 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Wednesday, well, afternoon. It's already afternoon Sunday, but early afternoon. Yep, we juggle the schedule because stuff happened. Thank you all for joining me. I appreciate your patience for the morning show to be at 3 p.m. east coast time. Anyway, let me repeat some of the... Well, we got a full schedule today, so we're going to talk about ADL and Elon Musk. That is the story everybody seems to be talking about right now, at least if you follow Twitter at all. We will be talking about a couple of things out of China, electric vehicles, and chips. Chips, microchips, not the chips you read. Microchips, a little bit of a panic around latest microchips out of China. We'll talk about green bailouts already, green energy bailouts already. Talk about bailing out green companies that are funded or that are subsidized by the... What is it? The Inflation Reduction Act, that's it. And then finally, we'll talk about Harvard ranking in a recent free speech. The least and most respecting of free speech universities in the country, they rank them. Fire, the organization responsible for it ranks them. And we will talk about where Harvard, one of the top schools in the country, where it ranks in terms of free speech. Before we do that, a couple of things. Reminder, if you support the show on PayPal on a monthly basis, please just check your account. Make sure your credit card and everything is updated. I'm just getting a lot of things bouncing. And I don't know if it's you not wanting to support the show anymore, that's fine. But then you might want to delete your account. Or if it's just a technical issue on PayPal site or a technical issue on your site, maybe a credit card that expired or something. So just check that. I'd appreciate it. And so we can get whatever you want, we can actually get done. And PayPal actually follows your instructions, which is not happening right now, I don't think. And then second, I want to remind everybody, I'm looking to do a public speaking seminar in London, October 18th, full day. So to be many hours, a lot of one-on-one, well, one-on-ten, but a lot of individualized attention, a lot of individualized input into your public speaking ability, technique, development, content. We'll cover all of it. And you'll get that in a very intimate setting. It's not going to be cheap, but it's not going to be crazy expensive like many public speaking coaches charge. I'd love to do it, so I'm looking for 10 people. And there's some interest, but it first comes first served. So write to me. Iran at uranbrookshow.com, Iran at uranbrookshow.com, and I will secure your place and get you the info and we will go from there. So just, okay, those two out of the way, let's jump in. So ADL, ADL is the Anti-Defamation League. It is one of these civil rights organizations that has a long history, decades and decades long history, basically defending Jews from anti-Semitism. So highlighting occurrences of anti-Semitism, fighting against anti-Semitism when it arises, and not trying to restrict people's speech, but trying to stop people from threatening, trying to stop violence and challenging people who argue and make anti-Semitic claims. And ADL, by all accounts, historically has done a very good job at this, and has been at the forefront together with other organizations that used to do a pretty good job at these kind of things like the ACLU, that used to be very, very good on, for example, free speech issues. Well, there is growing evidence that the ADL over the last few years has been taken over by kind of extreme leftists, the more crazy left side of the political spectrum. People who don't have respect for free speech, people don't really understand what it is that they are trying to do. There's significant evidence that the ADL has become much more, for example, lenient towards anti-Semitism coming from the left and much harsher with regard to anti-Semitism coming through the right, that it's become a lot more political, a lot more aligned with certain left-wing interests rather than with defending its mission, which has been to speak out against anti-Semitism and to highlight anti-Semitic activity. Anyway, all of this has, and this has been debated within, it's called Jewish circles, it's been debated for quite a while that the ADL has kind of taken a wrong turn, just like if you follow the ACLU and you follow the discussion about the ACLU, clearly the ACLU has taken a wrong turn and become anti-free speech when it was one of the great defenders of free speech in American history in decades past. And the consequence, this is all the consequence of the capture of these organizations by elements on the far left that are hostile to free speech and that have taken these organizations and politicized them, made them organizations dedicated to the woke or politically correct or whatever you want, whatever the latest term for it, a gender of the left rather than is actually protecting individual rights. Anyway, all of this has come to the forefront because, you know, ADL has been on, has talked about, has mentioned repeatedly that they think that Twitter, since Elon Musk has taken over, has become a place much more tolerant of anti-Semitism and a place that is promoting anti, in a sense, blamed Twitter for promoting anti-Semitism. And indeed, as Elon Musk claims, has approached advertisers who used to advertise on Twitter or X or however they want to call it these days, and encouraged those advertisers not to advertise on Twitter anymore because Twitter is a platform that promotes anti-Semitism. And, you know, the head of the ADL, a well-known kind of leftist, met last week with the CEO of Twitter. The idea was, could they talk about it? Could they come to some understanding? And there was some reason to believe that the meeting had gone well, but then over the weekend, Elon Musk came out basically ridiculing the ADL or attacking the ADL for really destroying significant ad revenue for Twitter. And Elon Musk was blaming ADL for a decline of 60% in the advertising revenue at Twitter because of ADL's campaign to convince advertisers not to advertise because of the platform's views. The last thing that happened, I guess yesterday or the day before, was that Elon Musk threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League for defaming Twitter, for speaking ill of Twitter, for lying about Twitter, and thus hooting its business. Now, whether that is a legitimate lawsuit or if that is a lawsuit that could be successful at all is not something I know, not my area of expertise, defamation laws. But certainly this has got everybody's attention. And really, there are two sides. You can see how the world splits into two on these things. One side is, you know, on the ADL side saying, yes, finally, we're having an impact. We're getting Elon Musk's attention. It's about time that Twitter stopped being this crazy right wing anti-Semitic racist platform. So that is certainly one side of the equation. The other side is finally Elon Musk, somebody in social media standing up to places like the ADL and other NGOs who are accusing platforms of not being woke enough and really going after advertisers and hooting the platforms unless the platforms cave. So a lot of these NGOs supposedly are using blackmailing the platforms in order to get them to limit the speech on the platforms. Now, you know, my suspicion here in this particular case is that the ADL is probably not guilty of defamation per se, but is wrong. That is wrong to go after Twitter as a platform for anti-Semitism, although I'm sure there's anti-Semitism being expressed on Twitter. I mean, Twitter's problems are the same problems of all the social media and we've talked about them for years. And the problem is of non-objective standards, not clear standards of what's acceptable and what's not acceptable as speech on the platform, not being objective about it. So it's hard to tell. So ADL is clearly exaggerating this phenomenon, is clearly motivated. If you judge the ADL by everything that it does, it's motivated by kind of a more woke anti-speech agenda that it has. Elon Musk is, you know, ADL is within its rights to tell people, hey, we think this platform is anti-Semitic. Don't use it. People can make their own judgments and make their own commercial decisions about whether to advertise on Twitter or not. I doubt that there's any legal, I mean any legal liability here. These are the kind of disputes that need to be settled in the marketplace. Elon Musk can do what he want with Twitter. ADL can do what it wants with its money as long as it doesn't engage in illegal activity or defamation being an illegal activity. But Elon is probably making a big deal out of all of this because it suits his purposes, whatever they might be, among others to make himself kind of a big time defender of free speech and also, you know, to score certain marketing points by standing up to the ADL. It's clear to me that this is not motivated from Elon Musk's perspective by anti-Semitism. There's no reason to believe that. But this is his opportunity to stand up to see bad guys make himself into a hero for a certain crowd. Sadly, the crowd that is rallied around Elon Musk on this issue, many of them are, the anti-Semites on Twitter. Nick Ferrantes is one of the people that has rallied around Musk. Ban the ADL has become a hashtag on Twitter, promoted a lot by some anti-Semites. Nick Ferrantes is an anti-Semite. Unfortunately, Musk is doing what he often does, which is interacting with horrible people and I think by doing that, sanctioning them. So Musk is not clean here completely either. People like Nick Ferrantes, I don't want to ban their speech, but they need to be recognized for what they are. They're the crudest type of anti-Semitic racist, slick, horrible individuals and somebody like Elon shouldn't have anything to do with them, even if they're still on the platform. There's zero reason to interact with people associated with Ferrantes. So this is of course creating a big to-do online. It's an interesting issue about whether Twitter is becoming a platform that is dominated by ugly voices or voices that while you don't want to silence, you also don't want to be in the neighborhood. You don't want to be exposed to, you don't want to be interacting with them. And how bad is it with Twitter? I don't see those things on Twitter, but then I only follow certain people and I guess I only interact with certain people and therefore the algorithm only feeds me certain stuff. But I know they're out there because doing my research, I find them. To what extent this is, how prevalent this is, is probably exaggerated, or I'm pretty sure he's exaggerated by the ADL, but there is an issue where Nick Ferrantes maybe represents that issue and the fact again that Musk interacts with some of these weirdos only enhances their power, gives them more followers, expands their exposure and that is sad. So I'm not siding with either party here. I think they're both probably motivated by the wrong things, but it's going to be interesting to watch this play out on Twitter and elsewhere. All right, let's jump to a couple of stories about China and we've talked quite a bit about stories that relate to Chinese economic problems. But in one area, China is doing very, very well. Chinese businesses put it this way are doing very, very well and that is in the production of electric cars. I don't know if you know this, but Juan Buffett has for quite a few years now been a large investor in an electric car make out of China called BYD. BYD only makes electric cars. It is a competitor, they're a competitor to Tesla. Its cars are cheaper and they're getting better and better and better. Indeed BYD has become the number one best selling brand in China this year. It used to be Volkswagen. Now it's BYD. Volkswagen wasn't selling electric cars. So the number one brand in China in terms of sale of cars is an electric car. Well, this week Munich is holding a big auto show. It's one of the big auto shows on the schedule in the world where auto manufacturers are showing off their greatest, latest and greatest cars and the Chinese are there in strength. A number of Chinese electric car makers, there's more than one a number of them are there and they are displaying some pretty exciting cars. Cars that have got the Germans really, really worried. Cars that are going to be introduced into European markets in the next couple of years. Whether it's SUVs or sedans or electric, again with exciting battery technology, longer ranges, built-in technology and, of course, a price tag that is significantly below what the Europeans are manufacturing electric cars at. This is a real challenge to one of Germany's largest and strongest industries, which is the car industry. Whether it's Volkswagen, whether it's Daimler-Benz or whether it's BMW. I think Audi is owned by Volkswagen. Anyway, I mean big auto companies, but really, more broadly, Peugeot in France, Fiat in Italy, the Swedes, which have, I think, Saab and Volvo, though I think Volvo is owned already by the Chinese company. Anyway, the Chinese are going to enter Europe with a flood of electric cars at a price point that is super attractive, particularly given Europe is struggling economically and maybe Europeans are going to be able to afford fewer of the luxury cars that the Germans typically produce. But again, remember the Germans and the Italians and the French produce cheap cars as well. Volkswagen, Peugeot and Fiat are pretty low-end cars. But given the mandates to shift to electric cars that every European country has embraced, given the moral supremacy, the moral, I don't know what you call it, pretends that virtue signaling associated with electric cars is going to be a real push in Europe to buy an electric car. I'm not sure exactly where they're going to get the electricity to fuel all these cars from. I'm not sure how these cars are going to get their energy, where they're going to load up, given that the content is probably heading towards electricity shortages, given their reliance on so-called green energy. And they were a bannerman of reliable energy sources like nuclear. So some countries are going to do better than others in this regard. But anyway, everybody's going to be required to drive an electric car. And the reality is that the Europeans are lagging. And the Germans who have always been at the forefront of technical innovation when it comes to automobiles at the forefront of producing the best automobiles are facing competition from China, which I don't think they expected. And they are way too slow, way too slow to innovate to catch up. And China has already taken, is exporting more cars than Japan now. I think the Japanese car manufacturers are in trouble, although Japan probably has better technology. I think Toyota is going to come out with a revolutionary battery that's going to have much longer range. But something is happening in the electric car industry, and that's something is China. You'll notice that Tesla has reduced prices on its automobiles this year already by about 25%. I don't think that's bullish. I think that's a recognition of the fact that while they might not yet face real competition from Chinese manufacturers here in the United States, on a global scale, they are facing this competition. And it is serious. Tesla might be considered a high-end brand than a typical BYD electric car. But BYD is starting to build higher-end brands and they unveiled some pretty cool high-end electric cars at the Munich show. And as I said, I think the Germans are panicking. Tesla might be a little worried. And generally, the Europeans are worried. X-Peng, which is another Chinese electric car manufacturer, is already planning to sell electric cars in Germany next year, 2024. It already sells them in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Holland. And a number of the other Chinese manufacturers are going to be entering the European market with a strong product and really, really, really strong pricing. While Renault, for example, is investing heavily in new technologies and new EV platforms, they're just behind. And the Chinese have moved so fast. And of course, most batteries for these cars are built in China. So China does have a supply chain advantage in that the batteries are right there next door. All this, I should remind you, of course, and there was just a study published today, or published, I guess, last week. I published last week that showed that EVs are no cleaner from any perspective. That is, if you buy into CO2 or whatever, the perspective on pollution that you have, EVs are no better for the environment than gas-fueled cars because they are so carbon-intensive to build. Chinese EVs are all built on coal energy, coal energy produced in China. And actually, for an EV car to become less polluting than a fuel car, it has to be driven a lot, depending on the model, depending on the environment, depending on which car and where it was built and so on, anywhere between 28,000 to 68,000 miles. One of the things about the EV manufacturers, at least this is true in China, is new models are coming out so fast and they're so cheap that few people are driving them a lot. They just flip them. So, yeah, in a very long run by some measure, they're so-called beneficial, but it depends on the car. And in some of them, you have to drive them 68,000 miles before it happens. And this is one study who knows what the real numbers really are. Who knows what they really are. Guitar Channel says BYDs blow up and the airbags don't deploy. I'm willing to put some money on this, right? That might be true. It might have been true two years ago. Maybe it's still true. But my guess is once they enter Europe, BYDs cars will have safety records that are the equivalent of European cars and will have airbags that deploy just as well as anybody else. I mean, I remember the days where Japanese cars entered the United States in the early 1970s and they were crap and they were death tin cans. And within less than a decade, they surpassed on every metric, anything that was being built in the U.S. Given one Buffett's investment, given their drive to globalization, given entry into European, a very competitive, very, very competitive European market where there is a lot of emphasis on safety and things like that, BYD cars will get better and they'll be just as good as European cars within a few years. And unless European car makers take them seriously, unless American car makers take them seriously, they will come to dominate, they will come to dominate the industry. Okay, another story out of China. This one is a little bewildering and head-scratching and, you could say, worrisome. Huawei came out with a new phone last week and it was a 5G phone with a 5G chip. And when people took it apart, they found what's called a Kirin 9000 processor inside of it. And what they found was a processor that was far more advanced than what anybody thought the Chinese could produce. It's a 7nm processor built on a 5nm platform, so 5 plus 2, it's called. Now again, I'm no expert at this, so if I make any technical mistakes here, forgive me. But the reality is that this chip was probably made by SMIC, which is the leading chip manufacturer in China. Or it could have been made by Huawei's own chip manufacturing facilities, which they are suspected of having, although there's no official recognition that they have them. But that's not the problem. The problem is that the Biden administration indeed has rallied Japan and Netherlands and other countries around the world, South Korea, to prohibit sales of advanced chips to China, but more importantly, prohibiting the sale of equipment that makes possible the making of advanced chips to China. Primarily this extreme ultraviolet machines that allow you to make these 5nm chips. So how did they make it in spite of that? Are these chips stolen and rebranded? Probably not, given just the sheer number that Huawei is putting into their phones. We're talking about a lot of chips. Or have the Chinese found an alternative way to make 5nm chips that does not require the extreme ultraviolet machine that is made by only one company, ASML? We don't know. And it truly is a mystery. Nobody knows where these chips came from and how the Chinese actually made it. There is one known process by which they could have made it that would not have required extreme ultraviolet lithography, but that process would make these chips super expensive. Now it's possible, given how much this industry is being subsidized by the Chinese government, that that's what's happening. These are just using an alternative process that's super expensive, but the Chinese are doing it anyway. But in any case, what this is making I think very real is how difficult it is to ever have economic sanctions that actually matter, that actually makes any difference. That even if you think you've got a massive technological lead, which everybody assumed the West had of at least a decade, it might turn out that the lead is not quite as big. And trying to manipulate trade, trying to restrict might ultimately backfire in the sense that they might find different ways to do something. Now, again, this chip is nowhere near as advanced as the three nanometer chips that TSMC is building for Apple in Taiwan that will be in the new iPhone that's coming out. Those are three nanometer chips. That is the latest and greatest technology. But it does mean they are a lot less behind than everybody assumed. And that of course has military implications and national security implications. And as implications with regard to why the hell are we bothering with all these sanctions and limits and limitations when they're right there and maybe what we're actually doing is motivating them and inspiring them to innovate and to get around these restrictions. Now, I still think Chinese innovation will decline. It's capped. It's limited by how far it could progress by the authoritarian nature of the Chinese regime, but they could still progress quite a bit maybe in spite of that. And anyway, a lot of people are looking into this. I think the US government is looking into it. A lot of people are trying to figure out what happened and how they made these chips, what technology they use, did somebody break the sanctions, unlikely. But what is going on here? I think this is the mystery right now. And it's going to be interesting. It's going to be very interesting to find out. I wish I had the guy who wrote Chippewa Miller, something Miller. I wish I could ask him. I'll do some research and see if he's written on this because it would be interesting to see as an expert on the industry to see what he thinks is actually going on here. But it is interesting. And it's interesting that Chinese didn't make a big deal out of it. I mean, why would we release this phone quietly, no big fan fan, making a big deal out of this? So who knows? Who knows what's actually going on? All right. What do we got? Two more stories? Two more stories. And yeah, don't forget, you can use the Super Chat to ask questions, shape the show, answer anything you want. I'll talk about anything you want me to talk about. You can ask a question, make a comment, disagree with me, challenge me, whatever you want by using the Super Chat feature available in the chat. So the Inflation Reduction Act, you know, Biden's really signature, what he'd consider signature achievement that was passed, I think with public and support. The Inflation Reduction Act includes hundreds of billions, hundreds of b, not m, billions of dollars in subsidies for green energy. And what that has done is there's a lot of money being invested in green energy. If you subsidize something, you get more of it. And now we've got a number of green energy quotes, you know, so-called green energy manufacturers, people who are building windmills are complaining that costs are going skyrocketing and that they are going to need more subsidies in order to be able to make these windmills economic. Remember how people always tell us, you've probably seen this online and everywhere, oh no, no, no, solar energy and wind are cheaper than fossil fuel to make electricity now. Now when you take out the subsidies, now when you take out the subsidies, indeed, if the price increases, that some of these windmill manufacturers or windmill builders, builders of windmill farms off the coast are demanding actually go through, then solar and wind are going to be two to five times more expensive than electricity produced via natural gas. Now why are all these manufacturers saying they need higher prices? Why are they demanding, in a sense, subsidies and help from the state? Well, they're claiming that the equipment that they're buying is going up in price because of inflation, inflation from the Inflation Reduction Act, something like that. But is that really the reason? Generalized inflation? Well, is it the fact that because the government is subsidizing this area, everybody is investing in it, building and trying to build wind farms, that the demand for the equipment is driving up costs? Well, of course, it's exactly that. The inflation in quotes that is occurring in windmills is a direct consequence of the artificially increased demand for windmills created by the government subsidies, created by the Inflation Reduction Act. Who would have known that Inflation Reduction Act would actually increase inflation? Who could have said that? So we are subsidizing our taxpayer money, our money, all of our money, if you pay taxes, is subsidizing an industry that produces energy at two to five times more expensive than natural gas that is far, far, far, far less reliable than natural gas because it actually depends on the wind blowing versus natural gas that is just there. And that is going to be super expensive because they can't afford to build them unless they can charge higher electricity rates. And that is driving up costs for all kinds of materials and all kinds of equipment because of this kind of demand that is happening. It's just insanity. It's why governments should stop centrally planning. It's why industrial policy never makes sense. It's why we should separate government from the economy, not try to manage the economy for the benefit of some higher, better, greater cause. Let the market work. And if we all decide that we really value green energy, we will demand green energy and will accept the fact that we'll pay high electricity costs. But don't do it through government. It'll just distort and pervert and actually make it much more expensive. So you can see with the electric, you know, you can see with the electric cars, where's the electricity going to come from? You can see it with windmills. They're not going to provide enough electricity for everybody to have the car. And do we have a grid that can provide electricity to every car in the United States? The whole thing is just such a fantasy. Such a fantasy. Insanity of industrial planning, which both Republicans and Democrats today endorse. All right. FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, an organization I've worked with in the past. When we did panels and debates on the Danish cartoons, we worked with FIRE. We've worked with FIRE in the past on other issues related to free speech. It has been historically an excellent organization. No reason to think it is not today. FIRE does a ranking every year of free speech on campus. And it put it out last week. It put out its ranking. Guess who came in? Dead last. The scale that they use is a scale from zero to 100. Zero to 100 to rate universities in terms of free speech on their campuses. Well, Harvard University scored an astounding, unbelievable and hard to imagine, negative 10. In the ranking, they actually gave them just a zero because they don't have negative numbers. Harvard was the least friendly towards free speech. They penalized faculty the most for things they had written or things they had said. There were the most constraints on students in terms of what they say and what they do. Number one was Harvard. Number two, this is the bottom. This is the worst. Number two was University of Pennsylvania. Number three, University of South Carolina. Number four, Georgetown and number five, Fordham in New York City. So you get all over the place, but these are all highly ranked universities, particularly Harvard, U-Pan, Georgetown, all very highly ranked universities. And yet, very unfriendly, two opinions or positions that some on campus might view as quote offensive. The best universities for free speech were, and, you know, for what it's worth, right? I mean, these scored the highest, were one Michigan technology university, Michigan, the technology university. Probably because in a technology university, nobody says anything controversial anyway. Auburn University was number two. That's pretty good. University of New Hampshire, Oregon State University, Oregon, Oregon, Oregon State University, and Florida State University. These are the ones that scored highest in terms of actual free speech. FIRE does good work in terms of bringing this forward. And then what it really is known for is defending professors, defending students when they are shut down, when the university comes after them, and going after the universities and protecting students and universities. From often the fact that universities are bridging their own founding documents, their own guidelines, their own rules. All right, of course, universities are a place where you'd expect the greatest freedom of expression. Universities are places where we deal with ideas, some of them ideas we like, some of them ideas we don't like, but we're exposed to a wide array of ideas. That's the whole point of going to university, to be exposed to all this, and to learn and to study. I mean, you don't have to be exposed to everything, there's certain ideas that nobody should be exposed to. There's no reason to expose people to it. You still have a right to do it, but university is a private entity and they can decide certain ideas are not acceptable. But universities are becoming more and more and more or less and less and less hospitable to what I would consider pretty mainstream ideas, but that somehow some find offensive. And ideas that certainly are within the scope of learning and within the scope of acceptable speech and within the scope of what you should be able to, what ideas you should be exposed to if you're getting a decent education, and yet many of those ideas cannot be expressed anymore. We're not talking about, I don't know, Harvard penalizing somebody for explicitly being a racist, or explicitly being anti-Semitic, or no. I mean, it's for ideas that are far more mainstream, far more acceptable, far more reasonable. All right. Thank you guys. We've got quite a few super chats. Thank you, Ryan, for the sticker. Thank you, RDF. Thank you, Sylvanos, for $50, really, really appreciate that. And what is going on here? And the person who got us all started with the stickers, Robert Nacer, thank you for getting us started. Usually it's Jonathan Honing, but Robert beat him to the punch. All right, Richard with a $50 question. It's been a while. I haven't seen Richard here for a while. Richard says, I'm very interested in public speaking course by you, but I will not be in London. Would you be willing to give a U.S. course or coach me individually or another class virtually? How did you get over being nervous when speaking in public? Yes, I'm happy to do a course in the U.S. if we can organize enough people to make it financially worthwhile, or I'm happy to find ways in which I can coach you or anyone else out there individually on public speaking. We could talk about that if you email me. We could talk about what the cost of that would be. Right now, I am doing this course in London just because I had a free day and some people in London said, hey, let's try to organize something. So we're doing it. If we have enough people, great. If not, I'll have a great time in a museum in London, I'm sure, or having a good time somewhere doing something in London. So no big deal, but I'm hoping we can get five to 10 people in London to do this. I know it's expensive, but I think if you care about your public speaking skills and you have the resources to do it, I think you'll benefit enormously from it. So, Richard, yes, happy to do it one-on-one as well. Just kind of drop me an email and we'll figure it out. Iran at youronbrookshow.com. In terms of how did I get over being nervous when speaking in public? I mean, there are a lot of techniques that you can use in order to do that. A lot of kind of psychological things that you can do, but a lot of it just is practice. You just got to do it. You just got to do it. And yeah, you're going to be nervous the first time. You're going to be nervous the fifth time. But over time, you'll get less and less nervous. And the more you do it, the more successful you are at it, and the better prepared you are, and the more confident you are, the less nervous you will be. Part of it is the realization that whatever topic you're talking about, you know a lot more than the people sitting in front of you. And therefore, even if you screw up, they won't even know. They won't even notice. So worry less about screwing up. Worry more about just doing a good job, just being out there and talking about something you care about and being passionate about. So it's psychological preparing yourself. So being really prepared into the material, knowing your stuff, being confident in practicing and being confident in your ability to present it. And then combining that with the knowledge that they don't know what you know. And therefore, you have a huge advantage over them in a sense. But yeah, these are the kind of things we talk about in my public speaking courses is getting over the nervousness, is practicing. But practice, practice, practice. That's true of anything you want to get really good at. You just got to practice it. I mean, it's not dumb practicing. It has to be smart practicing and I get into that as well. But smart practicing is every time you practice, you make a note of what you did well, what you didn't do well, you make it conscious, you think about it, and you try to emphasize the things, you reinforce the things you did well and try to get rid of the things you did badly. And developing that awareness, developing that awareness. Whoops, what did I do there? Jennifer says, I know you have said that a woman can't force a man to pay for a child. He didn't want outside of marriage. So he also wouldn't have the right to see the child if she doesn't want him to. I think that's right, particularly if you didn't pay. That is unless they come to some mutually agreed upon arrangement. I think that the woman is in control here and ideally they come to some arrangement, whether that arrangement involves visitation, whether that arrangement involves support, financial support, all of those things, none of those things, but some kind of voluntary arrangement. But at the end of the day, she gets to make the decision. She gets to make the decision whether the man can come see the child or not, I think, unless they're married. And then now there's a contract that kind of has specifies a more complex relationship between man, woman and child. But outside of marriage, I think it's all really in the woman's hands. And it's not, if you don't support, you don't visit. It could be that it's whatever the agreement is, it's whatever the agreement that they come to happens to be, but ultimately the woman is in control. She chose to have the baby, it's her baby, and the man could suggest marrying her, but she can say no to that even. Francisco, GDP growth in the late 19th century, it was not so special compared to other periods. How can I find good literature on the claim that this was the most innovative period in history? Books, articles, economists, God, you know, you might want to look at the work of Jason Crawford. I think Jason Crawford is doing some historical analysis of these kind of things. But no, GDP growth was spectacular in the 19th century. But GDP is a terrible number. If you look at any measure of standard of living and any measure of quality of life, it accelerated you in this period. But also this period is a period of building the foundation in which the real economic growth and again growth and standard of living quality of life happens. Which is after those foundations are already built and you can leverage it, which is in the 20th century. But I don't know that GDP growth is the best way to measure these things. But even by that, because of just the way GDP is calculated, for example, because government spending was so low during this period, and GDP has a strong component of government spending, government consumption. If government consumption is low, then GDP is not going to be as high as when government spending is high. So you get distorted figures. But I would look at the work of Jason Crawford. I'll have to look at my library in terms of other books that might cover this period. But it's very hard to look at numbers that actually capture what happened. But look at the innovations. Look at the actual change in life. Look at the difference between no electricity and yes electricity. That's never going to be captured by GDP. It's just not going to be captured by GDP. And yet it completely revolutionized how human beings live. James Taylor, you said yesterday people don't take their lives seriously because of altruism. Is altruism really the culprit? Or is it more existential and nihilistic philosophies? No, I think it is altruism. And I think altruism is what leads people to embrace more existential and nihilistic philosophies. Because altruism is the mainstream philosophy, whether it's through religion or through secular philosophy. And people find altruism impractical and doable and pleasant and they look for alternatives. And often what they embrace as an alternative to altruism, rejecting the just the ugliness of altruism, is they embrace something else like existentialism, nihilism, which are also ugly philosophies. But they at least, you know, they give some waiting to your own feeling, your own emotion, your own pseudo values. And that's all part of the rejection of altruism. But altruism sets it up. And again, most people in the world are not nihilists, as I've said many, many, many times. It's a small minority of nihilists. Richard says, I love our world in data that website has amazing charts of economic data, including annual hours worked, working hours, hour of energy, food, spending. Yes, that's right. I shared a graph, I talked about the graph yesterday of the number of hours worked for food. Yes, I mean, our world in data is phenomenal. You know, there's the Human Progress Project. I think it was launched by Cato, but I forget the name of the book now. There's a whole progress movement right now. There's a progress movement. Look it up that is very oriented around, wow, look at what we've done. Look at what we can do. We need to emphasize progress and economic growth. And that is the very, very, very, most in this data. And the data now is all available and you can see it. And I think that presents a much richer data set to see that something very, very dramatic happened in the mid to late 19th century. You know, it's set up the exponential growth of data. So for example, the Wright brothers flying does not increase GDP. But it does increase GDP 20, 30 years later, 40, 50 years later, when people start building airplanes, when productivity goes up, because you can now go from place to place, move from place to place so much faster. But the GDP is only captured way after the innovation happens. And that's why GDP, just looking at GDP is very problematic. But look at the progress movement, look at the material they put out, but look at our world in data. Unfortunately, I don't have just the tip of my brain. I can't remember all the other stuff that is other resources that are available. But there are a lot of really cool resources for data today. James says, you notice young people think not caring is cool. They'll make fun of you for anything so long as you take it seriously. Yeah, I think that's right. That's cynicism and skepticism. And that is much more dominant, I think, than nihilism in our culture. If you think about, I mean, it's one of my big complaints about TV shows that you guys all grew up on, like The Simpsons and Oh God. What is the other show? Animated show that's super cynical and scooped to skeptical and tears down everything. Everything you get his hands on, it tears down. Anyway, more and more, well, family game shows like that, South Park, South Park, right? And the whole genre of children's, pseudo children's TV shows that are basically about tearing stuff down, basically about shredding values and attacking values. And I think what we get from that is a real cynicism and real cynicism. We live in a cynical culture in young people, particularly that way. Richard, again, thank you, Richard. Have you heard of effective accelerationalism? No, I haven't a play on effective altruism. They want to keep government out of AI and ensure tech keeps advancing. They also support geoengineering, one of the few positive political trends. No, I haven't. Send me a link if you have an opportunity to something of theirs. But yes, there is generally a movement coming out of the progress movement out there, the yes and my backyard movement, the progress movement, I keep saying, that are very, very focused on advancing humankind. They often are doing it for the kind of, they position it in the context of effective altruism. And most of the people who push this in one way or another interested in effective altruism. But there's a lot of positive trends in the sense that they are advocating for building, for creating, for progress, for getting rid of regulations and letting progress happen. But this idea of keeping government out of AI is important, really, really important. And it's good to know that somebody is advocating for it. Liam says, quote, we need a revival of true capitalism, not coding capitalism. Vivek Ramoswamy. Great, great. I hope he understands what he's saying. I hope he means what he's saying. And I wish he just was more consistent in terms of what he advocates for and what he believes. We will see. Henrik, isn't Vivek the best or least worst presidential candidate? If so, don't you think he is worth supporting? Who else is better? I'm not convinced he is. Because I think that he, while he often says good things, he also has some really, really bad ideas. And he plays to worst ideas. So his position on immigration is very mixed with a lot of very bad elements. His position on drug cartels is very bad and, again, plays to the worst elements within the Republican Party. His position on Trump is horrible and, again, plays to the worst elements in the Republican Party. His position on foreign policy is ludicrous. It's a joke. And it plays to the worst elements of other policy. He's very inconsistent. He's very good on some things and very bad on other things. He's excellent on climate change and on energy. But so are most of the Republican candidates, at least as they speak, whether it depends on what they say. And, again, character matters because if you're saying ideas that are radical, then if your character is off, then the radical ideas get tainted by your character. Now, Vivek's character seems to be unclear at this point. Let's put it that way. So I'm not saying he might not be worth supporting. You don't have to vote yet. So I would take a very much attitude of wait and see. Let's watch. Let's see. Let's see if he matures during the campaign trail. Let's see if he gets more serious. Let's see if some of the fakery and obnoxiousness, like the way he attacked other candidates, was superficial and stupid and wasn't even an attack on anything of substance. Will he mature? Will he get better? But he was playing the Donald Trump. He was playing Donald Trump on stage. He was acting out Donald Trump. Not a good sign. So, again, let's watch him and see. I'm not ruling him out. I'm just, let's be very aware of the negatives and let's be very aware of some seemingly character issues and seeming willingness to say what the crowd wants to hear rather than what he really believes. And I mean, I still think that the best candidate in terms of, you know, in terms of most of her positions is Nikki Haley. And would Nikki Haley agree with the statement we just read about capitalism? Yeah, of course we would. Who is not going to agree with that? What we need is real capitalism, not crony capitalism. Who is not going to agree with that? All of them are going to agree with that. Every Republican in the world will agree with that statement. It's a meaningless statement. What is real capitalism? Vivek, tell us that. Is this separation of state from economics? Are you willing to say that? Are you willing to stand by that? That's a question. Even Elizabeth Warren would say what we need is real capitalism, not crony capitalism. And her definition of real capitalism is hyper-regulated capitalism, hyper-controlled capitalism. It's not capitalism, but it is in hope in hope propaganda. It is. I mean, she came out in the economic plan is I want to protect capitalism. I want to defend capitalism from cronyism. So to say that you're against crony capitalism is not to say anything. Everybody's against crony capitalism. Even the crony is against crony capitalism. Stephen Harper says, I have recently seen YouTube shows showing cheap Chinese EVs catching fire. I wouldn't want one even if it was free. I mean, fine. I'm not saying you should have one. I will. I am going to say that once they answer the European market, my bet, my guess is that they are going to be up to European regulatory standards, which means they're not going to be catching on fire. What you're seeing are videos that go viral. Videos that go viral are videos that are sensationalist. And you know, it's like the stories about the Tesla's killing people and Tesla's taking over and dry. You know, yes, it happens. But is it a regular occurrence? I don't believe you. And now granted, I'm somebody who, in 1979, bought a Ford Pinto. Talk about cars exploding. The Ford Pinto was well known as if somebody hit it back hard enough, it exploded. And yet I owned one, drove it cross country from the East Coast to the West Coast zigzag the intact. I think we did 20,000 miles on that thing. Yeah, so I've driven a Pinto. I was be hesitant to write off the Chinese EV market. You know, if they're in the Munich car show, if people are wowed in Munich by it, if the Germans are worried about them, there's probably something there. Richard said, could you have Patreon stream your shows on their platform? They won't interrupt you with ads and mid sentences like other podcasting platforms. It would be a nice benefit to Patreon subscribers. I can look into that. Maybe not stream them live, maybe after the fact. But I can certainly look into that. I didn't know Patreon had a streaming platform in and of itself. Let me copy paste that question so I have a record up. Remember to look it up. All right. Steven also writes, Did you see today's print Wall Street Journal article on broadband for all the cost is $42.5 billion in Nebraska? Win a bagel tribe will get fiber optic cable of $53,000 for each family. Yeah, I mean, I didn't see it. But this is in the inflation reduction act. It was pointed out at the time. I might have even talked about it on the show. And those numbers, yeah, I mean astounding in terms of how much money is going to be spent to give people in rural communities high speed, high bandwidth internet access. And yeah, it's what happens when government subsidizes things. So this this was in the IRA and I remember reading about it at the time. Michael, why is this generation losing the ability to love? Are they? I don't know. Maybe because they're narcissistic and cynical. I think cynicism will really undermine your ability to love. And in order to love, you have to love yourself and maybe a low self-esteem. So low self-esteem cynicism and narcissism, which are all connected, are probably the causes. That doodle bunny. I often hear the phrase when you label yourself, you limit yourself. Isn't this an attack on certainty and absolutism reality and moral good? Yes, I mean, you know, God forbid you identify. God forbid you have principles. God forbid you have standards. It's certainly an attack on certainty and absolutism, both of reality and certainly of moral, moral virtue. Finally, Hoppe Campbell, people who can't communicate think everything is an attack. Yeah, I mean, I think generally people who have low self-esteem think that everything is an attack. All right. Thank you. We blew through our target and really, really appreciate it. This has been a phenomenal start for the month. So keep it, keep it going. And I will see you all. Richard, don't forget to email me and I will see you all tomorrow. Probably 1pm back to normal time, 1pm East Coast time for another edition of the news roundup. See you then. Bye everybody.