 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Tuesday. Well, it's really afternoon here in Puerto Rico, but for many of you it's morning. I know we probably have some Europeans on here, Israelis or whatever, where it's already evening. Thank you for joining me. Today is one of our news updates, news briefing shows. So we're going to go through a bunch of news items. We'll do it fairly quickly. I think yesterday's show was a little too long, so we'll do it pretty quickly today. I do encourage you to help support the show by using the Super Chat feature or any kind of feature. The Sticker feature or the Super Chat feature, we've got a goal for these newsy shows and to keep them going and to keep them ongoing. We've got a goal of $250 a show, so let's see if we can make that show. I mean, I have to start. Today, shockingly, with really one of the most shocking pieces of news I've heard in a very long time, truly stunning both morally and, I don't know, existentially in every aspect, a real shocker, very upsetting. I don't know. I think at least in one country there is national mourning going on right now. And that is that Saudi Arabia has beaten Argentina in the World Cup in Qatar. I mean, I don't know, is this home court advantage because Qatar is so close to Saudi Arabia, although the Saudis don't really get along with the Qataris. But Saudi Arabia beat Argentina to one. I mean, how is that even possible? Argentina not only has the best player in the world on it, Lionel Messi, who is getting old, granted, but it's Argentina, one of the great empires of football, soccer in all times. And Saudi Arabia is on nothing, nothing place, nothing, middle of the desert. It's no, it's nothing. I mean, I find it offensive. Just the idea of it is offensive. So while I'm trying, you know, while, you know, I have all these objections to Qatar, you know, they're still following what's going on in the World Cup. And while most of the results are pretty boring, you know, Netherlands beat Senegal, U.S. tied, U.S. is never very good. England, best result yesterday was England beat Iran, 6-2. And when the coach was interviewed about how happy he is, he said, well, it could have been 6-0, which is perfect. And beating Iran, by the way, the Iranian soccer players did not sing the national anthem in protest, in solidarity with the goals and women in Iran demonstrating. I thought that was incredibly courageous of them. So that is, that is really fantastic. And, I know, Saudi Arabia can't use petrodollas to hire players. I mean, they're local players, they're Saudi players. No, that's ridiculous. Anyway, good for the Iranian soccer players for not singing their national anthem, for standing up with the protest. I wonder what the retribution will be. But it's also good that England beat them 6-2, so that's good. All right, so I don't know, Saudi Arabia, Argentina. I mean, Argentina right now, the country must be in massive depression. Soccer football is kind of a central feature, you know, central to that country, to its identity, to its sense of itself. And Messi has never done well in a World Cup, in any World Cup. But I don't think Argentina has ever suffered such a loss as this one. It's sad. You know, I have some Argentinian friends and it's sad. This is not good for them. Anyway, I'm going to try to have some positive stories in these new segments as well. I figure it's all depressing. I don't want to do exactly what all the new shows do is depressing, depressing, depressing. So we are going to try to do some uplifting stories. I don't know that I have anything dramatic today or this upcoming story is uplifting in one dimension, very depressing in another. But I will try to have at least one item every show that it is uplifting. Daisy says, don't cry for me Argentina. They're crying. Believe me, they are crying. Oh God, I can't even imagine what's going on over there. Alright, on a more serious topic. So the shooting in the gay bar in Colorado Springs, horrific. You know, the guy stepped in there with an AR-15-like semi-automatic and fired at people. He was at a hand pistol, which he never got to use luckily. But out of that event, we have a real hero. An Army veteran by the name of Rick Fierro. He was, you know, the firing, the initial firing was in his direction. He was with his daughter's boyfriend, his daughter's boyfriend. They were out there. They were going to see a drag show, I guess, and they were having a good time. And he was standing next to his, again, his daughter's boyfriend. When the boyfriend got shot, ultimately died of his wounds. Anyway, this Army veteran fell to the floor, dragged everybody else around him to the floor. Then, you know, crept over to the guy firing, you know, jumped on him, managed to wrestle the weapon away from him, started beating on him. Ultimately, when the shooter tried to pull out a pistol, he managed to stop him from getting the pistol. He was aided by one of the, I guess, one of the drag queens who used her, healed his, whose, he'll choose to punch, to hit the guy in the head and to pull, push the, and then push the weapons out of reach from the shooter. So I think due to the bravery, the courage of, I mean, imagine, imagine somebody is shooting and you move towards them into the line of fire. I mean, that takes them in courage. Now, I guess he was trained. I don't know what unit he was in the Army, but I guess he was trained. He had served, I think, two. He had served two tours of duty in Iraq and I think one in Afghanistan. Three tours of duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. So the guy knew something, something I assume about combat. But, wow, I mean, that takes immense courage. Ultimately, it takes real skill and for him to be able to knock this guy down, take his gun away. He saved countless lives. He saved a lot of people from being injured. And let me tell you, being injured from around from a semi-automatic rifle, those injuries are not light injuries. Even if they might not be life-threatening, those injuries, I mean, a bullet from an AR-15 will completely destroy your bones. It will shatter them. It could easily, you know, you're going to lose a lot of blood. If it hits some internal organs, those internal organs are going to be almost impossible to fix. I mean, AR-15 bullets are not, this is not no big deal. This is major, major damage that they do to people. So truly horrific, good for Fiero. This guy should be celebrated, not only for his service in the U.S. Army, but now using the skills he learned in the U.S. Army to prevent the death and the destruction of life of many, many people. So thumbs up to Army veteran Rick Fiero, a real hero, hero of the day. All right, let's see, what do we want to go from here? Since we're on the military stuff, let's jump forward to talk about hypersonic missiles. Let me just say, Marilyn, thank you for the support. Khmetija Bishak, thank you for the support. Really appreciate it. Really appreciate all you guys supporting the show. Really appreciate everybody tuning in today to the show. Don't forget, I like the show before you leave. Really helps the algorithm. Anyway, one thing that's, I think, important, militarily wise, I thought it was an interesting story. I was reading in the last couple of days. There's been a lot of talk about hypersonic weapons. The Russians have a hypersonic missile. The Chinese have tested hypersonic missiles. And there was a lot of concern about the United States being behind. You know, my general tendency is not to panic about these things. Regimes like China and regimes like Russia might be able to develop these weapons, usually by stealing technology, but deploying them, making them accurate, deploying them into submarines and to boats and to land bases and all of that is complex and it takes time. And my general sense is the United States while might be behind could catch up easily and the weapons advantage the United States has over any country in the world is so dramatic that falling behind a one-weapon system is not a game changer. But it does look like the U.S. is taking this seriously. It competition, just like between businesses, competition in, unfortunately, in weapons systems spurs on innovation and the U.S. is dramatically increasing the pace of its own development of hypersonic weapons and its deployment of those weapons. They've allocated a significant amount of dollars in the defense budget to the development of this. I think over four billion dollars are now developed on this. They are doing rocket-task launches and they, in my guess, they will catch up to the Chinese and the Russians very, very quickly and be significantly superior to them within five to ten years or even earlier than that. One of the things that is happening, whoops, what happened to that, is the United States is deploying, whoops, I think I closed the wrong window before. The United States is deploying these missiles. Let me just see if I can find the actual news story that I just closed. Yeah, there it is. They're deploying it to the new stealth ships that they have. So the United States, the U.S. Navy has now these stealth destroyers. They look really, really ugly. If you're used to usual destroyers, these look really, really ugly, but they're stealth. So radar does not detect them. And that's crucial given the firing capacity of, let's say, the Chinese and the crucial nature of, you know, the Navy in any kind of conflict with China. It's going to be, you know, we have to cross the entire Atlantic. Gail, thank you for the support. Really appreciate it. And so the United States has these Zumwalt, the stealthy destroyer called Zumwalt. And the Zumwalt is now, there are three of these Zumwalt. And initially the thinking was that these are the kind of ships that would get very close to shore and then bombard the shore with very powerful guns that they had. These guns now are basically, the thinking now is that these ships would make it close to shore, that the capacity of, let's say, the Chinese military to destroy these ships before they even got close to shore, or when they got close to shore, the ability to be destroyed by land to see missiles. So now the thinking is that they would stay further out at sea, that they are deep water destroyers, not shallow water destroyers. They are going to be each of these destroyers now. These stealth destroyers are going to be packed with these hypersonic missiles. These are missiles that are eight tons, three foot diameter. They can travel further than 1,700 miles at five times the speed of sound and potentially faster. Five times the speed of sound, 1,700 miles. So these ships can be well into the Pacific, let's say, and pose a dramatic threat to China. And of course they could be positioned all kinds of places and pose a threat to Russia. Indeed, these missiles, these hypersonic missiles are going to be deployed in nuclear submarines in the United States as well. So again, those submarines can reach almost anywhere. And again, our submarines in the United States, US submarines are the stealthiest submarines in the world. So the fact is that the United States holds a massive advantage over the rest of the world when it comes to its Navy. It is unmatched. It's not even close. The Chinese are not close. They're trying, but they're not even close. We're launching next generation aircraft carriers without launching these stealthy destroyers. Once we put them with hypersonic missiles, there's just no Navy and no military in the world that can come close to defeating the United States or to challenging the United States. So the challenge is that the Chinese do have missile capabilities that they can bomb and they can attack ships in the sea up to 3,000 miles away from the Chinese mainland. And I think a lot of my guess is that a lot of US defense budget spending and Pentagon spending is probably going these days into missile defense systems. I think the most crucial systems right now beyond building these hypersonics is to create missile defense systems and to knock down ballistic missiles as early as possible but to certainly have all these ships have systems that can knock down the missiles before they actually land on them, actually attack them. So while it's always a shame that we have to invest huge amounts of money in weapons systems because that is money, that is capital that is not then being used for productive purposes for enhancing standard of living, quality of life and so on. It is of course necessary because one of the important functions of government is to protect our ability to produce stuff that enhances standard of living and quality of life. So we need to defend ourselves and these weapons are crucial to doing that. It would be nice. It would be amazing. It would be fabulous to live in a world where we didn't have to do that. But given Russia's invasion of Ukraine, given the state of China's authoritarianism, I think it is important that the United States invest and invest heavily in weapons systems that match them and can act as a deterrent against any kind of aggression from the Russians or the Chinese. All right. Let's see. Thank you, Vladimir. Thank you, Vladimir. I really appreciate it. Okay. Let's see. So let's talk a little bit about business. We don't do enough business on the show. We don't talk enough about business news. Business news is really, really important and it tells us a lot about the world and about our culture and about what's going on and it's also important for you in terms of whatever investing you are doing. So let's start with talking about Disney. So Disney has been in the news a lot in the past year or two, not in a very positive light. Much of the discussion about Disney has been around the fact that it's such a woke company that has such a focus on woke and it has woke seminars and it does woke things and it puts out woke press releases and it really is being on the corporate level one of the kind of the forefront of the whole woke movement and criticized by Republicans and conservatives and everybody else around this idea of working as well. There are consequences to these things and there are consequences to these things that do not require people like DeSantis and Trump and other politicians getting involved and choosing to penalize particular companies or others. Markets actually work and the fact is that Disney, while focusing on all the woke stuff, Disney has actually not done well financially because it's way too focused instead of creation, instead of happiest place on earth, instead of providing us with products that enhance our happiness and enhance our well-being, that we value, that we want to buy. It has been too busy doing political nonsense and too busy focused on corporate stuff and too little focused on creation and producing and making the stuff that they need to make in order to make money. As a consequence of that, Disney has fired its CEO and in news this week it has brought back its old CEO who ran the company for many years before this current CEO, Bob Iger. Bob Iger has already done, just in the last few days, has already done some significant restructuring at Disney and I think has elevated the creative staff and is basically trying to return Disney to the priority of being creative, the priority of producing content, the priority of creating content that makes them money, that creates the kind of amazing movies and TV shows and theme to parks and everything else that Disney is known for and that is indeed enhanced all of our lives and all of our kids' lives. So it's good to see him. We will see exactly what kind of restructuring he's done. We'll see what happens with streaming. The challenge with streaming right now is for a while Netflix seemed like they were going to dominate it but then every company in the world figured out, wait a minute, why do we want to share all our profits with Netflix? So everybody started streaming. The challenge of course with everybody streaming, this is always what happens in competitive markets. You get a market leader, you get that first leader advantage, they dominate a space but if the space doesn't have very high barriers to entry and streaming does not and the more time passes, the more technology gets better, the less the barriers to entry exist. Everybody starts competing with you, that drives down profits, it drives down profits so much that some companies then leave the space and then over time the industry matures around a few players who can make enough money to sustain it but none of them are going to be super profitable and that's exactly what's happening with streaming. You have HBO in the streaming space, you've got Disney in the streaming space, you've got Prime Amazon in the streaming space, you've got Apple with Apple Plus in the streaming place, you've got Paramount in the streaming place and what's happened is that has driven margins basically to zero and some companies are actually losing a lot of money. A consequence of this is that Netflix stock is taking up pummeling because Netflix is losing subscribers to the competition. It's just competition but this is beautiful, this is amazing, this is wondrous, this is what capitalism does, this is what markets do and so it's something to be celebrated, not to be feared in Disney but it requires companies like Disney to restructure and rethink and strategize and figure out okay, where's our added value, where should we be investing and how do we make money. So good news I think for all of you who love Disney, for all of us I think who love Disney, Disney under new leadership and for those of you again who are petrified of the woke, woke has a cost, a big cost and that cost is often they pay it in the marketplace and Disney's paying for its losing focus and getting involved in politics and in culture. Alright, Catherine is here, Catherine is here, that's terrific. Now Catherine, we've got a goal right, we've got a goal $250 for these morning shows or early afternoon shows and the goal is, we're a little short of the goal right now, we've raised about $82 so we've got another $167 to raise so Catherine is going to be in charge of that, help her out, she likes making her goals, she gets pretty depressed if she doesn't make the goals, we don't want Catherine to be depressed so please help her out. Somebody says that Iga's actually pretty woke yet, Iga's a leftist, many CEOs in America leftist, but is Iga going to elevate woke issues, woke culture, woke fights with conservatives? No, I don't think that's his MO, I don't think that's what he did. At Disney the fact that people are relatively left-wing doesn't mean they can't be good businessmen and they can't focus a company and they can't and it doesn't mean they have to bring their ideology into work every day. So let's see, let's see what happens. At Disney we'll keep track of it, we'll keep track from both a business perspective and every other perspective. Alright, let's see, one other interesting I think business investment kind of story, this one relates to some predictions I made and I'm kind of really happy with this one, it kind of made me smile when I read it this morning, it's pretty cool. And that is that billionaire investor Carl Icahn, I've been following Carl Icahn since the 1980s where he was one of those hostile takeover artists who helped restructure America, helped free up the capital for America to become the powerhouse, the economic powerhouse that became in the 90s and 2000s. Carl Icahn I think from a business perspective is often a real hero, really, really smart, done really, really well for himself and again was as a long history going back to the crazy gung-ho days of the 1980s, the days of Michael Milken where Carl Icahn was a real legend. Well anyway, Carl Icahn, do you remember January 2021? I did a number of shows in January 2021 about meme stocks, in particular about GameStop that went through the roof and actually at some point I think reached a valuation of $483 a share and people were just like the nihilists left and the nihilist libertarians and the nihilists just generally with libertarians and leftists were just cheering on, this is going to destroy Wall Street, this is going to bring down hedge funds, this is going to make all these hedge funds lose a huge amount of money, this is so exciting, this is so much fun. And I said you guys are nuts, first of all, it won't bring down Wall Street, secondly Wall Street is going to make, not only is it not going to bring them down, they're going to make a fortune off of this and anybody buying GameStop at $483 is nuts, you're going to lose a huge amount of money. Yes, libertarians were doing it, a lot of libertarians were doing it, it was all over Twitter and libertarians were coming after me for not supporting this, for making fun of the whole meme stock phenomenon which I think was on so many different levels was irresponsible and wrong. Anyway, it turns out Carl Icahn was shorting GameStop when it did the big rally so at $483 a share it was Carl Icahn shorting the stock. Not only is it not the case that short sellers were wiped out by the GameStop, by the meme stock and what happened to GameStop. On the contrary, for some people in Wall Street like Carl Icahn, this was an incredible opportunity to make money. So Carl Icahn started building a short position when GameStop was trading near $483. He still holds as of today a large bet against the retailer shares and he has already made a fortune off of this trade. GameStop fell 8.8% on Monday but it's now at 25.16% so they did a 4-1 stocks plate. But overall, just this year the stock is down 71% and it's down a lot more than that. I think it's down something like 90% from its peak in January of... No, it's down 71% from its peak in January 2021. So Carl Icahn has made 70% on his investment. He still holds it because he still believes it's overvalued and he still thinks there's room for it to decline even further. So good for Carl Icahn. I wish I had the capital and the mandate to go in a short GameStop when it became a meme stock as could have made a lot of money but it's good to know that Carl Icahn made a lot of money. So good for Carl and a nice closing out of the whole GameStop saga. It's not closed out yet because GameStop is still in existence. Stock keeps declining. We'll see how far it declines. We'll see if GameStop survives at all. It turns out that a lot of the people who played that game lost a lot of money. A lot of the meme stock investors lost a lot of money. I think the original kind of guy who was behind a lot of the meme stock, the guy who was creating a lot of the buzz, he's very well diversified. So he has kind of a standard portfolio. He's more of a marketing guy than he is an actual, actually investing in the things that he talks about. But a lot of the people that caught up in all of this have lost a lot of money. Now it is true that one hedge fund did have to close because of the meme stock but it's one hedge fund among many. That was Melvin Capital. The principles behind Melvin would be back. But they did have to shut that particular fund. All right, so that gives us a little bit on GameStop. So we did Disney, we did Hypersonic Missiles, we did GameStop. So let's shift to my last topic that I prepared and then we'll go to questions. Super Chat questions, we're still about 150 short of our goal. So let's see if we can get some people to invest in these new type shows so that I'm motivated to keep doing them. It's not easy to every day prepare this content. Hopefully it will be well compensated ultimately. All right, Richard. Oh no, we had another topic and that is China Lockdowns. So this week we were seeing a massive surge in lockdowns in China. Supposedly China had was backing away from, you know, zero COVID and it was loosening up the restrictions. As a consequence, COVID cases went through the roof. I mean went through the roof for a zero COVID strategy. Only 27,000 cases are reported. Mainly in Guangzhou, Guangzhou is in the south of China. It's the industrial, it's industrial base. It's not that far from Xinjiang and Dongguan, Xinjiang being the high-tech base. So this is really the area adjacent to Hong Kong where a lot of the production, a lot of the innovation in China happens. Guangzhou is now because there are 27,000 cases, Guangzhou is locked down, Chongqing is locked down. I think there's seven or eight different cities in China now suffering under COVID lockdowns. Almost very, very few deaths resulting from COVID. But they won't tolerate, they won't, they just won't tolerate infections. So they, you know, they were putting a bulk of 8,588 infections in the Guangdong province. I'm just going to guess here, Guangdong province has, God, 100 million people living there? I don't think that's an exaggeration. Maybe it's 80, but it's somewhere in that vicinity. And they've got 8,588 cases and they're shutting down the province. The most productive and economically the freest province in all of China. I mean it's insanity. These people are crazy. And it just shows that craziness around COVID is not restricted to Western countries. It's not restricted to leftist in America. It's not restricted to, I don't know, to people anywhere in the world. It seems like craziness, irrationality, panic, insanity around the whole COVID issue is global. It's everywhere, even a country like China, which, you know, should know better. What are they doing? 27,000. They've got a population of a billion four. I mean, and death rates are very, very low right now from COVID generally and even in China. So, you know, people are going to die. Disease kills. People are going to get disease. And some of them will die. You can't stop living because there's a risk of getting some disease. It's completely nutty. Completely nutty. And it was nutty in the West and kind of you could say, oh, crazy politics, da, da, da, left, whatever. But no, this is like in China. It's just as insane. That's kind of surprising. It's kind of surprising. All right, let's jump in with some questions quickly. You see, it's late again. I don't seem to be capable of doing really, really short shows. It just doesn't seem to be in my, within my abilities. OK, Richard says, hypersonic missiles are one example of U.S. not investing enough in defense. But what about other new tech like AI, laser, et cetera? Or do you think U.S. is secretly invested in such programs? If so, should be classified. Look, I don't think we fell behind. You know, we could spend a zillion dollars in defense and we could jump up and we could make the best, most powerful, most biggest, fastest, craziest weapon systems in the world. But why? I mean, who are the enemies? I mean, some of our enemies are pretty pathetic. I don't know Iran and North Korea. How much do we need to really invest in order to defeat them? Probably the primary thing we need to invest with somebody like North Korea is in missile defense systems and primarily in South Korea and in rapid deployment strategies in order to crush them before they can destroy or cause significant damage to Seoul, South Korea. With Iranians, missile defenses, although we could take out their whole military in hours. So what is exactly the issue? So the real question is how much do we have to worry about the Russians? Look, look at what happened. Not much. They can't even defeat the Ukrainians. Never mind go up against a NATO force or an American military force. There again, there's nothing there. Even if they have hypersonics and we don't, we would crush them very, very quickly. So the only real challenge we have in the world right now is China. And China on every front, I think, is years behind the United States. It's Navy is years behind, particularly with the launch of our latest aircraft carriers, I think, in terms of its airplanes, it's years behind. The only real threat that China poses, I mean, put aside nuclear is in its missile ability. It has the capacity, missile capacity. And should we have invested in hypersonic when we didn't know the Chinese had it yet? Not clear. Our missiles are so much more accurate. We have so many more of them and we're just better at it than anybody else in the world. So you have to think about how to invest the money. Now that we've seen that the Chinese have developed real threats that are hypersonic, yes, we need to catch up. We need to have, like, the mutually assured thing. So I'm not sure, you know, that it was a mistake or we didn't invest enough. I generally think we invest way too much in the military. I think way too much of our budget is spent on the military. It's better than anything else that it's being spent on. But I think if you actually had a rational foreign policy, if you actually have a rational military policy, you could spend a lot less. You could basically develop our capacity to crush anybody quickly and thoroughly, whether using conventional or unconventional weapons, and do it all relatively cheaply. And I think we spend way too much money on complexity and creating things that are not necessary to win. The whole focus of military spending should be what is necessary to win quickly, effectively while destroying the enemy. That's all you should think about. China's decades behind in terms of the Navy, China's decades behind in terms of almost everything. It's missile technology is worrisome. And they probably have really, really good drones given that most of the drones you buy in the United States were made in China. But again, what probably I had on almost everything else, supposedly China is very, very advanced on AI. I believe it when I see it. And if I project 10, 20 years out in the future, China is going to deteriorate because of its authoritarianism, because of its clamp down on high tech and all of that. So I'm not that worried about America falling behind on these things. Richard says, I was at UVA school during the shooting last week. Wow. I'm glad you're safe. They ordered us to remain indoors shooting reported at 10.30pm. They did not catch the suspect until 12 hours later, about 11am next day. Is this police incompetence? I mean, I don't know. That's very hard to tell. You'd have to really study the case. I don't like to jump to conclusions about these things. Some things I feel like I have some expertise I certainly don't have when it comes to policing and I haven't read enough about the case to find out. So I don't know. Think about some of the cases in Canada. There have been two that in recent years, one where the guy slashed people. Brothers was brothers and it took them a long time to find the brothers and another one where they were shooting and it took them quite a while to find them and they shot them and they did the shootings in several different towns. It's not easy. You have to figure out what happened in real time. So I don't know. It could be, but it very much might not be. And I don't know that the police have the equipment and the skill set. I mean, that's an area where I don't think we invest enough. And I don't think what the police needs is bigger weapons. I think they need smarter stuff and I think they need better people. I think the police just don't have good people. It goes back to physical training. Just physically they need to be better, but it also goes back to the whole, you know, ability to just diagnose the crime scene and get it right. All right. Shazbot comes in and takes us over the limit. Please review Mass Season 8 Episode 19. Marlowe victory. Wow. I haven't seen Mass in years. All right. Happy to. Mass is a good show. Very, very anti-war, very, usually very smart. So I'm looking forward to reviewing that. Thanks, Shazbot. All right. Calib says, Chepek was slowly and criminally cutting off Kathleen Kennedy's control over the last year. Why is it so difficult for CEOs to make immediate necessary changes like this? It's just, you know, for a variety of reasons. First of all, it's just, it's difficult to analyze the situation and know what's necessary to do. It's difficult to figure out what the consequences are going to be to the company of taking dramatic actions and people, particularly big companies, create, you know, they create little fiefdoms, if you will. They get people, you know, corporations can become very political. And, you know, so by reducing somebody's power or getting rid of somebody's power, you can, you can often stir things up among other quarters. You know, so I think it's very, it's not easy, you know, big corporations to figure out what the problem is, how to fix it, and then have the courage and the audacity to fix it and do it quickly. And that takes skill. I mean, one of the things that people don't realize is how difficult it is to be a CEO, how challenging it is and how many CEOs actually fail. So the turnover among CEOs is very, very high because very, very few CEOs are good. And in spite of the notion that's out there that boards in the pocket of the CEO, boards are very quick to get rid of those CEOs that are lousy and fire them and good for them. That's exactly what they should be doing. All right, Jeffrey says you did this last year, and you summarize how shorting stocks works in practice. Where does the money come from when someone makes money on shorting? Yes, shorting 101, quick example. So let's say you, Jeffrey, own stock of game, you own some stock in game stock, stop. And you hold that stock at a brokerage. You have it at Charles Schwab. I want to short the stock. So I go to Charles Schwab and say, look, I'd like to borrow Jeffrey's stock for a while. I'll pay you interest on the borrowing. I'll pay you three percentage points, interest for the period I borrow the stock, and I borrow the stock. I literally take your stock and now it's mine, but I owe it to you. I owe you, let's say you have 100 shares. I owe you, Jeffrey, 100 shares of game stock. Then what I do is I go into the market and I sell that stock, and now I've got cash. And I can do whatever with the cash. I can go invest it. I can do other stuff, right? So I borrowed the stock from you. I sold it. Let's say I sold it at the very tough 450 bucks. Now, today I go back into the market and buy game stock stock. So I buy it for $25. So I sold it for 450. Now I buy it for 25 and I give it back to you, Jeffrey. And now you've got the stock and I spent $25, but I made 450 when I sold it. So I'm up $425 on the short that I did. So shorting is a matter of borrowing, selling, and then when you unwind the short, when you reverse the short, you buy the stock and return to the stock to Charles Schwab. You return the stock to whoever you borrowed it from. And the brokerage houses are set up to do this for you and it's part of how they make their money is from that interest that I pay them for the period where I hold the stock. And I noticed that shorting is very, very... God, today's show is going to be long again. I noticed that shorting stock is very, very risky because while I own this stock, imagine I sold it at 450, what if the stock goes now to 1,000? Now, if you want your stock back or if I have to give it back to you, then I have to buy it at 1,000 and give it back to you. I've just lost, I made an investment of 450 and I lost 550, but imagine if the stock goes to 10,000, I could lose on a $450 investment, I could lose many, many, many thousands of dollars. Whereas when I buy a stock, the worst thing that can happen to me is I lose the investment. Say if I buy GameStop, I get 453 and it goes bankrupt, I lost $450, right? But on a short, I can lose much, much more than I invested because it could keep going up and by the time I have to return the stock to you, I have to buy it at this unbelievably price. It once happened to me a long, long time ago, I shorted a stock at 40 and it went to 250. So I lost a lot more money, four or five times more money, four times more money than I actually invested in the stock. All right, hopefully that explains short-selling. Very, very risky strategy. That's why not everybody does it. That's why there's a lot less shorting than otherwise would be. I don't think there's a way around the fact that it's super, super risky. All right, Richard says, there is a poem I think you would like about genuine protest. I think the audience would like it too. What is the most efficient way to pay for you to read this on the show by multiple super chats or one big one? You can do one big one on maybe $100 on PayPal or on a super chat, however you want to do it, and then email it to me. So either do $100 on super chat or do $100 by PayPal. PayPal is better. PayPal takes less of my money than YouTube does, but either way is fine. Jennifer says, love these morning shows. You can't do too short because you know the importance of thoroughly explaining an issue. Thank you, Jennifer. I could explain fewer issues though, but I feel like it's only a few issues that I'm not... Anyway, I feel like I need to cover stuff. All right, quickly, the $5 questions. I heard a theory that the primary reason this is J.J.Jigby's. I heard the reason, the primary reason why Disney had remaking many of their classic movies is to renew their copyright on that material, plausible. Maybe, maybe, that's interesting. Spending a lot of money to do that, but interesting. I'll have to research that, but that is interesting. And I wonder what they're actually protecting. Does it really protect their copyright and how I'd have to think about that? I love poetry. Don't say poetry is not my thing. I mean, I don't read enough poetry, but I love... Actually, my real love is listening to poetry. I don't like to read it as much because I don't think I get, but I love a good actor citing poetry. Flows me. It's just brilliant. I love it. Michael, as do the American people want Bernie Sanders with a Trump attitude? No, the American people don't want socialism. They really don't. They want elements of it, but they don't want full-blown socialism. And Bernie almost has a Trump attitude. I think what they want is kind of, unfortunately, what they want is some combination of Trump and the national conservatives. I think what you need is somebody who is a fighter, but is articulate and principled. That's the real danger. And that, I think, will appeal to Americans, sadly. Michael says, if popular ideas in the culture come from intellectuals, why is racism so pervasive? The vast majority of intellectuals hate racism and let all constantly that race is a social construct. Look, racism is very popular among intellectuals on the left, and the racism, I think, on the right has always been around in kind of a subculture and has been, in a sense, legitimized and brought to the forward as a response to the intellectuals on the left who are racist, pro-minority racist, but still racist, because they evaluate people based on race. All right, Richard, last question. In Korea, citizens film crimes being committed and posted online. They're culture shames criminals. While they may come from a collectivist impulse, I can see an individualist case for this phenomenon. Yeah, I mean, you're seeing that in the United States as well. Certainly, you see that with the police, but yes, we should be... I mean, one of the great advantages of the phone is that you can now film crimes, and it's easier for the police to catch the criminals, and it's easier for us to also monitor the police when we see a police encounter with the civilian. You film it, and the police has to behave. So I think on all fronts, filming potential crime scenes, existing crime scenes, ongoing crime scenes, police-involved crime scenes is a good thing, and I think will make the world safer. Of course, in South Korea, there's almost no crime. It's unbelievable how low crime rates are. So there's not that much filming that's going on, because when you have almost zero crime... The same, by the way, is true in Japan. Almost no crime, almost zero. Particularly violent crime, but also property crime, almost zero. All right, everybody, thank you. I appreciate all of you being here. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. We've had over 100 live watches, but only 50 for thumbs up. It really helps with the algorithm. We want to expand the show. We want to get more subscribers. And the good news is, yesterday, in spite of doing a show on Donald Trump, we didn't lose subscribers. We actually gained subscribers. I don't think because of that show, but whatever impact that show had, it wasn't big enough, too. So we actually got an increase in subscribers yesterday, which was a good thing. So hopefully we'll get it the same today. But to do that, I need your help. I need you to share shows, and I need you to like the shows that exist. Those of you who would rather support me on a monthly basis, which is incredibly valued, partially because the monthly companies take less than you two, but also because it's regular and it's predictable, you can do it on Subscribestar, Patreon, locals, and you're on bookshow.com. I'll see you guys all tomorrow morning. We'll do another one of these probably earlier in the morning. This one will challenge you a little bit because it might be a little early, just because my midday is occupied tomorrow. So I'll see you all tomorrow morning. Bye, everybody.