 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow. Monday night, 8 p.m. here in Puerto Rico, 7 p.m. Eastern time. Hope everybody's off to a great week, I guess. All right, hope everybody is off to a great week and had a good weekend and everything is cool. And you've already watched my news roundup, and you're ready for maybe a later show today. So I figure we've talked a lot about war. We talked a lot about Trump. We've talked a lot about politics, immigration, borders, constitution, crises, problems, struggles. Enough, right? Let's talk about some movies. So this is a time, so I figured we'll do today's show, a positive show. We'll talk about movies. I love movies. I'll tell you why in a minute. And in particular, I want to talk today about movies that portray businessmen, that is, portrayal of businessmen in movies, and particularly positive portrayals, that unusual case. Positive portrayals of businessmen in movies. And I've got really examples from 2023. And 2023 was a very good year for businessmen in movies. There were a lot of movies about businessmen. There were a lot of movies about entrepreneurs in particular, or businessmen taking big initiatives. And they were generally positive. And some of them were pretty good movies. And I thought we'd talk about those. And this is inspired by an article by Scott Linsicum. He wrote this at the end of the year. And I was thinking of doing it as part of the year and summary. But so many things are going on. So many things are going on that I didn't do it at the end of the year. So I figured I'd do it now. But he had an article called A Great Year for Free Market Capitalism in Movies. And there's a sense in which this is true. These movies do illustrate that entrepreneurial initiative, that entrepreneurial passion that is so crucial for markets. And we had a lot of movies that did that this year, unusually so, very, very rare. Let's see. So we're going to go over that. At the end, I will also want to review two movies. I've got four movies left to review. So today we're going to do The Departed. I don't know if Goodman is on to hear it. But we're going to do The Departed. We're going to do Coherence. Coherence. I can't remember who asked for Coherence. We're Coherence and Departed. And then at some point, we'll do Centerville Woman in Brazil. Those are the two left, Centerville Woman in Brazil. Then I know I've got an album and various songs, including seven songs from one person to review. So I've got seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 songs and one album still to review. And I think I'm missing one. I think I'm missing one. So we'll see. We'll see. But anyway, OK, so when I finish the movies, I'll start doing the songs. And we'll do a couple of songs of each show or something. And hopefully, we'll get it all done by the end of February. All right. Let's see. So yeah, I want to say a few things about movies, generally. Before that, I want to ask you guys to think about movies about business that you like or dislike. So put them in the chat. It's better if you put them in the super chat because then they get saved and I can see them. Like right now, I can see a few. But we've got Pretty Woman. So put them in the chat. I'll tell you what Pretty Woman is. It's not exactly a pro-business movie. But I mean, there are very few pro-business movies. Put them in the chat or, again, ideally, put it in the super chat kind of framing. And in that way, I won't miss it. You can just use $2 or something to put it in a super chat as if it's a question. And that way, we'll preserve it and hold it. See, you're not doing it. You're still just listing it in the chat. And I'm going to lose it because as the chat goes up, I can't see all the old ones. But the super chats get captured separately. So I don't lose those. Anyway, it's a way to support the show. And it's a way to have your movie out there. And you can do it with a small amount. And that way, we'll get all the movies there. Frank continues. So we're going to do that. First, about movies. Obviously, everybody loves movies. But I want you to think for a minute about movies as more than just entertainment, which most movies, unfortunately, are just entertainment, but the possibilities of movies as art and the scope of such art, the potential for such art. Movies are the most complex of all art forms. They entail the most integration of any other art form because they basically integrate a bunch of others. They basically integrate a bunch of different arts into one aesthetic experience. It used to be, I think, before movies, opera was probably the most complex of all art forms. It had singing, music, theater, set design, acting, and, of course, story. But there's a way in which movies take that one notch higher. You have all the same things, acting. You have music. You don't have singing, but you have music. And you've got a story. You've got dialogue. You've got cinematography. You've got all the other technical aspects, special effects and makeup and the clothing and, again, set design. There is just so many different things that go into the production of a movie. And somebody has to integrate this all. It takes a real mind. It takes a real brilliant person to be able to integrate it all into something that conveys powerful emotion, a real message that makes you interested, that makes you care. And it takes you to another world for 90 minutes or 180 minutes and allows you to be absorbed in another world and provide you with certain values. I don't know. My watch decided I've gone on a walk. I have no idea why. So it's a magnificent canvas for really great directors. It really is a magnificent canvas in terms of what one can integrate and the kind of storytelling one can do. And in many respects, I think we haven't really even touched the potential of movie makers. Because while we've had great novelists, I know Victor Hugo Dasteevsky, we've had great opera composers, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, we've had great painters and sculptors. And every art form has had its world class unmitigated beyond great. I'm not even sure we've had yet a great director in the false sense of understanding the entire scope of what movies can do, the impact movies can have, the kind of stories they can tell. I know I've called movies predominantly a visual medium. How many directors, movie directors, actually view it as a visual medium where they can use the visual, the picture, the moving picture as the storyteller. Directors either tend to rely on dialogue or other aspects of the storyline. But to really use the visual as a storytelling machine, as a storytelling medium, is rare. There are some directors who have done it. And I think some directors are very good at it. And Hitchcock was very good at it. I think Fritz Lang and his German, original German movies was very good at it. I think that, oh, God, I can't remember the guy's name, director from who's done movies in the 70s and the 2000s, but nothing in between whose name escapes me. Kurosawa, the Japanese director was very good at it. There are directors who are very, very good at drawing you in. Terence Malick, thank you, Terence Malick, was very good. Igmar Bergman was very good at it, although the stories he told were horrible and ultimately boring. Osin Welles, to some extent, Terence Malick, though, is a master of it. And again, Kurosawa, Kubrick sometimes achieved that, sometimes, not always, very inconsistent, very inconsistent. So the potential in moviemaking is immense. I also want to warn against something, given the complexity of movies, and I think the aesthetic power that movies have. I think the challenges for most people is it's very difficult to be objective about movies. You get emotional and carried away to really evaluate a movie aesthetically. You have to watch it more than once. And even then, think about how much you need to know in terms of the movies. You need to know something about acting. Can you tell if acting is good or not? You need to know something about storytelling, about analyzing a plot, or lack of a plot as some movies don't have a plot. You need to know something about the integration of music and a plot and whether it works or it doesn't. You need to know about how well the storyline, the music, and then the cinematography, which is the most important in a sense, because that is what is the main medium by which cinema communicates with us is the cinematography. Is cinematography? How much do we know about that? And I find that there's almost nobody who is good in all those things, who knows enough about movies to say that is a good movie, aesthetically a good movie. I mean, Frank, you're just listing directors. They're all decent directors. But none of them are great visualists. None of them are really good to the extent that I know. I mean, I like Norman Drewson. I like King Vito. But none of them are great when it comes to actually using the visual to convey a story. So just listing directors doesn't give us anything. OK, so what I want to warn you against is when you see a movie you enjoy, you don't enjoy, you like, you don't like, you can analyze certain aspects of it. But be wary of this idea of, oh, that's a great movie. Like, good, great, or awful movies, aesthetically, require aesthetic judgment. And you need to think about whether you have the knowledge to convey aesthetic judgment. Do you know enough about the medium? It takes learning. It takes studying the medium. This is why movie critics, such a profession, make sense that it exists. Not that I'm saying the movie critics are any good. But they should be movie critics. Because what they want to do, what you want to do is have people who are experts in the aesthetic of these things to be able to tell us what is good and what is not. Doesn't mean you'll enjoy the good. And that's the thing which you want to be able to do is separate your enjoyment of a movie from the aesthetic quality of a movie. Your enjoyment of a movie from the aesthetic quality of a movie. You can't judge the aesthetics of a movie without an expert. You can judge whether you like it or not. You can judge whether you thought it was convincing, whether it evoked emotion in you. In terms of judging its aesthetic value, you can't. You can pretend. You can pretend. You can put on an act for yourself. That's great. But you need expertise, just like I don't think many people have the ability to judge the aesthetic quality of a novel. I can read a novel and say I enjoyed it. I did enjoy it. But is it a great novel or not? Is it a really, really good novel? I don't know. I'm not qualified to judge. I'm not an expert in literature. I know people who are. I am not. Can I really judge a movie? No, better than most people. But no, just because I've seen more movies than most people, more varied movies than most people. But no, I don't think I'm qualified to judge the aesthetic quality of a movie. I can tell you what I like. I can tell you what I like. All right, an individual is not qualified. You're only qualified to be able to tell you what worked for you, your subjective response to it. To be objective about it, most of us don't know enough about movies. Same is true, by the way. Same is true in a painting. I'm not going against my thought process. Most of you don't know economics. You might think you do. You might have read a few economics books and you think you know economics. But you know, you need an expert to really understand what's going on in the economy. You need an expert. Experts might be bad, and then you don't need them. But to really understand it, you need a good expert. To judge a painting, is a painting great or is a painting enjoyable or is a painting mediocre? Most of you can't tell. I mean, the reality is that I could put a Leonardo da Vinci on the wall and a third-rate Renaissance painter and his painting next to it. And 95%, maybe 98% of people wouldn't know the difference. I can play you a symphony from Beethoven. I can play you a symphony from a second-rate romantic or classical music composer. And you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two. And yet, one is a work of genius and one is not. And for most people, they cannot tell the difference, not just on hearing it. You actually need experts in aesthetics. And aesthetics requires expertise, just like any other field of human endeavor. The idea that you just know because you feel it, you have to know something about it. Yeah, Tasey says, sure, you need expertise in economics, but not in movies. You don't need to be. Of course, you need expertise in movies. All right, anyway, it's very difficult to separate the subjective experience of a movie or the individualized experience of a movie from an objective aesthetic assessment of a movie. Those are two different things. Scott's such an idiot. Sorry. Sometimes he says things in the chat that are just so off context, oriented always towards his left versus right politics, even when you're talking about art aesthetics. And you just can't let that part of his brain, it cannot slow down. It cannot stop. So everything, oh, experts, lockdowns. I feel sorry for Scott because I don't know how you live in such a brain with such a mind. It's not a fun thing, not a fun thing. All right, so that's my view of movies. You do with that, whatever you want. Of course, this part isn't. Otherwise, you wouldn't have come up with it. It's interesting that people cannot accept expertise when something, they were emotionally attached to it. But I can show you that some movies that you probably really, really love are bad art. They're bad art. You might not care, and that's fine. I can show you, I bet you, that a lot of paintings you like are bad art. Everybody can be an expert these days. Doesn't mean they are an expert, right? Just because somebody declares themselves an expert doesn't make them one. All right, so let's jump in. 2023 was a particularly good movie for movies about entrepreneurs. I think the best of the bunch, or maybe the most interesting of the bunch, if we're not making aesthetic assessments of these movies, my favorite of the bunch was air, the story about how Nike signed Michael Jordan to a shoe contract. I don't think it's a particularly good movie. I don't think it's aesthetically a great movie, but it was a fun story. It was a fun story about a marketing guy a sales guy, figuring out how to sign Michael Jordan and by doing it, inventing a completely new kind of approach to marketing a shoe. It showed the marketing guy as aggressive, as really innovative. He's a salesman. He comes up with amazing ways to sell the story primarily to Michael Jordan's mother. The movie is fun. It's exciting. You're kind of in suspense, even though you kind of know that he's going to sign him, in suspense about how to do it. By the way, my case before about movies was not to say that you should trust me about movies. I'm not an aesthetic expert about movies. And all I'm going to tell you is movies I liked and what I liked about them. I am not going to tell you what I think. I'm against what I think about the aesthetic value of a movie, but I'm no expert. And therefore, take it for what it's worth. But I will stick by the idea a movie I like could be a very bad movie. I could enjoy the movie for a variety of different reasons, but aesthetically, it could be a bad movie. A movie I dislike that I don't enjoy could be a very, very good movie. I don't like Tolstoy. He's a great author, great author aesthetically. Nobody's asking you to rely on my aesthetic judgment about movies or my individual response to movies. You have to make up your mind. I'm just giving you what I like. Don't do with it as you will. Anyway, fun movie. You see how the world works. And you get a sense of how business works. You get a sense of how Nike works. But most importantly, what you get is that entrepreneurial spirit of the guy who's going to sell this shoe in spite of all the odds. Remember, Nike at the time was a pretty insignificant company. It was way behind Adidas and some other shoe that I can't remember. And this sale, the linking up of Michael Jordan with Nike and Nike Air, changes the dynamic of Nike completely and becomes, of course, a major company converse is the alternative. And of course, Nike today is much bigger than converse because of one sales guy who identified an opportunity. And this is what should motivate you. And this is what's inspiring about the movie. Finds one opportunity, figures out a creative, original, slightly breaking the rules, slightly breaking the rules. And he goes for it. And he succeeds. And as a consequence of his success, Nike is what it is. I don't particularly like the way they portray Phil Knight. Phil Knight is the founder of Nike. It's played by Ben Affleck, is the actor that plays Phil Knight. I don't like the way Phil Knight is portrayed. He's portrayed a little weird, a little strange. And I really don't like it. So the other aspects of Air that were really cool is it's just this idea that somebody like Michael Jordan can create, in a sense, a whole industry. Create a whole industry, which is truly extraordinary. So I enjoyed it. The story is a great story. Again, the movie, from an aesthetic perspective, is probably just mediocre at best. But it's a good story. It's a good story. And it's a story I didn't know. And it's an inspiring story. And it's a fun story. And I think you'll walk out of the movie smiling and having had a good time. Again, aesthetic. All right, so that is it. The other movie I really enjoyed this year was Tetris, last year that is, 2023. Tetris was a wacky movie. Because to some extent, the story of Tetris is completely insane. Tetris is the video game. I don't know how much you know about the story. And I don't want to give it all away. But basically, Tetris was invented by a guy in the Soviet Union. Tetris was invented by a guy in the Soviet Union. And it was kind of brought into the West. And people picked it up. And it became kind of this amazing game that people got addicted to it. But there was no distributor of it. Nobody, it wasn't clear who had the rights to it. It was in a very difficult position because the inventor and the quote, the rights owner, the rights and Soviet Union, right, the rights owner is the Soviet Union. What do you do with that? And again, this is about an entrepreneur that sees Tetris at one of these trade shows and decides he's going to go for it. And he goes to Soviet Union and he finds the guy who made it and he tries to deal with the bureaucrats to try to buy the rights to it. And he teams up with a Japanese company. So you've got with Nintendo, right? So you've got this, an American basically who lives, I think, in Tokyo, Hong Kong. And going to the Soviet Union, trying to buy this, but is leasing it out to a Japanese company. And in the background, he is competing against Maxwell. You know, the famous English-British businessman who died mysteriously on his yacht. His daughter, of course, was Jeffrey Epstein's, what do you want to call her, accomplice, right? So Maxwell, her father, was a media giant, but he was trying to buy Tetris. So you've got these, Robert Maxwell, so you've got these two competing forces trying to buy Tetris, dealing with the Soviet, dealing with the KGB, dealing with the whole bureaucracy, the insanity of the USSR, and ultimately, succeeding in getting Tetris to the West. And of course, I don't know if you know the history of gaming, but Tetris is like a massive success. The show was on Apple TV, so I think it was bought out by Apple. I just found it, again, not a great movie, aesthetically. You know, just OK. It is a fun movie. It's fast-paced. They're kind of these chase scenes in the Soviet Union. It's got comedic elements. It makes fun of the bureaucrats. It shows what happens when there's no clear definition of what property rights are. So it's got a very good theme in terms of property rights. It shows the better people in the Soviet Union, that there were better people in the Soviet Union, the bad guys in the Soviet Union. And again, it shows what an entrepreneur with a vision, an unbelievable determination, and a willingness to go all the way and all out in order to achieve their aim, it shows what such a human being can do and what they can achieve. Oh, we've got somebody whose name is Classic Tetris Monthly. Thank you. Thank you, Classic Tetris Monthly. You just made this first super chat ever. So I appreciate that. The Soviet Union fails. The KGB fails. But it's worth watching. Of course, the entrepreneur has a family and has no money, and they're struggling, and he's risking everything he has. He's mortgaging his home. He's mortgaging everything. That is a Vandy. That's Vandy's account. That is kind of the, that is what it takes to be successful. Being willing to put it out on the line and to really go for it and to think out of the box and dedicate yourself to winning. And the Tetris guys and the Air Sales guy, they do it. They do it. And as a consequence, they are successful, and they win. So it's very much like sports. All right, final movie, positive movie, came out in 2023 about business, and then I'll talk about a couple of others. Was Blackberry? I don't know how many of you saw Blackberry. Now, I don't particularly like the style of Blackberry, the way it was shot, the way it was done. It has the camera work of the office, which I did not like. I never liked it. It's got a certain naturalistic tendency of the way the camera is, the movement, the eye level. I don't like, I never liked the office. I never liked the way it was filmed. And I don't like the way Blackberry is filmed. But Blackberry is definitely worth seeing. I think mostly, because the story of Blackberry is a fascinating story. Again, it takes the chutzpah and the determination and the aggressiveness of the founders, of the two founders, Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fragan. It takes particularly one of the enthusiasm and dedication to the project. And then they bring in this sales guy, a CEO, this guy who can really sell and build something. Jim Belsai Silly. I can't pronounce these names. Anyway, but a really interesting story. I don't know how many of you had Blackberries. I had a Blackberry. I loved my Blackberry. I love my Blackberry. Not quite as much as I love my iPhone, never that much. But I really, really, really liked my Blackberry. It was a great phone, email, text. It was the first product that you could really comfortably write emails on. And it was pre-iPhone. And it was, by far, the best communication device. And it was incredibly successful. The rise and fall of Blackberry, a really interesting story. They were interesting primarily because Blackberry had a phenomenal product, a great product, and then a product came in and beat them to it, the iPhone. And they somewhat evaded the success of the iPhone. They rejected the iPhone. They rejected the concept of the iPhone. And by the time they tried to catch up, it was too late. So it's an excellent, excellent, I had a Palm Pilot. I had all of those, right? But it's an excellent movie showing that what it takes to succeed, that determination, that entrepreneurial spirit. And then what happens? What happens if you evade just even a little bit, if you pretend that something doesn't exist when it does exist, even a little bit? It crashes, right? Your company crashes. You lose everything. It's gone. The movie attributes the downfall of the Blackberry really to the SEC going after them. But it really was the free market. It really was the iPhone that led to Blackberry's demise. It's a great story of entrepreneurial success followed by tragedy. And it's definitely worth watching. You'll learn a lot. I didn't know the story of Blackberry even as a user and as somebody who loved the product. I didn't know the full story of it. So it was fun. It's a bunch of Canadians. That's fun. But yeah, highly recommended Blackberry. If you're interested in business, if you're interested in entrepreneurship, I would say Blackberry, Air, and Tetris are movies definitely worth watching. They're enjoyable. Again, none of them are great movies, in my view, aesthetically, but they're enjoyable movies. Other movies that came out this year that had a business-related angle, The Beanie Bubble, I didn't watch that. It looked like it was, I mean, The Beanie Bubble, Beanie Baby, Beanie Bubble, Craze, the whole thing was stupid. So I'm not that interested in it. And then, of course, the movie really concentrates on the downside of business, the greed as they view it. Flaming Hot is another one of these movies. This one is about the creation of Spicy Cheetos by Fiddle Lay, and it's created by an immigrant, Richard Montanz. I wasn't interested. I might watch it at some point, but I find it hard to believe that it's a particularly good movie. But it would be, maybe it's a fun movie. Some of you maybe have watched it. I think Ian says it was fun. Flaming Hot is another movie. That's very unusual. Five movies, five movies to come out in one year, the deal in business in at least a somewhat positive way, very, very, very unusual. All right, so those are the movies from 2023. Let me now, oh, there was also Dumb Money. That's right, there was also Dumb Money. I didn't do that because it's a movie that looks like, I haven't seen it yet, but it looks like it views the dumb money, the idiots, the GameStop idiots as the good guys and the short sellers, the hedge fund guys as the bad guys. So I'm reluctant to watch it because it'll just make me angry. As you know, I did a lengthy episode of The Iran Book Show on the whole GameStop phenomena. And I think I did more than one and how absurd and nihilistic and ridiculous it was. But yeah, so I might watch it. I don't know, Skyliff, you see it and you like it. Let me know. Maybe then I will watch it. But as it stands right now, probably not. I don't need another movie that tells me how corrupt financing is. All right, so let's look at some movies historically that have portrayed businessmen positively. And some of the better movies that have done that. So and I'm eager to see if you guys have any proposals for movies you liked that were positive portrayals of businessmen, positive portrayals of the process of business. And you can do that in a super chat. Just list the movies in a super chat. That is the best way. Ian says Tetris, the founder. So the founder, the founder's an interesting movie, 2016. I enjoyed it. It's about the founding of McDonald's. I thought it was very good. Interesting how historically accurate it is and it's unfortunate that end of the movie. It kind of presents the founder, the guy who actually created McDonald's, as I don't know. It doesn't seem like he's that happy with his life, in spite of the immense success. But I do think the founder is worth watching. And again, it shows what it takes. It's inspiring, even if it has some negatives. It's inspiring in showing us what it takes. Isn't it interesting that almost all the movies that are good on business are biographies, are movies that take real people? Because isn't it interesting that it's so hard for scriptwriters, for novelists, for people who write for a living to write a great story about a successful businessman? They could take an existing businessman and make a decent movie from it, but to actually take to write an original story very hard. So the founder is pretty good, but again, an existing businessman. OK, some ones that are not that are fiction, that are actually fiction. Let's see, we did a Tetris to founder, that was Ian. Thank you, Ian. One of my favorite all time, one of my favorite all time. Oh, by the way, one other movie. I forgot to mention about 2023, which I haven't seen yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing, because it came out right at the end of the year. I think it came out right at the end of the year for Oscar consideration. And that's Ferrari. Ferrari by Michael Mann. It looks terrific. It's about what it took to establish Ferrari. It's about what it took to get to raise the capital, to build out the Ferrari company. It's about NCO Ferrari. I'm really, really, really looking forward to it. It sounds good. So that also came out in 2023. So you've got six movies. Six movies, right? Reminder to people, if you want to list your movies, do it in the super chat. That way I can see it. It's saved in the chat. It all disappears and goes away. Also, reminder to everybody these shows are funded through the support of people like you, funded by your contributions, your support. You can do so monthly in Patreon or you're on bookshow.com slash membership. And you can do that PayPal or Patreon. And you can do it in super chat if you're watching live. We have a goal for these shows. We have to raise a certain amount of money every month in order to keep the show going. So please consider supporting the show through the super chat. Yeah, that's a good one, Gail. Chocolat. Chocolat is a great little movie. I mean, it's not about really a particularly ambitious, big scale business project, but it is about this woman who starts a chocolate shop and kind of the magic of chocolate. The beauty of providing, trading with the community, something beautiful, something tasty, something amazing. Chocolat is, I think, an exceptional movie, I think. And aesthetically, it is a gorgeous movie. It's beautifully shot. It's beautifully made. I think, again, my limited knowledge of the aesthetics of movies. I think it is a Ferrari, Ferrari. I'm reading somebody's question. I think it is beautifully acted and an amazing story. So I'm a huge fan of Chocolat. Chocolat, right? Jason says, sorry, Ferrari has the same problems. Up and high end, Napoleon, watch it and tell us. I will watch it and tell you, right? Let's see what else. Frank says the founder, we talked about that, Moneyball. Yeah, Moneyball is a good movie. Again, enjoyable movie about the introduction of statistics and statistical analysis into baseball, its introduction of data into business. I think it's a nice presentation of the business of sports. Flash of genius, I've never seen. Joy, Joy is a lot of fun. Joy is a lot of fun. Joy is about a woman with a family struggling to make its meat. And she basically comes up with a revolutionary product called Miracle Mop. Miracle Mop. And she basically changes the world. And she turns it into this massive product. Again, a true story. 2015, Miracle Mop, I encourage you to watch it. And yeah, so Joy, that's a good one. That's a good one about somebody coming up from nowhere and succeeding in business and achieving something. Right, what else do we have? Yeah, Ian says, TV shows, Gilded Age. Yeah, I enjoy a lot of it. There's certain things that undercut it, particularly certain things about the railroad guy, where he's cutting corners knowingly and doesn't care. But yeah, the Gilded Age is good. It's just it's not convinced it really wants to be positive. Halt and catch fire, a lot of it is good. Some of it is just depressing. It deals too much with the failure and they're all unhappy at the end, which is unfortunate. For all mankind, I haven't seen that. But they're all interesting. I particularly liked Halt and Catch Fire. I thought primarily because I lived through that period in tech. I think anybody in tech industry would like it. It's got a great, great theme. Let's see if any of the $20 questions have this. All right, we'll talk about that in a minute. Yeah, Stephen says, Executive Suite, 1954, starring William Holden was great in my opinion. Yes, I mean, in my view, Executive Suite is maybe the best movie about business. It's an exceptional movie. It's a boardroom drama. The movie starts with the CEO of a company dropping dead. And then it's about the different considerations of who is going to be the next CEO. And it's all about the board getting together and deciding and arguing and trying to figure out who the next CEO is going to be. Highly, highly, highly recommend Executive Suite. It's truly a wonderful movie with William Holden. Another one of my... Executive Suite is definitely one of my favorites. And again, very, very well made. The whole cast, not just William Holden. Everybody in the cast is famous actors and excellent acting. Let's see. Another one of my favorites, you probably all know this already because I've talked about in the past, is Other People's Money, 1991 with Danny DeVito and Gregory Peck. The best movie ever made about finance. Some of the best speeches ever made in a movie about economics and about finance. So I think Other People's Money is exceptional. Exceptional. That is the one with Danny DeVito. Oh, and Adriana says to Huck's Hutzucker proxy. God, I completely forgot about the Hutzucker proxy. It's a Corn Brothers movie. I haven't seen it in years. But I remember really enjoying that movie. It's kind of a little crazy, funny, super entertaining, really good sense of life. And it's about business and it's about success. So thank you, Adrian, for reminding me of that one. That's good. Hutzucker proxy. If you like Corn Brothers, definitely see that. That is good. It's funny. And it's benevolent, very benevolent. All right. What else do we have here in terms of some of my favorites? We said executive, other people, Sabrina. Sabrina is another movie from the 1950s, which has, oh, God, I can see her face. I can't think of her name. And is it Audrey Hepburn? Audrey Hepburn? No. Anyway, Humphie Bogart. It's got Humphie Bogart in it. It's also about a businessman and a positive portrayal of a businessman. What can go from 1988? Not a great movie with Melanie Griffin, one of my favorite lines in a movie related to business. She's sitting at a bar talking to, what's his name? Hutzucker. Anyway, the lead, it's Audrey Hepburn. She's talking to the lead and she says, I've got a mind for business, Haverson Ford. Thank you, Ian. She's talking to Haverson Ford and she says, I've got a mind for business and a bard for sin. And Melanie Griffin pulls that line off better than I can, obviously. It's a movie about takeovers and the value of takeovers. But it's very, very good with Haverson Ford and Sabina, I would say the old one, not the new one. It's Haverson Ford and Melanie Griffin. The aviator about Howard Hughes is a fascinating movie. Of course, Howard Hughes goes crazy. So it's a tough one, but it is a fascinating movie. And it does show at least the young Howard Hughes in a positive way. The social network about the creation of Facebook is interesting, if nothing else, definitely recommend watching it just out of interest. Again, not a great movie, but an interesting movie and an interesting story, particularly if you know a little bit of the characters and what's going on, particularly given the context of today. Jeremy Maguire was a fun movie about the business of sports, romantic and fun just in terms of the business. Another really good movie about businessman that I loved. It's got a certain, it's mixed in some respects, but I love this movie. It was Tucker, the man in the machine. It's one of my favorite Friends of Ford Coppola movies. It's very out of character for Friends of Ford Coppola. But Tucker, the man in machine 1988 is, again, based on a true story, is excellent and a lot of fun and very, very fast, very, very fast. In some sense sad, but quite fast. Pretty woman, you know, I don't particularly like it in the sense that even as a business movie, by the end he's softened by hope. If a woman suffers, if he doesn't do a hostile takeover, he only does takeovers that create value as if hostile takeovers don't. Those kind of things make me angry. Anyway, a most violent year. I highly recommended it a while back. I still highly recommend it. It's not about one of those go get your entrepreneurs. It's about a business owner that values his business, but values his integrity and is willing to defend his business with integrity and it's a beautiful movie in that sense. And there are other movies. The pursuit of happiness is very good and others. So Baby Boom. Baby Boom also in 1980s, 1987 about a woman who retires from Wall Street and it starts a baby food company and does very, very well. It's a little bit of too much of a slam on Wall Street. So, you know, that I didn't like about it, but it had some positive elements. Anyway, there are movies out there that are good on business. So I encourage you guys to check them, check them out. All right, I do owe two movie reviews. We've got the departed and coherence. Let's do coherence first. And then we will go to the super chats. So that is the order. I'm going to do these two reviews and go to super chat. Okay, coherence is a weird movie. It's a sci-fi movie. It's a movie about, what would you call it, the multiverse. It's a movie that has a group of friends getting together for dinner in north of San Francisco, I think, in Marin County. And they're in the neighborhood and they're having dinner. And a meteor is coming very, very close to Earth and it's having some crazy effects on Earth. And the effect, it turns out, and I don't want to give the whole movie away, but it turns out that the effect is, in a sense, to create a multiverse, to create all these different... So the one timeline of these people is not split into who knows how many, right, infinite number of them. And in this moment, you can travel between them. So same group of friends is having dinner in all these houses in the neighborhood. And they start moving from house to house and they keep thinking they're going back to the original. But there is no original. They don't know what the original is. And different people in this dinner party respond to this differently. And in different timelines are responding to this differently. And it just shows you how this is going to take off in all kinds of directions. And you get, you know, I guess this was written by David Doge, right? But you know, it's a real, the multiverse, it's a real illustration of how the multiverse would work. At every instant, there is an infinite number of possibilities in terms of the kind of decisions people will make. And they put every point times splinters into multiple universes in which those different decisions are being made. So the movie illustrates that. It lives through that. And it's kind of a mystery because in the beginning, you don't know what's going on and you kind of slowly unpack it and you slowly realize what's going on and how much is going on. At the end, I think that one of the dinner party members who you're following most of the movie, realizes this is what's going on. She can't find her way back to the original setting, but it doesn't matter. She settles in on one of the others and just lets it ride in a sense. It ends kind of without really resolution. I didn't particularly like it. I don't like movies like this that have kind of a multiverse or have time travel or have things that I don't think are metaphysically possible. And as a consequence, create distinct contradictions and therefore unresolved contradictions by definition are unresolved. So the situations that cannot be resolved and leave you just up in the air and you don't know what happened and you don't know what could happen. And if they do try to close it all up, right? If they do try to close it all up, then all falls apart because it's filled with contradictions. So while it's interesting and for a while it holds your attention because you don't exactly know what's going on and why the things that are happening are happening, I found it in the end disappointing and ultimately adding up to nothing, not really adding up to anything interesting, not adding up to anything of substance. So yeah, I mean, again, interesting, but I didn't particularly enjoy it and I felt empty at the end of it. It leaves you empty in exact opposite of what some of these other movies leave you energized. So that is a coherence. The Departed is indeed a fascinating movie. The Departed is a Martin Scorsese movie. It's got all the Martin Scorsese features, the grittiness, the violence, the kind of underworld Scorsese, of course, loves dealing with the mafia and the kind of the underworld generally. The...what else did I... Yeah, so The Departed is I think a sophisticated story. It has basically some of the top actors of the time acting in The Departed, whether it's Jack Nicholson, who I love to watch, I love Jack Nicholson's acting. He's not a subtle actor. I don't particularly like subtle actors. He is in your face. He is fully expressive. He is out there and I really, really enjoy, you know, really, really enjoy the Jack Nicholson's acting. It also has, of course, Mark Wallenberg. It has...oh, God. I need to bring this up because my memory for names, of course, is pathetic. It has pretty much a string of actors. Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Bobo, Martin Sheen. You know, pretty amazing to get all those actors together in one movie. Is Ben Affleck in the movie? I can't remember if Ben Affleck is a movie, but Matt Damon's definitely in the movie. I think Affleck is in the movie, right? He's one of the...one of the people in the...or maybe not. I don't know. No, he's not in the movie. I don't see him. So the movie is, again, is exciting. It's very dramatic. It basically has a clever, very clever premise. The premise is that the cops have somebody underground in the mafia, Jack Nicholson plays a mafia boss. The cops have somebody planted with the mafia. The mafia has somebody planted with the cops. So Leonardo DiCaprio plays a cop who's planted in with the mafia. And Matt Damon plays a mafioso who's gone through the whole police academy and everything and he's planted with the cops. And the movie is basically how all of that gets resolved. The cops are trying to get Jack Nicholson. They're also trying to...they've also discovered they've got a mole. They're trying to figure out who the mole is. The mafia is trying to do what mafias do, but they also have discovered there's a mole within their crew and they're trying to catch that mole. So it's a constant kind of battle between the mafia and the police and everybody one-upping in trying to... And when are they...when is the mole and the... You know, the two moles in a sense. When are they going to meet each other face to face? So it's exciting. It's...the story is intricate. It's involved. The two moles, one for the cops and one for the bad guys, both land up falling in love with the same woman. And so...but they don't know it. They don't know it. And she doesn't know it until kind of the end. And anyway, it's...you know, it's an exciting show. It's smart. It doesn't really in the end have a point, right? So it's one of these movies where you go, this is kind of cool and you enjoy watching the actors and you're kind of enjoying the story and you're enjoying how it all adds up and finishes up. But at the end you go, and the point is there really isn't one. It doesn't really add up to saying anything about the world except if you want, what it's saying about the world is everybody's corrupt. Almost everybody's corrupt a bill. You know, heroes are sacrificed. There's no winners, losers. It turns out part of the way through the movie that the Jack Nicholson character is actually informing to the FBI. So you've got a mafia boss that the police are trying to catch informing to the FBI while there are cops in his crew informing about him and he has somebody in the cops informing about them. And the theme of the movie of this is one. The theme of the movie is can't trust anybody. Everybody, anybody can be is double faced. It's all about being double faced and everybody in the movie is basically double faced. So in that sense, it's a depressing negative perspective and reflection on human life, on human beings. But that's typical of Scorsese, right? Scorsese doesn't do movies about good guys. He doesn't do movies that are inspiring. He doesn't do good movies with positive themes. His themes are always negative about human nature. Starting with Taxi Driver, like the movie that made him which was very, very negative about humanity. And I think that part of it is just another way another way in which he is conveying this idea that human beings are deceptive. They're bad. They're double faced. They're backstabbers. They're not good people. Even the good guys in the end are sellouts, right? There are a few people, some of the cops are good guys. But it's rare. It's unusual. And they're not the central focus of the movie. All right, let's see. Dave asked me to review this movie. I don't know if you're on Dave, if you're on the chat. I'm curious to see what you think. He says, in The Departed, the honest undercover cop was impoverished and miserable, while the mafia infiltrator in the state police was slick and charming and affluent. The exact inversion of how things work in real life. Yeah, but more than that, right? They end up with the same fate, right? The same fate inflicts both of them. But yes, the undercover cop is torn, is having a really hard time, is miserable. And the cop is slick and fanciful. It reminds me of my favorite movie that does that, kind of juxtaposition, the two good movies. One is Face Off with John Travolta and Nicholas Cage. And the other is Heat with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. And in those cases, it's exactly that. The good guy is miserable. The bad guy is having all the fun, is the successful one. The good guy is the one who suffers. The good guy is the one who benefits. Val Kilmer is in Heat, that's right, with Robert De Niro. But the focus is Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. Those are the two characters that matter. Anyway, The Departed is just a continuation of that and just a continuation of a very, very negative view that Scorsese has about human nature and human beings. But yes, virtue leads to suffering. Vice leads to at least having fun for a little while. Shaz Wadda asks, does Kiki's delivery service qualify as a positive representation of entrepreneurial spirit? Sure, it's a kid's movie. For children, it's only us. Partially it's a kid's movie because she's a kid, but she is an entrepreneur and she goes into business and she does it. There's even an aspect of that in the, what is it, the weathering something that I reviewed the other day because she goes into the business of bringing out the sunshine and she makes money off of that and that's perceived as a positive thing. So these Japanese movies for kids seem to have a positive view of engaging in trade, engaging in business. All right. I think that's it. I think of those are the two movies that I still owed so now I have two more movies, Center for a Woman in Brazil and I have a bunch of songs, 11, 12, 13 songs to do. I hope you enjoyed the discussion of the movies. I'm sure there's one of the things I wanted to mention. I watched Super Pumped. Super Pumped, which is the movie about Uber. Really interesting. Again, I think it has a tinge of hatred for business and Calanicus, it wasn't a particularly good guy I think generally but in the movie is portrayed as a real joke but it also shows what you need to do in order to be successful and the kind of things he did and some of the criticism he got even by the movie makers in a sense by how he's portrayed is about things that he did that were good like really break the regulations, really overcome the regulatory barriers that were placed in front of him. If you're interested in entrepreneurship, if you're interested in movies about entrepreneurs, Super Pumped is a TV series, I'm not sure where but on one of the streaming channels, you can watch it, I think on Netflix, Super Pumped, The Battle for Uber. At the end of the day I really enjoyed it. I also showed the boardroom drama of trying to get rid of Calanic and what revolved around that, so Super Pumped. Another TV series that I watched recently that I really enjoyed, I mean really enjoyed and I just don't think there's anything bad about it. It was just a good TV show and called Chemistry Lesson on Apple TV and it has definitely feminist elements to it but in a positive way. It's about a woman who's trying to break into chemistry and the men don't take her seriously in a lab and she falls in love and what happens. Lessons in chemistry, Vandy thank you, Lessons in Chemistry. Lessons in Chemistry is really good. It's a fun TV show about a woman who is committed to making something of her life and achieving something her in her life and succeeding in life. And so I highly recommend it. It's also a lot of fun and just good people. Good people, very benevolent. Very benevolent, very... Yeah, I enjoyed it. Queen's Gambit was really good and Queen's Gambit of course is about chess, not about business. Alright, oops, I don't want to do that. Alright, let's go to the super chat. Alright, thank you guys. We're about halfway to where we need to be. So if you're willing to ask a $20 question, a $50 question, a $100 question, a $500 question, looking for those kind of questions on anything. It doesn't have to be about movies. It doesn't have to be about aesthetics. It doesn't have to be about something positive. You can also just support the show. There are 100 people watching right now. Just $2.99 would get us to where we need to go, right? Everybody just did $2.99 right now. We'd get there and you can do that as a sticker. Just do a sticker for $2.99, it's less than a cappuccino or a latte or anything like that. $2.99 to keep the show supported. I'd appreciate it. Alright, friends, hop up. I watched an anime called Keep Your Hands Off. And it was about an inspired creature, animator and a manager producer making short animated film. It understood money represents productivity. It showcased the difference between primary motivations and secondary wins, the values of marketing, how to make do with what you have to be virtuous towards expanding science and production. It's even about filmmaking. Cool, that sounds really interesting. As you know, I'm resistant to anime, but that sounds pretty interesting, so do it. Oh, we've got the Indians are here. The Indians are back, alright. If you pay me to come to Mumbai, I'll come to Mumbai. I have a speaking fee. If you can raise the money to pay for me to come to Mumbai, I will come. Yeah, it's going to cost more than $200 to get me to Mumbai, but for the right amount of money, I will come to Mumbai. James Taylor, research shows that some human actions can be predicted by observing brave activity before the person is aware of making the decision to act. Does any coherent philosophy of free will have to be consistent with these observations? Oh, God. I don't think the observations, observations are what you're saying is being observed. I would, there are a number of books that are critical of these observations and explain what it is they're measuring and what it is they're now measuring, and I can't recreate it right now, but that they're now measuring the action before you make a decision. They're measuring something completely different. So, start there, neurologist or neuroscientist are very divided over those studies. I mean, those studies are repeated, are cited over and over again, some have a sites them, but there's a big literature that refuting them and showing that they don't show what Sam Harris and others claim that they show. So, I'll start with that. Second, free will is not about me raising my hand, right? Free will is not about raising my hand. And when did I decide to raise my hand? I never had the thought, raise your hand, you're on. I'm raising it in order to make a point and that decision is made somewhere in the background and I'm not, you know, I'm not, it's not a part of a witness, it's, you know, the action is taken because that's what I want to do. But I don't say it, I'm not aware that my hand is going to rise, it just rises. So, what does that mean? That it's determined to rise? I mean, no. It means that if I'm going to say in a sentence free will is not about raising my hand, my hand is going to go up because that's the way, to some extent, I've conditioned and I've conditioned that statement, that statement involves in my mind raising the hand. And the decision, the free will is not manifest in raising your hands and doing actions and doing things like that. That's not what free will is about. The essential about free will is the choice to focus or not to focus, the choice to think or not to think, the choice to turn on the motor of your brain or not, to engage or not. And I don't think these studies, I don't think the studies show what they claim to show, but they certainly don't show that what free will is actually about. So, I think an explanation of free will, you know, could easily explain these observations. No, but put it this way. And I know this will be controversial. No observation scientific measurement is going to contradict the fact that you have free will. If you measure something that seems like it's contradicting free will, check your premises. Just like nothing in physics is going to contradict the law of identity. Or the law of the primacy of existence. The only way we do measurements in physics is in the context of the law of identity and the primacy of existence. That's the context, right? So, you know, you can't have something that contradicts the context in which whatever it is you're finding, you're finding. So, again, you know, the basic axioms are what science is based on, not the other way around. You can't measure free will. It's not a measurable quantity. Now, maybe one day we'll be able to understand it from a physiological perspective better. We don't now. But that's a completely different thing. So, the philosophical metaphysical axioms are what scientists assume when they're doing their research, not the other way around. Shazbot, Kidco 1984 is a movie about children who start a fertilizer business to take advantage of the large amount of manure which their parents farm routinely disposes of. Oh, I've never heard of that one. I'll try it out. All right, let's see. Jennifer, could the reason why one doesn't like a great piece of art be the same reason one does not like a bad piece of art? No. Could the reason one doesn't like a great piece of art be the same reason one one does not? No, I mean, there are lots of reasons why you might not like a great piece of art. There are lots of different reasons why you might not like a bad piece of art. The main reason why you might not like a bad piece of art is because it's bad. But, for example, you could not like a great piece of art because it has a horrible sense of life. Because it portrays people with no free will. Tolstoy. You could not like Tolstoy because of the kind of people it portrays and the kind of so-called plot it has. Right? And you could hate it, but it's still great art. It's still amazing characterization. The language is great. The structure is amazing. There's a lot of good things about it. And indeed, Leonard Pickup has a talk about the survival value of great but evil art. Why you should consume great but evil art. But bad art, you could not like just because it's bad, whereas great art, it's usually because the art is great, the aesthetic value is great, but it projects something that you despise, that you reject. Adam, the social network was heavy with sexualized fetishization of Asian women. It was. I was married to an Asian woman and I saw the fetishization as a deliberate insult to the half, to the real life model for the film. I found it disgusting. I really don't remember that, but I just don't remember. It's certainly possible. It's interesting, the one on Superpunk, the battle for Uber, his girlfriend is also Asian. But, yeah, I don't remember that about the movie. All right. Hector, what a time to be alive. It's always a great time to be alive, particularly when life is so comfortable. Michael, if Trump wins, will we see any significant tax cuts of deregulation? Will Trump follow after Millet's lead as Millet proves effective and popular? No, no, no, no. I mean, Trump is the anti-Millet. Trump has no interest in liberty, freedom. He has no interest in individualism versus collectivism. He has no interest in freeing up the economy. He has no interest in any of those things. I mean, you will see selective deregulation if he happens to appoint a good person to the head, a good agency. You won't see it in law. You'll only see it at the regulatory agency level, just like the first time. This time there'll be less of it because he'll be appointing more people into the regulatory agencies that his people, the national conservative type people, the used big government to advance conservative causes people. And he will, will we see a significant tax cut unlikely? Will we see... And you will see a tax increase, a massive tax increase if he can pass it, which is, you know, his number one agenda item is a 10% tariff on all imports, which is worse than just a tax increase because it also is a massive distortion in the economy, right? So you will see a 10% tax increase across the board in the entire economy, which will also dramatically reduce productivity of American businesses. What else? Again, you'll see some deregulation at the regulatory agency level. Certainly in energy, you'll see some significant deregulation. Some of the stupid things Biden is doing right now, they'll be reversed, right? Even though the things he's doing right now are not really having much of an impact. Trump will liberate energy even more than it is already free. That doodle bunny, are you and Alex Epstein ARIs only real success stories? Success stories, Ankar Gatte and to some extent people like Greg Salmiere and Ben Baer, and then you've got success by what standard? By my standard, we've got 15, 20 intellectuals with success stories. Not all intellectuals or public intellectuals are out there facing the public. We've got philosophers, we've got teachers, we've got educators, we've got all kinds of people and we've got amazing successes. We've got a guy running the largest Montessori school network in the world is a product, is a graduate of ARIs program. So, no, I mean, that's a weird and distorted way of presenting it. Will your debates suffer then? I don't know yet. I haven't decided yet. I will let you all know when I decide. Have you ever listened to Ben Shapiro's rap collaboration with Tim McDonald? I thought it was entertaining and on brand for him. No, I haven't. I'm sure it's entertaining. You know, he is nothing if not entertaining. There it is, okay. Let's see, Andrew asked, the base of free will is the choice to focus, but there is a psychological element that makes me hesitate to morally judge it. Many honestly have problems focusing. That is, there are many children, ADHD, drugs per evasive. Look, I mean, it's certainly possible that you have some mental disease that makes it difficult for you to engage in a certain type of focus, but the kind of focus we are talking about, I do not believe, and I'm not an expert, but my senses, and again, I'm not an expert, is that it is not what ADHD affects. That is, the type of focus I'm talking about is the, what do you call it, the initiation, the bringing the mind into focus. Not can I focus 10 minutes versus only two minutes, but it's the very initiation of, I need to think now, I need to focus, I need to look out into the world. Now, could there be diseases? Could there be mental illness that prevents you from doing even that initial step? Yes. But I don't think ADHD is it, I think ADHD limits the amount of time you can focus on a particular thing, but it doesn't limit your ability to stay in focus in the sense of to stay in control of your mind. But it's probably beyond my pay grade to give a definitive answer on that. Daniel, what are these similarities and differences between pragmatism and prexology? Pragmatism and prexology, my own thought are that both end up with subjectivism and ethics in different ways. Pragmatism is against theory, prexology is heavily on deduction. Yeah, I mean, prexology is rationalistic. It is deduced from first principles, which I think is a massive mistake. And in that sense, because the principles, the first principles are somewhat subjective if they haven't been properly induced or haven't been properly proven. And they're not typically the axioms. They're not real axioms. And pragmatism denies all theories, it's all empirical evidence, but you can't even integrate that empirical evidence. That even would contradict the whole claims of the pragmatists. So both lead to subjectivism, there's no question about that. Both ultimately lead to subjectivism. But prexology is like Mises' approach. I really think the broader conception is rationalism. And rationalism, ultimately subjectivist, because ultimately you have to deduce from something and you can't keep deducing without input from reality. It's just floating, it's just attached, and it becomes detached from reality. And it's only detached to you, to your subjective wants, wills, wishes, whims. I don't think any of that's very clear. Sometimes we'll have to talk about that in greater depth. It's late now, it's 9.30. And there's still room to grow. There's still a lot to do to get to our target for today. So take that as a call to arms, right? The show funded support people like you. Max, thoughts on art that is very well done but contains a message you don't agree with. Can it still be considered great art, enjoying it on its artistic merit? Absolutely. That's the point I made earlier. That's the point Leonard Peacock makes in the survival value of great but evil art. I would definitely recommend listening to that lecture and consuming great, even if great art, even when the theme, when the message is bad. Yeah, Leonard Peacock has a lecture on this. You should listen to it. Daniel, have you seen the movie Inside Out? I highly enjoyed it. Although it raised an eye about the scene where they go through the chamber of non-objective abstract thought seem very postmodern. My understanding is the whole movie is very postmodern but I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it. Sorry. Demon says, you're a foodie around. Have you seen the menu? No, it's because I'm a foodie. I don't want to see the menu. The menu is supposed to make fun of foodies like me and discourage me from being a foodie. And it's like a mildly horror. Not interested. Urban Pokipine. I watched Dumb Money. It definitely has a leftist bent. The music is abysmal but it reminds you how dumb 2020 was. However, you could write into it an objectivist message about the dangers of altruism. Interesting. Okay. I might watch it at some point if I'm bored on a plane and want to do it. On what note? On what note do you implore me to watch The Sopranos? I don't know what note that is. I've watched The Sopranos. Not every single episode. I've watched most of it. I found it mostly enjoyable. I enjoyed most of it but I didn't enjoy all of it. I don't like any of the characters. There's not a single person in the whole show I like. You can watch a movie like that and I want to watch hours and hours and hours and hours. People you don't like doing things that you think are horrible is just not my... I don't enjoy it. So I don't want to do it. And it's not because... And I don't know that it's great art. I don't know that The Sopranos was great art. It was good. But I don't put it up there as... The same thing with Breaking Bad even though I think Breaking Bad is actually better made than The Sopranos. I saw it. I watched every episode. I can't say I enjoyed it. And I thought it went too long. I thought it could have been done in two seasons instead of five or whatever it was. And they dragged it out way too much. But... And... Yeah. All right. Let's see... Skyler says Patens. I've never seen Patens. 56. I haven't seen that either. Kit Co. We just mentioned... Oh, Patens was in 56. Pat Renner's. Huh. I don't know that. Margin Call. Margin Call was pretty good. Margin Call was pretty good. It was a well-made finance movie. Not particularly nice people the way they portrayed. J.J. Jigby. Sorry it's you already said it but don't forget Kurosawa's High and Low. Yeah. High and Low is a great movie. I reviewed it here. It's a fantastic portrayal of a businessman with integrity and pride. And yeah. J.J. Jigby's paid for me to review that movie and it was really a spectacular movie. It was a movie I really loved a lot. It was one of Kurosawa's movies I hadn't watched. Kurosawa's one of the great directors I think. And yeah. Excellent. High and Low by Kurosawa from 1950s or 60s. Jennifer, is there any bad art you like? If so, why? Because the artist was trying to convey a positive message but just isn't very good at the job. I mean there's a lot of kind of posters. Postery art. What do you call it? Illustration. Now great painting. But it's inspiring. It's nice. I can't think of anything right now. But there's some sculpture that is, it's a great sculpture. It's from a aesthetic perspective. It's pretty, it's just not great aesthetically. But it's pretty, it's got the right kind of sense of life to it. And it's good enough for certain uses, for certain places let's say in the house. I don't hang on the walls anything that I don't think is both, I think evaluate as good aesthetically and that I enjoy. I don't put on the wall anything that I think is bad. But the sculpture, there's some little sculptures that we have that are not great art that are just okay. They're not bad. I don't think. But they're not great. Most of the sculpture we have is great. What else am I thinking? Yeah, so I can enjoy that bad art. A lot of stupid movies. I mean, there are a lot of movies that are just, yeah, they're not very good. But they're enjoyable. They're enjoyable. I mean, I don't know. I'm trying to think of one, nothing's coming into my mind right now. But I'll try to think of examples of movies that are just not very good but they're still enjoyable and I still enjoy watching them. I mean, there are a lot of movies like that, that are certainly not great. There are ones that are bad art, that are actually bad aesthetically, that I enjoy. I think for most really bad art, the fact that it's bad is too jarring. It's too jarring to enjoy. Vandy says, I don't worry much about the message of a film. For two hours, I put myself in the hands of a great director and go on the emotional journey he wants to take me on and introspect on what I felt and think. Yes, but at the end of the day, if it doesn't add up, right, like Napoleon didn't add up to anything, it just was there. Oppenheimer didn't quite have the same problem but it had some similar problems. Or the departed, you know, I enjoy the departed but the message matters because the message is what's going to stay with you. It's what's going to let you introspect and the message is going to creep into how you emotionally feel about the movie. If all you see in the movie is man the fallen, man the failure, then that's going to have an emotional impact on you. So I'm fine with letting the director take me in that mode. I'm not trying to judge the movie as I'm watching it and question it as I'm watching it. But after I watch it suddenly and it explains my most responses to it. I don't like movies that are about, you know, the fixie of bad people or where the message is that human beings are bad and fallen. It's not enjoyable, right? Even though, yeah, I can appreciate all the good things, the cleverness of the director, the shock value of certain scenes, the suspense, all that is, yeah, I mean, I'll roll with it. But then I'll judge it as, but wait a minute, that's an ugly perspective on mankind and it has an impact on you when you see it. India Supreme, hello sir, I'm from India. I'm a huge fan. My friend called me house and my favorite food is breakfast burrito with non-bread. What is your favorite food? I don't really have a favorite food. I mean, I eat a lot of different foods. So I can't say I have a favorite food. I'm kind of a foodie. I go to restaurants a lot and I have a lot of favorite dishes and a lot of different restaurants. But I'm a big fan of food. All right. Thoughts on the actor Gary Cooper is an ideal. I don't think it's an ideal. He's very good in other movies. He's mediocre. I don't think he's very good in the fountain head. I think he's really good at in high noon. I think he's really good in high noon. I like him in some roles. I don't like him in others. He's good in some lube comedy, surprisingly. So, but in the fountain head, you just can't pull it off, particularly the speech scene. But I don't think he's an ideal. I think he's good, but not an ideal. Andrew. Some creative writing. Man is never meant for the garden of Eden. Mysticism to man's mind is like a gardener using acid as fertilizer, spouting nothing but weeds and ash. That's good. I like it. Maybe Andrew should be a creative writer. All right. Reminder. This show is sponsored by the Inran Institute. The Inran Institute is running two conferences for students of Objectivism, students who would like to deep dive into Objectivism. The conferences are primarily targeted at people who've read most of Inran's literature, studied Inran for a while, but would like to go the next step. You can apply for a scholarship to these conferences. One of them is going to be in Amsterdam in early March. The other one is going to be in Austin, Texas in late March. The one in Amsterdam will have Greg Salamieri, Ben Bear, Jason, Rines, and I can't remember who else. Tara Smith are going to be some of the professors that teach us there. The one in Amsterdam is going to be me, and Ankar, and Nikos, and Erin Smith are going to be in Amsterdam. You can sign up for them and you can get scholarships, all expenses paid, including flying to Amsterdam. But to do that, you have to go to Inran.org slash start here. Inran.org slash start here. This show exists because of sponsorships like that and your support. Without support from people who listen to the show, whether it's monthly, on Patreon, or you're on bookstore.com slash membership, and Super Chat. That's how the show exists. This is not a freebie. I have to get paid. My time is valuable. I put a lot of time and effort into the show. I do a morning show, an evening show, two shows a day. You know, we did one yesterday. We'll do two today, two tomorrow, two on Wednesday. That's a lot of work. You can show appreciation for that and trade value for value by using the Super Chat if you're on live or by going to Patreon and making a contribution if you're not live. Please consider doing that. Mary Elise says, I think it's a survival value of great, though philosophically, false art. I think that's right. I think that's right. I think you've got the title right. By the way, that lecture was inspired by something I wrote for a class that Leonard Peacock taught. My confusion and errors generated a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant lecture by Leonard Peacock. Sometimes even the bad stuff you do can have positive results. Everybody doing $2.99 or $5 right now blows this up. $5. Anybody who can, if you can do a sticker that would be terrific. All right, Dimon says, thank you, Dimon. This will be the last one. Name a few films popularly renowned as great that you think actually suck. Well, I don't think $5 comes sucks, but it's not a great movie. And I didn't find it an enjoyable movie. It's a movie that is, it's random. It's a rejection of free will. It's kind of a false manipulative feel-good movie. There's nothing really to feel good about because as far as Gump doesn't do anything consciously, everything just is luck, luck, luck, luck, luck. Every achievement he has is just luck. There's a sense in which it sucks, yeah. I mean, other movies that people think are great that suck. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, these are the kind of questions I really need to think about because I need to list the movies in front of me to really go through, to remind me of their existence so I can evaluate them. We love you, Yuran, but it's probably the title of the show this time. Haha, I hope that knowing the regulars love these shows makes up for the underfunded show. It is a challenge that when I do a positive show about aesthetics that you guys keep asking for and then it doesn't make the target is a disincentive. If I did a show today on why I hate fill-in-the-blank, yeah, we'd make the target like that, like that. But anyway, you know, Unforgiven, the Clinton Eastwood movie, Unforgiven, the Hollywood movie, and an anti-Western and it won the Academy Award. A lot of movies that have won Academy Awards are just not good movies on various levels. All right, thank you. Thanks to all the superchatters. Thank you to all the people participating in the chat and about the movies. Please don't forget to like the show before you leave. That is pretty simple, pretty cheap, pretty easy. Even Indians among you who don't do superchats can do that. So please do that. And Andrew does a superchat asking for my thoughts on Trump. Not today. Not today. Tomorrow. I'm sure tomorrow I'll have some thoughts on Trump. By the way, there is an Unforgiven movie that is great. It's from the 50s, I think, it's a Western and it's with Audrey Hepburn and what's his name? Anyway, a famous actor whose name I can't remember. But it was a great movie called Unforgiven as well. So don't confuse the two. The Unforgiven that is a Western is really, really, really good. You know what's a real trainwreck, Richard? Is somebody who lives their life listening to the Iran book show, who thinks the Iran book show is a trainwreck and who hates everything about the Iran book show, but listens to it almost every day in spite of that. That is a life that is a trainwreck. And on that wonderful, fabulous note, well, I've got another superchat. Least favorite great film, Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde. Yeah, Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, yeah, they're not great films. And I don't think, particularly Bonnie and Clyde, I don't think it's considered a great film, maybe it is. Easy Rider maybe. But even if you do crossword puzzles, that's even more pathetic. The fact that you do crossword puzzles and then that you do them while watching, listening to something you despise, that takes real, I don't know, patheticness in life. Bye, everybody. Have a great week. Don't be like Richard. Bye.