movie or something like that. But there's nothing here musically. I mean, it's got a great beat. It's very fast, very energetic, but it's just monotonous. The whole three and a half minutes or whatever it is, it's just monotonous. There's nothing going on. There's no, nothing interesting. Once it starts, you kind of get into it the first minute and the first 30 seconds you get, yeah, yeah, this is kind of cool. And then it just stays there. And it doesn't go anywhere. And the singing is, and there's no up, down. There's no, it's not interesting. There's nothing interesting about it. It's just flat, very fast, very energizing, but very monotonous. And it's supposed to convey a particular emotion. I get it. It's supposed to convey this excitement about battle and excitement about fighting the bad guys. But it's just, it's just, you can do that in a much more interesting way, I think. I think you can do that in a much more interesting way. I don't know what you're listening to right now. So people are listening to Sunday Music as we're talking about it. All right. I'm curious of people who actually submitted these if they're fighting any value in me reviewing them. All right. Another one that was submitted was Heaven Is a Place on Earth by Belinda Carlile. I mean, this is a 1980 song. I'm not a huge fan of music, of popular music from the 1980s. It's catchy. It's sweet. It's uplifting. A, Heaven Is a Place. I know it's right here. It's right now. Be happy. You can achieve. There's no complexity. There's nothing really interesting going on here. It's an okay song. The lyrics are nice. They're not great. They're nice. Rob is not happy with me, it looks like. It's nothing original. Would I listen to this song more than once? No. I mean, if you came on in the radio, I'd leave it on and sing along with it. But would I literally go out and seek out Heaven Is a Place on Earth to listen to? No. It really does nothing to it other than it's got a catchy song. Do I get the sense of this is heaven here on Earth? No. No. Yeah. I mean, the lyrics are very positive about achievement, about what people can get. It's got a very positive message about life and achievements and do it now. It's right here in front of you. All of that is, you know, really, I agree, really positive. But it's not exactly poetry and it's just not interesting. It's pounding you on the head with this idea, okay, we get it. It's supposed to be all supposed to be happy and jump around and enjoy it, but there's no content. There's no real fundamental, there's no content to this gaiety. And the music is, you know, again, to me, it's about the music. And the music, again, is pleasant. It's nice. I wouldn't turn it off if it came on the radio. Ego, I would turn off. If Ego came on the radio, I'd turn it off, change channels, go to something else. Have it in a place on earth, I'd listen to it. Be strong and hit stuff. I'm not sure I'd listen. Have it in a place on earth, I know the song, I'd sing along and so on. But again, wouldn't seek it out. It's too simplistic. It's too simple. Here's a song that, I don't know, you guys, I don't know how much. You probably don't know it. And it's called, I don't even know how to pronounce it. Baraye, Baraye, it's in Persian. And put aside the political significance of the song. We'll get to that in a second. Just, and don't read the lyrics. Put it on and just listen to it. And my guess is it's going to evoke real emotion. It's going to get you. I mean, I have to say, I tears in my eyes from this song. Now, the lyrics are really, really good. So I would definitely listen to this with lyrics, at least in a second. There's also a version of it by Coldplay where they get a Persian singer to come up and sing it with them, which is really beautiful. Baraye has become the theme song of the Go Revolution in Iran. And it is about the revolution. It's about liberty. It's about fighting for your freedoms. It's about what that means. And this song really hit me. It's again in Persian. It's sung in Persian by a young guy. I think the music is beautiful. And I wish I could play it for you, because that's part of the problem with this, is I have a feeling if I play it, then YouTube won't like it, because it's a violation of copyright. Even though I'm playing something off of YouTube, so it's already on YouTube. But it's Baraye. Look it up. And listen to the original version. And listen, I thought Coldplay did a really good interpretation of it. And I thought they presented it in a, you know, they kind of brought it up in the content, in an emotional, appropriate way in the context of what's going on in Iran right now. So, but, you know, look it up. If I just put Baraye into Google, just doing it now. Yeah, you get the full version with English lyrics by the Servin Hajipur, who is the guy who composed and wrote it. I think he does a phenomenal job. I think the emotion of it, the pain of it, the frustration of it comes across beautifully in the music. It comes across as honest and real and emotional. Part of the problem with the song like Heaven is a Place on Earth, is it doesn't have a reality to it. There's no emotion there. It's superficial, saccharine. It's like a very sweet dessert at the end of the meal. This is a meal. It's not a sad song. It's an inspirational song. But I mean, again, to me, this song brought tears to my eyes. I wasn't even trying, just listening to it. And I would listen to it again. I think it's truly powerful. So I encourage you to check it out. It was written this year. It was written in October by, I don't know if this guy's in Iran. But it was written in October in response to the demonstrations. I guess you can look it up on, let's see what Wikipedia says. It's a song by an Iranian songwriter, written and produced by Hajji Poor. It's called The Power Ballad, inspired by the death of Masha Amini and its aftermath. And, you know, Bariye means four. So I think it's God. I think it's excellent. And it's become the anthem. And I think you can see why. It's got a beautiful melody. It's something you can pick up and sing. A short song, popular music, if it's going to be a song. I mean, that's advantage of Heaven is a Place on Earth. You can pick it up and you can go sing it. This has the same kind of element, but it has deep meaning in it. It has power to it. What they call it, power ballad. I mean, power ballad is exactly right. It's a ballad with real. It gets to you. It gets you emotional. It got me emotional. But that's me, of course. All right, let's move on. There are a lot of these. So you guys are going to be patient with me. I will get to your, I will get to your super chats in a little bit. Should I do them all or should we leave some for another time? Let's get, let's get through all of them. It'll take, the show will be a couple of hours, but so be it. All right, this is a song by Everest. Everlast, sorry, not Everest. Everlast, what it's like, what it's like. Which is a, I guess a song for the last 10 years. It's got, I think the lyrics are quite clever. It has, it's a song basically about empathy, empathy with losers. The song is all about losers. It's very, it's very altruistic in that sense. But it is good in this sense that it's, you know, I think it's consistent. It plays out the theme. It's, you know, I'm not, you shouldn't judge the lyrics by the philosophical values. The lyrics hold together. I kind of like the music. I think it's, it's simple, but it's got a bit of a different sound. It's got a modern sound. And it is a sound that is, maybe it was different when it came out. Now more and more bands have it. I think there's quite a bit of popular music that has this, but I would take this over rap and hip hop and all of that any day. I think this is much more musical, much more interesting, much more engaging. You know, it has a nice, yes, I generally like guitars and this has a really nice guitar. It has this line, walk a mile in her shoe or walk a mile in their shoes, which emphasizes the empathy. I think it's very effective in bringing out that emotion around it. Again, it's got a bad philosophy, but so what? I don't judge music by its philosophy. You know, it's deterministic philosophically. You know where things will end based on where they start or because of where they start. It's this idea if you're born poor, you're going to be poor if you, you know, it's all determined. It's got a nice emotional overtone. It's very simple, I think, musically, ultimately, but it's nice. I would listen to it again. Again, it's not a song I would seek out. It's not something I would want to go back and listen to over and over again, but once in a while hearing this, again, wouldn't turn off the radio if it came on. And I'd sing along and I enjoy. There's something about the sound of it. There's something about the melody that I really like. I like something, you see, even though it's pretty simple and it's not particularly deep. Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z. I don't know, what do you guys want from me? Don't like rap. I don't like this. There's nothing here to like. I mean, there is something here to like. The best part of this song, the best part of Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z is Alicia Keys. Alicia Keys has a great voice. She comes in in the chorus. There's a great part about celebrating New York and how amazing New York is and you can achieve your dreams in New York and New York is amazing. And that's great. And Alicia Keys is a leases. Is that what I'm supposed to... Anyway, and that's great, but the rapping itself, I don't get it. I don't understand what's interesting or interesting about it. If you look at the lyrics, if you look at the lyrics, it's about success in New York, but it's not about the success that I like about New York. It's not about, you know, compare this to New York, New York. Compare it to... And indeed Jay-Z does compare himself to Frank Sinatra in the beginning lines of the song. You know, like Sinatra, he says, New York is where your dreams come true. But compare it to that. There it had substance. This, I didn't feel like it had substance. Half of it was about... I mean, a lot of it was about, I don't know. There were bits of it that were a lot standing on corners or the implications of drug dealings and other things. You can do whatever you want in you. You can achieve anything in New York or what is anything in New York? Become a rap singer. I mean, what is New York to him? Yes, it's kind of an OT in New York. The chorus is magnificent. Anything can be... And it's beautiful. The chorus is beautiful. But that's because of Alicia and because there's a melody there. There's a melody. But the rest of it doesn't do anything to me other than that section. I mean, Sinatra was... I love Sinatra. Sinatra was amazing. You're on popular music. Not from my era because he was long before me. I love Sinatra. I love songs by Copota. I love that pre-1960s popular music is inspiring. What a different sense of life it had. What a completely, completely different sense of life it had. God, I feel like I'm being way too negative with you guys and you paid a lot of money for these. But you asked me what I thought. I don't think popular music in the 1950s. I don't think Sinatra is jazz technically. It's not jazz. It's popular music from the 1950s. And it's good. So hip-hop is not my thing. I don't get it. I don't understand it. And it's barely music in my view. All right, here's another 80s song. Kids in America by Kim Wilde. Again, catchy, sweet, 80s, lots of energy. You know, put on the... If it's on the radio, I'm not turning it off. Am I looking out to go listen to this? No. It's full of energy, catchy, sweet, you know, so benevolent, overall benevolent and fun, but shallow, I think, and not timeless and not one you keep going back to. And it's just a dead end, in my view. It doesn't go anyway. Again, I would put it with the same categories. A lot of other 60s, 80s music. Heaven and the Place on Earth. I mean, these are the kind of songs, yeah, you would listen to once every five years and not miss them. All right, let's see. Hand of Bars by Flavats. Now, this is an interesting, interesting song. It's really horrible, but it's interesting. It's almost all beat and rhythm. Almost all beat and rhythm. But he does interesting things with the beat and rhythm, but very repetitive. I don't know, you know, is it music? To what extent is it music? Is it sophisticated music? I don't think so. The beat and rhythm is interesting. I'll give them that. The theme of it, that I think both the music and the... I don't know if you've ever heard this song, but the lyrics are pretty... This is called Hand of Bars by Flavats. I don't know if I'm mispronouncing that. But the lyrics are truly scary, truly evil. I mean, this is one of the most evil songs I've ever heard from a lyrics perspective. And I think, to a large extent, the music is very well integrated with those lyrics. I mean, to the extent that it's music. I mean, again, the rhyme and the beat and the rhythm, which are matched with the rhyme. Again, maybe this is hip-hop. I guess it's hip-hop. You should listen to this. So it starts out with... And again, so here it's sophisticated. There's a real message that's trying to say something here. And it starts out with, look how wonderful I can write my bicycle without my hands. And look how wonderful I can do this, I can do that, I can do all these things. And it starts out with all these positives. And I can be... I can hold... I'm a successful hip-hop style. I'm this, I'm that. But it becomes wider than just him personally. Now he's talking as man, man as man, we can do... I've done this, I can do this, I can create all these amazing things. And then at some point it takes this turn where it becomes really, really dark. I can control people, I can kill people, I can use drones to shoot people, I can destroy whole civilizations, I can commit genocide, holocaust I think he uses. I can guide a missile with a satellite. I mean, and all of this is one theme. So you start with writing a bicycle without your high-end arms. You go all the way to medical innovations and great technology, music and great technology. And you end with a holocaust. So it's all, this is what human beings can do. And it's... I think it's much more... Fred Harper says, they say it's about different types of people. But it's... I don't think so. I don't think so. An objective reading of it is this is man. This is what man is capable of. He's capable of all these different things. But there's no differentiation. There's almost like because I can be so sophisticated in solving all these problems, I can also destroy it, which is true, right? The same tools that I do here, I use here. But there's no... So it is a kind of a horror story about what man is capable of doing. No, it's not Greta. It's not in that sense. And it does have a certain... I don't know, there's certain appeal to it. It is kind of... It's really dark. It's really dark. It's really got a darkness to it. And it's at the end of the day, hip-hop. So, and Fred Harper correct me if I'm wrong about this being hip-hop. It is hip-hop. So it's a beat, beat, beat, beat. That's all it is. It's a beat thing. And again, I... Ultimately, I find that relatively, relatively boring. Let's see. So I get... I get that as music is deep. It has a deep message. And I think that... I don't know if... But I don't know if the music... If the music is really affirming the lyrics, or here, if I've just been caught up in the lyrics. And maybe what hip-hop is, is mostly lyrics. And it's just an entertaining way of delivering lyrics. It's an entertaining way of delivering poetry. Maybe that's the secret to hip-hop and rap, is that it's not about music. Music is not essential of it. What's essential is the lyrics. It's essentially poetry being delivered by music, and then it should be evaluated by the standards of poetry. I don't think it stands very high in those standards either, but I think that those are probably the standards by which it would be, which apply to this. But again, people that I know, people that I respect, people that I like, like hip-hop. So I'm not making any judgments here. You should ask Don Watkins about these songs. I think you'd get a very different view than mine. All right, then we have a song by the offspring. The kids aren't all right. Superdynamic, energetic, great rhythm, again, great beat, repetitive, all these songs are repetitive. The thing most about popular music that drives me crazy is how repetitive they are. How their beat in the background just is over and over again. And the worst of all music, so-called music is electronic music, boom, boom, boom, boom, which just drives me nuts. Drives me nuts. So the kids aren't all right by offspring. The music's okay. It's very angry. This one is very angry. So one thing I'll give them credit for is you definitely get what they're trying to convey here. You definitely get that they're angry and the music's very effective in doing that. There's a one tone to this. And it's about the lyrics. If you look at the lyrics, the lyrics are about, the kids are not all right. They grew up in this neighborhood and look how horrible they all turned out. Look at all the horrible things that they've done. Look at all the horrible things in which they've become. So it's a very, you know, teen anger. And look, it's interesting, but most rock and particularly heavy metal and particularly what I call angry rock, dark rock, is a product of young people pissed off at the world. A lot of it has a kind of a nihilistic tinge to it. And it's for young people, pissed off at the world, angry at the world, who haven't quite figured out how to manage in the world. And then I think you grow out of it. I mean, the kids aren't all right. Is a song I think you grow out of. It's not a song that lasts. It's a song you will ultimately, that anger, that energy around that anger is an anger of youth and confusion and misunderstanding and not knowing direction and not knowing what to do and not having full control of one's life, not having the ability to fully apply reason in one's life. And that's, look, most rock and roll is driven by that. Most rock and roll is by and for teenagers or people in their early 20s. It's not for consumption or production by older people. Very few rock and roll stars do anything worthwhile after the age of 30. If that are old, that's already old. Paul McCartney might disagree, but Paul McCartney didn't do anything worthwhile after wings. And even wings is questionable how really worthwhile it is and how much it will survive. I mean, the Paul McCartney that will survive is the Paul McCartney of the Beatles. 70s rock and roll is not timeless. I mean, everybody thinks the rock and roll that they grew up with is timeless. It's not timeless. Parts of it are timeless. I'll give you an example of a piece that's timeless in a minute, but very little of it is timeless. And, of course, we won't know it because by the time it's judged not to be timeless, we will not be alive. Elton John is great, but Elton John, a few of his songs will survive. Most of his songs will not. Most of his songs will not. So, same thing with Billy Joel. I mean, you guys listen to Billy Joel, but how many young people listen to Billy Joel? I guess as more young people listen to classical music. All right. Okay, this one, I know you guys have opinions about, and I'm going to get in trouble with Don Watkins around this one, but it is what it is. I don't even know how to pronounce this. Lateralus by tool. Lateralus by tool, which is constructed around some mathematical equations around the Fibonacci number series. And I guess if you listen to the music, you know, and if you know, you can actually track the beats to a certain Fibonacci, and even the way it is sung, there's a certain element of the way the different syllables are pronounced, which also tracks certain Fibonacci patterns. So, I think very powerful, very powerful rhythms. The rhythms are really interesting. Again, they're following this law, but you would know that. You're not supposed to know that in music. So a lot of music is very mathematical, but you shouldn't know that. Here the rhythms are very precise, but interesting, varied. They're not boring in that sense. There's no boring here. It's very angry. This is angry music. At what is it angry? I don't know. I read the lyrics, I don't understand the lyrics. I have no idea what he's talking about. I mean, it's something to do with escaping the boundaries of reason. Here's a line, I'm reaching for the random or whatever will bewilder me. It's breaking out. It's now you could argue that it's because he actually says overthinking over this. You could interpret it, and I'm fine with benevolent interpretation of songs. You could interpret it as he's looking for the different, unusual, the exciting. He doesn't want to be conventional, and that's all fine. But there's real anger here. And there's no beauty here. There's anger and frustration at the world and what's possible and reaching for the random and whatever will bewilder me. I'm not sure he's finding it. I'm not sure he's achieving it. And he's angry at the world for not being delivered to it. It is, again, rhythms are powerful. This is not music you can ignore, turn away from, but it's not music I would want to listen to. It's too angry. It's not just dark. We'll talk about dark in a minute. It's angry dark. It's furious dark, and there's nothing enjoyable about it. There's nothing beautiful about it. There's nothing interesting I don't find about it. I'm sure you can spend a lot of time figuring out the lyrics, but Beethoven is not heavy metal. God, give me a break, guys. Listen to some Beethoven's piano sonatas or Beethoven's, I don't know, second movement of his third symphony. You tell me, you find me, anything is beautiful in heavy metal. Maybe there's the drive and the struggle and the combat, but there's nothing of the beauty. There's nothing of the resolution and there's nothing of the explicit struggle and look, there is certainly a benevolence in Beethoven. I'm not trying to whitewash Beethoven. There's certainly a benevolent universe in Beethoven. I don't think in everything in Beethoven, certainly in some of his music and elements of the third, certainly in the fifth, but God, it's so much more sophisticated, so much more moving, so much more beautiful, so much more interesting. I mean, you can listen to Beethoven's third symphony over and over and over and over again and discover new things in it, and I never get bored with Beethoven. Again, I said that already. Yeah, Rand considered Beethoven malevolent. She was right. She is malevolent. So what? All right, I'm going to end this with two songs that you guys asked me to review from one of my favorites from the 70s. You know, I call this popular music. It's not really popular, but it is. And those two songs by Pink Floyd. So I think Frank wanted me to review Pink Floyd's Money. And this is not one of my favorite songs. I don't particularly like it. It's a little too repetitive. The lyrics are, you know, materialistic and silly and cliche. There's nothing really interesting about it. It's really dark. Both the lyrics and the music ultimately is dark. There's a great riff in the middle. There's a really nice pickup of the melody. I think it's a wind instruments. I'm not sure which wind instruments and a guitar overlay over that. That's Pink Floyd at its best when they get into those really beautiful melodies that they can play and that they're willing to engage in and make it orchestral almost and really do something dramatic and big. You know, it's exciting. I think Pink Floyd is one of those bands, one of those 1970s that will survive because I think the music is complex enough that you can get things out of it over the years that are different. I don't know that that's true. It might be just my bias. I don't know that that is right. But there's real beauty here. There's real beauty, which you can't say for a lot of music. There's this really beautiful, the midsection of the song, while most of it is not interesting and repetitive and the lyrics are not that good. The mid-song, which just instrumental is really beautiful. It's really beautiful. All right. Finally, one of my favorite all-time popular, in quotes, songs is Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. Now, I think this is a song that is truly beautiful. It has a beautiful melody. It's a sad song. It's a song about longing. And I don't think it's longing for a person, even though that's what they say and that's what comes out of it. I don't think it's longing for a person. I'll tell you in a minute what it's longing for. But there's definitely, you get the longing from the music. That is, even if not a word was said, even if the song was not called Wish You Were Here, that wishing you were here would be in the music. Is it in the music? Almost anybody I think who listened to that melody, listened to that guitar, I mean the best part of it is the acoustic guitar comes in. And that just rips me apart every time. And what you get is a longing. And it's, again, I don't think it's a longing for a person. I think it's a longing for idealism. I think this is a very cynical song. It's a song about giving up on idealism. It's a song about compromise. It's a song about, you know, was it lead role in a cage rather than a walk-on part in a war representing something worth fighting for? You've given up a lead role. You've given up a walk-on role in a war for a lead role in a cage. It's a song about the idealism of youth. And the giving up of the idealism of youth and the compromise that involves. And it's not a song that says you should be idealistic now. It's a song that just misses that. I wish you were here. Without thinking you can get it back. This is why it's dark, ultimately. It's a sad song. It's not a happy song. But it is truly beautiful. Yeah, I mean, did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? I mean, that is beautiful poetry. Not done in anger with in the background, which is most heavy metal. But done with a beautiful longing, you know, melody that just is ripping your heart out. Did they, I mean, what a tragedy that they got you to trade your heroes for ghosts? Did you trade your trees for hot ashes? Hot air for cool breeze? I mean, it's, the music is so, and there's no anger here. There truly is sadness and longing. You know, so I'm a big Pink Floyd fan. I particularly like this album, wish you were here. I love Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Again, partially because it's longing for somebody who shines like a crazy diamond. It's got a certain element of longing for a hero. It's got some of the most beautiful music and guitar riffs, I think, anyway. I think so does wish you were here again. The acoustic guitar work, the acoustic guitar coming in with the background, just beautiful, just beautiful. And then, you know, all of them. Animals is a good album, you know, and I even like The Wall. And The Wall is, of course, much darker and much more, well, maybe not darker, but it's more angry. But I relate to it partially because I lived through the British educational system in my youth, so I know a little bit about kind of the meat grinder that it is. So, I mean, but that's a very much, you know, kind of almost the anarchist song that you tear down the system. It's a teenage album written for teenagers. All right, I think I did it. I think I got through all of them. All right, if I somehow missed a song that you asked me to do and you send money for, or if I didn't address a certain aspect of the song that you would like me to address, right, then let me know. I mean, Rob says The Wall is a horror story about what Pink Floyd is, and yes, but the differences that Pink Floyd combined the horror of what they're trying to project, the darkness, certainly. I don't know about the horror, but the darkness, with beauty. They conveyed an emotionally powerful means and certainly with beauty. Not all, not everything. Again, I think what you hear is exceptional in terms of an album that is beautiful. But with real beauty, and I don't think many other rock groups have managed to have that combination, they are too angry. They're too angry. They don't have the aesthetic. They don't have the melodies. They've given up on melody. And what fits an aesthetic of anger? A beat and noise. Beat and noise. I agree they presented it as unterrible. It's dark. You know, dark side of the mood. The music is dark. I'm not trying to whitewash them, right? They are dark. They are malevolent. So to a large extent, it's Beethoven. And I'm not comparing them because Beethoven is Beethoven. He sits on a different rung of heaven than Pink Floyd way down there, Beethoven way up there. But still, you know, of modern music, of the music post 1960, this is some of my favorites. Yeah, somebody can pay me to do a Queen's song, but you know, that would be fun. All right, I've covered everything. So yes, if I missed somebody's song, let me know if I missed an element or if you wanted me to do it differently. Let me know, cover different aspects. I can revisit some of these. All right, let's do your super chats quickly because it's already gone an hour and a half. But thank you, the super chats have gone fantastically well. We've achieved that goal and more. So I really, really appreciate that from you guys. All right, I think I saw some big dollar ones down here. All right, we've got Liam for $100. He says, when your parents disapproved of your career choices, did they ever make you doubt yourself? You never doubted yourself because of others. Where does this wanting to make your old man proud come from? It is so ingrained in most people like altruism. It never, no, I don't think it ever made me doubt myself. It made me a little sad that they weren't happy with my career choices, but it never made me doubt my career choices. My dad wanted me to be a doctor. He did not want me to be an engineer. And then I don't think they ever wanted really me to be in finance, although they never really expressed them as giveings. The only real time they expressed misgivings was when, other than not being a doctor, was when I became the CEO of the Iron Man Institute. They never got that. They never understood my passion for Iron Man. And it was a bit of an embarrassment for them. Iron Man was this, you know, something bad and I was running the thing and it was weird for them. They never got over it, but it never made me doubt it. I never questioned that. And I never knew, I never knew exactly what I wanted to do. So it wasn't like I knew I wanted to be an engineer. I knew I wanted to do this until I got the job at the Institute. I never really knew, but I never, you know, there's a sense in which you want to please your parents, but a rational sense in which you want them to see that they did a good job. So it's not about pleasing them in a second-handed way, that you need to please them in order to gain self-esteem. It's more in a, you're thankful to them, they raised you. You want to convey to them and you want them to have the feeling that they were successful, that there's some success there, that they did well, that you reflect well on, you know, how well they raised you, I guess. So that's a sense you want them to be pleased for their own happiness, for themselves. You want them to be pleased more than anything else, because, you know, assuming you love them and you care about them. But it's not in a second-handed way as, you know, I need the approval because otherwise I'm not good enough. I don't think I ever really had that, you know, and I was disappointed when they didn't like what I did, but not in a sense that made me about myself, but made me disappointed in them. And then happy in them, with them and in them, when they were happy with the choices I made. Michael says, the reason I get angry at people, I've explained to projectivism too, who are smart enough to get it and reject it, is because I know they are what's holding humanity back. I could be living in paradise right now if it weren't for these unserious thinkers. I mean, I get it, but at the end of the day, it's what we're going to have to go through. There's just no shortcuts. And getting angry at them won't bring it about any faster. All right, we've got a bunch of $20 questions, and then we'll go to the $5 and $10 questions, and a lot of them will try to do this quickly. Michael says, will the coming American authoritarianism involve gulags, or will it be more mild, imposing restrictions on euthanasia, sexual expression, or massive increases in incarceration for victimless crimes and vulgar speech? I mean, I think it will be more mild. I think, you know, I would think that it would be more mild. I think there will be restrictions on euthanasia, sexual expression, there'll be restrictions on free speech, and there'll be significant incarceration, there'll be political incarceration, but I don't expect gulags and mass slaughter. I don't think the American people would ultimately tolerate that, even the evolved American people who accept an authoritarian regime. James says, do you think most psychologists on the level and universe like Jordan Peterson, they just help you to bear the suffering and misery of life? Does therapy make a lot of people worse in the state of philosophy today? I don't know enough therapists to come to a conclusion about that. I've noticed that a lot of therapists are people who are dealing with psychological problems themselves. I don't know if that means they're malevolent, but then, of course, they are good therapists. I know of some. I've interviewed some on this program. So I think they are good therapists. They're benevolent, objective therapists. And by the way, being an objective doesn't give it to you that you're going to be a good therapist. Does therapy make a lot of people worse? I don't know. I just don't know. I don't think it makes a lot of people better, but there's also, you know, there is the School of Cognitive Therapy that is supposed to be better and that is probably having an impact, not as much as it could if it was completely guided by a rational philosophy, but better. So I wouldn't give up on therapy and psychology completely. Liam says, is being arrogant necessarily bad? You can say Ayn Rand was arrogant, but I would say justifiably so. Why shouldn't we be arrogant if we're honest and right and have accomplished profound things? So yes, I mean, I don't know. I'd have to look up exactly what the definition of arrogant is, but to the extent, maybe there's a difference between arrogant and boastful. It depends why you're arrogant. If you're arrogant because, as just a matter of fact, look, I'm good at what I do, or if you're arrogant in order to get a response from people or in order to hide certain insecurities, which I think a lot of people are. So it really depends on what's motivating the arrogance and in what context it's being done and is it becoming boastfulness rather than, you know, rather than I like confidence. And I think somebody who's confident, the arrogance is implicit, but they never come across as, I'm the best in the world at this. They don't have to say it because you know it from their demeanor and from their expertise and from how they present themselves. So that is my view of that. Although I'd have to look at the exact definition to see the difference between the different words. Yeah, I mean, Asim Taleb's arrogance is horrible. It's to put other people down. It's to put you in your place. It's to emphasize how fantastic you are and by application how stupid you are. That's a very different arrogance than the kind of confidence and self-assuredness that an Ayn Rand exhibits. Ayn Rand never said I'm the greatest philosophy on earth. She'd be horrified by saying something like that. She might say in some way, I think I'm the best philosophy in the world today, but would she say in history, would she say I'm a genius, I'm a millennial type genius? No, I will say that about her. But she would never say that about herself. Would Taleb, yes. So Ayn Rand thought too highly of other people generally. And she didn't really grasp how different she was from everybody else. I don't think of Ayn Rand as arrogant. I don't use that word to describe her. And Somer says, the best opera in French is Notre Dame de Paris. Composed by who? Go just lyrics and great theme. Great original language. Have you tried brass bands? I'm not a big fan of brass bands. I mean, it's fun, but I can't return to it again. It's something that I can listen to in small quantities. The instrumentation is gorgeous. It's why I started playing soprano cornet. Oh, soprano cornet is beautiful. Very lyrical, yes. Very lyrical, cornet. I mean, a lot of the wood instruments are just beautiful. The wind instruments, not wood instruments. Wind instruments are beautiful. Yeah, I mean the clarinet, I mean the clarinet piece and Vosjeck's, what do you call it, for the New World Symphony? God, that is so beautiful. The clarinet solo. But, yep. Hopper Campbell. I think you should reach out to Destiny for debate. I think I have already. You get a lot of new subs when you debate with Vosje. Whenever you engage with moderate leftists, with big audiences like Dave Rubin and Vosje, your audience grows. I agree. I just need to find a way to facilitate that debate. I'll work on it when I have some time. Problem is, I'm swamped. So, I mean, the best is, if other people approach a third party or approach Destiny who invites me, that would be the easiest way to do it. And that's how we've had the debates in the past. I didn't organize them. They were organized by others. So, you could approach this, a number of debating groups like Online that run websites for debate and ask them to organize a debate between me and Destiny. Fender Hopper says, I really appreciate you reviewing songs, my selfish interest in sharing songs. I like with more people. I always just hope that as a secondary consequence, you find art you might like. Determine to find one you really enjoy. Thank you, Fender Hopper. I really, really appreciate that. Fender Hopper says, commonality between pro-wrestling country music and NASCAR, it's easy to follow while you are drunk. I think that's probably true. Great for a client of shade, light beer, drinking types who are never not sober, tune in and get an update, then zone out again. Makes sense, yes. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's theater. And country music is very superficial, very emotional, good guys, bad guys, you know, some of it. I mean, I often like country music. Sometimes, you know, once a year, I'll do on one of my road trips, I'll listen to country music. I can enjoy it, but it's a certain type of enjoyment that you can't have very often. Okay, Michael says, how are people able to suppress truths like objectives are so long? I don't know, Michael. Michael always returns to the same things. Why don't people get it? They're good at evading. Liam says, is there a network of energy that flows through all living things? No, I don't think so. I mean, I don't know what a network of energy means. But there's something that is consciousness that we don't completely understand. But I don't think there's energy that all living things have in common. Even an amoeba, I mean, there's something about consciousness, but amoebas aren't conscious, but they're alive. So is there something about life? Is life a form of some way energy? I don't think so, but I don't know enough. I mean, who knows? I mean, it strikes me as wrong, but I don't know. Dr. Pie, can you share the name of all the songs you've viewed in this video description? Yes, I'll try to do that. I think somebody goes, yes, I'll try to do that. J.J. Jigby's, we put our dog down recently, but before they initiated the process, they essentially interrogated us to make sure it was justified. Imagine it was a person. Exactly. I mean, people are generally oriented towards life. They aren't nasty people. They are evil people out there. But that's still a minority. James Taylor, do you think intellectuals have a tendency to be more second-handed than blue-collar people? Why is this? Oh, God. I mean, in some way, yes, in some way, no. In some way, I'm not convinced that blue-collar people are super-independent, certainly not when it comes to their ideas. Maybe they're independent in their job. Maybe they're independent in aspects of their life. But when it comes to ideas, they're very easily influenced by television, by their friends, by somebody charismatic. Intellectuals are second-handed because their job, partially their jobs relate to other people, so they get a false sense of self-esteem from being second-handed, from peasing to the masses and peeling to the masses, getting that feedback. But yes, I think at the end of the day, intellectuals are probably more because they're dealing with ideas and there's so few people who are original thinkers in ideas. It's hard to be an original thinker in an idea. It's so easy just to absorb the ideas around you and then just iterate that I think it probably... The whole professional life is focused on something that they're not really original thinkers in. Michael says, you say reason and IQ aren't the same thing, but aren't they closely related? No, they're not. I mean, again, unless you're talking about an IQ so low that they can't even... they're not conceptual. But no, I mean, all reason is the means by which we know reality and it's a faculty of knowing and integrating reality, the facts. And you can do that at almost any level of IQ at whatever level you can do it. At whatever level you can do it. All human beings except for the completely mentally retarded have the capacity to reason. They might not have the capacity to understand Einstein's laws of physics, but that's more related to intelligence, but they have the capacity to use their senses to understand whatever aspects of reality are relevant to their survival and survive. So, yeah, I think that's... I don't think the two are the same thing. Mary Benz, it's so great to listen to you seven-plus episodes a week. Eight, actually. Wish I could donate more, but I have a kid. I understand completely. I appreciate the support. Thank you. Jason says, if I'm in pain, you're okay with me valuing euthanasia. I want to live fully and risk dying, walking a highway across the Twin Towers or swimming with crocodiles. It is not a good value, explain. Well, because if you're in pain, you can't fully live. So, if you're in pain, euthanasia is a means by which to end that pain because the pain is eliminating any possibility of you attaining your value. Walking on a highway across the Twin Towers is risking death for nothing, for no real value, for a whim, for no life-enhancing value. There's nothing enhanced about life other than your knowledge that you did it. It's this massive risk or swimming with crocodiles, for what? It's completely whim, and there's no rational reason for it. There are lots of paths to achieve success in life that do not involve risking at a high probability. I'm not talking about every risk, but risking at a high probability, death. Now, again, if you're a professional what do you call it, professional, wire walker, and this is the thing that you do, yeah, it could be, you can imagine a context in which that makes sense. If you grew up with crocodiles and you understand crocodiles and you're risking swimming across a river with crocodiles is no big deal because of all your friends and you're an expert at walking on a highway so the probability of you actually falling is very, very low. If the risk is very low, then what's the big deal? But if it's really risky, why are you doing it? Stunt artists need to make sure that they're not risking death and do whatever they can and practice and make themselves really, really good at what they do so they minimize the risks involved. But it's a profession. But it's not risk for the sake of taking risk. And it's not the same as using death or death being a means to end something that is too awful to bear. Hopper Campbell, are we 100% Tabloirasa? Don't you think most women, one children are genetic urge or is this entirely cultural? We're not entirely Tabloirasa. If you don't, well, it depends what you mean by Tabloirasa. What I learned in meetings by Tabloirasa is we're born void of ideas. That doesn't mean we're not void of potential certain inclinations. And how do we explain the fact that some women don't want children? Their genes are screwed up? I doubt that. Women want children because most men want children. Most men want children. Most human beings want children. Most women want children, I think, because they have the capacity to do it. Women maybe want children more than men because they have the capacity to nurture something inside of them. There's this amazing, phenomenal ability that is to create a child. Have it in your belly and carry it. It's just an amazing thing, a beautiful thing, and they want to experience it. We as men will never know that experience, but that experience of having a living being inside of you, that's special. So we're not born Tabloirasa in a sense of non-ideas. We certainly have inclinations, temperaments, and other things that, you know, I don't have a clear definition of exactly what they are, but that make us different from one another from the moment of birth. It's not that the brain is empty. It's that it's empty of ideas. Ideas have to be built from experience, from evidence, from the senses. All right, Adam. What is the high level view of empathy not as an altruistic way by objectivism? Are there any irons, papers, or other resources that address this topic? As far as I know, there are not. At least none that I remember when she talks about empathy. I think empathy is a tool for bringing context to a situation. I think Leonard might talk about this somewhere, but I think it's part of that establishing context. Well, what must it be like to be in that person's shoes? I don't think that's a completely empty thing. I think that has some meaning and value in the context of judging somebody, judging their actions, judging your approach to them. What do you think about them? Tom says, thank you, Ron, for stating the impotence of the right, still waiting for the GOP to wrap up the departments. Yes, I mean, we've been waiting for a long, long time to get rid of the Department of Energy and Education, and we could add a few to those. We don't have to limit ourselves to that. Okay, I need to speed it up here. We have two hours. I have to go to dinner. Is it not sexist when people say Einwand wasn't pretty? No one talks about how handsome Einstein was. They just recognized a brilliant work he produced. Do we still live in a sexist times? Yeah, but we approach women and men differently, and one could argue about whether that is right and just or not. But we do... I just say for my own personal thing. When I look at men, I don't... No way in my consciousness is are they pretty or not. When I look at a woman, it does... That is a factor. Not a factor for my decision-making, but a factor that it's an identification I make. I make an identification about certain aspects of women that I don't do with men. So we approach women and men differently based on the fact that we are women and men. I don't think that's... I don't know what sexist exactly means. Do we treat the sexist differently? Yes, I treat sexist differently. I don't treat men and women the same. I don't think I ever have, and I don't think I ever will. I'm much more likely to open a door for a woman than for a man. I mean, there are lots of things I'm much more likely to do or not do. Men versus women. Michael says, I find it harder and harder to have sympathy for those who are alleged. Don't get the objective. Objectivism, since I got it so quickly, this isn't calculus. It's much harder than calculus, Michael. Much harder. Whoops, I skipped that one. James says, we either make ourselves miserable or make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same. Get busy living or get busy dying. Same thing. Valdrin, I never cultivated a taste for classical music. It's about time then. It's about time you will not regret spending the effort in doing it. Valdrin, do you like the song Falling by Alicia Keys? I don't know. I'd have to look it up. But I like Alicia Keys' voice. She has an amazing, tremendous voice to the extent that she uses it fully in that song. I mean, it's one of the things I don't like about popular music is the range of the human voice that they use, the capacity for the human voice to express emotion is like this through music. Like that. And popular music uses this range, most of it. And that I think is unfortunate if you listen to Schubert's song, which is short, three minutes, like a popular music. The range of emotion that he can bring out in the singing, whether it's a man or a woman, is stunning versus what popular music tends to be, not always tends to be, but very mono, very one, like one beat, one rhythm, one thing. All right, Apollo. The Ecstasy of Gold by Ennio Marciano, The Good, The Bad and Like The Yeah. Ennio Marciano, I don't know how to pronounce it. Beautiful music. I really like his spaghetti music. Spaghetti westerns, the music is better than the movies. Michael says, have you ever met anyone you believe is better and a better overall thinker, integrator than yourself? Yes. For a lot of things, Lena Peacoff. I mean, Lena Peacoff was a better thinker than me, better answer of Q&As than me on a lot of topics, on a lot of topics. Certainly anything philosophical, but also a lot of applied topics in life. And certainly Ayn Rand was. I mean, I didn't meet Ayn Rand, so Lena Peacoff actually met. On Calgate, I mean, there are a lot of people out there who are very, very good at thinking and integrating. Michael, the West seems to be more accepting of wealth and success than it was in the 60s as this Rand's influence. I think it is. I think to the extent that that's true, I think it is. Frank says, what is your dad, Dr. Brook, stand on euthanasia? I don't know. I'd be surprised if he wasn't for it. I'd be surprised if he wasn't for it, but I don't know. I've never talked to him about it. We need a tour of your book collection. Yeah, maybe. I mean, most of my book collection now is on an iPad. So I don't know how much that I'll give you. All right, it's been a long afternoon. All right, guys, thank you. It's been a profitable afternoon. I appreciate that. I appreciate the support. Thanks for letting you review some of your music. I hope you weren't disappointed by my reviews. Let me know if you were. And yeah, I mean, if you like me talking about music, then keep the money, you know, keep the super chats flowing. I'm just, I just want you to realize my limitations. And I want to be objective about what I know and what I don't know, what my limitations are. And as long as we're fine on that, I'm happy to review more music in the future. All right, everybody. Thank you. Really, really appreciate it. I will see you all tomorrow. No, well, no, tomorrow is my day off. It's the only day of the week I actually take off. So tomorrow is my day off. So I will see you on Monday morning, Monday morning. We do eight shows a week. Eight a week. I don't know how they kind of snuck up on me that I'm doing eight shows a week. That's more than one a week on average. All right, one a day on average. I'm going to have dinner with my wife and I will talk to you all Monday morning. Bye, everybody. Have a great week.