 How do you think cultural change is going to come about? I don't think in my lifetime I'm going to see an abjectorist America or an abjectorist Ukraine or a capitalist Brazil. I just don't think it is possible. I think politics is politics, which is what we say, what we mean, I guess, by a free country, right, a political system that is free, is very much downstream to use, I guess, Steven Bannon's terminology, from ideas. Ideas set the course of a culture. The culture dictates the politics. We're still way down at the ideas level. We're still battling it out to try to get our ideas heard. Never mind our ideas to have influence. The reality is that the battle we are fighting or the war we're fighting, the struggle we're engaged in, is not a struggle for the next year, for the next five years, for the next 20 years. This is a struggle that is going to continue over the next 100 years. First, you got to get a hearing. Iron Man's got somewhat of a hearing, but it's still small. The numbers are still tiny. Then, you've got to get people to take it seriously and to actually live it and to speak it and to advocate for it and to argue for it. There are very, very few people like that. I mean, I have, I don't know, almost 40,000 followers on Facebook. I'd say most of them are not objectivists. So I don't know how many objectivists there are in the world. People really committed to the ideas of Ayn Rand who are advocating for them, speaking about them, living them. I think there are very few at the end of the day, maybe tens of thousands, nowhere near enough to change the culture. If you really think about how you transmit ideas into a culture, then the culture transmits them into politics. The key to the whole transmission belt is intellectuals. It's intellectuals speaking, writing, teaching, engaged in the cultural debate and what is going on in the culture, engaged with young people, changing the way people talk about the world, talk about, in our case, morality, talk about reason, talk about capitalism. It's intellectuals on a daily, regular basis, speaking, teaching, writing, speaking, teaching, writing. And you need hundreds of them, maybe thousands of them to actually have an impact. I mean, this is what the left did. This is what the environmentalists did. This is what religion does in a sense with all its priests and its preachers and its interpreters of the holy whatever. Every intellectual movement, every movement of ideas requires hundreds if not thousands of intellectuals. So we are still at the, we are still at the infancy of an objectivist movement. We're still in an infancy of trying to change the world, of trying to bring about real cultural and therefore political change. And this cannot and will not happen in the next 10, 20, 30 years. We're talking about time frames that are far greater than that. So, Stephen, I will get to your question. I have it now and I'll get to it. I'll get to it in a minute. Let me finish this line first, this line of thought. Thank you, Stephen, for contributing $5. So where are we today? Today we're getting the word out there. We're trying to get as many people to read the books as possible. And we're trying to train future intellectuals. We're trying to then create a platform for those intellectuals to be able to write, to speak, to teach, to engage with the culture. So that one day as we build this platform, as we build a number of people, build a number of intellectuals, we one day have hundreds, maybe thousands of such intellectuals, and we dominate the intellectual landscape and basically take over. And at that point, you get less of a capitalism because once you take over the intellectual high ground, it's easy. It's easy. So my goal, if you were right now, in my goal, my ultimate goal is to change the culture, but I'm not going to see that. So that that's the long term goal. But how do I get there? How do I get there? I basically see the ultimate, the most important thing I can do right now is to find the future intellectuals who will change the world, who will actually do the work necessary to bring about that change, the dozens, hundreds, and one day thousands of those intellectuals. And I don't see why that has to happen in the United States. The fact is, how do you find them? Well, step one, you need to get them to read the books. They can read the book anyway, anywhere on the planet. There are a billion people on the planet. I don't know where the next great intellectual and objectivism is going to come from. I don't know where the next Leonard Peacock is going to come from. I want eight billion people to be reading Iron Man, because then a tiny fraction of them will take the idea seriously. And a tiny fraction of those who take the idea seriously will be ambitious in terms of wanting to become intellectuals. I mean, other people will be ambitious in other gods, but in terms of really wanting to become intellectuals. So we're talking about a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the population who actually want to become intellectuals, who actually want to try to have an impact on the world out there, who actually want to study these ideas seriously, study the philosophy in depth. Not everybody does. Not everybody has to. Most of you don't have to. You study the philosophy enough so that it helps you live your life as well as you can live it. You don't need to know it as in depth as a teacher would have to know. But what we need right now are teachers. What we need right now are writers. What we need right now are speakers. So the first step is to go wide, is to get as many people to read the books as possible. And then, and then those who are committed to really studying in depth and potentially becoming intellectuals. Provide them with the tools to make that possible. Very hard to study this philosophy alone. Very hard to study this philosophy by yourself, although much easier today than it was 30 years ago. Because now you have objectives on the philosophy of Iron Man by Leonard Peacock, a book that systematically prevents it. But who do you ask questions if you're not sure? Who do you ask for advice? Who do you, you know, who do you go up against in terms of challenging, challenging your own knowledge of the philosophy? So we need, we need to teach. We need to embrace those people who are indeed dedicated to studying these ideas. We need to embrace them and to help them and teach them, provide them with a place in which they can really study these ideas. And the Iron Man Institute does that, whether it's through Iron Man campus where you can take all of Leonard Peacock's courses, not only read OPA, but then read his commentary on OPA or study his commentary on OPA, which is on campus, other many other courses he provides. And then the most serious students, the ones who really want to be intellectuals long term, enroll in the OIC and they become, they become students. But there are all kinds of steps in between. Somebody might read Atlas Shrug and kind of get it. But by coming to one of my talks, might be inspired to go deeper and might be inspired one day to become an intellectual. Or by coming to my talk, might find out that there's such a thing as a path to becoming intellectual and what the important role of an intellectual in history is. So I see my job as really getting the word out there and motivating those who've already read Iron Man who take our ideas seriously to engage more deeply if they have any ambition to become intellectuals. And for the rest of you who don't want to become intellectual, my goal is to provide you with a fuel, to provide you with what I, you know, with my knowledge, my understanding of objectivism so that can improve your life so it can just help you live better because I think the more objectivist out there living good lives, the more objectivist out there advocating for good ideas, even non-intellectuals, the greater the chance of finding more people, the greater the chance of increasing our size, the greater the chance that you will do a credible job in getting other people to read Iron Man, getting other people to engage with these ideas. And for those people, again, I hope to find future intellectuals. Now, why is any of this got to do with traveling overseas? Well, there are potential intellectuals everywhere. While the United States is probably the country most likely to change, it is not the country most likely to produce a future objectivist intellectual. 350 million people versus the almost eight billion outside of it. If you look at the intellectuals and objectivism, many of them came from outside the United States, whether it's Ayn Rand herself, of course, in Russia, Leonard Peacock from Canada, Ankar Gates from Canada, John Ritt Path was from Canada, I was from Israel, Elan Junos from Israel, Keith Lockach at the Institute is from Canada. We have others who come from Europe. There is no reason to assume that the future objectivist intellectuals are going to be a Brad Thompson, who I think is on Facebook watching us right now, is Canadian, right? I outed you, Brad, sorry. There is absolutely no reason to assume that the future intellectuals, the futures changes of the world, the future writers, speakers, teachers are going to be Americans. They could be from anywhere. And the goal should be to engage with as many people around the world in a world today. It might not have made sense 20 years ago, because what would you have done with them? So they read Ayn Rand, but how do they engage in studying the philosophy in depth? How do they engage in going deeper? How do they engage in training up to becoming an intellectual? 20 years ago, that would have been a problem. They would have literally had to immigrate to the United States, because that was the only place where you could go to school in objectivism. That's what I did, not because I wanted to go to school in objectivism, but I wanted to move to the U.S. And once I did, I did go to school in objectivism. I think the motivation today to move to the United States is a lot lower for most people. More of the world is free today. More of the world is rich today. More of the world is doing well today. And America is in decline. America is in decline politically, culturally, and economically. And there's less of an incentive to move to the U.S. It's just harder to move to the U.S. today, particularly with Donald Trump. It's just hard to get a visa. I've talked to a number of people here about coming to O-Con, about participating in some of our events, and they say it's almost impossible to get a tourist visa from Ukraine. You know, those Ukrainian suicide bombers, we need to protect ourselves from them. It's become very difficult to come to the U.S. But you don't have to. To be trained as an objectivist intellectual today, you can be trained online. Campus is available everywhere in the world at a cost of zero to 8 billion people. 8 billion people. If I can get 8 billion people to take campus, to read OPA, to read INRAND, we win. And it doesn't matter where the people are. What matters is they're smart. What matters is they're motivated. What matters is they're honest. What matters is the thinkers. They're independent thinkers. That's what I'm looking for. And the United States has no monopoly over independent thinkers. We need a global search for independent thinkers, for objectivist who live the philosophy, and for objectivist intellectuals who can help change the world. So my view is the INRAND Institute is a global enterprise. I'm not CEO anymore, so I speak for myself only when I say this, although it was a decision of the board last summer to view ourselves as such. I think it's important that the INRAND Institute sees itself as a global institution. I certainly see myself as if you will. And I know this sounds globalist, because you're on, you're globalist. I know, in some ways I am. I'm quite happy traveling around the world. I'm quite happy going to other countries. I'm quite happy engaging with other people. I see the same intelligent eyes. I see the same curiosity. I see the same passion for truth and for egoism, for life, for a thirst, for life and for happiness. I see that thirst in Asia. I see that thirst in Europe. I see it in Eastern Europe. I see it in Latin America. I see it everywhere that I go. There's nothing exclusive about America. So in that sense, when I come to Ukraine, I'm not coming to Ukraine to try to change Ukrainian society. I mean, hopefully that'll be a byproduct of my coming here, the discussions about capitalism and free markets and morality of self-interest filtered through the culture. And ultimately, there will be some change to the good, but I'm not expecting that. I don't know if you know this. I think I've mentioned it in the past, but in Ukraine, AtlusShark came out in three volumes. It is available in the supermarkets here. It is so popular that it's available in the supermarkets. It was the best-selling book in 2015 or 2016 when the volume came out. It is doing very, very well in terms of sales here in Ukraine. So indeed, if I looked at the world and said which countries are moving in the right direction, which countries are moving in the wrong direction, America would be a country that I would say is definitely moving in the wrong direction. And a lot of other countries in the world are moving in the right direction. They're starting from way behind us, but they're moving in the right direction. Now, is that move sustainable all the way to lazific capitalism? No, not in the near future. It's not. I know that. I'm realistic, but that's not my goal. My goal to come to Ukraine is not to change Ukraine into objective society. My goal to come to Ukraine is to find those Ukrainians that are excited about Iran, excited about objectivism, excited about the philosophy that want to study it more in depth. I want to motivate them. I want to encourage them. And ultimately, I'd like some of them one day to become intellectuals. And maybe they'll be intellectuals here in Ukraine, or maybe they'll move to the United States. Who knows? Who cares? Because the fact is, it doesn't matter where you are as an intellectual anymore either. Because of the web, you can communicate with anybody, anytime, anywhere in the world. You can teach classes, you can lecture. It doesn't matter where you're based. So again, I still think, although my confidence in this is waning, that cultural change will happen in America. But it's not going to happen anytime soon. And by the time, in the time frame we're looking at 30, 40 years, is America still going to be the freest, best country in the world for cultural change? I don't know. Not if it continues on the path it's on today. So I'm looking for talent. My mission when I travel around the world is to expose as many people as possible to the ideas of Iran, to get them to read her books. And after that, to find the real talent, or to encourage the real talent to go study her ideas. And 40 percent today, 40 percent today, of the students in the Objectives Academic Center are foreigners, are non-Americans. I do not know, but I'll have to get the data, what percentage of the people who use in campus are foreigners, but my guess is it's quite high. English is becoming a second language to almost everybody around the world. So language is slowly and over the next couple of decades is a barrier that is going to disappear. Now it's true. We need politicians to stop and burn, implementing laws to oppress us. I'm not going to be able to achieve that. I've spoken to politicians. They're not interested. They don't give a damn about what I have to say, what you have to say. You're not going to influence the politics of America. You're not going to influence in the short run the politics of any place. And it's more likely, by the way, that I can influence the politics in Georgia than I can influence the policy in the politics in the US. Georgia has a population of three and a half million. United States has a population of 350 million. It might be that the Georgians land up being freer than Americans and maybe the next line of peak office in Georgia. I don't know. And neither does anybody else. And we've got to give it a try. And we've got to go everywhere where they are thinking people. All right. So if anybody has a question on that, I'll take some questions on YouTube or Facebook. I will say this. I mean, there's a lot of exciting things going on around the world. A lot of poor countries are becoming less poor. There's also a lot of depressing things going on around the world. So I was in Hungary. And Hungary is a very depressing place. Hungary is becoming authoritarian. I could say a lot about Hungary, about Orban, and maybe I will in a little bit. But Hungary is a very, very depressing place. And it's not going anywhere. Belgrade, while there's a lot of energy, and there's a lot of people interested in Iran, there's a, you know, there's a John Galt school in the Balkans, which is run by one woman who is an OEC student who goes around the Balkans and puts together seminars and objectivism in Montenegro and Macedonia and Kosovo and Belgrade. And people are passionate and interested in objectivist ideas because of that. But in spite of that, the place is pretty depressing because it's corrupt and it's still fairly poor. And Ukraine, Ukraine might be heading in a slightly better direction. It seems to be heading in that direction, but it's slow. It's painful. It's still poor. It's incredibly corrupt. It's incredibly depressing. You know, people are great. There's a lot of passion. More people here reading Iran than anywhere else. Georgia is much better. Georgia is much more exciting. Georgia is much freer. And Georgia is definitely heading in a good direction. Although, again, the politics is messy. The politics is absolutely messy. Politics is the last thing that matters. What matters is philosophy. Philosophy dictates the culture and the culture determines the politics. We're still at the level of philosophy. Forget politics. We can talk about Donald Trump or the politicians all day long. And I do a lot to illustrate certain philosophical points. And not because I'm changing anybody's votes. And even if I did change votes, so few people listen that it doesn't change an election. So again, philosophy changes culture, changes politics. And philosophy can be done anywhere. And philosophy done anywhere can change your culture anyway. So we are now living in an internet world. And it's a different world. It's an interconnected world. It's to use Thomas Friedman's terminology. It's a flat world. It's a world where you can go anywhere, where you can communicate with anyone. Everything is easy. And unless people like Trump and Auburn start building barriers and fences and walls. You know, I think the world generally is going to have a bright future because I see a lot of really bright people working really hard to make the world a better place. Not because they, you know, to make their lives better and by definition, making the world a better place. And I see a lot of goodness. Hey, hi, Stannis from from Australia. And yeah, we've got we've got a lot of people listening who probably don't usually listen because we're in a bit of a weird time time frame. So I'm very positive about the long term future. I'm very positive about the growth of objectivism. I see growth everywhere I go. And but but again, objectivism is a global movement. The Edmund Institute is a global institution. I am a global person. I will travel the world to find to find fellow objectivists to motivate them to inspire them and to try to identify the future intellectuals who will change the world.