 the radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. Hey everybody, there we are. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Friday, February 16th. I hope everybody's having a fantastic, had a fantastic week. It's almost over. And looking forward to the weekend. Just a reminder that we will have a show tonight at 7 p.m. east coast time topic to be determined. And there will also be a show, the Hebrew show, the show I do for Israel, will be tomorrow. I think it's 1 p.m. east coast time, 12 p.m. east coast time. And there will be another show on Sunday, not your exact time. So four weekend of shows, just in case you're worried about having some Iran Book Show withdrawal symptoms. All right, sad news out of Russia today. There's always sad news out of Russia. I think that's the essential characteristic of Russia is sadness. But Alexei Navalny, a longtime opponent of Vladimir Putin, a longtime opposition leader, a longtime anti-corruption activist, has died. No cause of death was provided. And he was seen healthy yesterday on video at one of the hearings related to his trial. And his mother talked to him on Monday. She seemed completely healthy. Anyway, he's dead as of this morning. And Navalny, of course, has been fighting against the Russian machine, if you will, a political machine since at least 2011. He had his own YouTube channel, his Twitter account. And in a 2011 radio interview, he described Russia's ruling party as a party of cooks and thieves. I think pretty much captures it, pretty much captures it. And he published investigative journalism around this that accused high-ranking senior officials in the Russian government of corruption. Over the years, Navalny was arrested many times. And he ran for mayor of Moscow in 2013. He tried to run for president of Russia in 2018, but the Central Electoral Commission ruled him ineligible. In 2020, he made headlines in the West because he was poisoned. He was on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. He became poisoned with a nerve agent. He was immediately shallowed off to Berlin, where he received medical treatment, and where the idea that he was poisoned was confirmed by German doctors. He made a recovery, recovered fully from the poisoning and decided, kind of crazily, to actually return to Russia and continue his fight against Putin. Even after knowing, Putin wanted him dead. There was no doubt, by the way, on who poisoned him. It was Putin and the Russian officials. He was arrested when he landed in Moscow. Russian prosecutors opened a criminal, obviously, he's been accused of violating terms of suspended jail sentence, something like that, and working against the state. He's been within the Russian judicial system since 2020. He was sent to a, what do you call it, colony, a prisoner colony. I didn't even know they had such things. Above the Arctic Circle in Siberia, very reminiscent of Stalin. Where he passed away, he's been on and off sick. And many people thought he was going to die a while back. But he died this morning at the prison. I don't know much about the politics of Navalny, other than he opposed Putin, and other than that, obviously Putin, at least, thought he was unbelievably dangerous and needed to be silenced. Just from that, I conclude Navalny was a hero, a hero of more freedom in Russia. A hero of getting rid of the brutal, you know, homicidal regime of Vladimir Putin. And Navalny, of course, suffered the consequence of that homicidal regime. This is, of course, the same Putin that Taka gave a platform for. This is the same Putin that in many ways, or the same Russia, the Taka praises. By the way, there's a video circulating not only did Taka go to the train station to the underground station. He went to grocery shopping. We talked about that yesterday. But he also went to a fast food place in Moscow and was raving about the non-GMO food. You can find that video online. This is the Taka who now loves all things Russian. Anyway, on the way home, I guess it was home, but on the way leaving Moscow, Taka stopped in another bastion of liberty and a bastion of freedom, another city that is super clean, very, very clean, and where there is no crime, almost zero crime, maybe safer even than Tokyo. And that is Dubai. In Dubai, he sat down at the World Government Summit. I don't know what that is, but it's a World Government Summit. And he was interviewed by a local, I don't even know who's interviewing. I have no idea. He has an Arab accent, so he's local. But more than that, I do not know. And in that interview, Taka Carlson was asked about Navalny and why he didn't ask Putin about him. And I think this is a video worth watching. I think we should, you shouldn't believe what I say Taka said. You shouldn't listen to it himself. I'll play it with the question and the answer. And we can discuss it after that. But this is the link between Navalny and Taka beyond the fact that one was fighting to free Russia and one was fighting to bring Putin, I think, is still fighting to bring Putin's ideology to the United States. Here is the video. This is the World Government Summit. This is about a few days after the interview with Putin. And I will play it. I assume the sound should be fine. The devil's advocate. Advocate away. Yes. Okay. I'll tell you. You should challenge in the rules of an interview and you're a master in your business. It's not for me to give you a lecture about that. But you should challenge some ideas. For instance, you didn't talk about freedom of speech in Russia. You did not talk about Navalny, about assassinations, about restrictions on opposition in the coming elections. I didn't talk about the things that every other American media outlet talks about. Because those are covered and because I have spent my life talking to people who run countries. Now notice he says those are covered. But everything he asked Putin has been covered. I mean, everything Putin said had been covered. And indeed, I thought the whole point of the interview with Putin was discover what Putin thought about this, not what is covered by American mainstream media that we all know. But the whole point of the question is, the whole point of questioning Putin is discover what does Putin think about free speech. Wouldn't that be interesting rather than bring that out? So, Tatekehiu is being duplicitous. He's being a hypocrite. He's lying. But why doesn't he just say, you know, to say I didn't cover it because the mainstream media covers it. The mainstream media is not interviewing Putin. He had this unique opportunity to interview Putin and find out what Putin actually thinks about free speech. He didn't ask it. Now we get to the actual reason why he didn't ask it. So, back to Tatekehiu. I have spent my life talking to people who run countries in various countries and have concluded the following. That every leader kills people. Every leader kills people. Every leader kills people. They're all the same. Model equivalency. Some might kill more. We'll say that in a minute. Some might kill us, but they all kill people. There's no difference. Putin, Biden, Trump for that matter, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Every leader kills people. This reminds me of an interview, almost verbatim of an interview Donald Trump did in 2016, relatively early in the presidential campaign, where he was asked about Putin. He was asked about Putin assassinating his rivals. And Trump said, you know, we assassinate people too. What's the big deal? This is who you want to hand the country to. These are the people who should govern. These are the people who should set the course for the country. God help us. Including my leader. Every leader kills people. Some kill more than others. Leadership requires killing people. Sorry. Leadership requires killing people. It isn't just, you know, leaders are corrupt, but leadership requires killing people. That's a pretty strong statement and tells you a lot about kind of the political thinking that somebody like. And we're not talking about here. I mean, he'll say, oh, war and stuff like that. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about, first of all, we're talking the context of killing your political opponents. We're talking about killing your political opponents. And he will say, well, everybody goes to war, leaders kill people. I don't know. I'll leave that for a minute. That's why I wouldn't want to be a leader. That press restriction is universal in the United States. I know because I've lived it. I've asked my former, you know, I've had a lot of jobs. So censorship in Russia, censorship in the United States, same thing. I know Biden is very critical of Biden. He's done a lot of shows criticizing Biden for years now. Is he being sent to to Northern Alaska to ice fish and to a labor camp? I don't know. If you guys are not furious right now, if you guys are not mad, if you guys are not ready to dump Tucker and anybody associated with him, then all I can say is it's hopeless. It's hopeless. If this doesn't make you steaming mad, because Tucker's not a trivial journalist. Tucker is the journalist of the way. Tucker is, his interview was watched for 500 million times or something. And I've done this for 34 years, and I know how it works. And there's more censorship in Russia than there is in the United States. A little bit, yeah, a little bit more censorship in Russia than it is in the United States. And so at a certain point, it's like people can decide. Almost no censorship in the United States. It's complete BS. Whether they think, you know, what countries they think are better, what systems they think are better. I just want to know what he thinks. That was the whole point. Yeah. Yeah, then why didn't you ask him? But that's the point. He didn't ask him what he thought. He didn't ask him about free speech. What he thought of free speech. Whoops, what am I doing there? I shouldn't be there. We should be there. All right. I don't know. My frustration is not so much at Tucker. It's at his audience. It's at the, I mean, Tucker's doing what Tucker needs to do to maintain his audience. I think Tucker, at the end of the day, this is Tucker. I think Tucker went from being a kind of pro-American, almost libertarian, pro-free market idealist to, I think, coming to the conclusion that that was hopeless and becoming, he's become a complete committed cynic, a complete and committed statist. I think he's gone through that evolution. So I don't think he believes in anything right now. I think he's playing a horrible, cynical, disgusting game. I think, I can't think of anything more despicable, anybody more despicable and disgusting that I've encountered in the media over the last, what is it now, few years, and I've been telling you this over and over again, that Tucker Carlson, and I hope that his performance over the last week or so shows that. And maybe other people start seeing what I saw years ago and what, anyway, I don't know. I am super frustrated, super frustrated. All right. A neat comparison here, some you might think between Tucker Carlson doing what he's doing in Moscow and Walter Durante. Walter Durante, for those of you who don't know, is the New York Times Bureau Chief in Moscow in the early 1930s. He won a Pulitzer Prize for 13 articles. He wrote in 1931 analyzing Joseph Stalin's regime. He is known for having basically lied about what was going on in Ukraine, the mass starvation in Ukraine. What was that movie? God, I forgot my another movie, but wonderful movie. Well, wonderful, scary, but wonderful, really good movie about, God, somebody remind me about the famine in Ukraine, Mr. Jones. Thank you, Emmett. Mr. Jones, Durante plays a role there, and he's shown to be the creep that he was. Durante was a communist spy, and he worked in the New York Times, and he wrote articles basically subtly praising Stalin. Durante, to a large extent, was responsible for FDR re-engaging with the Soviet Union, establishing, re-establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. I think, I think Tucker Carlson is the Durante of today. He's not a spy. I don't think Putin's paying him. The sad thing is, just like Durante found an incredibly receptive audience in the United States. In the 1930s, certainly the intellectual class in the United States were, the intellectual class in the United States were communists. I think the same today is with Tucker. Tucker finds a mass, large number of fascists in the United States. They don't call themselves fascists. They don't think of themselves as fascists, but they are fascists in the United States who love him and adore him as freedom in the United States declines. And as the contest between the authoritarians of the left and the authoritarians of the right and who gets, who gets to dominate the scraps of what's left of America, Tucker is the Walter Durante of the right. He is their spokesman. He is their guy giving us beautiful reports from Russia. And anybody who loves Tucker, and here I'm talking about Ken and I'm talking about Richard and others on this chat, not only can you go to hell, but you guys are at the forefront of destroying this country, at the forefront of destroying this country. You are part of the destruction of this country. You are part of the end of this country. You should be ashamed of yourselves. And it saddens me to see you on my chat. One last thing, maybe a little humor with forgot a Tucker at the end, because I am kind of angry. This is from your district judge, Mary K. V. Scottsill. She was a judge in the Southern District of New York, and she was the judge responsible for the defamation lawsuit against Tucker Carlson. This is basically what she ruled. She ruled that the genia tenure of the show should then inform a viewer that Carlson is not stating actual facts about the topics he discusses and isn't instead engaging in exaggeration and non-literal commentary. This is by the way the position the Fox lawyers argued for, and Tucker Carlson's lawyers argued for, that he is an entertainer. She wrote, quote, Fox persuasively argued that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer arrives with an appropriate amount of skepticism about the statement he makes. By the way, she was an appointee of Trump. She's a Trump appointee, not some leftist. Whether the court frames Mr. Carlson's statement and exaggeration, non-literal commentary, or simply bloviating for his audience, the conclusion remains the same. The statements are not actionable. Anyway, can't sue him because he's not really, nobody takes him seriously. Nobody should take him seriously put it that way. The comments I'm making about Tucker are based on everything I've said about Tucker over the last few years, but certainly over the last three days, the analysis of his interview with Putin, which was a joke, and then all this commentary on Moscow where he fawns over Moscow, and of course the video I just showed you where he basically morally equivocates between the Russian regime and the American regime and the Western regimes and advocates that leadership means killing people. So a big deal if Putin is killing people. All right, I don't know where I go from there, but we're going to take on another light topic that people can embrace. Just a roundup of some of the craziness that has been, you can see the craziness that is going on in the world right now as I think our civilization is challenged from crazies on the right, Tucker Carlson, and crazies on the left, these guys. All right, earlier this week, a crowd of demonstrators surrounded a hospital in Toronto yelling intifada, intifada at its patients and staff because the hospital was founded by Jews who have nothing to do with Israel. And somehow the hospital will not free Palestine, as of course the hospital should. The hospital is Mount Sinai, so there's another reason to attack it even though Mount Sinai is actually in the Sinai Desert Peninsula, which is technically in Egypt, not in Israel. But this all in the name of social justice, the anti-Semites attack a hospital in Toronto. But off of the second floor of the hospital, they climbed on top and they flew a Palestinian flag. They harassed patients, they harassed family members of the patients, they harassed nurses, doctors. Yeah, just because it was founded by Jews. It's named after Jews, the Joseph and Wolf Leibovich health complex, and it's called Mount Sinai. This is the world in which we live. Not to be outdone, the Pro Hamas, Pro Möder, Pro Rape mob in New York City basically took over, I think it was last Sunday, the Museum of Modern Art. Now, I have some sympathy for protesting inside the Museum of Modern Art. If you like Tucker, you're not an objectivist. How about that? If you like Tucker, if you like this Tucker, the Tucker of the last week, you're not an objectivist. I don't think, anyway. The amount of evading you have to do of what Tucker said over the last week, and for you to still say you like Tucker, you're an objectivist maybe in some bizarre compartment in your mind, but you're an evader. You are an evader. Anyway, it took over the Museum of Art. There were tourists there, there were families there. They put a big sign in the Museum of Modern Art from the river to the sea. They actively called for the genocide of the Jewish people in Israel, and this is a major tourist spot, although I hate that Museum. It's not art that they exhibit there. It's pretty ugly stuff. One more, Students for Justice in Palestine at Columbia University this week were very clear in their protests. They stated very clearly, we don't want two states, we want all of it. We don't want two states, we want all of it. In other words, what they want is they want the genocide of the Jews. That is exactly what they want. All right, see here. All right, I guess nothing to be seen. All right, and just to tap it all off in terms of anti-Semitism week, the Irish, the Irish, what is it? A basketball team, a basketball team, a women's basketball. The Irish basketball team refused to shake hands with the Israeli basketball team before a match, before a match. And the Irish basketball team does not look Palestinian, not look Palestinian at all. That red hair, those freckled faces, and oh, I forgot one last one, a Broadway charity called Broadway Cares. It turns out it's been obviously collecting money for Broadway, for actors who don't have work, actors out of job, and so on. And they have been found to have channeled $400,000 of contributions that came in to support starving artists, actors. They funneled $400,000 of those to Gaza, to Hamas. All right, let's see. Some good news, some good news. I mean, I think it's good news, it'll be interesting to see. I've got three good news stories, and then, oh, no, one kind of good news. Before we get to the good news, China. So the Chinese stock market has crashed. Chinese property markets have crashed. Most of Chinese people's saving were in property markets. Millions of Chinese people, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of Chinese are losing their life savings. And China's not the country that it was 40 years ago. China's a country where people notice that they're losing their life savings, and they've experienced middle-class hood. And they know what at least some wealth can do, and suddenly their stocks are crashing. Their apartments are worth a fraction of what they bought, and some who put money down for apartment they will receive in the future are not going to get that apartment. Just they're not being built. The developers are going bust. And the Chinese are frustrated, and they're expressing it in a variety of different ways, and it's difficult for them to express it because of censorship. But of course, all country's censor, let's not. I wonder what Tucker thinks of China. My guess is, and this is just a guess, that he despises China. He loves Russia and despises China, because China's not Christian, and Russia is. That's my guess. It looks like the conservatives and the right-wingers are all fans of Putin because he's not just an authoritarian, which they love, but he's also a Christian authoritarian. Although one of the funniest parts of the interview, and I don't remember if I showed you this part, is when, did I show you the part where Tucker asks Putin about him being a Christian leader of the state? And Putin basically says, nah, not really. I don't consider himself a Christian leader of the state. I mean, Christianity is important, but then he goes on and talks about other stuff. And it's like, Tucker's completely deflated. Completely deflated. It was so funny to watch. You guys should really watch the interview. It is an amazing interview in terms of how Putin plays Tucker and how Tucker's not getting any of the stuff he wants. None of the red meat that he wanted didn't get any of it. Didn't get any of it. It was unbelievable. It was unbelievable. I mean, Tucker was just, you know, Putin is a master at this stuff. He knows exactly what he's doing. And he played Tucker completely. Tucker was hoping for all this juicy stuff that he could use for his accolades and use for his mega followers. And he got nothing nada. Putin didn't give him the NATO stuff. He didn't give them the religion stuff. And then Putin has said, I think I talked about this yesterday, Putin has said that he was very disappointed in the interview. He thought Tucker would be a lot tougher and ask some challenging questions and really push him. And he was ready for that. And he says, Tucker was like, he was such an easy interview. It was ridiculous. And he was, he played him completely. Anyway, the Chinese are finding all kinds of ways to express their frustration with what's going on. The American Embassy in China has a Waibu channel. Waibu is like a social networking thing. And it has a section. It has a section on there where they talk about all kinds of irrelevant stuff, right? Not interesting. I think, and there's a section there about talking about a giraffe. And under the section on the giraffes, suddenly, all these tens of thousands of comments from Chinese people expressing their frustration at the government, expressing the frustration of what's going on. God, just a whole slew of this. It is pretty amazing how bad it is. And the challenge in China is there's no way for it to vent. And what's going to be interesting to see is if the Chinese find a way, and if they find a way, will their mechanism for venting, will their mechanism actually be ultimately some kind of demonstration, some kind of shaking the regime to its core? But the frustration is building. The Chinese have had a taste. They've had a taste of wealth. And it's not going to be easy for them to give it up. All right, now let's do the good news. Sora. I don't know if you guys have seen the Sora thing. It's all over Twitter. It's all over social media. But Sora is a new AI app. It's an application from chat GPT. And it is, you basically write a text about a video you would like to see, right? And you would like to see, I don't know, when I saw puppies playing in the snow, you would like to see a rhinoceros, I don't know, jumping on a lion, whatever it is. And the AI will basically create it for you. I'm not talking about find it. I'm talking about create it. That is they will take images, animate them, and create the scene that you have asked for. You can imagine typing in a whole script for a movie and then having this play out as a script for a movie. I think somebody put in a story on Mars with an astronaut who's wearing underneath, I guess it's helmet, a knit, like a winter knit something you would not find, obviously, in any actually video. And Sora created it. So this ability of chat GPT, the ability of AI, of this current generation of AI, to take what you say and create stuff with it, or reorganize data based on it, and is pretty stunning and pretty amazing. And we're just seeing the beginnings of this, but it is, stuff has moved very fast since chat GPT came out last year, chat GPT, I think four came out last year. And it's super exciting. It's super exciting and to see what comes next and how it's moving forward. All right. So yeah, watch for Sora, S-O-R-A, check it out. It's pretty cool. ASML. ASML is of course the Dutch company that makes the most advanced equipment in the world for chip manufacturing. It is the only company in the world that makes these lithography machines that use, what do they use? Ultraviolet light, I think extreme ultraviolet light. There are significant steps ahead, although I've seen now that Japan has a manufacturer that makes machines based on a different principle, but they're also making phenomenal chips, but these are the best. This is, ASML is the best and they've just unveiled the next generation machine. This is a machine that costs $380 million. It's a machine that makes chips. It costs $380 million. It weighs 165 tons. 160, that's two, I think Boeing 737s, two Boeing 737s is the weight of this machine. It's double the price of the previous low EUV lithography machine, so this is double the cost, but it'll allow them now to make chips that are far more dense up to 1.7 times more dense and will allow them to print many more features with few exposures and reduce production time significantly. Anyway, this is a revolutionary machine. It won't start producing chips until sometime in 2025. The first machine has been shipped to Intel. Intel will be using it, but they will also be shipped to TCMC in Taiwan, to Samsung in South Korea, and I'm not sure who else, but basically Intel and those two Korean and Taiwanese manufacturers are the only manufacturers in the world to be producing the highest end chips and ASML is making this possible. This is pretty cool. This is really, really cutting edge, cool stuff, and one of the reasons you need these kind of chips is to power next generation AI applications. I don't know. I think, and I've said this over and over again over the last year, I think the next year is super exciting, super exciting in terms of the AI application, not next year, the next 10 years, sorry, next 10 years. As the new generation chips start coming out in 2026, 2027, all the way to 2030, and you get these new applications of AI, everything now explodes exponentially. I don't know how to imagine what that looks like in the future, but in the future, I expect that I won't even have to do these shows. I will just have a digital image of myself delivering the show and chat GPT. Having learnt from all the content that it has gained from me, having read all of Vyn Rand and Leonard Pieckoff and all the other objectives material, will present this content as well as I ever could. Jennifer's panicking. Spieman says he's not watching that. This is the thing. You won't even know what's happening. You won't even know it's happening because it'll look exactly like me. It'll say exactly what I would say. It will have exactly my sense of humor. It will ridicule Scott on the chat. If Scott ever comes back, exactly the way I have. You won't even know it. You won't even know it. I mean, I'm laughing, but I've got somebody actually, one of our fellow supporters of the Yuan Book Show is actually working right now on trying to create a basically training chat GPT on all of my shows. So turning all my videos into transcripts, having chat GPT, read all my transcripts, and then you'll be able to ask chat GPT, what would Yuan Book say about this? And chat GPT would be able to tell you. It will be the Yuan AI and I hope hopefully within a few months or a year we'll be able to release something like that. So that if you're interested in what Yuan has to say about Tech Cacaucin, you don't want to listen to all the shows. You just ask the chat GPT, what has Yuan said about Tech Cacaucin and it gives you the whole spiel. We'll call it Yuan PT. I don't know, that sounds like Yuan post-traumatic stress or something, PTSD. You're on AI. I like you on AI. AI, you on. I don't know. We'll see. It's going to be fun. All right, finally, you know how everybody's panicking hysteria? Probably not you guys and you're probably too young for this. But there really is a real problem. One of those things where actually the panic in hysteria is somewhat justified and that is the fact that we use as much antibiotics as we all do has really enhanced the evolution of bacteria that are resistant to the antibiotics. We can see evolution in action for those of you who might doubt evolution. Evolution in action with bacteria as they become resistant to the antibiotics that we have that exist today in the world. There are quite a few deaths every year. In the thousands, in the many thousands, I think the tens of thousands are people who die from infections they get, from bacteria resistant antibiotics. Many of those infections, by the way, happen in hospitals. I know my brother in law died of such an infection. At a hospital, he had a heart operation which went fine and then died from an infection right after the operation. Infection did not respond to antibiotics in hospital and that was in 2020. This is my sister's husband. Anyway, there is now, this is really bad part and it is. On the other hand, though, I've always had the sense that, okay, it's a scientific challenge. Somebody will come up with a solution and indeed, scientists have invented a drug candidate that really looks like it can combat antibiotic resistant superbugs. They've done it so far non-human tests but it's now, I think, ready for human tests. It was a paper published on Science Journal. On Thursday, the new antibiotic is called chressomycin. It's effective in mice against several types of bacteria that cause serious infections and increasingly resistant to existing treatments. I expected over the next five years or so, you will find a number of treatments against the bacteria resistant. Look, nature, this is the thing the environmentalists don't get. Nature is always going to try to kill us. Nature doesn't like human beings. Of course, nature doesn't ever mind but generally, nature is always trying to kill us. Bacteria, all kinds of other stuff, weather, animals, just trying to kill us. We as human beings need to constantly innovate, constantly innovate in order to protect ourselves and we can. We have a mind and that is something that allows us to conquer nature. We can subdue nature by the use of our mind and this is a great example of that. We ended with three good news stories. Sora, new AI application, ASMR, new machine that is going to blow up AI. One of the problems that a lot of people are saying with AI is it's too slow, but with these new chips that we can expect over the next five years and with just the sheer number of chips, they're going to solve the problem of slowness and get the speed so it can do all the wonderful things that we would like it to do. All right, let's jump into the Super Chat. Remind you, Super Chat is a way to support the show. You can do a sticker just for support. By the way, we've got about 170 people watching live right now. Please feel free to subscribe to the show. That'd be great to subscribe to show if you're not a subscriber that way you'll find out when I go live, but also when I publish videos, short videos, long videos, all my videos, you can subscribe to that. Also, you can, if you will, I'd really appreciate if you just give the show a thumbs up. If you like it, just like the show that helps with the algorithms a lot. Write a comment, participate in the chat, make a contribution through Super Chat, do something, engage with the show in some way. That increases, the algorithm will pick this up and promote it and enhance it and get the word out there. So just hoping that you guys engage. All right, by the way, the scholarships for the March-Iran Institute Conference in Austin, Texas, you can still apply for the scholarship until March 15th I saw today, March 15th. So please consider doing that. God, you guys, way off topic. Phil, 100-year-old D. Dave UK vet parachuted into France today, I guess, this week and was interviewed on TV last week, last week. A bit deaf, but face looked hard as nails still. He was asked about what he fought for. He paused and said, I don't know anymore. And Phil says, I felt sick on his behalf. It's not just on his behalf. I mean, the reality is, I mean, it could very well be that he doesn't remember because, you know, just memory and age and all of that. But it could very well be, and this is the way I would interpret it. What was World War II about? What were we fighting for? Freedom? I mean, is freedom that great? I mean, clearly, the subway stations in Moscow are cleaner than the ones in New York. So maybe freedom is not that good. In Singapore, the streets are unbelievably clean. They're not in Dallas, certainly not in San Francisco. So what were we fighting for? Freedom? Is freedom that big of a deal? Is that worth fighting for? Dying for? Risking your life for? Is it? I don't know. That's what went through my mind, which made me sick for all of us. Phil, also, at last a reason to be cheerful, Iran. Thank goodness, well-funded climate cooling ideas, as you described yesterday, are here to save us from those evil volcanoes in Iceland and such, meaning metaphysics can be ignored. Hooray! Think that way to a second. Let me see if I understand what he's saying. I mean, the volcano is actually cooling, and if the volcano erupts and we get the soot in the air, we might go into an ice age, and then we'll have to put in particles that warm the planet. So we might have to scenario, but the beauty is the human mind will always figure out solutions for these things. So why worry? Just be happy. Don't worry. I mean, the enemy is not, at the end of the day, the enemy is not nature, because nature we can figure out. Human mind is very good at solving problems created by nature. The enemy is other people. The enemy is other human being. The enemy is Putin and Tekka Carlson, and Putin and Tekka Carlson represent challenges that I think are far greater than climate change and volcanoes and ice ages. Rimo says, do you have some tips for an introvert who goes to a conference where he does not know anybody, like me at the upcoming conference in Amsterdam? So not asking for a friend. Well, I mean, it's Amsterdam. It's a conference of objectivists. Come up to me, say, hey, you're on. I'm Rimo. I'm the one who asked you about the question about the introvert. Do you mind introducing me to some people? And I'd be happy to do it. So, God, it's a conference of objectivists. Just suck it up and go and say, hey, I'm Rimo. Really happy to be here. How about you guys? Where are you from? A simple stupid question. Where are you from? Because there'll be people from all over the world, certainly America and all over Europe. So that'll be interesting. There'll be people there from Tbilisi, some really cool, a few cool people from Tbilisi. I mean, the reality is that Amsterdam will be a conference filled with introverts who will have a hard time introducing themselves to one another. So you've got to just go and do it. And my general tip is, just do it. There is no magic to this kind of stuff. You just have to say to yourself, okay, so here's a tip. You know how public speaking they tell you, just pretend the audience is naked? Or what, how bad could it get? How bad could it actually get? So here's my suggestion. How bad could it get? You go up there and you don't have anything to say. You stand in silence. What'll happen? Nothing. Nothing will happen. You say something stupid. All right. Won't be the first time anybody's ever said something stupid. You stutter. I don't know what play through your head. All the things that you think could happen. You discovered you forgot to put your pants on this morning. Whoops. I don't know. And then run all those scenarios through your head. None of them are that bad. None of them have consequences you cannot recover from. And then just do it. Then just do it. All right. James Taylor says, Tucker Carlson helped cultivate the anti-values, anti-reason approach. He needs to rethink the monster he helped create or double down on it for his audience and his own power trip. The latter seems more likely. Yeah, no. I think he's already doubled down on it. I think he's got exponentially worse since he left Fox. I think this charade in Moscow is the worst I've seen him by far. And, you know, so he's already doubling down. I don't think there's an out for Tucker. There's no redemption. There's a point in which free will doesn't matter anymore because you're so committed to the irrationality, the irrationality you've embraced. So, Tucker's hopeless. Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless. All right. Oh, I didn't see Sivanos. They're $100. Thank you, Sivanos. Wow. That's great. Thank you. Hello, Yvonne. I'm celebrating my birthday today. Happy birthday to Sivanos. Come on everybody in the chat. Put in a little happy birthday there. You can do happy birthday balloons and stuff. You know the emojis. And I'd like you to read a few phrases for me. On God for real, for real, for real. No cap. Amy got yet. I don't even know what that says. That sounds like an issue. Not an ish me. Who is John Guile? Guite. Thank you. All right. I'm not sure what the purpose is there. On God for real, for real, for real. No cap. Amy got Guite. Who is John Guite? I don't know. All right. I read them. I don't know, Sivanos. For 100 bucks, I'm probably not willing to read anything, but I'm not sure if that was what the purpose of that was. Someday you'll have to tell me. Hopper Campbell, what is something you have learned from your audience? Oh, that's weird. Not you're weird. It's just weird. What about you learn from my audience? My audience. I think the most important thing I learned from the audience is they matter. That is, the context matters. Their attention span matters. Their focus matters. It doesn't matter what I want, what I think, what I'm comfortable with, particularly for public speaking, what matters is the audience and what they can comprehend and what they can access and what they can. If you come to my public speaking workshop, you'll hear a lot more about that and you'll hear about how I changed my ways in terms of public speaking and how I became the public speaker that I am today. So yeah, you should all come to my public speaking workshop in Amsterdam on March 11th. It's from 10 a.m., something like that to 5 p.m. It's $750 and whether you're attending the conference or not. And if you're in Amsterdam, I know there are a lot of Dutch people, a lot of Dutch objectivists. If any of you Dutch objectivists want to participate in my public speaking seminar, please participate in my public speaking seminar. Come on and join us. It'll be on, again, March 11th. It's a Monday from 10 to 5 and it'll be a lot of fun, a lot of one-on-one attention. Right now I have five people. There probably won't be more than seven or eight at most. So please, please come over. Please participate. Michael, is Switzerland the first country in Europe? Why are they so much more capitalistic than the rest of Europe? How are some countries able to resist academic left more than others? Switzerland is probably a little freer than Europe, a little bit more capitalistic than Europe. I don't really know. I think it's probably because they have this cantons, which have a lot of independence, and they have a long tradition of self-reliance and independence as individuals. They have a lot of state, particularly in banking or have had Swiss banks are not what they used to be. And so they rely on that and a lot of the income that comes into Switzerland. There's something in the spirit of the Swiss that is independent. There are independence. Maybe they've managed to avoid the world wars. I don't know. I don't know enough about the history of Switzerland. How are some countries able to resist the academic left? I don't know that countries are. The ones that have probably more of a tradition of more conservative, traditional academic study and have managed to avoid it. Now, let me be clear. Switzerland is not exactly free. It's not exactly capitalist. It's just less regulated than many, but there's some ridiculous absurd crazy regulations in Switzerland that are quite leftist. So while Switzerland might be better than France, it's far from any kind of ideal. It's not a bad place to retire to. It's not a bad place if you have a lot of money to go to because taxes can be low, but also that depends on cantons. Some cantons, taxes are pretty high. Others, they're pretty low. If you want to ask me a question, then that's what the super chat is for. I don't answer questions that are just asked in the chat. So any questions you have, $2, $5, $10, $100, you can ask in the super chat. It would be unfit to the people putting money in their questions to answer questions in the chat that are not related to that are not in the super chat. Paul Ferris, Peter Zeen called Taka a Putin puppet and propagandist on his podcast. He says China will collapse within a decade and others will support Ukraine despite the perverted right. Good for Peter Zeen. I mean, I like Peter Zeen. I don't agree with some of the explanations he gives. I don't agree with his over emphasis on demographics and geography, although I don't think they're irrelevant, but I think he over emphasizes. I don't think he emphasizes his ideas enough. But I like, he's got a good sense of life. He understands the good. For example, he says trade is going to collapse, but he doesn't say it gleefully. He says it tragically. He is a big believer in free trade. He is very anti-populism, but he just tells you populism is rising even though I'm against it. So I like Peter Zeen quite a bit. Yeah, that would be cool to do an event with him. I find his analysis very sharp. He's very clear. I think that's why he's so popular. Again, I think he overemphasizes certain things that I don't think should be overemphasized. He just did one on the Middle East recently that I watched. And a lot of it was very good. A lot of it was very good. And I agree with him. Whether Tucker is a knowing puppet of Putin or not, he is a puppet of Putin's, there's no question. Phil, your comments on age and presidents I beg to defer just a bit, would you turn down, would you turn down, let's say, a Charlie Munger 15 years ago? I mean, I agree with you that there are going to be exceptions. I hope I'm one of them when I'm 80. But I don't think you should govern by exception. That is, I think that you can't take the risk. And the other thing that happens when you're in your 80s, you might be fine. And then you're not. And it can happen quickly. And right now, at least, we do not have enough of a of institutional robustness, whatever the hell that means. You know, institutions are not robust enough to deal with telling a president he has to quit. Ronald Reagan was losing it to his then. He was. And he shouldn't have been president. He should not have been president. The last probably two, three years. I don't think Biden should be president. And I don't think I, you know, for a lot of reasons, I don't think Trump should be president. But you know, over 80, you're pushing it. And they're real challenges. That little bunny opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance. I don't see why. Don't see why at all. Opinion can be based on knowledge and opinion can be based on ignorance. Opinion in and of itself is neutral in terms of whether it is on which side of that spectrum it's on. Clock is Russia the most soulless place in the world? I found it to be. I'll find it to be. I found it to be. As I said many times way before the stuff with Putin, and I really disliked Russia. I think I told you this, but you know, I was giving a talk in St. Petersburg. It was a packed room, probably 100 over 100 people there. And they're very friendly time ran. And they had made an introduction. It was very friendly time ran and everything. And I, and during the Q&A, somebody asked me about Putin. And this is, I don't know, 10 years ago. And I said, yeah, Putin's a thug. And I went on to explain how awful Putin was. And you can tell how the atmosphere in the room changed. It's not that they disagreed with me. It's that they felt afraid to be in the same room as me saying that. And everybody kind of took a step back. And people literally came up to me after the talk and said, Joanne, you can't say that in Russia. You can't say that publicly. You can't say that. And Putin is a thug. He's weak. He's, and he's a pathetic, like all thugs and dictators. And to think of Putin as masculine is not to understand the concept masculinity. He can ride a horse shirtless. Yippie. That's not masculinity. That's not what masculinity means. Being a thug is not masculine. Anyway, I've talked about masculinity other places. And Putin is not my ideal of masculinity at all. All right. Liam, as technology improves and it becomes easy and easy to make automatic bombs, do you think this high likelihood one will be used in a terrorist attack? Yeah, so I don't know exactly what an automatic bomb is, but yeah, any tool that can be used will be used. I don't see why it wouldn't be. At some point, we will have all kinds of horrible use of technology for horrible means. Cook, if I recall correctly, Tucker praised China's regulation and crackdown on real estate speculation gaming into any content a few years ago. Yeah, you know, the other thing you just reminded me, Cook, that Tucker praised. He praised the fact that the Chinese authorities, it relates to the masculinity comment, he praised the dictate from the Chinese government to get effeminate men off of television. Can't have effeminate men be on television. That's destructive to the culture. That's the level of authoritarianism that Tucker would like in America because he praised that when China, you know, when that was in the news, that China was insisting on that. That's how pathetic Tucker Carlson is. But people love him. People like him. He's important and he's big shot. Willa, I'm not surprised to see the supposed champions of free speech from the past four years give a pass for the imprisonment and execution of a journalist and political opposition. Yeah, I mean, I'm not surprised either, saddened, continue to be saddened, but not surprised. And the idea that all leaders kill people, it just sends chills down my spine. I mean, if ever there was, I mean, what's the big deal about Hitler? He killed people. Maybe he killed more people than others. But all leaders kill people. Why? Why make a big deal about Hitler? Well, Stalin or any of these guys. Philip, do you know about Balaji Swivey Sun's network states? If yes, what do you think of the concept? No, I don't know anything about it. I'm suspicious because it sounds like one of those short cuts that I don't work create a state in cyber space. But I really don't know. I shouldn't judge who knows. Maybe there's something there. Hector, I'm baffled you on many here in Iowa who are MAGA heads admire Putin. They are not thinking. They are only validating their narratives. I know. I mean, the state of America is baffling, although, you know, I told you this would happen. I predicted it. I think this is, you know, you could argue, is this a consequence of the election of Donald Trump? Or is this what has brought us Donald Trump? But either way, this is the state of America. This is the state of the rights. And this, well, but also of America more broadly, because it's some extent of response to the left. But it is baffling where the founding fathers have gone, where the ideas of liberty have gone. They're not to be found in America. I just don't see them. There's no constituency for even for Ronald Reagan, who was mild in comparison. There's just no constituency. Reagan would be laughed off the ballot today. The Republican Party has no room for Ronald Reagan. And never mind for, I mean, could you imagine what they would do with the Goldwater? I mean, it's just unthinkable what they would do to Goldwater. Michael Kaufman, I agree with you after all that has been exposed to show how Tucker has sold his soul. Why does anyone take the modern day quizzling seriously? His supporters discussed me. I'm with you completely, Michael. I mean, it really is, it really has reached the level of disgust. I mean, I was anti Tucker, I have been for years and express that for years. But now it's been revealed completely. And instead of saying, okay, Tucker was once good. I get it. I used to admire Tucker when he was when he was better. But yeah, he's he's drawn, he's crossed the line. He's gone nuts. No, they still love him. They still and what it what it what it exposes is either the revasion or ultimately their sympathy, this sympathy for somebody like Putin, this sympathy for a tyrant, this sympathy for a strongman. This is why, you know, Ken thinks Putin is masculine because he's a tyrant. Being a tyrant is masculine. Go for it. I think those those by that standard Hamas, October 7th, incredibly masculine. They raped women. Isn't that super masculine? It's just it's just mind-boggling to me that that one could hold these concepts in that way. And then also call yourself, pretend to call yourself an objectivist. It's just state of the world, sad. All right, don't forget to subscribe if you haven't yet subscribed to the show. Andrew says, are you sure you're not understanding Tucker's evil by thinking of him as a huckster who doesn't believe in ideas? Now, look, it could very well be that he's an intellectual powerhouse, and but he's either way is a huckster. Because the hucksters, you know, even if he's an evil genius, he still has to evade. You can't be an evil genius without evading. Donna, thank you for the support. Thanks for the sticker GF 37. Thank you for the support. Appreciate the sticker. Finally, Apollo, Zeus. What's the difference between Yiddish and Hebrew? Hebrew and Yiddish. I mean, they're completely different languages. Yiddish is basically German. It's a Jewish kind of, what do you call it, a spin off from German? What would you call it? It's a, I don't know. It's a type of German that Jews talk to one another in the ghettos when they interact with one another. But if you know German, you can understand a lot of Yiddish. And if you know Yiddish, you can understand a lot of German. No Hebrew is there, right? No, it's not a Hebrew dialect. It's a German dialect. Yiddish is a German dialect. And Hebrew, on the other hand, is an ancient language. It is the language goes back to the times of the Bible. You know, a lot of what we know from the Bible is in Abimeic. But parts of Hebrew survived. But the way we speak Hebrew today, it's a modern language. It's a language in the early part of the 20th century was modernized. It took the basics and the roots from the biblical language, which was kept alive through the study of the Bible through prayer. Jews learned Hebrew so they could pray in Hebrew, but they didn't really talk Hebrew. They didn't know Hebrew. They didn't understand Hebrew. They understood what they prayed and that was it. But it was, Hebrew was resurrected, brought back to life in the early part of the 20th century. So it's a completely modern language. So Yiddish is a German dialect. Hebrew is a modern language based on a biblical language. Savannah says, thanks again. I consider those words from the AI. Not sure what that means. Spiderman 3000, Iran, would you watch two seasons of any TV show if 5000 was raised for you to do so? I took your price for reviewing a Tuam movie and multiplied that by the show Total Runtime. Probably, I mean, unless it was terrible, right? If you tell me it's a reasonable show, it doesn't have to be a great show, but it's a reasonable show, then I will, yeah, $5,000 definitely do it. I won't do it if it's like I'm going to suffer through every show, then I'll probably refund the money to you. But yeah, it's very likely I would do it. Unless again, the show is just painful. I'm not a masochist. All right, Yiddish is mostly a dead language. There's still some Jews who speak it in the ultra orthodox community primarily. But there's not a lot of people who speak Yiddish anymore. Periodically, there are attempts to revive the language in New York and other places, revive. There used to be Yiddish theater. There used to be Yiddish poetry. And people try to revive that periodically, but there's just no market for it. So it only exists today among the ultra orthodox, you know, primitives who live in parts of New York and in parts of Israel. All right. Thank you. Appreciate the incredible support. You guys were great today. And thank you for tolerating my anger at the world that respects Taka Carlson. And anyway, I will see you. I will see you all soon. Bye, everybody. Don't forget tonight.