 So 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 Saturday afternoon. Hope everybody's having a fantastic weekend. And yeah, we're ready for our Ask Me Anything episode. As usual, we've got our panel here. So far, we have four people on the panel. I wouldn't be surprised if we have some people join in the next half hour or so. And also, of course, taking, there we go. Robert is joining now. And as usual, also taking super chat questions from you guys on the chat. So feel free to ask questions. Feel free to chat among yourselves. Just chatting in the chat actually increases the attractiveness of the show to the algorithm, the all-powerful, godlike YouTube algorithm that knows all. So the more you just chat among each other and engage, the better off we do with the algorithm. So go for it. All right, so we are going to, as always, start with our panel and then move to any questions we might have in the chat. Those of you who are watching on Twitter, if you would like to kind of, I guess, X, am I not supposed to call it Twitter anymore, you can participate. You can participate in the show. Just come over to YouTube and type in your own book and you'll find the show. And you can also participate in the chat and also ask questions using the super chat feature. All right, let's get started with Jennifer. You know the terms, introvert and extrovert. I'm not sure exactly what those terms mean. I don't like to use them. I don't use them with myself because I don't know what it's supposed to mean. But have you ever noticed that people who call themselves introverts tend to, and again, maybe I'm totally misreading this, but you see memes online. It's like they almost sort of look down on quote extroverts, whatever that's supposed to mean, because they say, well, they're shallow and, you know. Introverts are just smarter. That's it. Yeah, yeah, it's like, I mean, if an extrovert supposedly means you're more able easily to speak to someone you just met or in a group of people, you might be more comfortable depending on the situation. What's wrong with that necessarily? You know what I mean? Nothing. It's, I mean, the definition I've seen of it, but I don't think it's an accurate definition. So I don't know what the kind of psychological definition of extrovert and introvert would be. But when you do those tests, what do you call those tests? Where they give you the four letters and those four letters define every aspect of your personality and character. And Maya's Briggs, Maya's Briggs, yes. I think the Maya's Briggs defines introvert, extrovert, based on where you get your energy. So an extrovert gets energy from interacting with other people. So being with friends and everything is something that gets you, you know, all rolled up and gives you energy. An introvert is somebody who gets energy from being alone. That is they, and actually being with other people is energy depleting. They feel like they're, you know, they get more tired or they get more, it's a burden on them, right? It's an effort. I don't know, I don't know how important those things are. Again, I would say we'd need to talk to a real psychologist to figure out, to figure that out. But, you know, there's nothing, I mean, you could argue that there's the potential, greater potential to be second-handed if you're an extrovert, right? Because you're feeding off of other people. But I don't know that that maps out. I know extroverts who are individualists and independents and are not social metaphysicians. And I know introverts who are social metaphysicians. So I don't think it maps onto ethics. I don't think it tells you what kind of human being you are or your value or your, or, introverts tend to be, you know, read more. They tend to be more alone. They tend to maybe associate with nerds, right? Being nerdy. And, you know, the nerds, one, is kind of part of the, part of the modern story, right? They come to Silicon Valley and they got to be rich. So they can look down on the extroverts. But I don't think it's that meaningful. And like when I do the Myers-Briggs, and again, I don't know how good it is at identifying this thing that nobody will actually clearly define, I score my very, very mild introvert. Which is probably true, right? I do get some energy from social interaction, but not, but it dissipates very quickly. I, you know, and I'd rather be alone. I'd rather be reading a book. So it is, it's, I guess it's interesting that they can identify that. But, you know, I don't know how good it is. What is, Kamma quality is very poor, James says. Catherine says, Kamma quality is excellent here. So I don't know, what do you guys see? Looks okay to me. Looks okay. All right, James might be, you've got a weekends and a connection and it's downgrading the stream down to you. So that, that sometimes happens on my end, even when video is really good, that it's just downgrading, right? Okay, thanks, Jennifer. Looks like you wanted a follow-up. I just wanted to say like, I guess I just don't understand all that because like I could be really excited about being with certain people in certain contexts. And I like to be alone. So I guess for me, it just, that doesn't work. I hate cocktail parties, right? Like where I don't know people. Yeah, you don't know anybody and there's nobody there in particular that you find. Yeah, but there are people who love that. There are people who thrive in that environment. Yeah, I guess I don't understand that. Yeah, so it's, you know, people are different when it comes to interacting with other people, particularly interacting with strangers. Yeah. Thank you. All right, Adam. Thanks, Jennifer. Yes. I'd like to ask you about changing the political culture of the enemy, which should be the goal of a military conquest. Now, I listened recently to a presentation on the Polish Channel strategy in future. And their military analysis was that the U.S. won militarily in Iraq, but then did not change their political culture and they wound up being a satellite of Iran. Now, the high marks of American strategy, the conquest of Germany and Japan in World War II, were each followed by a very well thought out program to change the political culture of those countries. And, you know, that included rewriting the constitutions and so on. Is there anything that Israel is doing in the current war to prepare to change the political culture of the enemy after they win? Well, I think that two aspects to changing the political culture of the enemy. One is, and I think the United States, that both in Germany and Japan did not anywhere else and certainly did not in Iraq or Afghanistan, but didn't try to do it in Vietnam, didn't try to do it in Korea, really didn't do it anyway. And it really wasn't even done in the past. That is, it wasn't even done in, certainly wasn't done in World War I. And one could argue about the civil war in the United States. So it's a two-prong strategy to change the political culture. I think in the civil war, one prong was done and only half the other in Germany and Japan both were done and elsewhere, neither one were done. And in Iraq, I would argue they didn't really win the war either, right? So they never won the war militarily and they never changed the politics. So here's the thing you have to do. One, you have to win unequivocally, not just win by a hairs margin, not just win in a way that gives the enemy hope for victory. Like for example, World War I, where yeah, the allies won, but Germany still hold on to the belief that if only they had done things a little bit differently, they could have won. It was victory was snatched from them at the last minute. They won the verge of success. The same in Iraq, you want to war in Iraq, but the insurgency continued, it never really stopped. It continues to morph, hostility towards the Americans and lack of fear and respect for the Americans was pervasive in Iraq, even as we won militarily. We never crushed them. We never brought them in a sense militarily to their knees. So the first thing you have to do is win unequivocally so that the enemy fears and respects you. It acknowledges unequivocally that you won and you defeated them. And that opens their mind to the possibility that they were wrong and that there is an alternative political structure for them. And I think that was true both in Germany and Japan because they were thoroughly crushed. There was no question. They were humiliated and they were brought to their knees. Then strategy, the second part of the strategy is to basically provide them with a free political structure, free political constitution, documents, not ask them what they want, but give it to them in Japan as maybe the example I know better. Basically, MacArthur and his aide wrote the Japanese constitution, went to the emperor and said, this is what you have to support. This is what you have to accept. This is gonna be your constitution moving forward. The emperor, because Japan had just been defeated thoroughly and there was no question about the superiority militarily of the Americans, said yes. And Japan I think benefits from that document to this day. In Germany, it's a little different because Germany had of course a history of so it was easier to bring these ideas to the forefront. But even in Germany, the system of government and the process of which it moved forward was imposed on them. Although, I mean, the history of Germany after the war is interesting because economically was the Germans who liberated Germany. The Allied forces, including the Americans, were imposing socialism on them and it is the Germans that actually liberated the economy to the extent that they did. So two prongs, victory and the second ideological imposition, if you will. And I think with regard to Israel, I don't think they're doing or going to do either one. So I think they intend to do both but I don't think they will or you could argue maybe even that in the international context in which we live, maybe they can't do either one of them. First, they want to defeat Hamas. They want victory. But by defining the war against Hamas as Hamas, they already will not win because the enemy is not Hamas. The enemy are the Palestinians. The enemy is broader. And therefore they have got to bring the Palestinian people to accept unequivocal Israeli victory. And it's not clear that they will because the Palestinian people can always say, well, you know, if not Hamas, maybe we could have won or if not Hamas, maybe we could still get a Palestinian state. If not Hamas, maybe we could still throw the Jews out to the sea. It's Hamas is the problem. And the Israelis would kind of say, yeah, yeah, that's how we prosecuted the war. So I worry that they don't have that first prong. They're not willing to go all out in defeating the Palestinians. And then the second prong, you know, Netanyahu just came out with a post-victory plan. And it's true that the post-victory plan does have elements of Israel kind of dictating some of the educational or at least preventing the worst elements within the Palestinian educational system from expressing themselves. So the worst anti-Semitic Israel hating parts, Netanyahu is committed that Israel will not allow. But I am very doubtful that once the war is over, Israel will be allowed from the international community perspective to actually control the Gaza Strip and to dictate these kind of things. I think it's much more likely that there will be some kind of international coalition or some kind of Arab states that go in there and provide some kind of buffer zone with Israel and that they are responsible for their education and that Israel might say, look, you've got to do this and they might commit. Yes, we will do it. But whether they actually will is a really an open question. So we'll have to wait and see. But certainly, you know, they don't seem to be winning to an extent right now where they are opening the Palestinian minds enough to the possibility of Israel imposing a new ideology on the Palestinians. So I'm not optimistic. Thank you. Thanks, Adam. Right, Andrew. Hey, Yaron. Hey. You were gonna do a show a couple of weeks ago on Change, like Yaron's Rules for Life, which canceled and went with another show, but you kind of alluded to that you were going to talk about it in terms of objectivists thinking differently than tradition and differently than all sorts of philosophies that we've been infected with. So I was wondering, even though maybe you'll do the show in the future at some point, can you give a kind of preview as to what you were thinking? Yeah, I mean, I'll do it very short because I do want to do a show on this in the future. There's a lot to say about it. But the bottom line is that I think if you're rational and if you're egoistic, then you should embrace change. You should embrace, and I've talked about this before, you should embrace risk-taking and change in terms of your own life, change in terms of potentially changing careers, change in terms of changing your mind on things as you discover new evidence and you learn more about the world, that this idea of tradition conservatism looking to the past, I think, is very irrational. And particularly given the past, given that the past has not necessarily been guided by rational moral principles and that new evidence is constantly arriving, right? The world around us is changing. There's new science, there's new facts that we're learning and we need to be open to the idea of the world changing. People, one good example of this is of course people's attitudes towards technology where people historically have been really, really, really fearful of technology, fearful of change in technology, fearful of the impact that has on their jobs, fearful of the impact that have on society, or whatever the hell that means. But I guess my point would be, no, we should relish that. We should celebrate that. We should celebrate the potential good that these technologies bring. And if it threatens in some sense a career or a plan that you have, then modify the plan, right? Modify the plan to make sure that it's consistent with reality. That is what it means to be rational. Reality is your guide and the changes that are happening. I mean, think about even threats. So people, I don't know, climate change, climate change is happening, everybody panics and end of the world and we gotta shut this down and we gotta shut that down. And the attitude should be, okay, certain things in our environment in the world around us are changing. How do we do it? Rationally, calmly and without hysteria. But the world in which we live in is the world of hysteria and panic and fear. And generally a hawkening back to the past, which we kind of think we understand and a rejection of the future, which seems risky and dangerous and uncertain. I mean, that's the whole point, right? It is uncertain. We don't know what's gonna happen in the future. That's pretty metaphysical. So how do you think that Elon Musk's still seems to suffer from that, even though he's an innovator? But with regards to AI, he's afraid. I don't know. I mean, Elon Musk strikes me as somebody who is massively compartmentalized and confused, right? I mean, he can be ultra-rational and amazing and completely childish and emotionalistic and irrational and he can do that at a flip of a few seconds. I mean, it seems like he can be that way. So I don't know why he picks up on certain things. I mean, he obviously is incredibly optimistic and excited about going to Mars and incredibly pessimistic about AI. But he's building an AI company of his own because he thinks he can build responsible AI, but other people's cannot. He's swing open AI because they are a for-profit organization and they commit it to being a nonprofit, but his AI organization is a for-profit organization. So it's just, he is a bundle of contradictions and that's sad because he's obviously brilliant and when he's good, he's the best, but he's not always good. I don't know what to, I have no explanation for that. People are like that. You see that everywhere. Why did Steve Jobs treat his cancer with juice cleansing, right? I mean, God, he's the smartest guy on the planet at that point and what's he doing? So, yeah, that's the world in which we live. All right, thank you. More of that in the future. Oh, it's good to see you. Unmute. Can you hear me now? Can hear you, yeah. All right, great. Salute to you, sir. That's quite a collection you have back there. Yes, some of my father's actually. Okay. But yeah, I just want to know how proper it would be to have some kind of manual or guide to becoming an objectivist. It was a rocky road for me. I was born and raised in the church. I have 16 years of faith-based instruction and it turned on me when I was 19 years old when I read the virtue of selfishness as the nonfiction and as the fiction anthem. So, how proper would it be to say, okay, you start off with Atlas or you start off with, you see what I'm saying? What is that line? I mean, I don't think there is one line, right? I don't think there is one line. I often recommend people start with the fountain head. But I'm not sure if I'd read the fountain head first, if it would have had the impact it would have had that Atlas had on me. I don't think it would have. I think for me, at that point in time when I read Atlas Shrugged, that was the book that was gonna change me and I'm not sure what the fountain head would have done. And I'm not sure if I could have even read virtue of selfishness or understood it or comprehended it, I don't know. Atlas Shrugged was the right book at the right time for me and I was 16. I don't recommend usually people start at 16. Most people, most Americans at least are not mature enough at 16. So, you know, I don't think there is one guide. I know people who start like you with a nonfiction, virtue of selfishness. And I go, whoa, I mean, that is so amazing to me because that's, I mean, I read the Objectivist Ethics, the first essay in that book, that's a hard essay. Even today, 40 years into Objectivism, that's a hard essay. It's not, there's nothing self-evident in that essay. That is one where you have to really think it through and break it apart. So how that had a profound impact on you at 19, I mean, that's amazing. Good for you, but you know, it's a huge challenge. So I wouldn't recommend that, but some people like you and there are others, that's the right thing. So I don't think there is one path. It depends on your background. It depends on what you know. It depends on what kind of thinking you're engaged in at that point in time in your life. What is gonna challenge the particular issues that are relevant and poignant in your life at that point in time. I think the novels are great because the novels cover so much and they also convey something that I think is crucial, which is they convey the sense of life. They convey the spirit of Objectivism, not just the philosophy of Objectivism. And in that sense, you know, they can capture you, even if you don't quite understand what she's talking about completely, as I think almost everybody doesn't when they first read it. So now that's not to say you couldn't have some kind of guide, right? Here's introductory material. Here's medium level material, and here's advanced material. I mean, certainly that you could create something like that, as long as you're willing to be flexible within these categories in terms of what particular path somebody takes. There's certainly introductory material in the novels and certainly, you know, some of it is nonfiction. There's medium level material. I wouldn't have people start with OPA, but, you know, they probably are people out there who started with OPA and, but you never know. So you never know, but I probably wouldn't let them start there. I would probably say there's medium to advanced, right? And then there's Leonard's courses that are depending on the course, some of them is introductory and some of them is medium and some of them. So I think if you took all the Objectivist content, let's say just on Rand and Leonard, and you organized it based on beginner intermediate advanced, then maybe you can start getting some kind of sense of a guide and recommendations, but you have to allow for flexibility within. Thank you. Sure. And one of the things we need still, and I don't think just any one book is gonna solve this, one of the things we need is more introductory texts, texts, right, that are introductory, that introduce people to Iran's philosophy at an introductory level, maybe by using concrete from the particular time and place so that people feel like it's relevant. So, you know, what we try to do in free market revolution, but you can do that or what Don just try to do, Don Watkins just try to do with Effective Egoism, his book Effective Egoism. I think we need a lot more books like that, the kind of, and I think they will make it easier for somebody who's just starting to get in and then deal with the more complex and more advanced content. Thanks again. Sure. Robert. Yeah, I was wondering, because I just did an episode of Amy and I did of our podcast, we interviewed Scott Powell and his latest history course. And he's living like a digital nomad. He's living in Athens, but you know, he's ready to leave and go to Montenegro for three months. And you've mentioned previously that people are too hesitant to relocate. And I thought about that and I thought, well, what would it take you, Yaren, what would it take you to pick up roots if Puerto Rico's economic or political situation changed? And where would you go next? What would be your next destination if Puerto Rico was no longer as attractive for you? Or do you consider yourself a permanent resident unless things get really bad? I mean, I don't consider myself a permanent resident. I'm not gonna stay here forever. I expect that my next residency will be in mainland US primarily because I'm getting old. So, you know, the way I think about it is I do not wanna be in a hospital in Puerto Rico. So, I mean, if you've been to hospitals here, you know what I mean. So my next destination is a place that has great hospitals. That becomes, as you get older, maybe you know something about this, Robert, I don't know, you're still a spring chicken yourself, but as you get older, healthcare becomes more of an issue. It just becomes something you have to deal with and having resources around healthcare becomes more important. It does to me anyway. And therefore I would like to be close to where world-class healthcare resources are available and easy to get to and so on. So I don't know if that's Southern California or that's Austin, Texas or where that is. I don't know, but that's definitely kind of the next place and since I'm still relatively young, you know, I'm gonna be in Puerto Rico for a while still. And healthy, but I'm still gonna be here for a while. But, you know, but on the other hand, in terms of, you know, my ideal and here I'd say the barrier for me at least is financial because I don't know, I live at a certain standard of living and I like it and I don't wanna lower it. So if I became a no man, that would be difficult because first of all, I have to give up this amazing home that I have today, which I'm not inclined to do. But, you know, maybe if I was single, I would do that. I wouldn't do it with my wife. She's not quite as interested in shifting homes and we have our artwork and we just have stuff which we love, right? But if I had the resources today, I'd spend three months every year somewhere else, right? Right now we're planning to spend, you know, depends on how things work out, but it's been three months in Barcelona this coming year, maybe in the future, you know, we'd spend it in Lisbon or maybe in somewhere in Italy or maybe in, I don't know. I mean, as you can tell, I like warm climate, but three months somewhere in the world is absolutely, particularly Europe where the culture is familiar and it's easy to get along and it would be harder for me, I think, to appropriately go to Asia just because while I love Asia and it's fascinating and interesting, I don't know I could spend three months there. I think I would feel too much of an outsider and if I was gonna go to a place like that for long, I would go for longer. That is, I don't think three months would work. You either go for as a tourist or you go for a while. Those are some of the considerations, but I would love to be able to spend three months a year somewhere else in the world. I love being in other places. I love the different experiences, meeting different people. You're just seeing the different architecture, the language, even though I don't understand a word of what the hell they're saying, but I'm used to that because I don't understand anything, anybody says in Puerto Rican, so. Okay, I appreciate those insights. I would use the Spanish. So, there you go. Sure, thanks, Robert. Katharine, you gotta unmute yourself. Wait, sorry, I joined late, so I kind of missed the prompt or what we're supposed to be doing. So if you can ask a question, that's the prompt, ask me anything. You don't have to if you don't want to, but that's what everybody's doing. Oh, I don't have a question right now, so actually you can skip me, sorry. That's fine, just sit back and, all right, Rubaan, you're up. Thank you. Do you think means testing Social Security and Medicare would be a legitimate way to start attacking the national debt issue, or do you think it would just be another way to punish the rich and push the inequality narrative? Can I say all of the above? Sure, that's right. I mean, it's all of the above, right? It's only a way to punish the rich. It's only a way to punish the rich. It's only a way to punish success, but it might not be unavoidable because we're digging such a big hole that there's just no other way to get out of it, that mean testing is step one, and then phasing it out is step two, might be necessary no matter what. It's probably going to happen no matter what, that is you're probably gonna get some kind of mean testing even if we all oppose it because I think mean testing is easier to do than it is to eliminate, to draw down Social Security, and given that it's going bankrupt at some point down the road, they have to do something, and mean testing is the easiest because it punishes a small group. So I wouldn't advocate for mean testing if it was the only thing that was going to be done, but I would advocate for it potentially as step one in a process that privatized it or got rid of Social Security. But I think whether we advocate for it or not, I think mean testing is coming, and I think the bigger issue is Medicare. Social Security, you could easily drag it out, the insolvency by basically extending the retirement age, raising it to 70, lowering the benefits a little bit, and you could keep Social Security. But Medicare, Medicare is out of control. I mean, it's absurd what happens with Medicare, and there we're either gonna get healthcare rationing, or you're gonna get means testing, or you're gonna get something that reduces the cost, that reduces the out-of-pocket costs to the government of Medicare expenses. And I think that's much more likely than Social Security. They can go with probably another 50 years and find a way to keep dragging it along, but you can't do that with Medicare. Thank you. Sure. All right, let's take a few of the super chat questions, and then we'll go back to our panel. James, $100, thank you, James. James says, art people consume tells a lot about their souls and sense of life. I view response to art as the mirror that reflects a person's evaluation of existence. German art in the 1920s shows the state of German soul, Prieta Auschwitz. What is the American soul today? I mean, certainly that is true, and of course that was, to a large extent, Ayn Rand's theory of art, and Mary Ann Sewers, who was an associate of Ayn Rand's, wrote a famous essay about metaphysics and marble, where she shows, through the history of sculpture, the manifestation of that kind of spirit of the people, their soul manifest through the kind of art that they consumed during different periods in art history. I think it's dangerous to do, it's dangerous to do because you have to know a lot about art. You have to know a lot about what is art and what is being consumed and its meaning. I think you also have to know something about psychology, which of course Ayn Rand knew about both things, and what consuming art really means. I think, God, I mean, let's think about what is American art? So what art do Americans consume today? So they basically consume zero painting. There's just no painting being consumed by Americans today. They consume zero sculpture. They might be exposed to sculpture, or what people pretend to sculpture, like the monstrosity is fun of all kinds of corporate buildings, but I wouldn't say anybody actually consumes it. People walk by it without giving it a second thought. They don't stop and contemplate it. Have you ever seen anybody stopping to contemplate, unless it's in a museum, one of these metal monstrosities in the middle of the pavement, they don't, and they're more likely to paint some graffiti on it than anything else. So this, and Americans don't really go to museums. They might go because, you know, that's what you do when you're in Paris, and you go to the Louvre, and you go, you see the Mona Lisa, you check the box, and off you go to your next sightseeing destination. But you know, a lot of people in America live in cities that have great museums in their own cities. They never go to those museums. They only go when they travel. So again, they're not consuming painting and sculpture. They're not consuming theater, not really. They're not consuming, okay, so what are they consuming? The only really odd forms they're consuming, I think Americans consume are music, cinema, and TV. Wait, I mean poetry? No, Americans will consume poetry. So that's it. Those are the three forms of art that they consume. And those forms of art tend to be mostly, not all, but mostly pretty shallow in terms of the ideas that they're projecting. Certainly music, the music is about as shallow as it gets. It's three minutes long. God forbid a song goes more than three minutes. I mean, there are a few exceptions, but there are exceptions. And God forbid that they have any complexity in the melody or harmony, as simple, the most primitive thing in music is a beat, and that's what every piece of music today has, rhythm. It's all about rhythm and nothing else. And even the rhythms are not that complicated, not the kind of rhythms you get in jazz or in classical music. So they're very simple. So they're consuming very simplistic art. The movies, one of the movies that are most successful, superhero movies, you know, again, candy, shallow, without a lot of meaning, without a lot of meaningful values, metaphysical value judgments being conveyed. And the same with TV series. I mean, the TV series that are the best. Think about the TV series that are considered the best TV. Sopranos breaking bad, right? So this TV series about bad people and bad things happen to bad people, but they seem to have fun on the way in the meantime. It's, but it's, so it's, there's a, definitely a malevolence streak in it, a darkness and a sense of, if you're good, if you're good, yeah, bad people do suffer, but good people suffer too. So big deal, right? Think about all the good guys in breaking bad, horrible, just horrible what happens to them, right? And there's a certain heroism in going out with a bang if you're a bad guy. So it says that the American soul today is, you know, so, what are the metaphysical value judgments here? Really, a lot of determinism, these are not big romantic dramas. I mean, breaking bad, he doesn't literally make the choice to do anything in that series. That whole series is like a flow of, oh, what choice do I have now? I have to, you know, the math is the only way I can survive. Oh yeah, I have to kill all the other meth dealers because that's the only way I can survive. I, you know, it's like this inevitable sequence of things where, you know, you never, he's never really sitting there contemplating the wide variety of choices man has in the universe. It's like he's on this one path and nothing will rid him of that path. So there's a lot of faith in determining. Sorry to interject, but did you find it difficult to judge Walter White because of that reason or were you? No, I mean, Walter White was a scrappy human being. You could see that pretty quickly on. He didn't really care about his family. He didn't care about the values that he actually said he stood by. So no, I despised him. And I have to say, I watched the entire show every season and I complained bitterly the whole time. Because it was well made. It does not seem like your kind of show. Yeah, but it, you know, but it was well made and I admire well made stuff. And so I watched it because it was well made. I enjoyed the dialogue. I thought it was clever, the suspense, the twists were clever, if not romantic or inspiring. It was like, you know, I can watch one piece or I can read one piece and I can admire one piece. I can bitch and complain while I'm reading it, but I will read it because there's so much good day not that I'm comparing, you know, making better one piece, more pieces is a masterpiece in comparison. I'm trying to think of anything. I mean, once in a while you come across something on TV that is inspiring and beautiful. I recommended the show, you know, the show about World War II recently, something about the lights, something, something lights. And it really is, it's beautifully made and it's very romantic and it's very, very good. And once in a while you get a glimpse of what is possible on television or there's a very good show right now on Apple TV called, and it's not getting a lot of attention because it's good, I think, called something chemistry about a woman chemist, right? Something chemistry, which I think is very good. Lessons in chemistry. Lessons in chemistry, have you seen this, Carla? I'm not, I just turned to the Apple page and I haven't seen it yet, but I'm looking forward. It's in my list. If you want benevolence, if you want somebody pursuing choices and struggling and choosing life, the other show is called All the Lights, we cannot see that Daniel just mentioned, which is on I think Netflix, which is a beautiful show. It's so good. And inspiring. What's that? I said it's a really good book. Oh, I didn't know it was a book, but have you seen the show? It's based on the book. No, I've only started the show, but I read the book, it's really good. Yeah, well, you should see it. You know, the show is really well done. So it's, even if you've read the book, even if you know the plot, it's still worth watching the show. So you see glimpses of it, but most, so what do I say about American culture based on the art that they consume? One, it's pretty shallow. There's not a lot, the American soul is pretty shallow. It's not very deep. It's not very thoughtful. It's not very engaged in the big questions of, you know, challenging the world today. It is, it's also poor in a sense that it only deals with, you know, certain forms of art and it's not really, it's not really expansive in terms of all the possibilities art has to offer. I'd also say that there's definitely now coming into the cinema, and this is true since the 1960s, you've seen in movies and in TV ever growing naturalism, ever growing determinism, anti-romanticism. So those elements are all there. Although again, once in a while you'll see a movie and you go, whoa, where was this guy hiding or where was this idea hiding? So once in a while you'll get a counter to that where it is romantic, it is meaningful, it does have some depth to it. What about the superhero content? I can't stand superhero movies. I mean, they tend to be altruistic, they tend to be, you can only be a hero if you're super, you need special powers to be a hero. It's, again, they're shallow, superficial, their stories are not really interesting, they're always the same, it's the same story and they've gotten to the point where the caricatures of themselves because now one superhero's not enough, so you need 55 superheroes all showing up at the same time to beat the villain, you know, so they all interact because that's fun to watch. I don't know, Batman and Superman fight. It's just, you know, and sometimes they try to be deep, but usually all it means to try to be deep is to be dark. So for American movies, typically, being deep means being dark. You know, look at John Wick as a movie, right? It's super entertaining. It's fun, meaningless, nothing, zero. You walk out of a John Wick movie going, okay? That was kind of entertaining, okay? I saw a lot of bodies, a lot of blood, a lot of body parts. What was the metaphysical value judgment there? None, zero is much, right? It's just empty and so much of our art is empty. It's just has no content. The art that people actually consume. I can't remember what's up for Academy Awards this year. It feels like every year I'm further and further away from the popular movies. I watch all our TV, but I don't consume any movies. Oh, Napoleon, I mean, Napoleon and to some extent Oppenheimer are great examples of this. Here is a movie that is large scale, has a canvas in which you can really paint something interesting, massive conflicts, ideas at play. You can make a statement about something in the world through this movie. And you take a talented director like Ridley Scott and the movie is empty. It literally says nothing. It's meaningless. It's not even historically interesting. It's not romantically interesting in terms of the romance between him and the Empress. And it's just not interesting and it's boring mostly. And if you look at Oppenheimer, not boring, super interesting, super fascinating, what does it mean? What does it say in the end? Not much. I mean, I think there you get Christopher Nolan who is relatively speaking a more intellectual director. So I think the Batman trilogy was the best of all the superhero movies made so far because it actually had a theme. He actually had something to say. Again, pretty dark what he had to say, pretty pessimistic what he had to say, but at least he had to say something. He had something to say. But in Oppenheimer, he really has nothing to say. So there's nothing positive that you can say about the American soul from watching movies. It's not quite as, well, maybe it is. It's not quite as decadent as the German arts of the 1930s, 1920s, sorry, 1920s. The Germans were far more intellectual people and therefore there was a real consumption of the modern art that was being produced. There was real consumption of the avant-garde and the crazy nonsense of the avant-garde art that they were consuming. Americans, there's plenty of avant-garde out there and Americans just shrug and they don't pay any attention to it. They don't dismiss it, but they don't embrace it. So Americans are healthier than Germans were in the 1920s in that they have a healthy skepticism, but they don't have anything positive to rely on other than country music, which is pretty shallow and bleak and deterministic. And Jesus take the wheel. That's as good as it gets in American culture. Jesus take the wheel. I don't know if you know that song, but it's pretty inspiring, right? I don't know that you're on the bed. Jesus take the wheel and decide whether I live or die. How about your own though that bad people do have their downfall? Yeah, yeah, I think that's right, but- There's nothing positive there. I don't- Yeah, but good people suffer as well. There's no positive characters who do well. I mean, I'm trying to think of the movies and the TV shows. Again, this is why I like the chemistry show. I like some of these other shows because good people do do well in these shows and they do well in interesting ways. And that is fun and interesting and positive. So they do exist. You know, the chemistry one, I think is allowed to exist because it has, you can easily interpret it having a feminist theme to it. If it was a guy, I'm not sure it would ever have been made. It was made because it's about a woman chemist and her struggles against a male dominated world, which is fine because she's a hero and she struggles and the struggles are real and she wins. But I don't know that that, but so you have to wrap it up in some kind of leftist agenda item in order to come out. Some of the most inspiring movies made were made about, let's say minority figures who overcame the odds and succeed. So because they're minorities, it's okay to make them heroes. So it has to be wrapped up in some political correct idea in order to present the hero. Now that doesn't bother me because all I care about is the hero aspect of it, but it is interesting to note that. All right, let me, James, so I hope I answered that, but that's a big question. It would make a great theme. Great topic for whole show is to talk about and I'm going long on it because I've got a lot to say about it. And the more I think about it, the more I'll have to say about it. Somebody disappeared, all right. I have a question. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, this is like affecting my personal life, but what about, so right now, I work for AmEx, the credit card company, and we're headquartered in Tribeca. And I feel like all of these companies are doing this return to the office in a very irrational and a lot of ways because my job and a lot of our jobs are very global. And so I work with teams all over the world, very few people in New York City. And this is true for most companies in New York City right now, especially big global companies, but they're requiring us to be in the office three days a week. And a lot of people have moved out of New York City and they don't live near the office and we ask our CEO directly like, is this because we own office space? And he says no, but I think it's true. And so people are often coming in, myself included, and you just sit alone on a Webex talking to your team that doesn't even live in New York City. And it's very frustrating because it's like that saying, like you can't fight City Hall because it's like there's no one to like reasonably be like, hey, my team's not even in New York, no one I work with is in New York. I'm just sitting alone and it's just, they bribed us now we get like free food and stuff but it's like really strange because like we're all adults and like it's just not really worth it. But it's happening not just at AmEx but like all across, especially Manhattan just because a lot of people have families and they've moved out of the city. Like my boss's boss lives four hours outside of the city and she stays in a hotel that she pays for herself just to sit on Zoom. It's like actually crazy, but there's no one to like, there's no like rational person to be like, yeah, that is crazy. And we've proven, and AmEx especially like for the past three years we've had like record earnings. So we've proven like we can do our jobs to like remotely like very effectively. But for some reason there's just this reluctancy to embrace it. I think that's right. I mean, I see it all over the place. The same thing is happening in California. Amazon is requiring workers to come in three days a week. Even workers who live far, far away because they moved during COVID and for a couple of years they hired people under the assumption they could work from anywhere and then suddenly they're telling them it's the closest office. It is a real problem. Some of it I think is, I can kind of understand primarily for young workers, for less experienced workers. I think being in an office, getting the mentorship from directly face to face in an office environment I think is something that you lose when you work from home. I think more senior people, it's less important because you've done that but you're not then mentoring the next generation as much. It's just harder to do over Zoom. But it's really, it's frustrating that they're doing this one size fit all. It's frustrating that they're not taking into account the fact that this is making people unhappy and therefore probably less productive. It's gonna be interesting to see how this evolves in the future. And it would be interesting to sit down with senior management and ask them why, what's the thinking? What are they doing? Why are they doing it? We do that. We have town halls with our CEO. The thing is like our CEO of AmEx he has a personal elevator and a personal car or personal floor, he doesn't take the subway and I get the sense from him he doesn't really like being home. I mean, I don't know. I mean, we do ask him and he just says, he just kind of gives us a run around. Like there's just not a straight answer. Yeah, which is unfortunate. I mean, if they have a rationale they should communicate it clearly and make an effort around it because worker motivation is crucial. And I think people are gonna leave these companies and go to companies that offer them more flexibility. I think that's gonna happen more and more in places like New York and California. You guys do have options particularly if you're good at what you do. You know, AmEx is not the only global bank or not the only global financial company in Amazon or Microsoft or wherever I don't know if Microsoft's doing this are not the only big tech company. So there are options out there and I think smart companies will start either communicating better with your employees about what's going on, reverse themselves or they're gonna lose some of their best people to their competitors. Yeah, thank you. Adam, you got a hand up. Yes, because at one point you discussed Solzhenitsyn and you mentioned that there are better histories of the Gulag available. And I wonder if you had on Apple Bounds Gulag history in mind when you said that. I think that's one of them. But also I was actually thinking of some of the dissidents, right? Other dissidents who wrote about their experiences in the Soviet Union like Chironsky and I can't remember others but there were several others who were dissidents in the Soviet Union. So they had very much parallel lives with parallel experiences of Solzhenitsyn but were better philosophically and therefore I think provided also. But look Solzhenitsyn, if you just read him for the horrors of the Gulag is incredibly powerful. It's when he gets into his positive philosophy, his positive ideas about Russia, it's where he becomes really awful. So, but and Apple Moms book is really good. But there are others, but you know me, I can't retain, I don't retain these things. So I'd have to go and do a little bit of research to get you a list. Okay, well, I'd like to mention that Anne Applebaum also wrote Red Famine, Stalin's War on Ukraine. And she also wrote, interestingly, a book about free will which is only published in Polish. She is married to Radosław Cikorski. No, she's married to Radosław Cikorski and lives with him in Poland. And she wrote a book about free will which has only been published in Polish. For some reason, she cannot find an academic publisher for it in America. That is strange. Given her reputation, you'd think she could find somebody. Okay, and her husband Radosław Cikorski is I think the most intellectual statesman on the world stage today. He's the foreign minister of Poland. And I wonder if you listen to his speech at the UN refuting the Russian ambassador's lies at the Security Council. If you haven't listened to that speech, I very strongly recommend it. Okay, I will. All right, let's go quickly back to the Super Chat clock says, did you catch Vivek's meeting with Millay? He said, I'm a Hayek guy, you're Mises guy, but we don't agree these agencies can't be reformed. They need to be shut down. Maybe some of Vivek's corruption comes from him being a Hayek guy. I don't think so. I mean, that's too low of an opinion about Hayek. As bad as critical I am of Hayek, Vivek just doesn't deserve it. Vivek is not a Hayek guy. Vivek's a Trump guy. I mean, he endorsed Trump, right? And he played to Trump's audience. I mean, if Vivek had been a Hayek guy, he would have been a hundred times better than he is. I don't think Hayek would have liked Trump. I don't think Trump is a Hayek guy, and yet Vivek has endorsed him wholeheartedly, not kind of half-heartedly, you know, quietly, but wholeheartedly. So I just think Vivek knows his stuff. Vivek is super smart. He's off the charts smart. He's got the IQ or whatever you want to measure, smartness. But Vivek has the soul of a... I don't know. What's pretty low in terms of souls? He's... He's so... It's empty. What's that? It's empty, isn't it? Maybe it's empty or maybe it's just corrupt. He's a corrupt human being who is willing to say anything for... willing to say anything for power, willing to say anything to be close to power, willing to say anything to attract a big audience. He is an opportunist. He is... He lacks integrity. I mean, he basically lacks the very, very basic virtues. So I think to say Vivek is a Hayek guy is much too generous to Vivek. Vivek also is a Mises guy up to a point, but Mele is much more a Mises guy than Vivek is a Hayek guy. All right. Got a few more of these. Michael says, the more I think about... the more I've realized slavery never ended. The scope simply shifted. We are free range human on a tax farm. That is quite a vision. But no, you know, you got words have to mean something. And yes, there's a sense in which you are, but slavery was a particular form of human institution. It was a particularly gruesome, horrible, evil form of human institution. You cannot compare you who are making, I don't know, many, many people out there making six figures. You write a check to the government. Yes, that's coercion and that's bad and it's evil. You can say it's a form of slavery in some regard. But that's a very, but yet you travel to Paris and you go on vacation to the beach and nobody ever lifts a hand against you ever, you know, as long as you pay those taxes. But, you know, you can't just be whipped. You can't, you know, there's a constitution to protect some of your rights anyway. You're so much freer than slaves were. And I think it diminishes the evil of slavery to seriously compare it. Again, you can say this is like or this is an element of it. This is, and I know objectives have done this, but I think we need to recognize just how unique slavery was as a human institution. And while what, you know, slavery there was coercion and today there's coercion. I think it's coercion at a different level. On a different scope. Anyway, that's my view. Although there's no question that your rights are being violated and you have to be ransom to get all that freedom, which is the taxes. It's just not quite, it's not the same. There's no, there was no freedom under slavery. None. All right, David said, attending my first opera tomorrow, Romeo and Juliet, assumed by Guno at the Winsphere here in Dallas. Any tips? How can I pull max spiritual fuel from such an event? I need all I can get right now as I launch a new business career. Oh my God. Attending your first opera is a serious endeavor and not simple because opera can be very difficult if you're not familiar with it. So here's what I would do. You know, if it's tomorrow, get, you know, I was going to say get a CD, but who the hell needs a CD these days? Stream arias from the opera onto your music system or your phone or whatever with good headset and start listening to it in the background. Start getting used to the music. Opera, classical music generally. You need to get used to this new form of art before you can fully appreciate it and before you can sit there and just let it sweep over you as it should. So any, if you've got a new composition that's more challenging, more challenging than what you've listened to in the past. Listen to it for a while, kind of in the background. Listen to highlights from it, particularly an opera you can do. You can download just specific songs and download just specific arias, the famous arias from it. Listen to it, let it, let it, just let your mind kind of just get used to it so that when you go there, it'll sound a little familiar and that familiarity would allow you to enjoy it much more and to follow the story and now you'll even understand the words and you'll understand what's going on. I mean, Romeo and Juliet by Guno is a beautiful, beautiful opera. It's very well made, beautifully made as an opera. The staging, it depends, I once saw a performance in LA that was, I think it was in LA, that was just stunning and it had two of the best opera singers of the time singing the main roles and they basically had sex on stage, which was amazing and I mean, not exactly, not really, but they simulated and it was perfectly, you know, it was perfect in the way it was done, in the way it was presented. Hopefully you don't get some modern crappy production where everything is abstract and people don't actually do anything, they don't actually act, they don't actually wear costumes or anything like that. So hopefully it's a traditional semi-peditional or a serious production and not a modern one, but yeah, it's beautiful. So yeah, train your ear to the music in advance. Do it today and maybe tomorrow morning and then I assume the opera tomorrow night. Yeah, enjoy it. It's a beautiful, beautiful opera and I think the Dallas Opera is a good opera company so you'll get a good production. Okay, Liam, I don't think the old left was seeking an altruistic utopia while the new left was seeking environmental nihilism. Both the old and the new left want death. The old left was better at concealing it. The old left was willing to put effort into creating a utopian facade whereas the new left doesn't even bother it's open about its nihilism. But yeah, I mean to some extent to a large extent that is true, particularly the old left once the consequences of Mao and Stalin were made evident and the reality that Marxism led to the death of tens of millions of people that's also when the old left kind of died and because what happened is the old left was committed to the facade. They were committed to the utopian facade. Now deep down they might have known it was a facade but they couldn't admit that it was a facade to themselves so they had to keep it going. They had to keep the facade going and as soon as they gave up on the facade they turned into the new left. The nihilism became naked and they started advocating for a utopia for nature not a utopia for man. They became anti-human. But that's important. It's important and relevant that they needed in a sense it made them in some way better people. They wanted to believe that they were good. They wanted to believe that they were pro-human. They wanted to believe in pro-technology and pro-growth and pro-industry. And then once they realized that, oh no, this all was as nihilist, this was pure nihilism and the consequence and really at a root it always had been, they gave it up and today you find very few real Marxists. What you find today is nihilists of race, nihilists of wokeness, nihilists of environment but what you find is the purity and they don't even, as you say, they don't even pretend that there's a facade but that says something about their own psychology that they don't have to pretend. The evil is much more difficult for them to hide from themselves which says something about them. Alright, last super chat before we go back to the panel. Can you reach out to Sam Cedar to do a debate about the one Garza on his program? He'll literally debate anyone and he lies. He's been spreading about Israel on wages. Also a great way for you to get more exposure. I will try. I've got a couple of debates coming up. So I don't know. And one that's a long detailed debate about Israel and the Palestinians. So I actually have to do a little bit of prep for that one. That wouldn't be at the end of March and I've got another one with a socialist. So I've got a couple of debates coming up online. But I will look into Sam Cedar as well. Alright, thanks, Michael. Alright, let's see. Alright, where is Jennifer? Is Jennifer still here? Yeah, there's Jennifer. Jennifer, hey. I don't think I ever mentioned this to you but we watch this show called Murdoch Mysteries. It's actually Canadian. So we can get it over the air because we're right back. But it's pretty good actually. Right now they're up to about 1910 in Canada and Toronto. But the hero, he's a policeman detective and he's actually shown as intelligent and he makes new inventions and he has a happy life. He has a wife who's very forward thinking like she fights for suffrage and they have a daughter and the characterizations are good and they show minor light progressing as a good thing and they talk about history, what was going on in the world at the time and it's pretty good actually. Good. Yeah, I mean they all have good shows out there that do have projection of intelligent people being successful. They're not, you know, sadly, usually, I don't know about this one, but usually they're not as well-made as the dark, brooding ones, right? So just the quality of the production value and the artistic elements of it are just not as good typically as the darker ones. You know, it's sad that to get to innovation in TV, it had to be through what do you call them, Sopranos, right? Rather than through something, a positive show. But Sopranos was innovative. I mean, aesthetically, it was very innovative and particularly interesting, even though its characters were all, I mean, there was no good guys in Sopranos, not a single good human being in the whole show. Yeah, there's a lot of good people in this. And like for example, they live in a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Really? Yeah. Great, I have to stand up for the therapist. Dr. Milfy is actually a good character. No. No, no. Wait, let me just say. The only thing a good therapist can do in that circumstance is resign. Yeah, you're right. She was weak in that regard. You're very right. But she did not enter that world when Tony wanted her to enter that world and encourage her. Okay. But she found it fascinating. She relished it. She didn't disengage when she should have disengaged and Marley should have disengaged. So yeah, I mean, okay. So not everybody's pure evil willing to cut their mother's throat. There was a therapist who was better. But I think my point stands is that when you really do have good characters, it's almost always in a superficial cause in a sense, which is sad. All right. Ryan. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Earlier this week, you answered a question about manufacturing illegal drugs and like the morality of that. And as part of that question, you cited studies about. And. Sorry. My mind just went blank. hallucinogenic drugs that help with like PTSD and things like that. Yep. I think, you know, I don't want to put words in your head. I'm just wondering if that's the case. What, what do you think it is about those experiences in this non-reality? That people bring forward to help them to. Actual actually handle reality. And, you know, I mean, you know, that's not, that's not taking part in reality. That's not being conscious. Maybe it's, is the way I phrased it. I don't know if those are your exact words. But I'm just wondering if that's the case, that actual actually handle reality and face the issues they're having. Yeah. It's a great question completely outside of my. But that has never prevented me for forth from speculating on an answer. So yes, I did say that. Because I, you know, Sam Harris claims that he has discovered truths about existence and about himself in a hallucinogenic state. And what I'm saying is that is completely invalid. You don't discover anything in a hallucinogenic state other than what, you know, that when you hallucinate, this is what happens, but you don't discover anything about the world because you're not connected to the world. You're clearly your senses are being played with are being distorted. And you don't discover anything about yourself because even there, you're not really introspecting. And you're not in control of it. The drugs are, it's like dreaming. The drugs are manipulating your, your, the way in which you interact with yourself. What? So why, how could this work for? What do you call it for? Post-traumatic stress. I think, and here I'm completely speculating, right? I think that what it does is in a sense, it does some kind of reset to parts of the brain. In a sense, it turns some stuff on and some stuff off that resets some of the connections, some of the subconscious connections, some of the, you know, maybe, you know, disconnect certain fears. I don't know how it works. I wish I did, but I don't know, but it could be a reset. It's the same reason why, do you know that shock therapy is very, very effective for certain mental health illnesses? You remember one floor of the cuckoo's nest and, you know, there it kind of makes you brain dead, but they take you and do shock therapy. And, but I know, I know a psychiatrist who swayed by it and it really empirically does work. I think Gina Golan on a show recently said, yeah, it works. And what does the shock therapy does? It basically, I think does something similar to the, to these drugs. It resets. It's, maybe it's a hard reset in this case, but it rewires in some way or turns some stuff on and some stuff off. The changes, the way your brain is actually functioning, and that has an impact on you once you get out of that state. And, but it isn't like the reason you get over your PTSD is because you discover something about the world during your trip that you didn't know before. Now everything is okay. That is my, again, speculation. Best I have. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I realize you're not a doctor, but I just was interested in what you thought about it. Sure. Thank you. Sure. All right. And Skyler. Yes, sir. I was thinking about, you know, a lot of civil war history, the world war is the 20th century in today's battles in the 21st century. And just, you know, not even about the wars themselves, just the letters home, the written word, how it kind of like eroded from the 18th century to now. Like you said, like an 18th century got like a 17 or 18 year old would say, like the blazing sun is, you know, beating down upon us and something like that. And then like the 20th century would be the same way. The heat is stifling. And then like the 21st century, it's really hot. Like, it's, it's terrible. And so what, I mean, beyond private schools, what was it that really had the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries better than the 21st centuries? Well, in that regard. Yeah. And remember, this is 18th century. I think it was less and the 19th century was more. And then it started declining in the 20th century. Although, even some of the letters from World War two are pretty beautiful letters from regular soldiers. And I'd say it's a combination of education, the quality of education at the time, but also respect for the written word. So who writes letters today? When was the last time anybody I know wrote a letter? I don't know anybody who writes letters anymore. You know, there was a penmanship mattered. You know, and being able to form sentences and write in a coherent way and including it in, you know, today emails and the principle in email is, I think, my principle in email anyway is, use as few words as necessary to convey the message. It's emails and texts and WhatsApp and all this stuff is all about efficiency. But there's no, the beauty of the written word that is expressed in those letters, the emotion conveyed in that is gone. Now you have emojis. You want to express emotion? You take an emoji that somebody else created and you stick it at the end of a sentence and that's supposed to convey emotion. You know, we live in superficial times. I said that before. So part of it is education. Exposure to the great authors. Right? Who are you reading today? Are you reading anybody in high school? Are you reading people who wrote beautifully? Or are you reading Joyce and modern stuff and people who, and you know, rap or whatever, rap is poetry rather than, I don't know, Tennyson. Right? If you've never read Tennyson, if you've never heard Shakespeare, if you've never read Hugo, if you've never read, then you don't know what words can do. Right? You just don't have the context. And then if you're not expected, I don't know how they teach English today. Do you write essays? Are you judged on style? Is anybody judging you on style? My guess is no. Right? Because style is, I don't know, probably politically incorrect. It's probably white, you know, what is it? Old people's stuff or whatever. So it's not learning the classics, not learning people who wrote beautifully. Very few current authors write beautifully. And not being expected to write like that. You know who I like reading in that sense is Douglas Murray. He's got a weekly column, I think the free press, Barry Weiss's thing, where he writes about poetry of the past. And it's really beautifully done. It's really, I mean, I don't know, I disagree with him and lots of issues I disagree with Douglas on. But his English is beautiful. You can tell he got a world-class education at private English schools and then went to Oxford. And that's why I love England. England is full of these people who went to Eaton and went to Oxford and can speak amazing English and can write really, really well. And even the better writers, young writers in America today just don't write that beautifully. They don't have that style because nobody values style anymore. So a lot of it has to do with the question before. You're not going to get beautiful letter writing without great art. Art stylizes our consciousness and by stylizing our consciousness it both makes us respond to beauty. It teaches us to respond to beauty and also encourages us to produce beauty. And without great art, you're not going to get great letter writing. But the people there, even simple people, regular guys and gals were exposed to beautiful literature, poetry at the very least. Thanks, Skylab. Andrew. Thank you, sir. I'm going to resist the urge to challenge you on the Sopranos and ask a different question. So... You should sponsor a whole show on the Sopranos. Yeah. I'd have to re-watch them and I'm really not up for that. I really just want to hear your actual judgment of the therapist because I think it's an interesting... It's interesting. Like, if you were to focus on certain aspects of it. But put that aside for now. So wokeness... I disagree with wokeness. I don't like wokeness. I tend to view wokeness as a sub-issue of altruism. And so I don't really get that exercised about it because, to me, the issue is what Rand identified as the issue in the culture and the moral revolution that we need to have happen to really move forward as a society. But why do you think that some conservatives become kind of single-mindedly obsessed about wokeness and maybe overestimate its importance? So I think it's... First, let me say this. I think it's dangerous just to categorize things as altruism because everything is altruism. Like, everything bad in the world is altruism. It's too sweeping... But that particular issue you're on, like, that is... It's a particular form of altruism that's particularly nasty and particularly nasty in itself in ways... And particularly evil in ways that victimize particular people. So it has its own... But everything, Christianity's altruism and statism is altruism. So it's too... It's dangerous to do that because the details do matter. The details do matter. Now, why do the conservatives get obsessed about it? Well, because I think it challenges much of their dogma. It doesn't challenge altruism, but it challenges the kind of altruism that they have built up. Their altruism primarily is to a God and to the state. And this challenges that. This altruism says... And maybe it reminds them a little bit because when I see this in one of the books I'm reading, they were making the argument. I mean, certainly in... What do you call it? God, this book I read, Christianity, Dominion, in Dominion. He makes the case that woke is just the application of Christianity and maybe the Christians feel like woke is stealing their thunder. They should be there in a sense of they should stand up for their press. They should stand up for the really, really... And they're not and maybe that hits a little bit of... Triggers them a little bit because of that because it's so close to home in some way. It's interesting. But it's also that woke also challenges very, very deeply held beliefs that the right holds. Woke tends to be secular and cynical and skeptical about religion. Woke is challenging the idea of sex and gender and that is very upsetting to people who are traditionalists and conservatives. I mean, it was hard enough for them to somehow wrap their heads around homosexuality. A topic the church has been trying to grapple with since the beginning of the church, right? Because it's been in existence since the beginning of the church and yet in the Old Testament, the New Testament, there's condemnation of it and yet it's all around them. And the Greeks had quite a bit of homosexuality around and the church doesn't know how to deal with it and basically condemns it. So they have to deal with that. Hard enough for them to wrap around homosexuality but now they have to wrap themselves around gender fluidity or bisexual or kinds of other sexual whatever and put aside whether they're legitimate it just freaks them out because remember for Christians sex is a big deal. It's really, really, really bad. I know they don't live this way but it really deep down. I mean, read Augustine. Read these guys. They obsess about sex. They write about sex all the time and for the Catholic church in particular and no, for Luther as well. If you read Luther as well, sex is not a good thing. It's part of the fall. It's part of man's fall. It's original sin because the baby is the product of a sexual act. The baby that dies as a baby could still very well land up in hell burning for eternity because they have original sin because they were born of a sexual act. That is Augustine. That's disgusting. I mean, isn't that any worse than that? Here, woke deals with sex. They can't handle that. They can't handle that. I think it's that and then I think it offends a certain perception they have of America. It's a cakewalk and I think it's true that woke is an attack on America. It's an attack on the flag. It's an attack on American values. It's an attack on American history. It's basically saying America's shitty country. It's got systemic racism. It always has and always will. It's in green in it. And that also pisses them off because again, of their race. Again, it's for them huge because of how important wrapping themselves around the flag is to them. And, you know, there are elements on the right, certainly. And maybe they're bigger than what we might have thought that, you know, are racist and this kind of brings it to the forefront. Not all of them, but there are more than they even think. A lot of them don't think of themselves all, but they are. And you can see that, again, I think you see the same. If we devolve into a race war, that is the lowest that is such a low primitive. I don't think we're going to go into a race war. I don't know what we're devolving into. We're devolving into something. But I mean, in a race that I think is true of, I think we could see more racial violence. I think we can see a lot more political violence. I don't think we're going to see a war. Partially because it's not clear who's fighting whom and where the battle lines are drawn and the woke a tiny minority like they're not people who are woke. They're very influential, but people who actually believe, hold woke ideas are a very small number of people. Do you remember what's that? Do you remember when Tucker's text messages were revealed in that lawsuit and he said white men fight a certain way and like it was crazy. I can't remember that, but it doesn't surprise me that he thinks in those terms. But no, I don't think you're going to see a race war in this country. I maybe one day, I just don't see it partially because I don't think even among minorities woke is that popular. I just think woke is something academics get excited about. Students get excited about. DEI offices and corporations get excited about. But that's about it. Nobody else cares. And whenever it's put up for vote, woke loses. And I think the same is true right now of anybody who's explicitly a white supremacist. Like if you can shuffle around your white supremacist like a Tucker Carlson can or certain politicians can then, yeah, people will look at the way. But if you're explicitly a white supremacist, nobody will deal with you. Or very few people will deal with you. Now, maybe that'll change. And maybe it is already changing. But I just don't see that as being the thing. And there's some ominous place into the skin color. There's some ominous signs and I don't know if like it's just me focusing on them like even that. Did you see the Tommy Tuberville, the senators quote on immigrants. And he basically said like they don't know our laws. They don't know our Judeo-Christian values. They're Catholic. They're all Catholic. So they don't know the Judeo-Christian values, right? Because they're Catholics. You know, they're more religious than most Americans though. It's just stupid. Yeah, I mean look, it he's the same guy who said that the Alabama Supreme Court is absolutely right to define a human being as a conception and should outload the destruction of embryos. And then he said, but I still support IVF without seeing the crazy contradiction in the whole thing. But he's a political animal and there are no requirements of there are no intelligence requirements for being a politician. Indeed, I think goes the other way. I think you have to be a little stupid in order to be a politician. And that's the thing about Vivek. Vivek is super smart, but he tried to be stupid and it doesn't work to really be a politician you have to be stupid to begin with. You can't just fake it. I don't know if I really believe that all of that, but it sounds good, right? To be a politician, you can't fake stupidity. You really have to be stupid. Alright, Catherine, did you have a question? Well, you might have already covered this, but because I was late, but the war in Israel, like how do you see this ending? Like what signifies that it's over? Well, what would signify that it's over is basically, I mean I would hope is basically a complete eradication of Hamas. The leadership, the entire leadership is dead. Certainly the entire leadership in the Gaza Strip is dead. And there are no more at least any significant armed resistance to Israel's presence in Gaza. That would signify an end. I doubt we'll get there. I think we'll have some kind of negotiated settlement that will skirt victory. Sadly, but victory would mean, yeah, the destruction and the occupation of the whole Gaza Strip by Israel and the destruction of Hamas. But you don't think that that will happen? I don't. I don't. Just today, you know, you read the headlines. You know, there was this incident where 100 Palestinians died trying to get to the food and they're blaming Israel for shooting all of them, which is probably BS. And, but even if it's true in an attempt to establish order because there are thousands of them streaming onto these things, and the international community is just flipping out and already saying this war has to end. Israel's wrong. Israel's in the wrong here. This now is a war crime. This is awful. We've never seen anything like it. Whereas, you know, what was October 7th, like a million times worse than this and what is happening in Sudan every day is a million times worse than this. Nobody cares. They only care when Israelis do something bad to Arabs. Yeah. So I think the pressure is going to be really intense. It's going to be hard for Israel to withstand it. Wait, can I ask a follow up or is that like, like one question I have is just like with this war, why is it that Israel seems to be like the only country that has to defend itself for defending itself? I don't feel like other countries have that same position, you know? I don't think the US really has that. If we went to war with someone who I guess we would drown it out more. I think because partially because people don't like strong Jews. Is that what it is? Yeah. Decemitism is still part of it. But I also think it's because the Palestinians and the leftist intellectuals have done a really, really good job of muddying the history to present the history as if Israel were the aggressors to begin with. So that this isn't a war of self-defense. It was the Palestinians on October 7th who were acting as self-defense because the people who started this really brutal, the people who really awful the Israelis. I think that they've muddied the history and there's so much perverse moral altruism is so perverse in terms of how to evaluate the sides that people just don't know how to make the evaluation and it gives a certain credibility to the idea that the Palestinians are just fighting for their freedom as a thing if they have any conception of freedom. Thank you. Adam. Yes. I would like to go back to the question of why are our politicians and the politics of ordinary Americans so stupid and I think the reason is the systematic this minding that has gone on for two generations with the world's worst philosophy of education and if you look at a country that has an Aristotelian philosophy of education Poland is one I'm familiar with they have intellectual politicians and they have YouTube channels with thousands of viewers on intellectual issues and their immigration policy is exactly what you once recommended anyone with a job offer in Poland gets a work visa and now Intel has the their third largest research lab located in Poland largely because of the immigration regulations in the United States and in Israel which were their first two research facilities the research facility in Poland where scientists and engineers from 40 countries I think that's right I think it's the end of the day it clearly is education education education I only think I disagree with you about is the two decades I think it's much older than two decades I was already a victim of American Dewey led disgusting horrible education in the 1970s so that was 50 years ago the educational system in the United States was already I spent two years of one year middle school one year of high school in the United States and fell behind students in Israel on math and science by almost two years so I fell behind by at least one year in the two years that I was here and in ninth grade I was literally taking 11th to 12th grade courses clients stay close to my Israeli colleagues in Israel so American education system was already terrible in the 1970s Dewey's impact on education I'm not an expert but probably goes back to at least the 60s if not earlier and it's just getting worse and worse and you're seeing the cumulative result of that so absolutely it's all about education and if we had I think generally European cultures are more intellectual they always have been not always good but they've always been more intellectual and less blatantly stupid I also think that religion plays a role in the United States and that is religion particularly the evangelical emotion based evangelical interpretation of Christianity fits with Dewey because Dewey of course is emotion based and pushes the emotion so I think absolutely it's all about the American educational system which is just horrible alright let's take a few super chats quickly John says I'm behind I'm where you're talking about breaking bad that showing my opinion is telling you that everyone is like Walter White didn't make decisions based on principles but wound up redeeming himself through sacrifice total BS yeah I agree I mean it's a show that ultimately is all about pragmatism and it's deterministic and it's not even clear that he redeems himself but the show gives him the opportunity for redemption when he doesn't deserve it and the other thing I was upset about by the ending of the show is the kid should have died I forget his name the sidekick Walter sidekick Jesse Jesse should have died at the last episode Jesse does not deserve to live he is a horrible horrible human being and he is portrayed in the series as this victim and he really wants to do the right thing and he can't but no constantly allows himself to be drawn back into doing evil things and he should not have been allowed to live at the end of the series and that exactly shows you the moral and the lack of clear morality that these shows have they don't have a moral stand not really all right Roland I'm a total introvert when it comes to people that bore me and perfectly extrovert when it comes to people I like yeah I think that's Jennifer's point and I think that's absolutely right I think most of us are like that Clark says I think two to five p.m. is a great time slot and the longer the shows are at once sitting the greater the super chat revenue that's why the three hour New Year's Eve shows do so well all right I'm going to test that remember Clark I'm thinking now that we're going to start this in April you know I've got a trip to Europe next week then I come back for two weeks which are pretty busy so I don't really have time to move to the schedule and then I've got a trip to South America which is like 10 days I think when I come back from South America we're going to go on a new schedule I haven't decided yet and I was actually going to run a poll but I forgot I was actually going to run a poll where the two to five or one to four is better for you guys I'm leaning right now tentatively to one to four just because that allows me one hour on the east coast for business after the show but but we'll see yeah so I'm going to be in London and Amsterdam this trip in Europe and then in April I will be in Chiba Brazil in Buenos Aires, Argentina where I hope to meet Millay and in Santiago, Chile so that is the schedule Hapa Campbell Hamas to 12 year old you are not a child you are a soldier Hamas to the media he was 12 just an innocent child they're very very good give them credit they know how to do PR they're very very good at dealing with the media they're very very good at pulling at the hot strings of westerners Maximus is government and culture linked? you said somewhere that ideas shape culture and culture shapes the government we pick can bad cultures thrive under capitalism as seen in China's case no they can't and this is why something had to give you had capitalism you had a bad culture and ultimately the culture went out and capitalism was in decline and going away so you know ultimately culture defines government and ideas define the culture and the social the social system is a consequence of the culture there was a period where the government in a sense imposed freedom partial freedom people relish that they embrace that the culture got better but there was no ideas to justify the culture getting better there was no foundation there was no intellectual foundation for that because I said it goes both it can go both ways and as a consequence of no intellectual foundation no better ideas the culture then when the government flipped when the government becomes more authoritarian the culture is not objecting and embracing it now we will see if the Chinese ever revolt against the growing authoritarianism that'll be a sign that maybe there were better ideas in the background and maybe they did stick and maybe the culture is better but so far we're not seeing that so far we're seeing is a government turning more authoritarianism and the culture following it not rebelling against it and that's because the ideas never changed the fundamental ideas that ultimately shape a culture ultimately means over the long run didn't really change monotropic first super chat thank you for the sticker really really appreciate it alright Michael your worst sin is you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing Dostoevsky yeah I mean Dostoevsky was sharp one of the great great authors of history also really really bad philosophically but in this he is right in this he is right Michael says we're the founding father of a collective in certain ways they didn't fully understand the individualism means yes I think that's true they were collectivists in certain ways they didn't have a complete understanding and defense of individualism and of freedom and of liberty they had elements not of utilitarianism why utilitarianism because it didn't exist as a theory but elements suggest of utilitarianism you know Adam Smith style freedom is good for the group for the society they weren't pure individualists I don't think you could be a pure individualist at the end of the day before Inran Inran really gave it a full philosophy a full content I think you could only be partially you couldn't be complete before so I think that's right I think there were remnants of collectivism in the founding fathers thinking and some of them more than others right I don't think I think Jefferson was more of an individualist than maybe some of the others James pay no attention to toxic words what people say is often a reflection of themselves not you I agree absolutely Michael thoughts on John Stuart I never liked him he strikes me as a swarming nihilistic leftist an enemy of Israel and capitalism I agree he's sometimes funny I mean when he makes fun both of Taka and of Biden on the same show that's cool that's good I'll take that but yeah his humor often is nihilistic his humor often is designed to tear things down not to build things up and to tear good things down valuable things down Harper Campbell do you do many people buy homes before they are ready for second-handed reasons they want to appear successful for their parents yeah I mean I don't know I think people do buy homes sometimes for the wrong reasons and too soon because they want to show off because they also second-handedly are bought into the idea that to be successful in life you have to own your home success is not about owning stuff or any particular stuff certainly and so yes I think there are a lot of kind of beliefs that go into people's financial and home buying decisions Roland says I started with opa I think it's the best explanation of objectivism you can ask for no question it's pretty advanced so your exceptional role on that you could just take opa right off the bat not everybody could do that I'm not sure I could have I would have read the first chapter and give it up like there's no way I could have really been drawn into metaphysics I don't think unless I was already motivated Liam can you start doing a once a year YBS meetup in Austin Las Vegas every year maybe do a barbeque would anybody come other than the local people I mean even when I go and speak in different places only some of my listeners show up so I'm just not sure it would get a big audience but I've thought about it Austin would probably be the right place it's central it's easy to get in and out of it's not cheap to fly into and out of though um yeah let me think about it let me think about it maybe we can do that certainly if you're at Ocon and you should all come to Ocon then you know last year there were I don't know 200 you on book show listeners at Ocon and we hung out so that is the best way right now so I'll think about it I've considered in the past but haven't pulled the trigger yet Apollo what do you think of modernism as an art movement I don't think of it I try to it's awful it's not art for the most part it is not art it's um I've got this talk on is modern art arts that I gave in Edinburgh Scotland just put your on book arts and it'll pop up on on YouTube I've also got a playlist on art all my stuff on art is in a playlist so you can listen to it there all right Michael from where do squatters get rights to real property what kind of local government would allow such insanity um they get they get rights from their action on the fact that they squat they get rights from the fact that they're taking a ban on property truly a ban on property uh if they have if I ever write to it and they are doing something with it so it is absolutely right that if you have property and you abandon it for a very lengthy period of time what exactly that time should be I'm not sure but for a very lengthy period of time then you lose the right to it and squatters who have built something on it get the right now and anybody walking into any abandoned property no matter how old it is get squatter rights and that's a violation of rights but if you don't maintain your property if you don't act to preserve it then at some point it's not yours um pickaxing Neil Stevenson said it's so hard today to write and sell optimistic sci-fi great exception black mirrors San Junipero episode but I can count the number on one hand how can we address this we can change the culture and make it more optimistic we can we change the culture and the only way to change the culture that I know of is better ideas and better art so if you can write science fiction write good science fiction write positive science fiction so we've got to produce better art and we've got to advocate better ideas hello Zeus, have you watched the movie Predator 1987 with Arnold Schwarzenegger thoughts in the film I watched it years and years ago in the 80s when it came out I can't remember he outsmarts the Predator so it's like human over monster so you can appreciate that aspect of it but beyond that I can't remember it's not like aliens which I think is a masterpiece it's good it's very similar to Predator in his theme but much better it's not like what's his name the director James Cameron the guy went really bad with Titanic James Cameron it's not like Terminator which has a great theme and a really really clear philosophical so I think aliens and Terminator are superior movies but you know Predator was good at least the man won the movies James Cameron makes today the alien wins man is the bad guy the aliens are the good guys Apollo Zeus are you aware of the Anikai-thera mechanism no I have no idea what that is never even heard of it is that a science fiction thingy I don't know what that is Ron Avni any restaurant recommendation for Amsterdam I have one but I'll email I was thinking about this that I need to email it to you I will email it to you after the show because I have to look it up it's in my little database of restaurants I haven't spent a lot of time in Amsterdam eating I've been many times to Amsterdam but haven't gone to good restaurants but this one I did go to and it was exceptional so I will send you I will send you an email with the name of the restaurant and if you make a reservation let me know I might join you alright we're going to do again we're going to go across you guys we're going to start with Adam because he's got his hand up and then we're going to do the rest of you alright and we'll do it relatively fast short questions please we're running late alright Adam go for it okay the Anikai-thera mechanism was an analog mechanical computer for computing the position of heavenly bodies that was discovered in a Greek shipwreck yep and has been reconstructed and the best guess of the archaeologists is that it was made in Archimedes' laboratory yep so I just read about it I just read about it in the opening of the western mind or the closing of the western one he talks about this in describing how successful the Greeks were and how unsuccessful the Christians were at anything scientific and so it's and how amazing science what amazing things science achieved and how sad it is that it kind of all ended in a sense with Christianity so yes but I don't retain words like any antikythera antikythera it's the island opposite kythera oh okay so it's the name of the island is antikythera cool so do you have a quick question Adam no I just wanted to answer the question I appreciate it good thank you all right let's see Catherine anything I don't have anything Andrew always has questions hey no I'm kidding so I think it's interesting that you've been talking about Walter White and Jesse and all that in this respect like I had trouble just maybe this is some interesting to you like I had trouble judging them because of exactly what you said it was kind of like the show gave them excuses for why they were doing what they were doing but what I'm hearing from you is you were judging them for letting these things happen to them in the more meta like not taking control or not making their decision for themselves absolutely I mean Walter White could certainly once he stopped having cancer he could have gotten a plane and got an Iceland I mean every option in the world was available to him and he knows and he sees that it's destroying his family he sees that he basically kills his brother in law he sees all this and he doesn't care he really doesn't care it doesn't really is he depressed because he's he's really killing his family no he is an evil person and he gets more evil as the show goes and what the show really is trying to illustrate is it's a slippery slope like slippery slopes do exist in morality once you breach morality once it's just a slippery slope downhill but the thing that the the thing that the show does which reality doesn't do is the show says and there's no opportunities for redemption there's no opportunities for change your ways once you're down this slope you're just slide down all the way until you're butchering everybody in sight yes it's disgusting and all the characters involved every single one of them could have stopped I mean Walter White could have committed suicide he could have pulled a bullet in his head and at some point that might have been the best outcome morally right because if he really is on a slippery slope and right now he's destroying X number of people and he knows that because he's on a slippery slope tomorrow he's going to destroy even more people then maybe a bullet in the head is the best way to end it but there's no conception of free will in that deep sense of I can determine my destiny really determine my destiny I can change this around I can not accept the destruction of my family and turning them into cooks themselves which is what Walter does in order to what is his wife becomes his money launderer and she doesn't have any choice she's portrayed as an end not having any choice right you thought maybe she would stand up to him and ultimately rebel but she doesn't either she becomes his money launderer and it has no qualms about that either in a sense right she kind of feels bad a little bit and she's worried about being caught but not really it's everybody in that show except for the brother-in-law who then is killed doesn't care he just gets swept up in the world and that's the ultimate theme of the show is you are determined by forces outside of your control yo thank you yeah generally in life if you see people killing other people and destroying the lives of people they supposedly love they're bad people I think that's the show was good at morally shrouding but that's because we live in morally great times and you're not you're not geared towards judging you gotta get better at judging and condemning maybe that's me but it's yeah we live in morally great times so it's easy to manipulate us in that way yeah Skyla yes sir you a few years ago explained a separation a four separation of government I try to make it into a tidy little acronym it's ideas, science, economics and education or IC do you and Don Watkins possibly have a book in the works in relation to that no we don't we don't know what is it again the four separation I know it's a four but what's the acronym IC ISEE yes so ideas science, education, economics cool excellent just putting it out there just in case you and Don want to get back maybe you write the book you're right alright Ryan thank you absolutely thanks Skyla just real quick also Breaking Bad his former business partner offered to pay for his whole cancer surgery and recovery too and he rejected that so like that was way off that's right in the first season I can't remember why you rejected him because the guy snoddyed towards him I think it was a matter of pride yeah but he'd rather not take the money from the guy because he's kind of arrogant and snoddy towards him he'd rather cook meth and get involved in the in the underground didn't he steal his business idea there's like a love triangle scenario there or something whatever it is whatever it is it cannot be worse than what Walter White ultimately does it just can't be worse than that but I get it they position it in a way that yeah Walter White is standing up for his pride good for him and he has no choice now but to cook meth and to kill people left and right you can make this a real quick question what do you think the reaction of either either losing party will be after the election if Biden wins do you see another January 6th type event happening if Trump wins do you see more cases like trials being sought after just to make him illegitimate I don't really see either party accepting their defeat I think that's right I think if Biden wins I'm not sure if other Republican parties in the states will certify their elections I'm not sure some states might refuse to accept Trump's loss if it's close this could be a contested election that goes to the Supreme Court easily because some states won't certify it they send different representatives who knows what will happen because remember what's happened over the last four years is Trump just packed the local Republican parties in states where Republicans have majorities control the election mechanisms he's packed them with his people and they're not objective so I don't know what happens I really don't know but it's going to be a mess it's going to be a mess whoever wins it's going to unless the victory is so thorough, unequivocal big margin that there's nothing to do about it but anything else is I think Christopher says the technical word is shitstorm everything else is a shitstorm it's really bad and if the Democrats lose I don't know what happens they'll go on into the streets it could be bad it'll be bad in different ways sounds wonderful thank you it'll be interesting Jennifer not fun but interesting Jennifer there's another example we were trying to watch this police show called Bosch but it was no good this moral equivalency his daughter's a policeman too this guy is literally choking her father and she can't get there fast enough so she shoots him and kills him and then she's like feeling bad because she shot the guy you're a policeman if you don't want to kill bad people why are you a policeman it's so stupid it's too bad they're police like that but yeah no that's pretty typical it's very hard to find a show where the good guys are good guys bad guys are bad guys and the good guys are doing willing to do what's necessary to win isn't Superman not allowed to kill anybody doesn't Superman never kill the bad guys he can only you know and Batman is supposed to not kill people although he does I think sometimes but he's not supposed to it's so weird it's like bad guys have extra rights they have extra protection alright guys thank you, thanks to panelists thanks to all the support oh we got one more super chat Steven Harper says I need to send you an email for the public speaking seminar after Okon in July but I want to be sure to send it to the correct email address youron at youronbrookshow.com youron at youronbrookshow.com and I know there are a bunch of people out there who send me emails and have not gotten a response welcome to the club people rarely get responses no I'm slow at email I generally very very very slow on email not with everybody but I am I will get back to all of you once I know what the plan is right now all I have is a date I'm trying to get a location about how much I'm going to charge you but other than that as soon as I have answers to all those questions I will send you an email but I was notorious that the institute my employees always complained that I didn't respond to emails but I but I did ultimately anyway you will get you will get a response and we will we were definitely having a public speaking workshop day after Okon alright everybody thank you I will see you all on Monday I'm still around on Monday so we'll do a news round up and then we'll see after that alright thanks bye everybody