 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 Thursday, 25th, ground up. Every day during the week we've got, there's a lot going on in the world right now. So it's relatively easy to pick up stories, but we'll do that. Let me remind everybody that tonight we'll be talking to Aaron Smith from the Iron Man Institute. We'll be focusing on different issues around Stoicism, the success of the Stoic movement and everything else. And yeah, join us. I think it's going to be a lot of fun and it'll be super, super interesting. All right, let's jump in. As you probably know, because it's in the top of the news everywhere, Ron DeSantis yesterday announced that he is running for president. Finally, made the announcement, and he made the announcement, well he made the announcement earlier but really the launch of the campaign was really done on Twitter. The attempt was made to do it through Twitter Spaces and Elon Musk's account. But it turned out that so many people came or whatever, there were significant technical problems and the whole thing was delayed by 16 minutes and ultimately they had to abandon Elon Musk's account, move it over to David Sacks' account. David Sacks was the moderator of this event. And then with a somewhat smaller audience, it could continue. DeSantis came off at least early on very canned. He had a canned speech. He had canned one-liners, so it didn't have kind of the natural flow of what you'd expect from kind of a, what do you call it, a conversation on Twitter Spaces or something like that. But a lot of people listened to it. He got a lot of press out of the fact that he decided to launch on Twitter. Who knows whether it's successful or not. I did find it a little stilted and somewhat humorous that all the people who asked questions were under DeSantis fans, big shot names who happened to be under DeSantis fans, people who worked for him, people who support him, people who openly support him, so all their questions were amazing softballs. You also got a sense of what he's comfortable talking about. Almost everything has to do with kind of the cultural issues. That is his shtick. That's what he wants to talk about. And his, you know, you also get a sense of what his, you know, the nature of his opposition. Trump is going to be in. This came across also in this interview with Fox later on last night. And that is basically the difference between him and Trump is they agree on the issues. The difference between him and Trump is he gets stuff done and Trump doesn't. And he's a winner and Trump's a loser. So, yeah, this will make it more interesting. Trump was already, you know, all fired up and attacking, has been attacking under DeSantis for three, four months now, trying to dissuade him, I guess, from running. The fact that Trump failed is a good thing. Having DeSantis in the race is probably good, just as another counter to Trump. But I think what we're going to discover is that DeSantis, in terms of ideology, maybe not in terms of personality and in terms of character, but in terms of ideology, is not somebody that we should be supporting. But we'll see. Time will tell. Debates will tell. His speeches, policy positions on different issues will tell. But all I can say is the last four months of not being positive when it comes to DeSantis. Just the one thing DeSantis will differentiate himself on policy-wise from Trump will be on the one good thing that Trump did, which was arguably, which is Operation Whoop Speed. DeSantis will try to run an anti-vax campaign and differentiate himself on that level from Trump. So it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out. Whoops, I lost. I had this other item I was going to talk about that's gone, disappeared. Yeah, no, there it is. In relation to the whole vaccine thing, I just thought this was interesting. There's a lot of talk about excess deaths and stuff in the United States among young people, early 20s and teenagers. And the conspiracy theories are quick to pounce on that as proof that the vaccines are killing young people. But the reality is that what is actually happening is a massive increase in deaths from fentanyl. It really is astounding and it really is sad and disturbing the extent to which this is happening. You know, right now, one in five deaths of people between 15 and 24 in California is the result of fentanyl. And nothing the government seems to be doing, and this doesn't surprise anybody, seems to be helping or seems to be stopping this or seems to be preventing any of this. Drug overdoses now kill two to three times as many people in California as car accidents. And since 2017, deaths related to synthetic opioids, which is 50 times stronger than heroin, have increased 1000%, 1000%. So, yep, I mean, and the solution, of course, is to militarize the border and go to war with Mexico and slam the cartels. And as if that is ever as if doubling down on the war and drugs on a failed policy on a policy that's clearly unequivocally failed from day one has failed. Doubling down on a failed policy on a drug on a worn and inanimate object as if that is going to be the solution for fentanyl. It's just unbelievable. Anyway, the Santas is going to make the race interesting. I'm glad he's in the race. You know, we'll see what happens. He's being a lot of money to the race, a lot of money. Not only is it doesn't look like a lot. Musk is going to support him, which is going to give him a big boost in terms of voice that he has. But he has already raised a lot of money from from different business groups and from different wealthy individuals. There was a hundred million dollar voter outreach push in New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and Iowa. It's going to be maybe the most organized, sustained, get the voter out kind of effort that maybe we've ever seen. It's going to be sophisticated. It's going to be high tech. And the Santas has a lot of money and he's going to be dealing with a lot of money. Whether he can dislodge Donald Trump from the prime position, from the lead position in the Republican race is hard to tell. I think that the, I think the most likely scenario is going to be that Trump gets indicted, maybe in Georgia, but it also looks like the special counsel, Jack Smith, is going to indict him over the mishandling of classified information. It looks like they have some real evidence and they have some real evidence of trying to hide the fact that he had these documents, in ways that are much, much worse than Pence having documents and Biden having documents. But what Trump did to hide it and to prevent the FBI from accessing it is, seems to be a real threat, a real legal threat to Trump. So it could be the one, the Santas is the nominee, not because he defeats Trump, but because Trump is forced out of the race by all his legal problems. We will see. So far, no legal issue hurts Trump in the race, so anyway, everything just bounces off of him. So, so we'll see, we'll see what actually happens. But it does look like this document issue is not going away for Trump and is a real issue. All right. Let's see. Oh, before I get, I wanted to, I wanted to start to show off with this before I get up to the Chinese malware. Important item in the news, which breaking news just, just happened a few minutes before the show started. So I just wanted to congratulate the Pacific Legal Foundation, PLF Pacific Legal Foundation for two victories in the Supreme Court today, Supreme Court, and I don't have the details. I'm not going to be able to give you a details of this. Maybe, maybe we'll get somebody from PLF on the show to talk about this. But one is a weakening of the Clean Waters Protection Act. So the left is freaking out over this, but basically saying that the regulatory agencies don't have as much power as they think they have. And this is consistent with a theme for the Supreme Court, particularly Judge Gorsuch, who are very against the administrative state and want to rein in regulatory agencies and rein in the administrative state more broadly. So they, they, you know, consistent with I think the position the Pacific Legal Foundation took, the Supreme Court decided to narrow, narrow the power of regulators with regard to the Clean Water Act. I'm sure that is a positive. And then let's see, there was another one, and I think this is the right one. Something about, you know, I mean, I'm just reading the headline. I don't know much about the details. Again, another Pacific Legal Foundation victory. Supreme Court sides with 94 year old woman who accused government of stealing her home equity. This sounds like some kind of a domain case or some kind of taking case where the government came in and took somebody's property and didn't compensate them appropriately or didn't compensate them at all or whatever. So it'll be interesting to know on what grounds they ruled. But, but excellent, excellent anytime we can rain in government power in anytime the Supreme Court sides with property rights and sides with raining in government regulatory power or government taking taking clause power. That is that is a good thing. So again, congratulations to all our friends and including the many objectives who are at the Pacific Legal Foundation for the amazing work that they do in trying to protect and in succeeding in some cases protecting our liberties in front of the in front of the courts. Okay, really, you know, I think an important story and somewhat of a scary story, you know, about the Chinese. So, China, yesterday it was revealed by Microsoft, and by a number of different government agencies in the United States, a national security agencies, that they've discovered a Chinese hack, Chinese malware that was in critical infrastructure, existed in critical telecommunication infrastructure all over the United States. The hack hadn't done anything yet, but it was positioned to be able to shut down networks, reroute networks, maybe listen in on conversations. Maybe one of the more, one of the more distressing aspects of this is the fact that this malware was found in, in addition to many places in the United States was also found in Guam. Guam is of course a US protectorate, just like Puerto Rico, but on the Pacific Ocean, Guam is the location of the FOS base, the US FOS base closest to Taiwan and closest to China. Guam would be basically the place that the United States would use the stage operations in any kind of conflict with China, stage operations in any kind of attempt to defend the Taiwan, the Taiwan Straits. And so this is, this is a crucial, a crucial facility, it's a crucial telecommunications hub for any kind of military action in the Pacific, particularly in the, in the western Pacific, particularly close to Chinese shores. The Chinese having the ability to shut down Guam, shut telecommunications out of Guam, would significantly harm America's ability to engage in military operations on that side of the Pacific. So the fact that they had infiltrated, I'm curious and I try to read through the stories and haven't found that. Was it Huawei, was it Chinese equipment? Was it just malware? Or was there actually also physical equipment that was involved? And none of the stories say what the equipment, the telecom equipment actually was in Guam and in other places that this was malware accessed. You could imagine if, if it was one of the Chinese companies that installed the hardware, they would have created a back door to allow this malware to come in. If it's Western technology, Western switches, Western telecommunication technology, switches, boards, and they still got their malware in, that's an even worse sign in many respects. Anyway, the, both Microsoft and a number of US again organizations have put up data and information and how to combat the malware. They have shared this information also with our allies, particularly in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, who are a part of kind of the Five Eyes Intelligence Network, work, all these intelligence services work together. And they've shared it with commercial operators of telecom equipment, they've shared this information with others so that this malware can be taken down and made ineffective, which would be really crucial. So, yeah, there was no, this didn't result in any destruction, didn't result in any negative act so far. But the existence of the malware suggests Chinese capabilities and suggests where the Chinese are focusing. That is a little scary. This is all a part of a hacker group that the US believes is part of a Chinese government and part of a Chinese government effort. The difference between Chinese hackers and Russian hackers is that with the exception of the one Chinese hack that stole information about government employees, Russian hackers are constantly on the offensive. Russian hackers are constantly using their hacking systems to get money, to get information. Chinese hacking is more passive in a sense that A, it's therefore when they need it for emergencies for when there is a conflict. And B, it's primarily focused on espionage, primarily focused on getting information, primarily about technology, about stealing trade secrets, stealing business secrets, technological secrets IP, that's the primary focus. But here you saw something that was being installed for a time of conflict where they could basically shut down the US's capacity to wage war against them. It's good to know the US is on top of these things. It's good to know that they, at least in this one case, figured it out. It is interesting that Microsoft is probably, it's probably Microsoft that discovered this and then brought in the US agencies. And again, that's a good thing. It's a good thing that we have private enterprise, private businesses in the US that are on top of these things and that are helping out. And I think more likely that they have the capabilities to discover these kind of things than even the government does. I think it's a big story just because of what the potential is. All right. A lot of stuff coming out of the Ukraine-Russian war. But most of it is, and I've talked a little bit about it. But I think the most interesting thing to come out is, is really a lot of insight into Russia, if you will, that is coming out from the videos and the statements from the owner of the Wagner group. Pugosin. Pugosin is an ally of Putin. He is one of the oligarchs. Part of the money he made as an oligarch, he invested in creating this basically a private army, the private army of the Wagner group. It is the private army that ultimately took Bakhmut. It took them only 10 months to do it, but they did take Bakhmut in the end. It is a private army that is fought more fiercely and more effectively than so far any unit of the Russian army has fought. But Pugosin is a Putin ally and yet over the last few weeks has become a massive critic of the Russian Department of Defense, a massive critic of the generals running the Russian military. He's just basically criticizing left and right the Russian military operations in Ukraine. And it is surprising because, I mean, obviously he is very well protected, so is unlikely to fall out of a window anytime soon. But it is surprising that such a dissent as he is expressing is permitted and allowed by the system. Now he is quite close to Putin, so it's interesting that somebody close to Putin is expressing such criticism of the Ministry of Defense and the Minister of Defense of the generals running the war. India-Putin is not acting by firing his Minister of Defense or firing the generals in the war. So there is a very interesting dynamic going on, a power dynamic going on inside Russia, which I am not an expert on, so I don't know the details of it, but it is, I find it interesting. I also find specific critiques of Russia interesting, and I'll get to that in a minute. It just shows you, I mean, to me what's really fascinating here is that Pugosin, who is right there, right on the front lines, is more critical of the Russian war effort than the Russian, what do you call them? There's people on my chat and there's various people in right wing America who just gobble up Russian propaganda and just spit it back at us mindlessly. So they think that Putin cannot do anything wrong, that the Russian military is the greatest military in human history, that Russia is winning the war in Ukraine. Pugosin has a much more realistic view of what's going on in the world, is willing to express it, and it's somewhat stunning that all these Putin worshippers in the west are far more supportive of Russia than Pugosin actually is, and Pugosin is right there. Now, I'm sure they come back would be, I'm sure if some of them won the chat right now, they come back would be, and I know you don't understand, you're on. This is all part of Putin's 3D chess. Pugosin is just one more element to love you, I don't know to sleep or to make you believe that there is conflict within Russia. When there isn't, this is just part of a grand strategy to actually defeat the West and to defeat. I mean, we know that once people start embracing personality worship as they did Trump and as they have Putin, their leader, their leader can never do wrong, can never do wrong. And therefore, whenever he says something that doesn't quite fit what we think it's always he's playing 3D chess and we're just too stupid to get it. So I want to quote, I want to read you some quotes from Pugosin, because I think he's quite interesting, right? So Pugosin has no question about who's got the upper hand in this war right now, and whether Russia has succeeded or is succeeding in achieving its goals in Ukraine. So here's, I'm reading you from Pugosin and granted, I mean a lot of this is BS, but just go with it and go with the language, because this is a quote from him, right? Quote, we came in bursh, we came in burshly, trampling all over Ukraine's territory in search of Nazis. And while we searched for Nazis, we fucked up everyone we could. We came up to Kiev and, I'll put it in plain Russian, shot the bed and retreated. Then on to Gershon, shot the bed and retreated. And somehow things aren't working out for us. The special military operation has done for the purpose of denortification while we've made Ukraine into a nation that's known throughout the world. They're like the Greeks or the Romans at their peak. And as far as demilitarization, if they had some 500 tanks at the start of the special military operation, now they have 5000. If they had 20,000 capable fighters before, now they have 400,000. What kind of militarization is that? Now it looks more like we did the opposite. Somehow or other, and we militarized Ukraine. Absolutely true, as I told you from the beginning. Whatever happens, Putin's lost this war. Alright, some more stuff that's kind of fun. Okay, so here he's complaining about the children of the oligarchs, the children of the elites. He says, in the best cases, the children of the elites shut their traps. But some of them allowing themselves to lead public luxurious, carefree lives. It's important to remember, the elites aren't the only ones with kids. And while the kids of the elites are smearing creams on themselves and showing it on the Internet, ordinary people's kids are coming home in zinc, blown to bits and mothers are crying over their sons. This split could end like in 1917. Just as an aside, 1917 was the Russian Revolution. This split could end like in 1917 with the Revolution. When first the soldiers rise up and then they loved ones follow. And it's pointless to say there are hundreds of them. There are now tens of thousands of relatives of dead soldiers. There will almost certainly be hundreds of thousands. There's no escaping that. And it's all going to end with a sebbatholomne day massacre in a single moment. The opulent lives of the children of the elites will end with people raising them on pitchforks. My recommendation to the Russian elite is to send your fucking boys to the war. And when you go to their funerals, when you start to bury them, that's when people will say things are fair. So here is predicting a revolution because the elites are not sending their kids to war. The oligarchs are not sending their kids to war. And he's saying there are hundreds of thousands of family members now of kids who have been killed during this war. They're not going to accept that the elites that govern them of what pouring creams over their faces while their own kids are dying. Now whether this is true or not, I don't know. But this is coming from Russia, from an ally Putin's. From somebody who's broadcasting this freely on Russian media. This indicates a little bit the conflict with them. But we'll see what his solution is. And then he's asked about the future of the war. On the future of the war, there's an optimistic scenario and a pessimistic one, he says. I have little faith in the first one. That is he has little faith in the optimistic scenario. The optimistic security looks like this. Europe and America get tired of the Ukrainian conflict. China sits everyone down at the negotiating table. We agree that everything we've already snatched is ours. And everything we haven't snatched isn't ours. But the odds for this are slim, he says. Here's the pessimistic scenario, which he thinks is more realistic, by the way. The Ukrainians are given missiles. They train their troops and they no doubt continue their offensive. And they try to counterattack. It's possible that this counteroffensive is successful in some places and they restore the borders to where they were in 2014. That could easily happen. This is the head of the Wagner group saying. They'll attack Crimea. They'll try to blow up the Crimean bridge. They'll cut off our supply routes. So we need to be ready for a difficult war. Some people in the West who grovel before Putin should listen to this guy and maybe take some perspective from him. Now, how do you fix all this? How do you fix Russia? This is him. This is again the head of the Wagner group. We're currently in a state where there's a danger of just pissing away Russia. So we should declare martial law. This is the solution. We should declare new waves of mobilization. And we need to transfer everyone we can to work on ammunition production. We need to cut the fat. Stop building new roads and new infrastructure and work only on the war. And this is the killer. Listen to this quote. Russia needs to take a page out of North Korea's book for a certain number of years. Close all our borders. Stop pulling punches. Bring back all our boys from abroad and work hard. And then we'll seek some kind of results. So the way to fix Russia is to turn into North Korea. Because that's working out so well for the North Koreans. Oh, God, you can't make this stuff up. You really cannot make this up. I mean, Putin is bad. His critic, in a sense, is a thousand times worse. All right. Yeah, somebody says so. All right. Not much of a victory, but a victory nonetheless. OK, quick Iranian story. Scary one. Over the last two years, there's been a series of tunnels constructed in a mountain near the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz. Now, these tunnel systems are really worrying both non-proliferation experts as well as intelligence analysts who've been monitoring the construction for years via satellite photos. Power plant in Nanette. We compared the two entrances and exits of the underground facility, which we know the actual height, the elevation of those at the mountain, and we know there's the elevation of the mountain itself. And this underground facility, we estimate to be anywhere between 80 and 100 meters below the ground. The depth of the facility is a concern because it would be much harder to destroy using conventional weapons, such as a typical bunker, buster bomb. And so the Iranians are trying to build resiliency into their program, and it's evident here. For its part, Iran says. All right. We've got, yes, we had the story about Iran broadcasting in the background. Sorry. Yeah, audio broken. OK, so anyway, I'll repeat the story. The story is about Iran. The story is about the fact that the Iranians are building a deep in the mountain facility close to the nuclear facility in Nanette. So deep that US large bunker busting bombs will not be able to bust this bunker. They're building it deep with the intention. Everybody agrees of moving nuclear operations in there and developing nuclear weapons outside the reach of Israel and the United States. You know, every year that passes, every month that passes, every day that passes, that the United States and Israel don't do anything substantial to stop and to destroy. Fundamentally, systematically destroy Iran's capabilities vis-a-vis their nuclear program is a day where they gain more strength. It's a day where they gain more confidence and it's a day where they gain that brings them closer to having nuclear weapons. Today, I think it was announced that the Iranians launched a ballistic missile that has a range of 2,000 miles. That puts Israel easily within their range and it puts Europe within their range and it puts all American facilities in the Middle East within their range. And if you match that up with a nuclear bomb, Iran then holds the world hostage. Look what Russia is doing vis-a-vis limiting what NATO will do with Ukraine and what the United States is willing to do because they have nuclear capabilities. Imagine what happens when the Iranians get them and they hold the world hostage with that capability. So somebody, Israel, the United States better act soon before it's just too late and irreversible. Iranians just have the capacity and counter to Putin who I don't think wants to commit suicide. I'm not so sure about the Iranians. After all, they are religious fanatics. Don't ever count out religious fanatics when it comes to taking suicidal actions. So scary stuff out of Iran. And finally, a piece of good news. Kind of cool good news, right? So this guy, let's see what's his name. This guy, a good Yan Oscom. Sounds northern European but hard to tell. Anyway, was living in China in 2011. He got into a motorcycle accident that left him paralyzed from the hips down. And for 12 years, he's been trying to, they've been trying to fix it, all kinds of therapy as well. It was just published that they have devised this brain-spine interface that uses artificial intelligence, thought decoder and artificial intelligence, thought decoder. Which is detects electrical signals in the brain and matches them to muscle movements. So it detects the electrical signal of the brain signaling move leg and it matches them to the muscle movements. So it creates the etiology of natural movement from thought to intention to action and they manage to preserve that. And they've created a digital bridge that spans the injured part of the body. Now this is amazing, stunning, stunning. It's a mind-body, you know, its ability to intervene positively in creating and reconnecting mind and body. As a consequence, over the last year since the implant was inserted, he's attained the ability to walk to climb stairs. You know, even when the, you know, and this ability has shown signs that it is causing neurological recovery. That is, that the, even the damaged part is regenerating because of the stimulation. This is truly, truly amazing stuff, right? This is a guy who's been paralyzed and leapt down and now can walk and send a steep ramp. He still needs a walker for the steep ramp, but he can stand, he couldn't stand before. And you see a picture of him standing and this is all because of a implant that connects your brain to your muscles and can read your brain. That is cool stuff. And it suggests more than anything, the kind of potential that we have in the future. The kind of potential that we can attain, which I think is very exciting. All right. Okay, let's see. What else do we want to do here? All right. Let's go to Super Chat. This is cool. Okay, so we're about halfway in the Super Chat. We still have about $120 to get us. Good van Oskom is from Netherlands, Muras Love says. Muras Love, thank you. Appreciate that. So it does sound like a good van. That sounds like a Dutch name. So he's from the Netherlands. All right. So it's still about $120, $130 short. So please consider asking a question or just providing support. We have 73 people watching. So a couple of dollars from everybody watching right now would get us to the target. All right, let's see. Tom, what about him? Oh, it's great to see you back. It's been a while since Thomas has been with us live. Thomas says, does the Ukrainian victory mean just pushing Russia out of Ukrainian territory? Or should they somehow try to take Moscow and outright defeat Russia and reclaim the Crimea? Sorry. I think because you're dealing with the nuclear power, I don't think it's realistic to think that you can invade Russia and actually take Moscow. I do think that a Ukrainian victory and Ukrainian support could encourage better elements within Russian society to revolt against Putin and to create a revolution that replaces his regime. So I do think that is a possibility. So you could take Moscow but not directly and not by military force by internally with Russians. And I think that's what is going to have to happen if we're going to see regime change in the Kremlin. Either it would happen within the Kremlin where one faction deposes another faction, or it will happen through some kind of revolution as the head of Wagner Group suggests. But it's unlikely to happen and I don't think it's possible given Russia's nuclear capabilities. This is why it's so important not to allow a country like Iran to gain nuclear weapons. It's unlikely to happen through a Ukrainian invasion. And I don't think that's smart of them to try to do an actual invasion. Michael asks, did you see Matt Walsh's new crusade is against medically assisted suicide? Yes. I did a whole show on that. He's worried Canada's lack of law surrounding suicide would be adopted by the U.S. Maybe the trans issue is being played out. He needs a new crusade. No, he's been playing both of these. The anti-assisted suicide has been on his agenda for a while. I did a show about this. I did a show about the Canadian system. I am a big supporter of lax assisted suicide laws. I'm a big supporter of assisted suicide. I don't think obviously people should be encouraged to commit suicide, but I think if somebody has decided they want to commit suicide, we shouldn't resist that. We shouldn't stop it. And if doctors can help make it smoother and make it easier and make it less painful and less difficult, I'm all for that. I have no problem in people ending their own life. I think for healthy individuals, nobody should. But if you have the right to life, you have a right to decide when to end it. And as I watch all the people deal with life and the difficulties and the pain and the destructiveness of old age, having the possibility of ending it, I want to have that possibility. And if you can't have assisted suicide, maybe there's a black market for a pill you could take to end it. But you've got to have that option in a world in which we can live into very... Physically, we can keep our bodies going, but we can't stop certain pain. And to a large extent, you have issues with dementia and you have issues where you're losing your mind. If people want to commit suicide in order to avoid all that, good for them. And if there are mental health issues that lead people to suicide, then so be it. It's not anybody's responsibility, including the government, to stop people from committing suicide. It's not the government's job to decide which reasons are legitimate for committing suicide and which are not. That's a job for individuals. I did do a whole show on this. If you search my back shows or search YouTube, you can find it. It really is disgusting, I have to say. The conservatives are taking vis-a-vis assisted suicide. They want to keep people alive so that they suffer. They want to keep people alive so that they can't fulfill their lives because that's what religion demands of us. Suffering and life at all costs. Again, it's the same evil argument they use with abortion. It's a flip side of that argument they use with their antagonism to assisted suicide. James asked, do you think fighting competition, thinking of Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson, Jack Dempsey, is in our DNA? How will more technology impact competition in people? I mean, I don't know what it means to say it's in our DNA. I think we want to be really, really good. There are contexts in which in order to see how good we are, you have to set it up in a competitive environment. You set it up versus somebody else. Sports and, unfortunately, war or physical combat are ways in which we have done this in our past. I don't think that's the same in business because the business world is fundamentally a win-win kind of competition. But, you know, sports is in a sense zero sum. Somebody wins, somebody loses. So what does it mean to say it's in our DNA? It's our desire to survive, a desire to thrive. It's part of what makes it, it's part of what it means to survive. It's kind of part of what life requires, part of what life means. And I think that that competitiveness comes out of that desire for life. And it applies in different realms and, again, sports is a good illustration of it. And yes, I think it's a healthy part of that desire to live and that desire to be successful. How will technology impact it? I don't know. I mean, it'll make it possible for us to improve ourselves. You know, you'll have, you already have performance enhancing drugs. Those will only become more sophisticated and more difficult to trace. You'll have more, you'll have technologies that just makes us stronger, more physical able, more physically versatile in every dimension. You know, but, but we'll all have that. So people will still be able to compete at whatever level the technology places it as, places it at. So hopefully that answered your question, James. Mike says, sounds like protesting, you want to petered out. Yes, I think they have, as I said at the time, I think the real challenge of the protest movement, it had no real support from within. It wasn't quite ready for a revolution, for the revolution to happen. It needed to have some support either from the military or from the police or from the National Guard, from somebody or from some element within the clergy. And it didn't not not substantial enough. It shook up the administration there. It's still shaking it up. It still, it still hasn't ended completely. There's still a real challenge going on with in Iran around the brokers and around authority and who has authority. But this phase of whatever's happening in Iran, the phase of the demonstrations that happened at the end of last year, early this year, that seems to be over. And we'll see what kind of lasting long term implication it has and whether ultimately it'll help embolden a real revolution in Iran. I hope that ultimately is the case, but it hasn't happened yet. All right, we are $90 short. So a few $20 questions and we get there. So or just a few like Maryland, $10 contributions on a sticker. Stephen did $10. Thank you guys. And RDF and Catherine and John Bales, all of these people have contributed. Colleen started us off with $10 right at the beginning of the show. So thank you everybody for supporting the show and adding to it. A few more of those and we get to our target $250 for the show. Okay. Not your average algorithm. I meant to address this on last night's program. I now identify as an ambulance. My pronouns are we. Identify as an ambulance. Why would you want to do that? You should identify something fun if you're going to identify something. But I guess we who is not bad. All right, James, will you leave Puerto Rico in the event the tax code changes? Do you see taxes increasing significantly in the U.S. over the next five to 10 years? I probably would leave Puerto Rico. Ultimately, if when the tax code changes, mine won't change until 2036. I'm grandfathered in. So I'm not worried about that. Do I think taxes in the U.S. are going to increase significantly over the next five to 10 years? Probably not. Not significantly. They will increase at the margins, particularly on high owners. There's still a race between Democrats and Republicans and who can relieve more people of taxes on the lower and middle income areas. And then increase taxes on high owners as much as possible. And I think that trend will continue. I wouldn't be surprised if the next Republican president actually raises taxes. Of course, George Bush did. Not George Bush. Trump did on all Americans by raising tariffs, which is of course a consumption tax on certain goods. So I don't see income taxes or corporate taxes rising dramatically. Even the proposals that the Democrats are putting together raise corporate taxes to less what they were before Trump lowered them. And on the income tax, their primary proposals have been really taxing people over 10 million, over 50 million, really taxing the richest of the rich. Primarily through some kind of wealth tax or something like that. So I just don't see for most Americans, for 99% of Americans, I don't think their taxes will go up a lot other than tariffs, which are a consumption tax on all of us. I wouldn't be surprised if taxes on the 1% rise significantly though. And again, there seems to be agreement between Democrats and Republicans on the need for that in one way or the other. Frank says, with trans women participating in women's sports, would it be fair compromise if she started to swim or raise five seconds after the gun sounds off? No, I mean, it wouldn't be. The reality is that I don't think trans women should participate in women's sports, period. But my position on this is it's not a mind business. It's something that the sports leagues need to decide. And sports leagues should be private entities, not for profits, I assume, or for profits, I don't care. And sports leagues, NCAA, sports administrators, professional sports leagues, they need to decide these things. I think it's ridiculous and stupid for trans women to participate in women's sports when they're clearly not women for the purpose of physical activity. It's not fair and it's wrong and it deprives women who are born female to actually participate. But I think that's what the sports leagues decide. If somebody wants, it's just like drug enhancing stuff. And I think sports leagues should decide what enhancements should be allowed and what enhancements should not be allowed. There's no right answer. There's no wrong answer in a sense of politically. There's a right or wrong answer, I think, just in a sense of propriety, even morality. I think it's immoral to have trans women participate in women's sports, even though it should be legal. So I don't think it's a political question, but I do think it's a moral question. James has, have you done a show about building competition, about building competition up in people or children to push for excellence and being better? No, because I don't think competition is the essence of being better and doing well. I think that's too much of a second-handed external motivation to be good and to be successful and to push oneself. I think the primary motivation to be successful and to push oneself and what I talk about a lot is every individual trying to be the best that they can be. Every individual in a sense making themselves the best that they can be, irrespective of what other people do. So I don't think, I don't think people or children should be pushed to be better than the other guy. I think they should be pushed to be the best that they can be, and that should be the focus. I don't think competition is essential in that regard. Sylvanus, thank you Sylvanus, $50, really appreciate that and almost at the goal, $37 away from the goal. Eh, we're so close. Hi Iran, in the fountain head, when Gail comes to realize how he is second-handed, it seems like Rand is hinting at some level of determinism. She uses the phrase born to be a second-hander, thoughts. I don't think so. I don't think that she's, certainly I know that, you know, she does not stand for determinism of any kind. But there's a sense in which at some point in life, after the choices that you make, usually quite young, it's very difficult not, it's very difficult to reverse whatever character traits those early decisions make on your character, those early decisions shape in your character. And if you make the wrong decisions, and if you shape your soul to be a second-handed soul, to be a, which is a contradiction in terms because the soul can't be second-handed, but a second-handed mind, then that's what you're going to be and it's very difficult to overcome. It's almost like you're born to be a second-hander. So I think she viewed as like being born a second-hand, not as a second-hander, not born as a second-hander. So it's like being born, but I'd have to find the exact quote. So, her view is that Gail is so entrenched in this way of thinking. So much of who he is and what he is, is entailed with this kind of thinking. So much of what he did through his childhood to reach where he is today, immerses him in this kind of thinking, that he can't get out of it, that he's in a sense stuck with it, and he can't reverse the second-handedness. Hopefully that answers the question. Thanks. All right. Brie says, the Wagner group guy sounds like he is planning a revolution, not predicting one. He has an army and could be trying to get the Russian generals to join him. Well, I mean, he's constantly attacking Russian generals. So he might be trying to get somebody to join him. It's not Clay Hu, and at the same time he's pretending that he's a friend of Putin's and he's just attacking the Ministry of Defense and attacking the other oligarchs. So it's very difficult to say exactly what his motivation is, but it certainly does seem like he is well positioned to be the one to lead such a revolution. Philip, hi, Philip. You addressed excess deaths and suggested fentanyl as a factor. However, excess deaths can be observed in all age groups and across multiple countries. Considering this, what other factors might be causing this phenomenon? There's a lot of factors causing the phenomena. I talked about this on earlier shows. You know, there are other countries that are not experiencing excess death, countries that have high vaccination rates, so it's not the vaccines. There's no evidence of vaccines. But in the United States, violent crime is up across many age groups, particularly the young again. Suicide is up. And certain health related issues up primarily because there's an argument that a lot of healthcare was, what do you call it, ignored or a lot of healthcare was just not provided during those immoral, ridiculous lockdowns that were forced on us during COVID. So there's a general deterioration in people's health. Other causes, you know, other causes, those are the primary causes that I've seen. But if you look at the United States, which I can't remember exactly, but when I looked at the United States, I did a show on this. It was clear that the dominant cause of excess deaths was, and by the way, fentanyl use is not, fentanyl excess deaths is not primarily in the 15 to 24, so I just used that statistic because that came up in a news story this morning. But fentanyl overdoses and what are called deaths of despair, which are often overdose deaths, but also alcoholism, liver failure, kidney failure, that primarily is middle aged men. So you're seeing it in 45 to 55 year olds. There's a huge, you know, there's a spike that started in 2014. It was identified in those excess deaths and those continued into the post-COVID period. So you're seeing that spike as well. So there are a variety of things in play, but there's zero evidence, literally zero evidence that the vaccines have anything to do with it. By the way, people are still dying of COVID, primarily old people, but people are still dying of COVID. There was also, if you remember, there was also a, because during COVID, there was like no flu. There was in the years post-COVID, a huge spike in both flu and in this other viral, what is it, AVS, a respiratory AVR, a respiratory virus that hits babies or very young children and very old people. And it gets you into hospital. Fennemine was actually in hospital with this RSV. Thank you, Jennifer. RSV, which also was suppressed during COVID and then exploded in the years after COVID and led to excess deaths as a consequence. So a lot of reasons for the excess deaths. Again, excess deaths are not uniform across every country in the world and a lot of countries that vaccinated are not seeing excess deaths. All right. So we are now $14 away from the goal. Let's somebody step in and get us to the goal just for the fun of it, right? James, do you think China is spying on Chinese citizens in the United States and globally now openly because no action was taken in Hong Kong? What happens next? Yes. I mean, I think they are spying globally. We know that. I talked about this kind of police station that was found in New York City and where the people were arrested as basically Chinese agents spying and trying to influence Chinese who were living in the United States. I know Chinese dissidents who live here get harassed by Chinese people in the United States constantly. So I do think that's happening. To what extent is the cause of that Hong Kong? Probably to a large extent. I mean, generally Hong Kong was a testament to the West's weakness. I think it abolded China. I think the West is starting to take China more seriously. But, you know, it's hard to recover from the weakness of Hong Kong. We will see. What next is hard to tell. Yeah, we will see. It is interesting. And this is just a side story. It is interesting that the number of Chinese people trying to illegally immigrate into the United States is spiking. And it's at all time high. It's in the thousands now. They're crossing over the southern border. They're trying to get here in any way they can. And, you know, there is, of course, people who particularly anti-immigration people are saying, oh, this is a Chinese invasion. These are Chinese spies. Most of them, though, are just people trying to get out of China and escape. And they're going through horrific conditions. And many of them go from China to South America and then go up through Panama and through Mexico and try to cross into the border and ask for asylum in the U.S. That is not an easy road. A lot of people die on that road. But it used to be no Chinese. And now there are thousands that are making that journey and trying to get into the U.S. James G. says, love for you to do a short segment or part of a show on the rise of Texas. How much does it cost to review a video on the topic? Well, I mean, a topic for a show is $1,000. I mean, if it's just a segment of the show, you know, just offering me. Just let me know what the number is and I'll do that. I'm not sure what the rise of Texas means. But, you know, if you've got a video that I can watch and analyze, that would be great. And some statistics that I can look at. I'll definitely do that. Just make me an offer, I guess, is my point. Bash Bandigan says, the left say richest pay no taxes. This is true. No, of course not. Richest pay. The most taxes is a percentage. And suddenly, the richest pay the most taxes by far in terms of dollar terms. But, you know, the left has all kinds of tricks like they don't count the capital gains tax. They don't count the corporate taxes that the rich pay on their corporations. They don't count all kinds of taxes that the rich actually pay. You know, they count what is convenient for them. But no, the rich pay the highest rates. And per capita, the highest amounts dollar wise by far than any American pays. So the media is wrong. All right. Thank you, Stephen, who got us over the target. So we made it to $251. Thank you. All right, everybody, I will see you tonight. We're talking to Aaron Smith about stoicism. It should be a fun, interesting program. So join us for that tonight at 8 p.m. East Coast time. And I'll do it. We'll also do another news update show tomorrow, Friday. All right, everybody, see you tonight or Friday or some other time. James, yes, 175 is good to go. Just send me, well, send me the video. Send me the video first and then send me the money. So let me see that I can do it. Let me see that I want to do it. And then, but I think it's doable. And then we can, and then we can, you can, you can pay me the money. Thanks guys. I will see you tonight stoicism eight o'clock and then.