 the radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Brook Show. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Brook Show on this, what is it? Still Tuesday, just like it was this morning, it's Tuesday. Thanks for joining me, we've got I guess people all over the states, almost suddenly everybody has called the weather than we have here in Puerto Rico, but you guys like pulled weather, so go for it. All right, today we're going to talk about mainstream media, how I should think about the mainstream media, is the mainstream media good, bad, neutral, whatever, basically I get a lot of questions around how do you handle the news, how do you deal with the news, how do you do the daily news briefings, what are your news sources, and so we'll talk about the mainstream media, we'll talk about the alternative media, conservative media, we'll talk about the damage, the good, the bad, that's what I should have called it, I should have called it the good, the bad, and the ugly, but then I would have had needed stuff under each one of those titles. Anyway, we'll talk about all of that, and yeah, I mean so we'll spend our time, of course you can use the super chat to ask questions about anything, anything you want to ask me about, feel free to do so, and about this, about news reports, about actual news from the media or anything else, or anything else, so feel free to jump in or with anything, we do have a goal, the goal for the main shows is the evening show is $650, let's try to hit our goals, it's always good to achieve your goals. All right, before we get to this, a funny story that came on the news reported by the mainstream media by the way, earlier today, but after I did my show, or at least I didn't notice it if it came out just before I did my show, but it is again a kind of a validation of a prediction that I made a few shows ago, and that is that Mike Pence has now found classified documents at his house, they all have it, they all have it, I mean can you imagine what's going on right now in the Clinton Bush and Obama households, the kind of spring cleaning that is going on, and what they are doing in order to, who knows, the fires they are setting, I don't know, maybe it's easier for them just to come clean and let the people know, oh yeah, we found some classical documents as well, we didn't know, but on the other hand maybe that fireplace just happened to suck those documents in and burn them, who knows, who knows what the power is to be up there, and somebody tweeted this and I think it's right, there's a sense in which the bureaucracy, the establishment, the administrative state, the bureaucratic state, they came more about preserving the classification system, they came more about all their top secret and secrets and giving privileges to some people to see stuff and some other people not, and to be able to kind of prevent us from knowing stuff and that they have secrets and we don't, and all of this, they valued that I think much more than they care about Democrats and Republicans, and so I don't think this is partisan anymore, this is just, this is the kind of administrative state starting to eat its own, if you will, Democrats, Republicans, doesn't matter in order to preserve a master-servant relationship over us, the masters, they get to classify stuff, we don't need to know, we're too stupid, we're too ignorant, as I said, change the system, declassify overwhelming majority of, overwhelming majority of these documents, Ian says that Justin Amash, yeah so this tweet, Justin makes the point that it's really hard to walk away with these documents, maybe, maybe that's true of congressmen and senators, and maybe it's even true of, but it just shows how, you see I think, you know, Justin Amash got to see something classified because it wasn't a daily thing, it was a special thing, but the president, everything he looks at is classified, everything, so it becomes routine and daily and stuff gets misplaced and stuff gets random and it just slips over here and slips over there, and I don't think they take it on purpose, I think, yeah I think, you know, maybe they do some things take on purpose, but some of it's just entangled, I'm sure Trump took a few things, this is sure of his friends, hey I was president of the United States, look what I have, but they all do it, they all do it, and part of it is that so much is classified, that it's easy to get confused and to lose track and to just have stuff, and it's quite possible they took stuff on purpose, I mean who knows, who knows, I don't see we've, I don't think we've seen any real big cases where people have taken after government and used those documents publicly because they'd get into real trouble if they did that, so alright, so Ian is saying there was too much objective content today, maybe that's why we're not getting as much viewership as we do, we usually do, two YB shows, ARI, Salem Center and ARC UK, Salem Center is on right now as well, yeah I mean it's a challenge these days, it really is a challenge and Salem Center, I'm traveling to Austin tomorrow, I'll be giving a talk at the Salem Center on Thursday night on Iran and China and the fight for liberty and freedom in the world and particularly in those places, but in the world what's necessary, what's required, I'm hoping we get a good audience and I'm hoping that a significant number of that audience is a new people, I'm hoping that people, that it's not just a bunch of Austin objectives to show up but we will see, we will see, you know I hope we have a good event and I will be live streaming it, so you guys will be able to see it, we'll be live streaming it from the University of Texas in Austin at whatever time that event is, I don't have it with me off the bat, but it is, you can look it up, you can look it up online which I'm doing right now to see where it is, UT, well let's just put your own book Salem Center 2023, that should get it, I don't know maybe not, maybe it's hard to find, there it is, it's right there and I guess there's a video, cool, there's a video, you can find it online, oh this is just a page for where it is, I'm going to put the link for the event, for the live stream of the event that's going to happen, so you have it right there, it's called because of Yunning for an ordinary life, the fight for freedom in Iran, China and the world and I hope you guys can make it and listen in to the event, I'm looking to see here if there's details on when it is live, I don't see those but it will be Thursday night in Austin and it will be live, there's no link to the website and I know there is a website with this stuff but we will find it, all right, events, yeah I'm not sure what's going on, why the Salem Center event page, there it is, all right so it's at 6 30 p.m and it is at Crumb Auditorium 1.400, that's on Model Luther King Drive 300 West Model Luther King, it is again because of Yunning for an ordinary life, the fight for freedom in Iran, China and the world, I encourage all of you who are in Austin or close to Austin to come, it'll be interesting, I'm hoping we get some Iranian and Chinese students there, all right anyway let's jump into the topic mainstream media, I noticed over the last month or so there have been a number of stories about the mainstream media on various sub stacks that I subscribe to, as you know, I subscribe to sub stacks, I get a lot of my commentary and some of my news from sub stacks accounts, some better news, some better commentary, anyway three of my favorite accounts all had stories about the media and all had stories about what was going on in the mainstream media and about the, generally the media not just mainstream, a lot of this was about alternative media, alternative media, excuse me, the first that came out that at least I saw, there might be others out there, was from Astor Codex 10 and I think those of you are following the Iran Book Show for a while and followed the show over the last two to three years, are familiar with Astor Codex 10, I often cited him less so recently, but more so during COVID, I think he had some of the best statistical analysis of what was going on in COVID, he has the best some of the best debunking of some of the nonsense that was going on in COVID, I thought he had the best article about what was that drug that was usually used to kill parasites, that some people were using it to fight COVID, he had a really excellent analysis of what was going on there, anyway Astor Codex 10 is part of the, I think it's Ivermectin, yes Ivermectin, so I think he had an excellent, this is Scott Alexander, for those of you that's the name behind it, he has a very famous sub stack, he used to have a very famous blog, he's done phenomenally well and has very, very, very, very large audiences both for sub stack and for any kind of blog, and a lot of his stuff, a lot of what he does is very much driven by statistics and by statistical analysis and debunking all kinds of myths about data, you know, he's probably, I don't know if he's done, I need to search and see if he's done something debunking the whole vaccine hysteria, that would be cool if he has it or save me some work, but anyway he came out with this title, which will piss a lot of you off, so I think that's good, the title was the media very rarely lies, and a subtitle is with a title like that, obviously I would be making a nitpicky technical point, so his point is, so he starts with the media very rarely lies and then about a week later, because he got a lot of backlash on that, he has a second piece which is called, which is titled, sorry, I still think I'm right about the media very rarely lying, now he has a very narrow definition of lying, and his definition of lying is basically stating something that is, you know, where the numbers, the basic fact that you're dealing with is wrong, completely acknowledges that the media is misrepresenting, that the media lacks, does not provide context, that the media spins things and perverts things and distorts things, but he says it's almost never the case that a reporter makes stuff up, or that somebody disclosing something makes stuff up, and he uses examples here, both in New York Times and from place like in Four Wars, and he shows that, yeah, what they're saying is wrong, what they're saying is outrageously wrong, ridiculously wrong, absurdly wrong, but they're basically reporting true things, it's all about the characterization of those things, the lack of context for those things, and the explanation and everything else around it, right, is what, you know, so for example, they would say, you know, experts say that Hurricane XYZ is caused by global warming, well an expert, you know, has said that, and they cite the expert and he really did say that, and they don't bother to tell you about the number of hurricanes, any given season, and the fact that the season was not any worse than any other season, but some expert did say that, and now in that sense, I think AstroCortex 10 is being in a silly way nitpicky, because that's all what lying means, lying is not just about, yes, here's a graph that suggests that the numbers I'm saying, even though the graph presents clearly distorted information, distorted information that I could easily explain it, I could easily tell you about, but I'm not going to, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna take it at fact value, you know, here's an example, there's a graph that shows stillborn and miscarriages, stillborn and miscarriages is reported in the VAAS system, the VAAS system is a system where you report on vaccine after effects, you report vaccine after effects, and so the VAAS system, you know, encourages you to go after you get a vaccine to report whatever side effect you might have had, and if you look at the VAAS system and you look at stillbirths and miscarriages as attributed, and you look at it, there is this massive spike in 2021 and 2022, in stillborn births and miscarriages, and InfoWars basically titles this, new vaccine data shows alarming number of stillbirths and miscarriages caused by COVID shot. Now, the graph does show a alarming number of stillbirths and miscarriages right after it looks like people got COVID shots. Now, this is complete nonsense, because what happens in a normal year is that people don't connect the miscarriages to maybe they got a vaccine, so they don't report it, but during these years when they were encouraged to report it in VAAS, everybody reported every single little thing, and therefore you get this massive distortion. So what they're doing is their interpretation is wacko, it's a complete misrepresentation, it's a complete detachment from reality and from context, but there's some facts there. All right, so a lot of, I highly recommend reading what he wrote, because there's a lot of really interesting and worthwhile examples that he gives on how the media distorts context on how the media perverts the information that they provide, and how even correct information, facts, graphs, numbers might be, even though they might be true, the interpretation, the explanation, everything else is completely nuts. So that was the first time I saw this issue about does the media lie? How biased is it? How distorted is it? Is the conservative media worse than the HDMedia? Is the HDMedia worse than the conservative media? All of this stuff. And that, I don't know if that stimulated Richard Hanania to write an article, and this came out I guess a week ago or so, maybe two weeks ago, but recently this came out, and this piece was called, and let me just give you a little bit of context on Richard Hanania. Richard Hanania is one of the most interesting writers out there. I highly recommend again his sub-stack. Most of what he writes is super interesting. I don't agree with everything. He has a libertarian tendency towards kind of a perverse isolationism, but I also think he's right about foreign policy in the sense that he has a book out on foreign policy that basically says the US has no strategy, has no foreign policy strategy. And I agree with that fundamental. I disagree with his disengagement, isolationism. I don't like those terms, but his approach of the US should not be involved or should not intervene, and everything the US does is always corrupt, is always bad, including right now in the war in Ukraine. But much of what he writes is very, very good. He's written some excellent stuff on civil rights and on woke. He's very anti-woke, so many of you will love him, because he's very, very anti-woke and very articulate about it. He is a former academic. I think he was in a PhD program. I can't remember if he finished his PhD or didn't, but super intelligent, super interesting, always taken an interesting angle and clearly, I'd say, lean's libertarian. He despises the left, particularly the woke left, but and I'd say most of his friends and allies he finds among conservatives, but he also has a very, very good, I think, rational perspective on all the flaws and problems of conservatism. And he makes the argument better than anybody else that conservatives just, typically conservatives as a group are just not very smart, and that's the main problem. And they don't care that much. That is that the left, the main, and I think I did a show on this, that the main advantage the left has over the right is that the left cares much more than the right does. And he shows as a lot of statistics about this. Anyway, this is somebody who generally leans libertarian on almost all issues and is very anti-woke. This is the title of his article about the media. He says why the media is honest and good. Now, if you actually read the article, I don't think that's actually what comes out of the article. I think that's what's it called clickbait. You know, I should do more of that. It's one of my weaknesses, right? Instead, my title of mainstream media, what should our attitude be is like, God, is that anti-clickbait or what, right? Completely nuts in terms of a title. That title should be something like why the mainstream media is great or why the mainstream media is evil. And then I'd get a lot more people listening to the show. I just can't bring myself to writing a title that doesn't actually represent what I think I'm going to talk about and what I think is actually true. But people who are far more successful than me at least in terms of reaching an audience are very good at very good at doing exactly that. Anyway, Hananya puts out a piece called Why the Media is Honest and Good. Brian Kaplan, the libertarian philosopher who I agree with on a lot of things and disagree with on a bunch of things, primarily anarchy and foreign policy. A week later, a response to David Richard Hananya with a title, mainstream media is worse than silence. If your big picture is wrong, say nothing. All right. So I want to go through Hananya and Kaplan's arguments and see what we make of them and see where at least I fall. And you guys are free to comment on what you think. I think I know some of you what you think, but I'm curious what the rest of you think. So I want to go through some of Richard Hananya's arguments. And there's a certain sense in which he is following Scott Alexander. His argument is basically boils down to, look, all the actual information we get, all the actual information that we get about what's happening in the world, the data, the facts about what's happening in the world actually comes from us to us from the mainstream media. They are indeed the only people who actually have reporters out there. They're the only people who actually write stories about stuff that is going on where they actually go and research and pull out facts. And he says, yeah, of course, they're biased. Of course, they tilt everything in a particular direction. But what's the alternative? His argument is that the alternative is basically conservative media that doesn't bother to check the facts. And to the extent that they conservative media actually reports on facts, it's almost always facts that were reported by the mainstream media. Just conservative media has a completely different spin on them. Or they are facts that are so divorced from reality, like the vaccine hysteria, or the election fraud hysteria, or just take any of the crazy borderline conspiracy theories, and sometimes outright conspiracy theories that obsess that the conservative media is primarily obsessed by. If you just listen to conservative media, you don't know what's going on in the world. You just don't. If you read it, you just don't know. You don't have the basic facts. You don't have the basic elements of what's going on out there. You might get a rigorous critique of the mainstream media, but you won't actually get any information, any facts regarding what's actually going on in the world. The mainstream media will generally give you the facts and then interpret them poorly. I'll give you an example from this morning. So I was reading an article this morning in The New York Times because I actually do read The New York Times. The story this morning, because I was doing something, if you remember, about government spending and government deficits and all of that. The New York Times story had a bunch of information, very accurate information, about government spending as a percent of GDP, about tax revenues as a percentage of GDP. What was interesting to me is that I looked at the facts and I looked at the graphs, and I had a certain interpretation of them, and what The New York Times was reporting as if it was news was an interpretation that in my view is completely wrong. So for example, every time Republicans cut taxes, and this is actually true, but every time Republicans cut taxes since the 2000, at least, government revenues go down as a percent of GDP. Now, it also happens that every time Republicans are cutting taxes, they're cutting taxes into some kind of a session, into some kind of negative turn. So one has to question what is actually causing the revenues to go down. But the reality is when Bush cut taxes in early 2000s, revenues as a percentage of GDP went down. When Trump cut taxes in 2016, 17, 18, revenues as a percentage went down. There, I think it's because the corporate tax doesn't quite work like the Lafacuff works on personal income tax. And when Clinton raised, when Bush first raised taxes, when Clinton raised taxes, revenues as a percentage of GDP actually went up. Now, are those causal? I doubt it. It's three data points, three data points, but they make a causal connection. And it's that interpretation that I think is false and wrong. I don't know if they're lying because I don't think they know any better. That is, I think the only economists they would talk to, the only economists they consider, I think if you ask 70% of economists, they don't say, yeah, if you got taxes, revenue go down. That is the Lafacuff, the effect of the Lafacuff, the effect of tax cutting taxes on economic activity and increased economic activity and all that. That's just our mainstream. It's not something that the New York Times is going to report about. They're going to report mainstream stuff. But what is valuable is if I want an article about, if I don't want to actually go look at the original data, because I'm in a hurry or because I'm not that interested today, if I look up in New York Times article about the economy and the way it's moved over the last, and this is what I did this morning, I also then went to look at the fed data because I want to make sure. But the reality is that the data they're presenting is right. Wow, Troy, thank you. Really appreciate it. Troy just made it a lot easier for us to get to the goal of $500 Australian dollars. I appreciate that a lot. The reality is that the New York Times gets the charts right, gets the basic data right. They're not making this stuff up. And again, you can go check it out because you can pull out the fed or you can put out anybody else's data on taxes per GDP or spending per GDP. And unless they're all conning us, the numbers are pretty right. So if you look at the New York Times and you look at what they're reporting, what is going on in Ukraine, most almost everything they say about what's going on in Ukraine is right. Often their interpretations are bad and certainly they've switched from early on in the war, for example, talking to generals who are saying, oh, Ukrainians don't have a chance, the Russians are going to crush them to today, you know, a very different tone to it. But in terms of moving the troops on the ground, what is actually happening, who is moving where, what is being taken where, all of that is, you know, you can go do the research unless you're willing to buy Russian propaganda. And even Russian propaganda, I mean, some of you listen to, you know, Russian propaganda that's at the level that, wow, is just unbelievable to me, because if you just read military bloggers in Russia who tend to be nationalists, who tend to be more radical than Putin, more crazy than Putin, not more radical, they are almost always acknowledged the facts on the ground as reported by the mainstream media. So it really is, it really is the case that if you're just looking for that, if you're not looking for explanations, if you're not looking for causal relationships, if you're not, if you're willing, and if you know that it's biased, then it's relatively easy to scan the mainstream media and pick out what's true and what's not. And, you know, and it requires, and then if, for example, given that I do a show on this, I want to be more than just assuming it's right, then you go and check a few, you check the references, you check the original story, you check the original video, you check the original quote, you try to find video, you try to find the original graph, you try to find the original data. And once you do that, you know, most of the time you can pretty much figure out what's true and what's false, what's happening and what's not happening and what's worthy of discussion and what's not. It's much harder when you look at the alternative to the mainstream media, which is typically conservative media, because that truly is a rabbit hole. It's layer of layer of layer of clearly motivated conspiracy theories that are so far outside of anything normal, that it takes hard work to untangle and figure out, and mostly you can figure out right from the bat that it's just false, that it's just made up stuff, or at least the explanation and everything else is completely made up and there's no there, there, and you can just walk away. And if you do dig deeper, it's layer upon layer upon layer of, I mean, I've done this a little bit with the data on, on vaccine deaths. And it's, it's unbelievable, the extent to which people will go to distort presentation of data, the extent to which people will go to scare people, the extent to which they will go to use statistics to manipulate everything. I mean, you've got, you've got this on the left with climate change, and you've got this on the right with the anti-vax people right now. And it's, it truly is, it truly is shocking. So when you get something where there's a little hysteria associated with it, you got to, you got to go dig, you got to go figure it out, you got to go and, and untangle the web. Hananya's point is, that's not that hard. Mostly the media is right. And what's interesting about Hananya is he says, the media is more, the mainstream media is mostly right, except, except when they talk about race or gender or any of the work stuff, he says, then the media is just crazy. They're just crazy. You can't take anything they say seriously. They're just off the deep end, they're completely nuts. True about economic stuff. I mean, when the media is explaining economic stuff, when the media has just, it's pretty nuts. If you don't know they're biased or if you don't know what the right answer is, you can't trust anything that they tell you other than the numbers. But is the media there really for the numbers for most people? So for me, I'm fine with the media, with the mainstream media, because I can pull out what I want to pull out. I can cross check it. I can go to the critics and the fact checkers and the, and all the, and I can cross check over there and I can figure out what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. But for most people, the damage that the media does is immense, because most people are not scanning it for the bias. I mean, I believe Richard Hananya gets a lot of the mainstream media because he's intelligent, because he knows what to look for and he knows how to identify bias and he knows he has certain priors in his thinking that are probably healthy that can screen out the nonsense. And what's interesting is the one area that he knows a lot about, woke, that's the area where he's mostly upset with the media. Maybe the area that I know most about, I don't know, Middle East, Israel, economics, finance is the best. I can see how crazy they are over there. I mean, and not in an ideological sense necessarily. The Wall Street Journal, for example, has to have a headline with an explanation for what happened today. And they make it up. They make it up in a sense, again, it's reasonable, but it's just not true. So they'll say something like interest rates went up today, the stock market went down. All right, I can see that. But then two weeks later, they'll have a headline saying interest rates went down today and therefore stock prices went up. Sorry, went down, also down, right? So they'll give two exact opposite causes for the same effect with no problem. I mean, I've seen this over and over and over again in the years. And that's because when you have to, from the, you know, off the cuff, come up with a causal explanation for every little phenomena where you don't know the cause of, you're going to make stuff up. Again, Harper Campbell, thank you. Wow. Some people who are knowledge about these fields can see that, can identify that, but most people can't. So I think Hananya underestimates the damage the media does, or at least doesn't emphasize enough the extent to which the media does real damage. Now, are they doing this on purpose? Are they doing this because they are devoted leftists and they're trying to take over the world? I think in the mainstream media, it's primarily because they've been, they've gone through our universities and they have a particular perspective on the world and they think that that perspective equals the truth. It's like, for example, in economics, they've never heard of the Laugh A Curve. They never heard of Art Laugh A. They haven't even considered it. They wouldn't know that that could be, that could be something that could explain tax revenue or anything like that. To them, that's not even a consideration. They wouldn't even know to look there. I remember once confronting an NPR senior producer at NPR and telling him that I found NPR extraordinarily leftist, biased, and he looked at me like I was crazy. And I think he was honest about this. He had no idea what I was talking about because he has convinced himself that whatever it is that they are saying is mainstream because all his friends think that. All the people he associates with think that. The university professors, they interview all think that. And the reality is that the media is just a reflection. The media ultimately just expresses or when it comes to causal relationships and when it comes to explanations and establishing a context and the bias of the media is a product of their philosophy. It is a product of a particular philosophical perspective on the world. And the philosophical perspective that these people have, they basically share with one another. It's basically common among them. Again, they all went to the same universities, the same schools. It's not like it's not like they know or they can even conceive of a different approach to looking at things. And when you present a different approach because their whole philosophy, their whole way of looking at the world is so dictated by a particular philosophy, you're coming in with a different philosophical framework. You're not even, to some extent you're not even talking the same language. This is the sense in which at some point it's almost impossible to convince an intellectual that they're wrong. Intellectually you disagree with that they're wrong about something fundamental because they built a whole structure around that. They've integrated a whole structure of knowledge around that. And it's almost impossible for them to deny it all. It's all connected. It's all interconnected. It's all related. So we have to understand you're not going to change the media. And there is an alternative media. The alternative media for the most part doesn't have reporters. It's hyperbiased on the other side. Most of the right wing media is not media. It's just anti-left. It takes anything the left produces and slams it, not with facts and evidence and a perspective and a new context and something interesting. No, and not because this is important, but because the left advocated for it. It has nothing to do with truth. That is there is no conception on the right of trying to achieve when criticizing the left of trying to achieve truth. The only perspective the right takes today is slamming the left and attacking the left and undermining the left. I think that in most of the big newspapers there's some general sense that they want to report the truth. And again, they can't escape their own biases. And it's very difficult for them to be objective because they don't know what objectivity looks like. But I don't think they start out with an article saying, okay, I'm going to make up the facts. I'm going to distort them in a way that, no, they take the facts as they are. They have a particular perspective. They have a particular perspective and they explain the facts in a way that presents you with that perspective. And they do that because they think their perspective is right. So I agree with much of what Hananya says, although I think he underestimates how damaging the media really is. I also think he, you know, because he's so focused on wokeness, he sees the damage they do when they talk about woke and he can't see the damage they do when they talk about other things that he might not be as interested or as inspired about. Though he kind of is an expert on foreign policy. So it surprises me a little bit that he can't see it there, although again, because he has, I think, a wrong perspective on foreign policy. Maybe that makes it difficult for him. I mean, the reality is today that almost all reporters, almost all reporters, almost all staff, people who go out into the field and research news stories and get you the facts and go to the places where things are happening, almost all of them are leftists because they've all been trained again in the same universities with the same philosophy, with the same perspective, almost all of them are leftists. I mean, look at the Wall Street Journal, clearly a newspaper that's trying to be an alternative to the New York Times, trying to be a conservative New York Times. And yet almost its entire staff, including its reporters, are leftists. And you can tell that by reading their news stories. And this has always been the case. So at least since I've been familiar with the Wall Street Journal in the 1980s, it's always been the case that the editorial board has been super conservative and sometimes free market libertarian. But at the front page, the news reporting has always biased left. I mean, even to the extent of the same story running from a factual perspective on the front page, facts being true, but all biased left, and the editorial page commenting on exactly the same story contradicting the explanations that the staff gave for the story on the front page. So a complete conflict between the front page and the editorial page. And that's not because the Wall Street Journal has tried to go out and find conservative journalists. I mean, this is the reality and this is what conservatives refuse to accept. And this is why I think they make such a big deal of Elon Musk. The reality is that most entrepreneurs today creating new businesses, building new companies, creating new technologies are left of center. And the reality is that most people in the media, including people on the ground researching the news like at the Wall Street Journal are left of center. The reality is that most people doing intellectual work in the world today are left of center. If Republicans, if the conservatives, if the right wants to change the world, they need to improve the quality of the people that they have. And that won't happen by becoming more populist and by choosing people like Trump. Or for that matter, I don't know if you saw DeSantis. DeSantis, I should have used this as a news, I'll talk about this in one of my news shows. But DeSantis had this, fired this district attorney and the court ruled that he had violated the district attorney's first amendment right, free speech rights. He couldn't overturn, he couldn't reinstate the district attorney. The judge said he didn't have that authority. But clearly, DeSantis had violated the first amendment right of the, I mean, I just find that this is what conservatives do. They don't have respect. Well, they don't have respect for the Constitution. They don't have respect for, they don't really think through what they're doing. But there is a dearth, there's a shortage of high quality entrepreneurs, intellectuals and journalists who are conservative. The Washington Journal would love to hire you, if you are such a person. They can't find enough. Conservatives could build their own media institutions. But they can't. You know, the New York Post, which is conservative, has a conservative editorial board and runs some conservative, some stories, is also what's it called, kind of a sensationalist yellow magazine, right? A yellow newspaper because that's how it sells. And that's true of the Daily Mail, I think, in England as well. And that's because sadly, you know, much of their audience needs that. The Daily Wire is not a journalistic enterprise. The Daily Wire doesn't have, as far as I know, as far as I can tell, the Daily Wire doesn't break news. The Daily Wire is a commentary. It's an editorial board. Conservatives are very good at editorializing. They editorialize all day long. And a lot of it, most editorializing, is garbage. It's bad. It's not, again, it doesn't contextualize. It doesn't exactly what they left us. They don't contextualize. They don't provide context or history or reason for what they do. So basically, what we have today is a mainstream media that provides almost all the news that we consume, even the news we consume from the alternative media is ultimately produced by the mainstream media. Clearly, it's biased to the left. Clearly, it distorts the way it explains things and provides, does not provide the proper context and views everything within a particular worldview. And then you have an alternative right-wing media that does not produce news and that distorts, perverts, and is enamored by conspiracy theories and causes people, some of them sometimes appear on my chat, to go into rabbit holes that result in a complete loss of mind in my view and complete embracing of conspiracy theories. The reality is that if you want to do a daily news show like I do, there is no alternative. There is no alternative to at least using the facts produced by the mainstream media and then using a critical mind and critical research skills to figure out how to explain it and to figure out cause and effect and to take out the bias from it. So I think you can condemn the mainstream media completely and I certainly don't think you can embrace them. I think the title of Hananya's piece, the media's honest and good is nonsensical. I think he contradicts that in the piece itself. I think the end of the day, the argument he boils down to is what's the alternative? The alternative is much worse. The alternative is complete made-up stuff. The alternative is even worse than what they have, what the mainstream media produces. And I can't argue with that. I think that's right. Now, what Brian Kaplan says is, wait a minute, I think it's much worse than what you guys are saying. He says the real alternative is silence. So for example, Brian Kaplan says, look, put aside the particular stories, put aside the particular stories, the particular facts. The fact that the media, for example, I'm reading for his piece endlessly complains about alleged social problems, poverty, the environment, racism, COVID, Ukraine, terrorism, immigration, education, drugs, Elon Musk. Even if all the coverage was true, the media is still promoting an absurd view that life unbalance is terrible and reliably getting worse. So it's doing damage just in the sense that it's so negative. I agree with him completely. And then he says the media, by painting government intervention as obvious solution to all social problems, think about the damage that does to people out there. Again, this is more interpretation than actually news. The media, so it's the choice of topic and how it interprets those topics. The media often asks loaded questions like, why isn't the government doing more about this? And that creates a particular way of looking at the world where people start thinking, well, why isn't the government doing more about this? I mean, American people have changed dramatically, whereas once upon a time, I don't think they looked at the world from the perspective of why isn't the government doing more about this? There was more of a initiative, more personal initiative, more personal responsibility. So the way the media frames issues makes it a lot worse and damaging. And then they purposely spread, by catastrophizing and emphasizing certain events, they suddenly make things appear so much worse. They cause people not to know statistics. We saw that during COVID, the media's idea of showing the one toddler that dies of COVID, that's what you see. And by that, you're supposed to assume, wow, COVID is killing toddlers. But the whole point is that COVID didn't kill toddlers, and that one toddler dying was a news item. But the media never tells you that, and therefore causes people to hysterically treat COVID with hysteria. The same is true of, I don't know, post-police murdering innocents, very rare. Plain crashes almost never happen. I mean, Brian Kaplan includes terrorism in this. I think that's wrong for him to include terrorism. But anyway, but by doing this, they kind of cause people not to realize the extent to which these things are rare. These things are overplayed, over-emphasized, turning anecdotes into phenomena that are happening out there. He gives another example, I think this is good, where they promote the kind of outcome that they would want. He writes, if a firm downsizes youth technological change, what are the odds that the media chides, quote, this is how progress works. Tractors put a lot of farmers out of work, too. I mean, when did that happen? If the government cuts spending, what are the odds that the media muses? We could interview the visible losers, but that's hardly fair unless we interview the invisible winners, which we can't do. So let's just move on. No, I mean, the media does never give you the actual correct perspective, the nuanced perspective, the interesting perspective, the deeper perspective on these kind of issues. And therefore, they often, not often, they always make firm downsizing seem like an evil, and government spending cuts always seem like evil, and tax cuts always seem like evil things. And of course, they whip up, they whip up support for whatever the crusade of the moment is, and completely disproportionately, completely out of whack, whether it's the war on drugs or even today, the one Ukraine probably gets way too much coverage by many of the news media. On the other hand, what's going on in Iran gets no media coverage by the news media, because it doesn't easily fit into the narrative that they're telling. So, right, Kaplan's view is, we should just shut down the media. Just have it go away. We should have zero media. And that's the best outcome. That's much better than having the media that we have, even knowing the biases and everything. Now, Richard, of course, answers to that. Hananya would answer to that same. I would answer that. I mean, that's theoretically nice, but that's not going to happen. It's not going to happen that you're not going to get any media. And it's not good that we not get any media. That is, people are curious. People want to know what's going on in the world. It's important to know what's going on in the world. It actually is relevant to know what's going on in the world. Something's more relevant. Something's less relevant. Some people, it's more relevant. For some people, it's less relevant. It's not clear to me that most Americans need to know the amount of detail they know today about, I don't know, war in Ukraine. But what's the alternative? The alternative is zero knowledge. That can never be the answer. But that's what Brian is advocating in a sense. And free them. Let them stop consuming news. Let consumption of news go to zero. People then focus on their own lives. And I tell you that. Stop focusing so much on the news. But there's a difference between so much and going to zero. And there's a difference between so much and maybe providing people with alternative ways in which to consume the news. So this is my pitch for my daily news show, right? I'll do the work for you guys because it's a mess out there. It really is a mess. And I think to some extent it's always been a mess. I mean, I think it's worse today. But I think it's always been a mess in terms of figuring out what the truth is and what isn't. What's biased and what isn't. I will try to figure out what is newsworthy and what is newsworthy and what is not. What are the facts that you should be presented with? And I'll try to provide context. And I'll try to provide causal relationships that I think are true. I'll probably make mistakes once in a while. Because you know, a lot of this is I'm delivering this information to you in a sense as this happened with some but finite opportunity to research it and doing it pretty quickly. But I do promise that if I'm wrong and I discover that I'm wrong or if somebody points out that I'm wrong, I'll come back. I'll come back and let you know that I was wrong and I'll fix it. So the morning shows, you know, the Iran news updates are going, will continue and the focus is going to be in exactly that. I'm trying to save you so that you can actually go live your lives from the effort and the I think the stress and the just the headache of having to go through all this news, which is emotionally upsetting often and you discover the biases and you get upset, you don't know what to trust and you I'll do all that work. I will then deliver to you in a condensed, I think we're trying to go to 40, 45 minutes on the morning shows where I deliver, you know, usually three, four pieces of news, not more than that, but we do it five days a week. So you get a lot of news in a week. I will take on the responsibility of going over this and because I agree with Brian, the things are a lot worse than what Richard Hanani is stating. I think Richard is viewing this much too narrowly, but I'll say agree with Richard that there is no alternative. This is what we got. There's nothing better out there. Well, maybe there is for you guys because for you guys, there is, you know, the Iran book show and there is now the, you know, the news briefings that I'm going to do and that I think solves much of your problem because you're still going to want to know something about what's going on in the world. You're still going to want to know the basics. You're not always going to agree with my causal explanations in the context that I'll provide, but I will do the best job I can to make those objective and make those and always try to make those valuable to you. So this is my pitch. For now, my daily show, hopefully more of you will join us during the morning and watch them afterwards and let people know that it exists. It's the remedy to the fact that we live in a world with media bias, but here's one thing I really, really, really want you to try to do because I think this one thing is really, really important. Of all the forms of news, the form that is most biased, the form that is most distorted, the form that is most emotionally evocative is TV news. Stop consuming it. Stop it. Stop watching Fox. Stop watching CNN, MSNBC. I don't know what you're watching, but stop it. Certainly some of the other crazy networks out there. Just don't do it. If you want news, read it. Stop consuming right wing fantasy stuff. It's just garbage. There's just no value to it. They're not being you facts, they're not being you evidence, they're not being you truths. They present as news their interpretation. I would stick to print. I mean, print on the internet. I would try to, if you're going to read the news, read widely. Don't avoid publications you know you disagree philosophically with. One way or another, you know, one way or the other, almost everybody is getting their news from Reuters and AP because they're the ones who have offices all over the world reporting on the news and checking out the news. And then of course, the New York Times and Washington Post and WRC Journal and a handful of other global news channels have reporters. And that's about it. Everybody else is just interpretation. So it sounds like Frank fell asleep during the Iran Book Show. That's pretty depressing that you fell asleep, Frank. Depressing for me. So come join us in the morning shows. If you find a news story that you find interesting and you think should be shared, send it to me. And so that so, you know, I can I have an opportunity to potentially cover it. I don't look at Al Jazeera. Again, I'll look at some stories from Al Jazeera, because again, they have reporters on the ground. But, you know, again, the bias there, you have to really watch when you read Al Jazeera, what the bias is the right of Qatar. And they're going to be super biased. But they do, they have reporters, for example, in Russia, where a lot of Western media doesn't have reporters there. All right, I want to, before we go on, I want to make a quick announcement. I don't know how many of you have been to Ocon. But I know some of you have not, or many of you have not. If there are people out there who have not been to Ocon, who are regular listeners to my show, and would like to go on scholarship, I'm not sure how big the scholarship is, but I think it's basically tuition free. So a lot of your expense is paid for. If what's stopping you from going to Ocon is the cost, in other words, then drop me an email, drop me an email at askuron at uranbrookshow.com. Askuron at uranbrookshow.com. Anybody interested in going to Ocon, who cannot afford to go to Ocon? Let me know. All I want is one paragraph telling me why you think, why you want to go. Now, Ocon is the objectives conference. It's the annual objectives conference. I'll be there. I'm speaking there. I almost always speak. I assume I'm speaking there this year. You'll get, talks by the leading objectivist intellectuals in the world today. It's happening in Miami over the 4th of July weekend, but anybody out there who would like to go, can't afford to go, particularly those of you who are new to objectivism, particularly those of you who've discovered objectivism through the Iran Book Show, write a short paragraph about why you want to go, why it's a value to you, why you should get a scholarship, just a quick, short, easy one. And I will try to get you scholarships. I'm not guaranteeing that you'll get it, but I think that there are scholarships available. There are quite a few scholarships available, so this is not just one or two. It's not going to be really, really hard. I'm serious here. I know a lot of you are relatively into objectivism. You've never been to an Ocon. Maybe some of you can't afford to go to Ocon. I know you're out there. Please don't be shy. Ask iran at iranbrookshow.com and we will work on getting you a scholarship to Ocon. It would be fantastic if we can arrange like an afternoon for the Iran Book Show at Ocon. We can get a bunch of people who are all subscribers, who are all members, who are supporters, and so on. Now, if you're interested in seeing how much it costs, just look, Objectivist Conferences online, Iran Institute Objectivist Conference online, and you'll see the cost up there. And again, it's in Miami. It's over the 4th of July weekend. It's longer than a weekend. It's like five or six days. It's fantastic. You'll be with 500 other people who share your values, who are there to learn from beginners, the super advanced, a wide array of different people, different professions, different age groups, young people, older people, experienced people, inexperienced, all kinds. And it's just a fantastic week. You'll feel many people, particularly first-timers, go to Ocon. Feel like they're in Gulch Gulch for a week. Now, those of you who haven't read Atlas Shrug yet, Gulch Gulch is a pretty cool place. So I encourage you to, those of you who can afford to come, come. Those of you who are not sure about coming, they're hesitant, they don't want to spend the money, maybe you can afford it, but you're not sure. You'd like a scholarship, you'd come if somebody else paid for it, write to me and ask Iran at youronbrookshow.com and we will try and we will try to do it. Yeah, absolutely, Michael. Do it. What have you got to lose? I mean, you get a scholarship and then you decide the last minute. I mean, I hope this doesn't happen, but you can't come. Okay. I mean, but I'd like you to come. So if you get the scholarship, I'd like everybody to come and get the scholarship, because then if you don't come, then it's a scholarship that could have gone to somebody else, but at least apply. Let's see if you can get it. And if you get it, it's just a lot of fun and it's just going to be exciting. And think about, instead of this chat here, think about 100, 200, 300 Iranbrookshow listeners all getting together and we'll have a party. We'll have a party. So scholarships are there, but it costs us around $2,000 for that week. $2,590, I think, before the discount. I think there's still a discount out there, but you can get that down to zero. Zero. That's a lot of money. So those of you on the fence, those of you who are not sure, again, paragraph explaining why you want to go, why you should get a scholarship. So it doesn't mean you have to be a student, although if your students certainly do this, it just could be anybody. It doesn't have to be student. It could be any age. Don't do it for the greater good of objectivism. Do it for your greater good, for you, because you want to grow. You want to be better. And as David, as Robert Nacer says, Ocon rocks. I can't pronounce the stuff. It's in the rest of it. It's in Spanish. I don't know Spanish, but he says see all in Miami. So Robert's going, all of you should come. You know, they're really with these scholarships, they might not be an excuse for anybody not to show up. It's just, it's fun and educational. And I'll be there. We'll hang out. Be cool. All right. I hope you enjoyed that discussion. We'll return to the steam of mainstream media again, because it keeps coming up and you know, we'll also return, keep returning to the steam of debunking really bad statistics. We'll keep coming back to that one. Let me see if Hopper Campbell, wow, Hopper Campbell came through 300 bucks. Let's take his question first. Thank you, Hopper. Have European, Canadian and Israeli healthcare systems allowed for more private options over the past 50 years? Seems like people in these countries with money are demanding higher quality care. As more people move from middle to upper classes, is there greater political pressure to allow privatization? I mean, suddenly, Israel has always had kind of a two tier system. You could always go to a private doctor. The hospitals are all government. Oh, no, they are private hospitals. They're not very good necessarily. You want any significant procedure. You have to go to a public hospital, but your private doctor will see you in a public hospital. They work both systems. And you know, you can basically get preferential treatment if you have a private doctor. But I don't know that in Israel there's any real push to have to expand private options. Look, I think part of the issue is that people don't know what a private system would look like. They don't understand the benefits of private medicine. They don't really have a conception of what higher quality care really looks like. I mean, unless you've had like a concierge doctor in the United States, I don't think you know what that is. I don't think you have a sense of what's possible. Now, in the UK, you've got private doctors. You can buy private insurance. But again, most of the really big hospitals, good hospitals are NHS hospitals and most people, if they're going to be treated, they're going to go to an NHS hospital. But you can get private insurance. I think some private hospitals, most countries have a dual system. Most countries have a basic government run system and then private health can talk. Canada does not. Canada basically outlaws that. And in Canada, I think there is pressure now to expand privatization. But it's filled with suspicion and people do be ears because privatization means profit. Profit is corrupting. Privatization means self-interested motivation. Self-interest motivation is corrupting. So in spite of there's a push towards more privatization, there's also a push against not just coming from the egalitarians who want everything the same, but also from people who are just suspicious of the profit motive and anything privatized. And those don't necessarily have to be just the rabid leftist egalitarians. That can be much more broad. Thank you, Hopper. Really appreciate the support. All right. Ashton. Thanks, Ashton. You are nice. Thank you for this morning, Anthony. And tonight, really appreciate the support. You are nice. So your take on Kobe Bryant's speech and after hearing it, motivation just went through my bloodstream. Good. Using my reason, my strength and my will to achieve excellence in a given profession is the true meaning of life. I think that's absolutely right. It's absolutely right. Using your mind and your willpower and all your capabilities to being the best that you could be in what you do. And also achieving great things in everything you touch in life, but particularly in your profession, that's what life is about. That's the meaning of life. So I'm glad. I thought that Kobe Bryant segment was superb. He was superb. I thought my analysis was pretty good. And because what you get is I brought it into the context. I've showed you how consistent it was with kind of a self-interested view of life. I don't think Kobe thought of it in those terms, but that's what it boils down to. And I'd say any successful human being. I could bring you COs or anybody who's been successful in anything ultimately is motivated by a form of self-interest, by rational self-interest, not a form of self-interest as if they're forms of, by rational self-interest within the scope of that way he achieved it, even when they don't even know it. He was not just a competitor, but he wanted it to be the best that he could be and use competition to motivate himself to be the best that he could be. I mean, even the stories about the Olympic team that he played in, I just saw a documentary about this, and where all these superstars were there, and this is after the US team didn't win the Olympics, didn't win the Olympics, and then this is the team that came back to redeem that to try to win at this time. They all motivated, but Kobe, and Kobe had nothing to prove. He'd already won the world championship, he was considered the best basketball player in the world, he was at the top. And yet who was the hardest working member of that Olympic team? Olympics! Not exactly the be all end all the basketball. That was Kobe. He'd get up early in the morning, he'd go shoot, he'd practice. He wanted to be the best that he could be at every opportunity, and in spite of the fact that I'm a Celtics fan, he is a super impressive human being. Harper Campbell also asks, once the baby boomers die out completely, will there be real political will to reform our retirement programs and begin some element of privatization? Most young people today know social security as a complete ripoff. Yeah, but I remember when I was young, most of the people around me knew social security as a completely ripoff, and it didn't help, it didn't make any difference. So I don't know, but the reality is that by the time the baby boomers completely die off, social security is going to be bankrupt, it's going to be in real, real trouble. They're going to have to reform it, they're going to have to raise their retirement age, they're going to have to reduce benefits somehow. It's unlikely to be privatized before there's a real moral revolution about it. It's more likely to be means tested, where if you're rich you don't get it and make it just a pure redistribution program. It's a lot cheaper. That's a potential. So there are all kinds of ways it could be reformed without changing its fundamental nature, but to change its fundamental nature to, in a sense, privatize it or to get rid of it completely, that requires a real philosophical change, real philosophical revolution, and that, that is decades away. Adam says, how long since you last read How to Lie with Statistics, does it need to be updated? Should it be in a curricula? If so, in what grade is it even possible to discuss data with someone who did not read and understand How to Lie with Statistics? Yeah, I mean, I definitely think you can discuss data because you could show him the lies that ain't statistics, that you could take a particular fallacy that the book points out and you could show it in reality, in fact. Should it be part of the curricula? The problem is that before How to Lie with Statistics is really of value, you have to know something about statistics. And the reality is that most high school kids don't know anything about statistics. And the statistics classes are pretty bad and they're hard. I, for example, and this is just me, I find probability theory much harder than advanced calculus or any kind of differential equations or any of that stuff. I mean, I found advanced math fairly easy in college, in high school and in college. I found probability theory really hard. And part of the thing about probability theory is, and part of the thing with probability and statistics is, they're so often counter-intuitive. They're so often counter-intuitive. I recommend Stephen Pinker's book on rationality. I think it's his latest book called Rationality. He talks about some of these really counter-intuitive facts, realities that statistics produces that you really have to think deeply. You really have to walk it through to see why they're right because your quote instincts, your gut reaction, your first response, your emotional response, or even your first cognitive response, your first walkthrough of it, it doesn't seem like it's right. And yet, when you really think deeply about it, it's right. It's hard. It really is cognitively hard. Most people don't know statistics. Most people who study statistics don't know statistics. And almost none of them know probability theory. And you know, so when doctors come out and show, give you the statistics, the things, they don't know statistics. Not at the level you need in order to actually make, come to conclusions, generalizations. And it's not that they're lying using statistics. It's just that they're ignorant. I remember I did a show during COVID, one of the shows that caused the most uproar against me when these two Orange County doctors came out and they had this data and they were misusing the data and they were honest. I don't think either of them were trying to lie. They just were ignorant. They didn't know what they were talking about. They know medicine. They don't know stats. And God did I get a backlash because everybody wanted to agree with them. And I wanted to agree with them. I didn't challenge, you know, it wasn't that I disagreed with the conclusions, but the stats they were using were bogus, just absolutely unequivocally bogus. And it's hard to do statistics right. So yes, I encourage everybody to read how to lie with statistics. It's been a long time since I read it. I have to admit I haven't read it in a long time. I should probably read it again. I'm sure it could use updating, but the basic fallacies are there, right? The basic problems are there. The basic ways in which people misuse statistics are there. Everybody should read it. And generally, I would say, generally, don't believe what you hear about statistics. I mean, I don't know what to tell you because so much of what we hear is statistical. So much of what's out there is statistics and econometrics and correlations, and correlations is equal causation. And it's so much of it, so much of the news is statistical. Don't buy the analysis. Even if it confirms your priors, even it confirms what you believe, you've got to accept the fact that most people, most of the reporters, most of the people doing the stats don't know what they're doing. And again, it's not that they're lying. It's just that they're ignorant. Do you ever watch these masterclasses? They seem to be extremely popular and lucrative. Would you ever consider doing a masterclass on self-esteem or achieving happiness? A great way to make dollars and really spread objectivism. I would love to do them. I think they would have to agree for me to do it. I have to be on their platform, and I don't know that they would. I don't know if they're interested in something like that. But I have not watched the masterclasses. I haven't paid to watch them. But yeah, I don't know if I'd do it on those topics. But I would be happy to do a masterclass. I think there are other objectives who might be more qualified than me to do particularly ones on self-esteem or happiness. I think you need to have some more knowledge of psychology than I do in order to do this, which reminds me, yes, next Thursday, the 2nd of February, Thursday is our interview day. I will have Gina Golanon. So save up those dollars and any psychology issues. Well, not issues, but questions you have, questions about psychology. She's always a very popular guest. Hopefully you'll enjoy having her. But yeah, get ready for Gina. Jeremy says, quote, statistics don't lie, but liars use statistics. See, I don't think they're liars. I think because statistics are hard to interpret, they interpret them wrong, or they find the statistics that match what they already believe. People are enormously amazingly biased, and that bias leads them to see in the statistics something that is not really there, or orient them towards a particular piece of data that they would rather look at. I mean, I can see that with the whole, you know, right now, I am bombarded, bombarded with statistics showing the vaccines are killing people in mass, large numbers of people. And I get these graphs and charts and stats and data and this and that. And it's a lot. And there's a lot of a lot of this stuff. Now there, I think some of it is just liars. I think some people have figured out that they can make a living off of lying about COVID. And there's a huge audience for this. And this achieves certain of the aims. This is, I mean, I think they're doctors, I think there are others who are clearly lying to perceive this. And when you take this data, and when you dig a little bit, when you start digging into it, you find that it's completely misused. It's not that the numbers are wrong. It's just that they're taking completely out of context. They're only part of the story. They might be right, but you know, they might be divided by the wrong denominator. They might be looking at the wrong percent. I mean, there's a million different reasons why they're wrong. And I'm thinking of doing a show just debunking the vaccine nonsense, right? Just debunking the vaccine, killing people left and right. You know, there's some people just lie like there's a documentary out there about the sudden death syndrome that people have after taking the vaccine. And they show all kinds of people just dropping dead. And a lot of the people that just dropped dead, dropped dead before they were vaccinated. That is, it was from periods of time when the vaccines weren't even available. But that's just straight line, right? That's just straight line making stuff up. But a lot of times they see some correlation. They seem some stuff. I think stats can lie. It's not that they're lying directly. It's that they're not giving you information or they're not giving you the information they purport to give. The statistic itself is not actually producing what you think it's producing. It's not telling you what you think it's telling you. The ratio of the number is true. As you say, statistics don't lie. The number doesn't lie. But the number as purporting to represent X is a lie. I wish I could think of an example right now. I don't think it's just liars. All right. Saul Zimad asked, to what degree do you see the Kato Institute as a force for good, bad? Same question about Mises Institute. I mean, I think the Kato Institute mostly is a force for good, mostly. I think there's some areas where they're forced for bad, primarily the found policy. But the work that Kato does on immigration is excellent. The work Kato does on trade is excellent. I think to a large extent, those people at Kato, the work they do in healthcare is excellent. Fellow travelers, I don't think the found policy work is good. There might be some other areas where I don't agree with the stuff they do. I certainly don't think philosophically they help the cause. But in that, you know, Scott Linsicum, George Selgen, who works for Kato as well, all good people moving things in the right direction and people I would work with and cooperate with and have and will in the future if I can, if they will have me. So I think Kato, generally my general opinion of Kato is positive. Again, I think they undermine that with their found policy. I think they undermine it by the fact that some of the people there are kind of anarchists and don't hide that and make some deal of it. But it's not a primary focus of the Kato Institute. Primary focus of the Kato Institute is to analyze policy and to present policy solutions. And I think in many, many, many fields, they do an excellent job. I don't, for example, agree with a lot of the Kato people on constitutional interpretation, constitutional law of individual rights and what individual rights mean. Whenever you get philosophical, they're not very good. The Mises Institute is a different animal. The Mises Institute's calling card is anarchy. The Mises Institute's calling card now is this paleo-libertarianism. They're often anti-immigration. They've got a perverse interpretation of history, which often is borderline justification or apologetic for slavery. They're terrible. I think the Mises Institute is a net detriment to the cause. Now it's true. The theoretical economists who work at the Mises Institute are often very, very good and often have the best economic analysis out there. But everything else, everything else other than the purely economic, is often horrible. And when it's bad, it is not a little bad. It is disgustingly bad and I think ultimately destructive to the cause. And in that sense, I think the Mises Institute is a destructive institution. I also think it's horrible and a perversion of justice that they use the Mises name. They should be called the Rothbard Institute because that's what they are. They have Rothbardians. They have nothing to do with Mises. Wesley asks, what do you think of Stephen Crowder's coming spat with the Daily Wire Ben Shapiro company? Who is right in your view? I don't know. I didn't know they had a spat. I thought that the Daily Wire offered Stephen Crowder to come and be part of their platform and he turned them down. That's all I know. So I'm ignorant of a spat. So I need to educate myself about the spat between Ben Shapiro and Stephen Crowder. All right, let's see. Wesley says, oh, what am I looking for? Anyway, I'm looking at the chat and I don't, I'm not sure what, okay. Frank says, does maritime law apply to Mars? In the Martian, the astronaut says Mars is an international waters since it's not in any country's territory. No, I think there's a special treaty governing space which is worse than maritime law. It's really, really, really bad and the US should withdraw from it as soon as possible and declare space, declare basically what do you call it, a homestead act for space. You get there, you use it, it's yours. And you get American protection. Let's see. Daily Wire gave Crowder a crappy deal and he said no, they were insulted and he decided to go do his own thing. I mean, why is that a spat? I mean, I don't know how much they offered him. Somebody said the other day $50 million, that sounds like a lot of money. So I don't know why he would feel like that was not enough. But you know, what do I know? Maybe Stephen Crowder today makes $100 million. I have no idea. This is in a different realm from where I live and in a different environment. You notice they disagree about a business deal. Why is that a spat? And I don't know why I would have an opinion about who is right or who is wrong unless there's some intellectual content there beyond a commercial disagreement about how valuable is Stephen Crowder. I have no idea how valuable Stephen Crowder is. So do you like the book Dune? I never did like the book Dune. It's too dark. Yeah, I read it 40 years ago, I think. Do you like the film The Good, The Bad, and Ugly? Good and Bad, and Ugly. I like it. I don't think it's a great film. I like it just out of kind of a sense of just fun. It's silly. It's purposefully morally ambiguous. The good is not really good. The good at best is not bad and not ugly. But he's not really good. It's character less. It's nobody has a character. They're all caricatures. It's like a cartoon. And it's fun. But it's not a serious movie. It's not a serious movie. And it's actually meant to undermine the Western. It's meant to undermine the idea of real characters, real heroes, real good, real evil. It's meant to, in a sense, make a caricature of that. And it's very successful caricature, but that's what it is. James, given the physical chaos, doesn't make more sense to start taking Social Security out as soon as you're legally allowed to at age 62, or because you're in good health, will you wait until you're 70? I mean, I'm going to wait until I'm 70. I get what you're saying. Maybe I should take it out now, because they might not be money. They're later. But it makes, you know, I'm going to assume Social Security will continue paying while I'm alive. I think the thing they'll probably do is move the eligibility age from 62 to later and save some money there. So, you know, economically, it makes sense to get it when you're 70, not 62. I'm going to stick with economically. And I'm going to assume that I'm going to live longer than average, because if you're assuming you're going to live shorter, you take it at 62. If you're healthy and you think you're going to live long, it's better to wait until you're 70. The amount of money you get is more. So, I'm waiting. And I am taking my Social Security. I paid into the stupid system. I'm getting some of my money back. And I will take Medicare because I have no choice. You can't get healthcare if you don't get Medicare. Socialized medicine for old people. That's what we have in America. It's nothing short of that. And there's no options. It's not like you can opt out of Medicare. There is no opt out. All right. Valdrin, Rain Man was based on Kim Peek, a savant who could read eight books a day, one page in 10 seconds, left eye, left page, right eye, right page, emotionally childlike. We can't clothe, feed himself or live alone. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of sad, bewildering that you can read. I don't know what it means that you could read that. All it means is you can memorize it. I don't think a mind like that can really integrate knowledge. That's why they don't really innovate. They don't produce anything new. They're just a fountain of information. But a good thinking mind is not just about retaining information. It's about integrating it and discovering new identifications. And I don't think Rain Man could do that. I don't think Kim Peek could do that. Michael Sanders says, did you see Brian Kaplan's debate with Alex Epstein? I didn't. Brian Kaplan has written a bunch of really positive essays about Alex Epstein's books. I don't know what they would debate about. I'll have to look at that. Is that unlike YouTube or somewhere? Any idea when you will be debating him? Yes. It's in July, 17th, 18th, something like that. July 17, 18th in New York City. I'll be debating Brian Kaplan on Anarchy. Anarchy. Is there any way to bring more big shots that baited Ocon this year like you did with Jordan Peterson? No, probably not. I mean, it cost a lot of money to bring Jordan Peterson to Ocon. And I don't think we got the value for our money. So I think people are more reluctant to do things like that at Ocon. Michael says, you say altruism is a more powerful force than envy, but isn't altruism just a rationalization for envy? I don't think so. I don't think it is. I think it might be for the intellectuals, but I think for 99% of the people who just hold an altruistic morality, it's all they know. It's what everybody teaches them. It's just the way it is. Again, I think it's a rationalization for the intellectuals, for the people who perpetuated, reinvented the people who advocate for it, but the people who just hold altruism as they're all ideal in their own minds, that's just they've absorbed it from the culture and they've absorbed it from their professors, from their teachers, from their religion. Jennifer, I think you are younger than your spouse and make less money. I think if you are younger than your spouse and make less money, you should take Social Security at 62. I'm planning to do that. I don't know. I haven't looked into it. While I'm going to take Social Security, I resent the whole idea generally and I haven't really done the research into it, so I don't know, but that is definitely possible. You just have to do a little bit of research and find the facts and it sounds like Jennifer has and that probably makes sense for her. For me, it probably doesn't make sense to get Social Security until I'm 70. Robert says the left needs to be fought. The right is an obstacle to this. News from the left is heavily biased. News from the right isn't even news. Great summary. Great summary. I mean everybody needs to be fought. Left and right need to be fought, but yes, I like that section about the news. News from the right isn't even news at all. Michael, Americans can't be that altruistic. If we let all these millionaires and billionaires come into existence, isn't it pretty rare to find a millionaire in Western Europe or Israel? No. I mean, there might be as many millionaires now in Israel as there are as a percentage of the population is now in the U.S. There are a lot of millionaires in Israel and there are a lot of millionaires in Europe and in the U.K., certainly U.K. has a gazillion millionaires. They're more in the United States. That's because we have more opportunities for people to make the money. But yeah, I think the U.S. is the least altruistic place among in the West because America is founded on fundamentally selfish principles. It was founded on fundamentally individualistic principles and I think that was captured by the American sense of life and that has to some extent sustained this country as we go forward. So I do think that it is less altruistic than other places on the world. That's changing. We're becoming more so over time. We're becoming more European. But I wouldn't use the number of millionaires necessarily as a measure. I think it's the attitude towards millionaires and yes, Americans have better healthier attitudes towards millionaires than Europeans do because we are less altruistic than Europeans. It doesn't make us non-altruistic. It just means we're less. Stephen Harper, thank you. I really appreciate it. Robert, that was your comment on Ocon. Thank you. Daniel, I'm definitely going to Iron Man Con in Athens, looking forward to it. The one in Athens is a blast because you get to go and you get to be in Athens and you get to talk about Greek philosophy and the place where it was created and you get to walk in the footsteps of Plato and Aristotle with some of the leading intellectuals, some of the leading objectivist intellectuals. It'll be a blast. But you should also come to Ocon, longer and more intense. So don't forget, you can apply for an Ocon scholarship. Ask you on at youronbrookshow.com. Just give me one paragraph on why you want to go to Ocon and I will try to get you a scholarship for it. Michael says, a Canadian friend of mine had to get a couple of stitches. It took him six hours before they could see him. He hates the healthcare system. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people do. Canadian healthcare system really, really sucks if you're sick. If you're really sick, the more sick you are, the more it sucks. And generally, it's about waiting. You have to have patience. But you know, people get used to waiting. They get mind numb and then they die waiting and nobody seems to care. There's no category on the death certificate says, died waiting. You know, even if you die of cancer, but the cancer was treatable if you hadn't had to wait. But no, the cause of death is not waiting ever, even though it should be. It should be on the death certificate. Why do you think government doesn't want to privatize Social Security? It's basically would work the same way. If not better, do you think the politicians are pillaging the fund? Well, obviously the politicians are pillaging the fund. There is no fund, right? Every dollar that you send into Social Security is immediately spent. Not on Social Security, on anything they want to spend it on. But more than that, it gives them immense power and control. It validates and vindicates the notion that you need politicians and you need the bureaucracy and you need government in order to sustain yourself as an old person. If it was privatized, you don't need them. You can privatize Social Security, you can privatize anything. So it vindicates and validates everything they believe in. Michael says, Rand mentioned this allowing public displays of porn wouldn't be against free speech. Is this objectivism or her opinion? Why did she think this isn't in a right violation of control's property this way? No, I mean, look, anything Ayn Rand said philosophically is objectivism. You might say it's wrong, but it is objectivism. So you can't separate Ayn Rand's opinion from objectivism when it comes to philosophical and application of philosophy topics. In this case, no, you know, if you on your property and you're blasting your radio all hours of the night and I can't sleep, you're violating my rights by doing that. If you are, you know, there are all kinds of ways in which, you know, your property, the use of your property can in one way or another violate my rights. Now, in what way does pornography, you know, pornography is something disgusting that I don't want to see. There might be other images that I don't want to be confronted with, with no option. That is, it's right there. I can't turn it off. And yes, so I think there is a possibility of saying there's certain things that are so offensive that you publicly displaying them on your property is just like noise pollution is a violation of my rights. So is some forms of content. Now, you have to be careful what that content is. And you have to be careful how you define it, how do you objectively define it? So it covers porn and maybe graphic violence. I don't think you should be able to put a massive screen showing people being slaughtered and everybody walking down the street has to see it. I think that's absolutely wrong. So, you know, you can't just do whatever the hell you want on your property. If your property is projecting outwards, doing something that projects outwards, there has to be some consideration for pass-by, people are passing by and who can't divert their eyes, they can't divert their ears. And in that, but it's dangerous to write that law, but somebody has to, this is what legal philosophers have to do. They have to write a law that objectively protects those people without, without doing it in such an expansive way that it violates people's individual, that it violates the property owner's rights. How you do that exactly, I don't know. I don't have an answer. I'm not that kind of philosopher. All right, everybody. Thank you. Today was very good super chat wise. Thank you in particular to Troy, to Hopper Campbell, and to Ashton, who are, Ashton gave 100, Hopper 300, and I think another question, and Troy 500 Australian dollars. So we, we made our goal and more. I, there will be probably no show tomorrow. There's a possibility that when I get to my hotel room tomorrow in Ashton, I'll do a new show in the evening. We'll see. We'll see how much time I have and everything, but there's a possibility I'll do that. I'm going to try to do a show on Thursday, probably in the middle of the day, Austin time. I have an important breakfast meeting after 10, but after that, I will try to do a show. And then on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I might, I'll try to do shows at 8am. Again, Troy is the emphasis, and it also depends on the quality of the internet connection in my hotel room. All right, everybody. Thank you again. I will see you all. Hope you enjoyed the show. I will see you all. And, and don't forget to check out my sponsors, einreinuniversity, university.inran.org. If you want to study Objectivism, if you want to, if you want to study Objectivism live with live professors, have your papers graded, there's no other place in the world to do it other than there. But also you can audit, you can, and there's some fascinating, really interesting courses that you can audit. As I, as you know, I'll be teaching a public speaking class in the spring, in the summer. You can audit that as well. So check out university.inran.org and sign up. And then of course, expressvpn.com slash your one where you get three months free, additional free on top of what they usually give if you sign up through that link. All right, everybody. I will see you soon.