 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 Tuesday, Tuesday night. It's January 3rd, the third day of the year. First trading day, first day back at work, hopefully. You guys all had a good time at work and looking forward to a week and a year before us. 2022 was, I don't know, it was kind of a weird year, but war, inflation. But other than that, it was, you know, I don't expect 2023 to be much different. So, yeah, we are starting a new year, and so we're going to spend the show today maybe making some predictions about next year, talking about next year, interested in your predictions, what you look forward to the most in next year. We'll talk about the world, politics, Russia, war, Putin, China. I don't know, Bitcoin, if you want, tech, science, stuff, predictions about next year. We can also talk about the show, Iran Book Show, and what we can predict for next year in terms of the show. And, yeah, this should be fun. So this will be kind of closed out at year-end events, beginning of the year events. On Thursday, we've got Don Watkins, not Don Watkins, we had Don Watkins last week. See, I shouldn't be doing shows this late at night. I need to really rethink what I'm doing. But on Thursday, we're going to have Nikos, whose last name I cannot pronounce, so I won't even try. We're going to have Nikos. I think he's like Pele. He's the guy who goes, you just need one word names, Nikos. So all he needs. Anyway, Nikos is going to join me, and we're going to talk about a bunch of different things. We'll talk about critical race theory. We'll talk about the anti-liberal right. We'll talk about Ayn Rand University, where he is a teacher. And we'll see where we'll talk about life in Greece. We'll definitely talk about the upcoming Ayn Rand conference in Athens. And I'm going to encourage all of you to sign up. I don't know why you haven't yet. It surprises me that not everybody is like signing up to go to Greece to listen to Objectivist, to walk in the footprints of Aristotle and Plato. And it's an amazing city. You'd have an amazing time and be with a bunch of Objectivists. I mean, I don't get it. I would go in a heartbeat, but I have to be in Brazil. You guys should definitely go. Definitely go and Nikos will tell us why. He'll explain to us. He's an exciting guest. He's very, very energized. So hopefully you'll join us on Thursday at 7 p.m. No, we're going to do it earlier because he's in Greece, right? So he's in Greece. We have to do it earlier. So we will do it on Thursday at 5 p.m. East Coast time. 5 p.m. East Coast time. We will do the Nikos talk. 5 p.m. All right. What else do we want to talk about before we jump into the topic? Nothing really. Remind everybody that we do have a super chat running. We still have the same goal of 650 a show. And yeah, we got off to great start the first two mornings with the new shows, both in terms of live listenership and in terms of the super chat. So hopefully the evening shows, night shows do as well. Yeah, we'll get to show sponsors later. All right. So let's see. Where do we want to start? I mean, let's start with the depressing news. I mean, the fundamental one has to understand from year to year in terms of where we're heading and what's happening is that nothing has really changed in the world. That is philosophically, intellectually, the world today is where it was yesterday. The world in 2023 is where it was in 2022. Things I don't think have gotten any better. There's no indication of a cultural, philosophical, aesthetic, or in any way, drift towards better times. But I also don't see any indications that things have gotten worse. It definitely seems, at least on the left, that the worst elements that come out of the left seems to be knocked down into place. Both voters do that, but also kind of the political machinery tends to do that. It's also almost impossible to really identify trends on a day, on a year to year basis, as Wanda Freeman says. It's more like a decade by decade. You can see changes over decades. You can see changes between today and 10 years ago. It's very difficult to see them on a year to year basis. So intellectually, philosophically, I just don't see things heading in a better direction. I don't see things falling off a cliff. I see intellectually things meander where they are, which is that a vast majority of intellectuals, a vast majority of our politicians, a vast majority of the people have no set of ideas. They're just wanderers. They're just some form of pragmatists. They have generally maybe politically leftist ideas, or generally politically rightist ideas. They generally have collectivistic explicit ideas, maybe still slight remnants of individualistic sense of life. And that's where we are. We're like in this no-way land, in this middle of the road, that intellectually leads us nowhere. And I don't see that really changing. There's no intellectual force out there. There's no new intellectual force out there. Moving things in a different direction. The intellectual was a dark web. It's gone, whatever attempts they had in trying to inject a different form of conversation, a different position into the debate. At the end of the day, the discovery was that they're not that different than everybody else. At the end of the day, the discovery was that they have a lot of differences, particularly on politics between each other, and it really went nowhere. So we kind of got stuck. So there is no, you know, Jordan Peterson has kind of gone into his groove. He's still an important voice, an influential voice, but he's not shaking things up. He's not doing anything new. He's daily wire, right wing, religionist groove. That's the groove he's in, self-help with a self-help dimension. Ben Shapiro's becoming more religious, more irrational, less free market as the years go by, which makes sense. He's falling into that groove, that groove of conservative Republican. Sam Harris has marginalized himself by saying, I think, silly things, which I want to comment on later. I've got a super chat question that I got for the January, for the December 31st show, but I forgot to use it. It came in on PayPal, on an email, actually. So I'll do that later regarding Sam Harris, but he's kind of marginalized himself, unfortunately. And again, nothing new to say. He made his career with the new atheists, and the new atheists are gone. And indeed, while atheism seems to be on the rise in America, it has no passion, it has no direction, it has no focus. Those intellectuals are gone, they've disappeared. There is no intellectual direction. There is just haphazardness. There's pragmatism writ large. There is no real direction. There's no real intellectual influences out there that I can see that dominate the space at best. There's a lot of substacks. There's a lot of people writing interesting things, but there's no direction. There's no direction. And again, there's some good writers. There's some good, interesting articles, but I just don't see a positive intellectual direction out there. The libertarians are making themselves as usual less and less relevant to the world. And the only positive, I would say, is what objectivism is doing. I think objectivism is growing. I think it's gaining a bigger, bigger voice. I think you'll see even more of that in 2023. I think there'll be some exciting projects that will be announcing that the Institute, I mean, Institute will be announcing, otherwise might be announcing. But I think that the battle continues from the perspective of the Institute. I think the Inran University is growing. As you know, the Inran University is a sponsor of this show, and I hope you guys all go check out university.inran.org and sign up where there's auditors, there's students. There's no better place to study objectivism. There's no better place to take live courses with professors and with teachers. We'll talk about more with that. We'll talk about Nicos on Thursday. But yeah, Inran University is exciting. I think the progress objectivism is making is exciting. I think you heard from Dodd Watkins and the stuff he's doing. I think we'll see a lot more. There's a new book from Don coming out. There's a new book from Tara Smith coming out. Both of them are about egoism, by the way. There's going to be more stuff coming out, more speakers, more podcasters, more content. And I think that's what we need and I think that's how we have an influence in a world that is becoming more and more empty as it is of intellectual content. I mean, the intellectual scene is, I think, empty of direction. Again, there are lots of intellectuals. Even some intellectuals doing good, decent work. But no direction. It's not like they're free marketers or they are pro-individual right. So, you know, there's some good people on the right that happen to do some good stuff, but then once in a while do awful stuff and they go to people on the left to do good stuff and once in a while do awful stuff and so on. And so on, it continues. So I think there's a real opportunity, again, for better ideas. I think there's opportunity for the Iran Book Show to go out there and attract more people. Certainly my plan is to invest more in attracting new listeners. I think the fact that we're doing this daily new show, hopefully we'll attract some people and we'll look for other strategies to attract people and, of course, I will need all of your help to do that as well. So intellectually, unfortunately, the world seems to have come to some kind of dead end. The left is dominated by a kind of the post-moderns and that's come to a dead end. It's the dead end of total subjectivism, the dead end of intersectionality, the dead end of critical race theory. It's these oppositions that are unpopular that nobody wants to hold, that have no sway in the broad culture even though they have big sway on the people, kind of the cultural elite, if you will. And people are rejecting that. They have no interest. On the other hand, you've got religion. Religion I think is the bigger danger, but on the other hand, religion is in decline. People abandon organized churches and are looking for something alternative. Unfortunately, often looking for mystical alternatives. Atheism is on the rise, but again, I fear that much of that atheism is dedicated to crazy leftist ideas. So there's no direction. The intellectual world is not heading in any direction that I can see. I thought there was some directionality in the days where Peterson and Dave Rubin and others were really taking off. And you can see in a sense the direction less in Lex Friedman who does a phenomenal show and does amazing stuff, but there's no other than open debate and discussion and interesting ideas. There's no direction to Lex Friedman's interviews. There's no intellectual program there, other than this, let's hear from a lot of different people from a lot of different perspective. And let me ask really good questions, and I think he does a great job at that. But he is incredibly popular, but where does that lead us is not clear. So intellectually, we're in a void. We really are. I mean, the more I read, the more horrifying it is. I mean, people almost never refer back to principles. There are no integrating grand ideas. There's no... I mean, the most integrated people, and this again is the scary part, but I don't think they're getting massive traction yet. The people who have the biggest agenda, if you will, are people like the national conservatives and the integralists, the Catholic conservatives. They are the most ambitious of anybody. They have a philosophical agenda. They have an intellectual agenda. They have a program. They have conferences. They write articles. They write books. They're very engaged. They're very, you know, active. They're not popular yet, but they don't have to become popular to be influential. And I fear... I really do fear it isn't happening yet. I really do fear that they enter and take over that intellectual void, that they are the only ones with a coherent M philosophy, a misintegration, an integrated philosophy, a wrong philosophy, but an integrated philosophy. I don't see a... I really don't see anybody else who's presenting a systematic, integrated philosophy out there that can attract any kind of significant appeal. Wolk is not M. We've talked about this before. I'm not going to repeat myself. And by the way, objectivity is not about presenting all sides of an issue. That's not the definition in objectivism of objectivity. Objectivity has nothing to do or little to do with presenting different sides of an issue. That is the false, pre-Iran definition of objectivity. Let's see. So, yeah. So it's going to be interesting. It's going to be interesting where we had intellectually and the fear, my fear is, of course, that you will see great and great influence from what we'll talk to Nikos about, which is the anti-liberal right, which seems to have its act together intellectually, hasn't gained the kind of popularity at once, but seems to have it act together intellectually at least and has real firepower, real firepower, where I think the left is... You know, the left has the elites, but the left cannot connect with the people. And we'll see if... Can't even connect with politicians. It's such an unpleasant... It's such a disintegrated set of ideas that people cannot live them. They cannot integrate them. They cannot accept them. CRT is just another version of egalitarianism, which is... The fundamental ideas of the left are egalitarian ideas, which Lennepikov demolishes and dims and describes as the ultimate disintegration, the ultimate fragmentation. All right. So that's intellectual sphere. It's bleak. There really isn't much there, but there are opportunities, I think, for objectivists. I think what's happening in Texas, what's happening in Austin, Texas, with the concentration of objectivists, the concentration of objectivist intellectuals, I think really good things are going to come out of that. I think when you put a bunch, not put, because they chose to be there, when a bunch of really, really smart people are together, good things will happen, even if there's no organizational structure, even if they're not together under one roof, but they're together in the same geographic area, they engage with one another on a regular basis. I think really good ideas come out of that. There's a certain critical mass in a particular culture, and I think Austin is a great culture that can then, they feed off of each other. Ideas will come out of that that I think will be incredibly valuable for the objectivist community, incredibly valuable for where we head into the future, for our activism, for our attempt to influence the culture. So I think having so many objectivists in Austin and so many objectivist intellectuals and entrepreneurs in Austin, super exciting for 2023. I can expect that I will be in Austin every few months and doing something, engaging with people. So that's exciting. And the fact that people like Lex Friedman and others are also there, I think only makes the intellectual environment richer and the potential and possibilities richer. Okay, so that's kind of the intellectual environment. Let's quickly do, well, it might not be quick, but let's do politics quickly. I mean, here I think this is going to be a fascinating year. This is really, really going to be a fascinating year because this is the year where I think this is the year where I think the Republican Party comes to terms with its basically embrace of Donald Trump and its unwillingness to stand up and challenge Donald Trump. I keep going back and forth on this, but I think that if I was going to make a prediction right now about next year, I would say that by the end of 2023, Donald Trump will be the lead candidate for 2024 in spite of everything. And I think you can see that in the fact that look at what's happening in the House of Representatives today. I mean, for the first time in over 100 years, or maybe exactly 100 years, I think it was 1923 maybe, they couldn't elect a House Speaker. The Republican Party could not come together around one candidate to elect a House Speaker, even though they have a candidate who should appeal to everybody. A candidate who, you know, embraced Donald Trump right after January 6th, bought into the party line, stood up and supported Trump candidates, a candidate who has promised Marjorie, something green, a juicy committee appointment, even though she's a wacko, a candidate who has supported the nutty right in the Republican Party as often as he could, but a candidate who's also had overtures towards the left, the left wing of the Republican Party, you know, should be able to bring everybody together. And yet, while Marjorie Teller Green is an enthusiastic support of him, because he promised her a juicy committee position, there are enough 12 actually, 12 Republicans who would not vote for him today, and as a consequence, they went for four votes, four votes, and the Democrat got more votes than the Republican, because everybody in the Democratic Party voted for one guy. The Republican Party is fragmented, it is filled with, I think the technical term for this is wackos, crazy people. Now the Democrat Party is as well, but the Democrats somehow, maybe because now they're in the opposition, has managed to rein them in. Republicans don't have that kind of leadership. It appears the only person who can rein them in is Trump, and they're gonna, you know, they haven't really come to terms with how brutal the loss in the midterms was. I mean, it was brutal. The more you think about it, the more brutal it becomes evident. And so, I just see this political party imploding. You know, the political class within the Republican Party, the people in Congress, in the House of Representatives, 100% behind Trump, all the people who voted, who spoke up against them, are basically being eliminated from the party with maybe one or two exceptions. And the Senate, there's some opposition to Trump, but we know that that opposition folds very quickly. I just don't see who challenges him. Now everybody says DeSantis. He's, I know, many of your favorite candidate. And it maybe, maybe DeSantis, but I just have this nagging feeling that if DeSantis runs, Trump will beat him up, verbally abuse him, and I'm just not sure that DeSantis can cope. I don't know that he's sharp-witted enough. I don't know that he's quick enough. I don't know that he has the most afforditude to handle what Donald Trump would unleash on him. I mean, Trump doesn't care if he destroys another Republican candidate. Zero. And from his experience, the candidates he's tried to destroy later become his best supporters and his best friends. So why not try? Does DeSantis really, is he that strong? I mean, some of you support him. Is he that strong? I see no evidence of that yet. I mean, maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong because I'd like to see somebody stand up to Trump. I just don't see it. I mean, certainly it's not going to be Pence who, you know, Trump will railroad. I don't think it's going to be Pompeo. Who's it going to be? Nikki Haley? Can Nikki Haley stand up to Trump? Maybe. We'll see. Probably not. She went groveling to him over and over and over again. All he has to do is remind her of that. Ruby is not going to run if Trump runs. Ruby probably won't run if DeSantis runs. So Republican Party is a Trump party. And a Trump party is a loser party. I mean, if Trump wins, Biden will win 2024. And I think Biden's going to run. So, you know, we can switch to Democratic Party, but I just don't see it. And I think this next 12 months are going to be disastrous for the Republicans and in fighting and backstabbing. And this is exactly the world in which one person excels. This is a world in which one person, i.e. Donald Trump is ideally suited for. And if I think that he becomes, he becomes the candidate. We will see. We will see. As much as he's been discredited, he's been discredited, I think mainly in the minds of people who already didn't like him. He's been discredited maybe in the minds of independents, but in the minds of the base, he's probably, he's probably it. Catherine says, hey, you want him? I'm here. Catherine, you know, you know how it for me to say this, but I haven't said a word about Superchair and you haven't been here and we're always almost at the goal. It's just, they're crushing it. They're crushing it without you. It's pretty amazing. Well, the base, you know, which it's good, the base, but the base is who elects candidates in the primaries. It's the base. It's the base. So I don't know. I mean, it's going to be fascinating to watch the Republican Party in the next couple of days, try to figure out how they can get a candidate into a speakership of the House. I mean, this is a political party that wants power, that wants committee chairs, that wants to investigate the Biden administration, wants to investigate Hunter Biden, that wants to investigate all kinds of things. They have a massive agenda of going after the left, not of doing anything positive for the American people, but going after the left. I think they feel like that's all they can do as a opposition party. And yet they cannot get a speaker of the House and if they don't get a speaker of the House, they don't get to do all those things, not on their terms. And who are they going to pick? Who's going to be the candidate? Who can unite the entire party because they have to get every last vote because they did such a horrible job with the midterms? Red tsunami, red wave, red ripple. Maybe it was a ripple in the House only, not even in the Senate. It was a, what do you call it, current backwards? Yeah, Kevin is useless, but who else can they pick? That's the whole point. Everybody is the ideal chairman for the Republican Party because ideal speaker, because he's useless, because he has sucked up to everybody, all sides, and any other candidate, like Jim Jordan is the candidate of the right, but others within the Republican Party won't vote for Jim Jordan. There's just no way they'll vote for him. I don't remember the guy I had a big argument with. I had a, once over dinner in New York, I had a massive fight with one of the leaders of the Republican Party, a congressman who was at the time head of the Intelligence Committee, one of the Freedom Caucus. God, I wish I remembered who it was. And you know the senator from Wisconsin, Johnson? Johnson was there and he was trying to bridge the gap between me and this guy. But I basically called him out, this congressman who was part of the leadership team in the Republican Party, called him out for how wimpy and pathetic and compromising and leftist and the Republicans had been, this is during the Obama administration, and how unprincipled and pragmatic and pathetic they were. He got really angry and we land up yelling at each other across this table with a bunch of Republican donors there. It was quite entertaining. I wish I remembered his name. I met him a couple of years later in London. He did not like me. I have this effect on politicians, what can I say? All right, so yes, that's the Republican Party. On the Democratic side, I think Biden will announce soon, probably the next couple of months that he is running for re-election. I think that will basically stop the speculation on the Democratic side. I think he'll run out of post. I don't think anybody will run against him. They'll maybe have some backup candidates just in case he drops dead. But the fact is he'll be 82 on election day. I don't think he cares. I don't think Democrats care. He's the one guy who they think can unify the party. From their perspective, he's done a decent job. From their perspective, they did phenomenally well in the midterm elections. And I think they give some of the credit to him. He hasn't hurt the party. That's a plus. And he is the one guy who's proven he can beat Donald Trump. And so I think that Biden will run. I don't think there's anybody else. The governor of California could run if Biden is not the candidate, but I think Biden is the candidate who won't run. But the governor of California is going to be very controversial because it's California. It's not likely that he can win a lot of swing states. So again, going to be interesting on the Democratic side, but I think the Democrats much more so than the Republicans have to act together. They've got problems with cinema and they've got problems with mansion. But those are not that relevant anymore because the Republicans hold the house anyway. So it's going to be full-due with compromise anyway. Democrats are kind of off the hook. Nobody expects them to get anything done significantly in the next two years because they lost the house. Fred Harper says he's going to forge a birth certificate for me so I can run for president. Yeah, I mean, I would run. It would be fun. Again, if you brought me a... What did I say? $50 million check? $100 million check? What was the number? Something like that. Anyway, I don't know if Biden continues with Kamala Harris. I don't see a big downside for him continuing with her, replacing her is just a hassle. But who knows? It's not something I think is that big of a deal. Alright, shifting topics away from politics. Let's talk about Russia. Putin, this is an interesting one because I wonder what you think. Is Putin going to be around? Is Putin going to be running Russia year for now? You know, given his unbelievable failure over the last 10 months, given the fact that I'm expecting, if you look at the war, I'm expecting him continue to fail. I expect continued defeats for the Russians. By the end of 2023, I think there's a high probability that both Sweden and Finland are part of NATO, if not one of them is. So at least one of them becomes a member of NATO. That is a huge L, a huge lose for Russia. So that is horrific. I think Ukraine gets closer and closer to Europe. Another huge lose for Russia. And so then it's just a question of what happens on the battlefield. I think every indication is that the Ukrainians have their upper hand in the battlefield. You know, the Russians just cannot get enough soldiers out. They cannot train them fast enough to overwhelm Ukraine with numbers. And in terms of technology, in terms of quality of weapons systems, in terms of everything else, the Ukrainians are way ahead of the Russians, given the Western support that they are getting. So I think that Ukraine keeps pushing forward. Not a lot is going to change over the winter. Not a lot is going to change in the early spring, because the ground is just not particularly suitable for large ground warfare. But I think once you get into the late spring, early summer, I think you'll start seeing significant Ukrainian advances. And I think you'll see the Russians, by the end of the year, basically out of, you know, pushed out of almost everything, if not everything they have occupied. So they might still hold on to Crimea and part of Donbass. But everything in terms of, you know, all the gains they made last year, will all be gone by the end of this year. That is what I predict. I think there's a good chance Putin is not there. Putin gets sick. I don't think he falls out of a window, but I do think he gets sick. Maybe he retires under this thing that he's got cancer or got other things. And he has to step aside. I think the next guy who replaces Putin, you know, plays tough guy, but slowly moderates and slowly finds a way to get Russia out of the mess that it has in Ukraine. I think ultimately Russia pivots to blaming Putin for everything and finding a different path forward that involves rejecting Putin. They'll throw Putin under the bus in order to save themselves. Now, this is hard to tell what the Putin gang is and who exactly composed of it. I think Putin has killed over the last year or so so many of the oligarchs and so many of the wealthy in Russia that have opposed him. It's hard to tell who's left. There is a gang there, politicians, businessmen, or businessmen, oligarchs and probably people in the military who have his back, but at some point some of them will turn against them. Some of them will be disappeared, fall out of windows. But exactly who takes over? I have no clue. But I think they take over in order to retreat at least for now so that they can fight another time. I think the cost to Russia of this war is really hard to imagine. I think the Russians don't know exactly what that cost is yet because it hasn't fully played out. And remember, one of the characteristics of Russian culture is that they are used to suffering, used to suffering. All right, let's see. I did jinx it. Since I said something about, you know, we're doing great. Super Chat has just gone dead. Silent. All right, let's see. What else should we... Oh, Bitcoin is interesting. Well, let's wait for Bitcoin. Bitcoin we can do with the economy. Quickly on China. China. Wow, it's so hard to tell what's going to happen with China. It's so hard to predict this one. I think, as I've said before, their forces in the United States definitely want to escalate things with China. They want to push China. They want to try to push China around. It's hard to tell how China is going to respond. China just appointed the ambassador to the United States. It's ambassador to the United States to the position of foreign minister. Now, this guy has been relatively pro-US. He's been pretty moderate when he comes to the US. So it's going to be super interesting to see how China maneuvers. China has a lot to lose from conflict with the US. It's experiencing it right now. I mean, what Biden has done in the last five months to China is a hundred times worse from Chinese perspective than anything Donald Trump did to them. Donald Trump didn't affect China one aorta. It made them more cautious. It made them more authoritarian. It made them more afraid of the United States. Biden has really struck them at the heart of progress, at the heart of technological advancement by excluding certain chip technology from China, by denying them access to the most advanced chips, and also, importantly, to the most advanced chip manufacturing machines. You said with Chinese back a decade, at least. And I think China is really, really worried. I think China, because of COVID and everything else, has a PR problem in the world from their perspective. Again, this is from their perspective. They might start playing nice just to try to see if that helps them get on the right side. So, you know, we'll see what happens. There's some indication also that the Chinese government is loosening restrictions on entrepreneurs, that they're presenting themselves again as more favorable towards markets, and loosening up their central planning a little bit. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. China is definitely the place to watch over the next year. It's much more interesting in the long run than Russia is. Russia is a dying, dead country. Putin is dying or dead. It's just a question of time. But Russia, Russia as a culture, Russia as a society, Russia as a military, Russia as an economy, is dying, and it's dead. And demographically, it's dead. Much more interesting is what happens to China. China is increasing its control on Hong Kong. It will intensify that. But it will try not to cross certain lines because what it wants from Hong Kong is for Hong Kong to maintain itself as a center of capital, of capital markets, of banking, of finance. And for that, they will need to be careful not to cross certain lines. Again, it's going to be interesting. Probably the most interesting place in the next year will be China. And my plan is to read a bunch of books on China. I've been reading quite a bit so far, reading more on it, because I think, again, that's where the action is going to be. That's where the action has been and is going to be. Economy. I think the only question is whether we're heading towards a mild recession or a deep recession, but we are heading towards a recession. I expect increased layoffs, particularly in the tech space. We saw today Tesla stock drop 12%, 12% in one day. Already dropped 70% last year, another 12% today. We saw also Apple stock drop I think 4% today. Significant drops in Apple stock as iPhone sales and other sales are soft. And as the economy is probably heading towards a recession and not just in the U.S., this will be a global recession. We're seeing the U.K. maybe will be the hardest hit of all the Western economies. Europe is definitely going to head into a recession. How deep or mild it'll be is really hard to tell. We haven't seen the consequence of high interest rates play out as the Fed continues to increase rates in the first quarter here. We will see what those consequences are. I think ultimately they are going to be bankruptcies. We still haven't seen the big bankruptcies in the United States. We've seen them in China. We've seen the big real estate companies in China go bust. We've also seen the Chinese bail people out. But there is going to be a recession next year in the United States and globally. Beyond that, I don't think we've seen the last of inflation. I don't think what the Fed is doing now by itself just increasing interest rates is going to completely defeat inflation. I think inflation is going to be obstinately above what the Fed expects it to be, particularly if the Fed starts decreasing interest rates once we head into inflation. I think this inflationary bout is going to be much more sticky and going to stick around for a while. So next year is going to be very, very challenging from an economic perspective. Dollar hasn't collapsed yet, but the dollar is losing value versus a lot of the other currencies, primarily because interest rates are coming down. The long-term interest rates are coming down. Ten-year bond interest rates on that are way down from its peak over 4%. I don't know where that's going to head. Recession will tend to drive interest rates lower, but then I think once they realize inflation has not gone completely, we might see a real spike in interest rates later in the year. So I just don't see good news on the economy front. Bitcoin. I find it fascinating. I was reading about predictions about Bitcoin and predictions about Bitcoin vary between some people predicting that Bitcoin will go up 14,000% or 1,400% and other people predicting that it will go down 90%. You know Bitcoin cannot be money when it has that kind of volatility in expectations. Because what is it worth? What would it be worth tomorrow? We don't know. It could be worth 90% less or 1,400% more. It's meaningless. So that is... Bitcoin is, I suspect, will continue to decline. I don't think that it's time for a turnaround. Bitcoin is highly correlated with the NASDAQ. I don't think the NASDAQ has hit bottom yet, although it might, it'll probably hit bottom once we hit a recession, but it's not hit bottom yet. So I expect a difficult stock market, a difficult economy, continued difficulty for crypto. And, yeah, not good news on the economic fund. And then ultimately, when you look at positive news, the positive news that comes out is primarily from the scientific technology side. And here I really do see some exciting things happening on the biotech funds, on the, you know, some of these treatments for cancer are super exciting. And I think we'll see a lot more of them. I think mRNA technology is going to provide a huge boost to biotech. I think the other vaccine technology, you know, if we can really get a vaccine from malaria, that is massive. And then you can go from there after malaria. Maybe we'd even get a vaccine for AIDS and other viral diseases. So it really is, I think we're entering into an era of super exciting, large-scale breakthroughs in bio. I think the last 30, 40 years have been huge, massive on the side of tech, on the side of, you know, micro-processes. And I think the next real revolution is in the side of bio. I think you'll still see, continue to see progress in tech, but it's hard to tell exactly where, and you'll continue to see progress in things like AI. But biotechnology is where the real, I think, exciting things are going to happen, with CRISPR and with mRNA and with autoimmune therapies for cancer, all of that. Yeah, I mean, exciting. And hopefully that also has implications for longevity. Let's see, what have I missed? I don't know, housing, I think housing will decline, but not by as much as some people think it will. I think housing is going to hold up pretty well, as I've told you many times. The fundamental problem in housing is, there's just not enough supply, just not enough supply. So it might come down, but it's not going to stay down and it won't come down as much as some people think it will. All right. I mean, the other aspect of bio, which I think is exciting is stem cells. And there's a ton of regulations, but people are finding ways around regulations. There's also a lot of money in bio to basically go through the regulatory process and deal with it. And then there's also, for example, for stem cells, you go to Panama, you go to Colombia, you go to Mexico, you go to Europe, you go to other places where you can get around the regulations. Okay. Supreme Court, I think, will reject the idea of explicit racial preferences for admissions. I think they're going to say that that goes against the Civil Rights Act. I think they're going to reject the ability of universities to use race as a criteria to either reject or accept a candidate at a university. So a lot of universities will have to rejiggle their acceptance criteria. California has had that standard as refused to use racial criteria for acceptance to University of California schools for a long time now. I think that's going to become now national policy through the Supreme Court. I'm sure there are going to be other fascinating cases, but that's one where we know a little bit about how the justice think because of all arguments of already being. Sure, let's see. I do not think China will invade Taiwan. I don't think that will happen in 2023. I think the odds of that happening are less than 1%. What else do we have? Yeah, I think we covered everything. We covered the big things. Yeah, I mean, tech is an open-ended thing, and I'm not in the business of predicting that. All right, hopefully that was of some value, and you'll be able to call me, what, a year for now and tell me, no, you're on. You got this all wrong, and hear the things that we got wrong. I'll probably discover that during the year and we'll talk about it as we go through the year. So you now have a list of semi-predictions that have made that ever be interesting. I'm not predicting whether we go into a deeper session or a milder session. I don't know. I don't know, but I'm pretty sure there will be a recession. All right, let's jump into the Super Chat. We have just crossed the $650 mark. Thank you. Vadim, happy new year to you too, who took us over the $650 contribution. We do have some big Super Chat dollars being put here. We have Harper Campbell with $200. Let's start with that. It seems like leftist nihilist intellectuals just want us to die, whereas conservative Christians think as an outrage by the concept. They want us to live and suffer for as long as possible. Suffering misery are the more mature adult options, whereas suicide is immature and cowardly. I think that you really boil it down to what it really is. I mean, the fact is that the left is dominated by nihilism, by a rejection of human life, by a rejection of human happiness. But it's not that there's any methodology by which you want to die. They basically would like to sacrifice us all to the polar bears and to the spotted owls and to whatever worm or whatever insect happens to be. Or at least most of us. The right, once in a sense, glorify man, but for them glorifying man is to glorify him before God, glorify him not as an individual, but as a collective that is there to suffer and sacrifice for the sake of the deity. It's all about sacrifice. It's all about doing your duty. And remember, your duty fundamentally in religion is not to other people. Your duty fundamentally is to God or to something else. And some combine it with your duty to the state. So I think the right... Again, going back to the demarche process, right wants us to integrate all ideas around the concepts of religion and country and states and the sanctity of the states and the sanctity of God. And that's what they want to unite us around. The left doesn't want to unite us. It just wants us dead. The left doesn't want to unite us. It just wants us to stop living. And they don't literally want to take out the machine guns and shoot us all. They don't have to. All they need to convince us to do is stop using fossil fuels and we'll die anyway. So, yeah, it's nihilism on the left and return to the Middle Ages on the right. I don't think either one of them will win. I think we'll be bouncing around in mediocrity and bouncing around in no way is land. And even if the right wins... The left, I don't think, can win, but even if the right wins, it won't win for very long. It's not sustainable. There's too much liberty in the world. There's too much freedom in the world. There's too much individualism in the world for us to accept a state as a groveling suffering being. So I think we rebel. It doesn't last for very long. The question then is, of course, it's always the question, what replaces it? Key facts. Thank you for the support. Friend Harper, thank you as well. These are stickers. They're not super chat, so they don't have a question associated with it. Thank you, Harper Campbell. That's very generous support. Michael for $100 asked, I made argument that humans are amazing. We can build iPhones and satellites. I was met with him about only a small percentage of humans can build those things. Most people are too low IQ. Yeah, I mean, that's typical. It's typically, I don't know, maybe it's the low IQ people who say that. Shouldn't we be grateful the gene produces some geniuses? Yes, absolutely. And the reality is that how many people work in tech? Millions? So while it's true that the inventor is a rare breed and the Steve Jobs is a rare breed, but there are millions of people, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions globally, who make their living, make a very good living by contributing some of their intelligence, some of their work, some of their mind to the production and the creation of new iPhones and satellites. And all this illustrates is that we should be thankful to the geniuses. Not that the geniuses should then have an excuse to run our lives. Not that the geniuses then have an excuse to think they're philosopher kings and can do our living for us. But we should be motivated to thank the geniuses, to embrace them, to encourage more of them, to give them more freedom to manifest a genius in the world so that we can all benefit from that. So, you know, we should celebrate man and the fact that some men are geniuses and the rest of us who are now geniuses can still do really, really great things, live great lives and enjoy the geniuses, support them, help them and take their geniuses and make it possible to turn it into businesses. Not everybody at Apple who contributed to the making of the iPhone was a genius like Jobs and Ives and some others. But they helped make the iPhone. So, it's not... And IQ makes it deterministic. That's the other part of this that I hate. It's as if you're born in a particular way and to some extent you are. No question. You're born with a certain potentiality. But then the question is, what do you do with that potential? I know so many people who are super smart who do nothing with it. And I know a lot of people are not that smart who do a lot with it. That's what matters. That's the essential. The choices you make. The choices you make and how to use what you have. Vadim, thank you Vadim. He says, reading Atlas Rock for a second time since 20 years. Quote, if to please the people we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The rest is metaphysics. That was an unquote, the rest is metaphysics. Yep, the rest is metaphysics, but there's a lot of work to be done taking that metaphysics and turning it into ideas and a philosophy and specifics and a way of living and a morality and just a life, a life and even a politics. So, the rest is metaphysics is a lot of work. Thanks Vadim. And enjoy, I'm sure you will, your second readings of Atlas. All right, Colleen, using January to rewatch all Iran's rules for life and focus on leading a value-driven life in 2023, even better the second and third times. Thank you Colleen, that's great. Yes, it's all in a playlist, organized nicely. It's easy to access. Please, those of you who've missed some of the shows or those of you haven't listened to them at all, please go and see. I mean, if you like them, keep going. If you don't, that's fine, but at least try them. And I am interested in the input you might have, Colleen or anybody else. If you're listening to them, if you have input, if you have questions, it should be, the rules for life should be a great source of super chat questions because then also we can take those, answers those questions and include it in the book whenever that book is written, because I'm sure not everything I have to say about the issues that I raise in those sessions, I have said, so there's always more to embellish and the more content we produce around this, the better. So please, as you're listening to those shows, come back with questions. All right, Liam says, do you get mad at people who don't get objectivism after you've explained it to them perfectly? It's like, how could you not understand this? You forced me to waste all this energy casting pause before swine. No, I mean, I don't really get angry with them. I mean, for a number of reasons. One is, what does it even mean to say that you explained it to them perfectly? Do I know I explained it to them perfectly? Is there a better way to explain it? Have I fully taken into account their context of knowledge? Could I do a better job? I mean, that's much more productive way of approaching something like that. Not beating yourself up, but trying to learn from the experience and trying to get better at it and trying to figure out if there are better ways to do it. So, you know, I definitely approach it from the perspective of how can I be a better teacher than the perspective of I'm angry at you because I waste the time on you. No, I mean, you expect to waste the time. I mean, the fact is that in every classroom where you teach, a certain percentage of the kids are just not going to get it because they're not motivated because they don't want to. And you don't know in advance who are going to get it and who is not, so you're doing it because you expect people to do it. Are there people who I do get angry with and frustrated with? Yes. Primarily people who think they're objectivist who think they get it and then are stubbornly, you know, blind, evasive about certain issues or misrepresent objectivism on points that are not that difficult. This is why I have very little patience for the Atlas Society or a bunch of others. It's because objectivism is not that difficult and you guys are smart enough and that's not acceptable. So them, I'm angry with, I'm frustrated and so on, but common person out there, no, I mean, given the state of educational system, given the state of everything else, I am blown over by the people who get it. And you see when somebody comes on board and says, hey, I listened to your show and now I've read I'm Rand and da-da-da. They close me. That's the positive. I don't really have the negative. I've read I'm Rand and it did nothing to me. Okay, I get that. I get it in the sense of given the culture, given where we are, given the level of education, given the inability of people to think, given the difficulty of the fear that I'm Rand's ideas I think elicits to some people, I get it. I'm frustrated in me. What I am is always amazed and thrilled at the people who do get it. Fenoppa says, who has been the best opposition to objectivism? Best by the standard has the most knowledge understanding about objectivism. I haven't heard of someone who has taken on Opa and opposed objectivism afterwards. I think they are, I think there's some critics of objectivism kind of within objectivism that objections to it. Maybe there's certain libertarians who've been exposed to a lot of objectivism, but I haven't really delved into that material. Maybe we can ask some of the objectivist philosophers if they have. There's so much positive to do in the sense of rather than looking at those people looking at how we can better communicate objectivism, how we can get to bigger audiences, how we can communicate with more people, how we can have more influence, all of that stuff which I think ultimately is more interesting. I haven't delved into the opposition, but I don't know of anybody who's done a systemic analysis that is credible or decent. Hoppa Campbell, the stunning success of UNIV shows convinced me the objectivist movement has reached a new level. Not sure how to classify it, but I think it's happening. The next ten years are going to be very interesting. I hope so, and I think so. I mean, this is the thing that I think is different. I don't know how much bigger we are, right? I mean, viewership of the show has not exploded, has not gone up significantly, and subscribers have not gone up significantly, although it's steadyed and now going up. But I think the knowledge and the passion and the involvement of the people in the movement is great. And one other thing, I mean, a lot of people, here you are, there's a bunch of you who are putting down real money on super chat questions and supporting the Iran Book Show. I mean, it's real money, and it adds up. I don't know how much, I don't want to name names, but the people who put a lot of money into the show today, just the top people who put the show in today, if you look over the year, they put a lot of money into the Iran Book Show. It means they have some money. So, what to me it suggests is more and more objective is successful. A lot of the movement used to be a movement of young poor people or older people who never made a lot of money, but now there seems to be people with money, with real money that are successful. Again, I think you'll see out of the Institutes of Projects later in 2023 that I think are going to be illustrating some of this. But it suggests that there is passion, interest, commitment, and money. And that's a great combination. Now the next step is, okay, how do we take that passion, commitment, and money and turn it into a growing movement? How do we turn it into bigger numbers? And that's going to be a big challenge and it's not clear to me how to do that for the Iran Book Show. I think that the Institute is going to have a variety of different tactics and strategies to do it. But for the Iran Book Show partially because I've already been on most of the big podcasts. It would be great to be again, but you only pick up marginal people there. I mean, Joe Rogan is the obvious exception. I haven't been on him. There would be a huge coup to get on him. But I've been on Lex and on Dave and a lot of others. So I need to figure out where is the next audience? Where are the people waiting to hear my voice to come over? Who can I appeal to? I don't think it's libertarians. They know me. I don't think they're libertarians who don't know who I am. So who is it? Where is it? It's on Twitch. Who is it? Do I need a debate with Destiny? I mean, who are the people out there that I need to be engaged with in order to get? And maybe it's to do more debates with the leftists, with Destiny and Vosh and some of these others, because I did add significant subscribers and did add significant followers from doing those debates. So we will be looking for more people to meet the debate over the next year to expand the audience and to find new audiences. And if you guys think of people with you, I mean, on the right, I'll keep debating people like Yoam Khazoni and others. And again, I'm looking for other people to debate. So please, you know, let me know. I will be debating a libertarian, which I don't think will bring me any more subscribers. I'm not sure how valuable this will be, but I'm getting paid for it. And I will be debating Brian Kaplan on Anarchy in March in New York City. So I'm not excited about that debate. I mean, I'm looking forward to meeting Brian Kaplan because I like him in spite of him being an anarchist. And I find a lot of what he writes really, really interesting. And I think he is an ally, again, in spite of being an anarchist and having other philosophical disagreements. But we will be debating Anarchy. But I'm looking for other debates. If you guys have ideas for other debates that I can hold that will attract a large audience, I'm definitely interested in those. Definitely interested in pursuing those. But there is something going on with at least the Iran Book Show. And how do we turn this into something bigger? I like the idea of having some events where I meet you live. I'm going to think about how to do that in a structured way going into next year. I mean, it would be great if you guys all came to Ocon in Miami in July, and we could have our own Iran Book Show session. You know, I could take a room at the conference and have everybody who is your Iran Book Show fan. I mean, Shahzabad is being there in the past. Others of you have been there in the past. Being you all into one room and we could schmooze and think, maybe even do a live show and do other things. So there is, yeah. All right, and Soma. For this year, I'm picking up a new instrument, Soprano Kornet. Wow. I have a question. What thoughts do you have about the odd left nationalism that Canada has? Language laws in Quebec, auto abandoning, foreign residential purchases. Yeah, I mean, this is not overly surprising. I mean, the left has often been associated with forms of nationalism. Again, it's national socialism, right? I mean, think about Argentina that's got incredibly leftist, I mean, you call it fascist, but it's really leftist regimes that rule it, but they're also very nationalistic, willing to go to war over the Falklands. I think that often leftist regimes have been nationalistic and it doesn't surprise me that Canada combines those two. It basically defines itself as being anti-U.S. and therefore, you know, it's brought as important to it because it differentiates from the United States and that also goes together with leftists, right? Leftists are anti-U.S. and that is combined with the nationalism. So, yeah. I mean, there's nothing in leftist ideology except in pure Marxism that rejects nationalism and even the pure Marxists, when it came to the Soviet Union, abandoned international socialism, abandoned the international nature, the so-called globalist, the one-world government nature of communism and we're much more interested in the nationalistic Soviet Union. You know, think about the Olympics and, you know, the pseudo-pride they took in winning gold medals and the importance they placed on the nation in spite of Marxism being supposedly anti-nationalism. It's not. There's nothing there that's anti-nationalism. Left ideology is collectivist ideology that is easily susceptible to nationalistic tendencies. Whoops, wrong one. Okay, Liam says, Hitler was voted in to help the poor. Every time the poor are used as Trojan horses, it's always a cover-up for dictatorship. Is that why blue states are enacting policies to rev up the number of visible homeless? I don't think so. I mean, you give the left and the right way too much credit in terms of their ability to manipulate the world. I don't think they can. I don't think they know how. I don't think they're competent enough to do it. The homeless crisis is not consciously created by the left. It's created because of leftist policies, but that's not their intent. They evade the consequence of their policies. And I don't think Hitler was voted to help the poor. I think Hitler was voted to defeat the left. Hitler was voted in to defeat communism. Communists were the real threat at the time. In the 1930s, communism was on the rise all over Europe. The Soviet Union was considered a powerful force. It was spreading the communist ideology. Communism was very popular in Germany, very popular in Poland, very popular elsewhere around Europe. Communism was the real threat. Socialism was the real threat. And Hitler came to power to defeat the left. I mean, explicitly came to power to defeat the left. By the way, you know, why was the welfare state established in Germany in the 1880s to defeat the left? Socialism, communism on the rise in Germany in the 1880s and Bismarck, I think it was Bismarck, instituted the welfare state in Germany in order to try to take the issue of poverty away from the communist, away from the left. And that is, you know, so the way we got the kind of status that we have today is usually the right responding to the left. The left is the intellectual, the left is the one that proposes new ideas, and the left responds. And the right responds, sorry, the right responds. And sometimes the response is, okay, we'll give you what you want halfway. And sometimes the responses will slaughter all of you and will establish a dictatorship. But it's always counter to. The right is empty. The left gives it content, at least as an oppositional force. And the only right, so the right is always looking for content. And this is the danger of, I think, religion and the national conservatives is finally they have a cause, a positive cause to fight for. God and country. All right. Maryland says, what are your predictions for Iran? Oh, good question. I meant to cover Iran. You know, I'm torn, right? Because I want to be optimistic. And I want to say the regime will fall. And I'm not sure what replaces it. And it's going to be, it's going to be mayhem and it's going to be a real disaster. But I think the regime is going to be significantly weakened and fall. And maybe the transition will be a more moderate theocracy, but ultimately heading towards freedom. And I want that to be true. And I think there's a real possibility of that being true. And I am reluctant to say it because, just because like at the back of my mind, it's like, you know, bad shit happens. But the reality is the bulletin wall did fall. Communism was defeated. And I think so will Iran. And I do think there's a good chance that this year, this regime will be weakened significantly and potentially fall. And if it does, let me just say, you know, if it does, it's a real, it's one of the best things, maybe the best thing to happen in the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall, you know, in global politics. Similarly, because it will completely eviscerate the general movement towards Islamism. It will take the most powerful nation that was committed to Islamism out of the equation. It will completely restructure the Middle East. It will take away the primary military ally for Syria and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen and a bunch of other elements in the Middle East that were dedicated to warfare and killing and terrorism and so on. It is, the fall of Iran is a major event. And the Iranians are always leaders in the Middle East. They were leaders within Islam. Without Iran, the slumist movement, I think, falls apart. And Turkey will try to capture the leadership role that is given up by Iran, but I just don't think Turkey has the capacity and Turkey at the end of the day is too secular. The leadership of Turkey might be very religious, but so many of the people are secular and that is not going to change. So, and I don't think the Saudis are interested in getting into that game. I don't think the Saudis are interested in becoming radical or becoming the leaders of an Islamist movement. I mean, I don't know if you've seen the plans that the Saudi Arabia has for this 100-mile-long city that they want to build in the desert. They're breaking ground. They're actually starting to build this. It's going to cost them hundreds of billions of dollars. I mean, they are very, very ambitious economically in all kinds of ways. And I think the young people in Saudi Arabia realize very, very much that the Wahhabis and their religiosity stand in the way of that. They're not going to eliminate that all at once, but it's in decline. I think Wahhabism is in decline in Saudi Arabia. I think it's being softened. Obviously, things could change. I mean, there could be a revolution in Saudi Arabia and got rid of some of the leadership that exists today. But while they remain authoritarian, they are moving away from the Wahhabis. They're moving away from a commitment to the Wahhabi religion. And the fact is that the Islamists in the world are weakened. The only place in which they are thriving and on the rise is in Afghanistan. And that's primarily because of the American complete and utter failure in Afghanistan. But everywhere else, the Islamists, the radical religionists are in retreat. It doesn't mean they're in retreat forever, but they're in retreat. And if Iran falls, that would be a major retreat. Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabis have been important for the exploitation of these ideas, but Saudi Arabia itself has not been a leader. It's been a financier, and it does not finance as much as it used to. It's a lot less of a threat than it used to be. I mean, they're really, really focused on trying to create some real economic activity, their replacement of oil. I don't think they're going about it the right way. I don't think they're going to be successful. But that's the focus for the Saudi regime over the next 20 years, not Sharia law and establishing an Islamist caliphate over the rest of the world. So what do you think of inspirational objectivism replacing religion, the conscious integration of reason and emotion along with spirituality? It's a difficult but worthy ambition. Yes, I agree completely, and I think it will replace religion at some point. Ultimately, objectivism will replace whatever it is that people get out of religion. Objectivism or philosophy in one way or another will replace. I think that the secular world driven by a philosophy of reason will find the kind of the spirituality, the integration of consciousness and reason and emotion, will find that to be a much more powerful motivator of human beings, a guide in terms of reason, and allow for certain social cohesion and community. So I think all of that will happen, but under the guise of irrational philosophy. But when, 100 years, I don't know. It's going to be a while. And who asks, is environmentalism intellectually integrated or just an outgrowth of guilt? Does environmentalism fit intellectually with the Christian nationalism or just a potential add-on to embrace in order to gain power? I mean, I think it is, it does fit, sadly. I think it does fit. And if you read Vermeure, I think I actually did a show on one of his essays on environmentalism. He says, look, God left the earth for us to be its... I can't forget the exact word, right? But to take care of the earth. We're not supposed to abuse it now. He said, you know, we shouldn't be crazy environmentalists by not allowing for human progress at all, but we also need to be very careful on how we treat nature and how we treat the environment. And stewards, thank you, Richard, stewards, custodians of nature. And therefore, so it has a role and it's being integrated into their ideas about nationalism, certainly into their ideas about Christianity. And remember that the environmentalist movement used to be called the conservation movement. And the conservation movement was a conservative movement. It was a movement of Republicans. It was a movement of, you know, most of the people in the environmentalist movement pre-1960s were on the right, not on the left. So it fits really, really well. So I think the leftist, wacky environmentalist, again, are disintegrators. The haters, it doesn't integrate around a particular view of, you know, it's egalitarianism taken to the nth degree. We shouldn't just be all equal as human beings. Human beings should be equal with the rest of nature. So they are complete eviscerators of integration, but the Christians could integrate the environment into their ideas quite easily. And I think haven't, well, Jennifer says, was listening to handles, how do you pronounce that? Xeris, Xerces, which I guess is a Greek play originally. Do you like that one? And this is an oratoria. This is handles. I don't think it's an opera. It's an oratoria, which is mainly, it's a chorus and then individual singers, but there's no action on stage. They're just standing and singing. I think that's true of handles. And yes, I like it. I mean, I have to admit that handle is not my favorite. Handel is part of a neoclassical, of the neoclassical tradition, or classical tradition really in music. I have a strong preference for romantic music, I'd say from Beethoven on. I like Mozart, but I'm not crazy about Mozart. I like Handel. I'm not crazy about Handel. I certainly appreciate the beauty and the power of what he does. And Handel and Bach, and I appreciate their music. I to some extent like their music, but if I had to put something on to listen to, it would probably be something from the 19th century rather than the 18th, just in terms of my preferences. One of my New Year's commitments, what is it, New Year's, whatever, resolutions, is to listen to more music. I've been bad about it. I've got a great sound system. I invested a lot of money in a really good speakers and a really good amplifier. And I need to take advantage of that more, much more. Daniel, it's frustrating that Sam Sita still has you labeled as a libertarian on his YouTube channel. It is one of the many, many, many frustrations in life, but it's going to be hard to have him label me anything different. I mean, Sam Sita, somebody, I need to figure out how to get on the show again and go at him again. This is James Taylor. What did I mean when she said the cult of uncertainty is a revolt against reason? Yeah, I mean, the cult that says who knows? Anything is possible. I mean, this is her rejection of skepticism, of humane kind of, you don't even know that you're awake right now. You could be asleep. You don't know that, you know, I don't know that this is a microphone. Maybe it's not. That's a rejection of reason. It's rejection of our senses. It's rejection of thinking. That doesn't mean you don't recognize that there's some things you're not certain about. It's the idea that there is no certainty. There is no knowledge. All there is is maybe. And that's just not true. It's still true that some things we're not certain about. Some things, you know, there is issues about uncertainty, but skepticism is what you rejects outright. The idea that there is no certainty can't be certain about anything, including the explicit evidence of your senses. James says, is it legitimate to speak of people as fully rational? Even if you've integrated objectives and properties, subconscious is always going to send you irrational fears and ideas. Maybe, although no, I think that certainly somebody who has made the right choices in life and has integrated his ideas properly and who maybe didn't have a traumatic childhood can change those irrational fears and ideas and can become fully integrated. But yes, I do think you can say somebody is fully rational and then somebody acts on reason, even if he might have certain irrational fears and ideas. He doesn't act on them. But I think you can also eradicate those, maybe not us now, but in the future that will certainly be possible. Daniel says, have you read anything by American biographer, Robert Caro, currently reading The Power Broke Up about Robert Moses, known for his exhaustive research and detail? I have not read anything by him. Let me know what you think of his book. Michael says, you notice pundits often write, or say conservatives and libertarians, not just conservatives anymore. Have you been talking things, this is Ayn Rand's influence slowly creeping into politics? They've been saying that for a long time because they want to make clear that within the conservative movement there are certain people who are more libertarian. That has to do with conservatives from 10 years ago less to do with conservatives today. Maybe they're saying conservative and libertarian partially because in the past when he said conservative, the assumption was you're somewhat libertarian on economic policy and now conservative doesn't mean that anymore. I don't know that Ayn Rand has. I thought that Ayn Rand had any influence on politics and I think she did up until Trump. I think Trump has eviscerated that influence at least in the short run. We'll see what happens in the future, but today the conservative movement has almost no remnants of Ayn Rand in them. I just don't see it anymore. There was a time where I could list six, seven senators who were influenced by Ayn Rand, but today I'd be embarrassed because those senators have become so disgusting that who wants to think of them as being influenced by Ayn Rand? Many of the ones influenced by Ayn Rand in the House of Left being kicked out of the party, abandoned the party. I think the Republican Party has moved away from Ayn Rand's ideas. Rand Paul has been super mixed and terrible in certain issues, so no, I'm not happy with Rand Paul at all. There's not a single senator that I'm positive about and Rand Paul was terrible in the era of Trump. He was good in his first couple of years in office and has been a compromising joke since then. He ran an awful campaign for president in 2016, just awful, a non-entity, and then just folded to Trump and it became terrible. Ben Sasse has left politics. Ben Sasse has left politics. He has resigned from the Senate and has gone to become the president of the University of Florida system. So he's gone. I liked Ben Sasse, although he was too religious for my liking, I liked him, but he is gone. He couldn't stand it. That's exactly my point. The good ones can't stand it. And they've left. All right, thank you guys. We did great on the super chat. You were terrific. Good questions. We're at an hour and a half exactly, which is perfect. And don't forget to like the show before you leave. We've got a bunch of likes that we could add to that. And I will see you all tomorrow morning for the news hour. So thanks everybody for joining me and see you tomorrow.