 of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. Hey there everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this, what is it, Wednesday? Wednesday night here in Madrid. I know it's kind of a weird hour for many of you. What is it now? Probably around, well, two o'clock in the east coast and 11 a.m. on the west coast. So again, a program more oriented towards my European audiences. But hopefully some of you are sneaking a listen to the live show while that picture looks a little weird while at work. Let me just see something. I have a feeling, yeah, it's on the wrong camera. That's better. That's a much better picture. We'll get that in a minute. There we go. Let's see if that translates over here. It should translate in a minute into a better picture. There we go. Much better. All right. Hi everybody. I hope you're all having a great week. As you know, I've been traveling around Europe. I am now in Madrid. I gave my last European tour talk last night here in Madrid at Universitat Francisco Marquin, which is a Guatemalan university that has a satellite, I guess, or branch in Madrid. And I gave a talk there with Nikos was also there. So that was fun. But starting today until Monday, I'm on vacation. So this is vacation time. And but I'm still going to do you on bookshows. We'll try to do as many as we can during this week, depending on kind of other things going on. And my time given that I'm on vacation with my wife. So so that's, you know, that's kind of the plan for the next week or so. Not I am feeling better. Thank you, Gail, for asking. I'm feeling much better. So I recovered from whatever I had. I guess a mild cold and, you know, I'm fine. So feeling much better just in time for getting together with my wife. It worked out perfectly. Much more important for me to feel, you know, really healthy when I'm on vacation with my wife. And while I'm jumping from plane to plane to plane and giving talks all over Europe. Less important. So yes, I'm in Spain. You know, we've got this. We've got a magnificent hotel, a really beautiful hotel. And we got a suite in the hotel. And I've actually got an office. This is an office. So it's really cool. I mean, the suites here kind of little apartments, tiny little apartments. I've got a really nice office here. You know, I have a desk, a chair. You can see my little window back there. It's actually a really great place to do the show, except for the fact. And I don't know if you can hear this or not. But the room is super echoey. Right. So there is, it's like a, it's like an old, this is an old building. And it's all bricks or concrete or something. And it's domed. There's a round ceiling and the room is super echoey. So I can hear myself with a lag as the sound bounces off into my ears. Hopefully it's not bouncing off into the microphone. Yeah, Stephanie says you can hear an echo. It is what it is. This is, this is the room we got. I don't know how to, with equipment I have, I don't know how to, I don't have here a, a board or any kind of way to mitigate, mitigate the echo. But, but it's, you know, it is what it is. So hopefully you can tolerate it. I can hear the kind of, it's, it's the sound quality is eh. But that's good. I'll try not to yell because if I yell, if I get too excited, too passionate, I think, I think the, the, the reverb will be just too offensive. So again, thank you all for joining me. I know it's a, it's a weird hour. It's, it's not, it's not the, you know, the ideal timeframe for you guys listening, but so be it. Of course, those of you who are not listening live, it doesn't matter to you, but I do have my, a good size audience of live people listening. And that's great given the, the, the weird time. And of course I do appreciate, I think Wolland has already started with, with the Super Chat. Wolland says, and I'll just say this, greetings from the Canary Islands, changed planes in Madrid yesterday, could almost have run into you in the airport. Yeah, I was in the Madrid airport yesterday. So we almost met Wolland. Canary Islands, that's also interesting cause there's a new, I was just talking to the guy at UFM, Vista Francisco, here in Madrid. And the Canary Islands, there's just a new university has been started. It's a virtual university, online university, but it has as its program, a kind of a classical liberal program. It's run by the guy who used to be the president of Francisco Malqueen in Guatemala. It's out of the Canary Islands. So interesting things happening in the Canary Islands. Who knows? Maybe I'll be coming to give talks in the Canary Islands. Who knows? We'll see. So Wolland, I don't know if you're there on vacation or they for work or they for living, but it could be a hub. It could be a place for interesting things to be happening. All right, let's see. We have a bunch of people on. I'm hoping we get a bunch of our Europeans on as well. Again, I understand that the timing is unusual. Plus, I didn't give you much notice. So I apologize. So we've only got about 50 people listening live, but I'm sure a lot of you will listen after the fact. All right, so let's start with a... I can hear myself in the other room, so I have a feeling my wife's listening to the show in the other room. So let's start with this question of natural gas, which is fascinating and interesting. So the last six months, I think, we've been hearing stories about the coming shortage of natural gas. We've been hearing stories about Europeans freezing to death. We've been hearing stories about really, really, you know, real significant problems with the European economy because of a shortage and the restraints on natural gas. Guys who are joining the show, I know there's an echo. I'm in a room with an echo. I'm not sure exactly how to solve the problem with the equipment I have. So I guess you're just going to, you know, either turn this off or tolerate it, but there's nothing much I can do. I am very cognizant of the echo, but I can hear it as I speak. So imagine how disorienting that is. You know, I know you guys can hear it after the fact. So we've been hearing over and over again the, and I'm trying to speak softer because I think the softer I speak, the less the echo will be. I think the more I raise my voice, the more reverb we get. But maybe I'm wrong. We'll see. So we've got, we've been told that there's a massive natural gas crisis. We'd be told that this is going to be a disaster. That, you know, there's no way to solve it. There's been panic. People have been upset. People have been, I mean, it's typical of the media to blow this out of proportion. You know, people are going to die. Europe is freezing. Energy crisis in Europe. We're totally dependent on Russia. We can't survive without Russia. If we don't sign a peace agreement tomorrow with Russia, and oil and gas supplies, gas supplies will come, you know, Armageddon is going to happen. And this is consistent with the general kind of, you know, general appetite for catastrophe that exists in the world in which we live. We're always seeing catastrophe. It's just around the corner. Armageddon is going to happen. Maybe not this year, but certainly next year. Maybe not because of this thing, but because of that thing. We are an interesting species that seems to believe that the end of the world in one way or another is always just around the corner. It's always going to happen. It's always in my life that I'm going to happen. So the whole natural gas problem in Europe has been blown out of proportion. And then, of course, there was the gas pipeline explosion and the conclusion from that was, well, now even, you know, now the Europeans are finished because they can't get the natural gas from Europe. And this is a massive, horrific disaster. And we should immediately beg Putin to be nice to us and to open up the spigots and provide us with natural gas. Because who knows what will happen if we don't have enough heating right now. So that's the story. The reality is, of course, very different because once it became evident that there was going to be a natural gas problem, what are markets do when supply of a good we believe are going to shrink into the future, yet demand is as high as ever? What happens to prices? Well, prices are just prices start going up. Not because right now there's a shortage of natural gas, not because right now there's a shortage, but because we have futures markets, because we can buy and contract natural gas or oil or pretty much any commodity today, we can buy it today, but for future delivery, then people bid up the price of natural gas today because they're worried about their ability to purchase it in the future. So what actually happened to prices of natural gas as this panic came about is the natural gas prices went up. What happens when natural gas prices go up? Well, demand for it goes down. So people consume less of it. Energy prices went up. People consume less energy when energy prices go up. Consumption of natural gas went down. What European countries did with the fact that consumption went down because prices went up is they started to refill their storage. There is massive storage underground in, you know, in the ground. There are these massive capacity to store natural gas in Europe. And what has been happening is because demand went down because prices went up. European governments have been massively using opportunity, the additional supply of natural gas funneling it into storage. So one storage is at record highs. It's, you know, the certain capacity for the storage in Europe that can be filled with natural gas. I think with something like 94% of that, that's way above expectations. That's way above anybody predicted way above what Europe thought would be enough to survive the winter. That was around 80% and we're now at 94%. So that's one thing that happened. Beautiful how markets work. It's beautiful how prices work. There's going to be a shortage. We raise prices. People start demanding less. That creates the potential for surplus. And that surplus gets driven into warehousing, right? Into inventory, into some kind of place where we can store this stuff. So that has happened. The second thing that happens when prices go up. When prices go up, people become very, very creative in terms of fighting new sources of gas. Prices went up because the expectation was that gas from Russia would be diminished dramatically because of the war in Ukraine. And indeed the supply of gas from Russia declined significantly. So we're now getting, we, Western Europe is now getting about 25% of the natural gas that it gets in the typical year. So typically it's getting 75% less. So what's happening? So where's the rest of the natural gas coming from? Again, because prices went up, demand went down, that covers part of it. But as soon as it was clear that the supplies from Russia were going to be constrained because of the war in Ukraine. As soon as it was clear that Putin was playing games with the natural gas and it became clear that Europe is incentivized not to buy natural gas from Russia, because it doesn't want to support the Russian war machine. Remember Germany was, I'm not sure what the number is today, but at the beginning of the war was sending $1 billion a day in cash, and dollars to Russia in exchange for the natural gas and the oil it was receiving. As soon as it became clear that they didn't want to continue doing that, Germany and other countries immediately start looking for alternative sources of natural gas. And it turns out there are other players in the marketplace who have natural gas that challenges how do we get it to Europe. So for example the United States has plenty of natural gas because of fracking. We have in a sense more natural gas than we consume in the United States, and as a consequence we can export natural gas. Qatar, because it is in the Persian Gulf, it can access natural gas from the entire Arabian Peninsula. It has massive quantities of natural gas. Kazakhstan has natural gas. Israel has natural gas. Egypt has natural gas. Norway has natural gas. So the first thing is increase the purchase of natural gas from these alternative sources. Now the problem is, as you might know, how do you get the natural gas to Europe? Now some places have pipelines. Kazakhstan actually has a pipeline that goes through Turkey, that comes through the Balkans and actually can access places like Bulgaria and Eastern Europe and supply natural gas to those places through a pipeline that can replace natural gas that they lose from Russia. But how do you get natural gas from the Persian Gulf? How do you get natural gas from the United States? Well, it's called liquefied natural gas. I mean it's a pretty amazing technology and pretty stunning after all. If you think about, I mean we take these things for granted, we always do, but what happens is that you have these terminals at a port and what they do is they turn the gas into a liquid. They turn the gas into a liquid. I assume through high pressure or through massive cooling, but they turn the natural gas into a liquid. They then pipe the liquid onto a ship, a special LNG ship that has the equipment to hold and maintain the natural gas in liquid form. I think it's under pressure in liquid form. Then the ship travels to an LNG port, let's say in Europe, let's say it gets loaded up in Houston and then a ship to Europe where they unload the liquid, turn it back into natural gas and use the pipeline to pipe it to wherever it's needed. So what has happened is that Europe has become much more reliant on LNG terminals. And at the beginning of the crisis, the idea was that not enough of them, but it turns out that they might be enough, I think more being built. Spain, where I am right now, I think has about five LNG terminals, maybe six LNG terminals, and it has pipes where they can pipe it into parts of Western Europe. Portugal, where I was yesterday, has a number of LNG terminals, and again they can pipe it into the rest of Europe. American ships have been just back and forth between America and Europe with LNG ships. Now it's interesting, just as in a site. You can take a ship from Houston, Texas or from Baltimore using an LNG terminal and ship natural gas to Europe, but you cannot take the same ship and ship that natural gas to Puerto Rico or even to Boston because of the Jones Act. The Jones Act actually prohibits using LNG ships which are not US flagged and not US owned and not US built. There's only one such LNG ships that qualifies by all those standards to actually ship natural gas to other ports in the United States. So we can ship gas to Europe, we can't ship gas within the United States using LNG. So stupid. Well, stupid is like too mild of a term. So evil. So anti-progress, so anti-flourishing, so debilitating for the United States, particularly for places like Puerto Rico, but even for Boston, which in some years was importing gas from Russia because they could get a ship from Russia to come to Boston but not from Baltimore. Even though Baltimore would be dramatically cheaper because there are no ships that can travel from Baltimore to Boston according to US law. It's moronic. Thank you, spiral days. Moronic is exactly the right. It's evil moronic. There needs to be a word that combines evil with moronic. Stupid. A word that combines the two. Anyway, Europe has accelerated the amount of LNG supplies that it is getting. And indeed, right now, last I read, there are 34 LNG ships outside European ports waiting to unload the natural gas that they have. And there's so much natural gas flowing into Europe right now that so much natural gas flowing into Europe right now that there was a day, I think this week, earlier this week, where prices went negative. That is, don't, you know, I'll pay you not to give me natural gas. I'll pay you to take the natural gas off my hands because I don't have any way to spill it. I don't have any way to put it. Natural gas prices in Europe are plummeted. They are way, way, way down. Energy prices should follow unless, of course, they are being manipulated by governments to keep them high to suppress demand, which is quite possible. But I was shocked when I read this article, but then once the shock went away, I said, I'm not surprised at all. I know you know that markets work. And when you get a shock like the Russian shock, yes, prices will go through the roof. But what happens when prices go through the roof in a global market like the market for natural gas? Supply increases. People take the opportunity when prices are high to produce a lot of it and to ship a lot of it so they can get lots of money. They can make a huge profit. Now prices are low right now, so that's going to go away for a while. The incentive not to ship that natural gas is very low, but the stockpiles are full. All the backup channels for Europe are full. If prices start going up again as the weather becomes colder and demand increases, those LNG boats can get back in the water because prices will be higher. Again, there are 34 such ships waiting to unload in ports in Europe. They will all be going back to Qatar, the USA or wherever they came from. Finland has increased the amount of natural gas they are pumping to Europe. Again, other countries like Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, I think, have increased the supply. I suspect that all the fear mongering, all the complaining, all the talk, all the Armageddon, all that. I think Europe is going to be fine this winter in terms of natural gas. I think we're heading towards a recession. It has nothing to do with this. So we're not going to be fine economically, but from the perspective of people freezing, that's probably not going to happen. Everybody's probably overreacted, probably too much fear. One other thing has happened, and I don't know what you want to attribute this to. You could, if you really wanted to, attribute this to climate change or really to not so much to climate change, but to global warming. But the fact is that they fall so far to my immense benefit has been very mild. It's been a warm fall. At least this is what I read. And as a consequence, what happens when the fall is warm? People use natural gas, and again, another driver for demand to be low, for those increased supplies to be pumped into reservoirs, pumped into storage. And again, we're going to be fine. You know, all the stories, the constant stories about Armageddon, and everything to justify appeasement, everything to justify compromise, anything to justify getting along with Putin. Just we want to fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. The latest, of course, and this will be my transition into, I guess, the discussion about kind of the war update. The latest, of course, is the idea that nuclear war, they're going to start a nuclear war, we're going to die from radiation. Europe is toast. We should, you know, Jordan Peterson is very good at this. We need to appease the Russians. We need to compromise them. We need to give Putin what he wants, because Putin won't lose. Putin not losing might mean nuclear war, or it might mean all kinds of dark things that are not always mentioned exactly, but just fear. The idea of fear, we need to fear the Russians. We need to fear, you know, the winter, we need to fear climate change. And fear is an unbelievable motivation, it turns out. And people are usually motivated by fear and they write checks because of fear, they get excited because of fear, they certainly vote over fear. And the consequence of all of that is that, you know, bad policy is enacted because it's enacted not out of thought, not of reason, not of actually assessing the dangers and the probabilities and the risks involved, but out of just pure fear. So we see, I don't know, Jordan Peterson, we see a long musk, and even Biden himself talking about the brink of Armageddon. The more you talk about it, the more you normalize it, the more you make it possible, and the more you make possible, you make real compromise and appeasement. This week, two things happened politically that regard to the Russian war in the United States that relate to appeasement. One, a bunch of progressive Democrats wrote a letter to Biden, it was kind of a weird letter badly phrased, just weirdly written, which encouraged the administration to engage in negotiations with Putin to achieve some kind of settlement ceasefire, some kind of negotiated to stop the war because it's a bad war and bad things can happen and we should be really afraid of the Russians. They didn't say that, but that's the implication. And hey, we're spending a lot of money on it and should the United States really be funding a war and supporting a war, aren't we all anti-war after all? And a bunch of progressive scientists, this contract date, I think today retracted it all because they got slammed by, I'd say, the center-left media. The center-left media just went after them and slammed them and I think politically it looked like it was a losing strategy. They got slammed by Democratic constituencies and they walked it back and they took back a lot of the congressmen said, you know, I'm doing it. Of course, they did write the letter. But at the same time, a congressman McCarthy, who is going to be the speaker of the House come November, come two weeks from now because I think next week the Republicans will take them. They'll take the House and they will control the House and McCarthy, I think it's McCarthy, right? Congressman McCarthy, I think he will become the speaker of the House. He basically said Republicans are not going to approve aid to Ukraine for the war. So, you know, we should not be supporting Ukraine is the implication. And I mean, what he's really playing to is, you know, we have these massive deficits in the United States. Why are we spending money on a war? Why are we taking a risk? You know, again, Putin might do XYZ. We should be afraid of Putin. Why are we funding this war? Why are we sending equipment over there? Why is America taking a position? Why does America care about this? And, you know, by, it was, and of course, by implication is, you know, this kind of moral equivalency between Putin and Ukraine, between Russia and Ukraine, and we, the United States should be in the middle of it. Now, you know, I, let me talk a little bit about this idea of the United States funding the war and in funding the Ukrainian supplies of weapons and why I think it's justified or why I think the critics of it are way off base. So the United States says it's going to spend, I don't know, $50 to $60 billion in humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine. Much of that is in the form of loans, loans that might be repaid years from now, maybe decades from now, who knows when they'll be repaid. But the idea is, this is not a grant, this is a loan. But so part of it is a loan. But think of it this way, the United States spends, and this is going to be over several years, this is not going to be all at once. While you keep hearing these numbers thrown around, it's not like we just sent them $60 billion. This is going to be a long term plan. It's very difficult to spend $60 billion in one year. This is going to be money that's going to be doled out. All the Congress has done is approved the ability of the United States government to provide them with this aid and loans for weapons and ultimately economic aid for rebuilding once the war is over. But the war is not going to be over for a long, long time, in my view. So let's think a little bit about this aid. First, I find it really, really interesting. And by the way, the complaining about this, the complaining about the foreign aid comes from really three sources, I would say. One is the fall left. The fall left hates the fact that we're providing aid to Ukraine. The fall left is sympathetic to Putin. It was sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Why wouldn't it be sympathetic not to Putin? It hates America. The fall left hates America. The fall left hates Europe. It basically is super sympathetic to authoritarianism and therefore it's pro-Putin and you'd expect that from the fall left. You've noticed that OEC, Ocasio-Cortez, has not exactly been vocal in support of Ukraine in this war. She basically kept quiet because her constituency, the progressives, the fall left are not pro-Ukraine. They're much more likely to be pro-Russia. It is, you know, the center left and the center right that are pro-Ukraine, but the fall left is clearly pro-Russia and has been AOC. Sorry, not OEC, AOC has been pro-Russia. So that's one group. The second group is what you call the new right. And the new right now, I think, is becoming more and more the dominant voice at least within the Republican Party. So while some Republican senators voted for aid to Ukraine, many have not. And, or some have not, and there's growing voices in the campaign trail where I think JD Vance and Masters and I'm not sure about us, but some of the others have basically said that they would not support aid for Ukraine. And there, so there's a group on the right on the Republican side that basically holds somewhat similar views to the fall left. You know, that are sympathetic to Putin. Putin, after all, is anti-left. Putin, after all, is pro-Christianity, or at least says he is. Putin, after all, this is the Jordan Peterson line kind of. Putin, after all, is one of us on the right. He is one of the good guys. We shouldn't alienate him. We shouldn't threaten him. We shouldn't piss him off. And he, so Putin was, so the conservatives, some of the conservatives, I'd say the national conservatives and the paleo conservatives and the, and the theocratic conservatives, basically the Trumpists are basically pro-Russia or kind of neutral and certainly against giving any aid to Ukraine. Then the third group are the libertarians. Again, not all libertarians, but certainly some libertarians that call them the paleo libertarians. And they are very similar to the fall left, the fall right, the fall left, the fall libertarian, they're all the same thing. And they basically object to spending the money. But here's the thing about the money. And I sympathize with the money because, you know, you should really, really think through where government should spend money and on what government should spend money. And it's easy to yell national defense, but you need to actually be able to justify national defense. And that's hard. So I want to get to trying to justify aid for Ukraine in a minute. Before I get to that, just notice that the only foreign aid, the only funny that libertarians and conservatives ever complain about, ever complain about is foreign aid to Israel and foreign aid to our allies. This about 50, I think the last number in the budget was $58 billion of foreign aid, not including the Ukrainian money. $58 billion a year, a year that has spent a foreign aid. Much of that foreign aid goes to places like Ethiopia, Africa, different places in Africa. Ethiopia, of course, isn't Africa, but other places in Africa, places in all over the place, all over the place. $58 billion. Now part of that goes to Israel and Egypt. They each get about $3 billion of foreign aid. And of course now a bunch of money is going to Ukraine. But notice that the complaining is always about Israel and Ukraine. The complaining is always about aid that goes to countries that actually American allies, that actually in their actions, and then you could argue in the use of the money for the American interests. Suddenly from the perspective of fighting our enemies and furthering the cause of Western civilization, whereas aid, the rest of the money is going to all kinds of dictators and all kind of governments that are doing the opposite of furthering American interest and yet we give them aid. But notice that the worst thing according to the libertarians and according to many of these conservatives, and of course the far left, all three groups, the worst kind of aid. Is aid that one could conceive of as self-interested. The one could conceive us as helping bring our ideas, but also just help our allies reject the real forces of darkness in the world, whether those forces are Islamist in the case of Israel or whether the forces are Russian in the case of providing Ukraine. The people we hate the most to give money to are the people who are closest to our values. The people we hate the most to give money to are people who are fighting to some extent or another enemies that we share. Russia is an enemy of the United States in my view and once it launched a war against Ukraine became such an enemy. It doesn't mean we should literally send troops to fight them, but it doesn't mean that we should boycott them and we should to the extent that we can't support the people who are indeed fighting them. But aid to Ethiopia? Yeah, I'm sure the libertarians would say yes, we're against it, we're against all foreign aid, but what do they get passionate about? Not about the altruistic aid, not about the aid that is motivated by pure altruism with the U.S. has nothing to gain from. The aid that really pisses them off, the aid that really gets them excited, it really gets them motivated, it really gets them passionate is the aid to actual countries that actually are helpful to the causes of the United States. Actually helpful in fighting the evil out there. So I think that's interesting. Now, what would be the justification? What would it be the justification for helping out Ukraine? Well, first again, of all the foreign aid we give, this kind of makes the most sense. But if we believe that Russia's aggression is a sign of a regime that is violent, that has interests in using violence and using war to establish control, not just over its own territory and over its own people, which would be bad enough, but over others. Now, primarily in Europe, but given that Russia is a nuclear power that is a threat to the United States, they have ballistic missiles that can reach the United States. Europe, of course, whether I agree with this or not, we are a member of NATO, we through NATO have a treaty to defend Europe. Russia has just declared itself an enemy of NATO by invading Ukraine. I think we have every interest to make it clear to Putin that aggression will not be acceptable, that aggression is basically something that we will not tolerate. That, you know, we might not go to war over Ukraine, but beware, because we would if it's NATO, because we have a treaty. And while we're not going to go to war over Ukraine, we're going to support Ukraine in every way we can because of the threat that he poses to a potential war with the United States through NATO. We do not want that war. We do not want direct war with Russia because of the potential to escalate. So let's end it in Ukraine. Let's allow Ukraine to defeat Russia and make it clear to Russia that war is not an option. It's not a possibility. There's no way for them to win. There's no way for them to actually advance their interest through war. If we can prove them that to them on the battlefields of Ukraine, then it's quite possible and quite likely that we will never have to engage them on the battlefields of a NATO country with American troops and now the threat of an actual nuclear war between the United States and Russia. Because if Putin decided to invade Romania or Latvia or Lithuania or Estonia or Poland or Finland now, Finland and Sweden are going to join NATO or Norway, it would be war with the United States because we are a member of NATO. Shouldn't we do whatever we can to avoid that? Isn't helping Ukraine a way to avoid it? If Putin had been allowed to just take Ukraine, if he had been emboldened by that, if Biden had said, yeah, I'm not intervening, let him have it, which I think is what ultimately Trump would have done. Would that have not emboldened Putin to go maybe after Moldova, who's not a NATO country, but now puts him on the border with Romania? Would that not have emboldened him to a little bit inch forward and maybe take a little bit and see, would we actually defend Estonia? Estonia, which Putin could probably have taken a day given how small of a country it is. What would we do? How would we react? I mean, if he had taken Ukraine, he would have been emboldened to try and then we would have had no choice. Now, you could argue the United States should not be a member of NATO and I'm very sympathetic to that argument and that this is all a European problem and I'm very sympathetic to that argument. But at the end of the day, we are a member of NATO. That makes it our problem and we have no choice but to respond. And not responding is a sign of weakness. Not responding is with emboldened evil all over the world with emboldened Putin and we would be in grave and grave and grave danger. So let's support Ukrainians and Ukrainians with this so that it doesn't turn into something more. Ukrainians are doing, and this is the update, Ukrainians are doing a phenomenal job in the battlefield. The Russians keep reinforcing their troops, keep trying to bring new recruits, keep trying to dig into new positions to defend them. The Ukrainians are still holding up, they're chipping away on the east. There are a number of areas in which Russia has tried to launch offensives, tried to increase, particularly in the Donbass area, tried to increase their ability to take land and increase the they want to take the whole Donbass province. They have an oblast, they have not been able to do that. And Ukrainians have not allowed it. The Russians have gained nothing for months now. On the east, in spite of all the resources they've plowed into it. In the meantime, Russian lines of supply are being attacked directly in the east, in the Luhans province, where, well, since the taking of Lehman, the Ukrainians have not made a lot of progress, but they're chipping away. And my expectation is that they will significantly, you know, they will over the next few weeks, I think before winter really sets in, and Ukraine has benefited from the mild winter Europe has had, they will probably take much of Luhans province by the beginning of the winter. In the south, you've got Gershon, where there is ongoing fighting. About a few weeks ago, the Ukrainians made huge amount of progress, taking the kind of northeast part of that province and chipping away at the south in the southeast and the southwest. They have now kind of progress slowed significantly because the Russians have reinforced their positions. However, it appears that Russia is slowly evacuating its troops out of the city of Gershon, and ultimately that city will fall to the Ukrainians, and they will have the whole northern section of that province, whether they'll be able to cross the river and attack the Russians on the southern side of the river before winter sets in is probably yet to be determined, but there are other things the Ukrainians could do. They can attack further east, they can encircle the Russians, they can, you know, so progress can be made even in the winter by the Ukrainians, but progress will slow as everything slows in winter. But Ukrainians are doing phenomenally well on the battlefield. The Russians are losing, part of the way you can see that the Russians are losing on the battlefield, is they are resorting now to, instead of winning on the battlefield, what they're trying to do is weaken the resolve of the Ukrainian people. They're doing that by attacking civilian targets, primarily they're trying to shut down the energy supply. So they're trying to shut down electricity, trying to shut down natural gas plants, trying to shut down the capacity of Ukrainians to warm themselves in the winter. They want to weaken the resolve of the Ukrainians to fight. I think there's a backfire. I think Ukrainians, Ukrainians were poor not that long ago. I mean, they still poor, but they were really poor not that long ago under the Soviet Union. Ukrainians have seen their homes attacked, shattered, destroyed by a foreign power. I think the Ukrainians can handle the cold. I think if anything, the cold, the suffering will motivate them even more to hate the Russians, to resent what Russia is doing to them, to fight back and to, you know, in a sense, penalize the Russians for what they have done. So I think there's a backfire, but you can see the kind of desperation. You can also see the desperation and the fact that most of these attacks or many of these attacks are not anymore using Russian cruise missiles, which is what they were using in the first few months of the war. But the supplies of those cruise missiles have been depleted and the Russian industrial complex is not capable of producing these missiles and other munitions at the pace at which they are being used on the battlefield. So what Russia has become dependent on now is their ability to buy drones from Iran of all countries and the Iranian operatives, now in Crimea, teaching the Russians how to operate these drones. Many of these drones are kamikaze drones. Kamikaze drones are basically drones that are missiles themselves. They crash into the target and explode. The drone dies. The drone is finished, but you need a constant supply of these. But the Iranians have a lot of drones. They can produce more drones. Interestingly enough, I think the Israelis are watching this very carefully. They are, would be my expectation is that they are refining and improving their anti-drone technology, their technology against what they see now happening in Ukraine because they can imagine that happening if the Iranians ever attack Israel directly. So this will be an interesting learning opportunity for the Israeli military in terms of how to deal with a massive drone attack, which Israel can expect one day from Iran. Let's see. And then finally, so they're buying drones from Iran. That's a pretty desperate act. And then there was a buying from what we can tell munitions and weaponry from North Korea. There's another high-tech, innovative country that is supplying the Russians with the best state-of-the-art weapons for which they can use in Ukraine. In the meantime, the United States, Germany, and the rest of Europe, UK, in particular, supplying the Ukrainians with innovative state-of-the-art cutting-edge technology. And was it a German general? A German general just read an article by a German general saying, Yes, what the world in Ukraine is showing us that Western weapon systems are superior. It's taking you six months into the water, figure this out. I've been saying this from day one. And I've been saying that this would be the cause for why the West would win. Sorry, Ukraine has a chance of winning this, or at least really fighting back against the superior numbers of Russia. Because of the massive, not small, massive technological advantage the Western weapons systems have. And we're seeing that day in, day out on the battlefield in Ukraine. Another, you know, plus to freedom. Freedom builds better weapons systems than authoritarians. Yeah, I know my pacifist libertarian non-friends are freaking out when I say that because, oh my God, isn't that horrible? No weapons are good. More for weapons because you sometimes need them to defend yourself against brute like thugs, evil thugs like Putin. Freedom is strong, as Jennifer says. Freedom is absolutely strong. Freedom breeds strength. All right, what else do we know about? Yeah, Putin is supposedly has just created a new committee of the Politburo. That's in charge of finding creative and new and innovative ways to improve the production of weapons systems for the war, because even Putin recognizes these way behind. So there's a committee now, and that's a huge step, right? There's a committee. I think the committee will meet regularly. They will produce a report. We'll have a plan that will plan will be put in place. And I'm sure I'm confident because the five year plans have always worked out so well that that plan will be implemented to the T and it will produce a great victory for the Russian forces in Ukraine. So, you know, they're falling apart when they start committees to improve the production weapons, the supply of the front. You know that they can't win when they rely on committees for to dictate the path of the war. All right. So that's my Russia war update. I find it. Let me just one more last point. I find it mind boggling, astounding and upsetting. And I've said this before and I keep saying it because I'm still upset by it. The number of libertarians that I meet on the road now than a pro-Russia, the number of libertarians that I meet on the road and everywhere that hate Israel, the number of libertarians that I meet where have I go that hate America and hate the West so much that they are pro-Russia, pro-Islamist, pro-anybody who will actually fight against the West. And that's what motivates and that's what drives them. And I know I've always known they exist. I've seen them in American libertarianism, but going on the road and meeting some of them. And somebody mentioned the fact that, you know, encountered libertarians such a libertarian at a talk that I give in Japan. That talk is up online. It's about individual rights in the context of foreign policy, individual rights in the context of global, you know, interstate relationships. So I encourage you to watch that talk. I think it's really, really good. I think you'll enjoy it so you can go and you can find out my channel under your own lectures. It's on the playlist, your own lectures. But it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a talk I gave at the University of Tokyo. I've uploaded now online. It's available to you. Go watch it. I think you'll enjoy it. I think it's really good. But the Q&A is particularly illustrative because this libertarian comes out and says he comes out with his pro-Putin nonsense. And I set him in this place. I don't remember exactly what he said and what exactly what I said, but you should go and watch the video and you'll get the gist of it. I get, you'll get, you'll get the way in which I demolish the guy, I think. All right. So yes, I meet them all over the place. It's stunning to me. It's upsetting. It's, but it is what it is. These are our so-called libertarian friends. This is why I don't consider us, me, part of the libertarian movement. I don't want to be in the same tent with these guys. I think that kind of attitude towards foreign policy is beneath contempt. That kind of attitude towards foreign policy distances, you know, they can stay over there. I don't want them in my tent. I'm going to have my own, even if my tent is going to be really, really small. Even if my tent is tiny because I want to associate with people who, who, who I think ultimately, are going to stab me in the back and murder me. I only want a small tent. I've said this often, right? I'm only going to, you know, fight up that hill, march up that hill with my bayonet. I'm only doing that with people I like, with people who share my values and with people I trust. I'm not doing it with anybody else. So my tent is small, so be it. It's going to be principled and it's going to be passionate and we're going to fight like hell. And you guys, the other plus side of this trip is again, I keep meeting people who are listeners to my show. I keep meeting people who this show has had a huge impact on their life. That is so rewarding. That is so amazing. You know, we are building a movement here that is a global movement. It's send it maybe to some extent around the show, but it's ultimately an iron ran movement. It's send it around iron man's ideas, send it around objectivism. My show is just a lead in my show is a presentation of application of but ultimately, ultimately, this is about iron man and objectivism. But I'm meeting so many people all over the world in all kinds of places. I mean, I met a lot of them in Portugal. That was amazing. In Lisbon, a bunch of people who were there at the talk because of my talk and because of the show and talk so much about how the show had changed them. Not that many in Spain. So we've got to work on Spain, but Portugal for whatever reason, I think it's because of English. The Portuguese, young Portuguese speak English in a way that young Spaniards do not partially because Portugal is a small country. I think that's the main thing. It's so small that they don't dub their television. This is one of the Portuguese guys told me this, right? In Spain, English shows are shown on television, but they're dubbed into Spanish. So the kids watching English shows don't get an opportunity to hear English and to read the subtitles and slowly learn the English. In Portugal, because it's a small country, it's not worth dubbing. So they never actually get to hear the English. And as a consequence, sorry, they never actually, they actually get to hear the English and they actually learn the English. And young Portuguese speak great English. One of the best countries in Europe in terms of English. So it's a great place for us. It's a great place for the show. It's a great, great place for Ayn Rand. They can read Ayn Rand's books in Portuguese and they can also read them in English. Most of them have read them in English. And many of them who came to the event read Ayn Rand because of this show. So we're doing what we set out to do. I'm excited about that. The trip to Europe, if anything, has reinvigorated me and given me more motivation to keep doing this. Not that I was waving about that, but just more. More is good. All right. Let's see. The one thing that's not motivating me right now is the Super Chat, which is beyond pathetic. So I don't know. The goal is 650 bucks, but basically we've done nothing towards that. And we're already an hour in. So I don't know what's going on. Maybe maybe we don't have any live listeners potentially with money. So that's that's possible. Oh, Mugat says evil plus moronic equals demonic. I like that demonic. Yes. It's got the moronic because it's got demonic and it's got evil implied in it. Oh, right. Demonic. I have to start trying to use that. That'd be good. Anyway, please consider supporting the show through the Super Chat. It's a great way to support the show to motivate me to increase our reach to encourage me to do more shows. You know, we're way behind on the Super Chat right now of the 650. We've only raised about 50. So, so a lot of work needs to go in there. So hopefully some of you will come through. Let's see. What else did I want to say? Yes, likes. We can do a lot better on the likes right now. We've got we've got like 61 likes. We've got 91 people watching live, but they've been as many as 100 people watching live. So let's get the likes up maybe before you leave. Just make sure to like the show really helps with the algorithms. It gets again, this is the way to expose more people out there to the show and get people more engaged and get people more involved. So that'd be great. So like the show. Use the Super Chat. If by the way, if you're not listening live, the best way to support the show is you run bookshow.com slash support where you can use PayPal or you can go to Patreon. A lot of you recently have been using Patreon. So Patreon funds are growing. That's great. You know, let's let's grow them even further. And then of course, there's also a subscribe star and locals where you can also use those platforms to support the show. Patreon seems to be where the where the momentum is right now. But I also like us. I like the PayPal platform. So any one of those platforms are great. Please use them and please support the show more. All right, we've got just a few super chat questions to super chat really is dead today. I don't know what's going on. It's probably the time of day. The time of day just I guess the people who usually write big super chat questions are not here. But that's all we had. All right. Let's see. So we got the super chat. Let me start with John who's asked the $20 questions. That's actually the first $20 question. This might be a show that it's taken the most time before $20 question has been asked. It's a challenge guys. All right, we'll have to figure out what to do about all this. Because we can't have a massive drop off on super chat funds. We actually need to increase. We need to fund this show. We need to keep it alive. All right. John asked, we're traveling to a new country. What kind of activities do you recommend to get most value out of the experience? Wow. I mean, it really depends on the kind of country, the country that you're going to. And it also depends on what you like. So I'd say you want to find a way. So if your wife, I'd say in a new city rather than a new country. And not to say you're going to spend a few days there or a few weeks there, a few days there. The first thing you want to do as a new country is really get an overview of the place. You want to get a feel for it. And so you want to have a map. And I know we have Google Maps, Apple Maps, all of those maps. The problem with those maps is that usually they're focused in on a small area. And I like to get a sense of a city, where it's north, where it's south, where it's the center, how do you get to places, where they're to its detraction. What's going on? And for that, I actually like a paper map because it gives me the outlet. And then I use the electronic map to go places, to go from place to place. I like the size of the paper map. I like that you can start drawing on it. You can do that on a laptop on computer, but it's hard to do on the phone, just too small. So get a lay of the land. And then a really good thing is to do one of these city tours, whether it's a bus tour, you know, or a private tour, if you want to pay a private guide. But get on something that just takes you, gives you the highlights. The key overlooks where you can see the view. If you're in a place like Rio de Janeiro, that's a big part of what you're going to do. Rio is go to different, you know, views because that's what the city is known for is the views, it's the geography, it's nature. It's when nature has less about museums or cultural issues. If you're going to Paris, a lot of what it is is about, okay, where's the Louvre? You want to go, where's the Dorset Museum? Where's this other museum? Where, you know, where's the Sien, this famous river that's supposed to be the most romantic place on the planet? You want to get a sense of where all these places are. And a tour for that is great. And then pick the cultural places you want to go. What museums must have? Like in Paris, you got to go to the Louvre. You got to go to the Dorset. If you love sculpture, you got to go to the Rodin Museum. And there's a bunch of others, right, that you've got to make. So what are the places you cannot miss? You know you cannot miss. You can use tour guidebooks. You can use the internet. There are lots of ways in order to do that. If there are plays, like in London, when you go to London, you want to go see a play. You want to go see a musical. You want to experience what it is to go see theater in London. Make sure to book those in advance. But again, London is a great city to get a bus tour and just go around. Then I recommend really doing a lot of walking. I try to walk everywhere. Because walking will give you a really sense of the place. You'll see the architecture. You'll see the streets. You'll see the difference between the neighborhoods. You'll bump into people, literally and figuratively. You'll bump into people. You'll find little restaurants. You'll find little coffee shops. Just walk a lot. I mean, I did, when I was in Paris two days ago, three days ago, 18,000 steps, right? Because I walked all over. When I'm in London, I do 10,000 steps easily every day because I'm walking everywhere. Walking to business meetings. Walking to lectures. Walking to meetings. Walking everywhere. Walking just to see. Just a sightseeing with the museum is over there. It's a half hour walk. Great. Because you really get a sense of a place when you walk it, much less so when you're ubering or when you're driving or taking a taxi or anything like that. You really don't get a flavor of it. Now some places are harder to do that. You can't get from one side of Hong Kong to one side of the Hong Kong bay to the other side of the Hong Kong. Easily, you have to take an uber. But once you get to a site, you want to walk. It gets really hot and humid in Hong Kong. So walking can be a challenge. You could say about, I don't know, Bangkok or where it's hot and humid. It's very difficult. But wear comfortable clothes with sandals or shorts with t-shirts and walk. Because you'll get an amazing sense. And walk in during the day and then walk in the evening. Go see what the city, the vibe, the sense of the city during the night is. So do the museums. Do, you know, pick some restaurants and book in advance. Books and plays or like we're going to, we're here in Madrid. We're going to see the opera on Saturday. We're going to see Eda. Go experience some cultural, you know, opera. I love opera. I don't have opera really in Puerto Rico. I get an opportunity to go see Eda, one of my favorite operas of all time in Madrid. There might not be English translation. I don't care. It's, I know the music. It's going to be so much fun. It's going to, it's going to be hopefully a beautiful production. I hope they don't modernize it and spoil it a bit. Anyway, it's going to be, it's going to be fun just to take the night out and do something like that. So, you know, you, you, you want to go, you want to find out if you need to food. You want to go find like the market, the, the, the Mercado in Spain and a lot of cities have it with a little stall selling food and stuff like that. So depending on your interests, just, just look for the places. Get a, get, spend a day getting an overview and then go to the particular places. Yeah, opera has to be sung in Italian. When it's Italian, when it's German, it should be sung in German. But almost all opera is in either Italian or German. Some operas in French. There are probably some operas in Spanish, but I can't think of them because even ones that are said in Spain are sung in a different language. But, but really the, the languages of opera are primarily Italian, German and then secondly, so French up, you know, and then so translation is important. But usually the stories in opera are stupid and, and Aida is a pretty simple story. So you can tell what's being sung and you can tell what's happening without knowing the, the every word by word. Italian is, is beautiful, even if you can't understand what they're saying. My wife can translate although she can't talk at an opera. You have to be. So anyway, those are some of the things, some of the things that you should do. All right. Hopefully that was helpful, John. All right. You know, super chat is picked up, picked up, definitely picked up. Thank you guys, but we're still like 475 short. So still a long way to go to get to our kind of targets. All right. Adam, you know, is just put 50 bucks in that helps a lot. Adam says, not sure if you're familiar with Spanish economist Daniel Lacalle. I'm not, but he's worth a read. Listen, by the way, I echo your sentiments today. Thank you. Yes, he's referring to the echo from the room vibration. This is not a good room for doing a show. But on the other hand, it's an office. I'm not bothering my wife while I do this. There's not a lot of noise going on. She can do her thing, maybe even listening to the show. I can do my thing. And, and this is really, really comfortable. But it does, the room does have reverberation reverberation that does cause an echo. So I apologize for that. But I'll look up the economist. Thanks for pointing them out. I think the next $50 question is Shahzad. And I know Shahzad. I owe you a bunch and I owe some other people. Once I get back to Puerto Rico, your top of my agenda is the review of movies that people have asked me to review. So I've got three or four of them. I know on my list. All right. Matthew asks, oh no, Shahzad, I was going to do Shahzad. Jesus, what am I doing? Shahzad says, do staff at ARI ever play practical jokes on each other? Um, yes. Less so when I was CEO. I don't know why. Maybe I don't have a sense of humor. I don't know. Maybe it wasn't my style. I don't know. But the most, the practical joke that was the most, the funniest, I think, that was played on me by the former CEO of the Ironman Institute, Mike Belina. I can tell you about that. And Mike is a practical joker and I'm not. So maybe because I wasn't. People didn't do as much of it. I don't know now with as tall as the CEO. I don't get a sense of tall as a practical joker. But Mike definitely was. So here's the practical joke you played on me, which was actually quite hysterical. David used to work at the Institute. David says I would replay messages on our whiteboards. So yeah, obviously there was some kidding around and joking at the Institute while I was CEO. I was just not a practical joker. I'm just not. But there was stuff going on. And yes, the whiteboard was often public whiteboard often had funny stuff on it. But this is hysterical. This is one that Mike played on me. So the first time ever that I was interviewed like on a news show on television was by a local television station in LA. I can't even remember what the topic was. But they came to the office, they set up lighting and everything and they did an interview with me from which they clipped. I don't know, half a minute, right? 30 seconds, which is kind of what they do, what is done at these kind of interviews. So they came, they did the interview and and then it wasn't live. And then so in the evening, we're watching television to watch my interview. And I come on and I say what I say and I'm looking okay and what I say is not stupid. But right underneath me is somebody else's name. It's somebody else. I don't know who it is. It's somebody else's name. It's not your own book I managed to. And then the next day, the interview is this guy in the street. He's a black guy, big guy. Kind of talks, he's talking a little slow. And right under, I can't remember what he said, wasn't super intelligent. Right under that, it says, your own book, I'm running. This is my first experience. The CEO of the I'm running 2001, maybe before 9 11. My first experience with a media as the as the CEO of the I'm running. And this is my name going out there into the world. And it's on the wrong guy saying the wrong things. So I was horrified. Mike took a screenshot from his television. I don't know how he got it, how he managed. Maybe he was taping it and he replayed it and he took a camera photo of it. He printed it out. And the next day when we came to the office, the picture of the, the, the, this, this guy on the screen is back guy on the screen with your Ron Brooke. I'm chairman of the CEO of the I'm running Institute underneath it was plastered all over the office at the Institute. And it was pretty funny. It was pretty funny. So I don't know if you think that's funny, but pretty funny and sickening at the same time. All right, let's see what other questions we have. Matthew, back to Matthew. Thank you for the question. Chat is quiet. What's happened to chat? There we go. All right. Matthew asked, did you see that the UK band fracking again today? No. Really? Who are these people? Why are they so? What was it? What was it? Demonic. Why are they so demonic? How, how, how is that conceivable? Yeah. Again, the US will bail out the rest of the world by actually being the only place that allows fracking and therefore has plenty of natural gas and will supply through LNG to the rest of the world. Stephanie says, not demonic. It's retardedly demonic. I think you're right. It's retardedly demonic. I mean, I thought the trust government actually said they would lift the ban on fracking. And as I said, the fall of the trust government, the complete and utter unequivocal disastrous failure of the trust government is going to be a catastrophe for the UK because it is, it's this. It's, it's basically all the good things that she stood for are now going to dismiss as part of that losing agenda. So the new government in the UK, which was put into place yesterday, which is a basically run by a sanctuary stand from nothing, middle of the road, compromising, Keynesian, nothingness, nothingness. Rishi. Sunak. Sunak is his name. It, it's, it's a disaster. It's, it's just a disaster. We're going back. I mean, Rishi Sunak was treasury secretary in a sense of, of the Johnson administration was boring, uninteresting. It was middle of the road, Keynesian. And this is what we got instead of this trust, which had some radical, who had some radical ideas, but who had no idea how to implement them. No idea how to sell them and no idea what order to put them into place. When are they going to make me PM of the UK? I mean, when do I get that job? I want the job. I want a job where I get to actually do stuff like that because I, you know, I could get it right. I surround myself with really, really good people and we would get it right and we would change the world. It takes at least for a short period of time until everybody riled up against us and did it all. But I don't know, UK PM or, I don't know, can you make me president of the United States? So present some little place somewhere that we could actually try this all out and we could, we could, we could test out the theories and put them into place. God, some, there must be some country out there that's looking for a radical, a radical president or a prime minister. I don't, very frustrated because I mean, I've said this before on the show, but the most frustrating thing about my life is the most frustrating thing about my life. Yeah, Canada would be a good example. Although I don't know that even if they give me the job, I would do it in Canada because it's so friggy cold. Jennifer would take the job in Canada. Governor of Puerto Rico, maybe, but I'd be constrained by the US federal government. Maybe Georgia, maybe Tbilisi, they would go for it. I don't know. Israel, you think Israel? God, they would never have me. They would surrender to the Palestinians before they would appoint me prime minister. Jennifer is ready to take the job. You hear Canadians? Jennifer is ready. She doesn't mind the cold. She's ready to go to Ottawa. She's ready to take the job, the premiership of Liberland. Liberland would never take me. You should have seen the almost violent argument I got into with the quote, president or was a dictator or whatever of Liberland years ago when Liberland was first started. The guy hates my guts. There's no way ever that I would get a leadership position in Liberland. All right. And I'm fantasizing about something that's never going to happen. Where are we in a super chat? Not going well today. Just kind of stuck there. Just kind of stuck there. Like when I travel, all the whales, the people who can write big, big checks are not following us when I'm traveling. It's interesting. So anyway, we'll see what happens. We'll see if we can get them back once they get back into routine in Puerto Rico, which actually won't happen until December. December is the next time we'll get into routine in Puerto Rico until then, in and out, in and out, in and out. Yeah, I just need I don't need to defend Jeff Bezos. I just need like the regulars who write 100, 200, $500 like super chats for there to be more of those and for them to be more engaged in to be more listening live to the shows in these weird hours. Anyway, all right. I think that's our time. Are you sympathetic to the US support for the white PG Y P Y D, which is Syrian branch of the PKK, Communist, the terrorist organization organized by the US US support for their them just because they fight against ISIS is an immoral policy, I think. Yeah, I mean, but yes, I, you know, whether the white PG Y DP is a in the PKK or all terrorist organizations. I don't know. I don't know enough about it to, to comment the fact that Oguan thinks they are is not enough reason for me to believe that. But I think the issue is a bigger issue. And that is that the fight against ISIS is an American fight, the fight that war against ISIS, the war against Islamists all over the world is an American fight. They basically declared us as the enemy. So this is something that America should be doing, not with proxies, but itself. The US should be out there destroying ISIS. So I think the fact that we're using and supporting the white PG supporting anybody to help fight ISIS is pathetic and assign a weakness. The United States could have and should have has the capacity to crush ISIS, destroy them and completely demolish them without taking particular sides in the Syria civil war or taking particular sides among the Kurds. You know, I don't know about the white PG, but generally the Kurds in Iraq certainly have a case to have their own country. The Kurds in Iraq certainly have a case to receive American support in the fight against ISIS, whether the ones in Syria and the ones in Turkey do or not. I don't know, but certainly the United States should have taken care of ISIS without anybody's support, doesn't need anybody's support, just crush them. What the hell? This is a war that was declared in the United States by these organizations and the responsibility of the US government in its job is protecting US citizens and US property is to demolish them and to destroy them and to defeat them and to bring them to their knees. And that should be in the US military doing that doesn't need the Kurds help. It doesn't need them to be the main force that is doing the work. Thanks for the support. Thanks for the question. Stefan asks, can you explain the situation in Yemen and why the US is allied against the Houthis? Yeah, I mean, again, I'm not going to go into great detail in the exact history and everything like that. But fundamentally, the Houthis in Yemen represents the Shiites in Yemen. So the Houthis are a tribe in Yemen, Yemen, like most Arab societies is a tribal society. Like most countries in the Arabian Peninsula, it is split between Sunnis and Shiites. The Houthis are Shiites and they have basically been fighting a war with the Sunnis in Yemen for control over Yemen. Yemen sits at the southern side of the Arabian Peninsula. So it is southeast of, well, south, yeah, kind of southeast of Saudi Arabia. And there's a civil war raging over there and has been for a long time. But this is what makes the civil war of interest to Saudi Arabia. And what makes this war, I think, by extension of interest to the United States. And that is that the Houthis are being funded, armed, supported, encouraged. They wouldn't, the civil war wouldn't be possible without Iran. I believe Iran is an enemy of the United States. I believe Iran declared war in the United States in 1979 and was never given up on that. Iran will do everything in its power anyway, everywhere in the world that it can to undermine American interests, to kill Americans, to undermine anything that they do. They certainly undermined us in Iraq. Whether you think the Iraq war was justified or not, it was none of Iran's business. Yet they engaged in killing Americans. They killed Americans in Lebanon. Again, whether Americans should have been there or not, none of Iran's business. They killed Americans. They should suffer the consequence of that. They are undermining our interests in Syria. They are clearly an enemy of our ally Israel. They are developing nuclear weapons that could be a threat to the Americans. They have declared enemies of America forever. The chance death to America is part of Friday prayer. It's why I'm always excited by any form of revolution in Iran. And again, I bring back that the go revolution, the women's revolution in Iran is ongoing. And the fact that it's not getting support, media, any kind of attention from anybody. And the fact that the libertarians are so opposed to it says everything you need to know about the state of the world and the state of the libertarian movement that they are opposed to this. But anyway, America has every interest to fight American interests wherever they can. America obviously has shown that it will not go to work directly with Iran. But America has a strong interest, a strong incentive not to allow Iran to establish itself as a power in the Middle East. Right now Iran, Iranian controlled political parties are forming a government in Iraq. They will control Iraq. They control Syria and they control Lebanon. They basically have the entire fertile crescent that are that goes from Lebanon through Syria into Iraq. They have control over that their troops all over the place. They're placing missiles, they're placing troops in the place and they dominate that part of the Middle East. That is the whole entire northern and eastern border to Saudi Arabia. The eastern border is of course the Persian Gulf. On the other side of the Persian Gulf is Iran to the north is Iraq and ultimately Syria. And then the other idea is that they would control the south through Yemen. There are Shiites in Saudi Arabia that the Iranians are funding and Iranians are supporting terrorist attacks against the Saudi government. I'm not a supporter of the Saudi government but I would rather the Saudi government control the oil supply out of Saudi Arabia than the Iranian government control it. It's enough that Iran now controls in a sense the oil out of Iraq and that we did nothing to allow them to basically take control over Iraq. So we have a strong incentive for Iran not to gain power, not to gain control over more and more resources, not to increase its power influence and powers in the Middle East. And in that sense we have an incentive not to allow the Houthis to win in Yemen and take control over another country. Iran has been very good at taking control over Iraq, Syria and Lebanon primarily because those countries have a complete and out of vacuum. A complete and out of the vacuum of any kind of alternative leadership and they filled that vacuum. Yemen the same thing, civil war Iran comes in, supports one side, fills the vacuum, now it's in their control. The next one is to try a civil war in Saudi Arabia. That would not be good for the West and for the US and for Israel. Alright, Alex, Alex, he says about the Ukraine subject one, it is important to know that Ukraine pays a hefty price in dead and wounded. Yes it does. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dying on the battlefield and among civilians. To the US military aid is hesitant and slow, way below expectations in quality and quantity. I don't know whose expectations, but certainly way below expectations of the Ukrainians for what it could be, but you know, you don't have to convince me. I would do whatever it took to defeat the Russians and to avoid Russian victory because I think the worst thing for US interests and for the future of Europe and the future of NATO is a Russian victory. On the battlefields of Ukraine, so I would provide the Ukrainian weapons necessary to defeat the Russians. But the problem is, and the real problem is, is that the right in the United States and I warned you of this, I warned you, the Trumpist right. The Trumpist right is pro-Russia, it's pro-Prussian. It might not always admit to being pro-Russia and pro-Prussian. But it's certainly anti-Ukraine. And the real danger, Alex, and the rest of you that we Americans face, the real danger that Ukraine faces, is that as Republicans take control now of the House and Senate, help whatever has an half-assed, help the Ukrainians again, they're going to get zero, they're going to get zilch. And that is a disaster for Ukraine and I think for all of us. So, yeah, I mean, it's super troubling, it's super problematic that the right in the United States could become so corrupt. And that is what Trump did. That is what Trump did. He corrupted the right. And God the left is beyond corruption. And now we have a corrupt right. What's left? That's why I was so anti-Trump, so anti-Trump for the whole time. So, you know, and if Trump wins in 2034 and we have a pro-Putin, a pro-aggressive Putin president, God help us. That would be a great super chat question, Tasey. Adam, thank you. Thank you for the support. I appreciate it. Let's see. Okay, we are, you know, a little bit more super chat and we'd make it a halfway of the goal, which is pretty good for a two o'clock in the afternoon. And now it's 3.30 in the afternoon show East Coast time. Just putting it out there. Alright, equal to reality asks, fly by support. Have a tight deadline. I need to meet so I quickly dropped into show my support. Thank you. Watch tomorrow when I have brought myself some more time to do so. Cheers and thank you. Thank you. Equal to reality. Alright, Cook asks, ah, this is Tasey's question. What are your thoughts on Kanye West's recent antics? God, I'm going to alienate people, right? Because I know so many of you love Kanye West, right? He's this amazing, brilliant artist. So let me stop by saying I never got it. I still don't get it. I don't like rap. I don't like hip hop. I don't like Kanye. I don't like anything he's done. I'm not impressed. He strikes me as a complete cook. People say he's got, I don't know, some kind of real mental illness. I guess he just did Lex Friedman. So I should watch that show. But everything I've seen of him, I'm impressed. Yes, he's a rap singer who's not a radical leftist. So what he does is strike me as particularly intellectual or particularly bright or particularly interesting when it comes to his views about anything. He's a mishmash of stuff. You know, he's been unbelievably successful. That success has gone to his head. What did they say he's bipolar? It could be he's bipolar. I don't know. I feel a little sorry for him. I know Don Watkins is a big Kanye fan of his music and said that he understands he's bipolar and kind of feel sorry for him because he's bipolar and got mental problems. I really, I have no connection to Kanye. So I read his tweets. I see the anti-semitic horrible stuff he writes. I see other stuff he says and he writes. And it's just, it's just ridiculous. You know, Cook says in the Lex interview, Kanye straight up said he's a tribalist and encourage his fans to do what you feel, follow your instincts. That's who Kanye is. He's a intellectual nothing. And the fact that he, you know, this is the problem. I said this in one of my events. Who cares what Kanye thinks? He's, he's a, you know, so he does good rap music. Does that mean he knows anything about anything? No. Celebrities are zeros. They're nothing when it comes to anything outside of the thing that their celebrities for. So I never found it interesting what the political views was of movie stars or rock stars or, or, or, you know, what the, or, you know, sports. Like, I don't care what LeBron James thinks about politics. All I care about is how well he plays basketball. So I have no interest in their politics. And it's not that I'm even offended by it. If they don't have the same politics as me. It's just, it's irrelevant. It's just a random person from my perspective because, because the fact that they're good at basketball doesn't make them good on anything else. Anything else that ideas. So Kanye defies a certain attitude that I think exists among rap singers and around in within that culture, which, which has elements of anti Semitism in it. So seeing it with with money and bankers and greed and so on, associate Jews with that. I think, but I think Kanye is more than that. He's just not intellectual. He's just not rational. He's just not a person to be emulated. He's, he's not interested. Right. He's a rap son. Fine. Like his rap. Great. But, but, you know, I wouldn't listen to Alex freedom interview with Kanye West, other than to discover that he's a, he's bad, but Cook just gave me the quote I need. And now I'm completely uninterested in what Kanye has to say. So, you know, he's people, I think got all excited about Kanye because he came across for a while as not left, but not being left is not a virtue, not left. It's what are you, which determines whether you have virtues or not. And what is he? He's certainly not of any intellectual inclination. There's pro liberty, pro freedom, pro reason, pro egoism. Oops. What did I do? Okay, Andre, Andrew, not Andre, Andrew says, and I agree with this. It's getting hard to admire Musk, Elon Musk, his response to Gary Kasparov's valid criticism of his peace plan was to call him a name for feminine hygiene product. What does the disrespect and public discourse say about the culture? It's truly horrible. And the people are justifying Musk because he's a hero for them in business is just pathetic. And I feel bad about all the good things I said about Elon Musk. But yes, I mean, his attack on Kasparov, Kasparov is a good guy. He's a guy who's been fighting the authoritarians for over a decade now, for probably a couple of decades. He's a guy who has money in the game. He has something at stake. He has been out there in the streets demonstrating. He knows what Putin is, what Putin stands for, what Putin represents, is willing and has been willing throughout his career to stand up for liberty, to stand up for freedom, to fight for the right cause. And libertarians and some conservatives and Elon Musk make fun of him and stab him in the back. I think it's just pathetic what Elon Musk has done. And then, okay, so he doesn't quite understand the situation between Russia and Ukraine. So he might say something stupid about peace, or he's afraid of a nuclear war. But then he turns around and says equally a stupid stuff about China and about the need for compromise with China and the need to create a, to give China, you know, basically control over Taiwan and what a loser intellectually and ideologically. Again, it's so disappointing. It's so disappointing. He was so good for a while there shaking the fix of the sky and providing starlink to the Ukrainians and, you know, opening his factory up in spite of the controls during COVID and all of that. You know, so much positive and then, but he's so erratic and so not thoughtful. I mean, he switched from being on the left or being on the right so quickly and without, I think, principle and without real focus and without real ideology. It's unfortunate and sad and disappointing to watch. Thank you, Andrew. All right, let's see. We're halfway to 650. So that's good. We at least achieved half. So it's always good to see that. Well, about it, you know, somebody putting in $100 would be nice to just to get us over 400, which used to be our old goal. But but anyway, thanks for everybody's got us to where we are today. All right, let's quickly run through these. Someone says, you handle the Japanese libertarian heckler very well in your recent post. Thank you. Other than repetition and practice any tips on how to deal with this. Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think, you know, you shouldn't be afraid to show your anger. You shouldn't be afraid to show your passion. You shouldn't be afraid to show your frustration in the appropriate times. You shouldn't be angry with them. And I think it showed. There was a little afraid that I was turning off the audience, but they loved it. They thought my anger was justified. They they you could tell from the audience. I snapped back at the guy. I put him in his place. I shut him up. And they responded positively because they thought what he said and what he was doing was inappropriate. And what he said was ridiculous. What was it? Not moronic. It was demonic. It wouldn't have so it, you know, my worry about turning off the audience turned out to be not. And now you should watch it. And you tell me if you think you think I got too angry with him or not. But yeah, I encourage everybody to watch that video. I think I say stuff there about foreign policy that I probably haven't covered elsewhere. So it's a good talk in the sense that it has original material. And I think that the interchange with the libertarian, maybe action to action should turn that into change with the Japanese libertarian. He wasn't Japanese, by the way, is an American, I think, but he was in Japan. No, it wasn't a little bit. It wasn't an American. It was a Russian. He was a Russian living in Japan. Maybe we can turn that into a short video. That would be a good short video. I don't know if action Jackson you're listening. But oh, you're there. You'll hear this later. But that would be a good segment to cut out of that talk. So, you know, know your stuff and don't be afraid without getting into long arguments. Once you get into confidence and self esteem to do it to shut them down. Alright, Adam, in taking your suggestion to travel more seriously. So we recently went and saw the Cleveland Orchestra play Mahler's second. It was amazing. Any thoughts on Mahler? Have you seen the Cleveland Orchestra in person? So I have not seen the Cleveland Orchestra in person, but at least historically, it's one of my favorite orchestras when it was particularly when it was conducted by George Zell, who was an amazing conductor. And I really loved it. But as you experienced watching an orchestra play live. It's just a fantastic experience. The acoustics are fantastic. You can see the violinist play the violin. You just see it and it's beautiful. And because everybody in the in the place is silent, you get that experience of just focusing on the music. People are not chatting. It's not background music. You totally focus on what's happening on stage and it's a blast. So, yes, do it. It's fabulous. I actually like Mahler and I've grown to like him more over the years. I don't like everything, but I certainly like certain pieces, the second being one of my favorites. The parts of it that are stunning. Some of the second, the second has some of the best music ever. I think the most inspiring music I've ever written. He's not easy. I don't recommend it for beginners. I wouldn't start with Mahler. But Mahler, M-A-H-L-E-R. M-A-H-L-E-R. But he's fantastic when he gets it. Now, he's mostly dark. He had a rough life and he had a right sense of life, but his children died. His wife died. I mean, it's a horror story. If you ever read a biography of Mahler's, it's not pleasant. But he wrote some of the most beautiful, touching, emotionally stirring music. Much of it melancholy, but moving, deeply moving. And he wrote some amazing heroic music. The second has some of that. Trumpets and heroism and the whole orchestra. He wrote a symphony. I think it's the eighth symphony where the orchestra and the choir are a thousand people. A thousand people. I think that's right. It's just this massive thing. No, it can't be a thousand people. Is it a hundred people? No, I think it's a thousand people. Anyway, somebody correct me. So it's just amazing. It's just the sheer force and power of it. And a lot of his music is like that. Mahler's most easiest piece. Mahler's easiest piece to listen to is his first symphony, which is beautiful and magnificent. Probably his most benevolent piece. I think his first and second, his second might be his best symphony. His third I enjoy, but I haven't quite really gotten it. I love his fourth. Love his fourth. I don't know why exactly. There's something particularly benevolent about the opening movement of the first. It's a little fragmented, but it's got a very, very, I think happy benevolent kind of feel to it. So my favorites are the first, the second and the fourth. But then like, what is it? I think there's the slow movement of the fifth is stunning, stunning. So beautiful, so touching, sad, but so moving. I mean, when music can make you feel, even if the feeling is a feeling of sadness, it can make you feel deeply. That is power, that ability of music to stir you, to move you. God, I mean, it's so magnificent and music can do that like nothing else. And so Mahler's music can really get you that way. And certainly not, I find his latest symphonies hard. All the movements, they don't completely integrate for me. Some of the movements are harder than others, but some of the pieces, some of the movements are magnificent. And, you know, the eighth is, it's called Symphony of a Thousand and has a thousand people on stage. Takes quite a logistical effort, but the power of that, the volume. Oh, and as I told you before, the classical music needs to be loud and the symphony of a thousand gets loud. Yes, I love it. So I'm a fan, I'm a fan, even though it's hard and even though a lot of it's malevolent, malevolent or sad, but it's so, the power of the music to move you is so important. And so wonderful with Mahler. But yes, first, second, fourth, my favorites. Third, next, and then I like the rest of them as well. Spock says, thanks for posting your recent talks. Terrific. Appreciate it, more to come, because I did quite a few talks. Some more talks in the pipeline. I'll be posting them in the weeks to come. Oh God, lots of super chat questions already, almost two hours in. I'm getting hungry. Cook says, a lot of conservatives who claim to be opposed to socialism have also argued that money sent to Ukraine should be spent instead spent to help the poor in America. Yeah, I mean, go figure. At the end of the day, they are, they are, they are, you know, altruists and statists. It's just God. I mean, if we do one thing saying we can't afford it is a huge deficit, we should shrink the deficit. Here's my, here's all, you know, like first argue to get rid of the 50 billion of foreign aid. And I'd vote for that, including foreign aid to Israel. Israel doesn't need it. So, but they don't, they don't argue to cut spending. Very few have argued to cut all foreign aid, which I would do. Adam says, a quote and a donation to meet the old 400 gold. Thank you, Adam. Really, really appreciate that. Wow, we're almost at 450 now. So that's, that's great. That's our old goal. The quote is the man who dams money has obtained it dishonestly. The man who respects it has earned it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you, Adam. Inspiring and inspiring both in the support and inspiring in the quotation. I appreciate it. What happened here? Okay. Let's see. What do you have? Oh, let me just do this one just because it's on the topic. Adam says Cleveland is playing Mahler's first in February. You should go have the mushroom ravioli at Valerio's, which I guess is close to the concert hall near Cleveland. You won't be disappointed. Yeah. I mean, Cleveland has always had one of the best orchestras in the world. And when they had Yog Sal as its conductor, it was one of the best orchestras in the world. He was one of the greatest conductors ever. I'm sure it's a great symphony today. If you have an opportunity to go to Cleveland and watch Mahler's first, go do it. Yeah. I mean, travel and experience, gain experiences. Life is made up of experiences, even less so than stuff. I think life is made of experiences. Thank you, Adam. Oops. Let me just get this. All right. Let's see. Colin, don't get to listen to live often. Thanks for everything. Thank you, Colin. Valdrin, your best move was to expand outside the U.S. and witness myself, the rising prosperity of the second world where liberal capitalist ideas take root. My best move? Well, absolutely. I mean, I've been doing this for well over 10 years, expanding overseas. I think it's been incredibly valuable. It's more than 12 years, 15 years or so. And it's bearing fruit. And again, over 50% of the listeners to this show are not in the U.S. all over the place. And some of the most passionate are not in the U.S. I am Murkat. Give you on a dragon and make him king of Westeros. Yeah. I want a dragon. Although I fear of heights. Don't tell me who becomes sits on the air and thrown at the end of this season because I haven't watched the final two episodes. So don't say anything. Thanks, I Jason. What are some of your favorite sports films? It's charity, if you will. Can you check out hustle with Adam Sandler? Say a few words, ranking it in a sports film. I went to hustle. I saw hustle. It was a, it was a fun movie. I don't think it was a great movie was a fun movie. It was inspiring. It focused on kind of what sports movies typically focus on hard work diligence. You can achieve, you know, if you work hard and if you are responsible and if you do the right things, you can win it. So it's certainly a movie, an enjoyable movie. I like basketball. So it was, it was a fun movie. Um, God, I mean, the problem is you asked me out of the blue. So I have to bring to mind the names of movies and that, you know, my mind doesn't work that way. I need a list and then of all sports movies and then I can, I can rank them. I mean, my favorite sports movies. And I think the sport and some of you will not agree with me on this. I think the sport most conducive to movies weirdly enough is baseball, baseball. Because what can a movie or a movie can do is make the three hour long baseball game. It can emphasize the high drama that exists within the game because it can emphasize kind of the, the, the, the, the tension and the drama between the pitcher and the batter, the, the, the conflict. And it can really, it can really elevate that in a way that I don't think you can do in most other sports because most other sports movies, you just want to watch the game. And it's a fast game. Baseball is so slow. You typically don't want to watch the game. You want to watch the movie. Um, uh, so maybe my favorite. And again, I don't have a list in front of me. Maybe my favorite, um, sports movie is a movie called the natural with Robert Redford. It's a baseball movie. Um, it's a movie about redemption. But it's, it's, it's a movie that has, it's a movie that has a very good representation of evil and everything that evil represents and everything that evil is about. And the essence of evil being envy and the essence of evil being hatred of the good for being the good. Um, so it's envy and evil. Evil is also represented by darkness and the good by light. Um, watch it again. Jennifer says she remembers that movie. Watch it again and, and try to watch it properly in a, you know, biggest screen as you can with kind of focus and, and, and watch the theme. It's, it's, it's, and watch how it evolves. And I don't remember enough to articulate a theme right now and all of that, but it's definitely good versus evil. And, and it's represented beautifully on the baseball field and it has no problem being romantic. It has no problem having the good guys win. It has no problem letting it all hang out in a sense, take it being emotional, letting you experience it all. Um, it is one of my favorite, call it modern movies, modern movies. It's natural. It's with Robert Redford. Robert Redford plays a baseball player. And I think there are a lot of good baseball movies, but you're going to have to give me a list. Yes, I mean, Jason also says thanks love natural actually first sports from I saw 14 years great music to absolutely great music. You're absolutely right. The music is fabulous. The music is appropriately dramatic and, and, and more appropriately emotional. I can't remember who wrote the music, but it's fabulous. It's a kind of movie that deserves a proper movie review. But, you know, you know, a fun movie. It's a little mystical, but it kind of fun was the movie with Kevin Costa, where the famous line is if you build it, they will come. It has a certain romance to it. It has a certain style to it. It has a certain passion for values and a passion for building it. I can't remember what the movie's called, but so one of you will recognize it. If you build it, they work a field of dreams. There's a certain romanticism to it. There's a certain passion or longing for beauty and a great, and a great, you know, a time of innocence and passion and beauty to the sport and about people who love the sports. I liked it even though it's got a strong mystical element. But there are a lot of sports movies that are good. There's one where Denzel Washington is the coach of a football team, a college football team. Anyway, if somebody wanted to make, for one of these shows, I just had a list of sports movies. I can tell you the ones I really, really enjoyed. But generally, I like sports movies because there's always a hero. All of them follow the same kind of arc. This is why I think they're natural and some of these others are a little different. But the good guys win. Good guys win. Thanks, Jason. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to talk about sports movies. Felapa. What is the country in Europe that is most receptive and more inclined to share and agree with your views and why? Well, I think that most of Europe would be the UK. I think it's the one that, first of all, has English going for it. Has a culture most similar to the United States and most similar to Objectivism, if you will, and the ideas of Objectivism. I think that next would be countries in Eastern Europe that understand the evils of socialism, but maybe are not religious. So that combination, Georgia comes to mind. Some elements within Poland, Czech Republic, other places where there's a lot of receptivity to Iran's ideas. But it's rough for me to say we don't have really good survey data, but clearly the most events, the most interest is in the UK. Have you seen my Mr. Korean series in Netflix? This is truly good value. Are we in a theme plot characters fully integrated? I have not. I'll check it out. Thank you. Thank you. All right. That we made $451, so we reached our old goal of $450. So thank you to all the superchatters. Thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you for all the people who listened, who all participate in the chat and who are listening. I hope a lot of you, I hope that those of you who did not listen live, that some of you at least would consider supporting the show. On IranBookShow.com, so I support on Patreon or subscribe stuff. We want to keep the show alive and growing and active and for do that we need, we definitely need your support. I didn't talk about recession question mark again. We'll get to that. I don't think that question is going away anytime soon, so there's plenty of opportunity to talk about in the future. So we'll get to that. But for now, it's already 10 o'clock in Spain. So I will bid you good night and I will not sure when the next show will be. I'll probably do at least one more show from here from this office in Madrid. But anyway, I will see you all soon and have a great night and have a great rest of your week. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. We should be well over a hundred of likes down there. Thanks everybody.