 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everyone. Welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Tuesday night. I hope everybody's having a great start of your week. This is the second show of the day, so I don't know. I might be slow. You might be slow. I have to catch up a little bit. I hope, as I said, I hope everybody's doing well. Let me take these things off. Do I need them? I don't think I need them. All right, today we're going to talk about Texas. I wanted to talk about a show ago or whatever, and yeah, we ran out of time. So we'll talk about Texas today, and we will talk about cancel culture and free speech. So some examples of self-canceling, self-censorship, and then, which I think is probably the biggest damage that has been done from the whole canceling phenomena. And then we'll talk about this new law with regard to free speech that has just been passed or is about to be passed in Ireland. So those are the topics for today. On Thursday, we've got Ben Baer back. Ben is going to be talking with us. We're going to be talking about altruism and Christianity, altruism and religion. And that should be interesting, and hopefully you guys will enjoy that. And then, what is the next show? Oh yeah, we're going to do on Saturday, Saturday at 3 p.m. We're going to do a show on the Seven Deadly Sins. We're going to do an update from our previous Seven Deadly Sins show. So we're going to contrast, kind of in a sense, we're going to feed off of what we talked about with Ben, and we're going to talk about the contrast, if you will, between a morality and objectivist morality, a morality of objectives, values and virtues versus a morality that presents these sins. And we'll take the one at a time and analyze them. That one is sponsored by Adam. So thank you, Adam. Adam Campbell has sponsored that show. And then on the 4th of July, around the 4th of July, sometime around the 4th of July, we'll do another sponsored show. I think this is a sponsored show that Andrew wanted. I think Andrew won the lottery on this one. And the topic of the show, and it'll be around the 4th of July, that'll be perfect. The topic will be American Exceptionalism. So for all the topics you guys suggested, to Adam that he sponsored, he chose American Exceptionalism. So we're going to do that around the 4th of July. That seems to be the right time for an American Exceptionalism talk. All right, today we're going to talk about Texas Exceptionalism. So James sent me a video about Texas. Why Texas is becoming America's most powerful state. I'll just show you the screenshot. That's the video of Texas. So if you want to see the video, this is where you can find it. It's being seen 3.1 million times. And it's basically just a video about what's going on in Texas. And James wanted me to comment on it. So I figured that would be fun to do. And just give you kind of a general sense and a general sense of my views on Texas for what that is worth. For the state of Texas. As Jennifer says, don't mess with Texas. Don't mess with Texas. There used to be signs on the side of the road. When I live in Texas, this is the 1980s and early 90s. And signs used to say don't mess with Texas. And it's like, all right, don't mess with Texas. But the signs were there because to prevent people throwing their trash out of their car onto the street. And it's a play on the wood mess. Don't make a mess. But don't make a mess in Texas. But I think don't mess with Texas is bigger than just garbage and loitering. Don't mess with these people. Don't mess with the state. And it's a fun term and I think articulates or represents something about the state. All right, so let me give you a little bit of highlights of the video. I'm going to, without actually going through the video, the video is about 37 minutes. You know, when I do 37 minute video would take me to do, you know, let's say every 30 seconds, I do three minutes. So that's, anyway, you can do the math. It's not doable, right? It's not doable. So I'll just give you some of the highlights. Texas, as you know, is the second second largest state in the union. It is anybody you know what the largest state in the union is going once going twice. It's Alaska. Alaska is significantly larger than Texas. So that's a bit of a problem for Texas because Texas likes to be number one in everything. So Texas is the second largest geographically state in the union. I think it's a larger, it's certainly the largest it is. So it is larger than California. Big point of pride, big point of pride. It's larger than California. But it's only second in population size. It's only second in population size. Second to California, although California as we've talked about many times is shrinking, Texas is growing. So by, I don't know, 2050 maybe Texas might catch up, might not depends on trends. But Texas definitely has a population that is growing. California is shrinking. Texas used to be a fourth or fifth in population. It has risen fast over the last 40 years. New York used to have a bigger population. Illinois used to have a bigger population. But today it's California and Texas by a pretty dominant, pretty dominant in terms of population. One of the interesting things politically is California has been losing congressional seats. It lost a congressional seat, not losing congressional seats. That's one inaccurate. It lost one congressional seat in the last census, likely to use it, maybe lose another one in the next census, but lost one in the last census as it started to shrink. California, Texas gained two. So that gives you a little bit of a sense of the speed at which California is shrinking and Texas is growing and that's why there's a chance at some point that the Texas catch up to California. Dallas-Ford Worth, the metropolitan area of Dallas-Ford Worth is today the fourth largest in the country behind New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. It's likely to see Chicago soon and become the third largest. Houston, of course, is a massive city. San Antonio is big. So, and Austin is growing. That triangle, it's called the Triangle of Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and Houston is where almost all the Texas economy is when almost all the population is. It is an exciting place, a growing place, a place of business and profit and industry and entrepreneurship. It's that triangle. Austin is right on the triangle. It's right along I-35 between Dallas and San Antonio. You pass through Austin. Of course, Austin, probably the best city in Texas, but we can get to that. Just a few other stats. Texas economy is growing one and a half times faster than the U.S. economy. If it was a country, if Texas was a country, it would be the eighth largest economy in the world. Just imagine what California is. I think California is the third or fourth largest economy in the world. Maybe the fourth largest economy in the world. Texas is the number one state in the country in terms of exports out of the United States. Primarily, I think oil and gas was a big chunk of that. But Texas is a large exporter. And you could go on it. 144 companies relocated, 35% of all new jobs in the U.S. since COVID. In Texas, Texas has a zero income tax. One of the great advantages of Texas, zero income tax, zero capital gains tax on a state level. It has a low cost of living, particularly in Dallas and Houston, where there is plenty of space to build. Austin is a little bit more restrained because of the leftist in government there that restrained building. But Houston in particular, you can build that if an item and therefore prices are low. Housing prices are a function of supply, not just demand. And while demand is high in Texas, supply is huge. The cost of living in Texas, let's say in Texas is four times less than it is in San Francisco. 54 of the Fortune 500 companies are based in Texas. Oil and gas industry, of course, is huge there. So is tech, primarily in Austin. Let's see, of course, fracking or something. North Texas, northwest. Yeah, I've got my northwest Texas. Oil was originally discovered, the first big oil field was discovered in East Texas. But today, most of the production is from West Texas, the Permian Basin, where really there's a massive amount of fracking. They thought the Permian Basin was like done. They got all the oil out of the basin and then fracking came along and the Permian Basin has like, you know, maybe some of the largest oil reserves in the world. Huge refining capacity. Today a diversified economy and lots of windmills. Not sure that's a good thing or a bad thing. Lots of windmills. It turns out that some of the windiest places in the United States are indeed in Texas. That whole Midwestern region is super from North Dakota down to Texas is super windy. So that is Texas. What has made Texas, Texas? I think Texas has always had a sense of independence, of entrepreneurship. It was, of course, a place where oil was discovered in the early, sorry, very early 20th century. The kind of people who drilled for oil, the people who built up those oil empires were independent people and they made a lot of money. They brought a lot of wealth. They built Dallas. They built industry in Houston. The refining industry, the oil industry is primarily based in Houston. Dallas is primarily a finance place. There is also a sense of just the size of it and the loneliness of it, the desert nature of it. Which I think breeds and encourages kind of an independent spirit, the ability to survive in that kind of environment. It's hot. It's not hospitable. And that requires a certain attitude. It requires a certain attitude among people. I guess the oil guys were called Wildcats and a lot of movies were made about Texas oil. There's something special about that sense of independence in a big country. But also that sense that America had in the 19th century of just going out there and starting fresh. And I think a lot of people came to Texas with the idea of coming here and just starting fresh. So it's become a place that has attracted independent minded people. It's attracted people who wanted adventure. People who wanted to do something interesting and exciting. Of course, Texas was one in a revolution. It gained its independence from Mexico in the revolution famous. You know, Austin was one of the generals at that time and then became, was it Austin? Houston became the president of the Texas Republic. And then it kind of emerged into the United States of America, became a state. But I think it's the only state that has kept the right to secede as part of its agreement to joining the United States, something like that. So in all those regards, Texas has been a kind of unique place and has a unique place in American history. You know, Texas Juneteenth is actually when Texas abolished slavery. It's not even when the entire U.S. abolished slavery. It's when Texas abolished slavery, Texas was not. Was Texas a part of the Confederacy, a formal part of the Confederacy, or just an ally of the Confederacy? I'm not sure. So I think it was just, I think it was an ally. Anyway, modern Texas, because of the low tax rates, relatively low regulations, but not really. I mean, Texas is fairly highly regulated. A lot of licensing laws, a lot of silliness. In that sense, Florida and a number of other states are freer than Texas is. The cities in Texas, so the city of San Antonio, the city of Austin, the city of Dallas, I'm not sure about Houston. But those cities are all governed by Democrats. It is interesting that even in Texas, Democrats win in the cities. Outside of the center of the cities, Texas is dominantly Republican, with the exception probably of the south along the border, which tends to be more Democratic. Texas is about, I don't know, 55, 45, maybe a little bit more lean Republican. But it has shown on occasion a tendency to lean a little bit more Democratic. Texas is not a slam dunk Republican state forever. And it's interesting that Hispanics in Texas are more likely to vote Republican than, excuse me, let's say Hispanics in California. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that Republicans in Texas have just treated Hispanics with more respect. Hispanics have been there for a very long time. And Republicans in Texas have never been as hostile to migrants, even illegal migrants, as they're California, as people in California have been. They haven't passed this, restricting regulations on them and so on. So generally Hispanics in Texas are much more friendly to the Republican Party than they are in California. What else can I take you about Texas? Austin is an amazing city in my view. I've said that before in spite of the fact that it's governed by Democrats and they do a lot of perverse things to increase the cost of living there. Austin is just a beautiful city. It truly is a beautiful city. It's an exciting city. It's a fun city. And actually all exciting cities and fun cities, and I know you guys hate to hear this, but almost all exciting and fun cities are cities run by Democrats. But the periphery of Austin outside of the city itself is not as heavily regulated, is not as heavily zoned as let's say Austin itself is. You know, Houston is not a pretty place. Oh, one other thing that Houston really signifies and represents is no zoning. No zoning laws in Houston, so you get a lot more freedom of development, a variety of development, much better in Houston. But Houston is not a typical city. There's a downtown, but there are lots of downtowns. There are many kind of city centers. That's how the city evolved organically. Questions on Texas. Any questions on Texas? Daniel says, interesting fact, I was a roommate with Sam Houston's great grandson in Ben Houston. I don't know what is his name, Ben Houston. Wow. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool to know the great grandson. Sam Houston was quite a character. I mean, all those, I mean, if you've watched the movie The Alamo, I think the best version of the movie The Alamo is John Wayne. There is a Alamo with John Wayne, and John Wayne actually gives a few speeches in the movie. And the speeches are really, really good. So I encourage you to listen to the speeches of John Wayne in the movie The Alamo. It's a good movie. And The Alamos in San Antonio, of course, definitely worth a visit if you go to Texas. San Antonio is a really pretty city. It's got a river there. It's got a river walk. It's really pretty. I should say this about Texas, though. Texas is also, unfortunately, super religious, particularly outside of the main cities. It definitely, at least when we were living there, this is late 80s, early 90s, but I have no reason to think it hasn't changed. There was definitely a sense of xenophobia, a dislike of the other, a dislike of the different. You know, people looked at us as foreigners a little funny, and not so much me because I don't look like a foreigner and I don't speak, but my wife. It was sometimes uncomfortable once you got out of Austin into some of the smaller towns in the periphery, the way people looked at you. So there's definitely an element in Texas that is unpleasant. And you know, Texas has some of the harshest anti-abortion laws. And you know, the Texas legislature is to some extent looking to pass laws that I think are really, really offensive and bad. In a sense, offensive or bad in a sense of bringing kind of a socially conservative platform to the state in the law. And that of course would be really bad. So the amazing things about Texas I think are endangered by the social conservatism. James adds that Texas is a mixed state via ethnicities. Yeah, quite diverse, quite diverse. It's got a very large Hispanic population. Some of them going back to the days when Texas was part of Mexico, many of them new immigrants over time. Austin in particular is a very, very kind of city with people from all over the world, students from all over the world. Because it's a university town, because it's a government town, people from everywhere are there. So it's really, really an amazing city. Partially because of that. I like the, what do you call it? It's not multicultural in a sense of, I hate multicultural. It's a good word if it just meant lots of cultures, but it's a bad word. It's a bad concept when it means what I think it means, what actually the way people use it is, you know, all kind of the implication that all cultures are equal. I just mean people from lots of different places around the world. And Austin is a fun place because it has, it has that. It has a lot of people. Let's see, James says, what about Texas and renewable energy? So Texas has invested a lot in renewable energy. As I said, it's a number one state I think in the country when it comes to wind. It has, I think more wind farms than Germany. I mean, it's big in wind. It also has, I think it produces like 17% of electricity when it's windy from wind farms. It produces something like four or five from solar after all, Texas is a very sunny place. So you'd expect it to be a lot of solar. But the problem is, of course, that all of this is completely unreliable when it's cloudy or when it's cold in the winter, or when the wind doesn't blow, then or when the windmills freeze or whatever, then there's no electricity. Then you get an electricity shortage, which California now, sorry, Texas now has experienced several times. And it's investment in renewables, which is massive. And the state has done it, and entrepreneurs in the state have done it benefiting from state and federal subsidies and benefits. The investment is that is diverted energy focus thinking from actually expanding the incredibly cheap energy source, which is natural gas, that is plentiful in taxes, that is reliable, that is easy to get, easy to transport. Texas has the network of pipes and everything that needs in order to transport it. And then what happens is Texas is just not invested properly in the grid, in a grid that can withstand, for example, a freeze, can withstand cold, can withstand switching from wind to solar to gas if there's no wind and solar. All these backup systems, I mean, one of the big problems with wind and solar, particularly solar, is that you need batteries because there's no solar energy at night. So you need to store the energy you produced during the day and batteries are super expensive and the technology doesn't really exist to store it in mass. So you're still reliant on fossil fuels to generate the energy, and Texas is not properly invested in the infrastructure to sustain that energy no matter what the weather is. And that's where the focus should be, instead of putting the focus on alternative energies. They should be putting it on a resilient grid. Let's see, Daniel says, what do you think of ATX? Keep Austin Weird. We're in the ATX, where are you in ATX during the campaign? I don't know what that means. Keep Austin Weird. You know, I don't know. I'm not particularly fond of Keep Austin Weird. Weird doesn't really mean anything. If it was Keep Austin Quirky, that would be fine. You know, Austin has always had kind of a different character. Sixth Street with this music, live music, and South by Southwest with the Big Music Festival. Austin was always a little special, a little different, a little quirky, and I think all that is fine and all that is good. Weird is, I think, not the right term, but I get what they're trying to get at, and they're trying to preserve that. So, yeah, I don't have any real problem with Keep Texas Weird, and I'm not sure I understand what it means during the campaign. What campaign? Were you in Austin when? When what? Were you in Austin when? Oh, were you? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what you're asking. So, ask again, because I don't know what you're asking. Alright, I think those are the Texas questions. Cool. Alright, let's quickly talk about these other, these cancelling stories. So, where did I put this? I'll put this story somewhere. Copy-pasted it into something. No, not there. There it is. Okay. So, it came across a few days ago, a story about Elizabeth Gilbert. Elizabeth Gilbert is the best-selling author of the novel, or is it Eat Love, Space Out, something? Eat, Pray, Love. Eat, Pray, Love. You remember that was a big book, I don't know, 10 years ago, whatever. She did amazingly well. Anyway, during COVID, as she was locked down, Elizabeth Gilbert started on a new book, and the new book focused on a story, a true story, but she was turning it into a novel. The true story of Cop Likov, who, with his family, were discovered by a geologist in 1978, completely being cut off from all human contact since 1936. So, they had been cut off for 42 years, living in the wilderness in Siberia. The family were members of some kind of Orthodox Christian sect called the Old Believers. They were being persecuted in the 1930s by Stalin. So, they basically left. Cop's brother had been shot by Communist patrol. So, they just left and isolated themselves, and she was writing a novel about what that must have been like. She had done research or, you know, I don't know, I haven't read the novel. And she started, you know, she finished a book, and she got a publisher, and she got a publisher for the book, and she was getting ready to launch the book. And she tweeted. She has 263,000 Twitter followers. You'd think she had more. But she has 263,000 Twitter followers. And she wrote them that she is going to, she wrote them out the book, and she encouraged them to buy the book, and she sent out the tweet to the world. And there was an incredible backlash. An incredible backlash from Ukrainian readers who objected and felt offended by the fact that she was publishing a novel set in Russia, set in Russia, when, you know, when they are at war with Russia, when Russia's invaded, when Russia's doing what it's doing in Ukraine. How could she write a novel set in Russia? Now, this is nuts. Why can't you write a novel about Russia, particularly one that's not particularly positive about Russia, right? It's set in Russia just because Russians are bad people. Is it impossible to write a book about historical Germany during World War II because Germany are bad people? You don't want to read about Russia right now? Don't buy the book. But supposedly Ukrainian readers were offended. Okay. So Ukrainian readers offended. What she should have said is, I'm sorry you offended. I understand that as Ukrainians right now, you do not want to read a book about Russia. Don't buy the book. Don't buy the book. And by the way, anybody who's offended by a book set in Russia, it's a novel. Don't buy the novel. You know, I still think you should buy Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. They are set in Russia. But I don't, I think even Ukrainians should buy those novels. They're good novels. Instead, she shortly after the tweet, she announced that she would draw the book. And so six days after sharing the pre-order link, she told the audience that she's removing the Snow Forest, the name of the book from pre-publication. This is called self-canceling. Now it's not even that hordes of people on Twitter attacked her and went after her. She said that an enormous outpouring of reaction of Ukrainian readers. I mean, how many Ukrainian readers could have done that and how bad could it have been? I don't even know that she caved. It's, it's, it's, this is just weakness. It's like caving assumes you have something. And I don't know, maybe I'm exaggerating here, but, but no, this is just weakness. And look, much of the cold cancel culture is about weakness. It's about people not being able to tell people to go to hell. It's about people not being able to tell people, don't read it. Unsubscribe. Leave me alone. It's about people caving to the mob, giving into the mob, just capitulating. It's terrific. And, and of course this is not the only example of such, of such a case. You know, there's a woman by the name of Alexandra Duncan. She was writing a novel called Ember Days. The book was all set to be published by Green Willow, an imprint of Harper Collins. And the author would do it. What was the problem? Why did she withdraw it? Because it turned out that she was writing a book from the point of view of a black American, a person of Gula heritage from Georgia and South Carolina, from the Georgia and South Carolina low country. And of course, Mrs. Duncan is white. And when the description of the book came out, people said, wait a minute. A white woman can't write a book from the perspective of a black person. And she caved. She wrote, quote, my own limited worldview. I mean, listen to this, my own limited worldview as a white person led me to think I could responsibly depict a character from this Gula culture. Clearly. The fact that I did not see the signs of the problem with my book premiere, with my book's premiere, is evidence that I was not the right person to try to tell the story. I am deeply ashamed to have made a mistake of this magnitude. I mean, can only Jews write books about Jews? Can only blacks write books about blacks? Can only men write books about men? I mean, how did I and Rand have male heroes in her books? I mean, that's ridiculous. She's a woman. She can't write about men. Who the hell does she think she is? I mean, this is such an ignorant statement and such a racist statement. Because it assumes that there is a fundamental, inherent, intrinsic difference that cannot be bridged, that cannot be understood. I mean, an American could write a book about a Russian. They did. One of my favorite authors growing up as a kid was a German by the name of Carl May, M-A-Y, and he wrote the most amazing westerns. He wrote these amazing cowboy and Indian stories. I mean, I loved them. I read all his books when I was a teenager. Everything was translated into Hebrew from German and I read them all. You can't get them in America. Maybe two of his books are translated in English. They were never translated in English, but they were translated in Hebrew. Funny. I mean, that's weird. How can an Israeli read a book written by a German given what Germans did to Jews in World War II? I should cancel myself. I should cancel all of my reading when I did as a teenager. And all those publishers and translators should cancel themselves by having translated and published in Israel. Anyway, Carl May wrote these books about the American West and he had a second genre. That was one genre that was fantastic. I loved the heroes. It was just amazing. I was a teenager, so if I read it today, I don't know exactly what I think of it, but for a teenager, they were amazing. And then, Yosset, another genre of Arabian stories, like heroic characters in Arabia, in the Middle East. Another topic that I shouldn't have been reading about because I'm an Israeli and I'm not supposed to read about the other. I don't know. The interesting thing about Carl May is he wrote many of the books from prison. He had never been to the United States. He had never been to the Wild West. He had never met an Indian. He had never met a cowboy. He had never been to the Middle East. He had never been to Arabia. And he wrote these amazing novels. How many authors write historical fiction? Historical fiction is about history. By definition, they weren't there. By definition, they're none of that culture. But you do your research. You analyze the psychology of the characters. You're not depicting history. You're just writing a novel. You analyze the psychology given the culture. And you write your novel. It might be good. It might be bad. But, I mean, it's real racism and barbarism to limit people's ability to write literature only through their own experience. So it's okay that Ayn Rand wrote We the Living. That was her own experience. She can write that. But Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand wasn't a businessman, woman or man. And again, lots of men in that book. I can't even go there. It's just so silly. It's just so silly. And of course, it only applies to blacks because blacks were oppressed, blacks were slaves. There's still discrimination against blacks. There's been discrimination for a long time against blacks. All of that is true. And if for somehow that level of, you know, the fact that they have been so abused throughout their history means that everybody has to treat carefully. Everybody has to pretend that that is the only horrible experience that any human beings have ever had in history. And therefore, it cannot somehow be understood. And again, unless you have that color skin, it's just, it really is horrible. Anyway, so when she announced that she was drawing the book, an article by her explaining her self-cancellation was published in Publishers Weekly. But you can't read it in Publishers Weekly. You can't read it in Publishers Weekly. Because in that article, the author, Miss Duncan, identifies the person whose critical queries led her to self-cancell the project. And he is this person who queried her and asked her, are you sure you can write a book about a black person? This person is black or a person of color and author of young adult fiction. And he was criticized on Twitter. So because he was criticized on Twitter in this world of wokeness, because he was criticized on Twitter, Publishers Weekly followed Blige to kill the article and not connect him to the story at all. I mean, wimps cowards is an understatement of what I think of these people. I mean, this is the problem we have in the world today. It's in America today. We're becoming more racist. We are becoming conscious of race. We're becoming aware of race. We're emphasizing race. We're talking about race. And race, it's not even race, as some people understand it, and I think race is a bogus concept anyway. It's skin color. That's it. Skin color. We become obsessed with skin color. And skin color is representative of how oppressed you happen to be. And the more oppressed you happen to be, the more virtue you get and the more we must all grovel before you. It's horrible. I mean, these are authors who have worked hard in their books. They've devoted a significant amount of time and effort to write a novel. And they feel so guilty. They feel so, as if they don't belong in their own skin, that they're willing to grovel and cave and take the work of years, of years, and dismiss it and dismiss it just so that they don't offend some people who, I think, to some extent, deserve being offended because they're just being ridiculous. I think in the end, the worst aspect of self-canceling is that it leads on a much larger scale because only a few people can self-cancel because only a few people actually produce something that is worthy of cancelling, if you will. But what about other people who have different thoughts, who have different ideas, who have different songs, different paintings, different sculptures, whatever, and who are self-censoring themselves, who are preventing themselves from speaking, from painting, from drawing, from sculpting, from filming a film because they're afraid. They're afraid that marble will come after them. Or they feel guilty for having the thought. They feel guilty for wanting to make the movie. They feel guilty for wanting to play the part. The problem with woke and with cancelling, the whole cancelling culture, is that it shuts down conversation, but ultimately the real evil is that it shuts down the mind. It basically takes whole categories of ideas and products and creations and original works, and basically says, you can't do all this stuff. So don't even think about it. Don't even consider it. Don't even work to achieve it. And that just shuts down the mind. It shuts down creativity. It shuts down originality. It shuts down people's willingness and ability to produce and create and make and innovate and do things in all realms of life, but particularly in the arts. Now the arts in deep trouble anyway, but this can help. It makes everybody conventional. It makes everybody mainstream. It makes everybody the same. You know, be careful. Don't piss anybody off, but how can you, how can you discover truth? How can you engage with ideas? How can you be a truth seeker at any level without upsetting people? I mean, look at this show. We upset people all the time, every day. All I have to say is something like vaccines and people run for the hills or Trump and people run for the hills or whatever. Bad Trump, bad, bad Trump. What would the world be like if we stopped offending one another? I mean, the funny thing is if you have self-esteem, then you don't get offended. I mean, what are you going to say to me that offends me? That I'm wrong? That's not offensive. That I'm an idiot? That's not offensive. That's just stupid. What can you say to offend me? You can draw a caricature of me? Whatever. It doesn't work, right? It has to be pretty personal. But everybody finds everything offensive. And I think the real danger here is that people become fearful, people become insular, and they don't share their ideas or they don't, and then they stop having ideas. It shuts down the mind. And this is why free speech is so important. And it's not just a free speech in the legal sense, but a culture that is accepting at least of a certain range of speech within a rational context, right? For a white woman to write a novel about somebody black is not irrational. She might not do a good job. The novel might fail because she'll miss some of the nuances of that culture. Maybe. I don't know. But then okay, let it fail. Why is it offensive? Why is it morally wrong? It can only be morally wrong in a racist world, in a world where skin color is deterministic of what you can and cannot do, only in a world where skin color is deterministic of who and what you are. And that's not a kind of world any of us want to live in. So if we're talking about free speech, we should talk about Ireland. Now I think a lot of you know some of you Europeans or some of you know this because we talked about it before in the show and other places, that Europe has a lot of hate speech laws. Europe is really, really bad in terms of prohibiting speech that is hateful. And different countries have different laws and some of them are worse than others. And you know I've said this before, Charlie Hebdo before was attacked by the Muslims, by the Islamists. It was attacked by the French government for being too insinuity, too offensive. Offensive, there's that word again. But Ireland is trying to take it to the next level. Lawmaker's in Ireland about to pass a bill in the coming weeks that criminalizes, quote, incitement. And you think incitement of violence, that should be criminal. No, not would criminalize incitement to hatred against a person if it's on account of his race, gender or other quote protected characteristic. So purposefully vague. It basically says that if you put out something that somebody could suggest implies or incites. Or suggest hatred towards a person because of his one of the protected classes, you can go to jail. It includes in this law that if you are preparing a possessing material likely to incite violence or hatred, then the burden of proof is on you. You're not innocent until proven guilty anymore. The burden of proof is on you. That the hateful material is not really hateful. And you're distributing it non-ordinary and incite hatred. The law also in multiple sections specifies that being reckless about your speech, saying something, you know, stupid, reckless in other words, that people find hateful is you're not protected by recklessness. Reckless is, you know, and you, you know, if you're drunk driving is reckless behavior. So being reckless is sufficient ground for conviction. You don't have to be completely self-met, you know, aware of what you're doing. Just being reckless about it is enough. Now again, this is another way to shut people's minds down, to shut down the conversation, to shut down what people can say and can't say. If there's a terrorist attack in Dublin caused by Islamists, can we say something about Islam? Or would that be immediately hate because it's about somebody's religion? Can we identify the terrorists as Muslims? Can we discuss their motivation being connected to the Quran? Can any of that, can any of that be discussed? If it's Catholics blowing up a building in, well, no, Protestants blowing up a building in Catholic Dublin, can their religious be identified? Can it be discussed, the conflict between, I mean, what counts? I mean, this is again another form in which the mind is shut down, in which debate is shut down, discussion is shut down. This is placing the emotions of people above facts, above reality, the fact that they offended, the fact that they feel hurt, the fact that they feel like this is not good. There's no objective criteria to what is hatred and what is not. Many times what is just factual statements of you as hatred. We are elevating emotion above reason, elevating emotion above fact, and thus destroying debate, destroying conversation, destroying new ideas. Remember, every new idea, every new idea is offensive to somebody, the people who held the old idea. And why do we have specific classes, you know, protected classes? Why isn't everybody a protected class? Why is it okay to offend anybody? There is nothing more important than free speech. And laws like this in Ireland and many European countries are talking about expanding this, expanding these kind of laws, only going to bring about greater and greater angst, greater and greater authoritarianism. And ultimately they all bring back a massive backlash. Again, if you're going to be racist, the other side can be just as racist if not more. And in many cases like in Europe and in the US, they're the majority. So beware. Yeah, very unhealthy what is going on in the world today. This attitude towards offense is dangerous, unhealthy, and yeah. And again, mind crushing, soul crushing, mind crushing. All right. And of course all of that is promoted by, you know, the left in the US and the left in Europe. I was going to give an example of the right cancelling, but it doesn't quite fit. It's a little different, but I did read a story last week about the Southern Baptist Church kicking out of the Southern Baptist Church, two churches, two megachurches, one of them, I think the biggest megachurch. So one of their big, big churches, they kicked them out because the church had ordained female priests. So they kicked the churches out of the biggest evangelical organization in the country because they dared to have female priests. That's a form of cancelling. All right. Let's see. All right. Let's take some questions. On the book already. We are about $270 short of our goal. And it would be great. It would be great if we could achieve the goal. We're heading towards the end of the month. We're heading towards Ocon. We've got a few benchmarks we need to achieve in order to keep the show going. So consider doing some more questions. A lot of good questions so far. I already see up here. I'll be going over them while we're doing these. Consider doing additional questions. I'm looking primarily for $20 or above questions. That would be amazing. So keep them coming. Hopper Campbell. A bit of good news. Hopper Campbell says this $100 worth of good news. Larry Salisman was on a Harry Binswanger show yesterday and mentioned that the academic writing critiquing the New Deal and the regulatory state had left the Ivy Tower and made their way into the Supreme Court. This court is hostile to the regulatory control. I think that's absolutely right. I've talked about this before, particularly Judge Gorsuch. Gorsuch is very hostile to what he calls the administrative state. That is also true of probably of Barrett. And Justice Thomas. So you have three justices that are pretty committed to rolling back the administrative state. And you've already seen a few decisions that have done this. You've seen the decision with regard to the EPA. We just saw the decision with regard to the, what do you call it? We used to call swamps. Now it's called wetlands. We saw the decision about carbon emissions. So there are a number of decisions. And I think more and more cases are going to come up for the Supreme Court that actually what we're going to see the court actually limiting the regulatory state and limiting the administrative state. So that is all good news. I mean it comes with the baggage of all the bad stuff they have already done, including doing away with abortion protection. But that is good news. Gorsuch in particular is I think you know the most intellectual and intellectual consistent about the administrative state of all the judges. What I find interesting, and I don't know that Larry talked about this, but what I find interesting is that while this is happening at the Supreme Court, the next wave of conservative justices and the next wave of conservative law professors and the next wave of conservative law students has a very different approach. The sexiest, most interesting topic right now among Federalist Society members, these are kind of the right wing law students, is not the kind of thinking that Gorsuch brings to the table, but is the kind of thinking that Vermeul at Harvard brings to the table and Vermeul is what he calls a common good conservative and common good constitutionalist. And his interpretation is the exact opposite of Gorsuch. He is massively, massively a pro administrative state, pro regulatory agency, pro big government, pro government imposing morality on the people and everything else on the people. So while there is definitely good news with this generation of justices, I worry about the next generation. I mean Thomas is at some point going to retire. It'll be interesting if there's a Republican who he's replaced with, hopefully it's with somebody more like Gorsuch than like Vermeul. But you never know, it depends who the next president will be and it depends who's advising the next president and a lot of the conservative think tanks and maybe even within the Federalist Society there's been a real shift in the last few years towards more of these common good constitutionalists. But yeah, I think the justices in the Supreme Court right now and you saw some of the rulings, some of the good rulings were like eight to zero or nine to zero, seven to two. And so some of these issues even the left is coming around on. So yeah, I mean this Court on economic issues so far has done very well and has been really good, has been really good. All right, let's James for $50. We need a few more $50 questions guys if we're going to make our targets for today and really I should increase the target, it should be higher because we missed the target this morning, see. Why did New England never really grow? It has a lot of water, innovation and many other things going for the area. Do you think it will ever grow to become a major region in the country again? Boston never actually grew like Philadelphia or New York City, huh? I don't know exactly why. I think the weather has a lot to do with it. I mean Boston is colder than New York and it's colder than Philadelphia and it's wetter, it's more snow, it's a more difficult place to live. On the other hand, it's an amazing culture, amazing museums, amazing orchestras, just amazing theater, just a lot of stuff going on in Boston. Boston is a great city, it's one of the truly great cities. Boston has been rejuvenated. When I lived in Boston in the mid-1970s, like South Boston, the area south of downtown was a dump, it was horrible. And by the ports, by the water, warehouses, just awful. And all of that is now beautiful, just amazing and downtown is amazing and much of Boston is really, really, really nice. And beyond that, Boston is, Massachusetts is the richest state in the Union. On a per capita GDP adjusted for cost of living, Boston is by far the richest state in the United States. So a lot of wealth is produced there and a lot of the wealth might be old wealth, but there's a lot of entrepreneurs, it's a biotech center, it's a tech center. Boston is the university town, the university city. It has MIT and Harvard, it has Tufts, it has a bunch of other universities. I think it has more universities in the city than any other city in the US. BU, UMass, BC, Boston College, so lots and lots and lots of universities. But it's a major city, so why didn't it grow? I don't know. I think a lot of it has to do with the cold and with people moving to the south. The areas in the US that have grown are basically the areas of sunshine. First it was California, everybody moved west to California. And it was sunshine, it was a great way of life, it was a great quality of life because of the weather, because it was growing, because it was new, because everything you built was new. Boston would have to grow out in order to grow significantly and traffic is a problem. After Boston, of course, Texas, Florida, but Atlanta is a city that has grown a lot. North Carolina has grown a lot, the research triangle. So generally the places that have grown in America over the last 40 years are places with sunshine. And people have just, when they can afford to, and with their jobs and when there is an opportunity to move, people move because they like the sun, they like the sun. Boston is on the left of those, Massachusetts often had Republican governors or even Republican mayors. Boston generally is a centrist place in politics. The policies are not as awful as, I don't know, Chicago or San Francisco. It's held a nice balance and again, schools are relatively good and just generally. But also Boston had busing, if you remember, and I think that caused a lot of people to leave. But I think it's mainly the weather. And probably taxes, taxes are high. Those are two things, taxes and weather. And when you combine the two, it's a killer. Liam asks, did you see Elon Musk's interview with Tucker Carlson? The first thing he brought up is how great regulations are and how we need to regulate AI. I thought he was a hero. Now I'm starting to believe he's a compliant, goody two shoes. It's really hard to pinpoint Musk. I think Musk has the sense of life of a hero, but he is too conventional in his political cultural thinking. I think he's being captured by, first he was captured, I think, by certain pro-regulation leftists in Silicon Valley. Then he was captured by pro-regulation right-wingers like John Peterson when he turned to the right. I think when it comes to politics and culture, he's conventional. He's got the sense of life of a hero is when, for example, in this state of California says, we're going to come down, shut down your factory because you opened during COVID and he says, go to hell, right? Come and do it. That is where he's great. When he shakes his fist at the sky, he says, what can the regulators do about Skylink? They can shake their fist at the sky. That's great, but that's the sense of life. As soon as he thinks it through, he wants regulation. What's fascinating is, of course, as always, he probably doesn't want a lot of regulation on Tesla. He probably doesn't want a lot of regulation on SpaceX or his battery company or his tunneling company. He wants a lot of regulation on everybody else. He's one of these geniuses who believes, no, no, I don't need to be regulated. I know everything. I can do it right. Tesla is an, arguably, Tesla is an AI company. To a large extent, it's going to be building self-driving cars and self-driving cars are AI driven. Does he want regulation on AI for cars? He'll probably say no. A very, very perverse view of the world that places him in a position where I don't need any regulation. I don't need a control. I can run everything. I'm okay, but everybody else is too stupid. I don't know if you ever saw the discussion I had with Weinstein, not Brett, the other one. With Weinstein that we did, I think in Chicago, Dave Rubin moderated it. It was fascinating because one of the things he said was, look, smart people shouldn't be regulated. You don't want to regulate smart people because they're the ones who innovate. They're the ones who create new things and regulation destroys that. So there should be a two-tiered system. Smart people should be allowed to do whatever the hell they want. I mean, he didn't say that exactly, but that's what he definitely implied. And everybody else who are too dumb to take care of themselves and are going to do really, really stupid things, buy stupid things, commit to stupid things, they need to be controlled, they need to be regulated. Eric Weinstein, thank you. I mean, wow. Wow. I mean, that is Plato's philosophy of king mentality. And unfortunately, both he and Elon Musk seem to have it. All right, guys, we're making really nice progress towards the goal. So thank you. We're now down to just 190 left. So we're slowly chipping away and Richard has showed up. So Richard usually brings a lot of questions. I already have a lot of questions, so that's good. But let's just do $20 above. I mean, almost all the questions now are $20 above. But let's keep doing $20 questions above or maybe even do some $50 ones so we can get to our targets quickly. Brady Boulson, if the South had won the Civil War and successfully seceded, would it be moral to try to take it back today? If not, then when would it have become immoral to do so? You know, it depends what it means to have defeated the North. If it had won, then it hadn't seceded. It wouldn't count as a secession. It would count as basically we have defeated the North. We are now establishing our own country. The North is a separate country. And with it, now, would it be moral to try to take it back? Well, is there still slavery there? If it's still an authoritarian place, if there's still massive violations of individual rights, then yeah, absolutely it's moral to take it back. If there are no violations of individual rights, it's basically a free country and there's no slavery there. Then no, it's a separate country, a separate country. You don't go to war over that. There might be reason to have discussions about unification. But there's no reason to go to war unless you're going to war to remedy a rights violation, a rights violation of your own citizens. In this case, the rights violation of your own citizens who happen to live in the South. So it's moral to go to war when the regime you're going to war against is illegitimate because of the extent to which they're violating rights. And even then, if it's moral in that sense to go to war, it might not be moral to go to war if going to war is a sacrifice for your own people. And that's the sense in which now there are two states. Now my job, the North, is to protect the individual rights of the North. The South is no longer my responsibility. They've established their own state. I still could if they have slavery. It'd still be legitimate and moral for me to do so. And I might, but my focus then is oriented towards protecting individual rights of our own people. Luckily, the North won. Not so much luckily, but inevitably the North was going to win. I don't think there was much of a question about whether the North would win or not. All right, Richard, just came in with the $50 question. So let's jump with that. Would it be moral for the United States to overthrow the government of Cuba today, given the nationalization of U.S. businesses and support for Venezuela and other anti-American regimes around the world? The new Chinese listening base in Cuba is concerning. So I think there was a case to be made in the early 1960s to overthrow the Cuban regime based on the fact that they had confiscated and stolen American property. And based on the fact that it were coming communists and that the United States was in a cold war with the Soviet Union. We didn't do it back then. So I think as time has passed, there's less and less reason. The fact that they support anti-American regimes does not justify, not from Cuba's perspective, from our perspective, from the perspective of the people who would die trying to liberate Cuba from the perspective of the taxpayers who would have to fund the war in Cuba. From their perspective, it would be a moral to liberate Cuba today because it's not a threat to the United States. Now, if Cuba is becoming a major ally of China and China is literally putting soldiers in Cuba, then it becomes a concern again. And here what I would argue is the United States should be doing everything in its power at this point, given the Chinese movement into Cuba, to undermine the Cuban regime and to support the Cuban people's rebellion against it if necessary help them assassinate and get rid of the Cuban dictator. A sort of going to war with Cuba if Cuba is going to literally allow Chinese intelligence and Chinese troops in Cuba, then the United States should do everything in its power to rid the world of whoever happens to be the dictator of Cuba today. I'm big on a strategy, having a strategy in front of policy and executing that strategy. And part of that strategy I think should be the assassination of world leaders if it fits into the strategy. But the problem with what we were doing in the 1970s is we have no real overarching strategy. We had no vision for where we were heading. All right, only a hundred to go. We'll close, like two bucks from everybody. Just do a sticker with a few dollars and we can get there. So yes, we'd really appreciate if we could get our goal. That would be fantastic if we'd go over the goal by like 75 bucks, that would be even better. But let's first get to that 650 gold. That would be sweet. James says, I suspect the reason Europeans don't shoplift is not because they have a greater respect for rights than Americans. They just don't have the boldness to try and get away with crime. Europeans are more risk-averse than docile. I mean, I'm not sure that's true. You know, suddenly, you know, they fought some wars and they've been pretty aggressive in the past. I think there's an element there. It is a culture you don't stick out. Shoplifting is like sticking out. It's like being different. There is a certain, there's something about Europeans that's very conformist and they conform to not stealing rather than not stealing because they believe not stealing is the right thing to do. So there is that, I think. But I do think there's also, and look, most Americans don't steal. You know, stealing is done by the few and it's done primarily by people who clearly reject property rights. They feel like they're owed something. They feel like they're above the law and they're willing to just take. And, you know, it's a mentality of entitlement. It's a whole idea, a whole position of entitlement. I remember during the Chicago riots in 2020, they were breaking into electricity stores and taking stop and saying, okay, this is reparations. Just a form of redistribution of wealth. That's all. We deserve this. And I don't think you get that as much in Europe. You don't get that. You don't have that kind of mentality as prevalent as Europe as you do in the United States. And look, in many areas in the United States, there's no shoplifting. There's no stealing. There's very little of it. There's pickpocketing in Europe. That is true. There are pickpockets. Laboratorial says, I think one thing that COVID lockdown and mandates have shown is how much coercion destroys truth. As soon as something gets mandated, it becomes almost impossible to let go of a counter argument against it thoughts. Yeah, I definitely think that's true. I think that, you know, coercion breeds coercion breeds coercion. A coercion of muscle breeds coercion of to restrict speech and restrict thinking as well. And I definitely think that COVID lockdowns, I mean, the COVID lockdowns were shocking in that so many people just accepted them, just rolled over and accepted them. And they were shocking in how many people believed in their necessity and believed in the necessity of a mandate and then see the massive violation of individual rights that a mandate were quiet. They're locking people down, were quiet. So it was, yeah, I mean, we learned a lot about people in COVID, but absolutely coercion destroys truth. And once you start on that path, lots of truth will be destroyed. Ragnar, Ron Atkins in Blackadder and well-known gearhead in an article in the Telegraph says he feels duped by electric cars. I left a look into that. Ron Atkins, of course, is... So Ron Atkins wrote the article. I'm trying to understand. But Ron Atkins is one of my favorite comedians, particularly in Blackadder. So many of you might know him as Mr. Bean, but my favorite by far is Blackadder. Richard, Stephen Spogo felt uneasy about making the color purple because he didn't have the black experience. Quincy Jones reassured him, saying he didn't go to Mars to make E.T. That's right. And if he'd gone to Mars, he still couldn't have made E.T. because E.T. doesn't live on Mars, so he would have had to go to... who knows? He could never have made E.T. A beautiful, amazing, wonderful movie. Oh, it's Ron Atkinson. I didn't know Ron Atkinson loved super cars. Cool. Good for Ron Atkinson. Good for him. All right. Josh, what is your favorite health tracking device so far? I caught a glimpse of your whoop and was curious about your thoughts and other devices you have tried. So I like the whoop. I like it because... I mean, the thing I like most about it is that it basically is giving you advice every day on how much exercise you should do. I find the whole exercise thing super confusing, super disturbing. Everybody has conflicting advice. I can't find... a lot of people are consistent, but they contradict other people. So I can't find good exercise advice. I've read Buddy by Science. I did the super slow heavy weights. I love that. But it doesn't seem like that can be enough because you don't put enough calories. Just with that, there's a lot of things you just don't do. You have to do more. Just because of the relatively sedentary way we live, we have to find other ways to build calories and build aerobics, although the guy who wrote Buddy by Science doesn't believe in aerobic, I think. Anyway, I shouldn't represent or misrepresent. I'm listening to Peter Atia, but Peter Atia wants you to exercise all day long. I can't exercise all day long. So one of the things that Woop does is it basically says, okay, this is how much sleep you have. This is how much you recovered from that sleep and based on what you did yesterday, based on your heart rate variability. This is how much stress you should put on your body today. And every day it gives me a number that I have to reach in terms of the stress. And if you go over that, I guess you're building capacity. If you're at it, you're allowing your body to recover. So I try to be at it or above. And it's a lot of work, but it gives you a target and it doesn't tell you what to do in terms of the exercises. So right now, you know, I'm doing a combination of it's big enough to do zone two exercises, hate zone two exercise, zone two exercises, relatively low impact exercise. It's just to burn calories. You have to like be on the stupid elliptical for an hour. Today wasn't an hour on the elliptical. I don't have time to exercise for an hour. I want short, intense, brutal, painful, and you're done. I'll do that every day. I can't do hour long walking, not even walking outside, walking on the elliptical because outside I can't get my heart rate high enough to get to zone two. And the elliptical, it's too low. It's too boring. I like if I'm exercising, I like to go all out. So I need to find the right balance. The whoop, I think helps me a little bit. Not enough. I want more guidance from my whoop. But that's basically it has all the stats. It has all the stuff. I also have an Apple watch. I'm not wearing it right now because it's charging. But I also have an Apple watch. I like it too. I like to compare the data from the two. I probably do too much when it comes to this stuff. I compare the data, make sure it's accurate, make sure everything's working nicely. I compare the sleep. I don't believe any of these things regardless of sleep. Now, I'm told that the aura, the ring is really, really good, particularly for sleep. The problem with the aura is they won't ship it at Puerto Rico and I can't get a subscription in Puerto Rico. So that's the challenge with the aura. But I hear the aura is excellent. My doctor recommended it. I know people who have both the whoop and the aura and I think that is probably the best combination if you can afford it. It's expensive. But for me right now, the whoop is it. The one problem I have with the whoop, I'll just share this with you. A little personal, but share it with you. I'm allergic to something in the metal in the whoop. So I have to constantly move it from hand to hand, arm to arm, and then I put it on my ankles. I wear it on my ankles. And I keep moving it because if I keep it on the same spot for too long, I start getting a rash. My skin breaks out and I get these really bad sores and it's itchy and it's horrible. So that's the one thing I have against the whoop, for what it's worth. All right, Richard, why is DC so high income per capita? Is this because of bureaucrats and lobbyists? Is this a recent phenomenon? For example, DC is higher income than anywhere else in the US for recent college grads of 2019. Yeah, I mean, it's completely a consequence. I'd say it's mostly government contractors. It's people who get their contracts from the government. Also, DC is booming. There's constantly constructionists. I'm sure there are many wealthy people in real estate. There are many wealthy people in small businesses that supply products to the government. I mean, remember, you can sell a hammer for 900 bucks to the defense department. You can overcharge government. There's nobody in the government negotiating really, really hard to try to get prices under control. So you can really make a good living off of the government. So I think that's part of it. That's all of it. And then, of course, you have the lobbyists. Everybody has a headquarters there. Every major corporation has people there, not just lobbyists, but some business people and some business development people. Everybody who has business from the government has business development people there. And then, oh, yeah, Scott is right. Then there are gazillion lawyers. There's lawyers everywhere. So a lot of high income people in Washington, DC, a lot of them. Tech companies have people there, again, to lobby and to get the contracts from the government. Jeff, construction here in the Bay Area is super slow right now. After a long boom, do you think the tech expansion along with office property development is done for good? No, I don't think it's done for good. I mean, the Bay Area has too many strong networking effects. And it's too pleasant a place to live if you exclude San Francisco, maybe San Jose. But much of the Bay Area is an amazing place to live. It's very expensive. Prices will probably come down a little bit, but there's still a massive shortage of housing. There's too many networks. The venture capital community there, big tech is there. A lot of startups are there. A lot of engineers are there. And in spite of people moving out, most people are still staying. So while I think it's going to be slower than in the future, I don't think it's gone. I think San Francisco is going to struggle more than the rest of the Bay Area because it has unique problems that are associated with San Francisco. But I think the rest of the Bay Area has a real chance of ultimately recovering, maybe not to the peaks, not to the kind of growth rates we saw, but particularly in tech, I think tech will recover. Richard, Houston weather sucks. Oh, yeah. But their lack of zoning is very attractive when combined with Texas tax policies. I don't know if I'd want to live there, but do you think it will be high economic and population growth in the coming years? Yes. Houston has been very high population growth, very high economic growth, and it will continue to do so, partially because it's a refining capital. It's huge refineries. The oil industry is based there. Fracking and oil is going to be big in the next few decades. But also because it's a pretty diverse now economy and it's grown a lot and a lot of people have moved in. It's become more of a cosmopolitan city. A lot of people from all around the world live there now. I think people who live there really like living there. The weather in the summer is unbelievable. It's like living in a sauna, much worse than Austin. But it is in many respects and it's flat and boring and not the prettiest place in the world. But in terms of dynamic city and economic growth, absolutely. Richard says, also, why does it seem like there's always construction in New York City when New York City hasn't broken any records for new skyscrapers? It's great so that the U.S. isn't leader in record-breaking skyscrapers and the UAE has that title. Yeah, I agree. The reason it has to do with the fact that the authorities in New York City won't approve buildings that are too high. It has to do with the lack of ambition, I think, of American developers. There were some projects that were proposed in Chicago and in New York that were going to be amazing and beautiful and really tall. And they were killed, particularly in Chicago as a dying city. While there's construction in New York, a lot of it is residential apartments. Yeah, there just isn't the appetite for very, very, very tall buildings in the United States and particularly among city planners. It's also non-environmentally something. I think New York was going to ban skyscrapers because they were not environmentally kosher in some way or other. Cook says, when do you think it becomes escapism in exploring art? Art takes you some way into the recreated reality of the artist. Man advocated this experience, but how much might be too much? I don't know. I mean, if you find that it distracts you from doing productive activity, basically, so if you find that instead of giving you energy, instead of inspiring you to go out and be productive, it basically is all-encompassing and it sucks you in and you're not productive. You're not doing the things that you need to do in order to grow other aspects of your life. Then you're doing too much. So you've got to find the right balance, but that's very individual. I don't think there's a rule. It's basically, is it diverting too much of your energy and attention from your career? Richard, $50. Thank you, Richard. All right, guys, I set a new goal and we're now $38 short of that goal. It would be great if we could get there and that way we could really get closer to what I have as the goal for the month. Do you think video games are art? Clearly the story is art and I think graphic design is art as long as it's artistic director. It's just a new medium that requires new tools. The synthesis is a new medium with new opportunities. What do you think? I don't know. Art is contemplative. Art is an end in itself. It's just there. Games are for entertainment. Games are for playing. They're for contemplating. They're for being part of the experience and maybe they're a new thing that's neither art nor non-art. It's why I don't really consider architecture art. It's borderline art, but it's not quite art because it's got a purpose. It's got a use which supplants its contemplative and aesthetic qualities. It's more important than those. I think and I've talked about this. I talked about this at Ocon a few years ago when I did the sessions with Uncle Gattie about art. I think it could be art or it could be art-like, but it's going to have to have artists for that. It's going to have to have people who take that seriously. Not just a story for the sake of engaging you to run around shooting people, but a story with meaning, a story with purpose. It's got to have real quality because graphic design is not art. Painting is art. You could argue that scenery setting for play or for movie is an aspect of art. You could have all these different aspects of art. I think it might be a new phenomenon that's neither art that isn't art but close to art that has very similar aesthetic experiences to art. But somebody really has to think that through and it's something like that. I would really think that through. But it's certainly fascinating and has massive potential for human experience and for evoking emotions and for exciting and for stimulating but also for inspiring. All I need is one more $20. One more $20 question and I'm happy. Andrew, in my opinion, observe offense taking is a pretext perhaps subconscious for envy. It's easier for a struggling writer to smear a successful writer than to break through. Would a person with self-esteem act to sabotage others like that? No, I think they all lack self-esteem. Whether it's directly envy or something else, I'm not sure, but it's definitely a lack of self-esteem. But it's also now wrapped up in its ideology. An ideology that says that is racist, that says that a white person can't write black characters. Black characters, I guess, can't write white characters. It's low self-esteem combined with an evil ideology. Charles Watt says, my orthopedic doctor recommends swimming for exercise. Yeah, I mean swimming is fantastic for exercise. It's a whole body exercise. You exercise all the muscles. But even with swimming, you have to think about, do you want to swim straight for an hour? Do you want to do spins? Do you want to do one day you just swim for an hour, one day you spin? So even there, you have to figure out how you're going to exercise. What is the practice going to be? I think it's important. I'm not an expert. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a trainer. But this is just me with my limited knowledge. I think it's important to do high intensity exercise in addition to low intensity exercise. So if you're swimming, I think it's important to sprint, to do some sprints as part of your swimming exercise. I find swimming boring. And I'm a swimmer, I used to compete. But I find it boring. It's just the same movement and you can't see anything and you've got water going into your nostrils. I just find it just not enough fun. I'd rather walk. I'd rather stand on an elliptical and listen to books on tape. I also find that swimming is more exhausting. Partially because you need to get into it. It takes a while to get those muscles and your breathing right. There's a lot about the breathing. I find that I can exert myself, I can get my heart rate way higher on an elliptical than I can't swim. Way higher and I can go for longer at very high intensities. I feel like I'm more in control. I love the water and I'm a good swimmer. But it's just not as comfortable. It's not as comfortable for me. So as a consequence, I don't swim much, although I used to. Wow, Richard just came in with another 50. So now we've blown through my goal. Thank you Shazmat. Okay, Richard for the 50. I would also welcome any recommendations on specialist doctors. I'm 25, but I want to make sure I set myself up well into the future. My friend is in medical school and I'm terrified by the stories he tells me about curriculum and his colleagues. I would suggest something called human longevity. It is a concierge doctor that basically gives you an annual screening. It's expensive. You pay a lot of money once a year, but I think it's preventive medicine. Maybe that's best. There's at least one competitor human longevity out there. So there are at least two companies. They do your genome. They do a brain scan. They do a heart scan. They do a calcification score. They do everything. And you're never too young to start. So it probably makes more sense to start in your 30s, but it's never too young to start. And I would definitely look into it. One of our listeners, one of my long time and most consistent supporters of the show. You know, I told him about human longevity and he ultimately joined. And they did a last year. They did a body scan. They did an MRI. And in their MRI, they found something in his lungs, which no symptoms, nothing. He had a biopsy at the recommendation of the doctors at human longevity. The biopsy came positive for cancer. He has since had the lower lobe of his last lung removed. And if he had caught it a few weeks later, they would have had removed the entire lung. But if he hadn't gone to get that MRI, they wouldn't have caught it until he might have had, you know, terminal lung cancer. He probably could have died. And he's, I don't know how old he is. I mean, was he in his 30s and his 40s? He's a young guy, non-smoker lung cancer. I don't know it. And he was saved by human longevity. His life was saved. So, and I'm sure there are hundreds of stories like that. So, I'm a big believer in preventive medicine, in scanning, in testing. I don't think you're too young to scan for these things, particularly heart disease. Starts when you're very young. I would read, I'm reading right now Peter Tia's book on a lifespan, which I think is very good. Look into human longevity. They have good doctors. They're good doctors everywhere. Yeah, but look for people who value preventive, who don't just want to treat you when you're sick. Want to help you not get sick. Make sure you don't get sick. Constantly want to check your blood and constantly bug you about, oh, you should adjust this, you should change that because they want to make sure you don't get heart disease. You don't get cancer. So, they're not satisfied with you treating you when you get it. Right? The scan is not, you don't pay for the scan. You pay an annual fee. You have access to the doctor for that annual fee. You have the scans. I get, I don't know, blood tests three, four times a year to monitor all my levels. You get all the scans, everything. You do all that. I don't know what they're going right now, but it's not, it's not cheap. It's not cheap. I don't know if it's 15,000 a year or 20,000 a year. I, I, I got in early and I've got a discounted rate. By the way, if you do go to human longevity and you decide to sign up, ask them for the Iran book show discount. Ask them for the Iran book show discount. They should give you a nice discount if you sign up. All right, Richard also, I need a good doctor in New York City, New Jersey area. My California doctor is amazing, but he can't treat me because of the regulations. And I think he's retiring soon. Do you know anyone who's a good generalist? I do not, I do not. But again, if you join the human longevity thing, even though they're in California, they will recommend a doctor for you in New York and they will work with that doctor and they will work jointly with that. You'll be able to talk to your doctors in California and your doctor in, in, in New York. They, even though they're in California, they do do telemedicine up to a point, but they also find you specialists. They also find you specialists for service concierge. They do cook. What do you think of reenactment groups like people who live as historical groups, Civil War Viking Greeks for a short period for fun and love of history? I mean, I think it could be fun. I get it. I wouldn't do it. I'm not interested, but I think, I think it's kind of a fun thing for people to do. I don't know. I, I, I can't really judge it negatively. I don't have any basis to judge it negatively. Um, as long as it's not dominating your life or as long as this is fun thing that you do on a weekend or do for, for a week, once a year, something like that. I can't see anything negative about it. Now, if you're idolizing the South and recreating all the Southern battles where they beat the North, something wrong with that. Hunter, Hunter, just finished a pre-work to form a mobile coffee shop business. If you ever find yourself in rural Alabama in desperate need for cappuccino, I don't drink cappuccinos, but if you, if you make a mean Americano, I'll take that. Um, I'll give you one in the house. I appreciate that, Hunter, Hunter. And I'll keep that in mind when I'm in next in Alabama. Who knows? You never know. University of Alabama want me to come and give a speech. It'll be free. You can do it. Um, okay. Michael said, what did you say that made Robert White block you on Twitter? I can't remember. I challenged him to debate, I think. Justin, I often miss your live shows. Is it possible to notify your PayPal monthly contributors by email just before you go live? I don't have the email list and, um, it would require me to have it on my assistant. Let me think about it as I think about organizing the show and getting more regular in terms of the times. But, uh, you know, basically there's a show, live show every Tuesday and Thursday at 8 p.m. East Coast time. And there's a live show every Saturday at 3 p.m. East Coast time. And then the news shows are usually at either 12 or 1 p.m. East Coast time every day during the week. But Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, I do live shows in the evening. And those are pretty much set. Sometimes I add a show, but I try not to subtract any unless I'm traveling. Scott, is it your position that the left has been winning for 100 years but the rise of woke is unrelated and it is now in retreat? Is that wishful thinking? No, I don't think the left is in retreat. I think the left has been winning for 100 years. Um, and, but, as the left, and I think this is, I think this is Lenin's position in them, as the left becomes more disintegrated. The left in the past has been what Lenin pick up called D1. As the D2 within the left becomes more dominant, there is a backlash against it and the right overwhelms them. I think that is clearly what happened in the 1960s when the left took it too far with the riots at the universities, with Woodstock, with the justification for the riots by blacks all over the country. You know, with just a mayhem and disintegration the country experienced with assassination of political figures, I think what you got is a huge backlash to the right with Nixon and then with Reagan and Congress shifted to the right, you know, for the first time of a long, long time in the 1990s, I think all of that was a backlash against the 60s. And it's a backlash to the extent that even the hippies of the 60s stopped being hippies. I think today's woke is worse than the 60s. They're more disintegrated, they're more bizarre, they're more crazy, they're more offensive, they're more subjectivist, they're more nihilists. And I think there's going to be a backlash. I think there really is one. It started already and it's going to intensify. And I think this time the backlash because the left has gone crazier, I think the life, the right grows crazier. So I think the backlash is going to be worse. And I think as the left becomes more D2, more complete disintegration, there is, there will be a force to integrate. And that force to integrate as Lena Peacock at least sees it is most likely going to be in America, not everywhere in the world, but in America, going to be religion plus patriotism. And I would throw in probably some form of environmentalism as an integrating force that is authoritarian. I think in Europe it's more nationalism, it's more focused on anti-immigration even than in America. But what's interesting is almost every one of these right-wing political parties in Europe is also self-identified as Christian. So I don't think they can pull it off without religion. But so yes, I mean the left winning for 100 years, particularly in economics, but also in many cultural aspects is going to come to an end at some point because the left goes further and further into more subjectivism or epistemologically further and further into more disintegration. And that is not sustainable. Disintegration is not sustainable. Something has to replace it, whether it's something like communism or something like fascism or something like a theocracy, something has to replace it. I think in America, given the nature of America, given its history, given its culture, I think fascism is much more likely than communism. But something has to replace the craziness. Look at Weimar Germany. Weimar Germany, the left kept winning and winning and winning. And finally Weimar Germany is the manifestation of complete nihilism and hedonism and disintegration and disintegrating culture. And what replaced it? Fascism. So an integrated, bad integration, an evil integration, a misintegration. But something had to give, again, disintegration, complete and utter disintegration or a woke is not sustainable to use an economic term. It's in disequilibrium. It cannot achieve equilibrium. And therefore what happens is that the world shifts towards an equilibrium. And that equilibrium is authoritarianism of one form or another. So, you know, in socialism, the woke are not socialists. The woke are not socialists. Again, they're nothing. Anyway, so and socialism is not an integrating principle that will unite Americans. And I've now explained it 101 times. So at least understand what I'm saying. You can disagree with me. That's fine. But just understand what I'm saying. Disagree. Fine. Not your average algorithm is narcissism and defense mechanism towards the altruism in the culture or the person's own self esteem. I think it's primarily the person's own self esteem, which might be, you know, might be low because of the altruism that they have embraced from the culture. Or that they they they that has, you know, kind of put pressure on them from the culture. Excuse me. Apollo Zeus. Do you own a 10 gallon hat? I do not. I own a few hats, but I almost never wear a hat. James, have you heard about South Africa's energy issues? It is insane. And they have so many blackouts each year. Is it possible they will fix it? Hard to believe. I mean, South Africa is a complete disaster. It's a complete mess. It was basically taken over when they did away with apartheid. The great tragedy is that the blacks who took it over were basically a corrupt socialist. And basically what South Africa became is kind of a kleptocracy mixed in with socialism. It has created a brain drain where some of the best people have left, whites and blacks. It's, you know, they had this opportunity. South Africa could be one of the richest countries in the world. They have productive people. If they embrace private property, blacks could have become wealthy and successful. Instead they embrace socialism and what you get, the disasters that they're having there with energy and everything else. James says, UK economy in growth doom loop after decades of under investment. Business investment is lower in the UK than any other country in the G7 and 27th out of the 30 OECD countries. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think that the United Kingdom is small. It needs to open it up itself up to the world. It needs trade. That British Empire was built on free trade. That's what sustained it was at least free trade within the colonies, if not free trade. And with Brexit, UK has become insular and it is backfiring on them. They better open up. They better figure out how to reengage trade and how we engage with the world and how to, you know, again, they should drop Charis to zero. And people will invest massively in England, massively. They should deregulate like crazy. It's not hard to figure out how to solve these problems. But yes, as they adopted European Union regulations, as they increased taxes, England now has the highest taxes ever higher than when they were run by the socialists. The Conservative Party has raised taxes and raised taxes. Yeah, so you don't have economic growth. Shocking. James says, in Texas video, did you see Texas has more finance job than any other state? Now except New York, this is something I see changing the country long term. How will finance change by moving to southern states? I don't think finance changes. Finance has been very big in finance in southern states already. Charlotte, North Carolina has been a major financial hub for about three decades, four decades now. So I don't think anything changes in finance, but finance has been moving south for a while. And as banks consolidation happened, finances has become more regional and less dependent on the big banks in New York. Z400 Racer. Dante este alla Catherine lately. I don't know where Catherine is. I don't know where Catherine is. We don't have anybody to encourage contributions anymore in the chat except for me. So Catherine is no longer working for us in this role. I design and work with high schools and community colleges for interns. I am looking to understand how I can do something similar for interns. I don't know. I'm not sure. And I don't think we do much work with interns. We have we used to have interns programs. I just don't know actually. Cook says Red Dead Redemption 2 definitely is as close to art as a game I've ever experienced. Good story, long lines of artistic in the credits. Now I see where Cook is sucked into art, immersing himself. Alright, video games. Daniel, with all of RFK's conspiracies towards vaccines, it makes you wonder how bogus his pollution related lawsuits were, especially the ones he won. Well, there's no question. He is a radical environmentalist. He was bad as an environmentalist lawyer, awful. I wouldn't be surprised if they were, if they were awful. I don't trust the guy one aorta. He seems like a bad, bad, bad, bad person. Finally, WCZN says Huberman Lab podcast is a great health resource. I've seen some stuff by Huberman, which I've liked. It seems like more of a cross between psychological and, you know, I have to look more into his videos to get a good sense of them. But yeah, there's huge amounts of content online, which is amazing. So you can sort it out and figure out what you like and what you don't. Alright, everybody. It's been a long day, and this has been a long show, but thank you for the support. We beat the, we beat the goal. We made up for a lack in the morning. So we are doing really well. Marybens asked if I know any good jokes. I actually don't know any good jokes. I don't do jokes. One of my weaknesses in life is I don't do jokes. Cook says, No, not video games, literature. I played that game that game years ago. Okay. Yeah, literature is easy. More than maybe any other of the art forms to really get sucked in and to lose yourself. I mean, that's why I love very, very, very thick books, big books, where you can spend a lot of time with them. Jeremy says, I love my whoop. Help me monitor sleep. Yes, it's good with sleep. I think the aura is supposed to be better with sleep. Whoop is better with activity. No, I'm not going to tell a joke. All right. Bye everybody. And thank you and Marybens. I do have your novel at it's