 The radical. Fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Friday night. I know it's a little unusual for Friday night show, but you know, I have to make up for the fact that we didn't do any shows Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning. So I added the show tonight instead of last night. All right, we've got a loaded topic today. I mean, God, the stuff that's being written on this all over the web, fascinating, depressing, super depressing. So we got a depressing, loaded topic today. How about that? All right, we're going to talk about the one sex, which I think is ravaging America and Republicans are leading the charge. And then we'll talk about the latest woke AI, Germany, which is pretty funny, but and pretty, pretty disturbing. And yeah, don't take your AI seriously, I think is the bottom line is the bottom line for this. Let's, okay, so let's jump in. So where do we start? God, there's so many different threads on this, but we're going to start, I think, with, I had it here, yes, with the Alabama Supreme Court, Alabama Supreme Court, what is it, three days ago, two days ago, three days ago, ruled that embryos, embryos that were kept basically with equivalent of children, embryos were equivalent of children. And therefore, if you destroyed embryos, you could be or a zygote, a zygote, right, zygote, you could be accused of murder, killing of children, frozen embryos are children. According to the Alabama Supreme Court, where God is cited, and where the Chief Justice of the court, yeah, is a real religious conservative, all the way 100% no compromise. And indeed, so this happened, and all across kind of the Republican world, right, there were big cheers, people were celebrating this, this is great, yeah, absolutely. You know, life is a human life, comes into being a conception. And of course, embryos are children, that's why you can't have abortion. Well, if the embryo happened to be outside the womb, it's still a child. And therefore, you can't, you can't destroy it. And Republicans for a while there were celebrating this, the Senator, for example, from Alabama was like, yeah, this is good, this is a recognition of all we've been talking about along, you know, embryos are children. And finally, a court has recognized that. And Alabama, of course, is a state that has some of the most or the most stringent abortion laws in the country. What is going on? Are you guys having problems with video? Or is it just me? Somebody in the chat, let me know if video is okay, or video, video, people? Video's fine. All right. Okay. Cool. No problems. Good. So this is, Alabama has a law that basically says abortions are illegal at any stage of pregnancy. Abortions are illegal even in cases of rape, even in case of incest, even in cases where the woman's life is imperiled. So basically, zero, zero tolerance for abortion in Alabama. And now, zero tolerance for, you know, destruction of embryos in Alabama. But this creates a problem. Fertility clinics typically fertilize a number of embryos in order to implant those embryos as part of, when couples cannot conceive by themselves naturally. And as a consequence, whoa, somebody's calling me a liar. Why are they calling me a liar? What did I say? What did I say? And as a consequence, fertility treatments are really, really problematic because they don't use all the embryos. Fertility clinics usually use some embryos and destroy the rest. Some women, or some embryos actually are frozen and used later. You know, with an IVF, a doctor extracts eggs from ovaries, fertilize them with sperm outside the body, test you babies. And then there's an embryo. And then it can be moved into the universe. But now fertility clinics are going to shut down IVFs, shut down IVF in Alabama. The number of clinics have already said they're not going to do these procedures anymore. And suddenly Republicans are like, wait a minute, no, we didn't mean it to have a detrimental effect on actual childbirths. We want children, like we're big on family, we want children, we want couples. More importantly, we don't want to lose the vote of couples who can't have babies. In a amicus brief to the court, the Medical Association of State of Alabama warned that the ruling would make pursuing IVF more expensive or result in fertility clinics shutting down or moving out of state because of the increased risk of lawsuits. The justices shrugged this off, writing it was up to the legislature to address that policy focused argument. And it had a duty to provide legal protection to unborn life without exception. The Chief Justice, Tom Parker, quoted the Bible as he examined the sanctity of unborn life, quote, human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God who views the destruction of his image as an affront to himself. Even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God and their lives cannot be destroyed without a facing his glory. I'm not even going to mention the issues of separation of state that this brings up, right? I mean, God, God, yeah, God. So IVF is in trouble now. The senator from Alabama, when he heard that IVF was in trouble, was like, oh, we didn't mean it. That's not what we want. It's not clear how the legislature can solve this problem. The court is pretty clear. You cannot destroy unborn life. Now, this, of course, raises questions, not just IVF, but it also raises big questions for the abortion pill. The abortion pill, of course, only affects you, causes you, causes the woman to abort after conception. In other words, after the image of God has already been created. And then you are taking a pill to cause an abortion and that's killing the image of God. And therefore, you can see how that argument can be used to make the abortion pill illegal in Alabama, which is it is not yet. But we know that that's with the Supreme Court right now. The Supreme Court right now is going to be ruling about the abortion pill soon. I mean, when Roe versus Wade were struck down, a lot of people were saying, oh, well, no big deal. At the end of the day, the states will decide and look, you know, there'll be some rational conclusion to all of this. It'll be decided by voters at a local level, the way it should be. Don't worry. Everything's fine. Everything's not fine. Everything's a disaster for many, many women, minorities. Smallest minority in the world. Smallest minority is the individual. So individual women, their rights are stripped, being stripped from them. They're stripped from them in inaccessibility to abortion. They're now stripped from them inability to use IVF, that's stripped from them in the inability to use certain forms of what is still called contraception post fertilization, if you will, contraception. Everything, everything, in a sense, the worst case scenario coming out of Roe versus Wade, the dob's ruling is playing out. This is truly horrific. And next, we know what's going to be next. Next, once they get rid of abortion completely, including the morning after pill, including all the kinds of morning after pills, all the kind of abortion pills. The next obvious step is to get rid of contraception. And that seems bizarre and far-fetched. That seems right out of the Iranian theocratic regime. But for many Americans today, that is the next required step. It's not legal up to 20 weeks in Alabama. It's not legal at all in Alabama. It's not even legal with medical exceptions. It's not legal in the cases of rape and in Alabama. It has a basically zero tolerance law in Alabama against abortion. And you can see why. If I'm born a children, then yeah. Yeah, it's easy to call me a liar. I get it. That's fine. All right, let's, let's check this. You know, I could be wrong. I don't know all the, all the abortion laws by heart. Let's, let's check this out. An abortion should be permitted if an attending physician's life in the state of Alabama determines that an abortion is necessary in order to prevent the serious health risk to the unborn child's mother, except in the case of a medical emergency defined herein, the physician's determination should be confirmed in writing by a second physician, licensed in Alabama. The confirmation shall occur within 180 days after the abortion is completed and shall be primary fascia evidence of a permitted abortion. All right. So my mistake in the case, this is the only exception, right? It shall be unlawful for any person to intentionally perform or attempt to perform an abortion except as provided for by subsection B, which I just read to you. In other words, the only exception for abortion is if a woman's life is serious health risk. Now, did you see the issue of health risk? First of all, don't call me a liar, Rochelle, whoever you are, you bastard, right? You don't call people liars. I made a mistake. I didn't lie. I corrected the mistake. I expect an apology, not just a thank you, but an apology would be the appropriate thing when you call somebody a liar. A liar is not somebody who, yeah, I was lying. So somebody who says something wrong is always lying. God, the people, no, and I'm not happy that you, as a despicable person that you are, are not apologizing. All right. Notice that in the state of Texas, you remember the state of Texas? We talked about this, we talked about this a little while ago, a few months ago. The woman who said that if she did not have an abortion, the child would die and she would never be able to have kids again. That seems like serious health risk. And yet the Supreme Court of Texas denied her an abortion. So what is serious health risk is a very, very narrow, very, very narrow. All right. Anyway, Donald Trump was silent about this for days. And then finally today, you know, responded by wanting to have his cake and eat it too, basically urging the Alabama legislature to pass a law that makes it possible for, you know, for couples to get IVF in Alabama without overturning what the Supreme Court of Alabama had ruled in terms of, in other words, Republicans now want to have it both ways because they realize their electoral damage that this is going to have. Now, what, what motivates this? Now, you could say what motivates this is a commitment to this idea that human life begins a conception and therefore, you know, the embryo has embedded in it individual right, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as an embryo and therefore cannot be destroyed even. But that's ridiculous. That is completely wrong. It's a complete fabrication. It's not what motivates this at all. And it's, what motivates this is exactly what Ein Rand claimed motivated the opposition to abortion. What motivates this is opposition or rejection of sex and pleasure. It is the idea that if you have sex, then you know, you should live with the consequences. If you have sex, you should be scary. If you have sex, we shouldn't use human ingenuity, the human mind, human ability to just have sex without negative repercussions, negative if you don't have a child, then pregnancy is negative. What really motivates this hatred of women, this hatred of abortion, this hatred of, you know, this veneration of embryos, this veneration of zygots, this veneration of cells is ultimately a real hatred of sex and pleasure. I mean, and I saw this really manifest itself on Twitter over the last, what is it, day or two? Two days? February 22nd? Yeah, a couple of days, yesterday and today. So yesterday I saw this tweet by Michael Schirmer where he is retweeting or quoting a video from the Heritage Foundation. And the video, the tweet from the Heritage Foundation is actually a video of a feminist, an anti-sex feminist. And, you know, we'll talk about that. But I want to show you the video, and then I want to show you kind of the responses to the video. First of all, the Heritage Foundation, what I had to write about it, and then the responses to it following that. So let's watch, let's watch this video. Move it a little bit, center it a little bit. All right, there we go. All right, it's mainly for listening. It's the picture's not that crucial. I hear from great many young women who were put on the pill at the age of 14 and came off it so maybe 10 years later and realized they'd done a complete personality flip and actually. I mean, that I think is funny, by the way. I'll just mention this. I, again, I'm not a scientist. I'm certainly an unexpert on the side effects and the consequence of taking the pill. But I find it funny, you know, somebody who's 14 and then you're 20 something, 10 years later she said, so 24. How many of you who are not taking the pill? I don't even guys. How many of you are not taking the pill? Had a complete personality flip between 14 and 24? I mean, is it really possible to go from age 14 to 24 and not have a dramatic change to one's personality pill or no pill, pharmacology or no pharmacology? Anyway, that's just, I find this is the kind of reasoning that people engage in. One said, and I thought I was bipolar, but then it turned out actually it was just this psychoactive substance. I mean, what were they doing to me? And this is all, and this was all to the purpose of rendering a woman receptive to what is, for the most part, loveless and sometimes extremely degrading sexual access. So the purpose of the pill, the reason it was developed, the reason it was given, the reason it was encouraged, you know, people were taking it, is so that women could be rendered rendered as basically sex slaves, tools for sexual gratification of men, I assume. I mean, women have no say in this, they have no agency, they have no control over this, they take the pill, they immediately become, you know, open to sex with any male and it necessitates loveless sex? She didn't say sex slaves, yeah. All right. This is what she said. Rendered a woman receptive. What is, for the most part, loveless and sometimes extremely degrading sexual? What does it mean to make a woman receptive to loveless degrading sex? I mean, women doesn't have any choice when she takes the pill. She's now committed to loveless and degrading sex. Is that outside of her ability to say no to? To access. And it's, I struggle to see in what way that's in women's interests. And given the great many other things that to my downstream of the entry into that paradigm, it seems to me that a good place to start would be a feminist movement against the pill and for rewilding sex. So against the pill, she means here against contraception. Let's be clear. Rewilding sex. What does rewilding sex mean? It means redangering sex. It means making sex now risky again. Returning the danger to sex. Returning the intimacy and really the consequentiality to sex. And a great deal follows from an intentional reconnection of women's opting intentionally to reconnect with the fullness of our embodied nature. The fullness of your blighted nature is to always risk pregnancy when you have sex. That's what she wants. The danger because she's opposing sex. Now who is this lady? Even though the conservatives are jumping all over this, she is not a conservative. She is a feminist of the left generally. I have her name is Mary Harrington. Pretty famous, well-known feminist who's written quite a bit about this. This is, I don't know when this video is taken. Twitter doesn't cite a source on the video. You have to really dig to find it. But Mary Harrington is pretty, is very well known for having these positions, for believing the sexual revolution was very, very bad for women. That the pill has been very, very bad for women. That sexual, generally contraception has been very bad for women. She had a famous essay she wrote, the sexual revolution killed feminism, which she views women as embracing sex or somehow demeaning them and therefore destroying the ambition that is feminism. I read this, I have to admit, I find it very difficult to understand what much of what she's talking about. I'm not in most in the literature over feminism. But look, this is, you know, we're going to deal with exactly what she said. The context of what she said is pretty clear. She believes, whoops, let me get rid of this, she believes that what we need is a feminist movement against contraception to rewild sex. In other words, to make sex about reproduction again, to take out pleasure, sex for pleasure. Now, this is anti-life. It's anti-woman, it's also anti-male. It's anti-joy happiness life. Now, the fact that he's a feminist, it doesn't super surprise me that she's anti-life or anti-sex. I think a lot of feminists ultimately are anti-sex. So anyway, the Heavities Foundation writes, it quotes, it says, quote, it seems to me that a good place to start would be a feminist movement against the pill and for returning consequentiality to sex. Consequentiality to sex, the fear of getting pregnant. I don't know, am I the only one who is pissed off at this, gets angry about this stuff? I get a sense that nobody seems to care. And Heavities Foundation continues to say, conservatives have to lead the way in restoring sex to its true purpose and recreational sex and senseless use of birth control pills. Now, Heavities Foundation is very important, particularly today. The Heavities Foundation is basically Donald Trump's foundation right now. It is going to be the organization that will staff the entire Trump administration. They are basically, I get fundraising letters from them. And basically that's their pitch, their fundraising pitch. The fundraising pitch is we are prepared. The first Trump administration, he didn't have the right people. We are prepared to staff the administration. We're hiring the people. We're creating shadow departments. We will staff the Trump administration. We will have all the people. It will be fully staffed. We'll be able to hit the road running as soon as he gets elected. Scary, scary, scary stuff. Anyway, I posted, I did two posts, once the theocrats are coming for your birth control, which I think is true. She might not be a theocrat, but they're using her and they will use her. There's no question about that. And then I did a second post. Oh, and then, oh, so yeah, let me backtrack. Okay, so Michael Schumer wrote, I called it yesterday, IVF-frozen MBOs is just a start. A feminist movement against the pill and recreational sex have, you know, have sex to make babies. That's the only purpose of sex that Michael Schumer wrote that. So Chris Ruffo wrote, now Chris Ruffo is I think at the Manhattan Institute has gained a huge amount of celebrity. And to some extent, justifiably, Chris Ruffo is like a anti-woke warrior, super anti-woke, he's written a book, he's got a book out against woke. He also was instrumental in revealing the plagiarism of the former president of Harvard University. And I think without him, she probably would have never been forced to resign. So Chris Ruffo has huge, huge conservative creds right now, huge Republican creds. He is in huge anti-woke creds. This is the anti-woke warrior right now. This is what he writes after Michael Schumer writes, I called it yesterday, IVF-frozen, you know, and all of that by recreational sex and stuff. This is Chris Ruffo. So what? The pill causes health problems for many women. Recreation of sex is a large part of the reason we have so many single mother households, which drives poverty, crime, and dysfunction. The point of sex is to create children. This is natural, normal, and good. No. The point of animal sex is to create children. The point of animal sex is to create children. The point of human sex is to affirm life, to affirm pleasure. The purpose of human sex is intimacy, connection, human beings are cognitive beings. We don't have to reproduce. We can choose whether to reproduce or not. And modern technology has made that choice much more real. And what's amazing is, right, put aside the pill has health problems for many women, sure, women can choose. Some women don't have health problems. And there are other means of contraception that women can engage in that don't involve a pill. And I'm sure each one of those mechanisms some women have side effects and don't like. That's why in the modern world in which we live, there is a plethora of choices for birth control. It's not the health problems that these people care about. They don't give a damn about the health of women. If they did, they'd be proportioned. What they care about is to get rid of, quote, recreational sex. But what is recreational sex? Is recreational sex having sex before marriage anytime? Because, look, sex before marriage clearly is not for procreation. Sex before marriage is purely for pleasure. Is that count? Or is it just people who sleep around, go to orgies, swap partners every week? Is that recreational sex? What about a young couple who like each other immensely and share a lot in common and want to have sex with one another? And they might get married and they might not get married. And then to say recreational sex is a large part of the reason we have so many single mother households which drives poverty, crime, and dysfunction. Really? I mean, God, I mean, it's completely contradictory. Isn't the fact that we have single mother households because women are not using contraception? Isn't the reason we have single mother households because we're afraid to talk about sex? We're afraid to educate people about sex? Isn't it true that single mother households, by the way, are declining dramatically over the last 10 years from the peak in the early 2000s? And isn't it a failure of education? You could also argue that single mother households have to do with the welfare state, the disincentives to marry, all kinds of stuff. I don't think it's recreational sex. It is sex before marriage. That's true. And that's what he's really after. That's what they hate. And yet I have said, and I will say it again, and I will say it from the mountain tops as many times as necessary, although I don't know that I'm making a dent anyway, I believe strongly that getting married before you have sex is immoral. That not having sex before marriage is immoral. It's stupid. It's ignorant. And it's super risky. Everybody should have sex before marriage. They should use contraception not to get pregnant. I don't get Chris. He's a smart guy. I look to see did he retract this, did he, he hasn't commented on it since at least that I could find, but no attraction. But what's stunning to me is how many people agree with Chris. There's so many people who came after my post when I criticized Chris, surprise me, that people who follow me think that sex should be restricted to married couples is bizarre. Well, you don't know, Rochelle says, the only happy couple I know, they had their first kiss at the wedding. Yeah. I mean, I'm surprised they didn't meet for the first time at the wedding because maybe we should just go back to arranged marriages. I'd been married 41 years and we did a lot more than kiss before the wedding. Bizarre. You know, I sometimes think, so are we really in the 21st century? Yeah, arranged marriages have lower divorce rates because people are more, because people who agree to arrange marriages are going to be dogmatic about it, and they're going to suffer emphasis on suffer through it, whether it's good for them or not. And there's nothing wrong with divorce. Absolutely nothing wrong with divorce. I mean, I find this whole line of thinking about sex, about marriage, about children. It's 12, 20. It's what's his name? Forget the guy's name, who wanted to go back to 12, 20. What about couples who don't want to have kids? Should they not use the pill? Should they not use contraception and keep it dangerous? Keep it dangerous? I mean, this is so nakedly anti-pleasure, anti-individual, anti-joy, anti-happiness. Now, and this is the argument they make and both left and right make this, but this is the forced economy they create. You have two options. You can either wait until your wedding night and kiss then and then have sex and only have sex for the purpose of having children, or you pretty much have sex with everybody. You have recreational sex. You sleep around with everybody. You're promiscuous. Those are the only two options because what conservatives do, primarily conservatives do that, but some people on the left too and some people in the middle, is they assume people are animals. Animals in the animalistic sense. They don't have free will. They don't have reason. They're imbued with original sin. It's interesting. I'm reading this book in the founding of Christianity and the early years of Christianity. You know, I've been reading a lot about Christianity lately, and all the fathers of Christianity, like the original thinkers, the original people like Augustine and others, Jerome and many others, all the intellectuals who were at the foundation of capitalism were all obsessed with sex. They all despised sex, thought sex was unbelievably destructive. This is why monasticism and celibacy were so popular in the Christian church. Christianity and it's had this impact on our culture. Christianity is fundamentally anti-pleasure, anti-sex, anti-individual happiness. And it's connected with original sin, the doctrine of original sin, which it turns out, all arises from mistranslation of the New Testament. But anyway, it's just, it's pretty funny actually, really sad, really, that you have a whole doctrine that is, I think, psychologically really affected the church deeply, and the origins might just be a mistranslation. So yeah, but Christianity's, you know, Christianity's a really, really, of religions. Christianity's a really bad religion. And religion, of course, is already problematic just by being a religion. So there's this false dichotomy. We're animalistic. And therefore, if we just leave people to be, leave them in their, quote, natural state as human beings, they would just go around, you know, sleeping with everybody. So we need to have moral law and know, note how much of Christian moral law is dedicated to sex. We need to have moral law to restrict man. So he doesn't do all the evil he would do if not for these restrictions. And he doesn't have to understand the restrictions. He just has to follow in their commandments. He has to follow them as the law. It is his duty. So either promiscuous or you are, you can only have sex in marriage and only, and even then just to have children. I mean, this is cultural barbarism in its worst form. Yes, many people behave irresponsibly with regard to sex. It's terrible. But people behave irresponsibly with regard to a lot of things in life. What we need to teach them is reason to be rational. What we need them, what we need to teach them is to think, to be independent, to make choices, to be selfish. What we need to teach them is to be selfish, to think about their own long-term well-being. And we shouldn't try to replace try to replace the individual's thinking with commandments, with crazy rules that limit the joy in life. I mean, sex is beautiful. It's amazing. And if you were only going to do it when you were going to have children, you would only do it like three, four, five, six, seven times in your life. And that's crazy. You know, once, twice a week. Yeah. And when you're younger, even more often. So it's completely insane. You shouldn't be promiscuous. But you should have sex. You shouldn't be promiscuous in anything in life. You shouldn't be promiscuous in your friendships. You shouldn't be promiscuous in your job. You shouldn't flip jobs every three weeks. You should be thoughtful. If you do away with contraceptions, you can't have sex with your spouse for pleasure. But what about not with your spouse for pleasure? What's wrong with having sex not with your spouse for pleasure? If you gain value from it without being promiscuous, you see, you know, some of you are falling into the same nonsense, the same nonsense. You're going to quote the Bible on me? Michelle is quoting the Bible. This is the Bible. The Bible that tells the story of David, who had many wives and who in one of the final chapters in the section about David, he is the beginning of the chapter is David waking up with two young women in his bed with him to keep him quote warm. There is no conservative perspective. The conservative perspective is that we are inherently evil. That we're inherently irrational. That we are inherently cannot control our urges. The conservative perspective is the conservative perspective is particularly the Christian perspective is the inherently evil. And therefore we must be chained. We must be restricted. We must be bound by rules and laws and regulations to behave in the way the philosopher kings have decided is appropriate for us to behave. The reality is the Bible doesn't say anything. The Bible says whatever you wanted to say, there's stuff in the Bible for everybody. I can find justifications for my arguments in the Bible. And I'm sure all of you can find justifications for your arguments in the Bible as well. It is a meaningless document in that sense. There's no truth in the Bible. There's no knowledge in the Bible. And the conservatives don't look to the Bible to find the truth in their knowledge. They make it up. They make it up based on their perspective on human nature. It's fascinating. You know, evangelicals used to be pro-abortion. Then they flipped to be anti-abortion. The Christians used to hold all kinds of ideas. And they changed over time. All kinds of ideas change all the time. And if you look at the Christian church, it evolves based on the needs of the powerful, not based on so-called truth or commitment to some old documents. They find what they want in the old documents to justify what they want to do anyway for the purposes of power. But look, there is a third alternative to promiscuity versus following anti-life rules, anti-pleasure, anti-sex rules. And that is to enjoy sex responsibly, to have sex with the people, with people that you value, that you share something with. Don't be promiscuous, but don't be sex with one person in your entire life, only after marriage, which is ignorant and silly. The attack on contraception is an attack on human life. And it's not an attack just on women. Men, beware. An attack on abortion is an attack on human life. It's an attack on women, but it's an attack on all of our lives, on our independence, on our reasoning mind, on our own individual judgment. Having children is super important, super important. And therefore, one should be sure that one wants them, and one should have every opportunity to change one's mind about them. Sex, marriage is so important. It's such a big commitment that you better know that you're going to enjoy the sex with the person you're going to spend maybe the rest of your life with. You want to know that you, when you're intimate like that, that you respond in a way that is fulfilling. You better, when you marry somebody and make the kind of commitments that people make in their vows, you better know that this person is the right person for you. And to take a massive part of human life, sex and marriage, which is sex, and as a consequence and say, well, I'm not going to know about them in that realm until after the wedding, what if after the wedding you discover you hate having sex with them? What if after the wedding you discover that there's no intimacy between you and him or him and you or whatever? It's too late. It is ignorant and stupid and irrational not to have sex before the wedding. And primitive. And of course, why? Why wait? What is the reason? There's no rationale. There's no logic to it. It's all about what? It's all about what? If you know you're going to marry the person, why would you not have sex before? I mean, even if you don't know you're going to marry them, why would you not have sex before? Anyway, we live in 2024 and it's unbelievable to me that we have to have these conversations. It's unbelievable to me that we have to have these conversations 2024, how the ignorance that people have of human psychology, of human sexuality, of human life and, you know, the people still want, the people still want, I mean, this is the problem. The problem is that they live, people live unfulfilled lives. They buy into the conservative view of, they buy into the conservative view of human nature. They apply it to themselves and therefore they can't imagine a healthy sexual relationship that is not bounded by contract, which is a marriage. All marriages are a contract. They can't imagine having sex with more than one person, with multiple people over time or all at once, anyway, in a responsible way. What they really motivated for is hatred. Hatred of human reason, hatred of human choice, hatred of human happiness, hatred of human happiness. I mean, just read Augustine, Augustine, read Augustine, really the most important intellectual certainly in the early church. And it's hatred for life. It's hatred for life. Edward says, you can't imagine that people, that some people don't even have sex. No, I mean, I can't imagine that. I find that sad and unimaginable. And no worthwhile emulating. But yeah, read Augustine who whipped himself in order to take the urges out and his attitude. Asexuality is a problem. It's a real problem. It's a form of giving up on life. It's a form of giving up on pleasure. It's a form of giving up on intimacy. It's a form of not living. It's not a good thing. And you should see a psychologist if you're asexual. You should get treated. That would be my advice to anybody who considers himself asexual, get treatment. It's not a lifestyle. It's something's wrong. There's a problem. And it could be a psychological problem. It could be a philosophical problem. It could be both. But it's a problem. You're giving up on a lot of values. A lot of values. All right. I'm going to skip the second topic because we're already late. We'll do that topic next week. The Gemini woke AI. It was kind of funny. But anyway, you know, it shocks me. It shocks me all the time. It's not my values. Objective values, life, life, sex is life affirming. And anytime you turn your back on something that's life affirming, something is wrong. It's a sign from your psyche telling you, go see a psychologist. Sex is not just a preference. It wouldn't be if it was just a preference. Anyway, let's see. It's truly amazing kind of the responses on Twitter, particularly from those associated with the American right. It is a little scary. All right. Let's take some questions. And let's see. I'm going to look at the $20 questions to see if there are any on the topic. All right. Yeah, Adam says, banning the pill is like banning seatbelts, so people drive slower. Yeah, although it's like a lot worse, right? Driving is fun, but not as much fun as sex. So I get that analogy, but that's good. That's good. All right. Let's start with Liam, who put $100 behind his question. Thank you, Liam. The GOP really is the dense non-productive party. No question about that. Even the affluent areas in the red states are comprised of money parked there from blue states. The wealth of South Florida is all the money from the Northeast. The brains and money in Austin is all from California, et cetera. And notice that Austin is, in every city, really almost every city in the United States, is blue. Almost every city. Not quite. Every major city is not red. So where most of productive activity happens, which is in the cities, they're blue. But, yeah, I mean, red, blue, a pox on both of them, right? It's all, they're all problematic. They're all wrong. They're all problematic. They're all, and isn't it stunning that even though a state like California has so much brains and so much productivity and so much wealth, and yet they vote these politicians in that have these anti-wealth, anti-brains, anti-human policies? It's the condition we're in today is that we have two political parties that are undermining human life in different ways, but they're both doing the same thing. Liam, Trump hit the alpha male notes that made people think that he would stand up to the left. That's about as far as the thought process seems to go. The idea that he is a power-lusting maniac seems to be either missed or intentionally evaded. Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. I think there's something about his cockiness, his explicit unabashed narcissism that attracts people. And they really, it's really not about ideas. It's about anti-ideas. It's about the anti-left. This is why it doesn't matter what ideas Donald Trump actually holds. Nobody cares. Nobody asks him. Nobody wonders. And certainly not the people who support him. You know, it's why he could wait about the Alabama decision before making a public statement because he wants to see where the wind is blowing. He doesn't have any content. He doesn't have any ideas. And then he'll say something that is neither he or nor they. But yeah, I mean, I guess there's this alpha male thing going that both goes like, what does one of FEMA says, goes like bad boys. And a lot of guys would like to have his cockiness and arrogance and, I don't know, whatever it is that he has. I don't get it because I don't, I don't get what he has. I've never, ever, ever since the 1980s, when I first encountered Trump, never liked the guy. He comes across as vulgar, mindless, and, and, you know, a kind of a kind of a mindless arrogance. So I don't get it, but that's fine. He's probably be the next president. James, in regards to free will, is the objective of this position, the scientific explanations, need to catch up to our senses and experiences rather than us needing to degrade what we perceive in order to comply with current scientific knowledge? Yes, absolutely. And, and, but it's more than that. It's the whole philosophy of science needs to catch up. That is, for the way science conceives as causality is wrong. And that is the source of the problem in many regards, right? So we have to think about causality, not as object X, what it does to object Y, what precedes what, but how things act according to their nature and what is the thing's nature. And if we recognize that a human being's nature is free will, then there's no problem with causality. They might still be a problem. We can't explain it scientifically. But the reality is we can't explain life, not completely scientifically. We can't create it in the lab yet. Does that mean it doesn't exist because we can't explain it? No. So it's, it is that the science needs to be better both philosophically in terms of philosophy of science and just in terms of our knowledge of biology and our understanding of consciousness. I mean, the same thing with consciousness. We don't, we don't understand consciousness. We don't know the physics of consciousness. And yet you can't deny that we're conscious and that other animals are conscious. I mean, it's the same thing as denying gravity before you have a theory of gravity. You can't do it. Gravity exists whether you have a theory of it or not. And it was observable. People didn't jump off cliffs because they understood. They got it. They'd induced gravity, the effects of gravity, and they didn't have a theory of it. And we still don't completely understand where gravity comes from, what causes gravity. We just know it exists. And we know it follows certain rules and we know we can measure it in certain ways, right? We understand the law of gravity, but we don't understand where gravity comes from, what the source of it is. Does that mean it doesn't exist? All right. Clark, what is the same about 1920s Germany and 1920s America? Well, a lot is the same. I'd say a cultural decadence, a culture falling apart, a left that is going full on subjectivist, full on disintegration, a political class completely evasive of completely divorced from the people and what's going on. You also have a rising right in Germany. Of course, you had a rising Nazi party in the 1920s and a broader right, not just a Nazi party, but a broader kind of fascist movement, as a response to the ever growing party of ever growing power culturally of the left. If you think about the left in the 1920s, they dominated the universities, they dominated the arts, they dominated the letters, they dominated all the cultural institutions and fascism was a response against it. Nazism was a response against it and it was rising in the 20s. And then of course, the philosophy behind it all is very similar, right? You had a kind of a complete rejection of reason on the left, complete overall in the culture, complete rejection of reason a complete rejection of values on the left, a completely depraved morality, completely disintegrated, same as you have today. And then a reactionary effect of we need to go back to tradition less so religion in America, it's more about religion, there was more about you know, the kind of German mythology or German past or German greatness or whatever. But it was a harkening back to something, some mystical thing. And so tons of parallels, again, the best book on this by far is Linda Peacock's The Ominous Parallels, The Ominous Parallels. You can find it on Amazon, buy it, read it, everybody should be reading the Ominous Parallels and he shows that basically we today, although it was written in the 70s and early 80s, we today infected with the same disease, Kantianism, as the Germans were in the 1920s and 1930s. And the one difference is that we today have the alternative to Kantianism is much more explicitly religious today than it was back then. And that's true even in the 80s. I think I've heard Leonard say that if he was rewriting Ominous Parallels there would be a lot, he'd do a lot more on religion, because it's clear to him religion is played as it's played out in America, religion has played a much bigger role than anybody would have expected in the 1970s and 80s when America was far more secular. All right, Michael says, what makes you think evil people hate themselves? Don't they just hate other people? Because love requires valuing. Love requires, you know, loves require, what was I thinking? Love, which is the opposite of hate, requires valuing, requires a positive, requires positive virtues. And, you know, if you are evil, then you negate all positive virtues, then you are negating all positive values, anything or good. And as such, all you're left with, you can't have love, all you're left with is hate. And, you know, somebody who's evil is negating reality, rejecting reality, rejecting values, rejecting their own mind, rejecting, in a sense, their own judgment is, the only thing left for them to feel is hate. Hoppe Campbell, we make mistakes as we stumble uphill with the objectives movement is on the right track. I am glad you think so. You know, I'm not in a position to say, I think you're right. I wish it would, that track, we would move a little faster along that track. Hoppe Campbell, it's incredible how many people are dying inside from lack of encouraging words, lack of purpose, lack of reason for living. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's lack of encouraging words. I don't think it's a matter of what comes from the outside. I think that dying inside because of a lack of purpose, a lack of reason for living, which comes to come from the insight. It's your own insight, it's your own motivation. But it's not, what we need is people patting us on the back. That's not what we need. What we need is to pursue a life of purpose and to pursue a life of values. All right, guys, I'll just remind you guys of a few things. Please, if you're not a subscriber, subscribe to the show. If you find it interesting, like the show before you leave. If you like the show, it really helps with the algorithm. It's really, really valuable. And don't forget to support the show on Patreon or on PayPal, uranbookshow.com slash membership or Patreon, just your own book, your own book show. Let's see. Michael says, the mind can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven. Not so much, not so much. It is not, we do not live in a primacy of consciousness world. Reality matters. Reality matters. You're in a concentration camp. You cannot make it into a heaven. Sorry. It's hell and you'll suffer and you cannot change that. Your consciousness, just by wanting it to be, doesn't change it. Reality is what it is. The mind does not make heaven of hell and does not make hell of heaven. Now it can make things worth or make things better because of your evaluations of them. But reality is what it is. Cory, off topic, why do pro-Palestinians emphasize that it's not all Palestinians when Palestine is referred to as the enemy by us and others, yet in the same breath arguing argument state that Israel is a colonizer? Well, I mean, what are you saying that they contradict themselves? Yeah. I mean, they contradict themselves all over the place. So what they're trying to do is they'll do anything to portray Israel as the bad guys. And if they have to say contradictory statements in order to make that so, then they'll say them. Israels are the bad guys. They're killing children and Palestinians who might not support Hamas. They're killing civilians. But the Hamas kills civilians on October 7th. Yeah, but that was part of resistance and it's okay to kill civilians if you're resistant and if the civilians are part of the colonizers. As the colonizers, they're evil through and through. So yeah, ridiculous, but it is what it is. They are filled with contradictions. Andrew says it's not clear why Rand thought abortion rights were threshold issue of individualism. Some objectives think she was trivial in opposing Reagan because of it, but a person's position on abortion is very revealing. I agree completely. I agree completely. I really do think it is super revealing of really their soul, really their soul, where their values really are and how committed they are to individualism. So Corey says they emphasize individuality when it's Palestine, but disregard it when it's Israel. I don't know that I'd ever put it that way. I don't think they ever really emphasize individuals. They don't really think in terms of individuals. They emphasize the existence of so-called innocence when they talk about Palestinians. They don't talk about that, but there's no concept of individuals for them. And that's a sense in which they use these arguments. It's all about my tribe versus your tribe, and I'll use whatever arguments I can to get one up on your tribe. Corey, Israel is an apartheid state. Surely by their logic, it wouldn't be all Israelis. But no, but there is no logic here. And look, all Israelis are colonizers. So all Israelis are sinful. Not all Palestinians committed atrocities of October 7th, but all Israelis have committed the atrocity of living on somebody else's land, according to them, of course. So think about it that way. They're all sinners. Now, of course, they don't know what apartheid is. They don't know any of that. So yeah. But they will use any argument that they think will work without any shame, without any problem. All right, a few reminders. You can support the show on Super Chat. We're still a little off of the target. So a few $20 questions, and we'll get there. We'll $10 questions, and we'll get there. We're not that far off. I also want to remind you that the registration for the INRAN Conference in Austin, Texas at the end of March is still open. The INRAN Institute is still accepting, and will be accepting until March 15th, application for scholarships. And this is going to be a fantastic conference. I wish I could go. It's going to have, I think I went through the list, right? Four philosophers, Tara Smith, Jason Reigns, Greg Salamieri, Ben Baer, and then one psychologist, Gina Golan. What a lineup. That's an all-star lineup right there. And go spend a weekend with them. It's going to be a lot of fun. The conference is organized around a discussion for the new intellectual. If you are a serious student of objectivism, apply for a scholarship, all expenses paid, what are you waiting for? I don't know why everybody doesn't apply for this. All expenses paid. What have you got to lose? You might not get the scholarship, but at least try. All right. Also, reminder, if you, I'm doing two public speaking seminars, one in Amsterdam, still some slots available on March 11th in Amsterdam. Drop me an email. You're on at your on bookshow.com. And one right after Ocon, the day after Ocon, it'll be somewhere in Southern California. And drop me an email if you're interested in that. And some of you have always send more information out. But yeah, it could be, if you're serious, it could be in for the California one. It could be for the Amsterdam one. Of course, the Amsterdam one time is running short. And you have to get to Amsterdam. But the tons of you who are in Europe who could attend that pretty cheaply. And it would be, it would be great. So write to me, you're on at your on bookshow.com. All right. Richard said, what's your take on Gracho Marks, saying he wouldn't join any club who would have him as a member? I mean, I think it's super funny. And I think Gracho, again, it was a joke, right? It wasn't serious. It was a self depreciating joke. But that, you know, Gracho used to make jokes like that. I thought the Marks Brothers were really funny. Silly, often, but funny. And I think that, particularly when Gracho says it, is quite funny as a joke, not as a serious statement that depreciates yourself. Corey, did you watch Rabbi Schmawley debate? No, I'm Phil Costin on more Pierce Morgan. If so, what did you think? No, I haven't seen it yet. But I will try to catch it and comment on it. But I haven't, I haven't seen it yet. Thanks, Corey. I'm sure he beat the guy up. But Clark says, why are there so few good guys in history? Because, well, most people are pretty good, but they just live their lives and you don't know about them, right? Most good guys you don't know about. All the engineers, all the scientists, all, you know, you don't know most of them. So there are a lot of good guys. And so there's a big shot of good guys. It's because the world has been dominated by bad ideas. It's because to be a really good guy requires a lot of effort. And because, and maybe because the world usually burns at the stake, the good guys. And because the world has a perverse sense of who the good guys are, of what constitutes goodness. But no, I mean, it's amazing how many good guys they've been in history. How good they were. Jonathan asked, is the worst, is this the worst GOP and conservative movement in modern political history? I think so. I mean, has the Republicans ever had a worse candidate than Trump? No. Have they been worse on abortion? No. Have they been worse on foreign policy? No. Have they been worse on the economy? No. So, yeah, I mean, this is by far, I don't think it's even close. The worst Republican party conservative movements, whatever you want to call it, ever, certainly since the Republican party came into being. And the Democrats are probably the worst as well. Liam, all the country folk who despise people from the city should do seem to love the biggest city slicker con man in history. It just seems that way. Trump, by the way, if you didn't get his reference. Michael says, when the state calls you a taxpayer, it's equivalent to a rapist calling his victim his girlfriend. That's Javier Millay. Yeah. I don't know. The parallel doesn't quite work. But yeah, I mean, there has to be a positive. Like, what's the parallel to girlfriend? There's no parallel to girlfriend. Taxpayer rape that I get. But where's the girlfriend? Anyway, it doesn't quite work. Not if you think about it. But I get the intention. Anonymous, though, there are plenty of women who say both control affected the biology negative, negative took away. The deposit shot is insanely negative. The deposit shot. What's the deposit shot? I don't know what the deposit shot is. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, I mean, women have side effects from both control. All right, drugs, drugs have negative impact on you. You've got choices. You can choose not to use it or choose different birth control. But that's why I said there's a plethora of choices. There's lots of choices of birth control. You don't have to use just one and figure out the one that is most comfortable for you and that reduces the side effects the most. Some I've heard, I've heard, some are positive impacts, really positive impacts. So, you know, without getting personal, some can have very personal, very positive impact. I don't, I'm not getting imposed my choice of birth control on a woman. Let her choose which one is appropriate for. Nana says, also, I think there is some science that supports women changing sexual preference when on off birth control. Sexual preference, they become gay because they're on birth control or they want different men. What are we talking about here? I mean, this sounds like complete conservative gobbledygook, anti-scientific BS that is aimed at discrediting birth control. It's complete nonsense. What do you become gay when you're taking the pill? That sounds so, you know, you know, you write conspiratorial, weird, both anti, you know, just, I don't get it. And I don't get why any of you buy this nonsense. How can you believe this stuff? Really, grow a mind. I don't know. Think for yourself. Do a little bit of research. Did your mother not take birth control pills? Does your wife not? Do you not? Did your girlfriend not? Do you not have any contact with women who actually use contraception? And sometimes they go off of it because they have side effects and they look for a different one. Is none of you have experience with women? Do you just get all your knowledge of this stuff from conspiratorial websites online? Is that where you learn from this stuff? All right, I don't know. What can I tell you guys? I don't know what to do. John says, hey, Ron, I have a hypothetical scenario for you that I was hoping you could answer. A pregnant woman is involved in a car accident at the fault of the other driver being drunk. The man is being prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter. In the trial it is revealed and proven to be true that the woman was on her way to a planned parenthood and was to receive an abortion. What should happen with the man and his charges? And why? Thanks. I hope you have a great weekend. I don't get the question. So, oh, in volunteering manslaughter for the fetus. Wow. I mean, I don't know. I would drop the charges. I would drop the charges. She was going to have an abortion anyway. But I'm open. I think it's one of those borderline cases where she hadn't had the abortion yet. It wasn't his. It wasn't within his. Now he didn't kill it on purpose. So I would say my inclination right now is to say I would drop the charges. If she wanted to keep the baby, you know, and give birth, then I would say, you know, prosecute him on involuntary manslaughter. But if she was going to have an abortion anyway, I'd say drop the charges. Does morality have anything to say about the propriety of masturbation? Setting aside the feel good hippie mentality and the religious mentality, what's a rational attitude towards it? God, I mean, Leonard Peacock has did a bunch of podcasts about a bunch. He did a few podcasts about masturbation. And I think overall, the morality is pro-pleasure. It's pro-life. Therefore, it's pro-masturbation. It, as long as you're not using masturbation in order to fake reality, the fake reality, so that you're not using masturbation as an excuse not to have sex, not to date, not to try to have sex, as long as you're not using masturbation as to live in a fantasy world that removes you from engaging with reality. But if it's just you're masturbating for the pleasure of it, and it's not a substitute, it's not an escape, then I think the rational approaches is great, do it. It's fabulous, pleasurable, and yeah, I mean, there's no downside. There's no downside. So, and there's a lot of upside, the pleasure. So, that I think is the rational approach to it. Anonymous though says, I meant depot shot. What's a depot shot? YouTube is auto-editing. I'm pro-BC, but there are negative externalities. What's BC, birth control? But there are negative externalities. No, there are no negative externalities. God, you're not even using externalities, right? I mean, all the costs are internalized. The woman who uses the birth control is the one who deals with the consequence. So, there's no externalities unless you're forcing your girlfriend to take birth control, and then yeah, force is bad, and then it's an externality. But it's internal. The person taking the pill suffers the consequences. That is the definition of no externality. If by taking the pill, you then inflict the pain on somebody else, that would be an externality. But this is all internal. You might want to say the negative unintended consequences, but okay, the unintended consequences are a lot of things. You have to figure out, as an individual, whether you're pro against them, whether it's worth it or not, and every individuals need to do that for themselves. Not some philosopher king telling us, Jan from the Czech Republic, could something be done with the podcast on Leonard Peacock's webpage? Most of them cannot be played, and I'd really like to listen to them all. They are great. Thank you. Huh. I don't know why they cannot be played. But yes, definitely, there is a project to refurbish that website and to get those podcasts in better shape and to make them all available. I don't know why they're not playing now. I mean, maybe there's some broken stuff in the background. I'll ask and see if something can be done to fix it. Anonymous though, I think it's deeper than recreational sex. I think they specifically do not like women being sexually free. They want to control women specifically. I think that's right. I think that's absolutely right. What these religionists want is to control women. They want to go back to, I mean, Matt Walsh says this. He wants to go back to a world where he go gets home and his wife cooks him dinner and she has a drink for him ready and he sits on the sofa and he pats his kids on the head and she is taking care of all of it. It is male chauvinism of the worst kind. It's a primitivism. It's a kind of harkening back to some, you know, that didn't exist for very long. Those relationships. But yeah, that is at the core of it. The core of it, it really is the control of women, which is what so many men want. And particularly today, when so many men don't understand women, don't understand women. Adam, Ironic Christians promote sex to reproduce. Yet the guy they follow apparently wasn't conceived that way. No, no, because he was pure. I mean, that's the thing about Christianity. Every baby is a sinner. From the moment it's conceived is a sinner. Babies are sinners. I mean, this has been one of the quandaries of the church from very, very early on. This is one of the problems that church fathers, you know, debated. How can a baby, before it's done anything in the world, already be a sinner? And yet, that is the meaning of original sin. That is the meaning of Augustine, Augustine's original sin. And, you know, Jesus needs to be a virgin both, because Jesus had to be free of sin. He couldn't have been a product of sex. Of course, the whole debate within the church about whether Jesus is a God, is he a separate God, is he the Son of God, is he the same God, is it one God in three faces, is it three Gods with one, you know, is he part human, part God, is he first human, then God, is all of this stuff was debated for hundreds of years and people died. Large numbers of people died because of disagreements about this. Apollo, Zeus, your view of spilling the sacred seed, I just gave it. That's masturbation. I'm positive about it. I think we all know this will ultimately lead to laws against sex outside of marriage. Yes. Then after that laws against sex inside of marriage, there's not procreation. Well, I mean, that'll be the cultural norms. And what it will actually mean is not any of that, because men dominate the culture ultimately, and particularly once women are put in their place and men want to have sex, they can then in a sense write it off as well, all men are sinful, so be it. I'll just live with it. But what this will lead to is not so much laws against sex inside the marriage, but I think it'll lead to kind of polygamous relationship where men have multiple partners. I think that's where it always primitive societies, not all, but most primitive societies are societies where men control and men have more than one sexual partner, men have multiple women. And it's a lot of this is as somebody just said, it's about controlling women and ultimately controlling women for the purpose of pleasing the man. Now polygamy has lots of problems. One of them is not enough women, which causes men to fight more and more wars. And I mean, polygamy is a real problem for societies. But I think it's the ultimate of what many men who view sex materialistically and who want to control women act ultimately strive towards. It's not an accident like Mormon cults with multiple women, a lot of the Christian cults, the leader has multiple wives or multiple women. It's not an accident. John says, whoops, yeah, thanks, Iran. I was discussing that hypothetical with my wife this morning, and I had the same argument you gave. Then try to explain to her where rights actually come from. And the problem went to transicism. And I got over where over my head and had to stop talking. Yeah, I mean, when you once you get into into transicism and rights and where they come from, and it's not that there's something, some magical thing that places rights inside of a woman or inside the soul of a baby, it's tricky. Any kind of abstract thinking like that about rights is tricky. People want to see concrete in front of them. They want to point to something. And of course, ideas are not that way. Thank you, John. Really appreciate the support. Apollo Zeus. But some people do want kids. You're on and you can't disregard that. But sex of pleasure in general as well. Yes. Why did I disregard kids? I didn't disregard kids. People can do what they want with their sex. They can have kids, but to only have sex for kids is wrong. But of course, kids, I have kids. Dean, what are your thoughts about an open marriage? I mean, I think they are almost always fail. It's, I don't really know of cases where they are, well, I mean, where they're complete successes. It's, they, you know, open marriage is very hard to navigate. It requires enormous self-esteem from everybody involved, all the different partners. It requires a lot of time and effort. I don't think by def, I don't think it's by definition immoral. But I think it's, it's in the long run impractical. And even in the short run, it's going to require some pretty unusual people. I think it's going to require real confidence of esteem, sexual confidence, whatever, not viewing your partner having sex with somebody else as a threat to you. I think it's doable over short periods of time. I don't think it's doable over very long periods of time. But again, I don't think there's anything inherently immoral about it. My view is if you're curious and you and your wife are curious about it, try it, see if it works. Just, just be very open and communicative and make sure that you can patch it up if it doesn't work. There's real risks. I don't want to minimize that. There's real risks. So think about the risks and talk about them. And if, but I don't, I don't see a fundamental moral reason not to at least say, how will you know otherwise? Graham, hey, Iran, I'm popping in late, but just wanted to show my support. I'll have to go back and watch what I missed. Yeah, I was a rowdy session. All right, thanks, Graham. Really appreciate the support. Christian, just out of sheer curiosity, what is your ethical evaluation of BDSM? God. I mean, I have no attraction to BDSM. I find the association even mildly of pain with sex to be offensive and disturbing. So I have no attraction to it. But, you know, I'll just say that Leonard Peacock, when he was asked about this, said something mildly positive about what he considered mild, you know, bondage or something, something like that, you know, something playful where no pain was involved. So, you know, again, you need to figure out what your boundaries are. Again, I don't, I don't think every involving pain makes sense. But I don't know if being restrained helps in terms of or creates a certain sexual pleasure that you wouldn't get in another way, experimenting with it, doing it once in a while. I don't see anything bad about it. Again, as long as it doesn't turn into I enjoy pain or I enjoy inflicting pain or I enjoy receiving pain, that's, there's something wrong there, right? Pain is bad. But as long as it's playful and as long as it's more about just trying new things and playing with, yeah, playing with control in an intimate environment where you and your partner are trusting and intimate and loving and all of that, I, you know, why, why are we placing these boundaries? Try it and don't do it if you don't like it. And, but, and you might know that you don't like it and then you wouldn't do it, right? So, but if you're curious, try it. Daniel, is the term nice guy referring to a second-handedness in the extent, context of dating? Or is it an unnecessary package deal? Why is niceness equated with ubiquitousness and lack of self-esteem? I think it's a package deal. I think it's wrong, it's used wrongly. A nice guy, I mean, there's nothing, there's nothing, it says that a nice guy can be a strong guy, can be a masculine guy if you understand masculinity properly. But we live in a kind of materialistic world and we live in a world again of you either lack self-esteem or you're narcissistically cocky and confident, right? So for example, 99% of the world thinks Donald Trump has self-esteem. I know for a fact he has none. You know, people have miscategorized the behavior and the way people behave and then think they want things that they don't really want, that they don't know. So there's a lot of false valuing going on, people valuing the wrong things in relationships. And again, there's a sense in which the people talk about relationships, talk about them as if we're a non-cognitive species, as if we're not a species of the mind, as if we're not a species of choices and cognition and values that were just another animal, banging Barry's mother. Interesting handle. Lex Friedman said he wants to interview Putin. Would you support this? Why, why not? No, I wouldn't support it. I think it would be a mistake for Lex to interview Friedman. Putin, if he ever asked me, I would tell him. I think it's a mistake for him to interview Putin. I think any opportunity to give Putin a stage, an audience is a mistake. Putin is a thug. He is evil. He is a bad guy. And he should be shunned. The best thing to do with evil is to shun it, if you can't destroy it. Shun it. So, yeah, I would not support him doing it. Now, he would do a better job than Tucker, but I still wouldn't support it. Catherine, thank you, Iran, for making the show tolerable for this woman. Well, I hope it's more than just tolerable. I hope it's enjoyable and beneficial. I wouldn't want to just be tolerable. All right, thanks, Catherine, for the support and for being here. I don't have enough women listening to my show. We need more women on the show. Anonymous, though, change preferences as in the type of man they want, not in terms of being gay. You know, this sounds science fiction to me. It sounds completely bizarre. I'm not saying it doesn't happen to some women, but that's weird and certainly not my experience. Again, I've been married 41 years. 41 years, and my wife has tried a variety of different birth control mechanisms. I don't think that has ever made her attracted to a different type of man or not attracted to me because she was using this thing or that thing or whatever. Methods. Thank you. Methods is the word. Birth control methods. And I don't think any of the methods managed to turn into desiring any men that you wouldn't have desired otherwise. I mean, it's just bizarre. But it could be that it's a hormone. It changes your mood. It could be that you don't really desire the person you're with. And when you're on the pill that exacerbates that, I don't know. But again, so what? Every individual is going to have to figure out how to work with the birth control methods that we have and what we should be demanding, not really demanding, what we should be requesting is more options. It's better. Better birth control pills. Better birth control pills. Better birth control methods. Better birth control everything. Instead of demonizing the birth control, we should be demanding more, greater variety, more options. And how about a male birth control pill? That would be phenomenal. Right? A male birth control pill. Why does the woman bear all the burden of birth control? Why not? I mean, if men could take a pill, that would solve a lot of the issues. Frank says, can one learn Hebrew without common Greek alphabet? Well, you're not going to be able to write or read Hebrew with the Greek alphabet, but you could certainly learn Hebrew and learn how to write in Hebrew. So I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, Frank, but you're not going to be able to read or write unless you learn the alphabet, the Hebrew alphabet. You might be able to speak it without learning the alphabet. Robert says, if you're on book, you're right. More women should listen to the show. Share it out, people, and make it happen. But the women who do listen are the best. No question about that. No question about that. All right. Thank you, Robert. Thanks for the support. Thank you to all the superchatters. You guys were super generous today. Thank you, many of you. We had John who did $100, at least, maybe more than that. We had James Taylor and Liam being 50. Well, no, Liam did 150. Thank you, guys. I really, really appreciate it. And I will see you all tomorrow, 2 p.m. East Coast time. It's a positive show. No talk about abortion. We might talk about sex. Sex is positive. But no talk about abortion. No talk about birth control. Birth control is positive. Maybe today should count as a positive show. I think today should count as a positive show, other than it revealed the irrationality of the world and even some people on the chat. And that was pretty negative. But we'll be here tomorrow at 2 p.m. Have a great weekend, everybody. Thank you. Like this show before you leave. Don't forget to subscribe if you're not a subscriber. And share, share, share, share, share. Write comments, like, like, like. Andrew says quickly, I ran paraphrase, quote, one might ascribe the psychology of pro-lifers to medieval gargoyles. But in the 20th century in the United States, yeah, I'm with you, Andrew. It's pretty shocking. But here we are. This is what we need to deal with. Deal with it, people. Stay positive. Stay focused on your own life. Be selfish and hang out with good people. Talk to you soon. Bye, everybody.