 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual lives. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to the Iran Book Show on this, what is it, it's Tuesday, Tuesday evening. Everybody's having a fantastic week, having a good time. We've got some, let's see, we're going to talk about, I've got a surprise for you with regard to Atlas Shrugged and a guest, we're going to talk about cancelling Russia. Seems like everybody's cancelling Russia, they're closing McDonald's in Starbucks, I don't know how the Russians will live without McDonald's in Starbucks. And of course, we've got sanctions on Russia, so there is the question of, well, why doesn't the US drill more, the energy companies are now coming in to attack for not drilling enough, for not supplying enough oil to replace the Russian oil, so we'll talk about that as well. Some more, you know, and I'll also give you, in the context of cancelling Russia, some updates from my perspective on what is going on right now in Ukraine and in Russia, a lot of going on in Russia itself. I remind everybody that we have the super chat going, Catherine Mendes is here. We have our usual target of $600 for the show. You know, there aren't going to be a lot of shows in March, or at least not full length shows, or at least not shows in hours that you guys would expect them, because the shows starting next week are going to be from various locations in Europe. I'll be giving you firsthand account of what's going on in Europe. While I travel through there, there'll be shows from Europe, all kinds of parts of Western Europe. We'll be doing shows from Israel, we'll be doing shows from, you know, from the UK. So there's going to be a lot of shows overseas, a lot of those are going to be shorter shows, a lot of those are going to be weird hours. So if you plan to use the super chat to ask me anything, or to just support the show this month, well, today and Thursday are about it in terms of your opportunities to do so. So don't miss the opportunity, you can use the super chats right there below you to do it. And of course you can support the show on a monthly basis at youronbrookshow.com. So I support Patreon, subscribe, stop. And, oh, and don't forget to become, what is it, members? Don't forget to join the Iran Book Show on YouTube. There's a button below join. You can press that and become, and we'll put up exclusive videos up there over time for you guys. So, all right, so let's get going. I have with me today, I have with me, Ann Chigalilla, who is the Artistic Director of Austin Shakespeare and your cameras off. I don't know if you noticed that, there you go. I think it's coming on. Yes, there we go. There's Ann, hi Ann. It's great to see you. Ann and I have known each other for a long time, long, it's kind of scary, long. We met on a bus going to, my first objective is conference in 1987. And then we met again when Ann moved to Austin, Austin, Texas. She's the Artistic Director of Augustus Shakespeare. She's also a acting coach and a playwright. I still remember Madame Axe, which I loved that play. That was fascinating. John Singer, Sergeant Painting that a lot of people know, yeah. Which is hanging here in my condo. Oh, is it? Not the original, not the original. I post a rabbit, but the original is not here. I wish that would be cool. So Ann, we've got, you're putting on an exciting event. I think it's in like 10 days, it's on the 19th. Yeah, yeah. So tell us a little bit about this. Well, you know, AIRI, the Einran Institute, has a special group of donors to get these perks. And this is a perk that is not gonna be only for donors, but it's going to be for anyone who would like to come so everybody can get a little taste of the special events that go on for donors. So these are gonna be some scenes by professional actors from Atlas Shrugged. One scene has never been performed before because it's by Einran. And she wrote the teleplay. She wanted to do a mini-series, you probably know that. But so that's a brand new one. Others, Shoshana Milgram has adapted from the novel. So some of them are Frisco and Reardon, Ellis Wyatt appears, Richard Haley appears, but there will be four scenes. And then one of the features is the actors will chat a little bit about the scenes, but then the folks who attend the audience will go into breakout rooms. So that's a feature that donors, getting you get to meet other donors and so on. So it's sort of a virtual experience, but it is a lot of fun. So that's Saturday, March 19th, one o'clock Eastern time. And that's what I'm really here to pitch. That's great. And it's open to everybody, right? It's open to everybody. So you don't have to be a donor, it's open to everyone. And I wanna encourage folks who are donors, they might wanna ask friends. I think that actually helps when somebody else says, you know, this is something really interesting. You might wanna come and see it. So we hope that we'll have a nice audience for that. And where can they get the link? Where can they get the information about it? So go to the INRAN Institute page and there is a link there for the events. Just the website, Facebook. And it's also on Facebook. I got it today. Yeah, I got it today on Facebook. So and you've done this before. So we did, you've done with the living and of course you've staged in a theater anthem. Yes, I was very excited. So tell us a little bit about those productions. Yeah. Well, We The Living as you know is INRAN's really novel after anthem about her experience in Russia and what a time to read that novel now. So we did wonderful scenes from that. We had a Russian actress, a young actress, a playing Kira who is just a tremendous spirit. The actor and the character. And we also did a full production of anthem off Broadway with Jeff Bridding's adaptation and a lot of his music and so on. It's great. And we actually are going to be with you all at Ocon this year. Yeah, what are you doing in Ocon? So Ocon actually is gonna be live performance of scenes from The Fountainhead. So we're really excited about that. We'll be on Saturday, July 2nd and that's gonna be an interesting experience for us to all be together. When you read the novel, it's you and the novel. And it's true it's you and your imagination in the novel but when you're in a room with people there's nothing like experiencing something together. Absolutely. It's a beauty and excitement of live theater. There's nothing quite like it. So this on the 19th, it's gonna be on Zoom or on some platform like that. Who are the actors and shape of the plot? Well, some of the actors you've seen some people who came to the last Ocon, we did Mo Navana. And two of those actors, the hero, Redarito and the husband Guido are both gonna be in it. And the guy who played the old father is also in it but we have a new Dagny. So we'll see her at this. And we also had an Ocon a couple of years ago we did Cyrano, which was great fun, great fun to sword fighting in the whole bit. But we're looking forward to help everybody comes in July to DC, you might hold your nose at DC if you're working there, but if you're just a tourist I mean the museums are wonderful. It's a beautiful, beautiful city. So I know I'm envious of you your own going to London. Yeah, so though I'm gonna have zero time to do anything fun this time, other than being in London. But you're there, you're there, you're there. Exactly. You may find a restaurant. I don't know if I have time to go to restaurants. I've got the list, but it's, you know cause I've got a talk every single evening and some afternoons I've got talks at schools. So we'll see maybe some lunches, but this is gonna be a trip where I'm hustling nonstop. So. Well, that's great. That's great. I'm envious of all the people who are going and lots of Austin people are going. Some people who've never been abroad. Yeah, I know. It's gonna be a lot of fun. So that's exciting. Yeah, hopefully some of you will come to Ironman Con in Austin. Ocon, the objectives conferences in London, in, sorry, Washington DC is at the end of June over the Fourth of July weekend, which will, Fourth of July in Washington DC will be a lot of fun. We'll forget about all the current residents of Washington DC and we'll remember the founding fathers and the first presidents and we'll focus on them in celebration. So this is, so what's it gonna be like seeing a reading of Alice Shrug on kind of Zoom? Right? What's that kind of experience like? We have a special program that sort of neutralize, you're not gonna see people's living rooms. So it'll neutralize some of that. We'll have some music to introduce you. And the truth is it's amazing how your brain can go there right away. So we're excited to, you know, and obviously we all have our own images of Francisco and all those people, but it's interesting to see somebody's interpretation of it and what you think of them and so on. So we're excited. We don't have vaults this time, no gold. And you're not gonna do the whole of gold speech. You can think of that in your own mind. There you go. But hopefully it'll inspire people to look at the book again. You know, it's such a really a treasure trove in there. I just enjoy, like you said, I enjoy just seeing how the actors interpret the parts and then how they interact among each other, how they kind of feed off of each other. That is always fun. I'm particularly looking forward to any scenes with Francisco and Reardon in them. Those should be fun. Or with, of course, any scenes with Dagny and then we're gonna be great. So, you know, it's terrific. So this is on the 19th, it's at 1 p.m. Eastern time. Yes. 1 p.m. Eastern time. You can find the link on the Ironman Institute website, on the Ironman Institute Facebook page. I will go find them later and I will put them in the description. I'll be great. So those of you listening later can find it below and join us at the Institute on the 19th of this month. Yeah. And I look forward to becoming a member. I didn't know about this new feature of YouTube. I'm gonna become a member. I always see your show. Excellent. Thanks, Anne. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. And look, and everybody, you know, this is gonna be exciting. So definitely, you know, go show up and participate in this exciting event. It really is fun to see Ironman's characters come to life in front of you. Again, we use our imaginations when we read the book for that, but to get it like that on a screen in front of us is truly a unique experience. All right, so I will probably be in Israel. I'll be actually be in Israel when it happens. We'll see if I can log on, but if not, I'll try to watch it later on. All right, I see the Super Chat is already rolling. We're getting some questions. That's good. You know, more $20 questions would be good, but this is great. Thank you, Sabine, for the support. Thank you, Jeffrey. I didn't know this was one of your favorite shirts. Thank you. Let's see, next time I come to a restaurant, I'll have to come with a completely new shirt so we can see what you think of it. Let's see. All right, and thank you, Johnny, for becoming a member of the Iran Book Show and going on it. All right, so I can take these off now. Let's talk about what's going on quickly in Ukraine, in the war there. I mean, overall, really not a lot. Russia seems to be stuck. Forces are not really advancing. The Ukrainians are holding them back. It's still true that Russia has overwhelming force over the Ukrainians. Catherine is saying I should wear tuxedo. I've worn a tuxedo exactly once in my life, once. I was best man at a wedding. I wore a tuxedo. My goal, one of my minor goals for the rest of my life is to never have to wear a tuxedo again. Anyway, you know, Russia, as I predicted, or I don't think it took much to predict this, is becoming more and more desperate. As part of that desperation, they're targeting more and more civilians and becoming more and more aggressive while for the most part staying put, standing in place. So, you know, this is gonna be a long war. As I've said many times, Putin, Putin can't afford to lose it. He can't afford to appear to lose it. He can't really retreat. He's in many ways, he's got nowhere to go. And, you know, he's just gonna stick it out. The only way this war ends early, the only way this war ends quickly is if somebody overthrows Putin in Russia and withdraws the troops, but Putin will not withdraw troops, so this is gonna go on. We also heard today that Poland is going to give the United States all its airplanes, MiG-29s that they have from when they were a Warsaw-packed members. These are Russian MiG-29s. They're gonna give them all to the United States. They're gonna fly to Germany, to the US base in Germany. The US is gonna replace them with used F-16s. At least that's the story, right, that we're getting. The US will give Poland F-16s, and then the US will give the MiG-29s to the Ukrainians. And the reason it has to be all this complicated is because Poland doesn't wanna give the planes directly to the Ukrainians, because they're worried that the Russians will view that as an act of war, but somehow they think that if they give it to the United States and the United States, it gives it to the Ukrainians. It won't be an act of war. God help us with regard to how people think about these things, but so it looks like the Ukrainians will get some new, well, used, old MiG-29s. Poland is also urging, I think it's Bulgaria and Romania to do the same thing with their MiG-29 airplanes. So Ukraine gets more airplanes. You know, that has gotta improve their chances, at least of holding the Russians increasing their casualties and continuing to do it. Alex says, the US has declined the offer. And given that he heard that on CNN, it must be true. We'll wait and see. I mean, again, fog of war, there's a lot going on. Maybe the US did decline the offer, who knows? But this is not cash for clunkers too. This is war planes for no cash. Nobody gets cash here. This is just America aiding Ukrainians. So we'll see if anything comes of this proposal. As Alex says, it looks like the US has turned it down, wouldn't it surprise me that the cowards in the US government have turned it down? It is a cowardly bunch at the White House and the Defense Department. Jeremy says, US is turning down the offer of MiGs, all right? Again, I don't get all these games. My guess is that Russia probably called somebody in the US and said, if you accept these MiGs, it'll be an act of war and we'll be pissed off at you. And we're cowards and we just backed down. That's probably what happened. That's probably what is going on. Jeremy, thank you for that. Thank you for pointing out that with a super chat amounts associated with it. You see, you can ask questions even for $2. It's great. Or make comments. But, you know, we'll talk about the Biden today, basically prohibiting the importation of oil and gas from Russia. We'll talk about that in a minute. But sanctions are increasing. The UK has increased sanction. The Europeans are talking about increasing sanctions. They're not quite ready to stop importing natural gas. My guess is they won't do that until winter is over. But they might do that once winter is over and they can assume that they can replenish their stockpiles of natural gas with LNG shipments from all kinds of places around the world. The Europeans are searching for natural gas. They've talked to the Israelis, the Egyptians. They've talked to the Zabazhanis. They've talked to the United States of America. So they are doing what they can to search out and to try to find sources of natural gas so that they can tell the Russians to go to hell in terms of their natural gas reserves. But for now, you know, these sanctions are about as stringent as we've seen on any country. You know, I don't know how I feel about sanctions. I'm not a big fan of sanctions. I've said this before. I think you, I think in bar going a country, which means zero contact, zero interaction. It means it also would mean no diplomatic relations. I think it's much more effective. Sanctions are like that's half asked. I mean, are you allowed to trade with them? Are you not allowed to trade with them? Who's allowed to trade with them? Under what circumstances? It's sanctions are mostly a great revenue system source for lawyers. Lawyers make a lot of money because of sanctions. So, you know, as if they don't make a lot of money off of everything else, of every law and every little regulation and everything that the government does. Now they also make a bunch of, you know, a bunch of money off of sanctions because they do. In my business, you know, for reasons I won't go into I had to talk to a lawyer last night, spend a lot of time and a lot of money on a lawyer last night to get advice that related to these sanctions. So, you know, government sanctions, you know, I mean, I like the idea of tanking the Russian economy. I like the idea of making them suffer the consequences of what they're doing. You know, I wish I was in a position to be able to assess whether, you know, Europe going to war against Ukraine, what that would actually do and how Putin would respond. I think you'd need a lot of intelligence. I mean, not intelligence, IQ. I mean, intelligence about Russia, about the forces, about the nuclear arsenal, about the tactical nukes, about Putin's mental state and all of that, which I don't have. But obviously that's what should be happening is the, you know, the Europeans have a strong incentive to stop Putin. It could be that these sanctions work. They've never worked in the past in terms of replacing a regime, but they will make Russia poorer. They will make Putin less liked by the Russian people. It will put pressure on Putin and his cronies in Russia. How much, whether they'll have any impact, really, really hard to tell. We'll just have to wait and see exactly how this works out and what exactly happens. But one thing I found really, really interesting and this kind of suggests, you know, the role of voluntary association and the importance of voluntary association and the importance of voluntary action and private action. What I'm seeing right now is a large number of businesses stopping dealings with Russia. And I think they're doing it not because they're being somehow caused by government, but I think they're doing it for two reasons. I think there's some pressure on them from domestic consumers and from consumers in Europe. There's some pressure on them probably from shareholders. And there's some moral outrage among CEOs, among board members of what is going on in Ukraine. And that moral outrage is being reflected in the fact that, for example, today McDonald's, McDonald's, Hamburgers has closed 850 stores in Russia. 850 stores in Russia are closed indefinitely. Now that means a lot of people have lost their jobs in Russia. It means real economic pain in Russia. It means a hit to the bottom line of McDonald's and it's proof that companies don't always pursue just the short-term bottom line, but they do have an incentive to care where they are doing business. Now, will this affect how they deal with China? I think this is a great signal to China that if they invade Taiwan, Kentucky Fried Chicken might leave China and the Chinese would tolerate almost anything except Kentucky Fried Chicken leaving the country. You've never seen so many Kentucky Fried Chickens in your life as you will see in China when you travel around China. So it is interesting to see that these stores are canceling, Starbucks is shutting down all its stores in Russia, Pepsi. China is the third largest market in the world for Pepsi, which just proves that there's something wrong with Russia because Coca-Cola is so much better than Pepsi always has been, I think always will be. And yet, you know, and Pepsi is big in Russia. So Pepsi in spite of the fact that this is their third largest market is leaving Russia. Let's see, who else? Coca-Cola is leaving Russia. You know, we know that MasterCard, Visa and American Express have all left Russia. I don't drink Coca-Cola. I don't drink Pepsi. I haven't drank a Coke since 2004, 3, 4, something like that, right? So it's been a long time since I drank Coca-Cola. I still kind of miss it, I have to admit. But every time I taste a little bit, it's like I can't drink this, but I miss it. That first sip of a really, really, really, really, really, really cold Coke is amazing. Used to be amazing anyway. No diet, no zero, no sodas. I don't drink any soda. I drink basically, I have three drinks that I drink, four really, four drinks. I drink water a lot, you know, right there. I drink coffee a lot. I drink wine, not so much. A glass of wine with dinner. And I drink fruit juices sometimes, not regularly because it's not good for you, too much sugar, but like really fresh fruit juices, usually with, you know, with ginger and other healthy stuff in it. And bats blood, that's right Apollosus, and definitely bats blood because that keeps you young and rigorous and vigorous and healthy. So absolutely. Yes, I mean, I definitely think there are a number of objective schisms going to happen over drink preferences. Absolutely no question with that. No cocoa sugar. I can't stand artificial sweeteners. There's only one thing worse than sugar and that's artificial sweeteners. I don't, I try to avoid artificial sweeteners in everything at all costs. So if something is going to sweet my drink, it should be a fruit or something like that, something real, but no, none of these. I just don't like the taste, I don't. Anyway, how do we get onto what I drink as a topic? Yes, we're talking about cancelling Russia and Pepsi and Coca-Cola cancelling Russia. I think this is terrific. I think it's, you know, is not selling anything to Russia. You know, it really is. Of course, Russia has already banned Twitter and Facebook from the country. So they are centering the American social media companies. They're centering everything else as well. So I think it's terrific to see the private sector stand up and say, there are some people we will not do business with. And there's no requirement politically. And I don't think there's anything in the back channels where politicians are calling up McDonald's and saying, we're going to regulate you unless you do this and this with Russia. I think this is just long-term, rational, selfish decision-making by American corporations to not deal with this motorist regime. So I am all on board with that. Nathan asked just because it's right on this topic. In your last show, you said that the Russian people are being misled by the government. Yes. What are the people being told about all these businesses withdrawing the services? What do people know? You know, I don't know, but my guess is that it will, you know, the truth, in spite of propaganda, in spite of censorship, the truth does get through at least in pieces. They could be told, this is a vast Western conspiracy against Russia. That will be the propaganda line that all these Western countries are anti-Russian and they are being forced by the anti-Russian governments to leave Russia. That I think would be the standard line that the propagandist would sell the Russian people whether the Russian people buy out or not. I mean, it's fascinating. I mean, you're seeing people, obviously demonstrating in the streets, they know what's going on. Those are usually young and they're typically middle class. You're seeing people leaving Russia. I saw a story about people, middle class professionals, leaving Russia and going overseas and trying to find jobs overseas because they don't want to be involved in Russia. I mean, I've long advocated that the United States should say, any Russian who wants to come and work in the United States, you're invited. I wonder how many people would stay of the 144 million who live in Russia right now. But a lot of people would leave. But that would be good. So many Russians know what's going on. They find ways, they use VPNs, they do what they need in order to find accurate information. But the common person, the person is not sophisticated technologically, all the people in Russia, the more nationalist oriented, the ones who are just going to believe what the government tells them, just like some people just believe what Donald Trump says without questioning, without thinking. Those are, you know, and some people who believe everything Obama said without questioning, without thinking. I don't think anybody believes what Biden says without questioning, without thinking. I just don't think he has that kind of fan base. But Obama suddenly did and Trump certainly did. Yeah, express VPN, that's right. This is a good lead-in to the fact that express VPN. Ooh, where is the express, I don't have the express VPN link below. But if you want to use a VPN, if you're in Russia, or anyway, and you want to use a VPN, we should use a VPN, you should use express VPN, which sponsors the show. And if you do expressvpn.com slash Iran, you will get an extra three months free when you sign up to use express VPN. So I use express VPN when I travel, I use it when I do my finances. I use it when I want to, you know, access the United States or, you know, my bank or something and them thinking I'm coming in from the United States. Maybe I even do use it to watch some basketball because you can't watch it overseas. But if you use a express VPN, you can, again, you can pretend you're dialing in from the US and then you can watch the basketball. I'll definitely be watching basketball in March because of, because the Celtics are playing really well these days. But yes, express VPN is a sponsor of this show. So thank you, who was it? Somebody here reminded me of that and that connection. But anyway, so a lot of Russians do know what are going on. Nathan asks, are the planes Ukraine is getting superior inferior to those of the Russians? Now again, it might very well be that the Ukrainians are not getting these planes. So the question is, are the MiG-29s inferior superior? I mean, many of them are the same as the MiG-29s that Russia has. So Russia has and flies MiG-29s, but Russia also flies more advanced airplanes. Some of the SU airplanes are more advanced. I don't know if the Polish MiG-29s have the latest technology that the Russians installed in their planes. So they're not necessarily better than the planes the Russians have. They're just planes and just having a presence in the air gives you a lot of options. Having an air force gives you a lot of options. And a lot of the Ukrainian airplanes will be shot down. Some of them will be crippled on the ground. And getting some new airplanes would be a huge boost to the Ukrainian efforts to shockingly defend themselves against Russian aggression. So it definitely would be a real plus. A real plus. Let's see. Okay, quickly before I get to kind of energy and that stuff, let's see if there's anything else. Yeah, Michael says, in my opinion, this war will end up like Bonaparte. In Spain, the Russians will take over, but will be bogged down by Ukrainian guerrillas. I think that's probably true. I think the Russians will, given just overwhelming numbers, occupy at least Eastern Ukraine. I don't think they're gonna go to Lviv. I don't think they're gonna try that. I think they'll try to keep, they'll try to take Kiev, that'll cost them a lot, but they probably will take Kiev. And then I think they'll dominate East of Kiev and South of Kiev and they'll split the country into two. I think they'll leave the Western side alone. And it'll be a tough slog for them because there will be guerrillas, there will be terrorist attacks. It will be very difficult for the Russians. Right now, they're really bogged down in the mud. I told you months ago that I don't understand a war fought in the winter leading into spring. I mean, Ukraine is a disaster during this period and it's not gonna get, the ground will not firm up in Ukraine until probably late May until the rain, the water dries up, everything melts, everything evaporates. It's gonna be May before you have solid ground and then, and the Russians are gonna be hampered. They don't know geography as well as the Ukrainians and it is gonna be very difficult for them. So we'll see. It's also, we'll see if there's, Ukrainian have the leadership to sustain a battle after Kiev is taken. Will their president evacuate to Lviv, which I think ultimately is what he should do to keep the fight alive and to keep command of his forces? Of course, there's always a chance that the Russians won't take Kiev and the Ukrainians will fight them back or hold them steady or make it so painful that the Russians will replace Putin. But those are our long shots. The odds still are that Russia will take Ukraine, will take Kiev and survive. Okay, quickly. Let's see, not that, not that, not that, not that. Is it possible to be an honest million in a place like Russia? It depends what you mean by honest. I think the degree is here because it's such a crony place. But yeah, I think some of the people who made a lot of money early on, whether you can maintain that wealth in Russia without wheeling and dealing with the government or the mafia or something like that, hot to tell. But I don't know, but it would be hard, it would be hard. But I think some people certainly did, certainly millionaires, I don't know about billionaires, but certainly millionaires. A lot were created in Russia and many of them did it, I think the honest way. All right. Let's see, oh, who are your friends' connections in Ukraine and are you in touch with any of them? I am not, I'm in touch through third parties. Some of the friends I had in Ukraine, like the girl who first organized, or organized events for me a long time ago, in Ukraine, she now lives in Milan, but her family is still in Ukraine. I'm occasionally in touch with her. Others, like the people who run think tanks over there who I've met over the years and other people I've met over the years, I am not. I really, I'm not very good at keeping in touch with people. And what I'm in touch with them is through other organizations, like there's an organization in Vienna that was planning to take me to Ukraine and give a talk there in, I was supposed to speak in Kiev on April 28th and they're in touch with the Ukrainians and we're talking through them. So no, I don't have, if I had direct access, I would actually ask one of them to call into the show and actually interview them, but I do not have direct access to anybody there or any of my contacts in Russia, people who've invited me to speak in St. Petersburg and Moscow over the years, it would be interesting to talk to them as well. All right, let's see what other question there, why didn't, okay, we'll get to all those questions later. All right, let's quickly do, because we got a lot of questions and they're still coming in and what are we about, $250, I'd say $250, so we still got $350 to raise today. So it'd be great if you came in with $20 questions. We've got quite a few questions already and so if you can, I mean, I'll take lower denominated questions, I don't wanna exclude those, but if those of you have $20 questions, that'd be great. And of course $20 questions do get priority, particularly if they're on the topic, but even if not. All right, let's talk about finance, energy and war. Finance, energy and war. So Biden today banned the importation of oil and gas from Russia. So Americans cannot buy oil and gas from Russia. Again, I'm skeptical about all these things. I mean, if you're going to have a ban, why don't you ban all goods? Why are you selective? Why don't we just embargo Russia? No goods in, no goods out. You can export, you can import and just shut down trade with Russia. I think that is the right approach if you're going to use trade in this way against what you perceive now as an enemy, then you will bulgo the enemy. It's okay to, I don't know, to trade for Russian dolls, but it's not okay to trade for oil. No, it's not okay to supply money to the enemy and trade is supplying money to the enemy and therefore you shouldn't do it. So really what we should do is have a complete embargo on it. Okay, so Mr. Bogatim, message of hope and optimism for my Ukrainian friend watching the show now. Also the show, keep up the good work, man. Yeah, I mean, I've said this on the previous shows, I'll say it again, if there's somebody from Ukraine listening, I'll definitely say this. Look, Ukrainians are being amazing in this conflict. They are odd guns, they're odd manned. They are not a people that really prepared or have experienced with war. Yeah, they were invaded in 2014, but that went very quickly. There wasn't much of a war there. And Ukraine have done phenomenally well. I don't know if they trained well or prepared well for this. I don't know if it's just their spirit, but they have rallied to the cause and their president has been truly amazing. I've said this before, I think they're the most impressive politician on the planet right now. I can't think of anybody else, even in competition. He is truly amazing. He's rallied his people. He's put pressure on Western governments to help them out. Mostly he's been effective in doing that. And Ukrainians are holding them back, right? Rok Solana says she's in Ukraine, but currently in Georgia. I'm hoping to be in Georgia at the end of April, early May. So I've got scheduled talks on April 30th and May 2nd in Georgia in Tbilisi. So maybe I'll meet you there. That'd be great. And I think the Ukrainian people have really showed up and good for them. They've got, again, they've got less equipment but better equipment. They're using Western equipment rather than Russian equipment, although they're still flying Russian planes and doing quite well there. So overall, I think this is a good step. I think if the Ukrainians, the Ukrainians that are fighting should be proud of what they're doing. They're holding this Russian bear. They're fighting for their own freedom. You know, hopefully if they can win this or hopefully one day when the Russians leave, Ukraine can become more, even more of a free country. I mean, the real upside for Ukraine is to use this as an opportunity to really rethink what it means to be a free country and reinvigorate whatever freedom, liberty movement they have. And whatever the fate coming out of this, they will come out of this whether it's this year, next year, five years, 10 years, 20 years to come out of it stronger and more committed to freedom and liberty than ever before. So hopefully that's part of the lesson they learned and it can become. I mean, as I've told you before, Atlas Shrug was the best selling book in Ukraine in 20, I think it's 2014, 15 or around 2015. I think there are some amazing people there and who knows what the upside is if they're truly free. Look, Solana says Georgia has a pro-Russian government. I know, I know it's super sad, particularly considering where Georgia was 20 years ago, how free it was, how pro-capitalist it was. It was maybe the most pro-capitalist government in the world and that is all gone and lost. And I'll be in Georgia to try to inspire more activism towards capitalism. All right, James asks, what is the long-term impact of private companies punishing Russian citizens because of the war? Do you think it will create resentment of the West? Also, how does this help or hurt China long-term? China buys 20% of oil from Russia, what next? Okay, a few things that I was gonna talk about this in terms of energy, but let's, in terms of the companies, I mean, I think it's a short-term hit to the bottom line. Russia was a market, you know, as I said, Pepsi, it was a third of their market, third largest market they had. It's certainly gonna take a short-term hit. But I think that long-term, these kind of things could prevent China from taking Taiwan because China doesn't want this. They don't want private Western companies to cut them off because China would be devastated if that happened. China has much better understanding of the benefits of trade than do the Russians. And China is looking at this and saying, God, the West is really serious about these sanctions, about limiting trade, about these companies are leaving. We don't want Apple to leave China because we invaded Taiwan or something like that. And you've gotta imagine that Apple today is working through contingency plans of what if they had to leave China? What would happen? I really do think of all the activities these private, what the private companies are doing might be the thing that ultimately motivates the Chinese maybe a little bit to behave more than anything else the US government could do because they don't want to lose touch with these American companies, which are the real source of benefit they get from the West. So the companies will take a short-term hit to the bottom line, long-term who knows because who knows what will happen in Russia? Yes, this will definitely build resentment to the West on the part of the Russians and maybe in the part of some Chinese, but I think China has no options. It's not like they have other brands that can easily replace the Americans. Although in some cases they have replaced them, but in others it will be different. And so they'll take up a financial hit short-term. I think long-term it might be hopeful because other regimes will think twice about doing this kind of stuff and that'll prevent them from getting in these situations. And I think these companies benefit in the goodwill they generate in the Western Europe and in the United States and much of the rest of the world. So I definitely think they gain goodwill and maybe some revenue as a result. I'm much more likely to go in and interact with a company that is, with a company that just took up a stand than with other companies. So let's talk about oil. Use me. Let's talk about oil. So as you know, Biden just make it illegal to import oil or prices are going up because people are worried about shortages or becoming the supply of oil. And therefore prices are going up when you restrict supply or when people expect supply to be restricted, prices go up. I don't know that this action by Biden will actually affect the supply of oil because think about it this way, since Russia doesn't sell its oil to the US. So what does it do? Oil markets are international markets. So that oil will be sold somewhere else. India, for example, has already said that it is willing to buy Russian oil. Now it's gonna be more complicated to get it to India than it is to get it to the United States. India won't, for example, finance the shipping, they won't accept delivery at the ports. In Russia, they'll only accept delivery at the ports in India. China might take more Russian oil, although again, Russian oil is heavy oil. You need particular refineries to deal with it. It's not clear that China can take more Russian oil than it already takes. India, I think, has the refining capacity to take more Russian oil. I've seen countries like Malaysia say that they intend to continue trading with Russia. Potentially they would buy the oil. So because oil markets are international, if the United States stops buying, that doesn't really affect the flow of oil. We get oil from somewhere else. Now, where do we get the heavy oil that Russia provided, that Canada could provide, but we don't have the Keystone Pipeline? Venezuela used to provide, but we're not trading with Venezuela. Well, it turns out that we might be talking to Venezuela. Todd says, the US Open Dialogue with Venezuela, how distasteful do you find that? Very distasteful. I think it's horrible. I don't know if Mexico has the same kind of heavy oil as comes from maybe, I just don't know, but Todd, thank you. That is fantastic. Todd says, my firm unnamed has departed from Russia. I am proud of that decision. Seed motivates employees too. So Todd, just put $200 behind that. So thank you, Todd. That's very, very generous. And that gets us very close to $600 today, which is terrific. What were we talking about? Yes, so Venezuela, I think it's horrible that we're doing that. Venezuela is an evil regime, destructive to its own people. I don't think we should be trading with Venezuela. It's in our hemisphere. We have every interest to replace that regime, but it looks like oil rules and we will be talking to them. James says, what is the impact of getting off of Venezuela? They are an ally of Russia, yes they are. What stops us from getting off from Canada or using more oil in the United States? Canada oil, it's a matter of transportation. We don't have the Keystone Pipeline, so we don't have a pipeline going down south from Canada. We can use trail train cars, but that's a much more expensive, cumbersome, messy way to transport oil. We're probably doing that as we speak. We'll probably import as much oil as we can from Canada through trail, through train cars, I think is the main mechanism. We could go for more oil in the United States. The oil in the United States is a different kind of oil. It's a lighter oil. I just wanted to point this out. So before you get to US oil, which I wanna focus on. So the oil market is an international market. So the Russian oil is going to sell in world markets, but what's interesting is that if you look at Russian crude right now, as compared to American crude or Saudi crude or anybody else's crude, it is selling at a significant discount. And the reason it's selling at a discount is that Russia right now is trying to sell the oil. They'll sell it to anybody who's willing to. So Putin is not benefiting as much from the increase in oil prices as one would expect because he has to sell it at discount for anybody to buy it. Because the Indians are not gonna buy it at market prices like anybody else's oil. They'll only buy it because there's some political risk and some other risks. They'll only buy it at discounts and they'll only buy it, as I said, once it arrives at a port in India. So it's not easy for Russia to deal with this, but it's not like suddenly they can't sell all this oil and their revenue goes to zero. No, they just sell it to other parties and maybe they get a lower price for it, but they're still gonna sell oil. Again, this is the same problem with embargo on oil from Iran. All markets are global markets, as long as somebody will buy the oil, they will sell that oil and India will buy less American oil and buy more Russian oil, less Australian oil and more Russian oil, whatever, but the oil will be sold. Everything that's pumped up demand will be met, in other words, all the demand that's out there will be met. So it's not as Biden said, Biden said, oh, we're hitting them with really hoots. Not really. We're making life a little bit more miserable for them, but this is not some dramatic thing. Revenue for more right now is skyrocketing for Saudi Arabia, for US producers and skyrocketing. So they're making huge profits right now, huge profits. This will be an amazing year for them because they're pumping out oil, they're selling it at the highest prices we've seen in what is it, 14 years, 14 years. Yeah, Saudi, Travis said Saudi Arabia and oil revenue up 150% over a few years ago, absolutely, because prices are up more than 150%. Now, why don't US producers start producing more? Well, first because it's not clear the demand is there. So, you know, producing more would lower prices, but it's not clear how much more demand the world economy has particularly if things slow down in the world economy. But second, drilling all requires a lot of money. It requires financing. It's risky, not every, in spite of how sophisticated our technology is, not every oil rig pays off. American oil companies have a lot of licenses now from the government, but they need funding to drill. And they need to be convinced that if they drill and start producing that production won't be taxed or won't be shut down in a year or two. If they're gonna make an investment today, they need some confidence about the future. And they don't have that confidence. And this is where Biden and the Biden administration is particularly bad. This is one area where the Trump administration was good, not necessarily Trump, but the Trump administration was good. They basically were very pro oil and gas and coal and they allowed them and they gave them confidence that at least while that administration was in power, they would be able to profit off of the oil rigs that they drilled. The Biden administration is doing the opposite. It's regulatory agencies are currently writing new regulations to regulate the oil business. The Federal Reserve is being asked to start regulating financial institutions and the other bank regulators, all the different regulators of financial institutions and then many of them, six, seven different ones. They're all now being asked to consider climate change and how they regulate banks, which is a whole show I will do at some point because this is the dumbest idea in history. And part of this will entail banks not being allowed or limited in how much they can lend money or they can finance oil drilling. So people, I met a guy who's raising capital in order to finance oil drilling to replace the banks, but that is, it's gonna take time. It's more expensive capital. And again, because of ESG, environment, society, environment, no, wait a second, ESG, environment, society governance. This is the leftist way of taking over corporate America. All companies are just not motivated and are not incentivized to drill. They don't know what's gonna happen next year. They don't know what these new regulations are gonna say. And they're basically telling Biden administration, you want us to drill? We'll drill. You have to freeze all new regulations. You have to not promise not to penalize us later for the drilling we're doing right now. And it's real suicide, economic suicide what the Biden administration is doing. But of course, we knew this, they've manned all these agencies with a bunch of nutty environmentalists, managing the energy industries and in finance, if you listen to some of the nominees of the Federal Reserve talking about the systemic risk of climate change and how they're gonna try to get the Fed and financial regulators to reduce climate change risk, the systemic risk involved in finance. It's complete nonsense. And these people don't know what they're talking about and it's an authoritarian takeover of both banks and of, you know, and it's a takeover of our banks as if they're not taking over already. They're already taking over. But and it's a complete anti-oil and gas agenda. And oil and gas companies are saying legitimately, well, we're not interested. What's interesting is we're seeing that a lot of the environmentalist movement, a lot of the anti-oil and gas movement, a lot of the climate change movement in Western Europe and in the United States has been funded by the Russians. It's amazing how much money the Russians are poured into environmentalist groups to try to prevent them from fracking in the UK, fracking in Germany, fracking in Ukraine, fracking in Western Europe where there's a lot of natural gas. And of course in the United States, the Russians have been funding environmentalists heavily in order to discourage the local develop of energy. So they could be the primary, they want Western Europe to be completely dependent on this. So this is again ties in to the whole Russian propaganda thing. They're very good at this, right? Let's see, Jeffy's asking, let's see, it's on topic. So Jeffy's asking, can you summarize what happened with the Keystone pipeline and share any thoughts on it? I don't remember the full history of it, but this is a pipeline that's been discussed for over 10 years now. It's a pipeline that was gonna bring oil down from Canada to I think Louisiana where the refineries that deal with the kind of heavy oil that Canadians produce would refine it, mix it up with some of the light oil that the United States produces and produce primarily things like jet fuel. From the beginning, it had problems, the environmentalists don't like it. They claim because it can leak and cause damage and all this kind of stuff. But of course, the main opposition to it was they don't like oil. So one way to oppose it is to oppose any pipelines, any new infrastructure around it, but generally the environmentalists don't like building stuff, anything. They don't like building, they don't like increased construction of anything, particularly not oil pipelines. But also there were problems from the beginning because in order to build this pipeline, you'd have to use eminent domain or you don't have to, but the government was gonna use substantial eminent domain because a lot of the land between Canada and Louisiana is privately owned. So for example, in North Dakota, they were gonna take the land of some Native Americans and they were gonna put the pipeline in a Native Americans objected. So during the Trump administration, there were demonstrations, there were all kinds of problems in North Dakota around the pipeline. So it was initially approved, I think in the 2000s, then Obama put it on hold, then Trump reinstated it, then it got bugged down with these claims of the Indians. We didn't even get to all the lawsuits down in the rest of the United States around eminent domain. So this pipeline was gonna take years and years and years to build. And of course eminent domain is wrong. So I sympathize with all those people. The pipeline should have bought the land or gone around private land that it had no right to steal people's land or buy the land on the government's terms. They should buy the land on the private owner's terms. So yeah, I mean, the pipeline has been on and off and on and off, but Trump had approved it, but it was going very slowly. And then when Biden came in, one of the first things he did was stop it. Because this was a big issue for the environmentalist. So in order to appease them, he had an executive order stopping it completely. So yeah, I think that's the story of the Keystone pipeline. So it's gonna be interesting to watch oil. Oil is at 135, I think for $135 a barrel, which is again the highest it's been since 2008. Goldman Sachs is predicting oil will go to 185. So you're likely to see gasoline prices go through the roof still. You've of course got inflation, like just inflation just broadly on top of the supply constrained inflationary pressures on oil. So you've got this combination of things, driving up prices. And then you've got all the environmental policies coming out of the Biden administration that are restricting American oil producers from increasing the supply and driving prices down. So St. Louis says, finally, Goldman Sachs is right. You wish, Goldman Sachs is right more often than not. That's why it's Goldman Sachs. That's why it makes so much money. Goldman Sachs is incredibly profitable to a large extent because they are brilliant at what they do. They're very few banks in the world as good as Goldman Sachs. They might be cronies and certainly the CEO of Goldman Sachs is typically also Treasury Secretary a few years later, but they also are really good at what they do. So you get super unbelievably smart people at Goldman Sachs. All right, see, but sanctions, so Alejandro says sanctions of fertilizer lead to higher food costs, yes. Except if fertilizer global market and let's say Russian fertilizer can be sold somewhere else, but the war is gonna lead to higher food prices because remember that Ukraine is a massive exporter of food. So is Russia, exports of food are down. So the supply of food, wheat, for example, is down. This war is going to lead to higher food prices. It's not the sanctions doing it as much as it is the war. So if food price is gonna go up, blame Putin, blame Putin. All right, we're at about $550 for the day. So 50 bucks would make get us to where we need to be. So feel free to jump in there and help us get to the $600 goal. Oh, we could go to 1,000 again, like we did the other day, that would be cool. Given, as I said, given that there not gonna be a lot of shows this month, anything we can do in the shows we have is greatly appreciated. Thursday show just to remind everybody is gonna be on Elon Musk. So if you're interested in my views on Elon Musk, I'll be showing clips of Elon and we'll be talking about his tweets. We'll be talking about him generally. So I'll give you my evaluation of him. We're talking about his sense of life and his philosophy to the extent that we can glean one and his business acumen. So Thursday is Elon Musk, but today another 50 bucks is what we're looking for. All right, let's see things about the war quickly. Why do men have to die in war and feminists do not because feminists are wrong and they just can't fight in a war like men do. So if we're gonna protect civilization, if we're gonna protect freedom, the men are gonna have to do it because in spite of the feminist claim, very few women, they're awesome, but very few women can fight as well as men. Although, I'll say this, I don't know if you've seen the pictures of Ukrainian women with AK-47s around their carrying children or taking the kids off to the train to evacuate them and they're carrying an AK-47 and they're gonna go to the front. I've seen a number of women who've been killed in action. I've seen photos of them on Twitter. It's super sad. Almost all of them are young. Women who are fighting died not as civilians, but died fighting. I've seen a couple of mammoth couples that were fighting together against the Russians who've been killed. So what's going on in Ukraine is truly, truly tragic. So while, yes, you don't expect all women to fight, some women are fighting. And when it comes to fighting for your home, when it comes to fighting for your country, when it comes to protecting the lives of your kids, I don't know, I'd want a woman with a semi-automatic weapon next to me on my side, not on the other side. My wife who I met in the Israeli army was a better shot than I was. So if ever we got into a firefight, you gotta be worried more about my wife than about me. Johnny, thank you. He says, I really get to watch your show live. So here's my small contribution. I really appreciate that. By the way, people who don't watch my show live, you can still support the show. You can go to uranbookshow.com slash support and make a monthly contribution, which is incredibly valuable to me. You can do it on Patreon. You can do it on a subscribe star. Very few people seem to be doing on a subscribe star, but Patreon is available and easy to use. And of course on my website, uranbookshow.com slash support, you can do it through PayPal and it's pretty easy. If some of you can and already monthly supporters, if you'd like to increase that support, that would be great. The best way to do that is to cancel your existing subscription and resubscribe at the greater amount. And that'd be terrific. I'm trying to increase the regular monthly support that I'm getting so that when I travel and when I do other things and can do as many shows, that income is still coming in on a regular basis. And that's the great advantage of the monthly thing. I really, as I've said in the past, to get us to the point where this basically, where the show is basically my income, we would have to probably double the amount of money we raise on a monthly basis. Anybody who can increase the support on a monthly basis, that would be great. They appreciate it. And anybody who is not supporting the show yet, but does get value from the show, then it would be great if you express that value by going to PayPal uranbookshow.com slash support and making a monthly contribution. Even if it's $2 or $10, everything adds up, everything is valuable. Let's see. Okay, we're gonna take 20 questions in the order they came in. So let me, I think I might have deleted a 20-dollar question. We'll see. Okay, let's see. Scott, what are your thoughts on NASA? Considering the many inventions that NASA scientists came up with in the 60s, I think it was a partial success. However, NASA hasn't done anything since the astronauts landed on the moon. Yeah, I mean, NASA was a success in the 1960s. There's no question. It got a man to the moon. It was a heroic effort. It was amazing. The Apollo project was amazing. And yes, a lot of technologies were developed as a consequence. Of course, if John F. Kennedy instead of embracing NASA and sending it to the moon, if he had announced the privatization of the moon and whoever private citizen got there first could claim their territory and can mine it and could claim dibs on it and encourage private enterprise to develop it and cut everybody's taxes by 50% so they could have the capital to do it. It would have been better and we would have developed even better technologies. So of all the uses of government money, NASA, at least in the 60s turned out to be a pretty good use of money. I'd still rather we didn't have it. I'd still rather we'd use that, not use the money for that but allowed private enterprise to develop space technology from scratch. But the fact is that given the amount of state intervention given the amount of taxes, given the amount of regulations, given amount of everything, the controls that the state has, NASA is the least of our worries. And yes, what they did back then was terrific. Today, they rely more and more on Elon Musk to go other private space entrepreneurs to get into space less and less on NASA itself. So less valuable and more and more of the value is shifting towards the private sector, which is a good thing. Richard Witt says, thank for recommending Shenandoah with Jimmy Stewart. I'm glad to recommend it's a great movie. In return, I'd like to recommend Impact with Byron Dunleavy from 1949. Perhaps you'll watch and recommend or not carry on safe travels and well. All right, I'll look for that impact. I know the modern impact. I don't know the one from 1949. So I am putting it on my list. Let's see, Jeffrey says, oh, we already answered that one. That was about Ukrainian friends. Tom says, Tom Shubatom says, as bad as he is, isn't it better that Biden is president for this crisis as opposed to Trump? I understand that that's a pretty low bar, but still. It's a very low bar. And look, I think I can't imagine anybody worse than Trump, particularly in a situation like this. The guy is nuts. He's not very smart. He doesn't understand what constitutes American interests. So yes, I can't say I'm happy that Biden is president. That is not something that's gonna come out of my mouth, but I am happy that Trump is not president. Very happy Trump is not president. I really, really, really hope he never is president again because he is bad for America. And who knows how this thing with Ukraine would have transpired with Trump. I can think of multiple dimensions in which this could have been a, you know, even worse disaster than it is. And it is already a disaster. And I think Biden is weak, but Trump is weaker. And in some respects, more dangerous, significantly more dangerous. All right, let's see what other $20. Jeff asked, who do you think is the best architect to architect your firm designing buildings in the US today? I really don't know. I wish I did. I could, you know, if you send me some photos of buildings, I could tell you which ones I like, but I don't track them by firm. I don't track them by architect. There are some gorgeous buildings being built today. There are some gorgeous houses being built today, but I don't think, you know, I don't recognize the architects, so I really don't know. All right, let's see. Ali says, how much do I need to retire and have, do I need to retire and have fixed income? So how much do you need to save to retire and fixed income? I mean, that depends on a million different factors. I can't give you that kind of advice. What country are you timing in? What is your cost of living? How well do you want to live? How much do you spend a year? What age do you want to retire? How long does it have to last you? How risk tolerant are you? So it's not something I can answer. It's something that you need to sit down with a financial advisor. That financial advisor has to get a bunch of information from you in terms of your risk tolerance, in terms of your age, in terms of, you know, what is your existing wealth? What your expectation is? What kind of lifestyle you intend to live for how many years? And only then can you design a retirement plan, a financial plan for retirement. I can do it off the fly. Okay, Josh asks, I'm curious. What are your favorite countries in South America? You know, it's dangerous for me to answer because no matter what I answer, I piss somebody off. But look, it's pretty known what my favorite country in South America is. My favorite country in South America is Brazil. I love Brazil. I like the people. I love Rio de Janeiro. I love the scenery. I love the music. I love a Brazilian bossa nova music. I think it is fantastic. And there's no city like Rio de Janeiro in terms of just beauty. It's, I think, the most beautiful city in the world. Geographically, the people are, you know, just amazing and full of joy. I mean, in spite of poverty and everything else. So I'm a big fan of Brazil. So if all the countries in South America, that is my favorite. All right, let's see. Where are we? We've crossed the $600 mark, so that's good. So we've met our goals. I mean, as I said, $1,000 is always better than $600. So if you still have a lot of 20, no more less than $20 questions, because we've got a lot here and we've already gone an hour and 20 minutes and I'm getting tired. Apollo Zoo says about Rio de Janeiro, the women on the beach. Yes, Apollo, the women on the beach. Absolutely. And I'm sure for some of you, it's the guys on the beach. But for me, it's definitely the women on the beach. It is, yeah, anything, if you wanna ask questions, make them $20 questions. If you wanna support the show, great. Just use the Super Chat feature to support the show. That'd be fantastic. James asks, you prefer suburbs or city for living investing? I mean, when I had a family, I preferred living in our suburbs. Today, with just myself and my wife, I prefer living in the city. I like being close to restaurants. I like the vibe of the city. I like the excitement of the city. So today I'm much more inclined to live in a city, but it depends. In terms of investing, I'm not sure what that means, investing. It's suburbs or cities. All right, let's go through the non $20 questions. Ryan asked, US ban on Russian oil and gas. Oh, I already talked about that. I mean, it's good that the United States doesn't ban it, but it should ban everything. It should just ban that. And don't expect it to have a huge impact on Russia because oil and gas markets are global markets. They're not just US markets. Okay, theme asked quickly, 15 pounds is almost $20. For you overall, do Trump fans tend to understate Trump's negatives or ignore them altogether? I mean, it's a mixture. Some of them ignore them altogether. Some of them are just rabid. Can't think just all focused. He can't do anything wrong. But I'd say most of them just, I think, understate his negatives. And they understate it in the better ones, understate the negatives because they hate the left so much, because they see the left as such an evil, so destructive. And that's why they won't criticize Trump because they're much more focused on defeating the left. All right, let's see. Just to remind you, you can join and become a member of the show. It's really easy. Just click the join button below. It's only $5.99 or something like that. So it would be great if everybody in chat one day was also a member. Don't forget to share or more importantly, subscribe to the show. Don't forget to subscribe to the show, share the show, like the show. Like the show before you leave today. We've got 114 likes and 193 viewers right now. We've been over 200. So plenty of people are not pressing that like button. It's really easy. So just, what does Nike say? Just do it. All right, let's see. Wyatt asked, isn't the new AII essay an excuse for ejecting anyone who questions AII while exerting the faithful not to ask questions that go public with complaints? No, people can complain all they want. Nobody's saying they shouldn't complain. What they're saying is that if you're going to reveal private information, you know, the question is why? What's the purpose? Can you reveal private information in a way that's objective so that people can actually use it? And the answer is no. It's very difficult to do. These are complex issues of interpersonal relations. How are you gonna actually adjudicate and figure out what is actually going on? What is objectively true? You know, I know it's become popular just to shoot from the hip and not think about stuff and not consider and not evaluate before one makes a decision and before makes a public statement. Why do you have to make public statements at all? Can't you just evaluate somebody and walk away? You can tell your friends you don't like them, but why do you have to make public statements? And if you want to make public statement, that's fine, make public statements. But I'll evaluate you based on the quality of your public statements and how objective it is. The more content you put out there that's not objective, the less respect you'll get from me. So this is not an excuse for ejecting anyone who questions ARI. There are tons of people who question ARI. We don't eject people. We barely ever eject people. It's rare that we eject people. We have substantive disagreements with the people involved here. We went our own way. We wished them the best and then they stabbed us in the back. They came after us. We didn't initiate this. We didn't start this. And we didn't eject them. We didn't eject them. We didn't eject them until they started starving us in the back. But there was no sense of ejection. They were welcome to OCCONs. They were as participants. They were fine. There was no ejection involved. The only time they were ejected is when they stabbed you in the back. And generally in life, if somebody stabs you in the back, you should eject them from your life. Somebody tells lies about you or just says stuff that's untrue or out of context or badmouths you or makes public something that is private. You shouldn't have them in your life. I've said this many, many times. You want me to storm the hill and not care who my fellow soldiers are? Not me. I'm going to fight with good people. And if I change my evaluation of people and decide they're no good, I don't want them as my comrades. They're not my comrades in arms anymore. They're not my friends. So they can go do their own thing. I don't badmouth them. The essay didn't badmouth them. All I said was I'm not dealing with you. And the essay I think articulates why we don't deal with certain people. All right, there's another question on the same topic. What's the basis for AOI saying whoever publicizes disputes should be viewed with suspicion? Isn't that coincidentally the attitude of an entrenched bureaucracy shunning any criticism of leadership? No, there are a lot of people who criticize the Institute and we don't shun them. You can criticize us if we've done something and the information is public and you want to criticize. And what is wrong is when there is a private dispute, between private parties, not public, not about certain operations of the Institute, but a private dispute where the information relevant to that dispute is not available to people out there. And you come out and say, this is what happened between me and Iran last Sunday. It was private, but I think it's important so you all should know this is what he did fine. But what should you, A11U pencil, what do you make of that somebody who does that? Yuan said this of this last Sunday in a private conversation between me and them. Is the guy lying? Is the guy telling the truth? If I then say he's wrong, I didn't say any of that. Who do you believe? Why should you believe them or not me? If I don't say anything, do you see I'm guilty? Do you see I'm innocent? I mean, it's a private dispute. It's not your business. I mean, in a sense it's none of your business. But how can you even begin to be objective? He says, here's all the emails you're on, send me. Well, I've got emails. So do I get a published 200 emails and he'll publish 200 emails and then I'll take all my notes from all my meetings and I'll publish them and then somebody else will know. It's none of your business. I'm not gonna do that. I am in dispute with these people for a variety of reasons. I am no longer their business partner. I'm no longer engaged in doing business with them. I haven't bad mouthed them. I haven't said anything negative about them except I'm not working with them. I don't trust them. I don't like them and I'm not working with them. It's all I've said. I haven't given you. I haven't told you not to work with them. I haven't told you anything about them. You make your own evaluations. You read what they've written and you tell me, yeah, those are people I like. Those are people I wanna work with. Fine, you can do that. I'll judge you based on that. No, I'm not gonna put it out there and let up the activity you in because you can be objective. You weren't there and it's none of your business. Scott and everybody else, none of your business. I don't care about the implications. You don't wanna believe me, believe whoever you want. You know, it's your problem but that I should put all of my stuff out there that I should spend the time and the effort to do this bullshit. Of course there's a truth. Of course there's a truth. I have the truth. I am right in this dispute. Do with whatever you want. Do I owe you proof that I'm right? No, I don't owe you anything. So, and there's no way that I can divulge enough. You know, if it goes to court, then I'll have to divulge everything I can divulge about it but that's why there's a court and there's a jury and all the evidence is presented and their depositions and it takes months and sometimes years and there's a judge who decides what evidence is legitimate and what evidence isn't and you want, you think you can be a jury out there in the public. You think you can figure out these complex issues all by yourselves because I distributed the materials and somebody else puts our materials into the public forum. That's ridiculous. Let's say that we, you know, we don't have to decide using a system of justice with a judge and a jury and a court of law and we can put everything out there and we can just all of us can decide. No, it ain't happening. And yeah, I mean, if there's a subpoena, I'll divulge. If the law requires me to do it, I'll do it but with you guys, yeah, you judge me based on my integrity, you just as them based on their integrity, you judge me by based on what you know about me, you judge them based on what you know about them. That's all I ask. Read what they wrote, you tell me those are justified things to write if you think they are. Yeah, go to hell from my perspective but it's your business, right? I don't care, I've been honest with you guys from the beginning. I've told you what I thought but I'm not gonna get into details because I take privacy seriously, I take confidentiality agreements seriously and I have no interest in wasting my time or your time on these things. There are five people here interested in this issue. I'm giving you the 10 minutes that this deserves. I'm not doing more than that, right? All right, where are we? Wanna answer it already? Okay, Michael asks, do financiers and entrepreneurs understand abstractions more than most philosophers today? No one can get past disintegrated concrete like infants. Yeah, I mean, there's a sense in which but entrepreneurs unfortunately understand abstractions only in their field, it seems like and not in abstract fields. How many entrepreneurs know philosophy or think about philosophy or think about abstract ideas, unfortunately they don't but they certainly know how to deal with the abstractions that they need to deal with for their business better than intellectuals and intellectuals are supposed to know how to deal in abstractions. Yes, I mean, it's a complete mess. They are like infants, Michael, you're absolutely right. Michael says Seneca said the king controls what the people own where property rights historically used to reign in government. Well, yes, the claim of rights was used to reign in government occasionally in history. There was a brief period in Rome where it was used. There were periods later on in certain republics and so on and of course in the United States and post enlightenment and in the Western world. But yes, property rights, the individual rights, the right to life have been used, Seneca, the king controls, but the people own well, what does ownership mean if the king controls, right? This is part of the problem with the Roman conception of property rights. If the king controls, do you really own? And this is by the way, fascism, what Seneca is describing because if the government controls, you nominally own it but the government controls it makes decisions about it. Then do you really own it? That's kind of the definition of fascism. It's where you think you own your private property but the government really controls it. Okay, Mark, thank you for the $20. We should sell F-35s to Ukraine and allow US military pilots to go and leave and join the Ukrainian Air Force to fly them like the flying tigers in China before the breakout of World War II. Yeah, because if we sold their F-35s to Ukraine they don't have any pilots who can fly them. It's a very complex plane and you need months of training even for experienced pilots. So you would need to sell them with the pilots. Would American pilots want to go fly? I don't know. I mean, it's hard to believe that any Russian plane or any Russian missile could take down an F-35 would be my expectation. So it's not a super risky job but I don't know if they'd wanna do it. But yeah, the F-35s are part of an integrated battle plan but they can also fly by themselves. They probably unfortunately are designed to do too many things but they are so superior to anything the Russians have that they would do an amazing job in Ukraine if the American pilots would be willing to do it. Okay, Michael says, what is the mall justification for government telling to people they aren't allowed to trade with another nation in Borgo? The mall justification is war. The mall justification is viewing that country as an enemy, as an enemy. Like the Soviet Union was an enemy. So we told people not to trade with the enemy. That's why I don't believe we should in Borgo China because I don't consider China an enemy but now the Russia has shown that it is willing to go to war with peaceful countries. I think you could construe it as an enemy of the United States. Maybe not an enemy worthy of going to war with but an enemy the way you can tell your people don't trade with them because that is aiding and abetting the enemy. You're helping the enemy, right? Traders win-win. So every time we trade with the Russian, they're winning which means you're helping, they pay taxes. They're working one way or another for the Russian government. You're aiding and abetting the enemy. So enemy state should be in Borgo. Now, again, would we define Russia as an enemy? They haven't attacked the US yet. That is the kind of issues that you would grapple with if you were in power in a free society. We don't live in a free society. And I would like to see the United States not be a NATO which would be much cleaner because then we wouldn't be at the risk of by accidentally going to war with Russia. I don't think we should go to war with Russia but I think if Russia is gonna be aggressive, if Russia is gonna invade countries that are friendly to the United States and basically free countries, then I think we can view Russia as an enemy not as a direct enemy and threats and not somebody we go to war with but somebody that we don't wanna help. We don't wanna be involved in, we think it's a moral and treasonous if you will for American citizens to help them and therefore we should involve with them. The problem is that today all the measures are half-assed. We're not embargoing them. We're only restricting certain products and certain trade. We're only sanctioning certain people, certain companies, certain banks. I mean, either you're in or you're not. The half-assed measures we have today are ridiculous. But you can't really blame the Biden administration because every administration would do the same thing. They're all the same. They're all the same. That this is kind of the way politics work. There's no black and white. Everything's half-measures. Everything's half-measures. Free trade. So shouldn't ESG activists acting subversively on behalf of adversarial powers be investigated and prosecuted? Yeah, I mean, to the extent that you could prove that the ESG activists knew they were getting money from a hostile nation. I knew they were doing that nation's bidding. They're probably laws that require them to register as foreign agents and they didn't. But part of the problem is Russia's not considered an enemy. So the fact that they got money from Russia, so what? I mean, so did a lot of people defending both political parties and all kinds of things. So there's nothing wrong with getting money from overseas. But if you're actually advocating for the interests of another country, you have to register and there are laws against that. And we'll see if the ESG activists ever get penalized for it. I doubt it. What's what Peter Schwartz said about transgender athlete Leah Thomas, transphobic and bigoted? Should you have sanctioned that hate? No, I don't think it was a transphobic and bigoted. I don't, that he said that an athlete born male should compete as a female. I agree, shouldn't compete as a female, I agree completely, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous that somebody who has grown up with a teenager, with male hormones, male muscle structure, male bones and then I don't know, does an operation and cause themselves a female should be able to swim for the women's team. I think that is wrong. And I'm no problem with transgender people, but the limits to what they should and shouldn't be able to do. And I certainly don't think they should be able to compete. They're not in that sense. Once they choose to transition, then neither here nor there exactly. They're not quite male, they're not quite female. They shouldn't compete in female sports. They're not female enough to compete in female sports. That's my view. Male muscles are very different than female muscles. If you consider that attitude transphobic, so be it. But I have no problem with people who are trans. I have a problem with people who are trans demanding things that I think I mean, I feel sorry for the female athletes that have to compete. It's not fair to them. And when they start demanding things, when they start demanding things that are unfair, unjust and go against basic biology, then you have to say no. You have to say no. And that's not transphobic. That's just reality. Transphobia is sad. It's a sad state for somebody to be in. How they choose to deal with it is really their issue, but they can't get extra stuff as a consequence of how they deal with it. All right, the saintly order of nightly valor. 500 something, I don't even know what that is. What currency that is? Whoops, it looks like I missed a question here. Oh, it's Japanese yen, 500 Japanese yen. How you on soya in Tokyo? Can you plug my objective sci-fi novel, The Last American by Ed Ronin on Amazon? All right, we just got the plug. It's an objective sci-fi novel, The Last American by Ed Ronin. I haven't read it, so I can vouch for it, but Ed is here and put 500 yen for that short advertisement. So thanks, Ed, for, and hopefully, I wanted to come to Japan last year, but everything was, you couldn't get in because of COVID. All right, Ali asks, as an objectivist, if your wife started questioning your marriage, what should you do? I had really good memory and it was long-term investment for me and it is hard to let go. Yeah, I mean, life sometimes throws you things that are hard. It's sometimes hard to let go, but you've got to talk to your wife if you want to save the marriage. You've got to figure out why she's questioning it. What can you do differently? Is there a way to improve it? Maybe get some counseling? Do what you can, but at the end of the day, if the marriage is not working, if the marriage is making either she or you or both of you unhappy, then it's better to walk away. And yeah, it's a long-term investment, but lots of long-term investment don't work out. It's sad when they don't work out, but sometimes they don't work out and you've got to overcome them and find other ways to live, other ways to be successful. But you've got to fight for your marriage. That's the other thing. I mean, people go in and out. People have questions, people question, people go through all kinds of personal crises. Marriage is not one smooth, all the time, steady thing. People go up and down in terms of their marriage. And if you really care about the marriage, you fight for it. And fighting for it means communicating, fighting for it means trying to stick it out, giving it every chance possible. But then if it doesn't work, then recognizing that. We believe in recognizing reality, recognizing reality. All right, everybody, thank you. Thanks for being here again today. Really appreciate it. I think we did pretty well. Didn't quite make the 1,000, but we did make $700. So that's terrific. So thank you for all the superchattage. You can support the show on uranbookshow.com. So I support, subscribe to our Patreon. Patreon is great. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. We still have more people watching than likes. It should be the other way around. And I will be back on Thursday. Ali, thank you. Wow, that is super generous. So we got another $100 from Ali. Thank you. Don't forget, I'll be on on Thursday to talk about Elan Musk. And then I'm going to be in Europe. I'll do at least one show for me, the Europe and Israel on Iran's Rules for Life. I've got a good topic, I think, for that. So we're gonna do that while I'm on the road. But on the road, is the logic thing gonna be? It's gonna be a travel log. It's gonna be me answering your questions. It's gonna be telling you how things are going on the road, my experiences on the road, and it's gonna be a little bit of news. I'm not gonna be able to do much research. I'm not gonna be able to do much prep. So it's gonna be just me reading the headlines and seeing if there's stuff I wanna comment on. And yeah, hopefully World War III doesn't break out and the no tactical nukes in Western Europe because that would be bad. That would be really, really bad. But, and in April, I'm going back to Europe. This time I'll be in Eastern Europe and we're gonna do a Ukrainian event. We're gonna do an event about Ukraine. It's gonna be in Warsaw and we're gonna invite Ukrainians to come and participate. So hopefully, maybe some of the Ukrainian refugees will participate. We'll see, the organizers are still working on it, but we will do one I'm planning to do in Prague and Bovislav in Slovakia being in Budapest, in Hungary and in Warsaw in Poland and then in Tbilisi in Georgia and in Tallinn in Estonia, right on the front. That's front lines. Front line is Tallinn and Estonia. I will not go to Russia. I promise, I might never go to Russia. I might never go to Russia. Again, it's like China. I don't know if I'll ever go to China again. We'll have to see what happens, but that would be sad. I've always said, I really like China. I like the Chinese people, but I probably won't ever go to China again and to Russia again. And the sad thing is probably never go to Ukraine again. I mean, if this becomes an insurgency and it becomes a civil war for the next 20 years, probably not going there. All right, everybody, have a great rest of your week. I'll see you on Thursday. Don't miss their Elon Musk show. It'll be at 7 p.m. East Coast time. Of course, if there's breaking news, we'll cover the breaking news as well. So I'll see you in a couple of days. Bye, everybody.