 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 Thursday, April 18th. Look forward to another news roundup. And we're also going to talk about World War III we visited. And, yep, hopefully you guys enjoy the show. Don't forget, you can ask questions. You can use the super chat. You can support the show using a sticker any way you want. All right, a few stories just in terms of just continuing stories and updates. First one is about these anti-Israel protests that are going on really all over the country. We heard about the closing of bridges and airports and a blocking of access to airports and just generally making life hell for people in the name of, I guess, in the name of celebrating Hamas and its murderous activities and a murderous regime. But so in addition to that, we've had now yesterday, I guess, we had a group of Google employees occupied the office of Google Cloud CEO, Thomas Kurian. They locked themselves in the office. And the goal, of course, is to end the so-called genocide in Gaza. These activities are really going to succeed in ending the war in Gaza. There's no question about that. So they got a lot of attention, which is ultimately what they want. They got a lot of press, which is ultimately what they want. And there were a number of dozens of Google employees that in one way or another, a few hours after they occupied the office, they were cleared out by police. And they this morning were fired. So 28 Google employees today were fired for participating in this publicity stunt in Google. So while Google is clearly on the walk bandwagon, or at least its artificial intelligence is on the bandwagon, they are limits and occupying offices of senior management will get you fired, even unbelievable at Google. So good for Google for firing them. That's good riddance. Another similar story is happening, I think, as we speak. Yeah, as we speak at Columbia University, Columbia University, dozens of students have encamped outside of, in the grounds of Columbia University. You can find pictures of this online. They've got tents. They're camping out. They're sitting there. They're striking. They're disrupting classes. They're disrupting the ability to engage in activity there. All in the name, of course, of supporting a motorist rape culture that is Hamas. And they have been there for a while. Yesterday, I guess, the president of Columbia was in front of Congress. She did better than MIT and Harvard, but only marginally. At the end of the day, she was shown to be as ridiculous in terms of, if you remember, the MIT and Harvard a few months ago. Anyway, today, finally, police were called in to evacuate these protesters. They were all being piled into, I guess, school buses or police buses and driven away. And at least three of them have been, three students have been suspended, not clear why they haven't suspended everybody. The administration had said that anybody who was still protesting outside there by 11 o'clock yesterday morning would be suspended. It took them an extra day to actually clear them. And so far, at least, only three of the students have been suspended. Columbia University is where students were chanting death to Jews out. But the president of the university comforted us that not to worry those chants, don't worry those chants are not anti-Semitic, just because they want death to Jews does not mean they're anti-Semitic. So this has nothing to do with the anti-Semitism. I'm relieved. So that is going out of Columbia. And we will see what the repercussions of this. By the way, one of the people who has been suspended is Ilhan Omar's daughter, Isara Hirsi, who's been suspended for Bernard College for her involvement in the anti-Israel. I don't like to call it anti-Israel protests. They're not anti-Israel. These people are pro-Hamas. This is a pro-Hamas, pro-Hamas activists. Just one other story on this front before we get to the biggest story, which I'll get to in a minute. And that is that there was a vote today in the House of Representatives, basically condemning Iran's attack on Israel and expressing support for Israel. It was voted 404 to 14 in favor of condemning Iran and supporting Israel. The 14 constituted 13 Democrats, most of those of the squad, the famous squad, so 13 anti-Israeli Democrats. And one Republican, anybody want to guess which Republican voted against a House statement that doesn't bind the House for anything, doesn't involve money, doesn't involve anything other than kind of moral support. And that is, of course, Congressman Massey, Thomas Massey, Republican from Kentucky, who cannot even bring himself to vote in favor of Israel after the attack on Thursday. So they have it. Even among Republicans are those who are rapidly anti-Israel. All right, I guess the bigger story here, I think, both politically and in terms of what's going to happen. Scott is, of course, jumping to Massey's defense. Don't worry, Iran. Massey is just a libertarian. He hates Israel. But I swear to you, there's nothing against Jews. He has some of his best friends at Jewish. So Massey, don't worry about that. Did anybody call Massey an anti-Semite? No, just an unprincipled scumbag who has a horrible, disgusting foreign policy, just like many libertarians, many, many libertarians, who have a horrible, disgusting foreign policy. So that is Massey. But it's funny how people like Scott just jump. Oh, I've got to support Massey. OK, he's not an anti-Semite. I got you. He's not an anti-Semite. So be aware of those who would create alliances among people who clearly do not have their values aligned. The biggest story here is a story about, I think, the Democratic Party and the unraveling, if you will, of at least some of the supporters of the Democratic Party. There is a real challenge for the Democrats now what to do about Israel. And you see this in some of Biden's. But it's much more than that. It's got to do with a whole direction. The Democratic Party wants to go. You're seeing all these demonstrations in all these cities. Of course, just a few years ago, these demonstrations turned into riots or a BLM. The far left of the Republican Party is pretty crazy and pretty violent and, as no respect, for property rights. And is quite dangerous. And is a real challenge for, I'd say, mainstream Democrats, because these people won't vote for mainstream Democrats. That's one. They distract from the agenda of mainstream Democrats. And of course, they make the Democratic Party seem so nutty that nobody wants to vote for them. So in that sense, they help and assist. They hope and assist the Republicans. The big challenge that Democrats are going to face is their convention. The Democratic Convention this year is going to be in the city of Chicago. Democrats have a history with conventions, Chicago, and the far left. In 1968, the Democratic Convention in Chicago was a violent, horrible, crazy place where more than 600 people were arrested in just one street battle. All this battling violence, disarray, was broadcast all over the world. It made the Democrats look weak, pathetic, and extreme left. And it, of course, I think helped Richard Nixon go on to win that election later on in 1968 versus a moderate Democrat, Herbert Humphries, I think it was. And the same thing I think could very well happen this year. This year again, the convention is in Chicago. Just a few days ago, there was a meeting held at the local headquarters of the Teamsters Union. It comprised of 450 far left activists. And the basic premise of the meeting, the purpose of the meeting, was to strategize about disrupting the convention, marching in the streets, creating as much havoc and destruction as possible. The day was focused on training. These are considered the leaders in what can the police do and what the police can't do. What are their, quote, rights as demonstrators? What can they get away with? A lawyer from the National Lawyers Guild, a nonprofit, was there to tell them, and I'm quoting, I'm not here to tell you what the law is. I'm here to tell you what you can get away with. There was, broadly, I think everybody is anticipating a lot of mayhem during the Democratic Convention. I think it's in August, August 2, maybe, in Chicago. It's going to be hot. It's going to be humid. And it's going to be tense. It's going to be unbelievably tense with demonstrations, riots, and not clear how much the city and the state are going to mobilize to shut this down. Remember, the city and the state are controlled by Democrats. The city is controlled by people in the far left of the Democratic Party. It's not clear at all how far the city is willing to go in order to shut these demonstrators down, and in order to allow the convention to continue in a peacefully. So this is going to be a disaster for Democrats. And this is very close to the election. It's August 2. The election is three months later. People will remember what our TVs are filled with, scenes of really rabid, crazy, far-left people advocating for the craziest ideas of the fringe left of the Democratic Party. It's going to be very hard for somebody like Biden to distance himself from that. And at the same time, courts, the votes of young people who, to a large extent, agree with these people. Those demonstrators at Google and demonstrators at Columbia, Biden needs them to vote for him. So I think Democrats have a problem. They have a lot going for them this election. They're running against Trump. That's a good thing for them. And they have abortion, which is a huge issue which people care about, and they might vote Democratic over it. But on the other hand, they're also going to motivate the people not to vote for them because of how wacky they are. Now, you would have expected that effect with BLM. And indeed, I think that happened. It's why Donald Trump got a record number of votes. It's just that people were so sick and tired of Donald Trump that Biden got even greater number of votes. But it was, if you remember, that was an election, a massive voter participation. This time, how this plays out, people have forgotten how bad Donald Trump is. People very much will, this behavior of the Democrats will be right in their face. Anyway, that's where we are in terms of all these crazy demonstrations out there. This is an ongoing story. It will continue. And I will keep you updated. All right, another story I want to update you from yesterday. And that was the NPR story. As I said, I think yesterday, the reporter for NPR has resigned. After he was suspended, he resigned. He never intended to resign. But ultimately, when he saw the lack of support within NPR itself and really the wackiness of the new CEO of NPR, he decided to resign. More stories now are coming out on how indeed wacky Catherine Mayer, who's the new CEO, just a month old, new CEO of NPR really is. Here's a quote from her from Oxford Union Society in 2008. Sorry, 2018. She says, quote, tech products and the global problems they seek to solve are more often than not based on those in the rooms making the decisions. And we know that the majority of those in the room default to predominantly people of the Western world, predominantly male and mostly white. It turns out that she is very anti-tech, shockingly anti-big tech. She considers, quote, the rise of tech empires threatens society. And even though she thinks tech products themselves are not the problem, she thinks and she loves using them, she says. She worries about the fact that it's, as we said, predominantly male and predominantly white and therefore does not address the real needs of real people. For example, voice recognition software that struggles with accents of non-native English speakers. Oh my god, that is the end of civilization. Or she's worried about the allocation of bioengineering research, the wealthier, wider research subjects rather than darker-skinned subjects. So this is a woman of the far left without any question. She hates big tech. She would like to see it destroyed. She would like to see it broken up, just like the Biden administration would. She has gone after Elon Musk buying Twitter. She tweeted at the time, quote, a white man haphazardly strip mining an app built and popularized by people of color and activists. I didn't know that. I didn't know that Twitter was an app that was built and popularized by people of color and activists. I'm trying to think back on who the senior people at Twitter were, who the founders were. Anyway, she's called VC from Founders Fund. That's the founders fund is the fund of Peter Teal. She's called them the equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan. I mean, this is a woman who is of the far left. I mean, she has every right to say what she wants to say. She has free speech right, like everybody else. But should this woman be running a premier news organization? Should this woman be running a news organization that claims to be fair and balanced or is that Fox? But you know what I mean? Should she be running a news organization that gets money from the federal government? I think the answer to that is clearly no. I mean, it's one thing for her to be running MSNBC or some crazy left broadcasting station. And if NPR wants to acknowledge and admit and recognize and just embrace that they are that and is willing to stop accepting any money from the government, then so be it. Then maybe it's appropriate for her to be running NPR. But as long as NPR pretends and publicly advocates for the idea that they are somehow balanced, that they are somehow fair, that they are somehow doing, quote, journalism, then this woman should not be the CEO and she should be fired. It's going to be interesting to see. I mean, these revelations are coming out very quickly, fast and quick, the way she's talked about different issues, the way she's talked about different parts of the political spectrum. And there could be some pressure, even from the tech community, even from the relatively leftist tech community, to get rid of her. One can assume that a lot of that tech community listens to NPR in California. They might not want her to be around. Last March, she posted that tech companies mandating employees return to the offices, represents their, quote, barely concealed desire of cranky white dude CEOs to return to pre-organized labor levels of exploitation. This is because they asked employees to come back to the offices. This woman is nuts. She should not be anywhere near a news organization. She should certainly not be anywhere near a news organization that's funded by yours-in-mind tax money and certainly not in an organization that is, at least, pretends to be balanced in any kind of way, or journalistic in any kind of way. So hopefully, again, she will actually be fired for her tweets and all the power to those who are bringing this to the forefront. By the way, that was an article from PivotWire. Another, by the way, interesting development. I talked yesterday, I think, about journalism and about free press and the dispatch of PivotWire is another one. It's basically focused on tech, but not exclusively tech, but mostly on tech. And as such, it is clearly right of center, center right. It is often I don't agree with them. For example, they're at the forefront of arguing for banning TikTok. It is, I think, coming out of people at Founders Fund. So it has some relationship to Peter Thiel, although I don't know if it has direct relationship to him. And it is, in many cases, they are doing real investigative journalism. They're going and digging. They've done some excellent, excellent pieces on San Francisco, on excellent pieces on homelessness in San Francisco. They are kind of a right of center, journalistic and commentary institution that is building, primarily focused on tech and Silicon Valley issues and programs. So again, very successful. This is great. This is the kind of alternative journalism that we need. We need more of this. We need more variety of it. We need people to break away from the dominant journalism. For example, journalism in Silicon Valley is dominated by organizations like Wired, which has proven itself to be just a crazy nutty left wing, again, kind of the radical left. And anti-tech, even though they live inside of Silicon Valley and they report on Silicon Valley, it turns out that they are predominantly anti-tech. So here's an alternative to Wired. It's called Pirate's Wired. You can find it online. I would subscribe. I am a subscriber. You should subscribe if you're interested in news coming out of Silicon Valley. All right, talk about Silicon Valley. And we're just running through the various news stories of the day for now. And then I will take some of your questions. And then we will focus on one story, which has to do with an op-ed that I read at the Telegraph, which I think is excellent. I'll read you portions of it. Pirate wires. Pirate wires is excellent. Yes. If you're interested, again, interested in Silicon Valley based news. AI. So we've talked a lot about AI. You've probably read a lot about AI. You've heard about the scheme on Greek, also about the upside potential. The massive investment around AI. And the United States, in terms of the amount of capital being deployed, at least in the private sector, into AI is blowing away the rest of the world. Nobody in the world comes even close. Not what do you say, not China and not Europe. Nobody's coming even close to the amount of capital, at least in the private sector, that the United States is pouring into AI. So AI is exploding. Microsoft is building these massive data centers as is Google. As are the companies, Apple is investing heavily in AI and will ultimately be investing in an Apple Cloud. Amazon has to upgrade its entire Amazon Cloud services, I think, in terms of being able to deal with a future that is AI dominant. And that means massive new data centers with much hungrier computers, much more powerful computers running AI chips, which means massive amounts of energy. Massive amounts of energy. So by one estimate, by 2030, the world's data centers will consume more electricity in a day than India does, than India. India is the largest population on planet Earth. It's more people than anywhere else. I don't know if that's a really good comparison, because India is electrified, but I don't know how many of those populations all use massive quantities of electrical equipment. But just to give you a scale, this is massive. And of course, where is this electricity going to come from? It's as if electricity just drops from heaven as mana. I guess they consider solar electricity to be mana from heaven or mana from the sun. But where is this electricity going to come from? That is the big question now. Of course, this is just one new use of electricity. What about all electricity being used for electric cars? Where are we going to get this? From windmills, from solar panels? And how are we going to transmit this? Do you see a big increase in transmission lines all over the United States and the rest of the world? And there was a certain, I don't know, detachment from reality. And all this, while the Biden administration and other governments around the world are pushing for restrictions on CO2 and restrictions on fossil fuels. I mean, the only way to meet this kind of demand for energy is through more use of natural gas and by not reducing the use of CO2, and indeed maybe increasing CO2 for a while. I mean, ultimately, and I've seen Microsoft, for example, talk about this, what they would like is to have nuclear power plants, small modular nuclear power plants sitting next to the data centers to provide them with electricity. They don't have to build expensive power lines, but they can just put a small nuclear power plant right next to it. But those are, I don't know. I know it's only 2024, but by 2030, nobody's approved them. Nobody's built one successfully yet. They haven't produced electricity successfully. And again, not being approved yet, you would have to have a building boom to build these kind of things. And we can't build anything in this country. Maybe China can do it. I'm not sure we can. So where's the electricity going to come from? Now, again, nuclear is the solution. Now, fusion, yeah, I mean, that would be great. But nobody thinks that that is going to be a viable energy source on scale in the next 15 years. So I don't know. They're going to run these servers with little fly wheels with mice running on them, spinning around, something like that. I have no idea. So this is a big issue. It's a big challenge. It's a big problem. I don't think anybody knows exactly how to solve this. The big companies are running to build these installations. But just like the world is rushing somehow to try to force people to embrace electric cars. And yet nobody is talking about the real big issue which is where is the electricity going to come from? As we're shutting down nuclear power plants in places like Germany and even the United States, and as we are demonizing natural gas power plants that are super cheap and relatively easy to build, it's going to be interesting to see what happens. I mean, I don't think you can run one of these big data centers like Amazon and Microsoft and Google are planning with a diesel generator. Now, of course, everything we've got. You've got Intel, you've got advanced micro devices. There's a massive investment in AI which is going to result in huge demand for electricity across the country, all over the place, by a number of big companies. All right, talk about AI and talk about computers and that world, if we will. We're going to be talking about national security threats later in the show today. But it might be right now, it might be that the biggest vulnerability the United States and the West have, the biggest national security threat that we actually face. And again, I don't know enough about this. I'd love to get somebody from the NSA on to talk about this. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, but I would. Nobody's going to come on, though. The biggest national security threat the United States faces, probably in the West faces, is the risk of a cyber attack on a significant infrastructure in the US. We talked about a few months ago on the fact that Microsoft discovered the deep inside much of its software lay kind of a dormant, ready to be ignited piece of malware from the Chinese that this is software that is used by pretty much everybody. This was software that was used by infrastructure companies and by the military. And it sits everywhere. And this malware could have basically crippled much of the American infrastructure. They found it, they've cleaned it out, but this was implanted there pretty surely by the Chinese. Was seeing massive efforts from Russia. For example, in January, there was a hack in Texas into a water company where the water tower was just overflowing. And basically what was happening was that somebody remotely was turning on and off switches and on and off the water, where it was going, what it was doing. And it turned out that this was likely a Russian hack by the Cyber Army of Russia Reborn, C-A-R-O. And there is a lot of fear right now that Russian hackers have hacked into a number of water companies in the United States. And imagine them shutting down your water. And how quickly is it possible for us to get these things back up is not completely clear. Right now, we're seeing a operation, so a group again of Russian hackers, but again, this is happening in China as well, that is functioning on a global scale. First of all, 2024 has more people voting in it than any year in human history. We have the Indian election, the American election, and then a bunch of other elections, including the European Parliament. These hackers have these elections in their eyesight. They would love to be able to disrupt these elections across the world or maybe throw the elections in a particular way, although we will see. There is a group called Sandworm, which is this Russian group, is a Russian Federation-backed threat group that has units, part of the GRU basically, that are constantly trying to hack and disrupt and interfere and create havoc inside American and Western infrastructure elections and anything they can get their hands on, including, of course, the defense and other government agencies. We had the big hack of government agencies by the Chinese a few years ago. This is ongoing, and this is like a cold war going on in the background. And I assume, but I don't know, that the United States is doing the same thing to them. But I don't know that, and of course, they would never report it because authoritarian regimes never tell you about it. But I hope they are. I hope that there's a mutually assured destruction kind of capability that if they shut down our water, we shut down their electricity. If they hack our computers, we basically blow up their computers, but all through a program, through malware, I don't know that that's the case, but I certainly hope that's the case. And it could be that our next war, the next world war, is determined by this, by computer programmers and who is better at hacking, who is better at disrupting the infrastructure, the information flow, the telecommunications of the other side. Microsoft is at the forefront of cybersecurity. It is the largest cybersecurity company in the world. It is a huge chunk of their business. And this is the difference between the United States and many of these other countries that in the United States much of the cybersecurity is in the private sector. It does use the smartest and best resources the private sector has. The NSA, of course, does it at a governmental level, but the United States has huge private sector resources to handle this. And this is why I'm hopeful that, A, we discover and dismantle threats faster than anybody else. And then I hope the NSA has, was it a retaliatory ability basically to go after our enemies if they attack us in this way. But that is, again, I don't know. So yeah, I mean, let's hope that Microsoft and the many, many, many other private cybersecurity companies, and there were a lot of startups, and there were a lot of new investment going on. Let's hope that they are doing the job and will protect us when the time comes because imagine water electricity just shutting down, just shutting off. Pretty scary, pretty scary. And then, of course, a lot of that will be determined by AI, both in a protective side and on the aggressive side. And then the question is, who has the better AI is going to be a huge defense? All right, so we talked a little bit about, oh, I have a lot of stories today, but that's good. We've got a lot of time. These shows are getting longer, so we have plenty of time to talk about lots of stuff, anything you guys want to talk about. And so yeah, keep it up, keep asking questions, keep using the super chat. We will address everything and yeah, stickers, super chat, any way you want to support the show, please consider doing it. All right, we talked about the wacky left. Let's talk a little bit about the wacky right, just a little bit, right? And maybe you don't consider these wacky, some of you probably don't, but Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, a leader among Republican House members and somebody who is becoming more and more and more, I don't know, significant within the Republican Party, shockingly, shockingly. Anyway, Marjorie Taylor Green is offering an amendment to the defense budget, the budgets that are going through I told you last time, we've got four of these. One is Israel, one is Ukraine, one is Taiwan, and one is a kind of a catch-all with banning TikTok and a bunch of other things. Anyway, she's proposing an amendment to these that basically, basically allocates money. Allocates money for the development of super laser technology, for deployment on the Southern border. I mean, what do you do about this, right? On the Southern border, so the idea is we need lasers, satellite-based lasers that can, I guess, kill? You know, incinerate? Anybody who crosses the border, maybe? Is that what we're using this? This is Marjorie Green on Twitter. Israel has some of the best unmanned defensive systems in the world. I previously voted to fund space lasers for Israel's defense. America needs to take our national security seriously and deserves the same type of defense for our border that Israel has and proudly uses. This is the language of the amendment. At the end of the bill, before the short title, insert the following one, section so-so, by the funds made available by this act, such sums as necessary shall be used for the development of space laser technology on the Southern border. As far as I know, this is not like what make fun of Marjorie Taylor Green Twitter account, but maybe I'm wrong, maybe this is all in jest. Space lasers, that's what we need. American security is dependent on killing as many of those invaders on the Southern border as possible because that, we all know, is the real national security threat, not China, not Russia, not Iran, not North Korea, but poor immigrants trying to get into the United States from a Southern border, we need to deploy space lasers in order to stop them. This is the level of intelligence of the right part of the Republican Party. A little scary. I mean, we talked about the far left of the Democratic Party, here we are. Oh, I just, you just don't think Marjorie Taylor Green is just the only wacko, although this is not wackiness, this is just plain bad philosophy and this is not outside the mainstream. This is mainstream Republicans. There's a big story in Compact Magazine, Compact Magazine, which is a right wing magazine. Josh Hawley's Libre Revolution. Josh Hawley, Senator, I think from Missouri. Republican Senator from Missouri is, I think, together with J.D. Vance, the future of the Republican Party. Anyway, Josh Hawley has now put himself out there as the number one supporter of the Teamsters Union. He is out there trying to demonstrate against American businesses, against cost-effective measures that might reduce labor. And so, for example, you know, so the Teamsters Union this month, a showered Hawley with praise, he is a sole Republican to uphold the national labor relations board determination that Amazon amounts to a joint employer in the case of its delivery drivers. So, given the degree of control and surveillance the mega retailer exerts over their work, which means that, you know, Amazon needs to pay up, there's just one in previous month, the Teamsters thanked Hawley for joining striking gray bar electric workers on the picket line. And, of course, the Teamsters lauded Hawley for proposing to slap 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles. How dare we bring in cheap electric vehicles from China? Chinese electric vehicles, 100% tariff, which is a threat characterized by their lines for American manufacturing as a potential extinction level event for U.S. auto industries and jobs. Extinction level event, I love that. What happened to creative destruction? What happened to that shuntetro idea of creative destruction where, yeah, I mean, U.S. auto industry can't compete out of business? Anyway, Hawley's measure is supposed to deter Chinese automakers from even trying to evade U.S. trade law and come into the United States. We don't want them. Anyway, Josh Hawley, like his friend JD Vance, but Josh Hawley seems to be focused more on the labor issue with JD Vance and other issues. This is the left wing of the Republican Party. This is the, you know, who votes for Republican these days? It's the working class. We need a working class program for the Republican Party and that entails protectionism and that entails strong unions and that entails maybe even restrictions on CEO salaries. So one of the things that Hawley has talked about that is really horrible in regard to the fact that the top five executives of Coors, this is the beer company, the beer companies that hasn't yet pissed off conservatives, the Coors company make the same amount as 420 striking workers at a Fort Worth plant. And Josh Hawley, when referring to this, tweeted shame on Coors. So maybe down the road, it will be at JD Vance, JD Vance, Josh Hawley, Elizabeth Juan Bill to cap CEO pay at a certain multiple of employee pay. I would not put this beyond them. So again, differences, differences between Democrats and conservatives eroding quickly, quickly being eroding. All right, some good news. At least I consider this good news as I told you before. Sometimes I'm not sure you guys like good news but some of you don't like good news. Anyway, this one is really cool. Boston Dynamics is a company in Boston, I think in the suburbs of Boston, which has been building robots for a long, long time and they build robots for manufacturing and build robots for other companies. This is an incredibly successful company and they have been working on a humanoid robot for quite a while. The humanoid robot called, what would a humanoid robot be called? What would be the appropriate name for humanoid? Humanoid is human-like robot. Well, the most appropriate name for a robot like that is Atlas, because these robots are gonna hold the world up. So it's called Atlas, it's not at Alice, it's not Dave, it's not data, it's Atlas. And anyway, they have this hydraulically powered Atlas that they were using, it was quite amazing, it was incredibly versatile, very strong. You know, it has two arms, two legs, a face, kind of. And not a face, but it's kind of a round, so-called of light kind of thing. Anyway, they have retired the hydraulic Atlas, they retired him yesterday. And today, this morning, they introduced a new version of Atlas. This version of Atlas is all electric, as everything seems to be these days, all electric powered by batteries and electric cuitors. I don't even know what a cuitor is. No more messy hydraulics. Anyway, this Atlas far exceeds the performance of old Atlas dramatically, both in terms of strength and what is really interesting, flexibility. Indeed, this Atlas is stronger and more flexible than a human being. It can move in ways humans cannot move, it can do stuff with its arms, its legs, its body, that human beings cannot do, it can reach those really high shelves that you probably can't. It is an amazing robot. And what is interesting about this robot is it's the first time, the first time that Boston Dynamics has called a humanoid robot a product. So this Atlas is being built for sale. This Atlas is being built as a product, product for you, us, maybe industry, maybe your waiter in the future will be an Atlas robot. You can certainly, he's not gonna spill, he's not gonna drop the tray, no way. Is that tray gonna drop? Connect it to your arm with some kind of magnet. And it's, I mean, just imagine. Now, they're probably a little expensive for use as waiters at this point, but that is only an issue of time. We know that as you kind of just scale kick in as they build hundreds of these, thousands of these, hundreds of thousands, millions of these, the world is gonna be inundated with humanoid Atlas robots. Just as this is from, I guess, the press release, the electric version of Atlas will be stronger with a broad range of motion than any of our previous generations. For example, our last generation hydraulic Atlas could already lift and maneuver a wide variety of heavy irregular object. We are continuing to build on those existing capabilities and exploring several new gripper variations to meet a diverse set of expected manipulation needs in customer environment. So I would say don't worry, Amazon, about unionizing the, what do you call it, the massive warehouses, because soon, they're not gonna be any employees in those massive warehouses. It's already roboticized to a large degree, but now with humanoid robots, you can replace the humans as well. So all those teamsters who are, I don't know, driving and loading and doing manual labor, very soon manual labor will be a thing of the past for human beings. And I know people are bemoaning this. I know there are people out there, I mean sure JD Vance and Josh Holy will be really, really, really sad about this and they will try to pass laws in Congress to stop this, to stop progress. They will be joined by many of their democratic friends. Let's hope they're not by too many so that this is not an agenda of the passes. But I, for one, am super excited about humanoid robots. I want one and it actually doesn't need to be humanoid. Doesn't need to look like a human beings. But anyway, it's pretty cool. And I'm looking forward to seeing more of how they actually work and how they function in the real world and real world applications. All right, one other positive story. There you go. We got positive stories on the Iran book show. Not just the negative news. I do do the new negative news, but not just the negative news. This one is a political positive story. And you probably saw this video so I'm a little late in talking about this. I recognize that. I know that a lot of you have already seen this. This is the UFC champion, Renato Mosiano from Brazil who made this crazy statement to the audience, I guess after he won the fight and urged people, urged people of all things to read Ludwig von Mises and to read kind of the Austrian, you know, six principles of Austrian economics. And this is what was gonna save the world. And he did this in front of this massive crowd and he threw in a few swear words, which I'm not gonna repeat in between. So this was made in a very, what you would consider a UFC manner, right? So the mother, whatever, read von Mises. Ludwig von Mises, right? He's Brazilian. Now, this is the Brazil that he grew up in is the Brazil which I remember going to, seeing large demonstrations of young people with t-shirts saying less marks, more Mises. Less marks, more Mises. He kept screaming private property. I mean, this guy's probably done more to make Mises a common name out there than anybody in all of history. So, let's hope, I don't think he was inspired by me late. I think he's inspired by the very active Mises Institute Brazil unrelated to the Mises Institute US. By the way, the Mises Institute Brazil publishes Ayn Rand's books in Portuguese and I have a good relationship with them. And so not to be confused by the Mises Institute US but the Mises Institute Brazil. And just a huge activism of free markets. I've told you many times about how in Brazil, Ayn Rand is very popular. Ayn Rand has been very popular, fountain it, at least shrugged itself very well. How Mises has been popular, less marks, more Mises. And yeah, Moissanos has now gone out there. Now, I guess he's got a podcast and he's giving economics lessons on his podcast. All inspired by Ludwig von Mises, the greatest economist, the greatest economist ever. So now we've seen Millet talk about Mises. It turns out that Ney Bukele of El Salvador is also talking about Mises. Although, I wish he needs to act like it. Bukele government is not exactly a model government. And of course, Millet. So we've got, oh, and you have seen him. So we've got a bazillion UFC fighter and two heads of state citing Mises. Who knows? Again, is this the beginning of a revolution? Slow, maybe a revolution, but a revolution. Or is this the end of what people consider neoliberalism? This is the dying, dying, whatever, of free markets. I don't know. But anyway, and I was particularly excited about how the UFC fighter, they're kind of swearing the wind on in him talking about Ludwig von Mises. But I'll take it, I'll take the marketing, the video went viral, it's all over the web. That is a good thing. So I'm happy, I'm happy with that. All right, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a break from the news. And I'm gonna turn to your super chat questions, which there are quite a few of. So thank you for all of that. We still need plenty more, but this is a good start. So we're gonna start with these super chat questions and answer them, particularly the $20 and above. Then we're gonna talk about escalation in World War III, some new thoughts about that. And then we'll see how many questions you have at that point and we'll go through the questions at that point and we'll go for as long as we go, right? We'll go for as long as we go. It is a commercial break in a sense that this is the point in the program where just before I do the super chats, I'll also remind you that this is a show supported by listeners like you. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon or on PayPal through your on bookshow.com slash membership. You can do so at a dollar a month all the way up to $1,000 a month, $500 is a great sweet spot for those of you who can afford it. That would be really fantastic. I'm really looking for some people who can upgrade to $500. If we can get a few people like that and make this show completely self-sustaining, that'll be terrific. It will only be self-sustaining if we get more people at the 500 and 1,000 and 100 level, although all are welcome, of course, but those big checks make a huge difference if we can get those monthly. But then, of course, there is the super chat. You can support the show on the super chat. You can ask questions. You can just support it through a sticker. Please do so. It is an immediate reflection of the value for value relationship that we all have. I produce these shows, long shows, longer these days. And you guys show the support in the super chat and in the monthly contributions. All right. I also remind you that we have two major sponsors, the Einwand Institute, which is a sponsor of the show. And they want to remind you, you should sign up for Ocon in Anaheim, California. And you can sign up using Einwand.org slash start here. And then remind you also that another sponsor is Alex Epstein. Alex is, of course, the author of Energy Talking Points, the author of the book, First of Future, and the author of, I don't know what, the mind behind Alex AI, which is an AI trained on Alex's mind, at least what's publicly available of his mind, and that if you ask it a question on anything related to environmentalism, climate change, or energy, it gives you a reply based on Alex's data base, based on Alex's knowledge, based on Alex's framing of the issues. Huge, valuable go to Alex Epstein, Alexepstein.substack.com, Alexepstein.substack.com. All right. Let's jump in with some of the super chat questions. I do have $100 questions from Michael. Thank you, Michael. Michael is amazing. He probably spends more on the super chats than anybody else. So thank you for all the support, Michael. I don't know, are you still in Argentina? You were in Argentina at some point. I don't know if you're back from Argentina. Michael says, in the case where parents named their son Adolf Hitler, it would be a rights violation to not allow the parents to name their child this. But it is evident for social services but is it evidence for social services to move the child from the home because any parent who would name the child that is abusive? No, no, no, no, it's not. I mean, that would, again, a violation of free speech. It's a violation of the, everything about them. I mean, it's a violation of their rights. The only reason a child should be removed by social services from a home if they are physically being abused. Physically being abused. And you need the kind of proof that they're physically being abused. You need the evidence that you need to be able to see it, you need to be able, and or testimony from somebody who's seen it or doctors who've treated the child or so on. So that is the level of abuse. The state has to err on the side of the parents of right. The state has to err on the side that the parents, this is the responsibility of the parents. And again, the one area where the state always intervenes is where there is clear unequivocal initiation of force. Force, not emotional harm, not upset, but force. The state cannot intervene when it comes to emotional, psychological abuse. It is not a state's job. This is why we talk about the fact that free speech is protected. Part of the reason is that speech can be emotionally and psychologically abusive. It can hurt. It can cause people to have horrible emotions. It can be terrible. But the state only intervenes when it comes to violence, the gaining of values through violence, or just violence even if it's not for gain value. Violence of fraud, that is basically it. So sadly, no, even in cases with serious emotional, psychological abuse, the state qua state cannot and should not intervene. All right, thank you, Michael. Good question. And thank you for the $100. All right, Clark, why do Catholics have a lot more personality than Protestants? Look at Spain and Italy versus England and Germany. The people are much warmer and more expressive, and the food has more love in it. Protestantism seems much more repressive than Catholicism. I mean, that is interesting. It's interesting, although I'm not sure that's true in the United States. It seems like in the United States, the Protestants are much more emotional and expressive than the Catholics, who are much more cold and, I don't know. So I don't know if you can make a generalization here. Could it be that it has to do with climates in Europe, that people in Spain and Italy are not warm and their food is not great because they're Catholics, but because they live in warm climates, they live with an ancient culture that is a culture of trade, trade is a good thing. I wanna remind you, globalism, globalization, trading with other cultures, interacting with other people, like the Mediterranean has done forever. People who live along the Mediterranean, particularly in the northern shore, tend to be very open, and on the eastern shore, tend to be very open, tend to be very friendly, tend to have great food, tend to have food that is inspired by many, many sources because these are trade-based societies. England, Germany, relatively closed societies, historically until the 19th century, of course, 18th century where England became a mighty trade, but in terms of their origins, also cold. England is cold, Germany is cold. Cold societies breed coldness in people, coldness in people. The south is much warmer in terms of people are warmer than the north. They also own slaves not that long ago in spite of that warmness, right? So it's a tricky thing. You can't put too much into this. Because at the bottom, ultimately, Catholicism is a lot more dogmatic than Protestantism. Catholicism is a lot more supposedly based on calculated reason that is Protestantism. Protestantism is much more emotionalist than Catholicism. So that kind of plays against what you are suggesting, right? That plays against that. Against that you'd expect all else held constant that Protestants would be more emotionally open, more emotionally vibrant than Catholics. Because Catholicism is much more rooted in the Socratic, no, sorry, the Stoics, not the Stoics, not the Socratics. The Scholastics, God, the Scholastics, which is kind of dogmatic reasoning, reasoning in quotes, not real reasoning. And Protestants is much more driven by emotion. Protestantism is much more driven by a direct connection between the person and God. I mean, I think Robert says emotionalism does not equal passion. I think that's right. I think that's right. But you don't get a sense of the English being emotionalist and the Italians, no. But of course, the English are not, the English are Protestant and Italians are Catholic. So, I mean, the bottom line is, I really don't know I haven't thought about it. Now, the Protestants are, the Protestant religion to the extent that it has dogma, to the extent that it comes from Luther or from Calvin, Luther or Calvin, is really bad. I mean, really bad. It takes the worst elements of Catholicism in some senses. They take Augustine really seriously about predestination. They take Augustine really seriously about original sin. They take it really seriously about this world, nothing matters, only the afterlife matters. So they are definitely taking that kind of stuff very, very seriously. So, you know, how all that relates, I don't know. I'll have to think about it more. I mean, at some point it would be interesting to do a show about the difference between Catholics and Protestants and why, I don't know, you know, there is the whole idea that Protestant and ethic are a lot about capitalism, which is untrue. But it is, there is a truth to the fact that Protestant Protestantism, whatever, allowed for more variation of thought. And in some way opened up the world, opened up the West to, how would you say, to more diversity of thought. And ultimately to an enlightenment, ultimately to thought that rejected the very foundations of Protestantism. So there's something about shattering the monopoly that the Catholic Church, that the papacy had over religion that I think ultimately was very healthy for the development of Western thought. You know, you can see that in the history of Holland and how Holland developed and achieved what it achieved. A lot of that comes from kind of the Protestant shattering of one dogma, one consensus around religion. And of course, Holland embraced Protestantism in some ways, you know, more passionately and more seriously than many other parts of Europe. Right, clock, that was clock. Thank you, $50, that was very generous, but there's another $50 question also from clock. So let's do that. By the way, those of you who have maybe Twitter accounts or other accounts and you wanna help advertise the show and help get people to come and watch live, please tweet it, tweet that we're on live right now. Anyway, clock asked, the reason I'm voting for Biden is because I can easily see Trump turning a large segment of the right against Israel and capitalism. He is beyond the pale, unacceptable. We can survive another four years of Biden. Trump will cause damage for decades to come. I mean, I basically agree with that, although I am worried, I'm very worried, as you'll see when I talk about World War III, that either Trump or Biden will cause so much damage over the next four years that it's irreversible. We are entering a very, very, very difficult period globally. We're entering a very, very challenging period globally. And the president has, I don't think the president does much from an economic perspective. So as I've said before, I don't give presidents much blame or thumbs up for the economy one way or the other. I mean, not much, right? Long term, yes, but not in the short run, not while they're president. But in global affairs, on foreign affairs, the presidency matters a lot. And foreign affairs matters a lot, can matter a lot. It shapes much of our society, what happens vis-a-vis other countries. And I am worried that both Biden and Trump, no matter who wins, things are going to happen over the next four years that could make, it could be very irreversible and could cause huge amount of damage to the United States and to our future. So I think that has to go into the equation. If I thought that Trump would be better, maybe I'd vote for him, but I can vote for him, but maybe I would. But I'm not convinced of that. And if Trump chooses J.D. Vance as his vice president, which now rumors are suggesting he will, then he's gone all the way left-wing crazy socialist and statist on economics on top of everything else. Trump has just becomes hopeless at that point. All right, I am gonna take a two minute, two minutes, less than two minute break. I will be right back. All right, I'm back. I need one of those pages, one of those screenshots that says, on break, we'll be right back. Gone to get a snack. We chose a long. I didn't eat a big lunch. I'll learn from this. We'll figure this out. All right, let me just thank Wes, $50. Sticker, thank you. Thank you, Paul. I'm just thanking the sticker guys and gals. Those are all questions. Silvanos, thank you. And I'm sure there were some others that I missed. So thank you to everybody who's done a sticker. All right, Remo. How to respond when someone says the United States is at fault for starting the conflict with Iran because of a coup in 1953? I mean, there are two ways to respond. One, at some point, you gotta stop peeling this back, back, back, back, back. I mean, we could blame the Iranians for the Persian's invasion of Greece in 3,000 years ago for a lot of the trouble we're in. God, if the Persians had just left the Greeks alone, who knows what kind of a civilization we would have today? I mean, Greek expended so much resources on those battles with the Persians. God, you know, things are, anyway, that is one possibility. But the reality is that, you know, yes, the United States helped overthrow a democratically elected governor in 1953 and installed the Shah in its place. Then the governor in 1953 was going to move Iran in the direction of communism, in the direction of socialism, and was going to align itself with the Soviet Union. It was also in the process of nationalizing the oil, and that oil then would have been, again, aligned with the Soviet Union, which would have been a disaster. It is unclear what would have happened if that would have happened. What would have happened to Attila Khomeini or his equivalent? Can we rewrite history and project it today that the 1979 revolution doesn't happen? But it does. You could argue it wouldn't have happened if not for the 53. I'm not convinced of that. Islamic totalitarianism, radical Islam, was probably on the rise anyway. It might have evolved differently. It might not have been 79. It might have been earlier. It might have been later. The Shah, who came in instead of the 1953 government, was, for the most part, a liberalizer and a Westernizer. He brought Western values to Iran. He liberalized, he industrialized. He actually made Iran a much more stronger, more powerful, and to a large extent, freer country, and a country that embraced Western values. Sadly, he also had an authoritarian streak and behaved cruelly and violently towards his opposition, which ultimately led to his overthrow. Do we think that if the socialist would have been elected ultimately and stayed in power if those processes would not have happened? I am skeptical. I think you get the same result ultimately because what shapes history are ideas. The ideas of radical Islam were on the rise. It might have happened differently. It might have happened at a different time in a different way, but I think it's pretty inevitable that that would have been the direction the Iranian regime would have gone in or was heading into. And, but here's the final argument. Let's say it's absolutely true. Let's say it's absolutely true that the US is at fault for overthrowing the 1953 regime and that everything that's happened since is a consequence of that first evil that the United States committed. What does it change exactly? Does it change the fact that Iran is ruled by an evil, authoritarian, theocratic, thuggish regime? Does it change the fact that they violate the rights of their own citizens? Does it change the fact that they've been funding terrorism for the last 40 years? Now, you can say, this is Iran lashing back at America. Then why lashing back at Israel? But is it Iran lashing back at America? Do the Iranians want to re-institute elections in the 1953 regime? No, they want, they're with theocracy. They're the exact opposite. So could you say today's Iran is to some extent a consequence of a US action in 1953? Yeah. Yep. Does that change your evaluation of Iran as an evil country? No. Does that change your evaluation of Iran as a supportive terrorism? No. Does that change the evaluation of Iran as a threat to Israel and the Western world? No. So it doesn't change anything. It doesn't change anything, right? Yeah, I mean, the United States to Washington created Osama bin Laden. A CIA funded the Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Among the Mujahideen was bin Laden. He was funded by the CIA. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is fact. Does that mean it's a United States fault that 9-11 happened? No, I mean, that would be ridiculous. It's bin Laden's fault, the choices he made. Does that mean the United States cannot retaliate against al-Qaeda? Because it created al-Qaeda, of course not. It has to retaliate against al-Qaeda because al-Qaeda is a threat to the United States. So what happened in 1953 bears no relevance, zero, not a nothing to evaluating the status of Iran today or what the United States should do vis-à-vis Iran. That is the answer. Thank you, Remo. All right, James. It seems that very few people in the political arena are engaged in attempts to persuade others of the correctness of their views. The majority of content is directed at riling up people already on their respective sides. Oh, yes, I think that's true. And at mostly manipulating the people who are not decided yet to vote for me, not for the other guy. That it's not about educating. It's an appeal to emotion, or showing how the other guy is even worse than I am, or showing the other guy would do something horrible. I mean, that's all it's focused on. So, and it all focuses, and people in the middle are gonna make their decisions with just a few issues, abortion, the character of the candidates, a few things like that. And, but politics is no longer about persuasion, education. It was that in the 19th century, at least to some extent, right? I mean, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which lasted three, four hours of debating, were filled with content. They had this immense respect for their audience. They assumed people were intelligent. They assumed people could understand the issues involved and wanted to know what the candidates actually thought about the issues of the day. Our politicians in a whole political process in a whole political, you know, world assumes we're idiots, assumes we don't know, assumes we don't care, assumes even if we did care, we're not smart enough to know anything, understand anything. It treats us like emotionalistic little children. That's exactly what it does. And if you listen to some of Trump's rallies, you should actually listen to one, there are a bunch of sound bite gibberish. Half the time, it's not even coherent. He has this spiel and getters book the other night. It just doesn't make any sense. Random stream of consciousness stuff. But where does he get the applause lines? Whenever he blames the left. By the way, there was an interesting one where the crowd started chanting, genocide Joe. Now, genocide Joe is what the fall left accuses Biden off that he is supporting the genocide in Gaza, right? So-called genocide in Gaza. So the Republicans, these are maga, start chanting genocide Joe, which is a leftist chant. And Trump stops and he goes, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. And he says, they're right, you know, they're right. So difference between left and right again. Yes. No, no education, no intent to appeal, no attempt to persuasion, sound bites, emotionalism, chanting, you know, yeah, populism at best across the entire political spectrum. All right, Zack T. A seemingly management of my global book, of my global book supplier company, today joked that an Israeli customer is buying more books as defense against missiles. I don't get how books are defense against missiles. I don't get the insult or whatever. How seriously should I escalate that? Plenty of Israeli customers. I don't know. I guess I really don't understand what that even means. It seems like a silly joke, but it doesn't really seem to me like it's something where he's trying to be anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli or something like that. It's just something he thought was clever, stacking books and defending against, you know, I don't know, I wouldn't get too excited about it. You know, if he says other stuff and you see a pattern, then escalation makes sense. But if this is it, I wouldn't get that excited about it. That doodle bunny, are you comfortable being uncomfortable? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I'm at a standing desk. I'm at a standing desk because most of the time, my back hurts to some extent or another. If I sit, it's the worst. If I sit, then I can screw up my back for a long time. It's why flying is difficult for me because if I fly, I'm sitting in a regular chair. I try not to sit. I try to sit as little as possible during the day. When I do sit, I sit in a zero gravity chair at home. So in that sense, I'm uncomfortable most of the time because my back is always creating discomfort for me. And I live with it and I'm comfortable with it. That is, I'm used to it. It is the way it is. Now today, I'm suffering because yesterday, God, I really worked legs. It was a leg day and my legs in pain as a consequence of it. Michael, thank you. Thank you, Dudo Bunny. Michael, when are you going to give a pro-Israel talk at Columbia? When somebody invites me, I have not been able to get anybody to invite me. I haven't been able to organize anything. I try to get Douglas Murray to come and do something with me, but Douglas said he's out of the country and he can't do it. Although he did express an interest in doing something at some point, but I'd love to do a pro-Israel talk at Columbia. I just need somebody brave enough to invite me and to organize it. I can't do it myself. I can't do it myself. Liam, thoughts on Patrick Bedavid. Why is he so wealthy as interviews are largely overly aggressive and worthless? You know, I don't know. Are you interviewed me once? He came to Ocon actually a few years ago and interviewed me on stage. Thought it was a pretty good interview. And, but he said, I've seen him say some pretty awful things. So he's a very mixed, he's very mixed. I think he became successful as a sales guy, as a motivator, as somebody who motivates others, as somebody who's focused on sales and marketing and motivation and appealing to the self-help crowd and he's obviously done something right in that, you know, he gets, he's made a lot of money, people following people like his interviewing. He interviews important people because he's big and he became big because he obviously had something of value to offer. I don't listen to him. I listen to bits of his interviews when there's something interesting, but I don't regularly listen to him. And I thought the interview he did of me was actually quite good. You can find it online. What did Dr. Peacock prefer about the French justice system compared to ours? It's ours, isn't ours the best in the world? No, he was very critical of ours. This is during the OG Simpson trial. He doesn't like, he didn't like the jury system, but he didn't like the adversarial system. What he really didn't like was the adversarial system. The French system, the judge is part of the investigative team. In the French system, at least to my best of my understanding, I'm not an expert in this super chat question. The French system is built around discovering the truth, figuring out what actually happened. The defense attorney's responsibility in the French system is not protect my client at all costs, do whatever it takes to get my client off. Everybody in the system, defense attorney, prosecutor, and judge all focused on one thing, discovering the actual truth. I think that's what he really liked about the criminal justice system in France versus the criminal justice system in the United States, where defense attorney will say anything, do anything, twist facts, reality, and the judge can do very little. And it's up to a jury who can easily be manipulated by the attorneys, as you saw in the OJ trial. So I think it's that single-minded focus on truth, which I think really appealed to Dr. Pieckhoff. Savanos, as I read Atlas Shrugged, as I read Atlas Shrugged, the parallels between the book and reality grow more disturbing by the day. Just read the James Taggart gets married. Yes, there's no question. It looks exactly like today. Now that was true if you'd read it in the 70s. It was true in the 50s. It was true in the 70s. It was certainly true during the great financial crisis. That's why book sales went through the roof. And it's again true today. The concrete might be different, but the essential is the same. The essential is the same. So it is pretty amazing. In that sense, it's a pretty amazing book in that, pretty amazing book in that. It appears to be so close to reality in so many different ways over such a long period of time. So yes, Atlas Shrugged is all around us. And the reason it's that way is the philosophy of the villains is the philosophy of the villains. It changes in details only, but a fundamental rejection of reason, the fundamental rejection of individualism and advocacy for complete altruism and the fundamental rejection of freedom. That was true of the villains in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s today. It's just the details are different. Evil is the same. Of course, what they have in the book that we don't have, that caliber of heroes. And certainly we don't have Joan Gold. Hopa Campbell, why did you like the film Whiplash so much? Students can't learn when they're anxious about being abused. The best teacher inspires and not degrades. You know, if you want to inspire somebody for real excellence, to really max out, then it's not about degrading, but it's about pushing. Pushing and pushing and pushing. And not letting particularly somebody very talented settle, but striving for perfection, striving to be the best. I mean, it really is fascinating to me that there being a lot of sports movies with basically the same theme as Whiplash where the athlete is pushed and pushed and everybody loves those sports movies and everybody accepts the fact that sometimes you have to bleed in order to be great at something. Sometimes you have to be in pain, no pain, no gain. And that's okay in sports, but somehow taking that same sports movie and putting it into an artistic endeavor, in this case, drumming, jazz, some of that's offensive. I mean, you can think of a number of football movies or where, yeah, they're driven to the edge, right? And you know, and this is exactly what this teacher does. He drives them to the edge. Now, could he have been less abusive? Of course, but there's a point being made here. And the point is that great teachers who really aspire to real greatness push to the edge, however that edge is realized. And again, in sports, you get exactly the same thing. So I liked it because here are two people striving to be the absolute best that they can be. Absolute, and not just by their own, by any objective standard to be great, to achieve, to touch perfection, to touch perfection. And that is so rare. We live in a world of mediocrities. We live in a world where being a mediocrity is celebrated. So it's so refreshing to exit that world of mediocrity into a world where people take genius and success and achievement and perfection seriously. That's what I find inspiring about the movie. Michael says, do Americans not understand individualism? They just have a visceral sense of leave me alone, get off my back, don't mess with my property. Yeah, I don't think they understand individualism. They haven't understood individualism for a very long time. I'm not sure they ever really understood it except for the funny fathers and the generations, maybe they came right afterwards. And even the funny fathers had a mixed understanding of it. They got a few things wrong. But certainly today there's an understanding and unfortunately I think there's less and less of that visceral sense of leave me alone. I wish there was more of that. What I ran called the American sense of life. There seems to be less and less of that in the world in which we live. And we're suffering the consequence of that. So I wish there was more of that, never mind an understanding of individualism. Yeah, we live in a world of good enough. Everything is good enough. Don't try too hard, don't excel, don't be the best that you can be, never mind the best in the world. We still admire that in athletes, but really in nothing else. All right, we have a few more $2 to $10 questions and then I will go to our next topic and encourage you to ask more super chat questions for the second half or the second portion of the show. All right, Jacob says, "'I am cheering for you in the breed love debate." Thank you. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you guys go watch it. Please comment. Please share it. So yeah, it's a three and a half hour debate on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. I think you'll find it dramatically better than the debate Lex Friedman oversaw. I think it was more interesting, got into more real issues. So I encourage you to go and watch it. Liam, only worthless causes have supporters who block traffic. I've never seen pro-Israel supporters or tea party protest do that. No, that's absolutely right. I mean, if you're pro-individual rights or pro-freedom or pro-rights in any respect, you don't block traffic, you don't disrupt other people and you go by the law for the most part, right? Now, it is true that the civil rights movement blocked traffic. So there are causes where you're desperate enough, good causes, but where things are not changing and you're desperate enough where you do block traffic like the civil rights movement. So let's not overly generalize because there are exceptions. Hoppe Campbell, what did Eric Weinstein say that you thought was disgustingly elitist? He basically said that regulations, government controls, should only apply to the masses. To the common people. The geniuses and really smart people, they should not be regulated. They should not be controlled in any way. It does more harm than good. But common people, because they're generally not smart enough, he didn't articulate it this way, but this is what he meant. Cannot take care of themselves and they will need the government to help them, to protect them and therefore they needed the regulations and controls and everything else. They needed the nanny state. That's what he said. You can watch that in my discussion with him and I called him on it. He basically believes in a philosopher, Kings, right? He basically believes in some people, some people. You can watch it online and check it out. But that's Eric. I mean, he very much is that. He very much believes in that. John says, can you imagine if someone like the late Stephen Hawkins had an Atlas robot at his disposal? Yeah. Already had amazing technology at his disposal, right? In any other period in history, he would not have been able to do anything like he did. Yeah, this is way after it was canceled. The Eric Weinstein thing. This is during the, what was it called? The dark web, what was it called? The, I forget what they will call themselves, that he and Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson and something dark web. Anyway, this is during that period, intellectual dark web. This is during the intellectual dark web. Andrew Trager, logic and warmth of a person are not mutually exclusive, true. Many do think a logical person equates emotional coldness like a passionless robot. Thoughts on why that misconception exists? Oh, because of a mind-bodied economy, right? So the mind, which is the origin of logic and reason is not compatible with the body, which is the source of original sin and passion and emotion. At the end of the day, emotions and reason are incompatible. So that is exactly, you know, that comes from Christianity. Christianity separates body and soul. The soul is good, all good, striving towards the logos, which is ultimately revelation. And the body is all sinful. It's the source of original sin, right? The body's needs are sinful. So that's where it comes from. And, you know, it I think holds sway because there's a certain reality to this. That is, if you hold altruism as your morality, then your emotions and reality are not gonna be aligned. And often your emotions and your morality, what you wanna do, what you're thinking of it, are not gonna be aligned. So it's a split between morality and thought, morality and self-interest, morality and logic. You know, but it's also a split between emotions and morality, emotions and thought, emotions and reason. Only a realization of what emotions actually are and a system of thought consistent with reason and reality can say that emotions and mind can integrate. Emotions and ideas can integrate. Emotions and logic can integrate. Nobody else can say that. Apollosis, do you ever do high-carb days to carve up? No, I never do. Never do high-carb days. Gail says, do you take ibuprofen for your back pain? Yes. Sometimes, like I don't take it every time I get back pain because if I did that, you know, was it the kidneys, ibuprofen is really bad for your kidneys or your liver. So I try to minimize how much, you know, ibuprofen I take, but when it gets really bad, I take ibuprofen and it works quite well. So, but you do not wanna take a lot of ibuprofen. Very bad for you. It's the liver, thank you. It's the liver. So, you know, once a week I take two ibuprofen, maybe, maybe once every two, three weeks. So I don't use it regularly. I don't like drugs. Don't like drugs. I got off after my surgeries, I got off the morphine as quickly as I could even if I was in pain. Get off that morphine, get off the drugs. Yeah. Aspen is not good for muscle pain, not as good because this is inflammation. So you need an anti-inflammatory, which is ibuprofen. And Aspen is bad for you as well. Aspen has all kinds of stuff that it also, stomach, liver, kidney, they're all, they're all bad for you. I mean, generally, it's not, it's not food and it causes disruption and when you need to take it, take it, but try to minimize the times when you actually take it. All right, let's see. Thank you, Starjet. I really appreciate the support. Thank you, Fred Harper. Those are stickers. Yeah, and I think I'm caught up. All right. All right, so I came across this op-ed, which I thought was really, really good, consistent with a lot of what I've been saying for a long time, but it's rare to find a conventional, well, not conventional, but a mainstream person. Agreeing with me, so I thought I would read you parts of it. This is written by Alasdair Heath. Alasdair Heath is, I guess, the, I think he's the editor in chief. What is he? He's the editor of the Sunday Telegraph, which is a UK-based publication. I actually talked to them about potentially publishing some op-eds there. Maybe I will at some point, we'll see. But this is the Sunday Telegraph. He's the editor of it, and he wrote this piece. And it really is about what's going on in the Middle East right now, but more broadly, I think, around the world. I love this opening paragraph. So let me read you. Let me read you this, and then we'll, then I'll riff on it. And we will go as long as your questions keep coming. So please consider asking questions. He says, the conventional wisdom is wrong. We need rational, controlled escalation from the Western power in the face of Iranian aggression, not more of the sickening appeasement, delusion and cowardice of the past few days. The regime needs to be punished for its monstrous warmongering, not mollified and placated by a bunch of Western ignoramuses who confuse weakness for virtue. I mean, that's good writing. It's morally unequivocal. It's fantastic, fantastic. Let me go on, because it's, the whole thing is good. If Joe Biden were a serious president, he would announce that the Mullahs in Tehran have crossed a red line, that they are in existential menace to civilized nations. Notice, he uses civilized nations, civilized, right? Differentiation between nations. An existential menace to civilized nations. I love this. He would declare that enough is enough that no country can shoot hundreds of drones and missiles at one of its neighbors with impunity. And no government can go on funding terrorism, rape, torture and murder on an industrial scale. He would understand the need to deter the other rogue regimes through a show of strength. He would state that the Iranian regime must be treated like the global pariah that it has become, that all of its proxies must be destroyed, and that above all, it will never be allowed to get anywhere near nuclear weapons. He would put together a coalition, including as many of Iran's Arab neighbors as possible. He would impose extreme sanctions. He would allow Israel to finish off Hamas, and he would help hit Hezbollah. Now, he's being a little moderate here, right? Because I think what is really required here is a direct American response. So he continues, if all else fails, he would use American military power to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, just as Israel Bombardy rocks, Osirak reacted in 1981, and they all keep our sight in Syria in 2007. He would not invade Iran or impose regime change. That would be up to Iran's wonderful, long-suffering people. But he would contain and neutralize one of the key players of the axis of evil and make the world a safer place. Aghwan, this is good stuff, so why not read the whole thing, right? In the real world, in common with David Cameron, Biden clings to a policy of appeasement when it comes to Iran and its proxies, even though the strategy failed to contain fascistic, imperialistic powers in the 1930s and will fail to do so again in the 2020s. This isn't even a tactic to buy time while an actual plan is put into place. Our politicians are praying that today's crisis will somehow solve itself. No, this isn't Faraj, Faraj can't write this well. Give me a break. This is Alasdair Heath. Alasdair Heath, he is the editor of the Sunday Telegraph. If you'd been listening, I said who it was just a little bit ago. Alasdair Heath, he goes on, it won't, i.e. solve itself. The West refusal to face reality means that it is increasingly likely that Iran will eventually gain a nuclear weapon and quite possibly use it against Israel, itself a nuclear power, with the explicit view of triggering a millenarian moment. The world is careening towards a three or four-pronged third world war involving Iran, Russia, China, North Korea. The Islamic Republic is the weakest link, the least difficult one to deal with today if we had the sense to act. He says instead, the Iron Dome makes it easier for the West to turn a blind eye to endless attempts, attempted war crimes by Iran's proxies. If an Iran-funded missile fight at Israeli civilian centers is intercepted and doesn't kill anybody, we can pretend it never happened. If Israel strikes back at rocket launches and kills some Hamas fighters, it can be blamed for a disproportionate response. Demonized as the real aggressor, making it even easier for the West to downplay Iranian aggression. It's a kafka-esque state of affairs where actions and intents don't count. This madness has been pushed to new extremities this week. In what would ordinary be deemed a historic act of war, Iran fired up hundreds of ballistic and cruise missiles on Israel. Yet, because 99% were shot down, the official line is that the attack must have been merely performative and could be committed to the memory hole. Tehran warned various countries that it was about to strike, not least because it would be violating their airspace, but telling somebody in advance that you're going to attempt to murder them is no defense. Hi. You know, I mean, he goes on about the fact that Israel's not retaliating, that Israel didn't start this, all of that. He goes on, this is brilliant. Highly recommend reading it, beautifully written. You can find it on the telegraph.co.uk. It's from earlier today. And Alasdair Heath is good at this. I mean, he's just a good writer, and he's spot on this. He's just a pretty good on economics. That is, he's a traditional, old line, well, better than a traditional conservative. He's a free marketer who believes, who believes you don't appease evil in foreign affairs. You do not appease and coddle evil. So, go read it. Anyway, this sparked my thinking, and I've been reading some other stuff while this is available. Yeah, I mean, I've been reading other stuff about what's going on in a geopolitical sense. And I think we're really, I mean, I think what's going on with Israel and Iran and what's going on in Ukraine right now is bringing us much closer to a major global confrontation than what I believed in the past, because I didn't believe in the past that the West would sink this low. I really didn't believe that Republicans would hold up aid to Ukraine as long as they have. I didn't believe quite as much that Biden would turn so aggressively anti-Israel, particularly in the face of an Iranian assault like this. And I'm not worried about Iran, although if they get nuclear weapons, there's a lot to worry about. What always means China? China is sitting back and watching all this. It's watching how the West responds to clear unequivocal acts of aggression by Russia and by Iran. It's sitting back and watching how the West, Europe and the US, treats its allies. How seriously they take the actual, what is going on in the world. The threats that are clearly focused on them. How suicidal or self-interested is the West? When Ukraine war broke out and Europe rallied on the side of Ukraine and the United States rallied to the side of Ukraine, I think my sense was, and I think it was true. A lot of people say, oh, China is gonna take this opportunity to be Taiwan. And I was like, no, it's not. Because it's just so what happens. And China cannot afford the West ganging up on it. It cannot afford to cut off trade ties. It cannot afford what's going on. So, what's that? I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna put the link to Alistair's article in the chat so you can go read the whole thing. They couldn't afford the sanctions. And it looked like the West was really standing up against China. And as a consequence, I think China stood back and said, okay, maybe it's not time yet to invade Taiwan, maybe it's not time yet to test the West. And indeed, the performance of Russian military equipment was so pathetic, still is pathetic, as compared to just a little bit of Western weapon systems that the Chinese, I think, had second thoughts about going after Taiwan, given that Taiwan is on by America, given that the Americans might get involved, given that the Japanese and the South Koreans all have Western equipment, and that the reality is that Chinese weaponry is mostly based on Russian weapon systems and it's not very good. Not maybe the Chinese are better, but it's gotta have caused them to think twice. And I think they stood down, whether they intended ever to go to Taiwan or not, they suddenly, the response to the Ukraine invasion made it impossible for China to consider invading Taiwan under those kind of circumstances. And then the reality is that in the early days after October 7th, Israel seemed tough. It looked like Israel was really dealing with the threat. It looked like the Biden administration was completely supporting Israel and Israel was going in there and doing what was necessary to eradicate Hamas, both verbally in the sense of what Israel was saying, what Netanyahu was saying and what it was doing, it seemed serious. Certainly more serious than I thought it would be. And again, the world rallied around Israel. Shockingly, the Europeans supported Israel. The Biden administration supported Israel and they spoke almost in one voice. And again, I think the Chinese said, okay, some weakening with regard to Ukraine, but okay, they're still not gonna take it just lying down. Still not gonna take it lying down. But the last three months, maybe four months, China has to look at the West and say, no, they're actually much weaker than we thought. They can't withstand the pressure. They're afraid, the fundamental emotion, the fundamental driver of the West's actions is fear. Originally fear of Russia, but then fear of nuclear war, which I don't think was ever on the table with Russia, fear of Hamas and Islamism, but really fear of an expanded conflict, fear of Iran, fear of a global war, fear of themselves. The West pretends to have self-esteem, but whenever it's really challenged, falls apart completely. China's gotta be looking at what it sees as weakness, maybe not weakness of military equipment, certainly not. Look at what Israel just did. That is a sign of the power and strength of Western military equipment. And indeed, I'm sure unequivocally, China is looking at that and taking that into account. So it's not a weakness of ability, but there is a weakness of will. There's a lack of self-esteem. There's a weakness when it comes to actually taking decisive actions, standing up for the principles. The West in the last few months has appeared feeble, compromising, chamberlain-like. The worst thing in the world is war. The worst thing in the world is war. And we must avoid war at all costs. And the Chinese can see that. And they think, huh, I wonder if we put a blockade on Japan with our Navy. Will the West actually want war with us? Given their aversion at all costs to war, maybe they'll sit down and negotiate. Maybe we can do a two systems, one state solution, like we did with Hong Kong, with Taiwan. Maybe the Taiwanese and the Americans and the Europeans would agree to that if we put a little bit of pressure on them. If we bring them to the brink of war, because we know the one thing they don't want to be involved in is war. So China's watching right now. Russia, of course, is watching right now. And look, at the end of the day, Iran and North Korea don't matter. What matters is China and Russia. And they're watching what they're seeing is pathetic weakness. I agree completely with Alistair Heath. We should be escalating. The United States should be escalating. In a sense, I disagree with him, because I think the United States should be escalating to such a degree as to make regime change inside Iran easy for the Iranian people. The United States should not only completely eviscerate Iran's nuclear program and it should do so tomorrow. It should have done so years ago. It should certainly do so tomorrow. But the United States should also target regime-sensitive facilities, regime-sensitive buildings. The Mullahs should be running scared. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard should be eviscerated. And then, let the Iranians figure it out, but help them, make it as easy as possible for them to get rid of the current regime. Avoiding war, which, you know, in normal circumstances, everybody wants to avoid war. War is a horrible thing. Anybody who's been to war knows this. War is horrible, people die, it's the pain, the suffering, it's just unthinkable. It just is awful. Avoiding war is important, up to a point. Up to that point where by avoiding war, you're basically, basically guaranteeing a much worse war in the future. And that's been what happening with Iran for 40 years now. And 40, something years now, 45 years now. And that's what's happening right now. Avoid war, avoid war, avoid pissing off the Iranians. Even if they launch hundreds of missiles towards you, don't piss them off. Let's form a coalition. Let's work together. Let's find peace for ways to do this. Today, the United States and Britain announced a sanctions on Iran as if the Iranians care. They are sanctions on Russia as if the Russians care. I mean, they might care, but it doesn't matter. It's not gonna change their ways. It's not gonna bring about regime change. It's not gonna dissuade them from building nuclear weapons. The only way to dissuade them from building nuclear weapons is to show them what will happen if they try. It's to destroy their capability to do so. And that means bombing whatever is necessary in order to make clear to them what happens if they try to build nuclear weapons. The only way really to dissuade Iran from building nuclear weapons is regime change. So it is now that we must go to war, not because anybody's eager for war. Nobody, everybody likes war, but because it is the only way to prevent a much worse war in the future. Not just the potential of Iran actually having nuclear warheads which would completely destroy them at least, but a much bigger potential for war with China. The weaker the West is, the more appeasing, conciliatory, the more we appease in significant player like Iran, the more China is convinced that we will appease it, that we will not go to war with it, that we will let it get its way. The more we appease Iran, the more dangerous the situation gets for Taiwan. The more likely it is that China invades Taiwan or puts a blockade on it, which is almost the same. And Iran is a relatively low cost war. It would involve primarily an air campaign. It would not involve troops on the ground. Although our troops in Syria and Iraq and Jordan would be threatened, but you gotta ask the question, why do we have troops in Syria and in Iraq? Do we really need them there? What American needs right now, what the world needs right now, what civilization needs right now, is the destruction of the Iranian regime and it needs it as soon as possible. And it's something the U.S. should take on. I know Ben Shapiro is too cowardly to say that the U.S. should go to war with Iran. I am not, the U.S. should go to war with Iran without troops on the ground. Let Israel completely dismantle Hamas, devastate Hamas, and then let Israel take on Hezbollah, but let the United States deal with the Iranians. It would be appropriate, it would be appropriate given that the Iranian regime, this particular regime, this theocracy was launched with the taking of the U.S. Embassy and the holding of U.S. hostages. And in one of its first acts was the killing of U.S. Marines and U.S. Embassy staff in Beirut. It's been a long time coming. But I think it's imperative if you care about the future. If you care to avoid a World War III, if you get to avoid a much bigger, more brutal war that we take out Iran and we do it now, sooner the better. Every day you wait is the day the Iranians could be figuring out how to put a nuke at the tip of a ballistic missile. Targeted who knows where. Europe, Israel, who knows where they would send it. All right, just to remind you, I'm taking super chats, so I've answered a bunch, but we can still do more if you want them. I do want to thank Maria Lean for the sticker and Donna for the sticker, thank you both. I appreciate it. You too, we've got a lot of people watching, over 140 people watching right now. You too can support the show live by doing a sticker or by asking a super chat. I guess there's a limit to how many questions you guys have in any given day. I'll have to take this into account in my show prep. But yeah, if anybody has any questions about foreign policy, about China, about Russia, about the one Ukraine, about Israel, about Hamas, about Hezbollah, about Iran, now's the time to ask them. Or about anything else for that matter. You can ask about anything. So part of this could be moderately mitigated by the United States Congress in the next few days passing an aid bill that will cover, I think primarily Ukraine, but also Taiwan and Israel, which I think is super important. I'd like to see Taiwan getting missile defense systems by the bucket load. It would be cool if Israel was selling, is selling, will sell, should sell. The Arrow and the David Slings systems to the Iranians to protect themselves from the vast missile resources that China has. It would be cool, but more importantly I think, put it this way, more importantly, is that the United States support Ukraine? Again, I've talked about this. This Ukrainian support is primarily weapons systems that we're not gonna use ever. It's primarily weapons systems that are out of date or the most likely place that America goes to war, let's say Iran, aerial campaign, China would be Navy. It's very unlikely you need tanks in a war with China. Why not use those tanks right now to bolster Ukraine so that you never have to go to war with Russia? Why not give the Ukrainians the ability, the weapon systems, the missile defense systems to protect themselves from Russian aggression, to make it possible for the Ukrainians to live, thrive, succeed without the constant bombardment of drones and missiles? Why doesn't Ukraine have a defense system in the equivalent of Israel's? I mean, because they don't have the funds. Well, it seems like that would be a high priority. And let me just say, I think that if the Biden administration is gonna put pressure on Israel to do anything, then the Biden administration should be putting pressure on Israel right now to sell air defense systems to Ukraine. Israel has been way too, what is it, non-committal in terms of the Ukraine-Russian war. It should be unequivocally on the side of Ukraine and it should be willing to sell them all the weapons systems that they need, but primarily the air defense systems that the Israelis have perfected and that the Ukrainians dearly need. So this bill that is passing Congress right now with billions of dollars for Ukrainian aid, I think is crucial. Again, the Chinese are watching. If this bill passes, then at least the Chinese won't be able to say to themselves, well, the West won't support its allies. At least it'll be clear that the West does and is supporting its allies. And hopefully, if the West can really stand up, if the West can really stand up, then you avoid war. This is the lesson of World War II. This is the lesson of, I think, history. Is the only way you achieve peace is through strength. Is through strength. Let me go back to Alasdair Heetz's op-ed. He writes at the end, America has no meaningful long-term plan to contain Tehran or to destroy Hamas, the Houthis or Hezbollah, or to de-radicalize the Palestinian territories to ensure that in time a new leadership emerges willing to recognize Israel's existence, paving the way for a viable two-state solution. Its head is in the sand stuff. The message telegraphed to every other dictator is that the West is so desperate to avoid any further confrontations that it will turn a blind eye to almost anything. Yet those who seek peace at all costs inevitably end up at war. Those who seek peace at all costs inevitably end up at war. Right, I think that's a great message. It's a great message. And my little monologue on this, including the op-ed. All right, thanks everybody. I appreciate you sticking around. Thanks for the support. We could go another 45 minutes, but I've allocated that, but that would depend on your questions. And given that we don't have a lot of, we don't have any subjecture questions at this point, I think we'll call it a day. This is why these shows, the length of them, again, the content, the nature of them will be to a large extent determined by you, by how many questions you ask and the depth of those questions. I guess those are by me, by how long my answers are. But we will see. Thank you guys. I will see you guys on Friday. I'm gonna try to make Fridays a good news Fridays, positive news Fridays. So I'm gonna try to focus on positive news on Friday, positive themes on Friday. So the news will probably be the news how to manipulate that. I try to have some positive news in every one of these. But the topic, the second topic, I will try to make a positive topic, something on the Iran rules type of topic, so different than the one. So that'll be positive Fridays, fabulous Fridays, something Fridays, so get you in the mood. I will be doing a show in Hebrew for the Israeli audience on Saturday. Stay tuned for that. And yeah, I will see you all tomorrow. Bye, everybody.