 I'm doing a talk on Trump. Okay, all right. I'm doing a talk on, they won't let me have Trump in the title, not that I wanted any of this, right? But so it's something like the state of American politics or something. Okay, well, I can bridge those two. Oh, shit, we started, I did not meant to do that. Though radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest and individual rights. This is the Iran Brook show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Brook show on this Tuesday, January 30th, 28th of January, 2024, mind you. 2023 kind of came and went pretty quickly. Anyway, today I'm really pleased to have Don on the show, but we're gonna do something different because I've like interviewed Don many times, but we've decided to flip the scenario today and Don is actually gonna interview me. So we're gonna have fun with that and we'll see how that goes. But so I'm gonna pass the baton to Don and we'll see, I have no idea what he's gonna talk to me about. I'm sure we'll figure it out as we go along. But this should be fun. You can ask questions. Don has a hard stop in an hour, so the interview portion will end in about an hour or though we'll probably take some questions before that. We can also take questions after. Yeah, second show today, fifth show this week, two more tomorrow. And I get a rest a little bit because Don is gonna interview me. It's much easier to be interviewed than to actually do the interviewing, I think. Yeah, although you'll have to keep an eye on the super chats since I can't see them. So I don't have full control the way that I'd like. How's it going, Yaron? Pretty good, pretty good. I'm glad to be out of Michigan and in Puerto Rico. Well, I'm mad at you. So Yaron, I get a message on Facebook from one of my Michigander friends. I live in Michigan, not too far from Ann Arbor saying, hey, Yaron's gonna be speaking at Ann Arbor tomorrow night. This was what, last Tuesday? I said, well, that's really funny because Yaron did not tell me that he was gonna be in Michigan right in my neck of the woods. I still don't have Don positioned in Michigan. Don's a California guy. He's got a California vibe to him. And of course, we did everything we did when he was in California. So what I think it is is just too much respect for me to believe that I actually like living in Michigan. Right, that's right. So you won't believe the first of which we are is $200. It's a big, that's a big amount. $200 to review one of my favorite songs by Tool, by Tool, Invincible. It's also an excellent opportunity to have Don explain why it's one of his favorite songs. So go for it. You explain one of your favorite songs and then I'll trash it after I listen to it. Well, musically, I just think it's brilliantly done. But the, I always go blank on this. What's the Latinized name of Odysseus? Oh, God. I don't know. Yeah, it's not going to come to me. Yeah, I'm going blank, but there's a very famous poem. Hopefully somebody can fill us in. And it's one of my favorites. But of course, I can't even recall the title right now. But it's about an old man who's- Ulysses. Ulysses, yeah. And he's a, exactly. And he's, you know, reflecting on what should be the end and twilight of his life, but he's not ready to rest, not ready to retire. He's like, out for adventure, man of action. And the lyrics of that song have the same vibe, which makes total sense because Tool is doing, you know, like metal adjacent rock in their late 50s. And they just had to fess up to it. Unusual, right? Most of the bands, 50 who are even close to that, are reprising their old stuff. They're not doing new stuff at the age of 50. Absolutely. Metal is a rebellious music that is much more appropriate for the young. Yeah, I was listening to a podcast about the offspring, you know, punk band. And, you know, it's talking about like you can, you know, you can be like down with the government, down with society in your 20s. But when you're still saying that you're 50s, like we're less likely to believe that you believe it. Although we know our fair share of anarchists much older than that. Yep. So the real reason that I reached out to you, Yaron, is so, you know, I work at the Einren Institute and we run Einren University, which is the world's most in-depth training in Einren's ideas. And you gave a course with my colleague, Ankar Ghatay, called Kern Events. So I was intrigued. I was like, let me tune in. And I was floored. I expected good things. I mean, you get you and Ankar in a room. Good things are gonna happen. But it was one of the most fascinating, interesting courses. You covered things that I've heard both of you speak about for decades now, but shed so much new light on it because it wasn't just here's our analysis of these things, but here it's how we come to our analysis. Here's what's behind the ability to kind of project future trends and make sense of the sea of information we have. But one thing that was really striking to me as well was just the value of thinking about and being interested in current events. Because I admit, I have a streak in myself that doesn't wanna pay attention to them. And that when I was younger at least, frankly felt a little bit of superiority that I was. I was above being interested in this election and that, you know, the latest headline in the New York Times. But you made a real- That's healthy because, right? I mean, there's nothing, there's not a lot of good in the current events. So it's, there's a sense in which when one stuff just block it and focus on living. Yeah, the problem was, particularly in those days, I was getting paid to do it. So- Oh, oh, oh, doc is paid. Can we get it? Now it's not so much an issue, but no, it was really fascinating. So I wanted to talk to you about that, talk about some of the ideas and make a little pitch also. I mean, you're gonna be speaking not on this topic exactly, but sort of your take on the world today at our annual summer conference in Southern California in Anaheim this year, which I'll be at. It's called OCOM. We'll talk about that later, but it's a great chance to see Iran live, spend some time with him, with me, with a whole bunch of other, I mean, it's the world's largest gathering of divine Rand fans and it's really a, it's, to me, it's always the highlight of my year. I kind of, I have more dreams about OCOM than I care to admit. It's usually me on stage going, what am I talking about? Oh my God, what was I supposed to say? I, you know, so the course was, yeah, it was a lot of fun, partially because I get to do it with Angkor, who is brilliant. And I always feel like, if I, if I miss the point, if I don't cover the full thing, I know Angkor will cover, you know, fill in the blanks. And I think it seemed the same the other way around. We both kind of compliment each other really nicely. So there was a lot of that. But I think the thing that really made the course special is that we had everybody reading our current events and she's the genius, right? I mean, she is the one who article after article after article just nails it in a way that every time I reread articles, I find surprising and interesting and different. And that's why people ask me, what would I even think of X? And I go, you know, whatever I can think of, she would pop potentially contradict me completely. But even if she agreed with me, would think of it from a completely different perspective and far deeper and see connections that I just don't see. So it was a lot of fun to kind of reread a lot of the essays, integrate them for the students and show the thread that goes throughout them. And we did things like, I mean, I mean, I wrote a lot about presidential elections starting really in 1964 and on every presidential election. She wrote some significant articles. So we did a whole analysis of the presidents and the evolution of kind of presidential politics, presidential elections, the character presidents, the philosophy of presidents, starting with Kennedy whom she wrote a lot about and then Goldwater of course, and then the Nixon and the two Nixon elections and then all the way through Ronald Reagan, which was the last president she commented on. And it's fascinating to go back and have a bird's eye perspective on her evaluation of all of those presidents and how that evolved. And you can see some evolution in her thinking as the country shifts, right? As the country shifts towards religion in the late 1970s, she's very wary of Ronald Reagan and his attempt to kind of get close to the religionists and bring them into the Republican Party. And that's new, right? In the 60s, she's not thinking about religion. Religion is dead, religion is gone. It certainly has no application of politics, somewhat in influencing kind of Goldwater's moral defense of capitalism, but not in any kind of deep sense. And by the end of the 70s, religion is everywhere and religion is deep and getting deep into the Republican Party. And she predicts that it will dominate the Republican Party and here we are. And it is dominating the Republican Party. So it's fun to kind of be able to do that arc and then in addition to that, we took on particular topics around different issues that related to current events at the time. We talked about 9-11 and war. So we brought in her articles on Vietnam. And so we talked about all the work we did at AII around 9-11. But why 9-11 was so pivotal and why it was so important and why it had kind of the impact politically and how we thought about 9-11 and how to think about it. And then what else did we talked about? We talked about modern election that is elections that I did not comment on and how those evolved. We talked about free speech. So yeah, I mean, a lot of really good topics, a lot of opportunity to reread grand and then an opportunity to think about in the context of reading grand, well, how do you apply this to the world today? And yeah, that was fun to do. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm glad you saw the value in it. It's hard when you're teaching it to really know, all right, is this just adding up to something? Is are people getting something out of it? So that's great that it really added up for you. Well, I'll give you one just concrete illustration, which is I was halfway through the course. I said, all right, I subscribed finally to New York Times, Washington Post, the Atlantic. I made sure, all right, I'll have it. My fingertips a good array of news sources. I wanna, you mentioned learning when you're rereading Ayn Rand. What, did anything jump out at you this time? And it could be a small particular thing or a general trend in what you took away going through it preparing for this course that hadn't been on your radar screen before. I mean, it really is, I mean, at the end of the day, it's how integrated and how she could connect ideas from very disparate fields and kind of see it. I also, and I've noticed this every time I read one of Ayn Rand's nonfiction essays, particularly in current events, is how psychological she would be. She is, I mean, I'm always very hesitant to attribute motives to people. I don't know why they do what they do. And she is, she's quite comfortable. You know, and I think she's a novelist, she understands how people think. I mean, she has to really have a point of view, a psychological point of view to write the characters that she writes. And so, how psychological she is, how much willingness she has to attribute motivation and to show how philosophy and psychology are connected in ways that I think very few of us do because we just don't have, we don't think psychologically. I mean, we either train in psychology as some people on it, they maybe think this way, but I think for most of us, you know, for her, what really gave it away is the fact that she had to write characters, good guys, bad guys. And she had to motivate them in writing so she had a certain understanding of what motivates people. Well, and let me just make on that. So I mentioned our conference, Ocon. Last year, Ankar, your partner in the current events course, gave a talk on just this topic called Justice, Moral Judgment and the Danger of Psychologizing. And it really is an exploration of the sense in which we all have to be concerned with motives and other people's psychology and also what are the dangers and the pitfalls of that. Yes, and you know, it's an excellent talk, particularly for people with a little bit of experience in objectives and been around for a while, read a lot, who've been a part of kind of the movement and have experienced all kinds of characters in the movement. I think the more you've been around, the more valuable the talk is to you. I think for beginners, it's probably not that valuable, but I think it's particularly valuable for people who've been around. And yeah, I mean, you have to judge. And Rand talks a lot about the need to judge, judge and be ready to be judged. It comes out of the New Testament was one of the few quotes she ever had out of the New Testament. She quotes approvingly. And judgment requires having some kind of idea about somebody's psychology, but beware of psychologizing, by aware of excusing a bad behavior through attributing it to some psychological issue. Beware of being superficial in understanding and attributing psychological issues to people. And yeah, so think deeply about these things and apply psychology carefully to what is going on out there. So you mentioned one of the topics you've delved into is 9-11 and I was particularly interested in this one. I discovered Objectivism in 95, 96 somewhere in there. I was 19 when 9-11 happened. So I'd been around Objectivism for a while, but I didn't know any Objectivists. I certainly hadn't met you or wasn't working for the Institute. And thought I knew it all and thought, oh, this is all kind of obvious. And 9-11 happened and I say this with definitely my share of chagrin and embarrassment, but I was one of those who thought, yeah, Bush has basically got it, right? Yeah, he's not perfect. He's a little soft and so on. And this went on for a couple of years until in 2003, I think it was 2003, it might have been 2004, but I think it was 2003. I went and saw Leonard Peekoff speak at the Ford Hall Forum. It was the first time I had ever seen him live. It was the first time I had seen him speak. And he gave a talk called America versus Americans, which was his comment on 9-11 and its aftermath. And my experience, and he definitely had a searing negative, condemnatory take on Bush. And it shouldn't, it wouldn't have been surprised to you. You had already been writing similar things now for a couple of years. And I remember sitting in that audience and realizing, maybe I don't understand half as much about this philosophy as I thought I did. It was so clear that like, if I really understood philosophy, right? If I really got Einren's way of thinking about things, I might not have been able to see as clearly as he did everything he saw, but I would have been beat over the head with how self-sacrificial our policy had been. And that really was, I would say the period where I got the most serious and it's continued since then about, I really wanna understand this down to the roots. And really, because that's the only way I'm genuinely gonna be able to make sense to the world rather than just falling for whoever sort of, evokes American self-confidence. And that's definitely to your credit, right? Because many, I think, objective is young and not so young. We're in that position after 9-11. The sense of patriotism and outrage and everything led them to be huge supporters of Trump, of Bush, well, Trump too, but of Bush. And it really created kind of a split, an ideological split within the movement, I think. A lot of people even listening to Leonard's America versus Americans were convinced he was wrong, were convinced Bush was a good guy that the New York cons had, had a solid understanding of what was going on and would solve all the problems. And I remember even somebody implying, not very subtly in an essay that we were committing treason by criticizing Bush because he was a wartime president and we were criticizing him and we were criticizing him for day one from literally September 12th. And so it took a certain level of honesty and I think of understanding the philosophy, honesty to recognize that no, Leonard was onto something here. There was something, there was a perspective here that was unique, but truly radical in the sense that truly consistent with the ideas of Inran in a way that almost nobody, almost nobody else in objectivism got. I mean, you had to be, I think, within that orbit of Leonard to really, to really get it. Well, and I think part of it, and this is something that you and Ankar talked about in the course, looking back on that period, I think part of it was, it was simply too depressing to think that our leaders were as that sacrificial and selling us out as much as I've come to think they really were. And so it was much easier to tell, like, no, it's not perfect, but at least we've got some hope that we're gonna do something and it's gonna help somehow. And having to face the fact of there's still a lot of good in the world and you've given talks on this and there's still a lot to be optimistic about in the most fundamental sense. But if you approach current events with the motivation of I'm trying to see this through the lens that makes myself feel good about what's going on, you're not gonna get things right. And look, I think at the end of the day, whatever arguments there have been against the view that you've taken, that Leonard Peekov has taken, that the Iron Institute has taken, I think you can't question that you've been vindicated. Over the last 20 plus years, you guys have been completely vindicated. Nobody could argue that that approach succeeded or anything like it. That maybe that would cause people to actually take us more seriously now when we predict stuff about the world today, but it doesn't seem to work that way, sadly. But yes, I challenge anybody to go back and find my talks on 9-11 on Israel back then and measure them against what has actually happened. And I'm even stunned by some of the predictions that I and others at the Institute and Leonard made during that period and how accurately they came to be. But I think this attitude of they don't wanna believe that it's this bad. You don't wanna believe that our leaders are this pathetic, particularly in a time of emergency and a time of crisis. I think that explains part of what's going on with Trump. I think people are desperate for something, at least for some people, people are desperate for something. And they wanna believe that Trump is not what he really is, just to justify that kind of sense of hope that maybe they have, because it does seem bleak. If Trump is everything I say he is, it does seem bleak in terms of the future of America, and it does seem bleak in terms of, I don't know, 60 plus million people voting for him. That's pretty sad statement about America. And nobody wants to think the world is that bleak. So a lot of how we approach current events, I think is shaped by hopefulness, by the sense of wanting things to be differently, different, and kind of imposing our whim on reality, which as we know, is not gonna work out well in the end. It's gonna come back and bite you, but I think that's a lot of it. And so you hearing something that kind of challenged all that, said, oh, right, maybe I've made a mistake, maybe I really need to think this. Most people hear that, say, oh, well, those people that I've initiated are all crackpots anyway. They're just too pessimistic, they're too negative about the world. Yeah, it's hard to pin negativity. I would think it'd be hard, but I guess you don't come across as that pessimistic a guy, even if you're read on world events, maybe pessimistic. But to attribute that to you as your driving motive that you wanna feel bad about the world is hard. Yeah, no, absolutely. Anybody who knows me knows that that cannot be. So we've got, I don't know how many Indians on the chat right now. So lately, once in a while, the country of India discovers that Iran broke his online and a bunch of them show up for my chat. So it's entertaining. I'm not sure what to stop it, I have no idea. They all claim to love me and to claim to love Iran. I have no idea what it means though. All right, and at some point we need to leave some time for me to ask you some questions because I do have some super chat questions for you. Well, I wanna ask then just kind of one more methodological question about, and maybe it's probably shifted for you over time, but what do you do in terms of formulating your views on tournaments? Like do you have a process or is it just sort of like you read the news and stuff pops in your head and you start talking about it and sort of work out your view as you go? Like what's your approach now and maybe was it different when you were, you hadn't been doing it for decades and really formed a huge context and a basic take on the world? So let me give you a for instance, when Israel's attacked and you're deciding I gotta go in there and talk to say what to make on it. What does that process look like? It's like, I just trust, I'm at the point where I can just trust my subconscious or just trust the process, right? I went on air as I think the mascot was still going on because I was trying to catch, I was catching a flight that afternoon. So as soon as I heard the news, I went on air. We didn't even know exactly what was going on, how bad it was. It was still was something like 40, 50 people were dead, something like that when I went on air. But the outline of what was going on was clear at that point and that was enough. I think I did this exercise at the Institute once with some of the writers. I can't remember if you were there, but I think we opened up a Wall Street Journal. Like we laid out a Wall Street Journal page and I basically went, this is what I tell in this story, just reading for the headlines. This is what I tell in this, this is what I tell in this. I had already an opinion about each one of those. I couldn't do the number of shows I do today without being able to do that. If I had to really deeply think about each one of these stories, but it's so well-integrated now that I don't, right? So I can think while I'm speaking, that doesn't mean I don't make mistakes. I probably make more mistakes than I would otherwise because it is just coming out like that and I probably missed some points that I would make if there was more time to really consider it and really beef it up. One of my, as I said, one of the advantages of having on-call, there was that you could always, he would always fill in and cover the things that I didn't. But so I remember one of the questions was, because other writers today would probably want to be able to do the same thing. One of the questions was, well, okay, so how do we do this? And my answer at the end is, I really don't know. I have a particular skill set, a particular mind that is very good at integration. So, and I've been reading the news and dealing with current events since I was a teenager, integrating with objectivism since I was 16 and caring about the world and caring about current events since I can remember myself really. Living in Israel, I think does that to you because there's so much going on and so much of it is important. And so it's, I just have a mind that integrates things and sees the connection. So I can look at our headline and connect it to the rest of my knowledge very, very quickly. And I just need a few details to be able to talk about it. I don't need to go through a detailed process. You know, I've said half as a joke, but half seriously, you can probably just give me a topic to talk about it. I'll probably produce it a half an hour talk on the spot pretty much on anything, certainly anything current event related. Now, again, it won't be as good as I prepared it if I really thought about it, but it'll be as good as pretty much anybody else can do. So it's a unique skill that I have. I don't know many people, other people who have it. I have a vast inventory of facts, knowledge. You know, I'm a true journalist, not out of just not out of seeking that, but just, I just am. I just know a lot of stuff about a lot of different things. It probably not as any one of those not deep as much as an expert would have it, but a lot this way. So, and that helps with the integration. Yeah, and I think part of the key that you said there is I definitely think you have a unique skill set, but the precondition of it all is that it's not like you're just diving into the news once in a while for the last couple of weeks, right? Like this is a practice you've built up over years and decades. Decades. And so you're bringing a massive context to bear. And if you think about Ayn Rand, I mean, even by the time she's professionally writing about these things, we have a bunch of, she used to clip out, you know, literal newspaper clippings and keep them in file folders. We have a bunch of those in the Ayn Rand archives. Like she was deeply interested in the world around her and following it throughout her life. And even in her interview, she talks about in Russia, like reading the news and how they'd have to read, you basically had to read like very slowly and carefully to get what the news really was by, you know, what are they not saying? How are they phrasing things? Living in a conflict zone when you're young, you know, makes you sensitive to these things. You focus on the details. You focus on what's going on. There is a sense in which it's life or death because you better know what's going on out there because they're out to get you. So I think that has something to do with it. But yeah, it's many, many years. And then look, and then the other thing is integrating objectiveism, exposed objectiveism young and then having access to people like Leonard Peekoff and others who, you know, would help shape my views on current events and how to think about current events. And, you know, say if I got stuff wrong and I often did, there would be somebody there who said, no, no, that's, you're thinking about it wrong. So having Leonard in a sense for a while, at least as a mentor, not that I'm trying to say that, you know, he's certainly not responsible for my views today, but certainly helped shape how I think about everything. Well, great. So I encourage people to come see you live at Anaheim in this June. I should have the exact dates in front of me, but. Yeah, it's mid June. You can all go to einran.org, start here. I think there's a link there to the conference page. Oconn.Einran.org is the quickest way to get there. From that einran.org. Great. And then I don't know exactly what I'm gonna be talking about it'll be something to think about current events. There'll probably be something about, it's an election year, sadly. So I will probably be talking about the election, the state of American politics, something to that effect, you know, I'll be covering. I think Elon will probably be doing something on foreign policy on call. We'll be doing something as well, I think on current events. So we will be doing quite a bit given the tenure of the time and the election season and the many wars around the world and just the havoc that's going on. I'll definitely be covering a lot of that. But I think the main reason to come to Oconn, I have to say, and I hear this from everybody who's ever attended, is it's just so much fun to be surrounded by people who share your values. You've got, I don't know, 500 people are gonna be there, attendees, faculty and staff and you'll get to meet a lot of really, really cool people. You won't like everybody. There's some real weirdos at Oconn and they're just people you won't click with. But out of the 500, you will find people you do click with that are really amazing. And it's a blast. You don't have to watch what you say. You don't have to worry about people rolling their eyes. You don't have to worry about being, you know, shamed for mentioning Ayn Rand. So this is a place where you can really feel at home. And a lot of people think about it as, yeah, I feel more at home at Oconn than when I go home because there I have to put on this act when I go to work, when I hang out with people. But in Oconn, you can fully be yourself. God, I can't even block these Indians because there's so many of them. I can't even go in and block, block, block a cake. It's just too much work. I need to have somebody responsible online to do it for me. It's tricky. And there's a thing going on between the Pakistanis and the Indians and who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. So, you know, there you go. Ali, Ali put $20 behind love from Pakistan. Thank you, Ali. All right. I am continuing the fact that, I guess illustrating the fact that current events is something I'm still cultivating a deep interest in. My talk will actually be on philosophy, work, and business, which is coming out of my Ayn Rand University course with our CEO. And I get a session for you for that. Yeah, which people can find on YouTube. And so that'll be fun. It's talking about how you can use philosophy to actually build a career that you love. And I'll be co-teaching it with our CEO, Tau Sifani. That's great. Who, if you haven't had him on the show, he'd be a lot of fun to have here too. I think I've had him on the show. I can't remember now, but I'll have to have him on the show soon. I think he's on the list now to get people on. So yeah, guys, come to Ocon. It's a blast. We also have, I do a show from Ocon. So all the YBS fans get together and we tape a show and we do a show live. And it's just a lot of fun. And you'll meet one another. A lot of you will meet one another, which is great. So do you want to do some of these super chats that address it? You can see if we have time after that. Let's see, Ian says, Don, when are we going to get an audio, when are we going to get an audio book of effective egoism? Lots of people are more likely to listen rather than read. I want the book to get as many people as possible, to get to as many people as possible. Here's the problem that I have. The problem that I have is that I work pretty much 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and still don't have time to get to sitting down and recording an audio book. It's something I want to do. I really enjoy audiobooks. I know a lot of people only consume audiobooks. It will happen. It's just I'm going to really have to prioritize it at some point. Get Pellegrino to read it. Yeah, there you go. Well, so if anybody wants to... I mean, did I do it? No, he probably would. He's a fan of the book and a very kind, supportive person. You know, they're voice actors, but in our universe that... I guess so, but I don't like... I for fiction, yes, professional readers are great, but I find it disorienting when authors of nonfiction that I know aren't the ones reading it. OK. But it'll happen. I don't know that many authors are nonfiction books. So I haven't listened to them. So I don't know. But I think there's some really good professional readers who do a great job. I listen to a lot of books these days and there's a lot of that. All right, let's say DWNLogic says, I enjoy Don's wife's tweets regarding child education and mental development. They remind me of how much work having kids is and that I made the right decision to not have any. Well, it's my girlfriend. Neither of us will be too sad to hear you refer to her that way. Yeah, but, yes, Samantha Westmoreland. She actually works at higher ground education, which is run by a mutual friend of ours, Ray Gern, and does their marketing and writes about, you know, the theory of Montessori. And the funny thing is that she doesn't have any kids of her own, but helps me raise mine. And I trust her insights on parenting more than my own. I always say, I was like, I know my children better than you do, but you know parenting better than I do. It's good. It's a good division of labor. Thank you, DWNLogic. Really appreciate the support. Another question from DWN. Is there a sequel to I Am Justice in the Works? I handed out copies to neighbors and coworkers, and a lot of them have asked me if there's another stripper book coming out soon. Yes, this is a novel that I published, gosh, three, four years ago, something like that. And immediately after I wrote it, I drafted a follow-up to it. And the basic idea is really good. The sequel exists, and the idea behind it is good, but to get the finished product is going to be a lot of work. And I have to say, don't hold your breath, but I hope someday I get around to finishing it. Good. Yeah. He's working too hard at the Ironman Institute to write novels. Well, that's the problem. I've always dabbled inside projects, and it's because I've always enjoyed what I've done, but it's either not been financially remunerative enough to put food in my plate, or it's just there was something missing in my, you know, creativity outlets. Now the problem is I have a side project, but nothing is missing. I have the greatest job I've ever had. I do the marketing for ARI. I still do my intellectual work, which is sort of a side project because it's not quite an ARI project. But it's hard to fit in something as all-consuming as a book. I mean, the fact is when I'm writing a novel, it's living in my mind, you know, full-time. Very, very hard to do that when I'm trying to... I used to work with Alex Epstein, and he found out I was working on a novel early on, and he goes, I want your shower thoughts. He was really worried about it, and he's like, I want, you know, your subconscious to be going on how to help my company, you know, when you're going on a walk or in the shower or something like that. And ARI has my shower thoughts now. It's very... It's hard to project when I could make space for a book. To get inspired or something, yeah. All right. And send me, says Don and Yuan, which are the most successful avenues for catching the attention of people who end up developing a strong interest in objectivism? Are there any that you'd like to see more work put into? If you're the marketing director now, this is a shower thought. What are the avenues for catching the attention of people who end up developing a strong interest in objectivism? I mean, this is what we think about full-time at the Ironman Institute. And there's no short answer to that. You know, I remember, and I'm sure you've been party too, as many of these conversations, as I have probably a lot more here on, when we were trying to think of, what's the right first book for people to read? And people would debate, is it ITOE or is it, maybe it's OPAR, maybe it's Atlas Shrugged, or they debate, you know, what's the right, who's the right people to go after? Is it religious people? Is it atheists? Is it conservatives? Is it libertarian? And the answer is those are all completely wrong because people are diverse and what captures, what will capture their attention, get them interested or diverse, what will help them get to the next level of commitment is diverse. And so what you really have to do is be thinking about who are the audiences, where are they, and how can you reach them and help them take the next step on their journey and encourage them to take the next step in the journey. And I mean, basically, that's what we focus on full-time at the Institute. And I'll say, I think we have a pretty darn good idea of once somebody's been ignited by Iron Rand and wants to learn more. I mean, we have the, you know, largest free collection of Iron Rand material, Leonard Pieckoff material. We have the world's best training in objectives and we have everything that you need once you hit that point. And we have one of the best tools to get people ignited, which is we give away hundreds of thousands of free copies of our books and have some of the biggest essay contests on the planet to encourage people to read them. But I think what's, you know, the missing ingredient is really, we need a lot more people and not even a lot more people, but we need a few more people who are really, really good at that what we call top of the funnel. It's reaching those big audiences and getting them interested so that they read the novels and then want to take that next step of learning more. It's not that we can't improve on the other things, but that's what I consider the unsolved problem. But that's really the unsolved problem of how do you become a famous advocate of ideas? That's a hard problem to solve. And there is no these solution. It's very individualized. What made Alex Epstein successful is not what made you successful you're on. It's not what's going to make the next person who blows up and becomes really well known successful. There's certain universal principles of how you build an audience. And part of what I do, both as somebody who trains intellectuals and as a marketer, is I think a lot about and teach a lot of those principles. But how it works for any one person, they have to think about who they uniquely want to reach, what their unique message is, what their unique platform is. And you can't centrally plan that. Absolutely. Actually, I think this show has attracted a number of people who've turned out to have strong interest in objectivism and turned out to be perspective intellectuals. So I think quite a few of the ARU and quite a few of our new intellectuals are now graduates of the Iran Book Show or introduced to the ideas of Iran or at least developed to this. The only challenge now is that we're too small, so we're not reaching enough people. But once we get the people we get are very high quality people and a lot of them good things happen. So we need to go from 36,000 subscribers to a million subscribers. And that's a revolution in and of itself. Yeah, I mean, aside from word of mouth, which still is the biggest way people hear about Iran, a friend, a family member recommends in the book, the one name that dominates the list is the way that people got interested in objectivism is they discovered you some way or another and it got them in there. And I mean, that's, you know... We need lots of people. We need to make mean much, much bigger. All of the above. But for those who support your show, they should... who think that that's a positive outcome, it's support well spent because it really does make a difference. You're not... There's nothing wrong with preaching to the choir, but you by no means are only preaching to the choir. I think that's right. Certainly in Texas last Friday on my talk on Israel, there was a number of people who were not part of the choir. That was such a good talk. They were singing opposite me. That was such a good talk. Thanks. And part of what made it good, aside from just the content was interesting and illuminating, was when I was real... Knowing that you were saying it to people who hadn't heard anything like this before, it felt just like... That is satisfying to me. Knowing that these ideas, which I hear you talk about because I listen to your show and because I share a lot of the viewpoint... I share all the major viewpoints, but most of them I learned from you. But to know that people who have never heard this before were hearing it and hearing it in such a powerful way, that it was... It's such a depressing topic, but it was so... I didn't feel depressed. I felt really excited watching you deliver it. Yeah, I mean, one of the major fun aspects of it was that there were a bunch of people who supported me in general, right? Various students from Jewish organizations, pro-Israel organizations. There was a bunch of Israeli entrepreneurs in the audience, right? Well, I knew, basically supported my view, but they'd never heard anything like this, right? They generally, yeah, we're pro-Israel, we get it, there's bad guys, we're the good guys, but they never have heard anybody actually articulate a moral defense and articulate a moral defense. And they were... You could tell that they were the edge of their seats. They were eating it up in a way that it's rare for an audience to respond that way. I got a standing ovation for that talk, which is rare at universities to ever get a standing ovation. And I think it's because they came in, oh, yeah, yeah, we're gonna support this guy. And they walked away saying, whoa, we've never heard anything quite like that. So it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it a lot. And I suspect here's one reason why you're on. I mean, besides the generality that it was a good talk. One of the things I've noticed seeing hundreds and hundreds of answers to how people got interested in Iran, what appealed to them? Because as a marketer, you're always really interested. What captured your attention? You wanna guess which one word was up probably more than any other? What was about Iran that captured them? And I don't mean the novel specifically, but when they talk about, like, I, you know, saw a video by Iran. Clarity and certainty? Certainty. Certainty. And I think that came through the moral certainty that you had about Israel, which even Israel doesn't have. Clearly. I think that's right. All right, let's see. Don, who has the more impressive bookshelf? You or Iran? The objective? That's what Ryan says. Well, this one behind me only has two things. It has, well, three. It has philosophy, religion, and marketing books. So yours is probably much more diverse and will win on diversity points. It has a lot of argument books. It has economics. Philosophy, history. No fiction on that. No fiction in this. The bookshelf for fiction is in another room. But this is, you know, this is what, a tenth of what I had in California. And the number of, every time they saw me coming to the, you know, what do you call it? Goodwill. Every time they saw me coming to Goodwill, you could tell the guys were like backing off because my boxes were full of books and they hated that because they have to pick them up and they're really heavy. And they didn't want to deal with it because I can't, I mean, the number of boxes of books that I gave away is just, it's hard for me even to comprehend. I probably should have documented everything I owned, but it was. Oh, actually, I do win, but for not because of the books, I have a more impressive bookshelf because I have two items on this bookshelf. So the first one is when I was 15, I wrote to Leonard Pieckoff. I had just discovered objectivism and I wrote him about how excited I was. And I gave him this really great idea. I was always interested in the marketing of ideas because I gave him the most brilliant idea for how to spread objectivism. Okay. And I was sure it was going to floor him with my brilliance and innovation. I said, they need to make a movie out of Atlas shrugged. Incredibly original. Of course, I learned later, this is like the joke on every Leonard Pieckoff lecture you'd hear about when somebody going to ask the Atlas shrugged movie question. But he very kindly wrote me back. At the end of it, in fact, this ties in, at the end of it, he wrote me in the letter and said, if you were ever to a conference together, introduce yourself. Sam, the 15 year old who wrote you in English. So when I saw him speak at Ford Hall Forum, by then I'm, let's see, 21. And I went up to him afterwards. There was a little gathering afterwards for people who paid for the expensive ticket. And I went up and shook his hand and told him, hey, I told him the story of the letter and said, I'm the 15 year old now, 21 who wrote you in English. And he was very amused by that. The other thing is if you can see this, the letter A up there, that is Ayn Rand's own handkerchief that a friend made for her that I got in an auction at Okon, one of the events we hold is a gala each year. And often there's an auction associated with that. And so I bid. I paid more than I would admit to anybody who definitely more than I can afford. No regrets though, because it's the one personal memorabilia piece of hers that I currently own. I don't make a lot of money. Most of it's going to go back to the institute just from buying up as much memorabilia as I can. Yeah. Don wins. Let's see. Don, your view of the state of the conservative movement. I mean, I agree with you, Ron, except for I'm probably if anything more disgusted by it, it took a lot for me to even get to a place where I could consider voting for any Republican for any office under any circumstances after 2020. My view is if you are part of a party that really is trying to wreck the integrity of elections and not just like somebody's trying to you know, steal a few votes, but like trying to basically cast a doubt and overthrow the results of an election to me, I was ready to write off all Republicans forever until they completely rejected everything about it. Since I'm at the position where Nikki Haley pulls out a miracle victory, I would almost certainly vote for her over Biden but in general, it's very, very low which doesn't mean I have a low view of every individual conservative or Republican by any means but as a movement or as a group or as a party, I think it's a catastrophe and now I know it half of your listeners are thinking, yes so are the Democrats, of course that's the problem is we have two catastrophes. Don, what is your view of University of Texas? University of Austin, sorry University of Austin in Texas. I don't know enough to have a fully worked out view some of the people associated with it I have enormous respect for, particularly Barry Weiss she's as good as a non-objectivist public intellectual can be today, I learn a lot from her, I admire her courage and articulateness, it doesn't mean I agree with everything she says but there's people like that involved in it and I wish them all the success in the world but I haven't followed it closely enough it's an evaluation of it there's things that make me a little bit dubious in part it's what's the uniting principle exactly and she's tried to articulate I think a pretty good attempt at a principle but it's not obvious to me that that's really shaped everything they're doing but again I'm not following it closely so I'm willing to be corrected and I'd be happy to be corrected if there is a much better more articulated philosophy that I would agree with I don't really think it's to be determined any organization that has Sohab Amari associated with anything that they do is suspect in my mind they seem to have quite a few faculty who come from a theological kind of perspective which worries me because it means that religion is playing a big role I like the founder what's his name, Joe Lonsdale actually met him on Friday in Austin and he's a good guy you know he's quite Jewish but he's in terms of religion but he's a good guy and I like Barry Weiss I agree with you and I like several, you know Diedro McCluskey's on the Board of Advisors and I like Diedro a lot and there's some other people there who I think are very good but we'll see how it all comes together I've heard good things about the President Pano mostly I've yet to talk to him I expect to talk to him soon and I'm excited you know competition is good so they won't be perfect it's not going to be a perfect place and it's not going to be an objective university and it's not going to be a they're going to get it wrong because they're going to have this mixture of conservatives and centrists and Barry Weiss types they don't exactly know what they're doing but that's fine it's a competition to and at universities that are so dominated now really completely dominated by by the left and by the far left for the most part and we see that in the post-October 7th how awful that has been yeah so I mean I don't know exactly what to expect from them but my overall impression is similar to yours like I'm looking forward to seeing what they do and I'm happy they're trying to do something all right so I think final question of the questions this one is for Don directly this is from Jeff Fremiller chef extraordinaire if you haven't next time you go to New York let me know and I'll refer you to his restaurant I mean he really is spectacular he writes Don do you have a similar love of restaurants to Iran what tastes in food overlap oh well I mean the you're not going to like my answer at least it will be disappointing I Iran has taken me to some good restaurants a few times and I can appreciate them and I enjoy it when I've done it food is just not that important a value to me for me kind of fast and easy doesn't always mean fast food but just like it's usually something I want to get over with I'm really not that interested in much in life besides conversations about ideas there's some exceptions I'm rewatching Justified with my girlfriend right now and you know I'll take a good TV show but food is just not that important to me but I can definitely recognize when it's been done well and I admire that enormously and but no I'm the thing about going to Jeffrey's restaurant is you can sit at the counter he'll make your food in front of you and you can have a conversation with him about objectivism about sports about a lot of different things like I said it's not like I would be in a setting like that and be like I would have some denies it's not something that I pursue a lot I remember we were at a some talk at some point that you were giving and whoever was kind of hosting had said last time we had you run out we tried to suggest going out to a pizza place afterwards he was like we're not going to a pizza place I'm making you sound like a grumpy old man I'm sure it was a very charming but no I'm not doing that to me that would be the king move of any club that brought me out sorry Jeffrey you know I've tried on the other hand you have to take the perspective that Donna is still young and values change over time and they're still hopeful absolutely alright I think we're at at your limit so thanks any parting words encourage you wanted people to do something in particular no the main thing is go to okon.iron.org and check out go to university.iron.org if you want to make sure to be able to see the next amazing course that you're on and our other teachers give that I give we have space obviously for students who want to study with us full time but you can also take it as an auditor it's a really powerful experience it can be a life changing experience both for people who are relatively new to these ideas but for people who've been studying it for 20 or 30 years there really is an endless wealth of knowledge that you know the experts who are teaching there have gathered and to me it's just there's no better place to learn but the final thing I'll just say is I really it's as much as I love listening to your show I love it even more when I've first gone and delved into the stories and kind of thought what's my take going to be and then compare it to what you come up with it makes me get so much more out of it and it makes me appreciate how what you do isn't obvious even to somebody who shares your views that the kinds of insights and the kinds of facts that you bring to bear and the fact that you do it on such a rapid basis it really made me admire it even more because I'm always challenging myself what would I do if I had to comment on this right away but it's a really good mental exercise so I encourage people look at what topics you're on is going to cover that day and just spend 15 minutes saying what points would I make on these topics and then test your knowledge against the best I used to do that with Linda Peacoff and you learn a lot from doing that not that again I'm comparing myself to Linda but I think you can always learn from comparing yourself to somebody who's doing this professionally great thank you Don don't forget guys check out Ocon also check out ARU and you can find all that information on the Ironman website and what was the website again for Ocon Ocon.inran.org and if anybody forgets or has any questions about them you know they can ping me I'm on Twitter at Don'sWriting.com no at Don'sWriting there's no .com on Twitter but I'll be free I'll be happy to engage you there so take care you're on. Thanks Don alright guys so we've got a bunch of super chat questions still left I'm going to go over these and then we'll call it a night unless most super chat questions come in and we have more to talk about I think the best thing is to send me an email give me a little bit of background what your plans are what the marketing plans are who you are and if anybody is interested in being my first podcast guest I'm happy to travel to you for ease it will be similar to like Friedman's style with one-on-one interview long-form conversation long-time listener of the show thanks who you are and how you want to tape it so if you come here to Puerto Rico where would we do it if we did it somewhere else so think it through write me an email and but I've no no opposition to doing it so likely to do it you're on at youronbrookshow.com you're on at youronbrookshow.com all right cool good luck with the podcast whether I'm the first guest or not we need more and more podcasts we need more and more people out there getting these ideas hearing Rob says I'm super focused on building my business at the moment don't have the bandwidth to tune into current events I'm not sure what I'd gain from doing so either am I wrong no I don't think you're wrong in your business particularly if you have a particular passion a particular interest something that you're consumed with justifiably rationally consumed with then current events are a distraction to a large extent and now there's a sense in which you might not care about current events but current events care about you and that's certainly true and you have to at least know something about what's going on around you what the tax rate is, what the incentives what the disincentives are with regard to your business what is going on around you is going to affect you the mood of the people around you is going to be affected by the current events and one way or another the kind of stuff that happens in Washington affects all of our lives whether we like it or not but you have to put it into context how important is it how much of an effect is it I have a limited number of hours in a day you know right now I have to devote all the hours in my day to getting my business off the ground go for it don't feel guilty about it don't apologize for it go for it I will say one of the reasons I'm doing the news roundups in the morning is for people who want to have a sense of what's going on in the world want a quick take on it don't want to have to read the newspaper don't want to have to watch the horrible TV news which I don't watch and I don't encourage anybody to watch I don't think anybody should watch them so I do that it's 45 minutes and you get caught up on what's going on in the world but again 45 minutes is a lot of time and you might not want to and plus it might just piss you off it's only pisses me off to be engaged with what's going on in the world and you need not just your mental energy but your emotional energy you're probably at one building a business and you can't be distracted so I completely get it and yeah you're probably at some point when it catch up on what's going on in the world again because it will affect you in one way or the other but in the midst of pursuing passion don't let the news don't let the news in if it's going to hurt your ability to build a business Richard thank you $166 thank you for all you do and in honor of all the trolls in the chat thank you Richard all right trolls you got him you got Richard to get us over the the target so I appreciate that let's see Andrew how does your Ron maintain a benevolent universe premise despite focusing on so much negative content very few are able to maintain that more attitude to life consistently I think it's because I have a life that is I have values, the things that I love I have a white that I love I have art that I love I like doing this I like interacting with you guys I like talking and coming up with answers to the questions that you have I like the challenge involved in that I like going in front of live audiences people ask me how I stay calm in front of these crazies horrible people that are going nuts and why I don't panic or I don't get upset it just doesn't whatever irrationality they are exhibiting it's their fault it's their responsibility it's on them it doesn't affect my life it doesn't impede on my ability it does hood my values it makes it harder for me to pursue values to be achieved but you know it's if you're focused on your values and for me part of those values are talking to you about what's going on in the world then it doesn't really bother me you know once in a while I need a break because once in a while the negativity in the world gets to me particularly when I see yeah anyway particularly when it's just constantly negative and people who should know better are acting like idiots but most of the time my focus is on the good things that I have in my life and the world can go to hell in a sense Justin what is alternative media filled why is alternative media filled with conspiracies the private model seems to lead to more sensational and irrational and irrational media we live in an irrational culture we live in a culture on in the decline we live in a culture in which people's ability to think independently is in decline we live in a culture where people are looking for answers and yet they've been conditioned I think partially by religion to look for simple answers the answers that are emotionally appealing that don't require too much thinking conspiracy theories fit nicely into that the explanation for what is going on in the world that are not burdened by facts not burdened with reality the explanations for what's going on in the world that are simple straightforward the Jews did it the pedophiles in Washington did it you just come up with or the aliens did it or the space lasers did it you come up with a simple explanation and the simple explanation is super convenient because it explains everything it's a superficial simplistic but then it explains everything well why is what's going on in the world the Jews of course and why is this happening in the UK well the Jews it's an all-encompassing explanation and that's the nature of of conspiracies they can explain everything and they don't have facts don't interfere with the explanations and I think we live in an era we live in a time where there is elevated emotion where we want simplicity we don't want complexity we don't want anything we have to think through deeply about it and of course religion is what conditions people's psychology and mental capacity thinking to be like this to expect simplified answers without explanation the more religious the culture becomes the more conspiratorial it becomes the more emotionalistic it will become Andy says when is justice coming back it definitely felt like it was open for a sequel justice what is justice oh you talk about Don's book he's not quite ready to write it even though he's got the story and the outline is there justice says why care about current events culture and politics why not just focus on one's own life and forget the world because the world is there you live in it care about because culture has an impact on you it's how people behave it's the contour of the life you live it's the music you listen to the movies you watch it's all of that culture matters the lack of it matters politics less so but still even politics has an impact on you and it has an impact on the culture and it has an impact on other people who are good people so again as I answered before I don't think you should spend too much time on it I don't think you should obsess about it it depends what else is going on in your life but there certainly are contexts in which just forget about just ignore the politics because there's nothing much you can do about it in a short run better to improve your life and make your life the best that it can be in over the long run Justin why did atheism fail? I think because atheism is empty atheism is just a negation of God it doesn't have a positive agenda people need to be inspired by something positive they need to find purpose and meaning in life they need to find purpose in their meaning and they need to find moral guidance to live their life and the atheists didn't have that that most they had was the notion of Christian morality and Christian values so the new atheists failed because they failed to present a positive inspiring meaning filled alternative to religion so they might have become atheists for a while and then they went back to religion to find meaning in it or they gave up on meaning altogether and became cynics but whatever there was as a movement the new atheism failed Andrew says in what is a part or parts of Rand's novels does Don read and still go wow because it's so rich in content or just appeals to him Don's gone so I don't know we'll have to ask him when he comes back Kate Kat can I speak with you for 5 minutes after this guy no why why do you need to speak to me if you want to get in touch with me you're on at youronbookshow.com send me an email I don't just meet with people on zoom or anywhere else you know and why you I don't know you everybody on here might want to have a one on one with me usually charge for that so send me an email explain why you want to meet with me what value for me there is in meeting with you why I should make the effort and then we can see Daniel and plus the way you behaved on the chat is a little ridiculous I mean very needy and very you don't meet with me you talk to me really I mean be an adult and you make a request and you you don't exhibit this you know neediness and nastiness it's inappropriate you want something from me behave in a way that will project to me that you're an adult I'm not even saying pay me I'm just saying be an adult behave like an adult but pay me is not a bad idea my time is valuable and you want my time so one option is to pay me for my time a lot of people want to just talk to me but my time is valuable Don did you ever take up running I don't see Don as a runner plus in Michigan where would you run it's cold it's wet it's slippery try run first thing in the morning you'll love the cognitive effect I'll pass that on to him thank you Daniel Stevan have you seen killers of the farm who know I haven't my son who was judgment on movies I trust really disliked it and told me he thought I would dislike it so I have not watched it so so I left it I haven't I'm curious whether Stevan you've watched it and what you think of it I don't intend to watch it unless somebody highly recommends it and gives me reason why I should go and watch it Gian Niccolini thank you for the support really appreciate it let's see do we have any other stickers I don't think we had many stickers today anyway I think we had some earlier but I've lost them thank you guys I really really appreciate it and you know I like scorsese movies for the for the skill you know I talked about the departed which is a scorsese movie the other day the plot the skill really really all of it was really really interesting the theme was bad a bad terrible theme almost all of them bad terrible themes so but yeah it's good to see you back Stefan hopefully you'll make some more shows here's the plan tomorrow there'll be a news roundup I think it's at the regular time I think it'll be one o'clock Eastern time yes one o'clock East Coast time is the plan for the show tomorrow maybe there'll be later but that's right now that is the plan and then tomorrow night there will be a show I'm not sure what the topic will be I'm still thinking that through um maybe I'll try to do a commentary show on something somebody if you see any videos that you think would be interesting for me to comment on send them over I've got a few nothing has just struck me as yes I need comments on this but somebody send me a Jordan Peterson video this is just horrible but it's not so many Jordan Peterson recently so maybe somebody who's not Jordan Peterson you can send me something not Jordan Peterson Jordan Peterson just did an interview with with Ben Shapiro and I started watching it and God Jordan doesn't stop talking like he's interviewing Ben and the question is like 10 times longer than the answer it's just absurd and ridiculous um oh I did want to fill you in on Lex so Lex announced today what he's going to do I mean the Israel is destiny and Benny Morris I'll tell you something about Benny Morris in a minute which is very disappointing I think both choices are bad choices and then on the pro-Palestinian side it's Feinstein who's terrible really awful human being and um I forget the other guy name but but one of the one of the Muslims um I stand by what I said yesterday about destiny I just don't think he fits I don't think he's at the level of the others I don't think he knows his stuff well enough and I don't think he's principled enough to engage in such a debate I you know I think he's too centrist Benny Morris is a really really interesting character Benny Morris used to be a long time ago he was what you'd called a post-Zionist and that comes post-Zionism came from post-modernism so he was a post-modernist historian of Zionism and he wrote a lot of anti-Zionist stuff and a lot of revisionist history of Israel um history that I think a lot of it was false and during the Second Intifada he suddenly realized how evil what the Palestinians was doing was what the Palestinians were what was really going on and he backtracked and he basically reframed everything that he had done previously in a pro-Israel kind of slant and but I don't think he completely retracted everything about his history that I think is wrong and or other historians have found to be wrong so Benny Morris is pro-Israel he's an historian so he can he can deal with and he knows a lot more about and he's pro-Israeli but he's still way too middle of the road here when it comes to the history and grants too much to the Palestinians in my view so I don't know I mean who am I to criticize Lex Friedman I mean Lex is brilliant he puts on the best interview show on the internet and has several million viewers so he knows what he's doing it's disappointing to me because instead of putting on the Israeli side at least one's best foot forward the best people who could articulate the best case I think he's got people who are centrist moderates who are the best case that an Israeli person could I think you can find better historians who are more rigorous than Benny Morris have been more consistent over the years in terms of views about what happened in the past and I think definitely from an intellectual philosophical perspective you can do much better than Destiny it would be great if Lex for me about Israel and my views on Israel I don't know that that will happen again I've been on Lex's show a lot of time so you know and I'm not that popular so I don't get a huge viewership so I understand why you wouldn't do it and I am radical on pretty much everything so yeah this is not going to change the fact that I'm a Lex Friedman fan who asks for those who don't know Finkelstein how would you summarize him I'd summarize him as a person who has who plays to the fact that both he's Jewish and a Holocaust denier sorry and a Holocaust as parents of Holocaust survivors he plays on that fact I think in some ways minimize the Holocaust and thoroughly create a false narrative about the history of Israel and present Israel Israelis and Zionists as clearly the bad guys in history and as and I think he has written histories that have been debunked and challenged and he has no answers to them but it doesn't matter he's not about the story of truth he's not about what's actually out there he is clearly and unequivocally about he's figured out a niche and he's been on every single interview show and he has had a long successful career on basically establishing himself as the historian who is anti-Zionism and anti-Israel and there are others that are American and he plays but you can't accuse me because my parents are Holocaust survivors and so I don't know I think the technical term is a scumbag but he's not a good guy not a good guy a user and a manipulator is what I think he is but that is the bottom line of what he is as an intellectual yeah I mean what I find about destiny it doesn't bother me that he has blue hair and it doesn't bother me he has an open marriage what bothers me is about destiny is he has no principles what bothers me about destiny is that he's not a principal thinker and he doesn't fully understand what is going on in Israel you know, Benny Marvist at least is Israeli so he'll bring that perspective, that experience but destiny I just think is superfluous there what is he at understanding to a debate like that he has no particular knowledge or particular skill set other than he's a little bit of a he used to be pro-Palestinian he's moved to be more pro-Israeli so he is more of a middle of the road who could if you want to create a situation where we come to some understanding at the end of the debate then maybe destiny is your guy because he could again he's more of a middle of the road in the sense but look he has a massive following you know, I don't and a lot of the others but if you're going to have a commentator who has a massive follower and has a much deeper understanding of Israel and the moral what is at stake morally or Douglas Murray who's excellent on Israel so that's where we are right again you know, I shouldn't expect much until I get to like a million followers and we're a long way from that guys don't know what it's going to take probably impossible but we'll take it one day at a time and we'll keep growing and keep building and keep making more. I think I would be excellent in that debate I know the history I have moral certainty I know my stuff I'm sympathetic to the better Palestinians I have offer a real solution in terms of peace but I think I would be brilliant in such a debate alas it ain't happening alright, thanks guys thank you for all the people who voted for me by the way on Lex Friedman it's going to be successful given just the scale of it they got 35,000 votes at best I got a couple of hundred I can't imagine I got more than that but thank you for trying, I appreciate it alright let's see, again tomorrow news round up and an evening show at 7 p.m. east coast time I will see you all there thank you for all the superchatters thank you for all the people who support the show monthly thank you for Ironman Institute thank you for being a sponsor and VPN Express for being a sponsor and I will see all of you tomorrow