 No radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. Right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show, seconded and within the last hour, I think. Thanks for joining me. I see only a fraction of the people who were here an hour ago are still with me, but that's okay. Those of you who are here, we are going to have, we're going to have fun. Let me admit, Adam, so thanks today is, is our AMA and it will, it is, so you can ask using the Super Chat as usual, but we also have some of my regular supporters on, on the, on video here on zoom and they will be, they will get priority in asking, asking questions. Okay, so before we get to that, I promise to, you know, do a quick update. Those of you who don't know between one to two p.m. east coast time, I did a quick show on what is going on in Russia. I covered the events as they were happening and they write it towards the end. They flipped on me. They changed completely. So everything's, everything's changed. So let me give you a quick update on where we are right now in terms of what, what is going on in Russia as I think everybody knows by now. Because I don't know any other way to call it, but basically a cool attempt, a cool attempt earlier today by the head of the owner of the Wagner group, also known as Putin's chef or Putin's cook. He had his career in a catering business and has since purchased himself a private army and, and that is what, and that is what he has now it's called the Wagner group. The Wagner group both took a city in Russia rust off with its with the military command facility for for the Russian forces in Ukraine, and it headed towards Moscow indeed reached 200 kilometers. From Moscow, it was quite close. During the day today, it appears that the, the dictator of Belarus, Lukashenko has was on the phone with with what maybe they were zooming I don't know how they communicating who knows how they were communicating maybe by telegram. And communicating with the head of the Wagner group, the Wagner group, we go in and they kind of deal with Putin's backing and basically the deal is that because in gets what he originally wanted, which was the firing of the minister, the Russian defense, and he gets the firing of some of the generals commanding the Ukrainian forces, the Russian forces in Ukraine. This is a basically a pardon, all, all treason accusations against him get dissolved. He also gets his mercenary army gets for protection, and in exchange he is turning his forces around and leaving Moscow and leaving rust off I just saw video of leaving rust off, and heading, heading towards back to I guess their base in bases in Donbass in in the occupied territory that is Ukraine's also rumored is part of the part of this deal. Because in will send many of his troops to Africa, where he has many troops already and where they control much of the natural resources in Africa. I don't know if that's true. But, but you think that Putin would require that because otherwise, because in has basically a force of 25,000 maybe more troops ready to deploy whenever he doesn't feel right whenever he doesn't like somebody in in in in Moscow. The bottom line is, bottom line is that Putin is dramatically weakened. Putin is a much, much weaker leader right now in Russia. And, and that doesn't go well, generally in in a in an authoritarian state. So, how it all plays out, I think there's still a lot still that we don't know. And, and there's a lot that is going to still happen who is really in control over there. But it really does seem that whatever happens, Putin has lost a lot of his power, a lot of his influence and pro goes in now to a large extent is calling the shots in in Russia. And I note that it doesn't really matter who's calling the shots to all a bunch of thugs. Russia is a mafia state. It's a state run by bandits, private armies, cooks and criminals. And, you know, who exactly is the crooked charge. I think matters little to most of us, of course, you're on. Yeah, let me get. Yeah, go ahead, Andrew. Would you trust Putin pardon me. No, I don't think pro goes in can trust anything Putin says. Indeed, I saw a story just from a few minutes ago. There was being published. Most of the news now on telegram that basically says that the security forces FSB are raining homes of Wagner group troops all over Russia so they they're taking over their homes. Now they have now they have the family members of the of the officers and the soldiers. I know this so called agreement just bought the Russian security forces time to be able to go after the families of all the Wagner soldiers and gain leverage over pro goes in so very, very hard to tell exactly what is going on and we won't know I don't think for a while. You know how it how it exactly how it exactly happens. I find it amusing to read Candace Owens tweet it's always amusing to watch the, the, the new right respond to world events. And I gave a few, a few of examples in my in the other show but this one I only caught now. She she writes, Putin goes down. It's likely the next Russian leader won't hesitate to use nukes. Be careful what you wish for propaganda is Western citizens truly underestimate how much we are hated for destabilizing another region of the world via military industrial complex. So blame the West. Everything is always the West fault everything that's happening Ukraine is our fault because we're destabilizing a we're destabilizing a region. This particular region. And of course, any threat to Putin is a danger to the world without Putin, there'll be nuclear war imminently without Putin. There's no life as we know it will end on planet Earth. So we must protect Putin at all costs, because if Putin goes down. It's likely the next Russian leader won't hesitate to use nukes. I mean, these, these people have no shame they have no understanding of of the world they have no understanding of Russia they have no understanding of the of the US they have no standing of of what happens and and who's who. It's just pathetic. It's pathetic. And yet the Oz this is Candace Owen one of the great leaders of the new rights in America has more followers than Jesus I think these days and this is the level of non thinking that you can have they have no brain. All they have is allegiance and they have allegiance to Putin because he's an authoritarian who who is who is on the side of Christianity who promotes actively promotes Christian. All right. That is my little spiel I will keep monitoring as we do this. I will keep monitoring a kind of the news to see how this develops. I do find it interesting that the mainstream media is. Somebody just tweeted that Iran supports homosexuality and transgenderism. He is a, you know, a loser. So if you didn't know I am a advocate for homosexuality ism I guess, whatever the hell that is. It's it's really, you know, you know, the state of the state of the world is really affirming of. I don't know, you know, if anybody wants if everybody asked me was the one thing you're not sure about in objectivism. I think my new statement is, you know, I'm just not sure about this idea that man is the rational animal. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But I really, you know, some men are a few very, very, very few. Maybe one day, you know, humanity will achieve that feat. And I do think there is the potential for it, but it certainly isn't manifest in the world around us as we speak. All right. Let us let us start the Q&A. Let's go. Oh, by the way, there was a there was a goal. There's still a fundraising goal. So don't don't get lazy on me here. There's still easy money. Now for some reason, my, my super chat tracker software did not delete kind of where we were from the last hour. So it's keeping track of the money raised on the last hour and adding it to this. So I've kind of rate. So instead of 650 the goal is already 400. So I raised the goal to 1000 400 plus 650 400 in the previous show. So anyway, that's where we are. I'd appreciate any support you guys can offer. Of course, you can ask questions, please ask questions. That's what makes the show. It's a ask me anything show. So you guys should ask me anything. I'm dying for some of my Sunday's people who really, you know, sound off on Twitter and love to be behind anonymously and Twitter and think all these things come over and and they should come over and ask me tough questions because they think they have me. So come and come and challenge me on on the AMA. All right. Let's go to our panel. And we'll start with Andrew. Don't forget to unmute before you ask the question. Hey, so this is more speculation, but I do want to connect something that I think connects with your arms rule for life regarding one of your arms rules for life, but it always interested me and kind of like, I was curious about why Rand in her letters, you know, the book of letters by Rand. He never she barely mentions World War Two, which I always thought was interesting because like this is going on around her during these years and she barely talks about it in her letters. And the rule for life I was thinking about was like, you know, control the things you can control and don't control. Don't try to control the things you can't control. And I can't imagine. I mean, again, it's speculation, but it's like, that's an example of something she couldn't control. Her letters were about her writing. And she did talk about current events, but not that much in her personal letter. She barely focused on it. She really only starts focusing on current events. I mean, she does some current events in the 30s and early 40s. She's politically active. She supports some presidential campaigns, but she's very discouraged. She, you know, she works with what became FI, the Foundation for Economic Education. She works with them early on, but she's very critical of the work they do. I mean, she rips the shred, a famous paper by Milton Friedman and George Stiglitz to Nobel Prize winners. The only paper they co-authored together and she rips at the shreds and she's just discouraged by everything she sees and the intellectual activism, the political, she supports candidates who then she feels betrayed her. So she, she really in the, I think in the 40s is really focused on writing the Fountainhead. She's very aware of what's going on in the world. She's also very, very skeptical of the of the Roosevelt administration. She's also, you know, unhappy about the cooperation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union around World War II. She's convinced the U.S. will win and because she understands freedom, but she is single-mindedly focused on her productive endeavor which is writing the Fountainhead and that's what she focuses on. And of course when she finishes that, she's very quickly focused now on the new endeavor which is Atlas Shrugged and during those years she's writing Atlas Shrugged. She doesn't comment much on current events. She doesn't comment much on what's going on in the world. It really is only after Atlas Shrugged that she starts commenting on the world. She becomes a more formal cultural commentator at that point. Yes. And I mean, yes. And so she is ruthlessly focused. You could say on what she controls, but also on her career, on her productive activity on what is really, really important to her, you know, at that point. Okay. Somebody, yeah, that's fine. So I think that's why, I think that's why you don't see her commenting on World War II during that period and you don't see her commenting much on anything, on much of current events in the late 40s and early 50s because then it's Atlas Shrugged. Kind of also a check on all of us of like, if we think things are bad now so that we can't pursue values, imagine being around during World War II and, you know, I mean, a person would have that excuse times 10. I mean, luckily she was in the US and by that point, so she said the war was in her backyard. But she was actually Americans thought the world was going to die. But of course, I think she was very confident in America's ability to win the war, because she understood the value of freedom. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Let's see. Eric. Hey, Rome. Eric. I only had a brief question related to, I know you talked like how in the like culture war stuff you think the left's ultimately going to fail. But I was just wondering your take on like, they seem to be super pervasive in like what we call the deep state. Why do you think the there's so it's so dominated up by the left. Well, I think because, you know, the deep state which is really, I think that that's, I think the deep state is gives them too much credibility and power. The bureaucracy, you know, the bureaucracy and the best presentation of the bureaucracy ever in my view is in the old British TV series that if you haven't seen everybody should watch which is yes minister. The deep state is completely in control. They control everything. But I think the kind of people who go work for the government are the kind of people who have kind of a, you know, a predispose to a, at least currently to a leftist kind of ideologically stand because they believe that they can shape the world through working in the government, they can they can help make the world a better place they can. And of course, then they're there so they get to decide who gets hired. It's also true that the government usually hires college graduates college graduates go through college where they're indoctrinated and expose or exposed to much of leftist ideology because that's the ideology that really dominates our universities. I think how the deep state or the bureaucratic state or the administrative state is dominated and for the foreseeable future will be dominated by the left because it comes naturally to them the central planning that the idea of running people's lives the idea of determining what's good and bad for people is kind of comes naturally to them. On the other hand, you know, the right is changing its attitude towards the, I think the regulatory state and the deep state. I think the right is coming to the conclusion that if they want their ideas to win, they are going to have to be able to really take over the deep state. They're going to have to dominate the deep state. I mean, I mean, what Trump wanted to do really was not drain the swamp but replace the swamp animals to replace it with his own bureaucrats with own deep state and and I think a lot of the intellectuals on the right are coming to the conclusion that that's what they need to do. And I think that if particularly if you get a DeSantis presidency, somebody competent more competent than than Trump, what you'll get is a real effort on the right to replace the bureaucracy with their kind of people because they understand the leverage the bureaucracy has over the culture over over the world because they wield, in a sense, they wield the guns. Yeah, do you think objectivism holds like, or do we have anything offered to like to influence the right here to convince them that it's better to abolish the administrative state versus try to take it over. Is that something that influence on. Yeah, I don't because because I think once you understand what the motives of the right are that is what the goals are what values they want to achieve, then you realize that they're right. That is, if what you want to achieve is kind of the control over the culture so that it skews in your direction in the direction of conservative ideas, so that and if you want to control people's morality if you want to control people's behavior, and then you need the deep state so the difference between us, and the right is not a difference in in strategy. The difference is a difference in goals. We want different things. We want liberty. We want freedom. You know, and some of the behavior that will result from that laissez-fait is behavior that the right views as offensive that the right wants to crush and destroy and it's willing now it has come to the conclusion that in order to destroy that behavior it must attain political power it must attain, you know, political force. And, you know, so, you know, it used to be, you know, we use some of us used to believe that the right wanted the same things we did, they wanted America to be prosperous and wealthy and successful and free and finding what it was like. But I don't, but that's not what the right wants anymore. And therefore, I don't know that we even have a basis. I mean, what are they, we don't have any shared values with them so there's nothing to fight with them for other than we all hate the left. But I don't think that's a, so do you see what I mean, Eric? Yeah, I got you. I was just wondering like if on like a single issue it would be worth the time to try to influence the rights arguments in that regard. Sean, and I think we continue to try and certainly in the early 2020s during the tea party, we spent a lot of time trying to influence the right and at the end of the day it blew up in our faces so I am skeptical about ability to influence anybody on a scale that would have that would make a difference politically right now. I think we are so there's so much, so much cultural change that has to happen before we have any chance of real political influence. And what we should really focus on is the cultural change. And opportunistically if we can impact the right, then great, but I really fear that the right is beyond, beyond saving at this point. I think they've gone after deep end. If you look at the national conservatives, if you look at the integralists, if you look at some of these others that the Candace Owen types, I think they've, they're beyond saving. Sean, do you care that the right uses terms like freedom and liberty? Like do you think that's a problem? Yeah, but, but look, everybody uses freedom and liberty. I say this a lot in my talks. There is no group in it, there's no group in America in the world who doesn't claim to believe in freedom and liberty. So freedom and liberty mean completely different things to all people. You know, the right believes that in order to have freedom and liberty, you have to have Christian values. The left believes that in order to have freedom and liberty, you have to have freedom from, freedom from what is it, fear and wants and all these other things. They don't define the terms the same way we do. Nobody does. It's a problem all around and it's a problem we have in communicating with people because they don't quite understand what we're talking about when we talk. And that's, that's a reality that I think objectivists have to deal with why it's so important for us to constantly define our terms and explain what we actually mean. Alright, thanks Eric. Deb, you're muted. You're talking because I still can't hear you. You're unmuted but I can't hear you. No volume. Alright, let me, let me take a question. Adam, Deb, maybe you can work on seeing why the audio is not working. So something that might must not be connected or something like that. Okay, Adam. There are two completely different topics that I would like you to address. Let's do one now, one next round. Okay, the first one. Before Okan, I'm visiting Brookstream Gardens. And I'm spending several days here. And even though the best sculptures are still available for seeing in a kind of way, they're no longer where they were originally integrated with the landscape. The excuses they found that the salt air was affecting the finish on the sculptures. And so they're now indoors behind glass. And what is, what has taken their place is Yoruba sculptures from the African tribe, from which most of the slaves who work in the plantations on the property had come. And why they are, you know, sort of figurative. The really good sculptures, those whose finish allegedly would be adversely affected by being exposed to the salt air are now indoors and only visible from the front. The other good sculptures have been located in different places where they are not integrated into the landscape. I mean, that is horrible. Brookstream Gardens, in my view, is one of the most beautiful amazing places anywhere in the world. I've been there, I don't know, three or four times. It's always been an amazing experience. So this sounds like it's a new thing because, because last time I was there, which is before COVID, quite a bit before COVID, it was still fully integrated, fully beautiful. They had been there for over 100 years. This garden was founded by the by Huntington. I forget her first name. It was the wife of the famous industrialist Anna, Anna. Anna Huntington was a self sculptor. Actually, the entrance into Brookstream Gardens is a massive larger than life size sculpture of two horses and a man raiding the man that she sculpted and she sculpted quite a few other sculptures within the gardens. She did this in the late 19th century. So these gardens have been around for a long time. The sculpture somehow have withstood nature since then. And it was just one of the most magical, beautiful places. The sculptures were beautifully integrated into the landscaping. I particularly like it at night where they had light shining on the sculpture and really was magical at nighttime. Anyway, so if what you're saying is they brought in African or modern sculpture. They had a few modern sculptures last time I was there, but it was just an insignificant. When I was there, there were over 400 sculptures, many of them from most of them outdoors, where you could walk around them integrated into the landscape, beautiful, relaxing, just amazing, inspiring things. So if that is all gone, if the sculptures have been moved, if and if they put instead, primitivism, then that is one of the great aesthetic tragedies of the world because it was truly a unique place. Now, I understand that they have plans to build an indoor museum of sculpture, a very large building in which it will be possible to walk around the good sculptures. But in terms of what the organization is emphasizing is the primitive Yoruba sculptures and the history of the safe plantations that were there before the gardens. Okay, I'll wait until my next turn for the second. Sounds good. Okay. Deb, have you managed to fix the microphone? I guess not, because I can't hear anything. Okay, keep trying. Let me know when it's fixed. So if you want to ask the question on the chat and I'll answer it live, we can do that. We can do that as well. If you prefer to do that. And I see we lost, we lost someone. Jennifer, do you think, thank you $50 really appreciate it. Do you think the reason music seems to be so unique and aesthetic experience is it actually physically touches your whole body at once. I've read that even deaf people can experience music, because they can feel it. I think I think that people can feel certain vibrations in the air. They can feel certain feel a beat because there's a certain vibration that's associated with a beat. Hard to tell how well or how much they can really experience in terms of music. I mean, I certainly think there is something about the fact that it that it affects you. You know, tactically in some way. But I think the main reason music seems to is a unique aesthetic experience is because it is the only of the arts that in a sense goes around your cognitive evaluation it kind of hits for whatever reason. It hits your emotional response mechanism first and and and really really, you know, strongly. So it doesn't require analysis indeed before you feel something you feel something before the analysis was every other art form. But first, what's going on here you look at the painting you know what's going you read. It's a conceptual experience that becomes an emotional experience in music it's an emotional experience immediately and that I think gives it gives it its power and the fact that it's tactile might be part of that might be part of why it can affect you directly emotionally like that. Thank you Jennifer. All right, Wes says extra funds for the excellent Russia Ukraine coverage really appreciate that Wes. That's another $50. Thank you. All right, let's go back to our group here Andrew. So, I'm going to turn you into a philosophical surgeon general right now. Why would I assume from prior things you said that you would advise limiting ones intake to able news. Yeah, I mean I would I would reduce cable news intake to zero if possible. Okay, why I do I never use ever. Oh, because cable news is shallow emotion driven. You get very little real news news interviews are three minute long at most right sound bites. The stories they pick stories that they can visualize and they forget you to emote. It's just not intellectual it's anti intellectual radio is much more intellectual and ultimately print is the most intellectual because it actually whoops, you fell. What happened. And you skyline and you disappeared. So, basically, yes, I think, I think, you know, it's very very difficult to deliver intellectual content on on TV, because you've got to entertain and it's, you know, you know who's really good at this. I disagree with him on a lot of things and he was a kook in many respects he was a nutcase, but the best person ever to deliver intellectual content to television and make it interesting was Glenn Beck. He had a he had a he had a whiteboard, he was like turn his back to the audience nobody turns it back into audience he don't do that, and he would write stuff. And he would he managed to communicate intellectual semi intellectual content I mean. Expert that he loves who thinks that American exceptionalism is based on the Bible, and all of my, you know, admiration for the show would go out the window. Yeah, you know, but he also had me on quite often. So you got to give him credit for that and and once we did this long segment which I wish was available somewhere because it would be fun to show because I was I was at the big tea party event in the in the mall in Washington with basically I was I had a camera pointed at me, Glenn back in my ear, and a million you know half a million or million people behind me, right. And, and, and we got into this, you know, real debate about the role of religion in the founding of America. And he was, he was willing to let me say, no, founding fathers wouldn't this is not about religion and so on. And he was willing to let me talk you never talk or you never spoke over me he was letting let me and he let me speak for long segments not that's very sound bites. What's that. That's very admirable. Yeah, and he had me on his show to talk about how strong we did a whole show together and I was so I got to give him credit for that he's a he's a cook. He's crazy. And, and he's gone through ups and downs during his career in terms of being better and being worse. But he doesn't credit for that I would. It would be pretty amazing if somebody could find a recording of of that interview by Glenn back from the tea party days. Pretty cool. I tell you as somebody who's consuming too much cable news is this why I asked you, because I need a reminder to turn it off, basically. But MSNBC and CNN are covering Trump nonstop. Yeah, I mean, since you don't intake it, they are covering Trump in any way possible. And then Fox News, Fox News is doing with Fox News does you know what Fox. No, and this is why it's somewhat boring to cover them because I know exactly what they're going to say I know exactly what they're going to do I know exactly which experts are going to bring. It's just not interesting. It's boring. And it's, you know, if you think about the number of amazing podcasts that exists. Real information you can learn three hour interviews that Lex Friedman does or the Sunday's other people do real intellectual content really interesting stuff in depth analysis. Even I've discovered this guy who who covers Russia and covers Putin, who's really good Vlad something. And he does these so much good content. And I watch these morons, you know, on cable news who have nothing interesting to say who are your response. Why would you do it, because you would feel like you have your finger on the pulse of what's going on. Yeah, I'd rather not have, I'd rather not have my finger in the pulse. I get my finger on the pulse of Twitter Twitter is my finger. I'm useful at heart I go for the new tech, the new tech solutions not the old tech solutions. All right. Eric. power back to me already all right. So my other question is regards to the longevity stuff you've talked about. Yeah, you've recommended Peter a T I think. And now a lot of them have to do with like annual scans and stuff like that. My question is, is, is there any risk that you feel through the annual scans, as far as like, like, having to die, having them inject that die and stuff like that. The annual scans that I do, we don't inject any die. I think you can, you know, maybe the less accurate, but I generally prefer just to do straight MRIs. There's no radiation. And to do the calcium score maybe once every two years to get a sense of the direction of what's happening. And then I do things like echocardiograms and other things. I think you can do a lot of scanning without radiation without dies, and leave the die and the radiation for when you think there's a problem. And now you want to dig deeper and get a better look at it. So that's how I've done it. I know a tier really pushes for even better technology which includes dies and stuff like that. I just don't know what impact they have. They're probably fine. I've had those, I've had die injected into me for, you know, when they had to really scan me and see if there were real issues, both from my back and shoulder injury I once had. So then I have no, I've no negative, I didn't get any negative side effects, but who knows. So, I think you can do a lot of scanning without, you know, the radiation of the dies. And that's why I do MRIs not CAT scans generally. But I think Peter is absolutely right on the principle and I, you know, even before I knew who Peter was, who was, I was already doing the scanning stuff. I'm quite a bit older than you so, but I do believe that starting young makes sense, particularly for arteriosclerosis, you know, for, for hot stuff. A lot of young people unfortunately have hot problems for a variety of reasons. So it's worth definitely getting those hot scans and have somebody monitor the heart on a regular basis or doctor. But even cancer, I mean, the fact, the reality is that if you catch cancer early, it's treatable. If you catch cancer late, it's not. You're dead. So catch it early. And the way to catch it early is to get more scanning. And that means that even means a colonoscopy sooner in life and more often. And I hate colonoscopies. There's no, it's one of the most hated things for me in the world. I've done three of them. And it's horrible. Just horrible. Not the colonoscopy itself. Because you're out then you have no clue what's going on. The prep is horrible. It's just, it's a, it's a, it's a day and a half of sheer misery. And, but what can you do? It's, it's, it's colon cancer is deadly. And it is a really good screen. And first time I did it actually found polyps just took it out immediately. They're gone. Now, but Tia wants you to do a colonoscopy every year or two, every two years. I don't know if I can, I don't know if I can do that. I don't know if I can do that. My doctor wants to be 10 years. I might compromise with every five years, but I'm not doing it every two years. Yeah, I was thinking about doing my first one soon because I just turned 42. So Yeah, Tia suggests doing it at 40 because there's a significant number of people in their 40s get colon cancer. Yeah, I mean, it's not pleasant. You know, be prepared for that. But it's, it's worth it. Aaron, just to correct something that as an expert, because my first career was in medical engineering. Yeah. And one of my master's degrees from MIT is in biology. Positron emission tomography is much more effective at early detection of cancer than MRI. And if you're avoiding it, because you think the radiation might be bad for you. The amount of radiation poses a risk which can be calculated and it turns out to be much less than the risk of the difference in the effectiveness of early cancer detection. This is what's called a PET scan, PET. Yes. Positron emission. So it's, yes, I need to talk to my doctor because I go to the service where we do an MRI every year. I think the other issue with the PET scan is it's significantly more expensive. But I'm going to talk to my doctor and see if they can do a PET scan next time, rather than an MRI. But yes, it's, I've read that it's much more effective in terms of identifying the stuff. Eric, you had a follow up? No, just other than just, you know, none of that's being covered by insurance as of yet, correct? No, it's an out-of-pocket. If it's just, there might be some insurance companies to pay for it, but mine doesn't. Unfortunately, our whole medical system is upside down. We should be incentivizing people to, incentivizing prevention, not treatment, but we don't. Right now, we only get coverage for treatment, not for prevention. So none of this is covered by insurance. But I have recommended the Human Longevity Company. Again, they do the MRI, so I don't know if they'll do PET scans. But as I mentioned on one of the shows, one of our listeners here on the show caught, you know, his life was saved because he listened to me and went signed up for Human Longevity. Had a MRI, discovered cancer in the lung relatively early. They got it out and I just talked to him the other day and he's doing great. And he's young. He's younger than me and in great physical shape. Somebody who worked out every day ate well. Cancer is one of these things that bad luck can just, just crazy stuff can happen. You get a mutation somewhere and some cell goes nuts. And so it's worth checking even when you're relatively young. All right, thank you so much. Absolutely, thanks. You're on. Yeah, Andrew. Do you ever want to just yell at the anti AI people that like we're on the verge of curing cancer and they want us to slow down? Yeah, I mean, there are lots of reasons I want to yell at the AI people but yes. Yeah, I mean, I mean AI is going to be instrumental in helping us cure different cancers remember cancer is not one disease cancers many diseases but we can cure many of the cancers with with kind of the right analysis and I think AI is positioned to help us do that. And these people want to slow it down and stop it which is, I think, horrific. All right, Deb, I'm going to ask you try one more time see if the microphone has been fixed with this any other way you want to ask a question maybe right in the chat. A question. I'll leave it up to you. I guess microphone is not fixed. Let's see if she asks a question on the on the chat. All right, Adam. Second topic. Yes. With the new developments in brackets. The mirror maker for microchip equipment is in Vienna, Germany. And it's now within the reach of rockets from Krulevitz, which the Russians called Kaliningrad. It's essentially put in is able to blackmail the Europeans. And it's going to be a lot worse if he manages to take over the occupied areas of Ukraine. Now, the United States has always protected US business, wherever Americans were doing business remember the campaign against the pirates in North Africa. And this is something that many objectivists don't appreciate. We have a stake in what is happening in the whole microchip supply line. If we lose the mirror plant in Germany or AMSL in the Netherlands or the software company that makes software for that in Israel, or the actual manufacturing facility for ultra microchips in Taiwan, we would be American business would be said that by a decade or so. Shouldn't we really abandon this idea that our government is only for businesses physically located in North America? The reality is that all these places are threatened by Russian or even Chinese ballistic missiles. They're all within range. The US is within range, not just the Netherlands. And while there are specific factories that are crucial to the supply chain in semiconductors, there is no way to put those kind of factories out of range from the ballistic missiles. You can make them. I think the manufacturing in Germany is close to Kalynegrad, close to kind of the short range, regular missiles that they're much more vulnerable. But this is why Putin needs to be clear to Putin what the consequence of such an act would be. I also am less pessimistic about recovering from such an attack. Because at the end of the day, what is crucial here is the knowledge. And unless you manage to kill all the people working in this factory like this, they can rebuild it and they can rebuild it elsewhere. You know, I don't think that everything has to be relocated to the United States. ASML again is expertise and indeed, ASML has offices all over the world. So it's not even the one facility that matters that much. It's the expertise that they have, the knowledge that they have. That can be resurrected. It will slow everything down. Even if those two factories are gone, the equipment that they produce exists. The latest cutting-edge equipment still exists, both in the United States and in Taiwan and in South Korea all have the equipment. The state of the art chips could still be produced. It's new equipment that couldn't be made. But again, those factories would relocate. So I wouldn't be too concerned about any of those. I think the bigger issue is here that the United States needs a strategy. It needs a foreign policy strategy. It needs a self-defense strategy. It needs to prioritize certain things and define them and position its troops in the right way and think about the kind of investments it wants to promote and what it doesn't. What do you call it? The Defense Department should build certain factories in the United States, even if they're mockballed for crisis. There's a lot of work that would have to be done if you had a rational foreign policy and a rational military strategy and a rational long-term strategy for the defense of America. There would be a lot of work to actually implement that, to put that into practice, to actually apply that in the world, and we don't have any of that today. None of that exists today. All right. Thank you, Adam. Oh, I got Deb has written the question out. She says, I had a discussion with an objectivist regarding zoning. I live in a residential neighborhood that was developed in 1960. My neighbor is lovely, peaceful, and I appreciate the single-family zoning that currently protects my neighborhood. I realized that the government could arbitrarily make changes to the current residential zoning that is in effect and open my quiet neighborhood to unwanted development of gas stations, multifamily, et cetera. Well, maybe not gas stations, but who knows. Electric charging stations, not gas stations. Since objectivists disagree with government-imposed zoning and the government can be relied upon to protect the current status of my single-family neighborhood, should I investigate a preemptive legal change to protect the current use of my neighborhood? Well, I don't know enough about what kind of legal change is possible. Certainly, you know, I lived in a gated community in California, which was basically like a private city. It was basically, it was all contractual. Anybody who bought in signed a contract with the other owners of homes in the neighborhood, it was a massive neighborhood. I can't remember how many homes there were, but there were massive, massive neighborhood. But it was, and part of the agreement that you signed with all the other neighbors is that you pay a certain amount to maintain the roads and stuff like that. Just like you do in a condo where you pay the association a certain amount to maintain the condo, you pay the association their certain amount to maintain the roads, collect the garbage, things like that, but it's all private. And it's committed that all the tracks within the neighborhood will remain single-family tracks that they're that way, but it's not government zoning. It's a contractual relationship between you, the owner, and you're buying certain rights from the private owners of the original land. So whether one can change your neighborhood to make it into something like that, I forget what the name of those kind of contracts are, but there's a name for these contracts. I don't, I just don't know. But, and it's also, you know, unless you're in California, maybe you are, California is starting to try to force single-family home zoned areas to have multifamily because there's a huge shortage of housing in California. And for years and years and years, they've discouraged multifamily. So now they're trying to do the opposite. They're trying to force it down people's roads. Unless you're in a situation like that, the chances that the zoning will change are very small ultimately in most places in America, if it's zoned for single-family, it'll stay single-family. So you need to evaluate the particular situation, but I don't know what the difficulties or the complexities of changing the legal status of your neighborhood would be. You could consider moving to a neighborhood that is essentially kind of privately contracted. All right, let's see. Let's do some of these questions here. Scott says, what's your point about the Lincoln project that some people got so consumed with a hatred of Trump that it turned them into Democrats? No, I mean, that was never my point. My point is not that the hatred of Tom turns you into Democrats. These were people that were, I think in many cases, borderline Democrats anyway, or Neocons who, you remember, Neocons are people who are, who are leftist, mugged by reality. So they started out, they started out and Neoconservatives, original Neoconservative generations started out as Marxists or actually, Scott, what was the guy who opposed Lenin? Somebody will remind me. Trotskyites, that's a Trotsky. They were Trotskyites who were then mugged by reality and became, and it's not the people running the dispatch. Nobody in the dispatch has become a Democrat, but in a dispatch, people are not Neoconservatives, Scott, educate yourself. It's more the Irving, not Irving, it was the father. Irving Crystal's son, Bill Crystal. Bill Crystal is literally registered as a Democrat. But, you know, he was pro the welfare state and he was pro the United States is the, is the, Jonah has never been a Neocon, it still isn't a Neocon. Jonah Goldberg was never a Neocon. He never published the Neocon journals. I mean, regularly, he's not a Neocon. So you got to figure out who Neocons are. I wrote a whole book with Brad Thompson on Neoconservatism. And so I start, if you want to educate yourself about Neoconservatism, go read that book. But not every conservative you don't like is a Neocon. Not every conservative, you know, who agreed with the war in Iraq is a Neocon. Neoconservatives mean something. It actually has meaning. But Bill Crystal is an example. He certainly is a Neocon. And he is now a registered Democrat. Not because, not just because of his hatred of Trump, but because a lot of things. I'm not a registered Democrat, same as me. Very funny, Scott. You know, he's literally a registered Democrat. I'm not. I voted for Republicans and I vote for Democrats. I vote strategically. I know that's a concept that some of you have a hard time with. Clark says, do you think Grant was inspired as inspired a whole segment of the entrepreneurs to take risks they otherwise never would have. Yes, I've said this many times. I do think that's true. I've met a lot of these entrepreneurs. I think many of people in Silicon Valley, both in the venture community and in the startup community she spied many of the CEOs in the fortune 500. So yes, I think I think she's spied people to take risks to give them moral, moral kind of courage, and more backbone to go and follow their dreams. Because I'm finding people are more uncomfortable with how strong objectives hold to their claims rather than the context of the claims how unwilling we are to bend to others. The truth is unbending. The truth is unbending and that yes, people are very, very resistant to certainty and certainly to moral judgment. We live in a society that doesn't like moral judgment much except on the far right and the far left. But most people don't like moral judgment, don't like the need to do it and don't want to do it. Aaron wouldn't you say though that they are okay with being certain about sacrificing to the court. Yeah, there's certain about certain things but yes, I get that a lot because I say things with conviction. I say things with conviction and they will say, yeah, sacrifice to the poor but not too much, just some, you just have to sacrifice for other things like God. And you know, they're not, except for the nuts on the right and the left, they're not like fully motivated and excited and passionate and certain. They want a little bit of everything and that's a big difference between us. Okay, Harper Campbell, stay away from negative people. They have a problem for every solution. Thank you again, Iran, for changing my life. Absolutely. Happy to do it, Harper. Michael, any school shooter altruists in our school shooters altruists in a way, not that they want to sacrifice for others but that they that the world owes them a certain quality of life. They haven't received or they're justified in lashing out. They're responding to altruism in the culture. I think fundamentally the nihilists, the rejecters of any kind of, they reject your morality but why are they rejecting morality. They're rejecting morality because, because who knows psychologically, but to some extent, because the morality so insane, so wrong, so offensive. Okay, Stephen Lam for $20 says how much to ban Scott, much more than $20. No, Scott is entertainment. Why would you want to ban Scott? And he asks you once in a while, you'll put in five bucks and ask a question. You know, most of the time you just who hangs me for free. But once in a while, you'll actually put in five bucks. So, you know, there's entertainment value there. You got to have a few people, most of the people who used to do this and attack me on the chat are gone. Scott is, is holding on. I mean, I don't know how long he'll be with us. He might not be with us for very long, I suspect, because everybody else is gone. But you know, Frank, what happens when rich people like those in this submissible pass away? Don't they have properties, credit cards, businesses, bills, taxes, they all, yeah, they all have wills. They have estate plans. They have lawyers and accountants and heirs and and don't worry. It's all dealt with. There's a massively go framework, dedicated for taking care of particularly if you if you've planned for it. I mean, if you pass away without planning, it's problematic. But for those of those of us who plan for it, there's a whole procedure well documented. All right, I'm going to go through these and then I'm going to give my panel a last chance to ask questions. And then we'll see if there are any other, you know, we're still around 370 short of my revised goal. We'll see we'll see if anybody wants to jump in to support the revised goal. We've caught up. We now have like over 80 people listening live. That's cool. Michael says if the covert lockdowns would have persisted for years, would you have considered forming or aligned with resistant fighters? Yeah, certainly. I mean, I'm a little old to be a resistor fighter, but I saw that a little bit of fight in me. Yeah, absolutely. I, of course, remember that if if lockdowns would have persisted, your standard of living would have declined. You know, everything would be, we would be heading towards some kind of dark ages because production would have stopped. You work would have stopped. People would be starving in the streets. I mean, if you really push this out for a long time, it's the end of life as we know it. Right. Now do I have a algorithm that rejects classical liberalism? The left one socialism should be run to the hills or what? No, let them run to the hills. Let's let's stay where we are and let everybody run to the hills. Liam says what is the best way to let go of things that cannot change like big mistakes you've made in the past that still bother you? I think it's to really work them through in your mind, understand what you did, understand why you need to let go of them, understand why you can't, you know, holding on to them as self-destructive. You know, I think those are the those are the things that you just have to work it through. And if you have, if you're lucky enough to have the ability to work with a good psychologist, then they can help you work it through. But you have to think it through in order to let it go. You have to understand why it's pissing you off so much. You only go over it until that happens. Is it immoral to sell solar panels in Texas? If I know they have a stupid idea, it pays super well and after fast money for something I do care about. No, I don't think it's immoral. It's a legit business. It happens to be subsidized, but so is a lot of stuff. You can't figure what you're going to sell or what you're not going to sell based on how involved the government is. I mean, you would get lost in just figuring out what's what with all the bureaucracy. Okay, last one for this round. Will any of the stuff you did with Greg Salamieri about statistics in Austin recently be available online? No, I mean, all of that was private, not recorded. You know, I hope that some of the people there will ultimately publish some of their work, do podcasts about some of this work, do stuff about statistics. Maybe Greg will do something. That'll be good. But I don't think any of it was recorded. It was pretty much a real open conversation. All right, let's run through our panel. Andrew. I like that. Let's have the other people run for the hills. Let's stand our ground. And what do you think is the best? This is no offense to any Objectivist Intellectual. What do you think is the best book written by an Objectivist Intellectual after a nine grand book? Well, oh, Paul. I mean, that's easy. Okay, it's easy to me to I just didn't know what you. I mean, it's God, you know, that's such an achievement. It's such a brilliant book. It's such a masterpiece of condensation and integration. That is the book and yeah. Would you also say that in literary, literally? I think so. I mean, Peacock's a great writer. Every word there is purposeful. And he talks about that. He talks about how he dedicated to it. And let's see. Literally, nobody comes close. I mean, who else in Objectivism writes that well? Not. Yeah, I mean, it has to be Peacock whether it's Opal, whether it's ominous parallels or whether it's dim. I mean, those three have to be first among any books in Objectivism. Thank you, Eric. Oh, you can skip me for now. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Eric. Deb says you're always very positive even though you get upset about various situations and crazy stupid people. What things get you down? Oh, really get me down is I'd say it has to be accumulation of things but just encountering, you know, just encountering ridiculously rationality in kind of concentrated ways that affect life. Not an abstract. I know it affects life in the long but affecting life today. I mean, you know, just sometimes it's little things sometimes big things like in Puerto Rico, you can't get anything done well. Right. Some people come and fix the window and then they have to come 17 times again to fix the problems they created by fixing the thing and it just drives you nuts and just competence people just do the job. Right. And then of course it's you can multiply that by many dimensions. And then of course you see that also in the culture you see it every way so the thing that most gets me down is just how irrational and just unprofessional people are and can be and ignorant and and and yet cocky right cocky super cocky about them so they think they run the world and yet so many of them are ignorant. One of the things I really can't stand in people is, you know, kind of a smug a smug. What do you call it? God the word just escaped my mind. Anyway, people who are smug and think that they know everything and that everybody else around them is an idiot. And a lot of times those people arrogance a smug arrogance that I can't stand it. And I know arrogance can have a positive a positive connotation, but but you know it can also be a very negative thing is smug cocky arrogance just drives me nuts. So yeah, I'm just dealing with somebody like that now. So it's, it's, you know, it drives me crazy having to deal with him and I have no choice but to deal with him. What's that I said arrogance usually goes with ignorance. Don't you think? Yeah, but you know, I don't know. I'm sure some people think I'm arrogant. I don't think I'm smug. I don't think I'm cocky. I'm confident. But so arrogance is a tricky word because it can sometimes represent having self esteem and being confident in yourself. But, you know, I try to be objective about what I actually know and what I don't know. And these kind of people I'm talking about don't have any sense of objectivity about that. All right, Adam. Yes, about competence. I happen to be the secretary of the homeowners association of my condo. And we were not satisfied with our previous management companies. So I search around for a management company who knew who was competent, who was the competent electrician, who was the competent plumber and so on. And we found one. And it's a pleasure dealing with competent people. Yep. It makes all the difference in life to be surrounded by competent people. It's one of the things that for the most part you have control over one of those things maybe in your own rules for life. I should add surround yourself with competent people. You know, in some places it's easy in some places. It's hard to suddenly one of the downsides of living in Puerto Rico. I have to admit is the the in certain areas like in home renovation kind of stuff, very difficult to find competent people. I also wanted to mention one thing, which is that when I see someone who seems arrogant, I have no way of knowing without talking with them first, whether it's justified self confidence or not. And so I don't particularly dislike it unless I found out, find out that it's not justified. Yep, I agree. I agree completely. And another interesting thing that I found out is that in listening to what TV commentators say, I find it different cultures of different attitudes. And when I listen to commentators on Polish YouTube channels, I don't see. I don't know to what extent this is due to the Christian idea that pride is a sin. If they are Thomas, they read this redefine pride as essentially being arrogant without a basis in fact. And so it's a pleasure to be among people who take that view and who are only arrogant about things are competent. They really know and they're really competent. Absolutely. Absolutely. By the way, I'm on Tuesday will be I'll be doing a show on on the seven deadly sins. Of course, pride is the queen among those so we'll be talking about pride as a virtue versus pride as sin. So the Christian vision of pride. So that'll be a fun show, I think. Thanks, Adam. Well, which which of the many Christian. Whoops. You got I saw you got muted by accident. So which of the many Christian. Which of the many Christian version versions of pride will you be talking about because the Thomas version and the Augustinian version are very different. I think I'm going to be talking about Augustinian version but I'll we'll see we'll see I haven't I haven't fully prepared for that one yet. Okay. Thanks, Adam. Andrew, was that you? Yeah, you can tell the difference between pride and arrogance. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I mean, but I'm not sure in its proper definition whether arrogance is a bad trade is is how to walk arrogant. There's a sense in which he is. No. Yeah, but that's why we need to be careful on how we define the term. Yeah. Okay. I'm not, I'm not convinced. I once said something to Lenny Peacock about I didn't like this person because he was arrogant and Leonard said, but arrogance is a good thing what's what's what are you talking about. So, Leonard Peacock says that you got to think it's what if you got to think it. Okay, you brought in Leonard. All right, Liam says it's been long overdue to ban Scott and put him in the funny farm. You guys can block people you if you don't want to see somebody in the chat, you can individually block certain people in the chat and then you don't have to see them. And maybe that's what some of you should do if Scott upset you this much. I get motivated by by people by by by people who completely don't get it. It shows me some of the issues that need to be addressed, I guess. And this says wouldn't government being involved in the environmental issues fall under private property rights. Wouldn't that be protection of property rights. I'm still fighting myself with this. Yes, most, most issues almost all issues that are so called environmental issues, ultimately property rights issues and need to be dealt with from a property rights perspective. The change is a little different because it's kind of universal and global. So it's it's not easily defined in terms of property rights, but almost everything else can be defined in terms of property rights and therefore requires just a better definition a better way of dealing with and more respect for property rights in order to rid ourselves of of the pollution of the bad consequences. I guess this is the last question, and we'll call it a day. Hopper says, oh God, Craig Biddle made some comments at Toscon that make me believe that he did that debate with Hicks to piss off people at AI. He's such a baby. Because he didn't piss off people at AI. You know, he, he, he just revealed himself to be what he is, and gave us an opportunity to address some of these issues. But anyway, Hopper Campbell, why are you, why are you at Toscon? Why are you watching Toscon? That is the question. All right. It is what it is. The world is the way it is, and we're going to try to change it. Let's see. Yeah, I want to remind everybody you can support the Iran book show on your own book show.com slash support. Also on Patreon and even subscribe star any kind of way you want. And so thank you to all the listeners. I don't know what's happening tomorrow. I was planning a member's only show. I still don't have a topic. I was thinking about doing something about, what do you call it, favorite TV shows, having you guys being your favorite TV shows and stuff. I don't know. I've got like dead silence from everybody. So I have no idea if this is something that interests you. Maybe I'll do a news update tomorrow because stuff in Russia will continue to be insane. So that might happen tomorrow. I just don't maybe I'll just take the, maybe I'll just take the day off. We'll see. In any case, I will be back on Monday with a with an update. Don't forget next week is Ocon. Please join me in Ocon come on over to Miami if your father certainly come but anywhere fly over. It's going to be it's going to be a fun conference and it will be great to meet you in person. I'll probably do I'll try to do at least one show from Ocon with a live audience. You can come and be live there that those are always fun. But yeah. Yeah, let's let's you know what, if I don't do a news update tomorrow, we're going to the show we're going to do is a members only show you can still become a member by pressing the join button pressing the join button down there. Do it at the minimum amount. That's fine. Let's do it favor TV shows. Just bring your favorite TV shows with you and and let's compare notes. Right. So it won't be me lecturing it'll be us having a conversation about fun, fun TV shows. Somebody wants us to bring Daniel wants us to bring Ocon to Des Moines, Iowa. Really, Daniel Des Moines, Iowa. No, that's not happening. Not happening. Too difficult to get to not enough people come dead. I have a recommendation on Ocon. Yeah. I thought the art Ocon on art was tremendous. Good. And like, if there could be a sequel to that. The only improvement I would recommend is like if there's a city that has museums that people could go to unlike field trips. It would be great to do it there. Yeah, New York would be ideal for that or New York would probably be the best Washington DC was not bad but New York would be even better. Atlanta is not bad for conference Boston is always nice for conference. Boston, Chicago, California. You know, surprisingly, in spite of the fact Oregon is nice. You know, Washington State is nice. All those places are nice in the summer for an Ocon conference. Des Moines, not on the list. All right. Thanks everybody. I will see you all, if not tomorrow than Monday. Bye. Thank you to the panel. Thanks, Adam and Eric Deb. Sorry about your microphone would have been much more fun to have you ask the questions live.