 Though radical, fundamental principles help rebuild rational self-interest and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. Oh right, everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show. Everybody's having a fantastic Saturday. I just did a, I did a whole show, now and a half in Hebrew. So if I slip into some language that sounds like I'm speaking tongues, I have not converted to some strange form of Christianity that's just me, just the Hebrew bubbling to the surface. Sounds like speaking in tongues, I guess, to most of you. All right, let's see. We have our panel here. We have a few of you on the chat, and don't forget, you can participate by asking superchats questions. I'm going to start with the panel. Let me see. Is there anything I need to remind you of before we get started? Ask about anything. Andrew, umla, and if you could mute, that would be great. And ask about anything, yeah, we'll talk about sponsorships, all of that later, and yeah, let's just jump in. All right, who do we have? Andrew was here first, so Andrew, you get a, you get to get us started. Great. Hi, Iran. So you spoke around the Christmas show about the importance of thinking positively and taking the time to think about positive things. And I really enjoyed the show, and I thought it was good advice, and I wanted to hone in on a particular aspect of it. I mean, if there are a lot of bad things that go on in the world, you know, politically, and there's a lot of bad stuff, just, you know, in your personal life that go on. So why is it not, and those things exist, and sometimes you have to give attention to those things, but I wanted to hone in on a particular aspect of like your advice to take time to think positively. Why is it not evasive to think about the negative things if they are in fact real? Well, I would never say don't think about the negative things, particularly the negative things that need to be dealt with. That is, there are certain negative things that you need to do something about. Anything you need to do something about, you should do something about it. And it would be evasive indeed not to, you know, do the things necessary to deal with the issues, problems, negativity that you have control over. So, you know, I don't suggest that you ever evade or ignore issues and again, in particular things that are relevant to your life and things that where you can actually act against. My concern is though that people tend to focus way too much on that at the expense of all the good that they have in their lives. That is, we tend to take good stuff for granted and just accept that in the background and not focus on it. We tend to take the good people in our lives for granted and not let them know what we think and how we think about them and the value that they represent to ourselves. And because our focus is elsewhere in dealing with all the crap and dealing with all the problems and thinking about it constantly. And I think we undermine our own life, we undermine our own values by doing that. So it's not that I think we should evade the bad stuff. We ignore it. We have to deal with it to the extent that you have to deal with because it's relevant to your living. But don't let that, don't let, because of that, don't let the good stuff become background, become, you know, become something you take for granted, something you don't invest in, something you don't give the appropriate attention to. Because I think it, I think that's unjust towards you and towards the people that you might be ignoring. And I think it's, look, at the end of the day, do you think it's irrational? Yeah, I think it is irrational because at the end of the day, what sustains human life is the good stuff. At the end of the day, what sustains you is the work that you do, the career that you have, the friendships you have, the love relationship that you have, the things you enjoy doing. What sustains you is pleasure and good. And you cannot, you know, yeah, you know, in a concentration camp, and it's why I think people consider suicide in concentration camps. In concentration camp, yeah, there's no good. And therefore, life, it becomes meaningless and, but even there, if you orient yourself completely about how horrific your circumstances are, you will die. So what sustains us is the positives. What sustains us or whatever human relationship you can have, even in worst circumstances, what sustains us is the little piece of food that one can gain even when there's almost no food. But that's true in a concentration camp, but it's like a gazillion times more true in actual life. What sustains us is all the positive values that we achieve that we attain, and you cannot lose focus on those even as, yeah, you have to deal with some of the bad stuff. There's just no way around the necessity to deal with it. So, you know, you deal with it, but don't let it become overwhelming that there's no space, no space for your mind to focus on the good stuff. That's really good. Good. I mean, think about what good is. Good is the life affirming. Good is the life sustaining. Good is that which supports human life. That's what you want to be. That's where you want to be most of your life. Now, yes, that which threatens you evil is out there has to be dealt with because it's threatening you, but getting rid of a negative does not equal is not as good as the positives. You have to do it, but you only have to do it so you can get to the positive. Life is about the positives. The point of life is the positive. Any thoughts about why people get so mired in the negative? Oh, I think as we live in a culture where people don't know what the positive is, they're uncomfortable with the positive. They're being taught not to be selfish and positive. The ultimate positive is take care of yourself and pursue your values and who are you to do that? I think people feel uncomfortable about pursuing positives too much. I think that the negative probably causes us to, it kind of triggers a kind of a, and for response, so it gets priority, maybe even from a evolutionary perspective, you get kind of the warning, danger, do something and people get a height from that and they sustain it. But I think it's primarily the lack of positive values. And the lack of a real clarity around positive values and a real, we're not, you know, people are not oriented that way, ideologically oriented towards the negative, we're oriented towards other people, we're oriented towards satisfying their needs, we're oriented towards thinking about what they're thinking, we're not oriented towards intellectually, towards figuring out what's good for us and what are the good values we as individuals should pursue and how to make our lives as individuals better and all of those things. Thanks very much. All right, let's see, Ryan, you've got your hand up. Oh, you got to unmute yourself though. Yeah, sorry about that. I don't mean to jump in line here, but my second question was basically going to be a lot of what Andrew just asked. And my question was based on, I think, I don't know when it was, sometime last year, ARI published a series of interviews with Marianne and Charles, I don't know how to say the last name, and what really stood out to me, it was a bunch of interviews on their lives and interactions with Ayn Rand. And what really stood out to me is how much Ayn Rand valued just little things in life, like chocolate, like she had a favorite chocolate and she liked fudge and she liked the color aqua, like blue-green, and she just filled her life with that kind of stuff. And it's something I've been trying to do, and it really makes a difference in your life just to start focusing on, even if it's just something little, it just sort of puts a smile on your face and helps you get through the rest of the day kind of thing. I mean, absolutely. I mean, I emphasized when I did the Woos for Life series on find those things that you have control over, you don't have control over politics, you don't control over the weather, you don't, there are a lot of things you don't have control over, certain things you do have control over. Find those things that you have control over and make them good, make them beautiful, make them something that you enjoy, that you like, that you get pleasure from and surround yourself with that or orient yourself around that. So, yes, I mean, Ayn Rand did that, and she surrounded herself with things that she found beautiful, that she enjoyed with her favorite color, with her favorite shapes, with cats, with things she loved, and that gave her that sense of positivity, of focusing on the positive, focusing on the positive in the world. And I think we all need to do that. We need to do that in a variety of different things, different ways, different contexts. So just to jump in, Euron, I mean, partly is what fascinates me about it is that, like, just for example, Ayn Rand's Ford Hall Forums, every topic of her Ford Hall Forum was negative. And I'm just very interested in the fact that, like, here's somebody who talked about the negative in a very intellectual way and focused on the negative, and yet this is a person who believed in the deepest level, joy, you know, in living on earth, and the joy that one gets from life. And like, how did she maintain that perspective, given that she was intellectually often focused on the negative? Well, partially is because she knew that intellectually she was fighting the evil. She was fighting the bad stuff that Ford Hall Forums will wait for her to stand up to the bad guys and to the evil out there in the world. So I think that she maintains her positivity by knowing she's fighting for what's right. And, you know, so I think that's a big part of it. She, you know, fighting the good fight is a way to stay positive because you partially because you know, you have the answers and you exhibit that in the talks that you give in the fight that you engage in. Yeah. All right. So which Ryan raised his hand before I've got to Ryan's here. That was me, Ryan B. And that yeah, you can count that as my question. So. OK, so I'm going to go to Ryan W. Hello. Hello. I have a question a little over a week ago, I think I read a news story about the US Navy engaging with a Houthi gunboat. Yeah. And what I found interesting was that the news story, I think it explicitly stated that they did not neutralize the threat until they had been fired upon. Yeah. And this made me very angry. I think for obvious reasons. And understanding your views on. War theory and just war theory. And how to properly fight wars. I was wondering your view on why we don't hear more. Objection to this from the military or from people who were formerly in the military or actively in the military. You would think with social media the way it is that people would be speaking up more about just how immoral this is. Well, because the military, including former military, this is ingrained in them. This is now standard operating practice. There is no opposition to this inside the military, maybe, maybe among the grunts, what they called, you know, lower ranks, but among the leadership of the American in the military. This is completely acceptable dogma. There is nobody to challenge it. And of course, it's all based on altruism. It's explicitly based on altruism. If you read Michael Waltz's just war theory, which is the primary book where this is taught out of at West Point. But it's in all the academies. You know, I debated. Wow, this is a long time ago, but I debated the chairman of the philosophy department at the Air Force Academy. In we debated that the Air Force Academy is in Colorado Springs, where we debated at the University of Colorado in Boulder. It was the period where Amy Peacoff was teaching at the Air Force Academy and Leonard Peacoff was living in Colorado Springs because he was in the audience. Anyway, I debated I debated this philosopher. And he's the guy teaching there for us, but he's the authority. And he was 100% aligned with just what they sadly, they didn't videotape that debate. It would have been great to have that on videotape, but in those days, videotaping was really, really hard, but it was. Yeah, I mean, this is what's taught. There is no alternative. I think about the generals that we admire from the last day and the generals that we admire from the last 20, 30 years, Petraeus, Mathis, they, you know, these are generals that 100% believe in these ideas. Petraeus wrote a dissertation defending basically just what theory application to insurgencies. Mathis was a huge defender of this idea. You can't fire until you're fired upon. This is altruism through and through. And Americans think of this as some kind of, it's almost an honor thing about it. It always used to drive me crazy. If you watch a Western, I think I've mentioned this before. If you watch a Western, the good guy has an opportunity to kill the bad guy. And he doesn't because he wants a fair fight. Like, I don't want a fair fight with a bad guy. I want him dead. Quicker than better. But just what theory requires a fair fight. It's called proportionality, right? If they shoot you with handguns, you're supposed to answer them back with handguns. If they shoot you with, it's just absurd. But that is pretty much, well, proportionality I'm caricaturing a little bit. But that is doctrine today. So, yes, they shoot first. If a few American soldiers get killed or wounded, you know, that's what they signed up for. We're not gonna feel sorry for them. Only then can we shoot the bad guys. So, do you think that, I can only conclude that it is impossible to project force if all you do is show up to be shot at? I mean, do you not need to act more proactively in order to actually project force? We say that the US has the greatest military in human history, but I don't think they do a good job of projecting force, I guess. No, and I wouldn't say they're the greatest military in human history. I'd say they're the most powerful military in human history. They have the firepower and they're probably the best trained military in human history as a troops soldier by soldier. But do they have the best strategy? No. I mean, they're terrible. They couldn't beat the US Army of World War II. Patton would crush them. So would MacArthur. They just don't have the strategists. And in that sense, they don't have the people willing to take America to war and win and are willing to think about what is necessary to win. I mean, today's military would, I don't know, pay the Nazis to go away or would drop leaflets and Dresden to evacuate the town before they bombed it, the city before they bombed it. And then they wouldn't bomb any of the churches or any of the cultural significant buildings. And people today, what a crime that we destroyed culturally significant buildings in Dresden, primarily churches. Yeah, it's impossible. And it's impossible in that sense. Look at Russia. I mean, the reason Russia is whatever success it has in Ukraine, it has it is because it bombs ruthless. It doesn't consider and now it's kind of funny because now Ukraine is bombing a Russian city and civilians are dying. And Russia say, wait a minute, you killing civilians? That's not fair. It's like, yeah, we're allowed to do it, but you can't. And you're not supposed to. You're like with the West, the West or whips. They never bombed civilians. So what are you doing? And of course part of the horror the West has with Israel is that relatively speaking, Israel is being ruthless. I don't think they're being ruthless enough. I don't, you know, they're still telling people to evacuate, they're still dropping leaflets and stuff. But they're being much more ruthless than America was in its wars, it has been in its wars more recently and more ruthless in other Western countries and the world is shocked by it. And to the extent that Israel might be successful, I still think it won't, but to the extent that it might be successful in this war in Gaza, it's going to be because Israel is ruthless or to the extent that Israel is ruthless. But yes, I mean, it's sickening and pathetic. And when you talk to people like soldiers on the ground, like Marines who came back from Baghdad, they will tell you how horrible it was. They will say we went into the fight without our hands tied behind our backs or with blindfolds on or with all these limitations. I watched my friends, my comrades die next to me because of the rules of engagement. They know it, but the officers can't allow themselves to think it because it goes against everything they've been taught and it means if they think it then they're not being moral. The only moral way to fight a war is to do it in the self-sacrificial way. Thank you. It's like Han shot first in Star Wars. Remember that old debate? That's- I'm not a Star Wars, whatever you want to call it. In the original release, Han Solo killed the bad guy before the guy could shoot him. But in the re-releases, Luke has edited that so that it looked like the bad guy shot first. Really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's amazing. And you know, it's sickening. That's sickening. It's just sickening. But that's, if you go back to the Westerns, the Westerns are like that. It has to be a fair fight. I mean, the evil guys never care about a fair fight, but good guys always care about a fair fight. They want to do a gunfight, a dawn and you know, it's just pathetic. And it's at the end of the day, egalitarianism. It's egalitarianism sneaking in. All right, Adam, read. I don't know. I only have one, Adam. Yes. The historian Timothy Snyder sometimes talks about instances where a country would lose a war and then win the peace as the U.S. in Vietnam. So that in Vietnam, they got an American side. China invaded to stop that just as Putin invaded Ukraine. And they were driven back with American aid and now they're doing joint naval exercises with U.S. And... We're talking about Korea and not Vietnam, right? You're doing Korean... Vietnam. No, Korea. No, Korea is North and South. Okay, so Vietnam, okay. And South Korea was our ally. North Korea was the enemy. So what are we... But in Vietnam... It was achieved. In Vietnam, what happened after the war was that there was a national unity government and many people who had been on the American side of that war became influential and they switched to a market economy, started dealing very heavily with the West. China didn't like that and invaded them. And they won the war against China with the aid of the United States. And they became an ally. And now the Vietnamese Navy does joint exercises with the U.S. Navy. Essentially, we lost the war, but we won the peace. So I completely disagree with that interpretation. Completely, including the historical details. You know, Vietnam became an oppressive regime. Many of the people who supported the Americans in the South were killed by the regime in the North. Vietnam didn't win the war against China. It granted a stalemate, which I guess was an achievement. It was Deng Cha Peng's war. And maybe the U.S. aided them covertly, but it certainly wasn't overt. Vietnam is still an oppressive dictatorial regime, just like China is. It has some semblances of markets, but it has less economic freedom in Vietnam than China does. And what about the 30,000 Americans who died to achieve what? And indeed, before the Vietnam War, there was peace. That is, if the United States had never entered the Vietnam War, it could have still had a relationship with Vietnam. It could have still done everything that it was done afterwards with Vietnam. The North still would have won. It would have won maybe sooner and maybe differently without making fools of the Americans. No, I mean, I said Vietnam was a horrific loss for America. A loss I don't think it ever really recovered from. Vietnam would have been far better if the South had won, but the North was going to win, it appeared, given that Americans wouldn't fight. And if America never entered the war, 30,000 Americans or 50,000 Americans, ever many died, wouldn't have died. So everybody's better off. The Vietnamese are better off, because they're the same place they are today. And the Americans are better off. So Vietnam never liberalized as much as China did, and that's why it's so much poorer than China is. It doesn't have anywhere near the capacity, the innovation, the progress that China has. So I disagree with Snyder. I agree with him a lot under Ukraine. Obviously, I disagree with him here on Vietnam. I don't believe that anything good was achieved by the United States losing in Vietnam. Okay, second part. He also cites as a textbook example of winning a war and losing the peace, the Israel 1967 war, the Six-Day War, where Israel didn't take advantage of its victory. And again, I don't understand that. I mean, Israel not only established a huge strategic buffer by taking the Sinai, so in the 1973 war, even though Egyptian troops made progress, they made progress in the Sinai that nobody cared about and didn't really affect Israeli life in Israel, and the Golan Heights protected Israel from the Syrians. Without the Golan Heights in 73, the Syrians would have been in Haifa, and Egyptians would have been in Tel Aviv. And without the 67 victory, the overwhelming victory, you wouldn't have gotten the peace of 1979, 1980 with Egypt. You wouldn't have got the peace with Jordan. Now it is true that Israel never figured out how to deal with the Palestinians and how to win with regard to securing some kind of deal with the Palestinians, but that's a whole other story. There's no negatives to winning in 67. Without the winning in 67, Israel probably doesn't exist today. Even if that war doesn't happen, it just doesn't exist because 73 would have wiped it out. So, you know, yeah, I don't get it, but that's, I've got Snyder's- Let me go on to the second part. Which is that according to polls, after October 7th, Israeli Arabs, or as some of them call themselves Palestinian Israelis, have gotten over to the side of Israel. They're overwhelmingly in favor of Israel against Hamas. And what do you see happening after the current war, assuming Israel wins, will Israel use the pro-Israel Israeli Arabs to administer the conquered territory, just as the U.S., for example, used German Americans in Germany to administer Germany after World War II? No, I don't think they will. I don't think the Arabs will want it and I don't think Israel will do it. I mean, there are a lot of differences. Partially, geography, Gaza's right there. I mean, it's not far away and partially it's the risks involved. Now, again, it depends on how thoroughly they defeat Hamas and if you go to zero risk, but there's a lot of risk in administrating Gaza and it's going to have to be heavily militarized. But I doubt the Israeli Arabs will want that. It's true what you said, that the Israeli Arabs have moved much more in favor of Israel and it's the one good thing to come of October 7th, plus waking Israel up, is that the Israeli Arabs are much more pro-Israel now. And I believe that if Israel wins against Hamas, the Israeli Arabs will be even more pro-Israel. That is, people love a winner. That's a reality. I mean, people in the Middle East love a winner. Maybe not in Europe. Europe, they hate a winner. But in the Middle East, they love a winner. And they will side with Israel. The more thoroughly Israel wins this, the more, not just the Arabs in Israel will support Israel, but the more likely it is Saudi Arabia as a peace treaty with Israel, the more likely it is that other Arab countries and Muslim countries come around to Israel's side. The real question is, will Israel win it in a fashion? But no, I don't think they will use the Arabs. Again, not because they'll use them for some capacities, but I think culturally, it would be very difficult for the Arabs to actually do it. You know, Arabs do serve in the Israeli army, particularly Jews, but Jews are not Muslims exactly. It's a secret religion, but it's not a Muslim religion. But some Muslims and some Christian Arabs serve in the Israeli military. It could be that they are placed in the Gaza Strip in more visible positions because of their fluency in Arabic, but of course, a lot of Jews speak Arabic. So it's gonna be important for our administrators to speak Arabic. I don't know, right now the last program, the last plan I saw coming out of Israel was that what Israel plans to do is divide, I mean, this is the craziness of the world in which we live. Israel plans to divide the Gaza Strip into tribal affiliations, right? The Gaza Strip, the Arab world is still filled with tribes, just like in Iraq. And the Israeli government will basically give sections of the Gaza Strip to different tribes within Gaza and let them self-regulate with an overriding security umbrella from Israel. So they'll play into the tribalism of Gaza, which is the exact opposite of what Israel should be trying to do in Gaza, which was turned into individualists, they're gonna play into their tribalism, so. So you're wrong, instead of just Hamas hating Israel, they're gonna have five tribes that hate Israel? Well, no, the five tribes already hate Israel. Everybody in the Gaza Strip hates Israel, right? 70% of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip support Hamas, and it's not clear that the 30% who don't support Hamas might support Islamic jihad, even worse than Hamas. So everybody in the Gaza Strip already hates Israel. It's just a matter of assigning political power to the tribal leaders instead of the religious, religiously inspired political leaders of Hamas. I don't know what the logic behind it is. It's divide and conquer. It's partially divide the Gaza Strip into five, six different tribes, and hopefully they're weaker that way. It's not a long-term solution. It's what the US tried to do in Iraq. It's what the US tried to do in Afghanistan, and it failed dramatically in both places. All right, thanks, Adam. Okay, I have a second question for later. Oh, sounds good. Andrew, we did, Ryan, we did. I've got Ian next. Did we lose, yeah, we lose somebody? Yeah, we lost Robert, me, sir. Oh, Robert was there, that's right. Where's Robert? All right, maybe I'll come back. Go ahead, Ian. So it's the third anniversary of the January 6th riot insurrection, whatever you want to call it. And I was seeing some footage today, and it's still surprising to me that new footage is coming out, and it's still shocking. Oh, no, you're seeing the mainstream media edited propaganda, all those people climbing up the side and breaking windows, all FBI agents trying to rile up the crowd because the FBI was so anti-Trump. It's all AI generated footage of people. Watching the propaganda in HD media, if you want to do. Based on the propaganda, do you think as soon as some of the rioters started literally attacking police, like hitting them with bats, hitting them with flagstaffs, hitting things like that, do you think that the police should have started to respond with escalating force, in particular lethal force. The only lethal force used was on that one woman who actually tried to crawl through a window, but... Should they have... Oh, no, she was trying to open the door to the chamber, to the house of a chamber. And God trying to protect the chamber itself, shot it, it cracked in the door. Yeah, no, absolutely lethal force should have been used. It's bewildering how police allow themselves, not just there, but I see it, I'm seeing it all over the place. Police have allowed themselves to be attacked, to be beaten, to be overwhelmed. I think they should be using force all over the place right now with these demonstrations. They should have used it against BLM, given that they were burning stuff down and they were beating police and attacking them. Do you remember what was going on in Portland, where they were literally beating police and, you know, I don't get it. I don't know, at the very least rubber bullets or something. You know, the idea that the police should just stand there as martyrs to be whipped by these nihilists is just absurd and I think that's absolutely true. You're defending the capital of the United States. You're supposed to be defending the seat of power of the American government and you're not gonna draw a gun and at least shoot in the air or do something to drive these people back. You'd be a terrible libertarian, you're wrong. I am not a libertarian. I am so proud of not being a libertarian. God, I mean, it is ridiculous and pathetic. And they're afraid. Look, in the 1960s, police did use force, lethal force and it was at Kent State, it was a Kent State where they killed a bunch of students and others and I know the circumstances at that time, whether the use of lethal force was exaggerated or not, whether it was justified or not, but they're traumatized by that. There's a real trauma about using lethal force in law enforcement. Also, see what happened in other circumstances where lethal force has been used by police, particularly if it's a minority that's on the other side of it. You know, I don't know, I don't know how to explain it, but yeah, well, I do know how to explain it. It's altruism through and through and it's again, fear of lawsuits, fear of be called a racist or the genus six, that wouldn't have happened. I mean, a lot of leftists argued that if the crowd, and I don't know if this is true or not, but it is something you could say, if the crowd was made up of a bunch of black rioters, lethal force would have been used and it wasn't used because these were patriotic white Americans and therefore wasn't, but there wasn't a lot of lethal force used against BLM. So I think it's just generally the case that the police don't use lethal force anymore. I've seen pictures where like the police were locked up in New York and the head, the demonstrators are demonstrating they were hiding. And again, didn't take out the guns, didn't shoot warning shots, didn't threaten, didn't, and what this is begging for is anarchy. It's rioting in the streets, it's the mob, it's mob rule, it's the mob gets away with anything. It's disgusting, it's despicable and yeah, I'm not a good libertarian. So I do believe that rioters, rioters must be subdued. Rioting is a massive violation of the rights of the property owners whose property gets destroyed of the people whose lives get disrupted and the people who might die because they caught up in the fire. I mean, think about, what was that guy's kid's name who ended up shooting a couple of people in Wisconsin or something, right? And I mean, a lot of the blame for that is that the police let that white get out of hand. The police were so pathetic there that individuals felt like they had a need to take out guns and go and patrol the streets themselves. That's not civilized, that's anti-civilization, that's the negation of civilization. When I have to protect my private property with a gun, same thing happened during the LA riots and stand outside my to protect it because the police are not doing their job, that's a breakdown in civilization. And so, yes, so I'm horrified by that. Thanks for giving me an opportunity for the rant again. All right, I'm live. Yeah, sorry. So, sort of related to the topic we were talking earlier around rules of, you know, just, my question's more around rules of engagement and it's obviously a mess the way it is right now. And it's immoral. But what would be the morality of soldiers ignoring those rules? And in particular, it doesn't matter if a soldier is a volunteer or a draftee. And now I'm with you, you're on, like to me, draft is one of the most immoral things you can have. But if it is what it is, let's take Israel today as an example. You know, I mean, these are soldiers who are largely draftees, but at the same time, I suspect a lot of them are also kind of, you know, they're fighting for what they believe in. And, you know, we may not say that that's completely correct, but, you know, like to what extent can they morally ignore rules of engagement? And what would be the sort of the right thing there for soldiers to look at? Well, I do encourage you to read my article, Adjustable Theory, where I talk about this in great detail. Okay. But I think it's immoral, it's, I think that it is moral to completely ignore rules of engagement, completely. The only rule in war, war is the absence of civilization. War is the absence of rules. War is, there's only one rule in war, and that is to win. If you're the good guys, if you're the bad guys that know rules and you should lose quickly, and yes, you should abide by rules of engagement. If you're the bad guys, right? But of course they never do. Right. But if you're the good guys, your only responsibility is to win quickly with minimal casualties to your own forces. And that means do whatever is necessary, kill whomever needs to be killed in order to achieve that victory. So rules of engagement are immoral, not just the way they are today, but any rules of engagement. When you go into battle, you have to defeat the enemy and you need to try to stay alive to do it. And if there's some kids in the way, and the only way for you to achieve that goal of beating the enemy and staying alive is to kill those kids, then the blood of those kids on whoever started the war and got you into this mess to begin with. And that's why war is horrible. It's sad, it's the most evil thing human beings can do to one another. But the fault of everybody who dies in a war is those who begin it. Those who initiate the use of force. Right. So. Because otherwise sacrifice, if I say I'm not gonna shoot the enemy because the kids in the way, I'm gonna risk my life because the kids in the way, then I'm placing the lives of the kids above my own, but not just above my own. I'm placing the lives of the kids above my responsibility to win. And if I don't win, then I'm risking all the population I'm defending, all my fellow soldiers, all of them are basically being sacrificed. All of that is being sacrificed for the sake of what? Right. So in today's world though, if you're a infantry soldier in the IDF today. What can you actually do? You're in a squad, you're in a platoon, whatever. You're having to take out a tunnel. And to take your example, there's some kids in the way blocking the tunnel because Hamas put them there. What's the guidance you would give that soldier? It's very careful because you don't have to a lot of people, if they ask me about joining the military, I can not recommend joining it in the United States. A country I believe that we should fight to preserve is worthy of fighting for preserving. But by going into the military, you're putting your hands, your life into the hands of the people who I don't want to be in the military. I don't want to be in the military your life into the hands of the people who I don't trust. People who I think morally a treasonous and morally will not protect your life, which should be their job. So it's very difficult. Now, what would I tell such a soldier? I sell, I tell him, do whatever in the moment you think you have to do to protect your own life. But take into account the rules of engagement because you do not want to land up in jail because you shot somebody you shouldn't have shot. And if that means the war will take longer, it's not your responsibility, it's your responsibility of those who put the rules of engagement into place. But don't do anything that literally forfeits your life. Don't forfeit your life. Shoot whoever you need to shoot, fight it afterwards. But if it's just going to prolong the war and make it more difficult to enhance Hamas, that's on the military commanders. That's on the politicians. That's on the people who've set these rules of engagement in place. It's not on you. Yeah, that's another way of sacrifice. We use sacrifice for the principle and then you sit in jail afterwards. That's a good idea. Yeah, makes sense. Thanks. No, but it's very difficult. I don't envy these soldiers. Now I have to say for everything I've seen, Israel is a lot, the rules of engagement in Israel are a lot less severe than they are in the US military. The US military is a lot worse. Yeah, yeah. No, I believe that. Particularly in this war. In previous wars, it's been bad. This was, the Israeli army's been much better. Sadly, the fact that they killed those three hostages that escaped suggests that shoot first, and the last questions later is the strategy right now. And I can't blame them for that. The tragic consequence of that is they killed their own people. But it's still the right strategy. The American military is a lot, a lot more stringent. It's a lot more difficult. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, I'm not, I mean, I was in the Canadian army decades ago. And so I didn't, when I was in, it was during the Cold War. We never had any active fighting. So I never participated obviously in any of the more recent stuff. I suspect it's as bad. I mean, I know at the time our rules of engagement were very, you know, they were pretty easy going, if I could put it that way. It was like, okay, you know, like the example given was, you know, you can't shoot like an obviously unarmed child kind of thing or something like that. Like, you know, and even there it was, you know, it wasn't like, you know, you can't do this, can't do this. It was pretty much like, okay, you know, get out there. But that was 40 years ago, right? I mean, I have to say, when I was in the military, so 40 years ago, there was very little discussion of rules of engagement. Yeah. Very little. Yeah. I mean, we were literally marking buildings to be blown up in intelligence. And there was very little of, well, how many civilians in the building? I mean, there was a terrorist there, you blew it up. There was no real question. And I have to say a lot of times, the call of whether to blow up a building was made by me or somebody at my, you know, that was what? First Sergeant? I mean, it wasn't, it didn't go through multiple layers and the lawyer didn't sign off on it. Like today in the US Army, I think a lot of that lawyer signs off. On the other hand, if you watch some of the video that's coming out of Gaza, it does look like at least from the air, a lot of times the drone or the pilot will wait until the person they're trying to kill is alone and nobody else will be killed and only shoot them then. So. Yeah. On the other hand, every day you hear about a family's home being bombed in Gaza and 20 people dying. So it's very hard to tell what Israel's rules of engagement are right now. Okay. Thank you. All right. Let's see, Pini has joined us. Stono Robert, he disappeared. Pini, you there? Yeah. Yep. You hear me? Yep. Good. Speaking of Israel, I have actually a question about Israel. I heard you a few times talking about the political situation and about Netanyahu. And I can hear clearly that you don't like him or that you don't like his policies. But when we look again, my opinion, and you look what there is and you try to choose the best that you have till somebody really principle like Millay come up as you were saying yesterday. But when I look in Israel, everybody's worse actually, you know? You look at Lapid, it's like he flip flops like every five minutes, you'll see the opposite that he said yesterday. A guns that is very popular now has no backbones and he was part of the government, previous governments and he was the head of chief of staff. So he has a lot of responsibility, just the same. I know you mentioned Ben, but Benet, yeah. He completely, he went on to be right of Netanyahu and he flip on his people that vote for him completely just to become a prime minister. And when he was prime minister, he gave his bala to the North, he didn't do anything, he was a year and a half almost. So why you point more than others? My view is you could take the yellow pages in Israel and point to anybody and they'd be better than Netanyahu. He has failed, he's been prime minister for 16 years. Now I think, I thought he was bad in 2000 after he was prime minister in 96, 97 or 97, 98 and he signed a deal with Yasser Arafat after he swore he would never deal with Arafat after he wrote a book about never negotiating with terrorists and he signed a deal with Arafat. I said, from my perspective, the guy is exactly how you describe Lapid, changes his mind, betrays you all the time, doesn't stick to anything. But then he's been prime minister for 16 years. Anybody with a shred of integrity on October 8th would have submitted his resignation as prime minister of Israel. He has failed in everything that he has done. Nothing he has done has gone well. As prime minister, he's done no liberalizing the economy. He did when he was finance minister but nothing as prime minister. He fought two wars, three wars with Hamas, nothing. He fought one big war and one small war with Hezbollah, nothing. He gives a good speech in English but he is a horrible, horrible prime minister and I think a horrible human being. All he cares about is power. He has handed billions and billions and billions of dollars over to the ultra orthodox Jews who deserve a dime, who don't serve in the military and who don't contribute anything to a productive country and who corrupted intellectually. There's just no positives that Netanyahu have, none, zero. He gives a good speech in English. But what has he done in 16 years in power, the longest serving prime minister in the history of the state of Israel? What positive thing has he done? And now you say there's nobody better. Any of those people would be better just because of Netanyahu's reputation. So I don't know who would be better but we'll never discover who's better as long as the Israeli people keep electing this power luster as prime minister. He needs, after October 7th, I mean, if he was Japanese, he would have committed harakiri, right? He would have committed suicide because he would have had some respect for himself. But this is 100% on Netanyahu. It's his fault. It's his policies that led to this. And the fact that he, this is to me, you know, when Chamberlain finally discovered that Hitler wasn't the nice guy he thought he was, what did he do? He had the balls to resign and to hand things over to Churchill. When Netanyahu lost because the Hamas wasn't the nice guys that he thought they were, what did he do? He declared himself Churchill because he's good at declaring stuff. But he should have resigned. I mean, that would be, that is the only decent thing he could have done. Now, okay, so you don't want to resign in the middle of a war, which by the way, Chamberlain did. So wait a couple of weeks and take responsibility and say sorry, say something. But no, he wants power. He thinks if he can win in Gaza, he might retain power in the future. You know, I just can't imagine, I mean, you can't imagine supporting Netanyahu now. Put aside the alternative. I don't care who the alternative is. You know, anybody off the street in Israel at this point, given everything Netanyahu has done badly would be better than Netanyahu. Yeah, I'm not saying that he's definitely, I'm not saying he's ideal. And I think he definitely needs to take responsibility. That's what's without question. I do agree. I do think that it has to be after the war, not in the middle of a war. He should take responsibility for this. He could do it now. But on the other hand, on the other hand. He has a government right now that's functioning as a war cabinet. Would function as a war cabinet without him. He should leave now if he had any dignity, if he had any integrity, he would leave now. But realistically, realistically, I don't think whether Netanyahu or somebody else couldn't go what they're doing now in Gaza after Hamas. The US would have never let them do anything like that if it's not for October 7th. That's a hundred percent. Even now, even after October 7th, three months later, the Americans are already starting to forget it and they start to put all kind of limitation. You know, you remember what Golda Meir told Henry Kissinger when he said, but all those soldiers are gonna starve and they're gonna die of, she said them. And she hung up the phone on him. She hung up the phone on Henry Kissinger. You know, some Israeli politicians, maybe nobody there would have done it, but the only thing that would America's will accept is whatever Israel does. They're not gonna turn against Israel. They have no other option. They have no other ally. They'll play hoots and they'll yell and they'll scream and they'll do stuff. But at the end of the day, they'll come to Israel's side. You know, Netanyahu had an opportunity in 2014 in Gaza, in 2008 in Gaza, there were opportunities to do more than was done. And they didn't, you remember, you remember why? You remember why Alekshawon left Gaza, what he said? I mean, what everybody said was we're leaving Gaza because when we're in Gaza and occupying Gaza if there's a terrorist attack against us, we can't really attack them because we're responsible, we're there already. But if we leave, if they attack us, we're gonna wash them because they were... Yeah. They were... Oh, well, okay. But that was Charon. I remember the conversation and argument with my family. I said the same thing, forget it. You're not going to do anything. You're giving... I agree with you. Somebody that say, I'm going to kill you. Look at their charter. How can... But they were saying, no, we are inside. Once we get out, we have the moral right to fight. Unfortunately, that was, in my opinion, one of the worst thing that happened to Israel. I agree. I agree with that and leaving Lebanon. Yeah. And now they're paying... Oh, slow. Oh, slow. Oh, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow. That was a good buck. But the slow started the whole thing. Yeah, that was a good buck. Yeah, I know. I know. We have 2000 and they left Lebanon and that was seen by the Palestinians as a huge sign of weakness. And that's part of what led to the Second Intifada or at least accelerated the Second Intifada. But yeah, I mean, I don't know that there's anybody better than Netanyahu. What I do know is that Netanyahu is weak. He's not a good Prime Minister and he should have gone a long time ago. Whether somebody else would have done a better job or not, I don't know. But the reality is Netanyahu did a bad job. That's... You're wrong. You just don't like Netanyahu because he's on the right and you hate the right. And it is more to the right. And one of the reasons I like Bennett, first of all, well, I don't know, Bennett might be a disaster but Bennett was a weak Prime Minister for a year and a half like Pini said. But to a large extent, the only thing that brought that government together was everybody in that government hated Netanyahu. That was the only thing they had in common. And therefore they couldn't do anything because you had leftists and rightists and middle and it was a complete disaster. But the only thing that unified them after six elections where the Israeli public would not pick a winner, they unified around, we don't like Netanyahu, we don't want the religionist parties as part of it. And it was a government that had to fail. If you gave Bennett a right of center coalition, he might be a good Prime Minister. I think it's worth giving him a shot. That's my point. I would vote for him to give him a shot. Would he be better? I don't know. But at least let's try something new because Netanyahu is a loser. I think we need somebody really new from politics, not with hope. And not a general because the generals have failed. You're right, Gantz was ahead of the Israeli military when they failed on Gaza for years and strategically was a failure. We need somebody new who was not a general, which is very hard in Israel. To find somebody who can come up the ranks in politics who's not a general. Generals are easy because they've got name recognition because Israelis know the names of the top generals. All right, thanks, Pini. Let's do some super chats. Let's see, that Doodle Bunny, $50. Thank you, Doodle Bunny. You mentioned someone from ALI would be going on Jordan Peterson's show this year. Anko already did a conversation with Jordan Peterson and it honestly did not go great. I think you would be fantastic in one-on-one interview with Peterson. So first, I don't think Anko has ever spoken to Jordan Peterson. So I'm not sure what you were referring to. I don't recall it actually. Is your partner Ocon, you're wrong. But was Anko on stage? Well, I thought he was. Was Greg? You're wrong. It was Greg, it was me. And I can't remember who else, but that didn't go well for any of us. I'm not sure I would extrapolate from that conversation anything because I was bad on that one. I don't think Greg was particularly good. I don't think anybody was good. So I don't think that was a particular one. There's not been, Anko's never had a conversation with Jordan Peterson as far as I know. So I think that's too quick to judge that. I don't know how good I would be with Peterson. I often find that I have to listen to Peterson like three times before I understand what the hell he's getting at, what he's actually saying. Then I've got a great answer. But in a live conversation, you can rewind. You can't listen to it again. You have to have an immediate response. And I was listening to the conversation between Malice and Jordan Peterson. And I was trying to think, what would I say to this? In many cases, I went, I have no idea because I have no idea what Jordan Peterson just said. Now, again, after listening to it three times, I figured it out, but I'm just, I'm slow. At least when it comes to Jordan Peterson, I'm slow. So I don't know, you need somebody... Yeah, I mean, I would love to see Anko and Jordan Peterson, particularly with Jordan Peterson interviewing Anko. I think that would be fabulous. But... So you're on, let me jump in here. I was Googling. There is a Anko, Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin thing at Clemson University about free speech. Oh, that's right. A long time ago, but that was free speech. Yeah, okay. Yeah. So it wasn't a discussion between Jordan and Anko. It was kind of a panel thing on free speech. Yeah, that was a panel. Again, I want the interview to be Jordan Peterson interviewing Anko, which is a completely different dynamic. Now, although as you saw with him interviewing Malice, he spends more than 50% of the time speaking and not really asking questions. So, look, Jordan is a tough one. He's a tough one to talk to because he is all over the place and he's very difficult to figure out what he's actually saying. And he uses a lot of psychological terms. I'm not sure I'd be good, but let's see that Jordan even agreed to have anybody. But yes, that's right. There was that conversation. I can't remember how well it went or badly it went. Thanks Ian for correcting me. And sorry, Dudo Bunny for forgetting that. James Johnson is nowadays responding to aggression. It's called escalating the conflict. Yes, I mean, our Secretary of State Department, what's it called? The Secretary of State, Blinken is on a groveling tour of the Middle East right now. He's truing Middle East capitals and groveling before their dictators, asking them not to escalate the conflict because America does not want war. I want war. I want the conflict in the Middle East to escalate. I want it to get a lot worse because the only way it's gonna get better in the long run is if it gets worse in the short run. And what I mean there is Iran needs to be dealt with in the United States is really the only one in a position to do it properly. And it's time that happened. It's time that happened. All right, Hoppe Campbell, you said yesterday evasion doesn't come from anywhere. Evasion just is, but that seems ridiculous. People are clearly afraid of certain facts of reality. Fear is the cause of evasion. Why are, why and why are they afraid because they have poor character? God, I mean that reverses everything, right? Why do they have poor character? Because they evade it. Where does their poor character come from? So no, the fundamental choice in life is not driven by an emotion. It is a fundamental choice. It is an initial choice. It is a pure choice. And that is the choice to think or not to think. And the choice not to think is a choice to evade. It's a choice not to think. And if you choose not to think, then you develop a bad character. And if you choose not to think, you become fearful because the world is unknowable to you. And that reinforces the unthinking and it reinforces the evasion and the incentive to evade. But it cannot be the starting point. The starting point is never an emotion. And the starting point is not character. Character is something you develop. Why do you have bad character? Because you've made choices that led you to have bad character. And the fundamental choice that you make to have bad character is not to think. That's what free will means. Free will does not mean I'm raising my hand right now. Free will means I've chosen to focus my mind. I've chosen to engage in thinking. I've chosen not to evade. Now it's- It's your own, you're not saying emotions are not involved, right? No, but I'm saying emotions are consequences not the primaries. And so yes, once you develop a bad character, once you convince yourself you can't handle the world, you feel afraid and that fear is gonna increase the motivation to evade and not to think. But all of that had to start somewhere. It's a chicken and egg, but there has to be an egg to start it all, right? The chicken and egg is always an egg to begin with. The egg is the evasion. The egg is not the fear. So a young child might have fear, might have other things, but at some point he makes the decision I'm gonna focus or not focus. And if he chooses not to focus, he's only gonna feel more fear over time. And if he chooses to focus, he can overcome his fear. That's the source of the bad character, the good character, and that's the source of his adult evasion. And again, that choice is made all the time. You can change. You can't choose the focus, but you have to choose it. And by the time you're an adult, sure, there are lots of emotions involved, but the emotions are not the determining factor. So I don't buy it. And again, you have to ask where the fear came from and you have to ask where the bad character came from. And the bad character comes from lack of thinking, which means evasion. All right, Ali, in an interview with Vivek, he mentioned he is vegetarian. Who is vegetarian? Vivek? And it is a model to eat meat. I felt shocked because how are you going to rule over people? I guess it is Vivek. How are you gonna rule over people who you think are immoral? Also, human existence by itself results in directly in killing other species. Yeah, of course. I mean, we are carnivores. There's no question about that. We survived, we thrived, we grew because of the protein, the logistan, we benefit from that protein, we need that protein. Oh, so Mary-Benz, who's a biologist, is correcting me. If evolutionary mutation happens at meosis, the chicken, not the egg came first, but it seems to me much more likely that the mutation happens in the egg by something that's close to chicken, but not quite a chicken, lays an egg, mutation happens in the egg, and then you get a chicken. But maybe I'm not getting evolution somewhere right, but that seems to me to make sense, but Mary-Benz is the biologist, not me, so. So I agree with you, Ali. I think it's ridiculous to be, not just be a vegetarian, but to think it's immoral to eat meat, that to me is. But he is a Hindu, isn't that a religious tenant of Hinduism? They don't eat cows, they eat some meat though, or they don't eat meat at all. Anyway, yes, the bottom line is I completely agree with you. All right, so you're gonna have to explain meosis to me, Mary-Benz, because I guess I don't understand it. So in the species that was pre-chicken changed from being pre-chicken to chicken as an adult, as a out of the egg hatch thing, the change happened as an adult, is that how, all right, she's gonna have to walk me through the visuals. So one of these days we're gonna have to organize the presentation by Mary-Benz on evolution because obviously I'm missing, I have some big gaps. But I'm not an expert, far from it. All right, let us do a second round with a panelist. Adam, you now appear first on my list. Yes. What do you think of Hicks's thesis on Nietzsche and the Nazis? And especially the idea that Hitler's program was to remove the obstacles to a Nietzschean anarchy. In which the strong would kill the weak over generations leading to a Nietzschean Superman race. I mean, I don't know, I guess I'd say I don't know enough about Hitler to know whether that reflects what he ultimately intended. Clearly his agenda was to get rid of the weak, but whether to extend it to the point of believing he could create a race of Ubers mentioned, super humans, Nietzschean super humans over generations. I don't know, I don't know enough about Nazi ideology and Nazi thinking to know whether that was the ultimate goal. But certainly getting rid of weak was, I mean, you could see it manifest in not only Jews were killed in concentration camps, but anybody who was perceived weak by the Nazis, anybody who had any kind of genetic mutation or had cognitive issues or even from a body perspective had disabilities were killed. So, yeah, I mean, it seems like that is not an unreasonable assumption, but one would have to know a lot more about what the Nazis wrote and believed in explicitly to be able to make that connection explicitly. And I don't know enough about it. I haven't read Go-Bos, I haven't read enough Hitler and the rest of the Nazi ideology, ideologues, ideologues. And a follow up questions on that, there seems to be a political movement in Israel that essentially says God gave the land of Israel to the Jews and it is our duty to kill everybody else if they're in Israel or at least push them out so that it's exclusively Jewish. And we saw them going out on an anarchist vigilante raid against Palestinians in the West Bank. What's your opinion? Are they going to become more popular? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if they became more popular. One of Netanyahu's sins is legitimizing them and giving them a lot more political power. And if you will, supporting them over the last 16 years or not standing in opposition to their vision over the last 16 years and allowing them to grow and become more influential, partially because of his own weakness in dealing with the Palestinian issue, they became like, well, what else are we gonna do? This is the only option we have. This is the Kahana movement, the Khanist movement. And it's very dangerous. It's very anti-liberty, anti-freedom and individual rights of Jews, never mind of Arabs. And I think it is gonna be potentially more powerful. Remember, they're in the Israeli government right now. They serve in the Israeli government. They are a significant force within the Israeli government. And Netanyahu made that possible. Made that possible. His power lust is such that he was willing to cut a deal with anybody. And these are some of the sins, that I don't think Netanyahu should be forgiven for. But I think it's a horrible movement that is very dangerous for the future of Israel. It makes Israel good. It's secularism. It's Western ideas. It's respect for the individual and his rights. And these people are Jewish racists. To the extent that you can apply racism to Judaism, but that's what they are. Now, what I see is that the most prominent Israeli in the world is an Israeli Arab, Johnny Sruji, who is the technology guy at Apple. Tim Cook is essentially a marketing and distribution chain person. And Sruji is in charge of technology. And I think that since the death of Steve Jobs, the only thing that's keeping Apple ahead is the technology. I don't... And Johnny Sruji is responsible for that. That's great. And a supply chain, which Cook's main responsibility is operations. Steve Jobs brought him on because he was a master operator. He built the supply chains. He built the whole efficient way of building Apple stuff. And that's why they profit margins is so high. That's Tim Cook's responsibility. But yeah, that is quite possible that he is the guy holding up Apple. Good for him. That's great. All right, thanks, Adam. Andrew. Yes, on your point that people will love and follow a winner. How do you explain why the people who love and follow Trump do? Oh, God. I don't know. I think they follow him because... I know he thinks he's a winner and he still claims to be a winner. Well, he projects an attitude of a winner. He fights like a winner. He, you know, that's why when he lost, it was a brilliant move. I mean, you have to give the guy credit, a brilliant, brilliant marketing move to say, no, no, I won. They cheated. They stole it from me. I mean, that's not only saying it, then spending months fighting for it and never changing his mind. No matter how much evidence you throw at Trump, he's always gonna say, no, no, they stole the election from me. And his whole view of the world is if you say it, it becomes true. That is, it doesn't matter. He's the ultimate pragmatist. Truth doesn't matter. Principle doesn't matter. Long-term doesn't matter. If I say it, if it works, quote, works, then it's true. And that's all that matters. Doesn't work or doesn't it? Why do people love Trump? Because I don't know why they do because he's willing to break everything because he has a nihilistic streak and he hates the right people. He hates the left, which a significant number of Americans have convinced themselves is the ultimate enemy of everything. And he is willing to do anything in order to defeat the left. And there's a significant number of Americans that that's all they care about. That's the only thing they care about. That's winning to them. But it's not about leftism because if Trump tomorrow advocated for some woke policy, all the supporters would advocate for that woke policy. That is, it's not about any particular opinion. It's not about a stand. It's not about a view of the world. It's about those guys are evil and they don't even know why they're evil. They don't care why they're evil. They just are evil and we need a win. And Trump is willing to fight and Trump is willing to say unpleasant things and Trump is willing to gorge their eyes out. And I'm with Trump because that's what it's gonna take. That's what the world has come to. It's either I gorge their eyes out or they gorge my outside. And there's nothing short of that will be successful. It's either we elect Trump or we slam the airplane into the ground. That's the famous essay written in 2016, when they have Flight 93, which basically said Trump is despicable but he is the only thing preventing the airplane from crashing into the ground. So we have to elect him. That's the mentality. The world will end if Trump loses. And if you have that mentality then you're gonna fight for the world. So, but there's something deep psychological going on which I don't have completely the answer to because there's something about loyalty and about blind loyalty going on that I don't have an explanation to be. It's what Trump said early in the campaign, relatively early. I could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and my supporters would still support me. Nothing would change. He realizes it. He knows there's something blind about this loyalty that's psychological more than anything else. And I don't have a full explanation for it. It's interesting too because he says that he values loyalty like the most in people. That's so important to him, his loyalty. Yeah, but why do others value it as well? Why do others? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. And he doesn't believe in anything except in that concept of loyalty, right? But it's not even clear that it means anything in his head. All right, let's see. Just in the order I have on the screen. Pini, you're next. Yeah. I'm trying to understand how the US can keep going on their policy, foreign policy or non-policy, I should say, that stuff that they are so simple and so clear for me like five years old will understand like they almost supporting Iran, like they give them money, they try to appease them, appease them. But everybody in the US, I'm talking about the government and all the military, they know that they can destroy Iran easy. They know that Iran is the cause of all the mess that's going on in the Middle East and a lot around the world. What, how can you explain that, that even knowing all this, they keep going and they will let go Israel, they will go to the Saudis, they will let go whoever, but they will keep appeasing the Iranian. That's something that I'm trying to understand. And it started even with Bush. He should attack Iran, not Iraq in my opinion at the time. I agree with you completely. I mean, this is the ultimate in a Christian morality. This is, and I don't think, I don't think they know they can defeat Iran like that. I mean, I remember, I don't know if you remember 1991 when the first Gulf War and the America masked all its troops on the border with Iraq and in America and the press, everybody's saying, oh my God, this is gonna be a horrible war. Iraq has a mighty army, the Americans in trouble. And I was like, there's 91, I was relatively young and I was like, you guys don't know what you're talking about. This is three days max. You are old like that. There's nothing there. We fought against Russian weapons. Their weapons systems will get clogged with sand and they'll all break down. This is, you don't know what you're talking about. No, no, this is gonna be out. If you watch the military analysts, even with the Gaza, if Israel goes in on the ground into Gaza, hundreds of Israeli soldiers are going to be killed. This is gonna be a bloodbath. They have no clue. I mean, really the military experts, generals have no clue. The population has no clue. The, you know, one of the things that astounds me and it took me decades to get over this, right? Politicians are unbelievably ignorant and they're not very smart, right? They're not smart and they don't know anything. So they don't know what all they remember is Iraq. Oh my God, Iraq, you know, it was horrible and American people turned against us and it was Fallujah and a lot of people died. And most people don't even remember Iraq. They just remember it was really, really bad. Or Afghanistan, we went to war there, it should have been easy, but we got stuck there for 30 years, we can't do that. And they cannot conceptualize what a war would look like if you actually went into defeat the enemy rather than build them democracy. And they can't conceptualize, and this is where you write about Bush, Iran is very different than Iraq. Iran has a underlying secular culture. It actually has people who could take over, who would not be the enemies of the United States. And the US could destroy Iran from the air without ever putting boots on the ground. They can't conceive of it. They can't even think of it. It's not even comes to their mind that possibility. And you know, what about all the civilian casualties? What about all the children that will die? What about all this? What about all? And all the Arabs in the world will hate us. And I say to them like the Germans hate us today because of Dresden, and they don't know what to say. But the world will hate us. The Arabs will hate us, will destroy our relationship. But the Arabs hate Iran. They can't think. I mean, people think that if you become president of the United States, you must be smart. Not by my standards of smart. I've never met a politician that after the conversation, I went pretty smart guy. And I met some very senior politicians, all Republicans, by the way. Every single one of them was like, what a disappointment. These people can't think. They're uninteresting. They don't have the capacity. I mean, there's so many easy things to do, foreign policy being one of them. But there's so many other easy things, like economics, a lot of other things. They just, they don't do. They do the opposite. They do stupid things that they know are gonna get them in trouble. Doesn't stop. It's a project. It's a good project. Reality does not enter. It doesn't. Yes, it's tragic. And we suffer. We're the ones who pay the price. Yeah, that's it. Because they're on top. They're controlling and affecting our lives. I mean, Millay in Argentina, in the first week, did more than any Republican president ever to liberate his country. And he's just, in his first week, doesn't even, you know, they do nothing. So, and it's not that hard. What Millay did is like obvious. It's like simple stuff. It's not even like a Keynesian economist would disagree too much. But in America, you don't do it. You can't do it. And it's true at the local government level as well. You see the same thing, local government. They do the stupidest thing. And the simplest thing that you know would help, like the problem of lack of housing or the problem of high housing costs and stuff like build more houses. Release land, release land regulation. Yeah, just easy. It's easy. And it's not controversial. It's all like there's an economist out there who says, no, no, no. If you increase supply, prices will not come down. I mean, every economist will say, yeah, if you increase supply, prices will come down. So why don't you do it? You know, Rand was once asked why politicians, if they do what they do because of stupidity or malice? Yeah. And she said stupidity. Yeah, yeah. And there's some malice in some of them. There's some malice in some of them, but most of them are stupid. And stupid not in the sense that you would measure in an IQ test. That's one of the reasons I get so upset about IQ tests because I don't believe in them because I don't think they measure anything useful in terms of what it actually means to understand the world. I don't think that tests really test your intelligence as applied to the world, as applied to, I'm sure Bill Clinton has a high IQ, but he's an idiot. He's an idiot on every front and how he lives his life and how he politically and what he did when he was president. He's an idiot. All right, Ian. Hopefully on a more positive note. So in one of the chats, I mentioned a book called Beggars in Spain and I just wanted to give a little more detail for people who might be interested. So it's a science fiction book by an author named Nancy Kress. It was originally a novella, which won a bunch of awards like the Hugo and the Nebula. And then she expanded it into a novel. And the setup of the book is it starts in the future when genetic editing of children or babies has become more common. And an industrialist goes to this doctor and he wants him to do this new possible treatment to his daughter, which will enable the child to not sleep, to never need sleep. And he convinces the doctor to do it and the child is born and there are some other children with the same thing. And it turns out to have other benefits. But the real interesting twist for us is that this author is deliberately engaging with ideas like rants because the industrialist is pro free trade, pro trade. There's a character in the book who's invented a powerful motor who has put out these ideas of free trade and open contract and things like that. So these sleepless children start adopting these ideas. And it's about kind of what happens. And it's not all positive from a ran point of view because the author is kind of exploring the space between Iran's ideas and another author Ursula K. Le Guin's more communist ideas. So it explores what happens in the world. And I think you asked in the chat when I brought up the book about the title and beggars in Spain. And it's a reference and I'm not acknowledging the book that basically comes down to what do the productive people in the world owe to those people who are not productive and just have need. And when there's possibly an overwhelming amount of them like every beggar in Spain is the story. So it's a really interesting exploration of these ideas and not in an inherently hostile way. Like it honestly presents the ideas and these are people who live by it and this is what they accomplish. Interesting. This is what happens. And it's like I said, it's not entirely positive but it's a really interesting book. So I would recommend. And the beauty of science fiction is that it allows authors to really explore ideas and explore things that are unpopular that are not because they put them in another world that they put them in the future. They put them in a different context and that allows them to do things. So you find a lot more exploration of ideas including objectivist ideas or free market ideas in science fiction than any other genre of a book. The same a little bit you can do with fantasy. Terry Goodkind certainly tried to explore objectivist ideas in his fantasy books. Yeah, I enjoy those books. This is actually a better presentation of the ideas. Good. I think. Yeah, I need to look for that. I wrote it down again. I think I have it somewhere else written down. All right, Ryan W. Hi, very quick and not serious question. I love playing poker and I'm going to Ocon. So who should I watch out for? Who will be the sharks at the poker tournament that I should be worried about other than you? Well, the real question is, are you good at poker? I've played for many, many years. Yes. Maybe we should discourage you from coming to Ocon. Oh, yeah. I mean, there are a bunch of them. There are a bunch of sharks there. You've got to watch out for the Segolas, father and son team. They're both really, really good experienced poker players. And you got to watch out for them. They've done, I think the son won the first year we had the tournament. He won the tournament. I can't remember how far he got in this last year, the third one. He was definitely in the final table, but I can't remember how far he got. So he's been really good. But there are a lot of good players. I mean, but you know, I'm a terrible poker player. I mean, I'm really in bed. And I made it to the final table, I think all three times, maybe not in the second year, maybe I made it to the last two tables. In the second time, I was at the table, you're on, and I was one of the people that knocked you out. Yes, I think in the second, in the last two tables or something. So I'm not particularly good poker player, but I do good at these tournaments, partially because I entertain everybody so much, they keep me around for the entertainment value rather than anything else. But good. I mean, we need more poker players, partially because it helps you raise money for the admin institute, and partially because it's just a lot of fun. It's just a lot of fun. So look forward. Looking forward to it. Yeah. All right, I'm alone. Sorry. Yeah, I don't know if I can follow that up here with a serious question. So just again, sort of following up on the military stuff, what do you see as a role of the government in terms of care, medical care, primarily for veterans, military, police officers, you know, if they're particularly injured in the line of duty, things like that. I think you mentioned once, you know, there wouldn't be, the government should be delivering the care, you know, like the VA scandals from a few years ago and all that stuff. Like none of that surprises me at all. I'm from Canada with our lovely healthcare system. So, you know, that to me is just like, hey, if Americans want to know how government healthcare is, just look at the VA. But, you know, just in general, though, like if a soldier goes to fight and they're injured, like what's the role of the government here? Well, I mean, you know, simple answer to say it would be, it depends on the contract, right? So because it should be a volunteer army, the government should have a contract with the soldiers. And my expectation would be that the contract would be such that, and if I were going to volunteer, I would insist that the contract include medical, you know, a lifetime of health insurance if I got injured or anything like that. That the government would guarantee payment of, you know, whatever I needed in terms of healthcare if I suffered any injury while I was in the military. I think that that is reasonable. And I think it would be, if I think about the kind of dangers that you face going into the military, and I would include, by the way, PTSD, you know, mental care as part of that because a lot of soldiers suffer from PTSD. So it's a real issue. So it just seems like if there was a contractual relationship that would be part of it. And therefore, you know, it should be part of, it should be something that the soldiers negotiated and demand. And I think the government should agree. How exactly you work it? Is it a, you know, how do you create the right incentives? How do you structure the payments in a correct kind of way? I'd have to think it through, but yes, any injury that you suffer, healthcare should be provided to you for life, paid for by the government. And the same for police officers. And I think police officers exact the same. And I think again, if I was a police officer, I would insist on that being in my contract. And I really do think it's a contractual issue. And they should insist that. And I think the government should be willing to give that because it's an obvious, the one thing that would, the main thing that would cause somebody to resist going into the military to the police is of course the risk of dying. But second to that is the risk of injury. And you want to know that you'll be taking care of if you are injured. Right. So just in terms of bringing it to principle then the, you know, normally we would say healthcare is the private thing, you private insurance, whatever. But given the nature of this, like, you know, like, it's going to be very hard to get private insurance to say, okay, we'll come to you to go fight in the tunnels of Gus, right? I mean, that's- Yeah, the government just pays the cost and then so is the fact. Yeah. They would cover everything that the resulted from the pre-existing condition. Right. And they would probably give you some kind of voucher to buy insurance for the rest. Right. Okay, thanks. And one of the things that people don't realize is there's no reason in the free market you couldn't get insurance for everything other than the pre-existing condition. And of course, even with the pre-existing condition, there are all kinds of ways in which you can secure insurance. There's even been proposals for insurance against pre-existing conditions. So you could buy insurance policy that protected you from ever being in a position where you had pre-existing conditions you couldn't get insurance. So the markets are amazing at solving problems like that. All right, Ryan B. Yeah, I missed last month's call. It was my birthday and I just sort of forgot about it, but I wasn't doing anything at the time. It just slipped my mind. But in honor of me turning 46 years old and it being around the Thanksgiving holiday, I was just gonna take the opportunity to thank you and a bunch of other people in the Objectivist community for all the content you guys are putting out. You guys are killing it. So thank you for your show. Count me as one of the people who like the positive shows and think that your own rules for life should be a book. So I would definitely be a buyer of that. And then if people aren't looking at Gina Gorlin's sub-stack, there's a whole lot of stuff out there that's just amazing. Gene Roni's website is amazing. Tal Sifani had a talk about happiness that he gave a while back and he has like a happiness team that I did something with that, that was great. And I read Don Watkins book over the holidays. So it's just, I wish all this content was available when I was 26, not 46. And then I have two ancillary thank yous to give out. My dog would really like to thank Jonathan Honig for his book and his interview with you because she's even more spoiled since I've read that book than she used to be. So she's really enjoying that. And then also I'd like to thank, I don't know who it was. I think there were several people actually that were recommending Godzilla minus one to you. And I don't think you watched it yet. You haven't said if you watched it, but they inspired me to go see the film. And I won't give out any spoilers, but there were a couple of points in the movie where I was like, man, I can't believe someone in an objective as community recommended this film. But by the end of the film, I left feeling just with this sense of benevolence about life and about humanity in general. So they at least convinced me to go see it. So... Well, I will see it. I don't think I'll be able to see it in the theaters. I'll see it at home. I've got a nice big television and a great sound system. So I'm not too worried about losing too much there. But no question I will see it. It's just a question of when? Just a question of... And I didn't have my question, that was my question. Oh, I appreciate that. Thanks. Well, thank you, Aina. I really appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, I think people don't realize people in the objectives world, particularly those who are joining that world, don't realize how rich of a world it has become. I mean, I spent three years when after I first laid out the shrug, thinking it was only objective on a planet, didn't know there was anything beyond Ayn Rand, that it was... I didn't know how many books she had written, what she had written. It scrounged around to get whatever I could get my hands on. It took me three years to discover another objectivist. OPA had not been written, it wouldn't be written for another 14 years. I couldn't... When I was young, I couldn't listen to Leonard Peacock's courses because they were too expensive, couldn't afford it. For years, it took me years before I got to the point where I listened to Leonard Peacock's courses. So the only sort of objectivism for me was Ayn Rand's books and talking to other objectivists, that was it. And OPA was huge, huge in terms of objectivism. And then just the content since then, the amount of courses, the amount of lectures, the amount of books, it's unbelievable. And now it's like, I have to be careful when I schedule my shows because I'm gonna overlap with some of the objectivists running a podcast some way. So it really is amazing how much content is being produced, how rich the community has become, how rich intellectually it's become, how rich financially and as a consequence, the Institute's doing well. So yeah, it's a great time to be an objectivist. And I don't think people fully appreciate... And I'm not that old. So it's not like I'm telling you stories from the Middle Ages, but it's not that long ago. OPA was written in 91, which is from my perspective, not that long ago. And the courses are now for free. All of Leonard Peacock's courses are available for free. There's just zero reason not to listen to them all. All right, thanks, thanks Ryan. Let's do some super chats. Enric says, Trump sided with Obama as an American when no one justified the right conspiracy theory, these conspiracy theories. Trump continues to go along with any idea on the far right. The right sees Trump as the only one that consistently has their back. Yeah, I mean the wacky right, but he gets so much support from the non-wacky right. That's what's stunning. The stunning is the support he gets on the non-conspiratorial rate from kind of the normal people on the right. So that is what surprises, particularly when they have a choice right now of others and it doesn't have to be Trump. Yes, I mean, he will support anything that will get him attention. And he supported the Obama thing because it got him attention. And it helped him launch his presidential campaign in a bizarre way. You would think he would have undermined his ability to launch a presidential campaign, but it did the exact opposite. Adherent of Lady Columbia. All right, that's quite a name. I have no idea what it means. Iran, why are so many scientists deterministic, especially in regards of genes? I understand there is a relation, but they seem to devolve all agency. I think because scientists are convinced, and I don't know why, scientists are convinced that there has to be a material explanation from every phenomena in the world and that that material explanation should at least be understandable to them. That is that it has to be understandable within the knowledge of all the laws of physics that we have today. That everything is physics at the end of the day and that we know enough physics to be able to at least speculate about everything. And since there's no physics that can explain free will, they can't integrate it, and therefore they abandoned it. And it's the same reason why they're so afraid of AI since it's all physics and therefore the human intelligence is just a function of the number of iterations, number of processes that happen, then of course the computer with more connections and more processing part of the human brain will be created and therefore it'll be smarter. And if human consciousness is just a product of electrons zipping around, then the computer will be conscious and therefore it will kill us all. Now, none of that makes sense. No, none of that necessitates the next, but that's the kind of thinking that they have. It's a purely materialistic and it ignores the existence of consciousness which at best you can say we don't understand from a science perspective, we don't understand. It's an emergent property of something but we don't know how it's emergent and we certainly don't understand from a physics perspective free will. So what? Lots of things we don't understand even within physics. And lots of things we didn't understand before Newton was not an excuse to say they didn't exist just because we didn't understand them. Gravity, for example. That doodle bunny, as much as it's frustrating to hear Peterson and Malish, Butcherrand's ideas, it's so cool to see some of the most powerful intellectuals out there seriously grappling with their ideas. Yes, it is. It is, remember that that's true since she came up with these ideas. Buckley, Hitchens, a lot of these intellectuals earlier, I think even Chomsky grappled with Iron Man's ideas at some point or another. It was hard to ignore. Liam says, as I watch some of your debates at Soho Forum, you can tell Gene Epstein can't get annoyed when you keep winning. Well, he's always on the other side of the issue at least normally and he's the only one who beat me at Soho Forum. But yes, I think he would like me to lose, but that's okay. He treats me well and hopefully he'll keep inviting me to do those debates. Clark says, when I read other philosophers and intellectual commentators on the human condition, their analysis seemed so superficial and incomplete compared to Iron Man's. She truly was a specimen. Yeah, I mean, she was. And to me, a lot of the other philosophers and intellectual commentaries were incomprehensible full of contradictions and mysticism and rands were just so connected to reality and connected to this world. And I think that's, that is, and so logical. They just made sense. Michael, will Joe Biden end up pardoning Hunter Biden if he faces prison again? God, I don't know. I don't think so, but it depends. If he wins or loses, right? If he loses, he'll certainly pardon him before he leaves office. If he wins, I don't know if he will. He might do it only after the second term. James Taylor, do quiet people have the loudest minds? I don't know. I'm not sure I know what loudest mind means. James also asked, do Jews succeed in a way which is a threat to the egos of other people? Only of people with low self-esteem. People of low self-esteem view other people's success as a threat to them, yes. And Jews are incredibly successful in this world. And therefore, generally viewed with, they pose a threat to people of low self-esteem and there are plenty of people of low self-esteem out there in the world. Even people, as I've told you many times, who appear to be confidence are actually people of low self-esteem. Michael says, were the Nuremberg trials a bad idea? Did they give evil too much of a stage? Should all those monsters have been just shot without any kind of trial? No, I don't think so. I don't think it was a bad idea. I think they did give them a stage and they showed the world of impotency. They showed the world their weakness. They showed the world how pathetic they were. And I think that was a good thing. So I think the trials were good not as a form of justice because shooting them, putting them up against the wall and shooting them would have served justice just as well. In the sense of education, I think it educated the world about the nothing there that the people who cooperated with the Nazis engaged in. Frank says, how can trying too hard be same as overthinking? It can be, again, it depends what you mean by overthinking. It depends what you mean by trying too hard. Sometimes you're trying too hard in the sense that you're not stepping back and allowing yourself to think about doing it a different way that might be easier. You're too focused on the one way in which you're trying that are failing and you keep pursuing that way. And I think sometimes overthinking is used in the same way. You're so focused on this one way of doing things that you don't let yourself stepping back and thinking more broadly about other potential ways to solve the problem. I also think there's certain things that you need to allow for the fact that you've automated, automatized like sports and instead you start thinking about how you're shooting the basketball rather than just shooting the basketball. So there are all kinds of things like that that relate to both overthinking and trying too hard but it really depends on context and it really depends who's saying it and what they mean by it. Do you view that you're on as perfectionism to be doing the same thing over and over again? No, I mean Michael Jordan was a perfectionist but I don't think he overthought it. I think he practiced, practiced, practiced, practiced, got it to the point where it was so automatized and if he played a bad game then he thought about why he played a bad game and tried to correct whatever things he saw. So no, I don't think it's perfectionism. I think it's some form of stubbornness or some form of not relying on it, not trusting yourself, not trusting the process, not trusting where you are but again, it depends so much on context and how you're using the term. Yeah, I was just thinking about the part of like I have to be right the first time. Oh yeah, maybe, but maybe a bit of perfectionism. I don't know if that's if it manifests itself in at the first time. It just, it has to be right and I'm going to do it as long as it has to be right without really figuring out the full of context and how right is right. That is how accurate does accurate need to be, right? James, most relationships today and in falling out so damaged control ends up being needed. This makes me cynical and less enthusiastic about attempting to connect with new people. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, some of my relationships have ended like that way but I don't regret having the relationship. Like, you know, you got to try. What is it, Tennyson again? Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I keep going back to that. Better to have friendship and lose it than not have friendship. You got to try. You got to live. You got to take risks. Risks is part of life. You got to embrace risk-taking. You've got to relish risk-taking. You got to, yeah. You've got to engage in it. There's no alternative. So yeah, don't let yourself let the negative dominate you from doing the positive. Okay, Andy, happy new year. It's late but wanted to contribute. Also let you know that you inspired me to join ARU as a graded student. Keep up the good work and continue to be an inspiration. Excellent. Thank you, Andy. Really, really glad to see you as a graded student at ARU. Liam, what do intellectuals want merit to? Why do intellectuals want merit to go extinct? Because merit counters the idea of egalitarianism. They uphold egalitarianism as the top value. Egalitarianism means equality. Merit gets in a way. Some people, if you have merit, that means we're not all equal. If it's, if you're responsible for it, then there's no equality. So they want to get rid of merit in the name of, we're all the same. The evil of egalitarianism. Michael, part one, you say if you commit a really violent crime, your life should be over. But look at objectors podcast on Michael Lieberwitz's story. He almost murdered someone. Then after 25 years in prison, he was able to turn his life around using Rand's ideas as a world map. It's not obvious to tell when second changes should be given. Look, he almost murdered somebody. So he didn't actually murder somebody. And he spent 25 years in jail. We're talking about somebody who murdered somebody in South Africa. We spent only 15 years in jail. So A, if you murder somebody, tough you discover the truth 10 years later. Too late. Sorry. You know, you know, you commit such a sin that turning your life around becomes irrelevant at some point to the rest of us. You live the best life you can in jail. Almost murdering somebody is not quite as sinful as murdering somebody. So 25 years in jail is a long time. And you don't, you don't make rules of principles based on one example. So with all due respect to Michael, I mean, good for him. But he's very unusual, very rare case. And I'm glad he didn't murder anybody so that he gets a second chance. But for murdering, you don't get a second chance. You don't get a second chance after you murder somebody. Not in my book. Even if you turn your life around, then good. Then turn your life around, but you're still going to stay in jail. Clark says, Tucker Carlson does remind me a lot of Richard Spencer. I don't know Richard Spencer enough, but she's creepy. She's becoming creepier and creepier with time. Liam says, where were the best oysters you ever had? Oh, God, I don't know. Maybe in the oyster bar underneath time, underneath Grand Central Station. Oysters chosen for me by Harry Binswanger, who is an expert on oysters. I don't know. I'm not an expert on oysters. I've had lots of good oysters in my life, but I'm not sure I can differentiate. Harry has lists and ratings and rankings, and he has it down to a science. That doodle bunny, if someone succeeds in provoking you, is your own mind complicit in the provocation? Yeah. At the end of the day, yes. It depends, of course, what? You know, what do you do? What is the, what do you complicit in? Just in being provoked? Yeah. Okay. But do you act on it? The action is definitely a choice you make. Oops. Frank, did colonists or unions fight with rules of engagement? Yeah. To some extent, yes. There's a certain codes of chivalry and stuff that human beings inherited from, I think, the Middle Ages that dictated how you fight wars. I think they're silly. I would get rid of them. Robert Nieces, sorry for jumping off the panel. I was going to ask him a question about January 6, but my own question bored me. Keep up the fight, but also keep reminding us what matters is what's fighting for, in other words, the positive. Thank you. Meribens, if the evolutionary mutation happens at meiosis, the chicken, not the egg comes first. I'm going to have to have a private lesson with Meribens on evolution so I can get my chicken and egg story right next time. But I'm truly confused because I don't get it. So knowledge needs to be imparted on me. Knowledge I do not have. Alright, Daniel, what's the difference between philosophy and ideology? Seems both involve systems of principles, conscious and integrated or not. Would it be correct to think of praxisology as an ideology, for example? God, I'm not sure. Philosophy strikes me as more systematic and deeper. You can have an ideology, for example, that's only political. Philosophy is more encompassing. It covers five branches, metaphysics, epistemology, morality, ethics, politics and aesthetics. Ideology, just the ideas you happen to have on a particular issue could be, the philosophy could be implied in ideology, but it might not be explicit. Ideology is narrow, philosophy is wider. Adam. You haven't talked about Korean serials in a while. Did you see the sequel to one that you once recommended, which was my country, The New Age, and there's a sequel to it, The Deep Rooted Tree? I have not seen The Deep Rooted Tree. I haven't seen many Korean dramas recently. The one I did see was very good. I really enjoyed it. God, I don't remember what its name. But it came out recently, and it's a Western, basically set in a Japanese-occupied Korea in the North, in Manchuria, in this No Man's Land. It's kind of between China and Japanese-occupied Korea. And it's actually filmed in some of the same sets as Mr. Sunshine. And it's got a lot of really good elements in it. It's really violent, but it was really good. I enjoyed that. But I haven't seen any other Korean dramas now. If you remember the title, please let us know. I'll find it and let you know definitely. Also, have you seen Itaewon Class? I have. Excellent. Excellent, excellent, excellent. I really enjoyed it. Sure. We got three more questions, and we'll call it a day. It's already two hours plus. Paulo-Zu says, oh, my current exercise program. God, all right. I'm still to work in progress, right? But I do four to five times a week. I do zone two, which is 60% to 70% heart rate on the elliptical. Once a week, I do interval training, four minutes, zone five, four minutes rest, four minutes zone five, four minutes rest five times. I do that once a week. And then three times a week, I do half an hour each of weightlifting, of some kind of strength training, one-day legs, one-day core, one-day upper body. So that is my current exercise routine. I'd love to do one-day pilates on top of that just because I miss pilates, the stretching, and the core work are unique to pilates. But I don't have the time right now. Maybe at some point I'll add that. Yeah. I mean, I think at my age, maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like that's about what I should do. If I do more than that, I get fatigued, and my heart rate variability starts going down. So rest is important. Not just sleep, but rest. If you really go hard all the time, particularly as you get older, you don't give your body enough time to recover, you actually end up doing damage, not good. Anyway, that's it. If anybody wants to optimize my exercise routine, let me know. But that's what I'm doing right now. So it's about four hours, three to four hours of zone two a week, and almost an hour of zone five. I mean, it's not zone five, but interval training to zone five. Is your weight training standard, or do you follow through on the slow principle? It varies from day to day, and it varies from size. Sometimes I do slow, sometimes I do very fast. A lot of it's building up poor. A lot of it's building up the fast fiber, which you lose with age more, so more explosive stuff. And it varies from time to time to keep it interesting. And I get a lot of my stuff from the personal trainer, Tom, God, God, God, God. Anyway, Tom, from the UK, who designs kind of exercise routines for me, and basically really pushes me to my limit with these exercise routines. And he's really good. And if you guys want to do it, you should sign up with him for exercise. And I will on one of the shows get you his website and put it up, but I don't have it. I don't have his exercise. I don't have his website with me right now. But yeah, Tom Bison, he was at Ocon last year. Yeah, in Miami. All right. What do you think about EACC movement? I'm going to do a show on that. So I'm going to wait and let you know what I think of them after I do more reading about them and do a show on them, but generally positive and flawed at the same time. Daniel, is romance exclusively about morality or is there an element of aesthetics? How does the moral practical dichotomy undermine romantic relationships? Wow. All right. Deep question to end the day. Is romance exclusively morality? Well, I don't think about romance as morality. Romance is about character. So that's morality in a sense. It's about visibility. It's psychological. It's about emotion. The emotion the person makes you feel, how they make you feel. It's about communication. It's about elements of friendship, not friendship, but elements of friendship. It's about a lot of different things. Is aesthetic a part of it? It certainly can be. But it's interesting. You can view somebody. The more in love, the more you fall in love with someone, the more beautiful they become. And I know, and sometimes you fall in love with somebody beautiful, and as you discover their character, they stop seeming beautiful to you. So the aesthetic, which I think is an important part of romance, is not separate from the moral. It's not separate from their character. That is the more you know about the character, and if it's a good character, the more beautiful they will seem to you. And that's not a rationalization. That's reality. That is, you know, there's certain objective standards of beauty, but there's also a certain reflection of a character that comes through in what you see when you look at somebody. So, you know, I think all of that. So, aesthetics certainly plays a role, but it's not a separate role. How does the moral and the practical of the economy undermine romantic relationships? Well, it undermines it when, God, when, if you hold the dichotomy, or if your partner holds your dichotomy, it's going to undermine it. So if you think that, you know, if you think that, I don't know, you want to be moral, but it's not practical for the relationship, or you have to be immoral in order for the relationship to work, or you have to sacrifice for the relationship to work, because you think that being selfish will undermine the relationship. I would say check your premises if you think that. But so it undermines it to the extent that somebody holds that. But the moral is the practical, and the practical is the moral. So if you hold that there is no mind-body dichotomy, no moral practical dichotomy, then that, then your relationship will be enhanced, not undermined. It's when you hold wrong ideas, and you try to apply wrong ideas, that's when you get in trouble. I hope I answered the question, Daniel, but if not, answer it, ask it in a different way. Maybe that'll get me thinking about it in a different way and be better in answering the question. All right. Thank you, guys. Thanks to all the superchatters. Thanks to all our panelists. Have a great rest of your weekend. I will see you all Monday morning for News Roundup. And next week, I'm traveling. And if any of you in Colorado will be giving a talk in Colorado, you can find information about it on my webpage, you're on bookshow.com. And hopefully I'll meet some of you at the talk. So please join me at the Talk in Colorado on Friday. Bye, everybody. I'll see you soon.