 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Saturday night. Sorry, it's a little late. We got the show rolling. We are here. It looks like I was summoned here by Katharine. All right, Katharine? Your summons worked. All right, any of you on Twitter, for some reason I'm having a little problem with Twitter right now, if you go on Twitter and just let people know that the show is on, just use the hashtag IranBook and let people know it's on, that'll, I'm sure, help get some additional people listening live, which is always good. Katharine is in the house. Katharine is responsible today for the super chat and getting us going on super chat. Two big topics today. We're gonna talk about sports. Is it a value? Why is it a value? What's the point of being a fan? Isn't this kind of, is this rational in any sense? You know, why? What's the point? And then three movie reviews, three, two for which I was paid, kinda, second one, kinda. One, just because I watched a movie today, I went to see Top Gun. So Top Gun, Maverick, or whatever it's called, so the new Top Gun movie. So I will have comments on Top Gun, the movie as well. So three movie reviews, Top Gun, Bronx Tale, and the Star Trek, Star Trek movie number one. So those are the three movies that we will be talking about. I'm not gonna talk about Top Gun in 1986. Partially because I haven't seen it in a long, long time. Partially because I think, well, anyway. So that is the program. Why is this, why do I have this open? Okay, I'm gonna close this down. All right, y'all know about super chat. It's a way to support the show. It's a way for you to ask questions. $20 up-get priority. Catherine is here to make sure we get the $600, $650, $600, I don't know. $600, $650 goal. So somebody should get us started just so we get something on the board in terms of our goals. I think we've raised the goal to 650 because of inflation. So here's where we are so far for the people in the chat, they can see. And yeah, let's get rolling. As some of you know, earlier this week, I flew to Boston, spent a lot of money on a ticket to go see the Celtics play the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals. I've been a Celtics fan on and off over the years. It really has been on and off since the mid 1970s. So that's a long time, God. That's a long time. But I'd never been to a finals game. I don't think I've ever been to a playoffs game. So for my birthday, I bought the ticket and went and had a fantastic time. So part of the question is why? Why would you do that? What's the value the one gets from experiencing sports? What's the value the one can get from that? I'm also a baseball fan, again, on and off kind of fluctuates over the years. I have, I was a fan of the Boston Red Sox and seen a lot of baseball games being to a lot of baseball stadiums over the years. I always love going to baseball games. It's always incredibly enjoyable and fun even when I'm not really backing the team. I went to a lot of Anaheim Angels games when they played in Anaheim. I think they, what do they call it, Los Angeles Angels now or something back in the day. So being to baseball games, I, you know, I sometimes enjoy football not so much in recent years. As the violence involved, and we'll talk about violence support today as well. And you can ask me about that if you want. We'll talk about that as well. About the, as football, it's become evident that people suffer real damage, brain damage. It's become less appealing. I've never been to a life football game and I've stopped watching it on TV. But I watch, I regularly watch basketball, the Celtics, I don't watch anybody else. And it's sometimes, again, on and off kind of over the years, I'll watch baseball. But I particularly like watching baseball live. Life is particularly valuable, I think, or enjoyable when it comes to baseball. I mean, it's a valid question. What is it about sports that makes it so appealing? And indeed, sports is huge. I mean, it's huge globally. If you think about soccer, football around the world. Of course, I played football. I played soccer in the US, in Israel. I played basketball. What other sports have I played? Have I played tennis I played? I like watching tennis once in a while. I enjoy playing, watching soccer, but only like the World Cup and things like that. So I'm not a regular soccer, somebody who watches soccer. I love the Olympics. I love watching the Olympics. So in normal times, I watch both the regular Olympics and then some parts of the winter Olympics when it's not in China during COVID. So it's, you know, so I watch a lot of sports or have over my lifetime, probably less today than in the distant past, but everybody does. That is, sport seems to be universal. Any country you go to, they have their favorite sports. You know, most of the world, it's soccer football for them. A lot of the world plays, loves basketball, particularly I said over the last 40, 30 years since Michael Jordan, the world has become enamored with basketball. Basketball is huge, for example, in China. And that's a whole other topic. But in Europe, basketball is big. In England, cricket is big. Rugby in certain parts of the world. I mean, they're all over the world. Sports is a big deal. A huge number of people, billions of people follow sports regularly, boxing, lots of other sports. And so part of the question is why? Why sports so popular? Is there something legitimate there? And, you know, what do I, what I think can a rational person get out of sport that is hard and almost impossible to get in our, in particular, I'd say, in our modern culture? And it is interesting. Sports is a phenomena of the 20th and 21st century as fanhood. I mean, I'm sure it existed before that. I know it existed before that. But on a much narrower scale, it's a phenomena of, you know, brace yourselves, but it is a phenomena of capitalism. There is no sports on the scale and the, you know, the scale and the number of people engaged in it and watching it without capitalism. Capitalism gives us the wealth, the time. Capitalism buys us huge amounts of time. So capitalism buys us time and wealth to be able to practice sport, to be able to engage in sport, and of course to be able to watch sport and to be entertained by sport. So it is a monofenomena. It would not, the world of sports, as we know it today, would not be recognizable. I think in the 19th century, certainly not in the 15th century. I mean, who had the time, who had the ability, who, you know, to spend money on this, to make it possible for professionals to be professionals at it, to engage in it. I mean, you worked, you struggled, you barely survived, you somehow got through, you muddled through life. There was no time, there was no time for this stuff, for really for sport. But it was, so it's very much this phenomena of capitalism. Phenomena of wealth, phenomena of, you know, success, phenomena of free time. The fact that all of us can work, we create enough wealth and we have free time, and with that free time we purchase a product that then provides income to all these, call them entertainers, athletes, professional athletes who then provide us with the values, with the thrills that sport engages in. So again, very much a phenomena that could not exist without capitalism, without wealth creation, without the kind of market economy that the world has embraced over the last 200 years. So, and it's also, I think, well, we'll get to that. So, what is it? What is it that sports provides us? What value does sports give us? Why are we so engaged in this? And let me just say here that I owe a lot of what I know or what I think about sports or even the focus on it, but to the work of Tim Smith, who has done a number of talks on sports and the value of being a fan of what sports we represent, I actually was a participant in a seminar that Terra helped organize at Oxford University with a group of Oxford professors, and it was three objectivists. It was Alan Gotthelf, the late Alan Gotthelf, Terra Smith, a philosopher from the University of Texas in Austin, and a friend, and myself. And then with us were a number of professors, a philosophy professor, grad students, post-docs at Oxford University, and we kind of spent a weekend talking about sports and philosophy, and it was a blast. So, a lot of what I have to say about this comes from that seminar. So what is the value of sport? What does sport represent? Well, first, it is one realm in our existence where we can observe just people being unbelievably effective at what they do. We see talent on display, extraordinary talent on display. In activities that most of us know something about have engaged in ourselves, and therefore can appreciate the level, the skill, the ability of these people, because we've all thrown a basketball at a basket and know what it takes. We've all sprinted, we've all kicked a ball, we've all tried to hit a pitch, at least a little bit. All of us had some experience in physical reality, in moving, in engaging with the world, in a physical sense. And here are people who have mastered doing it. They've mastered dribbling the ball and shooting the basket, they've mastered controlling a ball with their feet, their legs, they can run nonstop without getting breathless, or sometimes they do get breathless, but at huge distances. We can actually see people be unbelievably good at what they're doing. And while there's no question there is some biology reflected here, you know, there's certain body type, certain ability to, you know, certain size of heart, maybe ability to absorb oxygen, who knows, there are a lot of physiological, ingrained genetic reasons why certain people are good athletes and others are not. But we also know, we also know that these people have worked unbelievably hard to get to where they are. They are practiced, they are, you know, if you've watched Phelps, if you've seen any documentaries on Phelps, the greatest swimmer in history, he's got more medals than anybody in history, and you watch the routine, the regime, the discipline, the hard work, it's astounding. Or if you know anything about Michael Jordan and how hard he worked, how hard he practiced in order to get as good as he became. And of course, it's not just hard work, it's also the mental toughness, the focus, the concentration, the ability to deal with the nerves of the moment, the ability to rise to the occasion of an important play. I mean, Michael Jordan of course was famous for being able to shoot that, you know, take that shot right at the end and beat the buzzer and win the game with one final shot, right? Not only the willingness to take the shot, but the focus and the mental focus to be able to do it. And then there's the whole mental aspect of just getting into shape and staying focused and practicing and being willing to sustain the pain and the efforts and the energy required, the sustained energy required in order to get, to be as good as these athletes are. And all of that is unbelievably admirable. And you can see it in athletes and you can see it in many athletes because it's not just at the very top, it's, you could admire, you know, most professional athletes because almost all of them are unbelievably good at what they do. And it's today, almost the only place where this kind of admiration for skill, for attention, this remind me that there is a scene in the movie Bronx Tale that I'm gonna talk about that undermines this, which we'll talk about. They make a huge amount of money and nobody cares. I think LeBron James, somebody said he just became a billionaire. Nobody cares because he's so good and we can see he's good. So it's the one area in modern life where there is no guilt, there is no shame in admiring success, in admiring ability. Where else do you see it? Everywhere else, she's supposed to resent the person who's been successful. Everywhere else, their success is at your expense. Nobody argues that sports is at my expense that LeBron James making a lot of money is somehow at my expense. Nobody argues that. So it's a space in which we can admire greatness, in which we can admire achievement in ways that we are not allowed to because of altruism, because of anti-capitalism in almost any other field. Maybe, as Jennifer says, maybe in movies. But even then, there's a sudden resentment, their lifestyle, their Pavarazzi, that it's not the same attitude towards athletes. It's just something about, because with athletes, first of all, again, because we've tried to do what they're doing and we know how good they are relative to ourselves, they greatness is self-evident, not self-evident, obvious to people. And it's universal. People everywhere around the world are throwing a basket at a basketball and they know how good LeBron James is. They just see and play, oh my God. I don't know anybody could do that. That's amazing. So he makes money? Cool, yeah, keep doing it because it's entertaining for me to see. So one important aspect of sports, one important aspect of being a sports fan is their ability to admire great achievement in a physical realm, but you know that nothing, because with my body, nothing is purely physical, physical, mental, you just see greatness in front of you. And let me just say, I don't care what an athlete's politics is. Just like I don't care what an athlete's, what an actor's politics is. I'm admiring his ability at basketball and I respect his ability at basketball. Unless he's an evil, murdering SOB, I don't really care what they say about politics. Who cares? I don't care about any celebrity. Says about politics, about philosophy, about anything. What I care about is their abilities on the court and I can enjoy that. The same with actors. I mean, I did not restrain myself from going to see the Top Gun or enjoy it, enjoy Tom Cruise, because Tom Cruise is a crazy Scientologist and Scientology's an evil ideology. So I'd rather just not know what the politics of the person is. I'd rather not know anything about their personal life, anything about their politics and just go watch them, do what they do well, right? So reason number one, I think that's enjoyable is this admiration of excellence, of ability. Note that in a healthier world, in a world that had robust romantic art, in a world that in its art had real heroes, had depictions of man of ability, of achievement, of success. I think sports would be less. I think much of the enjoyment we get from sports comes from the fact that we don't have any other avenues in which to enjoy and to celebrate the heroic sports in a sense fills in for the absence of romanticism, for the absence of romantic art. It fills in for something that we don't even know we're missing. Now, it's a shame in a sense because romantic art is deeper, more impactful, more life changing and more consciousness changing, more consciousness altering in the sense of shaping and stylizing in Iron Rands was your consciousness. Sports can't do any of that. Sports is not metaphysical, art is. But in the sense of inspiring us, in a sense of allowing us to experience what greatness is, what heroism is, what success is, what achievement is, what perfection is, it serves that purpose and it serves that purpose brilliantly. It's just sad, in my world at least. It's sad that we don't have the better alternative which is art, which is aesthetics. And even if we do, because you can enjoy the art of the past and there's a lot of good art in the past, we are not taught how to enjoy it. Art requires a little bit of engagement. It's not like sports where you can pretty much be passive and enjoy it. So we're not trained to enjoy art. So we got sports instead. And I think sports is not as good and it's not as valuable. It's not as enjoyable or as powerful or as moving or as, again, epistemologically important. And that's, you know, that's the world in which we live. We live in a world which we have to accept a second, in a sense, a second rate substitute for real heroism, for real romance, for real drama. Because if you think about sports, much of what we enjoy about sports, and my next point, is the drama. Who's gonna win? You know, in a basketball game, it takes, you know, back and forth. And there's a drama who's gonna shine today, who's gonna be the star, who's gonna on day, who's off, you know, what are the particular parameters happening right now, just like a play or a movie? It's just, a play or a movie are intentional. The drama is intentional. The drama is to make a point. In sports, it's not. There's no intent. And again, this is why sports is inferior to art. Not as good, right, as art. But it's what we got. So we enjoy it for the efficaciousness, for the achievement. And for the ability to achieve and be efficacious and enjoy it without the guilt associated with so much of achievement in our culture and our society. We get some of the values we can get from art, the appearance of a hero, the drama of success, of achievement, the hard work involved in achievement. We can get that from sports where we cannot, where we don't have enough of that in art. Sports allows us to affiliate with a particular team. This is part of what being a fan is. With particular individuals who we might like, or we might have affinity for some reason. Or a team that we might have an affinity for some reason. Now, teams are not good guys and bad guys. But we can pretend they are. We can project onto them our value system. We can project onto them what we'd like them to be. It's, yeah, it's a kind of a fantasy game. Particularly when we're young, we form certain attachments to certain teams because we watch them when we're young and we get excited by their play. And as a consequence, we form a certain emotional attachment to them. And we, that emotional attachment is basically a, you know, to me, for example, the Celtics and the Red Sox represent, I've chosen them because when I was young, they entertained me. If I had lived not in Boston when I was a teenager, but I've lived in Philadelphia, my attachment would be completely different. I'm glad it's Boston because these teams have had enormous success and therefore it's been a lot of fun. But I happen to live in Boston. I happen to watch the Celtics and the Red Sox when I was a kid. I formed that attachment. That attachment is now associated with positive memories, but it's also associated with a certain role that I've given them. They represented basketball and their baseball. They're good guys. Everybody else, and particularly the Yankees and the Lakers are the evil bad guys. Now, they're not, I know that. It's a game, it's play, it's fantasy, but it's a safe way for me to project good guys, bad guys, and let them have it at it. And when the bad guys, when you justifiably get a little depressed, don't take it too seriously, right? But you get a little, yeah, because the bad guys won. You're never happy when the bad guys win. And when your guys win, you're ecstatic because the good guys won. So sports allows you, allows you to create your own drama, to create your own story. Now, you don't get to decide who the actors within the drama are going to be. Those are decided by the sports franchises, but you get to adopt them, you get to embrace them, and you get to, you know, root for them. Now, this rooting for them, this being a fan of a particular team, is an expression and an experience of valuing. You value a particular team, you experience emotionally what that means. So in that sense, sports teaches you, sports fanhood, teaches you how to be a valuer. The massive emotional benefits of being a valuer. And what it means when you lose a value and the team loses it. You know, you tie your emotions to this value and it teaches you something about how you respond and how it works. So they are a value to you and you get to experience valuing them. You get to experience the successes and the failures, the ups and the downs, and it's fun. You get to track them. It's like collecting stuff. You get to know who the players are. You get to know something about who they are and what their struggles are and what they're good at, what they're bad at. And you create, it really is an opportunity to create a whole universe, a whole world around us. And as a consequence of that, it can be incredible fun. Whether they win or they lose, it's fun because you get to experience again what it means to value something and you get feedback on that experience. So, you know, these are some of the reasons I enjoy sports. I've talked about this before in the context of the Olympics. The Olympics is particular focus on individual efficaciousness. One of the things I like about basketball and baseball is the contest between teams or tennis, the context between individuals. It's the contest between them. What I love about them is the teamwork necessary in soccer, in basketball, in baseball, to some extent, is the necessary teamwork, the way the pieces work together. I love teams that work together beautifully and well. You discover that in spite of what the commentators say about always being selfish, always being selfless, complete misuse of those terms when they describe sports. What you see is how the interests of the individual to win are consistent with him being a great team member that is playing to the strengths of the team so that they can win. If victory is your goal, then sometimes making the pass and not trying to score yourself is the selfish strategy and a team that integrates that well, that plays like a team, that has a strategy. Not just individual players playing by themselves is amazing to watch. One of the things I enjoy about these Celtics is they play fantastic team basketball. The Warriors usually play fantastic team basketball. It seems like right now in the finals, basically it's a one-man show with the Warriors and it's pretty amazing. I don't know if you've seen Steph Curry play, but he is truly an amazing, an amazing athlete. The things he can do with the basketball, his ability to score from pretty much anywhere in the court, his speed when he approaches the basketball, just stunning and when I saw him live, to see him do what he did, whoa. I mean, what he could do with the basketball was just stunning. So it's always fun, even in an opposition player, somebody you're supposed to hate, being able to enjoy and being able to appreciate and admire the skill that is involved is truly amazing. So it is indeed a lot of fun, super enjoyable, team loser wins. You've had fun through the drama of it and that emotional roller coaster is the experience of having values at stake, right? It's not values, in a sense, remote. It's not values over there. The thing about sports is when you take it seriously, it's values being fought over right now. And you get to experience it. Again, the ups and the downs. It's not theoretical. It's not an abstraction. It's very much a concrete in front of you, very much real. So I think if you want to, you know, those of you who enjoy sports, I think it's a great way to connect to your emotions. I think it's a great way to connect to your values. I think it's a great way to experience your emotions, to experience the ups and downs. I just think it's a healthy thing to be doing, particularly if you're not very attached to your emotions. This is a good way to get attached and then maybe take that experience of valuing in sports and then go to a museum with that experience, with that frame of mind, with that attitude of seeking values, of seeking things to love, to attain, to achieve, and finding art that really has a powerful emotion, powerful emotional impact on you, like a sports team can have. All right, that's for now what I have to say about sports. Let me quickly go over, yeah, let's, I'm just gonna look for some of the sports questions. So, Schausbach says, I sometimes enjoy watching highlight reels of great sports moments, but I can't sit through an entire game too repetitive and much less fun than actively participating in. Yeah, there's no question that playing sports is a super fun, it's being efficacious physically, it's experienced that efficaciousness, it's being, you know, it's the competition, it's enjoyable competition, you know, it's just fun, particularly if you're even a little bit good at something. Engaging in sports activity is fantastic. Unfortunately, my body is too weak and my back is too bad and my getting too old to actually engage and support myself, but I used to, and I used to love it, from racket ball to basketball to pretty much, to soccer, I loved playing soccer, to pretty much anything, I loved it. Yeah, and I enjoy watching highlight reels and I enjoy watching games, but I don't watch games that are not my team. I don't watch sports when it's not my team. This attachment to the team, this idea that the team is your value is a value to you. That has become, that is a driving force of this, just sports per se, some people just enjoy sports, just the achievement, just the ability. But what really makes sports special, I think from an emotional perspective is the attachment you have and it's a conscious attachment. And look, I could decide tomorrow, I'm not gonna watch the Celtics ever again, I don't care. I've done that pretty much with football. It wouldn't really alter my life in a big way. I miss that fun that I have when I experience it, but I do it consciously, it's a chosen value. Now the Celtics in a sense is chosen because it's not chosen, because it's an accident of living in Boston when I lived, but it's chosen and I continue to follow them. So I like rooting for somebody if I'm gonna watch sports, watching sports neutrally, I can't. And then I can watch a whole game and I love going, this is the point I was gonna make, I love going to baseball fields. I love going to see like baseball. Partially it's the atmosphere, it's just the stadium's always beautiful, the ballpark's always beautiful. It's very calm while it can get intense, particularly in the ninth inning if a game is close, there's a certain calmness to it, the excitement kind of ebbs and flows in a baseball game. There's just something beautiful about it and then of course baseball itself I love, particularly for the idea of this combat if you will between a pitcher and a batter, this one-on-one kind of challenging and challenges and both the mental and the physical strategy and challenge that it represents. I love that confrontation of one batter, one pitcher, one-on-one, I think it's fabulous. All right, let's see. Let's see, okay, nothing there. Yeah, let's take this one. Lyman asks, on mental competitions like poker, esports, I don't know what esports is, et cetera, analogues to sports, Randall critically of chess, can admiration and enjoyment of Magnus Carlson playing chess be rational? Yeah, I mean, I think it certainly can. I think she wrote critically about chess in the context of dedicating one's life to chess, dedicating one's whole thought process to chess and at the same time, in a sense being, and that helping one stay detached from reality and not connected to reality and not connected to not just one's life, but what's going on in the world. And but I think if you can, as a fan, enjoy it and enjoy the skill, the mental skill involved, absolutely, it's harder because even though I played a little bit of chess, I can't really appreciate the play of Magnus Carlson. I have no tool to appreciate it. I appreciate Steve Jobs, I appreciate great entrepreneurs because I can see the benefit I get from them and I appreciate LeBron James because I've shot a basketball and I can see him do it, but chess is on a different level of abstraction. And so it's much harder for me to truly appreciate what great chess players are doing. By the way, I love that TV show about the girl who plays chess. I forget what it's called, but it was fantastic. I really loved it, particularly the ending, the end. I mean, there was a middle where I thought, ooh, where's this going? But it went in the right direction, it was fantastic. I did a show about it at the time, so it was a great chess show. Queen's Gambit, thanks you, Ian. Queen's Gambit was fantastic. I really enjoyed it. Let's see, Cook says, Cook says professional sports often does not get enough credit for discoveries and innovations in areas like medicine and field technology that comes as a result of lots of science and business goes in sport. Absolutely, I think the big innovations in sports on things like sports medicine in fixing knees, fixing elbows in what do you call it? In training in how to optimize your athleticism, optimize your abilities, what kind of training and diet in all of these kind of things, I think sports has contributed a huge amount to our knowledge. Let's see, Catherine Mendes says, what position do you play in soccer? I played striker and right wing. I was a right wing, I was actually pretty good. I was fast and I was strong and it was perfect for a right wing. So I loved running down that wing, getting the ball and just running with it and then crossing it over. It was a lot of fun, it was a lot of fun. So I played, you know, when I played most of my life, you know, I grew up in Israel and in Israel there was no soccer fields for kids to play on. There were no teams. So, you know, you played on a basketball court, you played in the street. Most of my soccer I played in my life, I played in the street and cars would come and we'd run off with the ball and we'd go back and we'd put stones, would be goals and we'd play with anything, with any kind of ball. It was rare that we actually played with a real soccer ball because nobody could afford one. The only time I played real soccer was when I came to America, two years in America in eighth and ninth grade and suddenly I played on a field and suddenly I was good because while in Israel I was average in America, I was really good. Average in Israel at those days was really good in America. So I got to play in my high school team. I was in junior varsity as a freshman in high school but I was gonna make the varsity team the next year if I'd stayed in America and I played in a soccer league, so off season I played in eighth grade in my school soccer team and suddenly there were big fields. I was a much better player because I didn't have great ball control but I could run and I was strong. So I could be a good right winger where I could not be a good small court dribbler. Let's see. Jemi says the NBA has been rigged playoff games for better ratings, outcomes since ratings plummeted when Jordan retired. Are you aware of this? No, I'm not aware of this and I don't believe it. I don't believe it. So if you actually watch the game, I don't see it rigged. I think the better teams win and so I'm not aware of it. Don't believe it. All right, so I think that's all the questions we had on sport. Somebody did ask about boxing yesterday so I wanted to answer that quickly. Do I think a boxing is a sport? Look, I think it's a sport. It's not a sport I like. I don't like mixed martial arts, the kind of what they call the fighting in the ring. I don't like violent sports. I don't think violence is something that should be celebrated even as a sport. You know, wrestling I get, it's skill without shedding blood. But any sport that results in brain damage, as a feature, not as a bug, any sports that results in bloodletting, as a feature, not a bug, I think is problematic. And I don't enjoy it, I don't watch it. Particularly, by the way, and this might sound sexist, I think it's horrible the idea of women's boxing, women's fighting. It's uninteresting and it's just horrific. And I don't watch, I've stopped watching football as a consequence because so many people get brain damage and I'm sorry, I liked football, but I don't think the league is doing what it could do to protect the players for a variety of marketing reasons. And I don't think the audience obviously cares enough about the players, so I've stopped basically watching football, you know, maybe I'll watch the Super Bowl, but I don't watch it regularly. But so I don't like violence, violent sports. You know, again, just hitting each other as move to a place to place like football was, but the intent is not, and you're not doing damage to the other person on a regular basis, then I like it. Then that's fine. But if it's shown that you're actually doing damage, then I don't buy, then I don't like it. I think it's wrong. Okay, there's another question on sports that I missed. Let's see, to the thumb, to the thumb. Oh, Justin, okay. Oh, I didn't realize it was about sports, sorry. Yes. Okay, Justin asks, do you think mass hysteria plays a significant part in people's love for spectator sports, and is that a problem? I think, I don't think it's mass hysteria. I think it's tribalism. There's no question that sports brings out tribalism in people, people who are already oriented towards the tribal, and this results in sports. Hooliganism, it results in people being clinically depressed when the team loses, and violent because of sports and hate, not just, but really hate the opposition team where there's actual violence between groups. I think it brings out that tribal mentality that unfortunately so many people have, and this just cultivates it and brings it out and makes it. It's one of the things that I think is unattractive about soccer is that in many parts of the world, it's become this tribal thing about your soccer team. It goes beyond just being a fan. Your whole identity, your whole life is tied up around this and it becomes an obsession. And I think that is not good. That is not good. And I don't know enough about mass hysteria to say whether that mass hysteria is tied up with the tribalism probably is, there's probably some relationship there, but I think it's that tribal mentality that is really comes out, that sports brings out in people. That sports brings out in people. Okay, quick, let's do these three movie reviews quickly. I don't wanna go past 10 o'clock today, so we'll see and we've still got a lot of signature questions. Just to give you an update, we've got a lot of questions, but not a lot of big dollars, so we're way behind. We've only raised $233, so we're about $420 behind. So if anybody out there, $50, $100, wants to ask a question, now's the time, over the next 40 minutes or so, then we're gonna be doing this, so feel free to jump in and ask those questions and engage that we great. As you know, this is how the Iran Book Show is supported. My time is supported much through the super chat that comes in here. All right, let's see. Yes, three movie reviews. Let's start with the freshest one because I just watched it tonight or this afternoon. I watched Top Gun, the new Top Gun movie in the theater. I loved it. What can I say? It's a fun movie. It has no great potentials. If you actually analyze the plot and thought through the different things that were happening there, a lot of it just doesn't make complete sense. It's full of kind of silly plot holes but it's not pretending, it's not trying to be realistic. It's super fun. It's unapologetically heroic. It's what I said about sports and it's so rare in movies where you have a hero that's just a hero. He's just pretty much perfect. He just pretty much does the right thing. He's capable and the fact that he's doing things that a 20-year-old, 20-something-year-old would find super-impossible to do in East 50, this is where you have to just accept it for what it is. Maverick is a heroic character. An unbelievable, efficacious character. A man of tremendous ability and courage. A man who cares, cares about the people that he loves. So, you know, Maverick is somebody you want to admire, respect, put up on a pedestal. He is truly a hero. He makes choices. This is not a deterministic movie. This is not just him playing along. You know, there's a point in the movie without giving it away where he might be losing his assignment. He takes the initiative. He proves everybody wrong. He proves himself right in an amazing dramatic, spectacular way. Yeah, I mean, it's just one fun, hell-of-a-ride that presents, you know, fighter pilots as heroic, efficacious, good, basically. There's no bad guys in the movie. There's an arrogant kind of prick who plays one of the fighter pilots. You have to have one of those. And of course, they're fighter pilots. So they're all a little bit arrogant pricks. And, but he, he, you know, but he's a good guy, right? And in the end, you know, no matter what happens, he's with the good guys and there's no question he'll do the right thing at the end of the day. There's a little bit of a personal drama that's involved with, that goes back to the first movie, Top Gun movie. So I do recommend watching the first Top Gun movie before you watch this even though I think this is by far better movie. And watch it on a big screen. Watch it on a, I saw it on one of these screens where they also using the sides of the theater to project images. So it was really cool. It was a big, a big screen. Go see it on IMAX if you can. But, you know, it's beautifully made, beautifully photographed. Oh, so Sound of the Plot refers to the first movie. It's worth seeing the first movie to just to have the emotional carry on into the second. And you can connect easier to the different characters and what happened to them. Although they do a good job of reminding you of what happened in the second movie. It's emotionally compelling. You get to read a few times during the movie. You care for the characters. Again, they're not deep, they're not sophisticated but they're robust. And, you know, while it plays a little bit to politically correctness, like a woman has to be one of the fighter pilots get chosen, but it's not, it's not that horrible, right? It's not in your face in any kind of way. What else can I say about the movie? The only thing I disliked about the movie was the music. I thought the music was mediocre at best and didn't rise up to the drama that is created in the movie. It needed a John Williams score and it didn't get one but I guess they were trying to mimic the music from the first one. But part, you know, and so I just, it's the only part I didn't really like. The acting is good. I mean, I like Tom Cruise. He's a Scientologist, which is an evil ideology. It's horrible. And they really do horrible things to people. And Tom Cruise is partially responsible for that and he gets moral blame and he should get moral blame for being a part of this horrific cult. But he's a good actor. He's really good. He's charismatic on screen. He has that look. He's unbelievably masculine, you know, and fighter pilot is an unbelievably masculine activity. And it's about controlling this machine and in that sense, controlling nature and defeating nature and overcoming nature and going up against massive physical, physical obstacles. You know, they go up to 10 Gs in this movie and all kinds of stuff. So it is really, really, really, you know, he's a good actor. He's a good actor, probably a horrible human being but a good actor. And, you know, you get a little Valkylma in there, you know, a very old and very sick Valkylma and you get other good actors, Ham from what do you call that movie? I forget that TV series. I forget the name of it. But yeah, thumbs up, thumbs up. If you just want to have fun, don't think about it too much. And there's nothing wrong with the movie except the plot is full of holes. But there's nothing really wrong with the movie. I don't think it says anything about American follow policy. I don't think it projects any good phone policy or anything like that. Mad Men is the show, yes, Ham from Mad Men. You know, I could critique the, you know, the military aspect of it to no end but I'm not going to because that's not the point. It's just, no, I didn't just mean the 10, Mark 10, I mean, 10 Gs. When he's flying up, he gets the 10 Gs in terms of the, what do you call it? Gravitational, 10 X the gravity. So it's pretty spectacular and fun and exciting and, you know, well done a movie and it's just fun because they're using real F-18s that, you know, you get to see it all, the special effects on me. I mean, it's not special effects, it's these are real pilots. Everything they do in that is truly amazing. They also had Mark 10, they did two things. They had an experimental, they had a real pilot, they had a real pilot. They also had Mark 10, they did two things. They had an experimental airplane at the beginning of the movie where he does, where he flies Mark 10 and then he does 10 Gs, several of them do 10 Gs as they come up vertically out of a dive. So it's both. All right, let's see. Cool. So that is top gun. Yeah, I don't see any specific questions on top gun. Okay, okay. Second movie, Bronx Tale. Bronx Tale is a movie with Robert De Niro. It's set in the Bronx. It's got this very, very New York Bronx kind of atmosphere. It's a very atmospheric movie. It's very well acted, very well made. It's Robert De Niro actually is also the director of the movie. I can't remember when it was made, but Robert De Niro is relatively young in the movie. So it was made quite a while ago. It's a story of a young boy growing up in the Bronx and his interaction with a local gangster, with a local guy who, tough guy who runs the streets, who is the local gangster and his father, his relationship with these two male figures, but primarily with the gangster. It's an interesting movie. It definitely captures the atmosphere. It definitely gets you engaged and hooked and you wanna see what happened. You care about the characters. It's got a strong elements of naturalism. The kid is not really, it doesn't really determine his fate except for one decision he makes early in the movie, whether to rat on the mafia boss or not. And once he makes that one decision and arguably morally the wrong decision, basically the rest of his life is determined by other people. He is pushed and shoved by others. He's influenced by others. He almost gets himself killed because he's following his friends into something he doesn't believe in and doesn't agree with and gets saved by the gangster. So it definitely has strong elements of naturalism. The kid is not self-determined. He's not self-determined except again for their first decision and for falling in love with the wrong girl. Again, I'm trying not to give away too much of the plot but he falls in love with the wrong girl. The movie deals with racism. I think well and the stupidity and ridiculousness and evil of racism. So I think it does, it handles that really well. I think it fails in, it projects the gangster as too, what, nice? At least to this boy, but more broadly, other than one, maybe two, but one completely out of no way act of violence, he's not really portrayed as a bad guy. So there's much too much sympathy for the mafia boss. There's much too much sympathy for that culture. A certain admiration for it, it makes sense, given the Nero's career. You assume that he had some of that given he's played gangsters and played them well through much of his career. So, yeah, I mean, I enjoyed it. I'd say it's a good movie but it's definitely got issues and challenges. Not one of my favorite movies. Non-movie, I probably would watch again. I think the acting is good, particularly the kid is good. The Nero doesn't really have as big of a role as you would think for the Nero movie. The gangster and his gang have much more of a role and the kid's friends than the father does. He plays the kid's father, the Nero does. But there's a lot in the atmosphere to like about the movie and it is, there is some suspense in it although I don't think it's particularly suspenseful movie in and of itself. All right, lastly, we've got Star Trek. Movie number one, I think Shaw's about to ask me to watch this. You know, what can I say about Star Trek? It's, there's certain things that are enjoyable about it. You know, I think there's the whole Star Trek nostalgia which it brings forward, which is fun, kind of the admiration of Star Trek, the admiration the characters have for themselves in a sense, for the enterprise, for what they do. You know, when Captain Coke first sees the new enterprise that's just being refurbished and redone, he's got this amazing look in his face of wonder and admiration and this is a huge value to him and it comes across. But that scene drags on forever. It's way too long. You get the point, done. It just, they go around and around the enterprise to show you every angle for no good reason. Generally, the movie has a lot of empty space, a lot of stuff that just doesn't add much. It's enamored with visual effects. There's a lot of visually beautiful things going on but that have really nothing necessarily to do with the plot. The music is excellent. The music is very good. As it is, I think in Box Tale, but here it's particularly good and it goes with these visual elements that you get to see. In terms of the plot itself, you know, it's an interesting premise. It's kind of an interesting story, but it can't go anywhere. It's kind of stuck. You know, what does it mean for a machine to get a consciousness? What does it mean for a machine to get consciousness versus human consciousness that is tied in somehow to emotions but they have no idea how it's tied into emotions and what function the emotions play and what function maybe evolution played in making human beings the way they are versus a machine that just becomes conscious because of the amount of data that it has. They have no clue where to take it. So it's dealing with an interesting issue, an interesting question, but it doesn't have any compelling answers. The ending, you know, there's a certain surprise at the end, but then the added surprise, the fusion of human with machine is silly and inexplicable and of course, it just goes from that scene where there's this fusion and boom, everything's fine and everything's okay and that world disappeared and went away. Where is this new life form that's been created? Where did it go? I can't say, it was okay but it didn't really engage me emotionally, partially because I think some of those scenes were too dragged out and too boring to really engage me intellectually. It didn't really engage me because I knew that the people who made the movie didn't really have answers to the questions that they were posing so the questions were interesting. The questions were big, the questions were dramatic but there were no real answers and you knew they wouldn't have any answers because it's a really tricky thing to answer. I think the best, from memory, the best Star Trek movie was The Wrath of Khan which was either the second or the third, I can't remember. I think that's the best of the movies from what I can remember but I can't remember the plot of any of them. I just remember liking that and I don't remember really liking enthusiastically any of the others, any of the others. So yeah, that's my three quick movie reviews for you. Let's see, we are 400 bucks behind targets. I don't know what's going on today. We have no whales, we have nobody putting in more than $20. We've got a bunch of people putting in 20 but not enough people putting in 20 to get us to anywhere close that goal of $650 a show so I don't know what I have to do to shake you up and wake you up. All right, I don't think I pressed the start button for the movie reviews. All right, this system of time stamps is, I'm struggling with it because I keep forgetting to do what I'm supposed to do but all right, maybe we'll figure out how to improve it. Dave, so we're gonna go to the super chat. Dave asks, it's amazing how Robert De Niro can be such a brilliant and thoughtful actor yet a complete airhead leftist in his private life. I don't understand why that's amazing, right? I mean, you've got Nobel Prize winners in physics who are complete airhead socialists. You've got some of the greatest business leaders in all of human history, being leftists. You know, it's, yeah, I mean, why would acting be any different, right? So I don't judge businessmen based on their politics. I don't judge actors based on their politics. I judge based on the value they provide to me and then I can judge them separately on the basis of their philosophical views and I can judge them pretty harshly on that basis. But it doesn't stop me from admiring them as actors, athletes, businessmen. All right, let's run through these quickly. I think none of these, oh, Jeremy says, Jeremy says, I believe the 2000 Specialty 2002 Western Conference Finals were rigged for better ratings outcomes. There's a strong evidence. I'm also highly suspicious of 26, 2016. I don't remember any of those in particular. And yeah, I'm very, very skeptical. And the burden of evidence is very, very high and I've not seen any of the evidence so I'm gonna remain skeptical. All right, let's see anything else on movies. Jason says, remind a hustle in Netflix. Do you need a full movie review? But if it is not one of the best basketball films you've ever seen in recent times, let me know. I stand by my whiplash comparison. I mean, I'll probably watch it, but for a movie review, Shahzabad has put up 500 bucks for those reviews so I can't undercut him by charging less but thanks for the recommendation and I will try to catch it and maybe I'll comment on it. All right, let's see that doodle bunny. Why is there right to life? Is it an action? No, it's not an action. If we want to be free to use our reason to flourish, we need a right to life but where does that right to life come from? From our decision, it seems imposed. The right to life comes from the need to be free of coercion, of violence, of force when one lives in a society. It comes from that need. It comes from that legitimate objective, human need to be able to use our mind free. So it doesn't come from any way external. It comes from a realization. It comes from a realization. Oh, in order to flourish in a society, in a society, the only way for individuals to do that is to accept the general principle that every individual has a right to life. And that is what's recognized in Declaration of Independence. That's the job of government is to protect that but it's not some mystical thing. It's not some external thing. It's a concept. It's an idea. It's an idea about how we organize people, how we organize them. It's not that rights exist in some other dimension and we capture them. No, it's that if we're gonna live in a society and be successful at it, we better have rights. And what are those rights constitute? Well, right to life. I highly, highly, highly recommend reading Rand's essay. Man's rights, it's both in the virtue of selfishness and in capitalism not known ideal. Man's rights is a must read to understand the concept of rights. So that is what the right to life means, right? But I don't know if I did a good presentation of it. You know, it would be good to read in Rand's essay. Why were you nervous about interviewing de Dermal Klusky? Do you often get nervous about being interviewed or interviewing debates? I don't get nervous usually ever about by being interviewed or by doing debates. I do get nervous about interviewing other people because it's not a skill I have. It's not something I've developed. I don't know exactly how to do it. I'm not, don't think I particularly good at it. So it is something new to me. But the other reason is Deirdre is in a certain world, she's a big shot and it was important for me for a variety of reasons to make a good impression. And I wanted to have a good relationship with her. So I was nervous because I'm not a skilled interviewer so I don't find that comes naturally. But if somebody I know and somebody I'm friendly with then it's easy. Somebody I don't know and I respect, it's hard. And it's also hard because I know I'm gonna disagree with them but I'm the interviewer. I'm not here to debate. So how do you hold that line of engaging with somebody and disagreeing with them without getting into debate because you're the interviewer and it's not your job to debate them. So that's a challenge. That's why I don't have a lot of interviews on my show. It's why I don't interview people I disagree with because I don't know how to create that balance when I disagree with them. Again, I did that wrong. All right. James Taylor asks, Ron DeSantis just suspended sales tax on most items in Florida for one year to help combat inflation. He might be Reagan-esque, the Reagan-esque president that turns things around or at least slows them down significantly. Maybe, I mean, one can be hopeful. I'm, as you know, I'm skeptical about DeSantis because I think he's a real, you know, Reagan talked the cultural wars but never really did anything about the cultural wars when he was president. DeSantis understands that in the Republican Party today to get elected and to maintain the love of the people you have to be engaged and you have to show results in the cultural wars. I worry about him vis-à-vis the cultural wars what he's done in Florida on a number of different issues I think is very scary and very, very bad. I think fighting when you're on the wrong side of the issue is not a virtue even if the other side more broadly is wrong. If you fight on an issue where you're wrong I don't think Biden is scary. Biden is a nothing. I don't find him scary at all. Anyway, so I hope DeSantis turns out to be Reagan-esque. People I've talked to about DeSantis say he is Reagan-esque in terms of economic policy and he just does the cultural stuff because he knows he needs that to get elected. I don't know, we'll see how the election evolves and how he positions themselves vis-à-vis an election. Yeah, you know, he handled COVID well of all the governors, maybe the best. If he suspended all sales taxes in Florida for a year that's a good thing. If Florida can afford to do it for a year why can't it afford to do it for longer? But that's a separate question. I'm not sure where revenue comes into Florida. If they suspended it for a year where did they get the revenue given that there's no income tax in Florida? So I'd want to see what he's exactly doing. Where's Florida getting the money? Because what really matters when it comes to the economics of it and the rights of it, what really matters is cutting spending, not cutting taxes. So is DeSantis gonna be good on cutting spending? Is DeSantis willing to stand up on the crucial issues of Medicare and Social Security on cutting other types of spending and cutting subsidies and cutting goodies for business? Those are the real challenges. Giving a pre-election period, giving everybody a one-year suspension of sales taxes is nice, but it doesn't really have an impact. I mean, Florida running a surplus is great. Maybe they could just use the surplus. I don't know what the debt is. Yeah, Florida has been among the best government states not just with DeSantis even before DeSantis in the country. So good for Florida. I just worry politicians. Michael asked, does philosophy only spread in chunks? Different pieces of it get adapted by different segments of the society at different times and we can't predict when and why. I think so. I don't think philosophy spreads as one big wave. I think it gets spread in pieces, different parts of the culture get affected differently by it. It only gets spread ultimately in that it gets applied. It's not like, for example, Enlightenment philosophy spread because a bunch of people, the populace, started embracing Enlightenment philosophers, reading Enlightenment philosophy and living it. It's that Enlightenment philosophy impacted people in positive ways in various professions that then changed the way those professions were done and the way they lived in a particular field and that was done in multiple places, in multiple areas, in multiple fields. And ultimately what that generated is a complete cultural change that you can say the Enlightenment was responsible. But it wasn't one thing and it wasn't all in one wave. It was little changes all over the place that accumulated into very, very big massive changes. I mean, big ideological changes that manifest themselves in little existential changes. God, the porn sites have really, really found us today. I have no idea what is going on. Did I say something? Is there something in the title that would attract them all? All right, we're gonna do some under $20 questions quickly. Again, we're about $400 short of our goal. If anybody wants to step in and make sure that Catherine is motivated to keep going so she doesn't fail with her assignment, for her to jump in. Unfortunately, given the topic, we've got a lot fewer people watching live than usual. The sports topic and the movie topic is not one that I get a lot of live watches. For that we have to do politics and economics or primarily politics. Let's see. Catherine says she can't fail. So guys, you gotta help her. Guys and gals. All right, Frank just put in a 50 bucks. So let's do this quickly. JC Unwin in 1934 said, sex and culture argued for 5,000 years of evidence that strict monogamy was crucial for a high energy rational society. Do you see monogamy as profoundly important institution? I do, I do think ultimately it's an important institution and is probably the stable equilibrium of relationships. For the most part, but I don't think necessarily that any other arrangement is impossible. I don't think necessarily for any individual, it can't happen. I don't think society should ban non-monogamous relationships. I don't think society or the government or anybody else should discriminate against people who choose not to be in monogamous relationships. While I think that ultimately it is optimal for most people, I don't think it has to be optimal for every person. I don't think that you have to sacrifice your particular sex life, if you will, for the sake of what's good to establish a culture. Now, we haven't had a lot of experimentation over the last 5,000 years, I'll add that. What we've had, we haven't had a lot of experimentation. We haven't had societies in which, let's say women have had relationship with multiple men. We've had men having relationship with multiple women. So the last 5,000 years is not a long time. It's not a lot of human experience. It's a lot of that 5,000 years was shaped by religion. You could argue that Muhammad's Arabs in the beginning of Islam were super high energy for their time, not less rational than anybody else around them, certainly more rational than the Christians around them, and they were polygamists. So I guess I don't even buy that. I do think that, again, I think that monogamy is important because it creates a certain equilibrium that is crucial, and it doesn't create a massive imbalance between men and women, which is another advantage. But I'm not convinced that for every human being under every circumstances, at every point in life, that is the only solution for relationships. And I don't see why it has to be. And I've read the books about monogamy in marriage. And yes, as compared to polygamy, polygamy is very problematic. Polygamy as a cultural phenomena is very problematic because a lot of men don't have women and that leads them historically, typically, to war. Whoa, Shahzabat, Shahzabat has just taken us to very close our goal by assigning me another movie review. So this one is for A Taste of Armageddon. It's an episode from Star Trek, the original series, and his favorite episode, so I will watch that. I always liked the original Star Trek. I think that they're the most philosophical, but all right, I will watch it, let you know. Hopefully I didn't disappoint you too much on the review of the movie, which I wasn't overly enthusiastic. Enthusiastic about. All right, Hopper Campbell asks, did you watch 2000 Mules by Dinesh De Souza? No, I don't watch De Souza movies. The cheap propaganda, you know, it's just, I mean, why would I watch this when I despise his others and I generally despise his views on so many things? There's no reason. I have read the fact checks on Mules, 2000 Mules, and they're devastating. So it's just not serious. And so it's not, it's so geared and motivated and partisan and speculative. And then when you read the fact checkers full of holes, full of discrepancies, you know, just not interested. And the fact checkers were people on the right, not people on the left. Michael asks, what is your motivation for regulating low income housing out of existence in these big blue cities? Partially to keep poor people out, you know, not in my backyard, partially because there's this notion of the philosopher king and people shouldn't live without a bathroom for every bedroom. People shouldn't be able to do, that's not right for people to only have one bathroom for four bedrooms. That's not right. I grew up like that, six people in a house with one bathroom, one toilet, one shower, one bathtub. We survived six people, but that's not acceptable to the elites, to the philosopher kings who think, oh no, and then they don't think, because they don't think that, oh, but if we actually have one bathroom per bedroom, it'll be too expensive. That never crosses their mind because they're not, they're detached from reality, they're detached from this world. Well, then let the government build it and let them build it cheap and we'll subsidize it. But that screws up everything as well, right? So they're not connected to the real world. Liam asks, is there anything in objective as metaphysics epistemology that would rule out a future perpetual motion device or is it only in physics? I don't know. I think it's probably only in physics, sounds weird physics and metaphysics. I don't think so other than the basic laws of physics and some of the basic laws of physics, a borderline metaphysical, but that's the best I can do with it. So no, I don't think it's a philosophical issue, I think it's a scientific issue. James Taylor, have you seen Jordan Peterson's quoting Iron Rand repeatedly on his Facebook? No, I haven't. That's pretty cool if he's doing that. Again, I don't think he's exactly an adherent and he said some pretty negative things about Iron Rand's philosophy, but if he's quoting Iron Rand, good for him, it'll get the word out there. Publicity is a good thing. Publicity is a good thing. Thanks, James. Jason, shouldn't transgender's lead the way in forming their own leagues and events and let everyone compete in sports regardless of gender in areas where men, women do not currently complete? I mean, yeah, I think transgender should form their own league, absolutely. They certainly shouldn't participate in the league opposite from the gender they were born with and they still mostly have. So absolutely, the whole idea of a man who transitions to a woman and then competes with women is shocking, disgusting, horrific and unfair and just wrong in every dimension. So actually, this is a sports question. I didn't realize that, Jason. If transgender wanna compete in sport, they should compete with other transgenders. And I don't think women in men should compete against each other because in sport, because sport is a physical activity. I think John McEnroe said, as good as Serena Williams ever was, she would rank 100th in the men rankings. Now, whether that's exactly right or not, I don't know, but that's huge, but that's big. So why deny us the ability to see women compete just because we've decided they have to compete against men. So I'd like to see men league leagues and women's leagues and if transgenders wanna have a league, let them form a league. Then that one equal pay, just like the women's soccer, just got equal pay with men's soccer, which also has a travesty topic for another time. Okay, Michael asked, will the new Tesla smartphone be better than the iPhone? You think you'll get one? No, no, no, no, nothing is gonna be better than the iPhone. Look, when it comes to iPhones, I am a bit of a, you know, I don't know, fanboy. It would take a lot to break me out of the ecosystem because it's not just the iPhone. It's connected to my computers and it's connected to my Apple TV and it's connected to my headphones and it's just a whole, I bought into the entire ecosystem. If the phone would have to be dramatically better for me to, dramatically better, for me to actually leave the iPhone. Cook asks, what do you think about all these European immigrants coming to the NBA to take good paying jobs of American athletes? I mean, it's actually worse than that. The African immigrants coming to the NBA, taking jobs from good American paying jobs. Yeah, I mean, horrible, isn't it? Europeans, Africans, next we'll get Asians. You know, where's the end of it? What's the end of it? You know, and these are good, really good paying American jobs. Yes, we're being sarcastic. I love it. Free trade, free movement of human beings. Let the talent wing out, win out. Yes, they have been good Asian players in the NBA. I know, I know. Just not that many. Michael asks, Michael asks, did you see Objectivist Dan Norton debate Econboy? No, I haven't seen it. Econboy is thoroughly dishonest. I'm not, it doesn't shock me, but I did not see Dan debate him. Cook says, Objectivist alike, can't. I'm not sure I get it. Okay, by the way, was $70 short of our goal of 650? $70, $70, $70, we can make it. Catherine, where are you? $70, you should be able to get somebody to jump in. All right, let's see. Frank, is it true that President Nixon imposed a 90 day freeze on wages and prices in order to count inflation? Yes, absolutely true. 1973, can you talk about this? Of course it didn't work. How can it work? God, Iron Man wrote a brilliant, a series of brilliant essays on this. Of course it didn't work. It was a disaster. It only distorted, perverted, created more shortages, distorted in the entire supply chain, made everything worse in the economy. And this is President Nixon, a Republican. And it was an unbelievable disaster. You know, it would take me a long time to go walk you through it. And I'd have to do a little bit of research to remind myself of the exact dates and what inflation was and what inflation was a little bit afterwards. But so, you know, I'll do it some show. I'll dedicate to that. I covered it a little. Yeah, I don't think I've ever covered that. Yeah, let me put it aside and dedicate one of my more economic shows to it. John, thank you. John has done half of it, so won't he show $35? Somebody jump in with $35 and we've made it. I've got two questions. One of them I'm Googling because I embarrassingly have forgotten the name of the restaurant. Okay, so Catherine asks, oops, Catherine asks, what's the name of Jeff's restaurant in New York City? It's Rosela, R-O-S-E-L-L-A. R-O-S-E-L-L-A and the website is Rosela-N-Y-C dot com. Highly recommended, excellent food, objective as chef, get the chef's table where you sit in front of the chef, you can chat with him and he just feeds you whatever he thinks is good that day. Wonderful, just a wonderful, wonderful experience. I'm looking forward to being back in New York and going to the restaurant again. Yeah, looking forward to it. Canthus says, what's your favorite Michelin star restaurants? God, this one's hard. This one is hard. I've been to so many good ones. I can tell you my favorite American Michelin star restaurant. My favorite restaurant in the United States of America is in Chicago, it's called Alinea and it is just a spectacular, fun, super expensive, maybe one of the most expensive places ever anyway. Restaurant experience that you'll ever have, it's amazing and it's in Chicago, Alinea. I don't have really restaurant recommendations for Washington D.C., although Washington D.C. is a base for one of my favorite chefs, although I haven't been to as many of his restaurants in D.C. and that's Jose Andre has a lot of restaurants in Washington D.C. What is it in the world, my favorite, God? Maybe Azamundi outside of San Sebastian in Spain. Or just recently I ate this Fatu in Barcelona, which was amazing. Only two stars, not three, like Azamundi, but amazing food. Azamundi was amazing. I'm trying to think of other. Yeah, I mean those are the ones that just jump out at me as favorite all time kind of restaurants in the world. I've had some great meals in Paris, but I still think the best Michelin star restaurants in the world are actually in Spain, in Spain. I've had amazing, amazing, best meals in my life have been in Spain. I've not been to Benu yet. Benu's in San Francisco, I think. I've not done the San Francisco food scene, unfortunately. Ooh, I was supposed to start that, the food Michelin just answered that, answered. Shazbot with $20, so we're only short 15 guys. One $15 question if we made a goal. Shazbot asked, what did you think of the transport accident scene from Star Trek movie? Did it give you second thoughts about trying it when you get invented? Yes, definitely. I mean, have you been trying to explain why philosophically, metaphysically, the whole idea of a transporter is impossible and that's what has given me second thoughts about it, but it's still my favorite invention of all time if it was possible and if it was safe. But yes, the transporter gets wrong and because the transporter, what it does is, it doesn't, see, I don't understand why it can't reconstruct your molecules. I mean, it doesn't have a backup copy of all your molecules. So I don't get the science, right? Because why can't it have a backup copy and then still recreate you in the original place? Because you're not actually transporting my molecules over there. You're recreating my molecules over there. So why can't you recreate my molecules anyway? Can you transport more than one of me? Can there be multiple me's running around the universe? Yeah, probably not. So what does it actually mean to transport somebody? I don't know. So okay, Shazba, now I'm even more confused about start your technology than I was before. All right, guys, thank you, Shazba. Thank you for the $250. Thank you, everybody who participated in the super chat. We are $15 short. So Catherine is gonna cry herself to sleep tonight. She's not gonna be happy, but we came close and we did beat a previous goal. So we were over 600. We just couldn't quite make it to 650. But we did great last show. So what was it yesterday? So I think we're okay on average. We're still averaging over 650. I don't know if I'm gonna do a show tomorrow. I might be going on a road trip here in Puerto Rico. We'll see if I get back in time. So Dave just says Jeff's restaurant is awesome and gave $20 so Catherine can go to sleep tonight. So Catherine, you basically owe Dave. He saved you, saved you. All right, I'm not sure about tomorrow, not sure about Monday. Suddenly Tuesday and Thursday we'll have shows. We will have either show tomorrow or Mondays. If no show tomorrow, then I'll try to do one on Monday. Thanks everybody, thanks for the support. If you're not live and you still wanna support the Iran Book Show, the way to do it is on iranbrookshow.com slash support on Patreon and subscribe star. You can set up a monthly payment scheme thing and we incredibly value it here on the show. I incredibly value it here on the show. I hate when people talk in third person. But no, there's a team here, they get paid. I pay them salaries, so we have to pay them. So they also value it when you contribute more money because then I have more money to pay them. Thank you Catherine, thank you very much Super Chatters. I will see you all soon and if you want to get me to review a TV show, it's 250, a movie 500. Happy to do it, bye everybody.