 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show. Last time this year, you'll hear that music. Next time will be 2023. All right, it's just a show on the road. This is our year-end show, and it's always fun. We usually do these big super chat matching, but we also kind of wrap up the year, wrap up the year in terms of the world, in terms of the news, in terms of what's going on, wrap up the year, in terms of highlights, I guess, from the Iran Book Show, and maybe some stats on how we're doing. And this year, we have, in particular, we have this massive match challenge, if you will, $10,000 that is really huge, just the biggest challenge, the biggest match we've ever had. But after phenomenal start, so before the show even started, we already raised almost $1,000. So that's already $895 of already being raised. So thank you to Mel, to Mike, to Tom, to Anonymous, to Armand, really, really appreciated Armand, $500, Len, Catherine, and John, who says he can't attend, but wanted to contribute, and then, I guess, ran off to other commitments. Catherine says, not much, but determined to participate in the effort. Happy new year, thank you. Armand says, happy new year. Mike says, here's to a happy, healthy, and productive new year, and all here, to all here on the chat. And listening elsewhere, elsewhere, after the fact maybe, and maybe you're gonna still join us, and we're gonna have the desert, just kicked in $300 to get us over the $8,000, so when our show's gonna be short at this rate. And Ian with $100, that is fantastic. So we were off to a fantastic start. We're, you know, okay, we got some questions, let's see. All right, Wes says, Wes, $200, thank you, Wes. That's amazing, happy new year. Thanks for 2022 filled with great content. It helps keep my mind sharp and my spirit uplifted. Well, I appreciate that. That is the intention, to keep you engaged, to keep you informed, and to the extent that I can, to keep you entertained. Thank you, Glenn, for $200, and wow, it's just flowing in. I'm gonna keep the ones that are questions, because we're gonna get to answering questions in a little while. So I'll keep the ones with questions, but thanks, Amlan Gupta, and we're already close to getting over a second $2,000. So thank you to everybody, again, really appreciate this. This is, it's gonna be a challenge, $10,000, but we'll see, we'll see if we can rise to the occasion. And thanks, Anonymous Shoes, I mean, one of the things I want everybody to appreciate is while it's great to have people jumping in and with hundreds of dollars and getting us quickly to our goals, I equally appreciate Anonymous Shoes and others coming in with, in Cook, coming in with $2 or $1.99, or any amount that for you represents this trade, this trade that we've been doing all year, for some of you many years now, for some of you just a few months, this trade that is, I think, if we can make these numbers, is gonna be really, really highly motivating for me going into 2023, and I'm pretty excited about the new daily news update, and that we're doing, I'm still thinking about how do we integrate that when I travel, and how do we do that when we travel, but I think it actually make it easier for me to do quick shows no matter what time of day I am in my different countries, we'll try to get them done. These interviews that we're doing on a regular basis, we won't do those while I travel, but we will try to do an interview every Thursday when I'm home. And yeah, I'm excited about 2023, and of course I am open to ideas, maybe one of the things we can do on this show today is if you have ideas of things you would like to see on the Iran Book Show into 2023, new types of shows, new types of programs, I'm excited about launching Capitalism 101, a series of Capitalism 101s, if anybody wants to sponsor Capitalism 101 shows, let me know, I'm thinking of laying this out over the next year and figuring out how to do it, but that I think is a program to speak of, thank you, happy new year, looking forward to an amazing 2023. Me too, me too, whatever that may be, right? Let's see, yeah, so any ideas, it won't be a course, the way Economist 101 will not be a course, it will be shows, every show will have a title, I'm not gonna try to design it like a real economics course and it's not gonna just be economics, it's gonna be Capitalism, the whole social-political system, so it's gonna be the whole array of programs of issues that come up under Capitalism, and I don't envision it as organizing as a course with one section leading from another, leading from another, but just hit on the big issues under Capitalism, and then what we can do is look back on it and say, okay, what am I missing? What are the holes? What are the questions people have about Capitalism that we can fill in and we could put in? Whoa, Skyler, thank you, Skyler. Skyler coming in with $500, that's amazing. We're already at 7,500 bucks, I mean, this is, I'm blushing, I think, because this is really amazing, you guys are fantastic. The best, you know, the best, what is it? Fans, participants, listeners, I think of any shows out there. I think we have the most enthusiasm and the most commitment and the most excitement. We might not be massive, we might not be the biggest show on the planet, but in terms of enthusiasm and commitment, I think we are way up there. Justin, thank you, Guy, thank you, really, really appreciate it, appreciate it from all of you. All right, so what we're gonna do today, I think, if I can catch a breath with all this happening. So yes, I said, please feed me with suggestions and comments. Let me just also note that if anybody would rather make the contribution during the show on PayPal or in Venmo, please do it, it'll count towards the match, I will keep track of it. Maybe put in a little note on the chat that you have done it so I can know to jump on to PayPal. I've already got, I think, $125 already on one Venmo and one PayPal contribution, so that's already happening. So feel free to use those. Let's see, anything other technical, we need to go over. Again, if you've got suggestions, jump in with the suggestions on the chat or put it under a super chat with a couple of dollars if you don't wanna put a huge amount of money on it, because that way up here, read it, I'll pay attention, it'll be right there and it'll be great, James, thank you. No says happy new year, thank you, thank you, guys. Remember today, pretty much every dollar is matched, every dollar until 10,000 is matched and I'd be shocked if we surpassed 10,000, but we're going at an unbelievable pace here. So thank you, thank you to everybody. Let's see, yes, I mean, it's hard to keep track. Let me, so let's talk a little bit about the big stories of the year of 2022 and then maybe some projection of 2023 and this is a promise I'm gonna make to you because I don't wanna depress you, this should be, but I do have to fill the next two to three hours of content but this is the promise I'm gonna make to you, I am not going to leave you just with bad news. That is, there's a lot of bad stuff that happened in 2022 and there's no question that the lead stories are mostly sad stories, even when there's a kind of a positive story, Ukraine standing up to Russia and defeating them or really defeating them so far, it's still bad news because Ukraine has flattened, tens of thousands of people have lost their lives. I mean, it's horrible and there's some other, I think positive spins on kind of bad news that's happening out there. I'm gonna do a section on good news on, and almost all of it is some science and technology because that's where the good news is, there's almost no good news on the political front, although again, I will spin some of the bad news, I will give you a good news interpretation of it, but there is some amazing, they're having some amazing achievements this year in the area of science and we talked about some of them on the show but not about all of them, so I've pulled out a few lists, I particularly like Peter Diamantes's list of great scientific engineering achievements of the year and we will go over that and talk about that. YN, what's BGN? Anybody know what BGN is? Currency-wise, don't know what BGN is, but it's 100 BGN, so, and it's, so thank you, I really, really appreciate that. Bulgarian Lev, Bulgarian Lev, so that's like 50 bucks. I didn't realize the Bulgarian currency was that strong. So thank you, YN from Bulgaria, really, I mean, it's amazing, one of the amazing things about the show or one of the amazing things in 2023, but throughout the show, throughout the time I've been doing the show and really on YouTube, I think it's since 2017. So it's, what is it, six years now? I mean, that's pretty amazing. I've been doing the show for six years and one of the amazing things about the show is how international the show is, how many people from honey countries watch the show on YouTube, listen to the podcast after the fact, engage in one way or another in the show, I mean, hundreds of countries, every content, every continent represented, not hundreds of countries, there can't be hundreds of countries, dozens of countries, there's Iran exaggerating, dozens of countries, but it is dozens of countries. And a lot of times when I do a show, like in the morning, we're getting people from Africa and Asia and Europe and all over Europe and South America, we've got a lot of people listening for South America. So it's pretty amazing. I mean, it's not just thousands of countries, it's millions of planets. So yes, we're in exaggeration mode. Doug, thank you. Oh, he wants a song review, all right? Let me capture this and copy it onto my song review list, which is way behind, way behind and actually delivering on the reviews, but I have committed to January catching up with all of them and hopefully doing so in the next week or so. All right, so let's talk about the show a little bit and then we'll jump into new stories and maybe take your questions and maybe we'll skip new stories if you guys are less interested. Just a little bit about the progress of the show. So I got a couple of graphs in front of me about the Iran book show starting in January 1st, 2017 and going all the way to this year. And just to give you a sense, Mel and thank you, really appreciate it. Richard, thank you. PB, thanks, we'll get you a question. So in 2017, I can't remember how much I did in 2017, but total views in 2017 of the Iran book show were 129,000 views in the entire 2017. Now, today, that's a really good month. That's a really good month, I get 129,000. Now, it has to be a really good month. In terms of hours watched, which is what I really tend to care about is the hours watch, ooh, another song. I'm getting, I have to copy, paste. So give me a second. So in terms of hours watched, which was what I like to look at, that's about 33,000, 34,000 hours in all of 2017. The real big move upwards in terms of the Iran book show was clearly 2020. COVID, can I say, was good for the show. I think particularly the summer of 2020 when we had Black Lives Matter, we had riots, we had, what was it, white fragility or what was that book? White something? And we had shows on all of that. Those shows took off. I mean, those are some of the most successful shows, kind of live shows that I've done. And oh my God, Doug wants me to review a song by Jay-Z. I don't think I've ever heard a song, certainly enough, a beginning to end by Jay-Z. So this is all gonna be very new to me. Doug is pushing, you know, pushing me outside of my comfort zone when it comes to music. So all right, so we peaked indeed, in terms of watch time, in terms of hours watched of the Iran book show, we peaked in 2020. People at time, people were home, and the issues were burning. This is also election, 2020 election. Well, I lost some subscribers in 2020 as a consequence. A lot of people listen to those shows in 2020. So we had 294,000 hours watched. I don't even know how to even get arms around that number. 294,000 hours watched. We had 1.4 million views in 2020, 1.4 million views. Doug is on a roll here. I mean, I'm gonna have to do a show just with all his songs. And I have a feeling he's really pushing me, pushing my comfort zone. All right, 1.4 million views. This year, this year, we have 283,000 hours. 283,000 hours. So I'd say close to flat from 2020. So it's still fantastic, amazing, close to that 290. And maybe after today, we'll be even closer because we'll get a few hours out of today's show. But close to 2020 peak. So this year was definitely a very good year in ours. But it does have views just to give you a sense, right? This year, we had 3.15 million views of Iran Brook show content. Now a lot of that, granted, a lot of that happened in January, February, I think it was January, February, and that was the short video. So woke students, gets education and capitalism had 364,000 views, Democratic socialist professor, sci-fi capitalism gets 320,000 views. Socialist students learns where capitalism never fails, turn in 25,000 views. Now those all a minute, but they also led to a lot of subscribers, so that was good. The biggest video I've ever had on this channel, I've got videos that are much bigger on other channels, but the biggest video I have on this channel that is not, that's interesting, that doesn't look right. Yeah, no, there it is. The biggest video that I've ever had on this channel, for those of you curious, that is, it's on my channel. Obviously, the Lex Friedman view has a lot more views on Lex Friedman's channel. I mean, this video I'm gonna note mention actually has a lot more views on the Federalist Society's channel. But the biggest video that I have on my channel and it's the most watched video on the Federalist Society channel, so I think that's even more impressive, is my debate on inequality, my debate on inequality. And that has 89,000 views on my channel and I think several hundred thousand on the Federalist Society channel. It's been watched for 36,000 hours. The second most is my first show I did, I think, on Thoughts on Jordan Peterson, which I think stands pretty well up to what's happened since with 64,000 views. And then Bernie's blatant healthcare lies on Joe Rogan podcast 49. I think that's a 40 minute short, not short short, not the million dollar, the million, that's the most viewed short that I think Christian created. Of course, all these short short videos and all the short videos are Christian's creation. So none of this would be possible without Christian. So everybody should say a big thank you to Christian. He deserves it. He does an amazing job of taking all my videos and creating these shorter videos that many more people watch and who, you know, those short videos tend to generally bring a lot of subscribers to show, but also Christian is very good at taking some of my videos and turning them into net negative subscriber videos, that is videos that people learn to hate and learn to hate me as a consequence. Anyway, this year, you know, based on views, three million views, that is a phenomenal number. And I'm super happy with it and I'm super happy. If we can start growing the watch time, which I think we will now, we've got these morning shows and I think we're gonna increase the watch time, I think this is gonna be super exciting as we move into next year. In terms of subscribers, the numbers go up and down in terms of how many subscribers we get every year, the best year ever for the number of subscribers was 9,000 in 2018, but that was a lot of low-hanging fruit. That was a lot of people low-hanging fruit. Oh, you want me to review Pink Floyd's song, Money? Pink Floyd has so many better songs than that, but I will review it. Thank you, Colleen and thank you, Frank, for the opportunity to review a Pink Floyd song. More my kind of music if we're gonna do pop, if we're gonna do contemporary music. So best year was 2018, 9,000, that's because we got a lot of low-hanging fruit. People discovered the channel. A lot of people came on board. 2020 was good, we got like almost 7,000. This year started out really strong in terms of subscribers really well, peated out towards the end, but we got about 6,000 new subscribers. So get out, and it started strong, I think because of Lex. So I think this year we're gonna focus on strategies to bring in new subscribers, how to get this number up to close it at 9,000, 10,000 a year, at least maybe we'll see if we have some opportunities to even increase beyond that. I don't know, maybe some advertising, maybe some other things. We're gonna experiment on increasing subscriptions because we need to grow the channel and that's how we grow the channel. All right, so that's kind of a quick update on the show in terms of just the sheer numbers. I'm happy to, if anybody has particular questions on the curious about particular parameters of how the show is doing, I'm happy to look those up in real time and let you know, and so we can certainly do that. All right, I think I'm getting all these music shows, but we will see. Let me just say, what has happened here? All right, so we are getting some more payments on PayPal. This is great, thank you to Michael, who did $360 on PayPal, so that we'll add that to the total. Ultimately, Richard, thank you. Let me just add, in terms of support, I mean, Super Chat is fun and it's entertaining and it's immediate and it has emotional resonance and we all feel like, but the reality is that the most valuable form of supporting the Run Book Show, maybe you could do it a small amount and then participate more in the chat, in the Super Chat, is the monthly contributions on PayPal or Subscribestar or a lot of people doing Patreon right now, Patreon or locals. And that's because it's predictable. That's because it's monthly, it's something I can count on, it's something I know is coming. Now you can always cancel, you can always change the amount, but it is, in that it's predictable, it adds an enormous amount to ability to plan and think into the future in terms of the show and growth and what we're spending on. But I do want next year to spend some money on growing the number of Subscribers and I'm definitely open again to suggestions. How do you do that? How do you do that? If anybody's hit like a barrier, I think PayPal, I think YouTube won't allow you to make more than $500 on a Super Chat, which is, I think, weird because the reality is YouTube gets a lot of money off of the Super Chat. So if you wanna make a contribution of one of the $500, you can jump over to PayPal, just put in your own book show and you should be able to, you should be able to make a contribution through PayPal. And I don't think, I'm sure there's a limited PayPal, but it's much higher than $500. All right, let's see, what are we doing here? You can also use Venmo. Venmo, I don't really have a, I mean, you can use Venmo. I don't really have a business account of Venmo, but if you do it to me, then I can funnel it through a business account. All right, we got a lot of these, a lot of Super Chat comments, questions rolling in. All right, so that was a quick update on the show. Again, if you have any specific questions, James says, have your team take these shows and chop up clips of individual rants or topics and post them on respective platforms, Facebook, TikTok, et cetera. This is how people are really growing in the space. I think we do that, maybe we could do a lot more of that, but I do think we do that already. We've got one minute videos up there. We've got anyway from four to 30 minute videos. So we're clipping them, we are putting them up. I think I have a TikTok channel. It does go up on TikTok. We put up stuff on Facebook. We put up stuff on Twitter. So we're doing all that. We're trying, if you think we should be doing it differently, you think there's a better way to do it, let us know. By the way, Action Jacket, who's responsible for much of that is actually on here. So any comments you make, any suggestions, any proposals, he's reading them and he could actually do something about it. Action Jacket says, Rumble hates us. I don't know why Rumble hates us, but I have a vague sensation that that's probably a good thing, not a bad thing. Is that right? I mean, we're actually getting close to the halfway mark here. We're getting close to $5,000 raised, which is, wow, in 26 minutes. So, which is pretty astounding. So, you know, keep it going. We've done halfway, we've still got halfway to go. I think David just got us closer to the halfway mark. Thank you, David. So we're definitely on track. Okay, so let's review 2022. And these review shows are hard because this, of course, so much happened and I'm sure I'm gonna miss some things that happened, but I was trying to think back on what are the most important issues. Oh, wow, look at this. John just figured out a way to get around the $500 limitation and on top of all the songs that he's done, he's put on a 480 movie review show. Oh, God, okay, this is a movie somebody else recommended to me to watch and not one that I would probably have done anyway. So now John is paying me to do it. It's Puss in Boots, Puss in Boots, The Last Wish. All right, David Arsenal, thank you, really appreciate it. We're now solidly below, you know, solidly past the halfway mark. So we're cruising on our way to, and by the way, you can use this opportunity, $100 for song reviews. I think we did 250 for an episode of a TV show, $500 for movie reviews. So, you know, John has just put a movie review. You can add movie reviews, you know, $500, a few movie reviews and we're ready at our $10,000. So that'd be amazing. All right, so I've taken the things that happened in 2022 and I put them into three categories, three big categories, economy and business, politics and culture news under the US. So those are the three categories under the US and then an international category with international news. Now, of course, all of those are related, but I'm gonna cover these quickly under these three categories. And you know, if you guys have additional questions relating to them, then jump in with those. So let's cover these and then I've also got, you know, and maybe if you guys have ideas for, I'm curious, what do you guys think? What was, here's the thing I'd like you to do, and I'd like you to try and use the super chat feature to answer the question, because otherwise it's gonna be really hard for me to keep track of this, but you can use it at a $1 level or whatever the minimum amount in essay. Could you list the top three movies of the year for you? I'm not gonna have a top three because I can't remember what movies I watched in this year. I don't think I watched that many movies. Put in the top three movies, top three TV series, I'm particularly interested in TV series that you watched and liked. Put in top three, what is it, movies, books. You know, I'll tell you what my favorite book of the year was, you've heard about it before because I've talked about it. Wayan, thank you again. More money from Bulgaria, I love it, thank you. So share some of your favorites, that'll be great, and then I'll share some of mine later on. Okay, big issues in the US, stories of 2022. I mean, I think the big issue, one of the top issues of 2022 was clearly the economy. And this is the first year since the 1970s that inflation made the news, that inflation was a big deal. Inflation hit a peak to 9.1% in June. That is the highest rate we've seen since the early 1980s, late 1970s. It is something that most Americans around today don't know anything about, are not familiar with, inflation, I mean, how does that work, what is that? And I think it hit people really hard. It obviously, what inflation represents is a significant rise in our cost of living. So over the last year, cost of living in the United States has gone up significantly. Certainly from June of 2021 to June of 2022, it went up close to 10%. And for some people, it went up a lot more than that. Remember that inflation is an average, it's a typical basket of goods, but none of us are typical. Some of us, our own inflation, that is the rise in our own cost of living, went up a lot more than 9.1%. And for some of us, it went up less than 9.1%. It depends on what kind of products and what your basket of goods happens to be. This is in a sense, a massive government tax. It is a way in which our standard of living is reduced. It is a way in which the government is basically devaluing its own debt. But who does it owe that money to? Who is it devaluing? Most of the people who it owes that money to are us. Who owns U.S. debt? Mostly it's U.S. insurance companies, U.S. pension plans. The Social Security Fund owns a lot of that debt. That debt is worth less because of inflation. So inflation represents a significant reduction in standard of living. At the same time, wages went up this year as is typical during inflation and repute. So some people, the people whose wages did well this year, in some professions, not all professions, probably did okay. Probably raises in some places might have been 9%. Mostly they were less than that but they were higher than they've been before. So on net, people still had a cost of living increase but a lot of that was mitigated by significant raises and wages. Also, people in Social Security got a big spike in Social Security. Again, not 9.1%. So I don't think in a way fully compensate them but quite a bit. So cost of living went up. Everything became more expensive. I mean, almost everything became more expensive. And depending on who you are, some people took a real beating, a real beating. If you need to borrow money right now, that's really hard. If you borrowed money a few years ago and interest rates were close to zero, you're doing great right now if the rate was fixed. So if you bought a house a few years ago and you got like a 3% mortgage, wow. You're doing fantastic right now. If you are trying to buy a house right now and your mortgage rate is 6%, not so good. Maybe even 7%, not so good. So again, inflation doesn't hit everybody uniformly. And that's part of it. Part of the evil of inflation is that it is a mechanism by which wealth is redistributed. Not just is it a tax, it's an uneven tax. It's an uneven tax that reduces standard of living of some people differently than standard of living of the other people. All right, oh, Len, thank you. Len is the first one to put together his three favorite shows. I think he's the first one. Three favorite TV shows of the year, all right. Oh, and Fendt Hoppe has some as well. Let's see, where am I? Yeah, so that's the big economic story. I think, of course, the response to inflation is that interest rates went up, that the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates. Long-term interest rates went up. Interest rates across the board went up. And interest rates going up causes, again, our cost of living to go up if we are seeking debt, if we're buying a home, and they cause asset prices to come down. We talked about this during the year. When interest rates go up, asset prices come down. And as a consequence, we saw stocks decline dramatically throughout the year. Worst year in the stock market since 2008? Worst year in the stock market that I can remember where we don't have a recession. Now, we might be going into recession. We didn't have one this year. And yet the stock market declined significantly. We saw bubbles burst. I told you last year in 2021 that tech stocks were probably super expensive and were probably going to come down. I warned you about Tesla. I warned you about crypto. And indeed, Tesla and crypto, Bitcoin is down, both down 65% over the year. Many other tech names from Amazon down a lot to Apple recently down a lot. I mean, companies that did phenomenally well, really, really, really phenomenally well during COVID, like Zoom, down a lot more than 60%. Paul says, 2.7% of negative GDP is a recession. We had that. It's, you know, recession is, what is a recession? NBER, I think it's NBER defines a recession as two negative quarters, but they never actually declared a recession in spite of the fact that they typically define it that way. A recession typically involves unemployment. It typically involves bankruptcies. It typically involves more than just those negative two numbers of GDP. So yes, technically we could say we already had a recession, but nobody's really called it. Nobody's really viewed it as such. Vladimir, thank you. Really appreciate it. More Bulgarian, I think it's BGN, right? That's the Bulgarian currency. Yes, we got two different Bulgarians hitting the $100 Bulgarian. That's pretty cool. By the way, for those of you who are joining, who might not know today, we've got a $10,000 super chat match. Every dollar that you contribute using the super chat on PayPal or on Venmo during the show today, we will match, we have an anonymous donor who's a contributor who's gonna match dollar for dollar. So the potential is today to get 2023 after an amazing start with $20,000, which is huge. We're well on our way to getting there. We've basically raised already about, if I count everything, over $6,000. So we've got less than $4,000 to go. So we're in fantastic shape. So thank you. Thank you for all of you who are participating. Thank you for all of you who are about to participate. I'm pretty confident now that we will make this number. All right, stocks declined. It was not a good year to buy on dips. Not a good year to buy on dips. It turned out that every time it dipped, it maybe went up a little bit and then went down even further. At some point it'll be a good time to buy. At some point, stocks will start etching up. I don't think the recovery is gonna be the same as the recovery was after the financial crisis because I don't think the Fed is gonna be in a position to pump as much money into the economy and into asset prices and lower interest rates to zero like they did after financial crisis. Maybe they will, but I don't expect interest rates to go back to zero. If they do then the market will take off. Again, interest rates go up, markets go down. Interest rates go down, markets go up. And the more the interest rates go down, the more markets will go up. I mean, generally speaking, all else held constant, right? So at some point in 2023 will be a time to buy stocks. Timing, don't try it, right? So the best thing is to make regular investments into the stock market. Whether they're down or up, not to try to time the dips, not to try to time the peaks, just put the money in and when you're taking money out, unless you have to take out a big lump sum, take it out the same way every month, take it out a little bit. And that way you avoid catastrophes. You avoid the catastrophes. So, tech stocks went down, stocks generally went down. And of course, the big asset class that got crushed, crushed this year is crypto. Not only did crypto get crushed, some crypto went to zero. Some investments went to zero. People's investment in FTX went to zero. People who had accounts at FTX and held their crypto at FTX, that went to zero as some of that money just disappeared and went away. Not a good year for stock market investing. I will just say just because, I can boast once in a while, right? I will just say, and this is not, I am not asking for investors. I'm not asking for money. I'm not doing anything other than letting you know that my fund was up just under 10% net to investors this year. So we did very well this year. So it was, that was pretty amazing. So it doesn't, every stock market's going, stock prices, stock markets going down, doesn't mean all investments go down. Some hedge funds out there, I think Citadel, which is one of the largest, most successful hedge funds in history, was up like 34% this year. Something ridiculous like that. So that can't happen. All right, I think those are the big stories. The one other story that kind of came and went was all prices, right? All prices went way up. And gas prices way up. They've come down since. And they've come down since. And the, even in California, I think they've come back down to semi-earth. So we had the stock, the all market shock because of Russia, but that seems to have been for the most part mitigated. So the big economic story, inflation, stock market declining, but no real recession. If there was technically a very, very mild recession, no one, not what you'd expect. You'd expect a lot more than that. So we'll see going into 2023, what we can expect. 2022 is a big year for politics in the US. Big year for politics and political action. It was of course the year of the midterms. It was the year in which Republicans expected a tsunami. Remember the tsunami? Nobody talks about the tsunami anymore. They expected a rich tsunami. They expected to just go, just take over, but the house and the Senate and everything else. And it was just a, they were expecting to win big time. A wave, if not tsunami, then at least a wave. And that never materialized, quite the opposite. They lost the seat in the Senate. They got a worse position in the Senate and they just barely, barely, barely, barely eeked out a house. Now why that happened is gonna be analyzed for a long time, but it seems clear that what happened, particularly in the Senate, is that the quality of the candidates sucked, I think is a technical word. The candidates in the Senate side that most affiliated itself in, in what do you call it, swing states, that most affiliated themselves with Donald Trump were the ones that lost the most. So this, I think 2022 might be, if I was a praying man, I would pray that this is true. 2022 might be, might be, might be the beginning of the end of Donald Trump as a political force in American politics. I hope that's true. I don't know that's true. I'm not, I don't have certainty around this, but I do think if you combine January 6th committee, which I think was a much bigger event than most people think it is. I mean, if you read the testimonies of people, almost all Republicans or people from the administration testifying what happened that day and what led to that day, Trump's performance is so pathetic and so ridiculous and so borderline treasonous that it is truly unbelievable. So I think this is the year in which the January 6th committee, if you think about Trump's legal problems, whether it's the rate of moral logo, him kind of having a bunch of top secret documents in his home, showing them off to people. Not, you know, nobody suspects him of espionage, but just the arrogance and the stupidity of the guy. And you combine that with the failure of the midterms and you combine it with his age and maybe the rise of the Santas. You know, this is the year of 2022 when I think while Donald Trump announced that he was running in 2024, I think this is his last big year, his last year of dominating the headlines. He just, the last year of him having the dominant position within the Republican Party that he's had. Again, maybe that's more wishful thinking that it is reality, but that is I think what's coming out of all of this. I'd say the other big, big story of this year is, of course, coming out of the Supreme Court and that is the overturning of Roe versus Wade. This is a huge story. It is a real shift in the Supreme Court. It represents the willingness of conservative governments to overturn precedent. Even though for years and when they were up for nominations, they said they would not overturn this president. They, the precedent president, precedent. Anyway, forget it. You know what I mean? They did anyway. It'll be interesting if they're willing to expand this to really, really bad past court decisions and economic liberty and other issues of liberty. If they're willing to expand it to liberty, overturning Roe versus Wade is a big step away from liberty. It's a big step backwards. It's a big step that I think is massively harmful to the individual rights of Americans. A massive step backwards in terms of liberty and freedom in this country. It's now up to the states. Some states are doing a good job. Kansas, for example, a red state which basically made abortion legal, so good for Kansas, or refused to make it illegal. It's a good, good for Kansas. That was amazing news. So certainly, you know, some states, but some states are gonna outright ban it and you're seeing more and more states where there's a total ban on abortions under almost any circumstances. And that is just such a tragic, horrible. Ugh, I mean, my heart goes out to young women all over the country for this freedom that they have lost. I mean, a real loss. And yeah, I mean, what can I say? What can I say more than that? That it is truly a tragedy. And I think, badly argued, this is a court, not just this court, the courts for 170 years now don't have a handle on what individual rights mean. Don't have a handle and a connection between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Don't have a handle on what unenumerated rights, what that refers to and how to deal with unenumerated rights. Most of our individual rights, most of the application of individual rights to our life is not enumerated. It's not enumerated. And unless we get a grasp on what that means or we get justices that have the grasp on what that means, I mean, in a sense, we're doomed as a country long term. And of course, replacing judges takes forever. So, and training judges and having judges who have a proper understanding of individual rights go through the process and get to the Supreme Court. I mean, that's just, at this point, science fiction. But the court is likely to do some good things, but it's unlikely to gain this really, really important philosophical grasp of what individual rights are, what their role is in human life, what their role is politically. So, we're gonna have to see, watch the courts. It was a huge story, I think, while this is weighed. It's one we're gonna be talking about for years because this is gonna filter into the, into cases in states, I'm already seeing just horrible tragic cases of just tragedy for women and in families all over this country, are caused by this ruling. And we'll see a lot more than that. Other quick stories. Biden tried to do a loan forgiveness program. It's so far being shut down by the courts. Again, we'll be tracking that. The CHIPS Act, I think, together with the Infrastructure Act, but the CHIPS Act in particular is a scary act because it was bipartisan and because it is a real attempt to bring central planning, government industrial planning into technology. And technology is being relatively free of that. We've had government intervention by funding science through the Defense Department. And that's mostly been a good thing. Sometimes the Energy Department, mostly through the Defense Department. And that's been overall a good thing. You could argue that that money would have been better spent by private investors, maybe. But it had good outcomes. But the government actually taking a role of picking winners and losers in the semiconductor industry. That is an unmitigated disaster. And what's really scary about it, what's really scary about it, is that they believe this is good. They believe this is virtuous. They believe that this is going to, that this is something that should be expanded beyond just CHIPS. This is something that should be expanded into other areas. And that government should have much more planning role in the economy. And I think that is a big trend in the Republican side who've always resisted this. 2022 is a big shift in terms I think Republicans' attitude towards central planning. They are now all in on central planning. At least a significant number of Republican senators. Maybe it's a minority, but it's still a significant number of Republican senators all in on central planning. Who's the opposition now? Who's going to fight back against the left? All right, and then of course on the cultural front, I'd say Musk buying Twitter is a huge story. The Twitter files are a big story. The extent of the attempt of the government to influence Twitter. I don't think it was completely new story. I think we knew about this for a long time. And of course it's not a new story in the sense that government is trying to influence what is being said on a broadcast TV. Government is being trying to influence what is said in print media. For decades in both left and right are being very, very, very active in trying to gauge. This has gotten worse I think since 9-11. 9-11 is really a turning point in American history. Because of the Patriots Act which gave the government a lot more authority and a lot more tools to intervene in kind of the, in media. And in what is national security and what is not national security. So I think that's going to be an ongoing story. And the question is what is the remedy? How do we stop that? And it's not clear. Taking it to court, voting the bastards out. What is it? Solomon Rishti was more of a America neglecting to protect the freedom of speech of writers, of bookstores. What we're seeing now is an attempt to censor. To tell publications you can't publish that story. Or don't publish that story. This is misinformation and that's wrong. And all of this in some senses is a consequence of the idea that you can't trust individuals to think for themselves. So an authority has to step in and regulate it for you, right? Regulate it for you. All right. Let's see. Nunningham says he sent $100 like PayPal. Let me check that out. Let's see if it's there. We're making amazing progress here. So we're down to, and I'm not including PayPal here or the money I've already received in PayPal. We're to the point of raising $8,000 already. And we're over that because we've got a few hundred dollars in PayPal. Yep, there's a hundred dollars. There's another hundred dollars. Okay, so we've done PayPal. We've got 380, 480, 580, 680. We had a hundred other hundred dollars. 780, 780 and I got 25. So let's call it $800. We've got in PayPal, we've already got 800 bucks. So really technically all we need is 1200 bucks and we've made the $10,000 match which is pretty frigging amazing, pretty amazing. All right, let's see. So that's kind of the world of politics. No good news there, zero zilch, nothing. Other than I think it was good news that in the midterms, a certain type of Republican got punished. I do think it was good news in the midterms that Trump was discredited and generally I think the best news of the year is if it turns out that this is the year where Trump lost his magic touch, lost his hold, his magic hold if you wanna call it on the Republican Party. All right, let's see. Okay, so let's quickly move to international. Of course, the big news on the international front was Russia invading Ukraine. You know, I have to say, Pat myself in the back here, I was right on top of the story from the beginning, actually made some predictions about this that turned out to be true. A lot of people, including a lot of people in my chat were super skeptical. A lot of people still deny the reality but the fact is that Ukraine's withstood the Russian invasion and has managed to push it back. Look, Russia still occupies big chunks of Ukraine by the standard of who occupies whom, Russia's winning. But if you think about the news reporting that day, if you think about the news reporting in the week and two following, everybody was predicting Russia was going to occupy Kiev, was gonna replace the regime there and it was gonna be over in days, if not weeks, or weeks if not days. And I said, hold on, this is gonna be a lot harder. Russians are not that strong. They're not motivated, they don't have good weapons and the Ukrainians are really, really, really motivated. And you know what? Motivated people, people who are fighting for a cause, fighting for their life, fighting for selfish reasons. There you go. People fighting for selfish reasons are ultimately really, really, really dangerous. Really, really dangerous. People fighting for some amorphous, undefinable, mystical, unexpressed really, to some extent. Motiv, what were the soldiers fighting for? For Putin? For Russia? But the Ukrainians were fighting for their homes, for their families, for their loved ones, for their life. It doesn't compare. Anyway, Russia has managed to withstand this Russian assault. They've pushed back, they've gained a significant amount of territory, more territory than anybody, anybody that I know of, out there, military historians, military experts, expected of them. Truly stunning. I have to say, and I know this is unpopular in certain quarters, I get more hate mail about this than almost anything, even more than what I say about Trump and the Santas. Zelensky has proved to be an exceptional war time leader. You know, some political leaders are no good during a peace time. I mean, Churchill could not hold office in peace time. Indeed, the first election after World War II. Churchill, who won World War II for the Brits, who held them together, who gave the most inspiring speeches ever, who kept the country going in the face of Nazi evil. First election after World War II. What happened to Churchill? Voted out. And then when he was voted in later on, didn't do that great of a job. Zelensky is an amazing war time leader. He has rallied his country. He has inspired the world. He has inspired other, his fellow Ukrainians. He has no problem going to the front and engaging with the soldiers. I mean, some of his lines from the first days of the war, you know, I need ammunition, not a ride out of here. The fact that he stayed in Kiev as assassins were deployed to try to kill him. The fact that he stayed in Kiev as Russian troops were closing in. And everybody, everybody, every single pundit out there was predicting the fall of Kiev. That is unbelievably heroic. And not to see it as heroic. I don't know. I think there's something wrong with people who don't see it as heroic. With the, with the Jordan Peterson's of the world, maybe Jordan hasn't said anything bad about Zelensky. I don't know. Certainly, again, I get tons of commentary, tons of commentary on my thing about how I don't understand Zelensky. He's really, really this evil, horrible guy and so on. But really, to not get it, to not understand how heroic this guy is is stunning to me. I mean, so I think Zelensky's inspiration, he's certainly man of the year this year. He's certainly the most inspiring person of the year. Certainly the most inspiring politician in maybe decades. Decades. I can't remember a politician that's so inspired me. Now, we'll see if he's a good in peacetime, right? And is he everything he done good? No, I'm not for conscription, even in time of war. For anybody, not for the Russians, not for the Ukrainians, not for the Israelis, not for anybody. Not for the Taiwanese, not for the South Koreans. So not everything he's done is good. But wow, wow. And wow, not just Zelensky. Let me just say wow, hat off, salute to the people of Ukraine. And to the ability to resist an invader, an aggressor, an evil force in this world. The ability to fight them back. The ability to fight for their land. Their selfish determination to win this. Their selfish determination to protect their own lives. Their selfish determination to protect their own property. Their selfish determination to protect their own families. We should all be saluting the Ukrainians. And of all the foreign aid the United States gives to all the countries in the world, the foreign aid that it's giving to the Ukrainian now is the least of our problems. We give foreign aid to countries that are hostile to us. We give foreign aid to countries where the foreign aid probably ultimately lands up in the hands of people trying to kill us. We sent our troops to 120 countries in the world. We are wasting resources left and right. We have a once point, we have a $5 trillion budget that's most of it, 90% of it, is outside what government should actually do. And we're worried about the money we're sending to Ukraine that's actually doing something efficient with our money. It's defeating an evil foe of the United States on the battlefield. So again, of all the money Congress is spending right now, this should be the least of our problems. And you can tell kind of the ugliness, I think, of so many politicians, particularly on the right, who in years past were so defense-oriented, so pro-American, so anti-enemies, and who hate China, despise China. But Russia somehow, Russia actually invaded a country. China's not invaded anybody yet. But Russia is actually invaded a country, the Parliament, we don't wanna help the President, we don't wanna piss off Putin, we're afraid of Putin, we're coward before Putin, he might use nuclear weapons, we should coward before him. Republicans? These are not Republicans anymore, these are just disgusting weasel pragmatists who admire Putin. All right, let's see. Oh, another, actually, you know my story that I've been following now for weeks now, maybe a couple of months, is Russia's falling out of windows. We've had a whole thing of Russians falling out of windows. Well, Atlantic Magazine actually have a story this week coming out, one of the elite stories is, I don't think they call it Russians falling out of windows, but basically they're making lists and they're describing all the deaths of all these Russian oligarchs and Russian businessmen and Russian critics of Putin who have died this year. So this story is getting legs, this is a real story. Putin is actively killing off dozens of people who oppose him, who have money and he's doing it, not just in Russia, he's doing it with agents all over the world, all over the world. And this is the guy that so many American on the right admire, because I think they would like to be able to do that. But he's literally killing people, murdering people all over the world, lately last two in India. And the Indian authorities, like all the authorities all over the world are playing along with, it was an accident, it's suicide, accident, suicide. Amazing, amazing. All right, other big stories. We'll get to, I'm gonna unify these stories in a minute because I think there is one positive trend here. Just one other aspect of the Russian invading Ukraine I think is interesting. The way the West responded. So one of the things that people have been talking about for a long time is how the West, pathetic the West is, how weak the West is, liberal democracies are weak. Nothing good's gonna happen. They couldn't stand up to Russia. Look how they unified sanctions, whether you agree with sanctions or not, but this is the most unifying thing the West has done. But it's not just governments. The speed at which businesses left Russia, the speed at which they devolved, partially that's a sign that Russia was never that big of a market and it's not. But wow, people just got it and they got the evil of what Putin was doing. They got the fact that they didn't wanna sanction this regime and they got out. And I think the Western response to Russia invasion is one of the real positive stories of the year, one of the real good signs of the year. They started pouring weapons into Ukraine, started increasing defense budgets, a promise to increase defense budgets. That's a huge story. And yeah, it's just an amazing, amazing, amazing phenomenon where you thought the West was dead and nothing could happen and they would never stand up to an evil guy at all. Okay, quickly, protest in Iran. You know, that's an amazing story. We've talked about it a lot on the show. We'll talk about it more in 2023. They continue young girls, women, really leading this protest. It's inspiring, it's exciting and they're real prospects, I think, for changing Iran. And it's not just about the hijab, it's about regime change. The same time, protest in China. Zero COVID crippled the Chinese economy, crippled supply chains globally, it was devastating. Chinese started to protest. They made a big deal out of the protests. As a response to these protests, it seems China has eliminated basically all of its zero COVID policies, including letting people travel and letting people travel in and out. All restrictions are gone. As a consequence, the estimates are that several hundred million people in China right now have COVID and hospitals are packed and there's real problems, but they'll do it. It'll be one big rush and it'll be over. So it is super interesting, but again, protest in China and that Xi gave into the protests as Xi who had tightened his grip of power, Xi who's been basically appointed dictator for life, folded. That was huge, huge. And I think what unifies these stories and then I'll get to one other international story. What unifies all these stories is 2022 in my mind, the big story of 2022 or one of the big stories, certainly internationally, the big story 2022 is the failure of authoritarianism, the failure of authoritarians. Putin fail. I mean, I didn't even mention the fact that Sweden and Finland are joining NATO because I've said it so many times, but people don't get it. But anyway, fail. Russia, Putin fail. China zero COVID, China controlling its people with zero COVID fail, big fail. Iran, forcing the hijab, forcing theocracy, beginning of a failure, beginning of a fail. And women today in Tehran are walking on the streets without the hijab. Now, whether there'll be a clampdown what exactly is gonna happen, we will see. But it's happening. Authoritarian regimes around the world are failing. And that's a failing to achieve their goals. So we're seeing in a sense for everybody who might be tempted by authoritarianism. We got model after model after model in big countries right now, visible in the news, everywhere, fail, fail, fail. Now, I don't know how many commentators out there are making the connection and pointing out to people. Look, look, authoritarianism doesn't work. Maybe, maybe we shouldn't rush in that direction too soon. I don't know. Conservatives are still seem enamored by Oban and by Putin. They haven't quite got the message yet. But if this continues, this is gonna be an amazing trend and maybe this'll encourage a rise in better political ideas in the West and stop this rush towards, I think, authoritarianism that has been prevalent in the West over the last few years. All right. Non-emissive users says, is this the best show so far? In terms of super chat, yeah, by far. I mean, we've raised $9,000, over $9,000. I mean, we're basically this close to 10,000. Adam, I'm not gonna count yours. I'm gonna count yours towards the sponsorship, not towards the match. But we're this close to total because I've got $800 on PayPal. So we're like $400 from the $10,000. So I think we're gonna make it. I think we'll probably blow through it. So yeah, this is by far, in terms of super chat, the best. And I'm blown away by you guys because I thought it would take three hours to get there. I thought I'm gonna be here. I'm gonna be sweating till the last moment. I'm gonna have to go and I pushed out dinner till late. And no, what's it in? Our 10 minutes, we've already raised $9,000. I could have never imagined, never imagined that that would happen. So you guys are the best, by far, the best supporters of anybody on YouTube. By far. No question. I will remind everybody, like the show before you leave, just press that like button. Does it cost you anything? It's not hard to do, just like it. Maybe do it now so you don't forget. Really helps with the algorithm. We get more people engaged. We're already up to 199 people watching live. I think we're gonna get over 200. Hopefully we'll have more than 200 likes by the end of the show. Already great if we had over 200 people watching at the same time. Because I asked for likes and I mentioned 199 and two people, two people leave, so we're down to 197. So, but I'm sure we'll get there. Okay, last international story and then we'll go on to kind of better news. Last international story is Boris is basically the implosion and collapse and complete turmoil within the Conservative Party in the UK. The UK Conservative Party, which I had a lot of hopes for, which I thought without Boris Johnson could do great things that has, I think, some really, really talented people that have better ideas that are not encumbered by religion. So, political party that I thought could go far. Yet, yet it imploded before our eyes. Boris Johnson resigned. Then Liz Truss came on board, had some good ideas, presented those are good ideas. The markets didn't like them. She couldn't explain them. She and her Treasury Secretary bumbled their way through. Markets didn't like that either. So, she resigned. So, we got Rishi. Rishi's just, God, a statist, leftist in the guise of Conservatives. And now, worse than Boris Johnson, I kind of have Boris Johnson with none of the flare, with none of the intrigue, with none of the craziness, but just the same policies. So, we've got a left wing Conservative government. Jay Moves, thanks for the support. Really appreciate it. Same with Walter. I'm going back to people who didn't make a comment because Fent Hopper, thank you. Yeah, all the others made some comments. I'll be able to get to them in a little while. All right. So, that's a tragedy and sad and depressing. And you know I love the UK. And I think there was real opportunity to make a change there. It was real opportunity to have an impact. And yeah, it saddens me that it didn't happen. On the contrary, it got worse. And I think now, the left really has a chance in England because there's no, what's the alternative? Two status parties again, it's like American. Two status parties. And it's just a question of the kind of statism. Who's going to rush to go to carbon zero faster? Who's going to rush to have industry of policy faster? And it turns out, I think, given the path that the UK has taken, and this won't be popular when I'm going to say, given the path that it's taken so far, Brexit was a disaster. Brexit was a disaster. Better off staying in the EU. You know, we'll see if I change my mind, if policy in the UK changes. But so far, Brexit has turned out to be a disaster. No deregulation. No new free trade agreements. And horrible, horrible policy. Horrible, horrible policy throughout. And the UK probably having a worse recession next year than much of Europe. So they had this thing called Brexit that they could have done a lot with. But it turns out that Brexit was not about what some of the better supporters thought it was about. For a future show, we'll talk more about Brexit and the UK and what's going on there. All right. Ready for some good news? Okay, just a few good news pieces, right? Just a little bit of good news. The planet holds eight billion people. Eight billion people. That's good. That's cool. There's more people than there were before. We're still growing in population. That's a good thing. Eight billion mines are better than seven billion mines. More good stuff is going to happen. Officially, we crossed eight billion mark. And I'm good with that. I am happy about that. At the same time as we crossed eight billion dollar mark, it turns out that we have probably passed peak agricultural land. That is, the amount of land we use today for agriculture is probably gonna shrink from now on, even as the population continues to grow, because we're so much more efficient, so much more productive in developing that land. Now in America, in the United States of America and I think much of the West, peak agricultural land was a long time ago. But it's a beautiful thing to have more efficiency. More efficiency means less using a product less to achieve greater and greater output. Agriculture is only becoming more productive. And as it becomes more productive, more land gets freed up for forest, for recreation, for other stuff. Oxford scientists developed a malaria vaccine. Now we'll see next year it'll be deployed, but it looks like we're gonna have a vaccine for malaria, which is massive. Malaria kills about a million people a year. And having a malaria vaccine will save a lot of lives. So eight billion, it'll grow because life expectancy is gonna increase, particularly in places like Africa and parts of Asia over the next decade, because of things like a malaria vaccine. But it's more than that. You know, we saw big advances in immunotherapies for cancer this last year. We saw a trial in which 13 patients out of 13 patients recovered fully without any invasive surgery and without any chemo and any radiation just through immunotherapy. Immunotherapy is basically getting your own immune system to fight the disease, in this case, cancer. So you're not sending in poison to kill the cancer, your own defense mechanisms, your own body, your own antibodies are fighting the cancer. Now I don't know the science behind it, but that's pretty amazing. Some of the research, some of the progress as we majored in this has used mRNA vaccines to deliver the immunotherapy and to stimulate it, to cause it. So massive breakthroughs I think are coming in the treatment of cancer, in the treatment of malaria, in the treatment of other diseases. I mean, it truly is, there's truly amazing stuff going on. Here's a few just quick stuff. On the front of space, two really, really cool things. The James Webb Space Telescope was deployed. Now I don't know much about space. I'm not a space junkie. Astrophysics doesn't really interest me, I have to admit. Of all the sciences, it's the one that probably interests me the least. Keith Lockett shouldn't hear this. But this is the most sophisticated and complex observatory ever constructed. It's a phenomenal thing. It costs $10 billion, and it's in orbit. It's an infrared observatory, and it has this amazing mirror, 21.3 feet long across. It can image objects nine times fainter than its predecessors of the Hubble Telescope. So this is amazing. We'll learn a lot more about the universe. This is a gift for the physicists, a gift for the astrophysicists. Truly stunning technology, and that's up in space now. This is pretty amazing. I guess I missed this story, but this is a pretty cool story, right? On September 26th, NASA smashed a fridge size, refrigerator size, like satellite spacecraft into a little moon that was orbiting a large asteroid. It just smashed it, just ran right into it, right? Purposefully. In order to view it, of course. And the idea here is asteroid deflection. This was a test for a technology that would be used. If an asteroid were heading to Earth, a catastrophic asteroid were heading to Earth, could we deflect it away by use of a spacecraft crashing onto its side? And they did this. They crashed the spacecraft into a moon of a large asteroid. Now, maybe next time they'll do the asteroid itself. And it crashed at a velocity of 14,000 miles per hour and it changed the orbit. The change was 26 times larger than what NASA had said as its goal. So this is really cool stuff. And I think that, when an asteroid heads to Earth, we'll see. We'll see. Now, we'll see, maybe we have technologies to avoid it. Maybe we have the possibility. Maybe we're not just sitting ducks for the next asteroid. So that was exciting. We've achieved net fusion. We talked about that on one of the shows. I don't know how big that is. Again, we'll see in the future. The first molecular nuclear reactor, sorry, not molecular. What am I talking about? The first modular nuclear reactor was actually approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. So go figure. The regulators actually did something good. They approved a modular nuclear reactor. This could be a revolution in energy production. First time ever in Israel, first time ever in the world, but they did this in Israel, they actually synthesized life without sperm or an egg. Actually, we're able to grow mouse embryos inside a bioreactor made up of stem cells, cultivated in a petri dish. No egg, no sperm, and they created an embryo. Pretty amazing stuff, and which will have, I think, amazing consequences in the future. I told you about the 100% remission in early stage rectal cancer in all patients, all 13 of them. And we'll see. That was a particular type of cancer, particular type of some type of cancer. We'll see how applicable this is to other forms of cancer to other people. We mentioned vaccines from malaria, AI being used significantly in biology, in developing protein structures and other such, I'm sure, many other uses. Let us see. Yeah, you can sequence the entire human genome now for 200 bucks, which is pretty amazing, given what it took to sequence the genome originally. And let's see. Cancer vaccines, show promise in phase two trials. These are the ones that used mRNA and a MOOC immunology immunology immunotherapy together matched up with a Moderna mRNA delivery mechanism. This is potentially, again, huge in the treatment of cancer. FDA has approved lab-grown meat, until I taste that I'm not buying that one. And we now have new, part of this peak agricultural thing is using more GMOs all over the world, in Africa and Asia, in China, China's developing a new form of rice that is just gonna change the ability to bring food to people. A Tesla's humanoid robot will be interesting to watch in the future. And let's see. We've got our first driverless hail writing service, still limited, but it is, I think, the future. We're heading towards that. Tony, thank you for the $100. Really appreciate that. Flying cars, moving forward with tentative regulatory approval. All right, and of course, AI is growing dramatically and maybe one little illustration of that was Troy, thank you, Troy with $500 Australian dollars is gonna be very, very close to just on the show, not counting PayPal, achieving our $10,000 goal. So we're now down to $327 short of the goal. Troy, thank you. Thank you for the support all year round. If you're not my largest super chat plus monthly supporter, you're very close to being it. So thank you, Troy. And there comes Star with another $100 to get us to 200 away from our goal. Let's see. And then of course, we all know the chat GPT, but also you're seeing AI being used in biology, you're seeing AI is being used all over the place for really positive things. All right, whoops, I didn't wanna do that. I didn't wanna close that. Let's see, where was it? All right, I am going to now turn to your comments, your questions. I know some of you have put into the super chats, your favorite movies, favorite books, favorite stuff like that so we can talk about that. So now we're just gonna go over the super chat stuff. We'll see how long that takes. And I'll tell you what my favorite TV shows were this year. I think, I mean, this is, my memory is terrible about these things, so I'll do that. And then maybe we can talk a little bit about what I'm looking forward to in 2023. All right, Ragnar of the Desert. Thank you, Ragnar. Any thoughts on Alex Epstein's recent interview with Jordan Peterson? I haven't watched the whole thing, but from the bits I've seen, I thought Alex has always did a fantastic job. I thought Jordan Peterson treated him with a huge amount of respect. I thought in the last half hour, Alex managed to push back against Jordan Peterson's, some of his false ideas. Again, I'll probably do a review of that interview later. I know a lot of people have asked me questions about it. But look, Alex is really, really good. Alex has done a phenomenal job, his book is phenomenal, the influence he's had. I talked about this yesterday. The influence he's had on what do you call it? On the industry is amazing, the influence he's had on the debate is amazing. So, you know, and Alex put out yesterday this long thread about kind of his intellectual development. I encourage everybody to read that. I think that was really interesting and fascinating. Alex is doing and going to continue to do amazing things. And again, what we really need is 100 Alexes, 1,000 Alexes, I don't know, but maybe we need 15 Alexes and 85 something else. But we need people dedicated and imaginative and productive and creative and rational as Alex, bringing our ideas to the world and engaging the world with these ideas. And that's how we will change the world. I did a show yesterday from members of others only on changing the world. And this is how we change the world. This is definitely how we change the world. I'm just gonna remind everybody that I like the show before you leave. If you like the show, don't do it if you don't. The 203 people watching live right now would be great if we had 200 likes. As soon as I mentioned liking the show, people leave. It's a funny phenomenon. All right, Ian says, one of the shows I liked in 2022 is The Gilden Age. One of the main characters, George Russell, is loosely based on Jay Gould. But instead of being a villain, he is portrayed positively showing off great integrity both in business and at home. Hopefully season two is good. Yeah, I watched Gilden Age and I really, I did enjoy it. You know, it's somewhat mixed because they can't avoid kind of, in a sense, they lack of understanding of whatever was really like. But there's a lot to like about the show and I think they over-emphasized kind of the snobbery of some of the characters, the old money versus new money. I mean, basically they were all new money, particularly as compared to the British. But I did, it was very well made, very well acted, and I did like the main character. Although again, they can't avoid little scenes where the character can't really explain fully what his productive genius is and what his contribution is and what the value creation is. So, but yes, one of the best shows this year, one of the most enjoyable shows I enjoyed this year was the Gilden Age, definitely was watching. All right, Amlan Gupta, thank you Amlan. A while back, you said countries like Canada should not have nuclear weapons. But if the US should not be responsible for defending other countries, I agree. Why shouldn't semi-free Canada not have any weapons that Canadians want to secure their national defense? I can't remember saying that Canada shouldn't have nuclear weapons, but I say so many things, I might have said it. Look, I think that what should happen in order for not every free country to have to have nuclear weapons and not for nuclear weapons to be everywhere, and not for some free countries then becoming not free countries, and the nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands and not just having a massive proliferation of nuclear weapons. What I do think could be done is that free countries could align with one another in treaties. Treaties that would involve an understanding about protection vis-a-vis nuclear weapons. You know, in a sense that's what NATO is. It is an understanding that if Europe is attacked with nuclear weapons, the United States will defend it or more effectively is a deterrent to the use of nuclear weapons because Europe falls under the umbrella of the United States. Now, I happen to think that the Europeans should do it themselves. Europe is a big enough continent that's far away from the United States. They have interests that are not exactly the same as the US, for example. They have much, much more interest in deterring Putin than we do. So I think that Europe could form an alliance where as the French and the British and maybe one other country has nuclear weapons and the rest don't, but everybody falls under the nuclear umbrella that these other countries provide. And I think North America could do the same thing. I think the United States and Canada and maybe Mexico could form an alliance under which the United States provides a nuclear umbrella for the North. So we don't have every semi-free country in the world clamoring for nuclear weapons because they feel like they're under threat. And that would restrain proliferation, restrain the idea that some free countries become unfree and therefore those nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands. Hope that explains it. And I think that's all doable, but it takes imagination and it takes a certain ability to imagine what the world could be like. It takes a certain audacity to actually go negotiate something like that and some effort involved. But it's all doable. Nothing about that is not doable. And it takes principles, principles of pharmacy. Okay, Colin says, thank you Colin. Thank you for the amazing content this year apart from education. Where else do you think objectivism can influence the culture? Happy New Year. Well, everywhere, right? Every single aspect can objectivize and influence the culture. I think the most important places for the objective is to influence the culture. But you can influence the culture in every single aspect in the culture. But the three areas that Leonard Peacock identifies in the DIMM hypothesis where it's crucial if we're going to have a revolution, if we're going to change the world, the three areas which most important to influence the culture is education. One, second is in art, romantic art. And third, but it has to be good art, not objectivist art. It has to be good art, good romantic art. And third is in science. Philosophy of science, but the application of philosophy of science to actual science. Scientists saying, I made this break through because I used the objectivist of cosmology. I benefited enormously in my work because of the objectivist of cosmology. I think those are the three fields, but the reality is that objectivism can make an impact on business. Objectivism can have an impact on understanding economics. Objectivism can have an impact on almost every area in a culture. But those, I think, I agree with Leonard are probably crucial beyond philosophy, obviously, to change in the culture, to people seeing objectivism as a positive force, seeing objectivism as a force for the good, seeing objectivism as something that is indeed changing the culture, that can change the culture for the better. Audra, thank you, really appreciate that. Let's see, Len asks, any surprise that chat GBT regresses, or GBT regresses to subjective constraints and, therefore, autocracy? It is easy to tease out the stendency in autocratic politics. Apologized for that in discussion on dim hypothesis, less apologetic two weeks later with fossil fuels. Yes, I mean, I think that because AI is always gonna be ultimately programmed by humans, and because AI, the restraints on AI and the restraints on the answers and the restraints on the kind of topics and the kind of subjects and the kind of attitude that AI can have is gonna be determined by its programmers. Chat GBT became very political very quickly because its program is very political. And when people ask questions about, I don't know, climate change or something like that, and people weren't happy maybe with the answers or they didn't feel the answers were committed enough to the party line, there was some backlash and people went in and started tinkering with the algorithm to change it. Remember, Chat GBT doesn't have an opinion. It will just regurgitate back what the algorithm allows it to and the algorithm can be tinkered with to allow it to do and in that sense, there's no question it is very dangerous. I mean, it would be nice if the tinkering, the politicization was not there, but it's going to be there. It's inevitable because the people doing the programming have a particular philosophy. They have a particular approach and that approach will be instituted in this. I mean, maybe there's something I'm missing about the possibility of one day and not being that way. But for now, it's certainly gonna be that way. Skylay again, thank you for the $500. James, glad I could catch the live show. Thank you for all you do, Yaron. Love the ideas of capitalism show. It would be awesome to see how you can bring more philosophical topics from morality, epistemology, et cetera, into show topics. Cheers. Thanks, James. Really appreciate that. Yes, more philosophical topics into the general topics that I talked about. Trent, interview ideas. Any chance we could get? Dr. Salmiere, Dr. Bateman on to discuss critique, discussing critique Bayesian epistemology. It's the dominant approach among people who think seriously about belief justification concept. Actually, we're going to do a seminar in Austin, Texas. I think in June, where I think Greg Salmiere is bringing in a bunch of people to talk about probability, statistics, Bayesian probability, Bayesian epistemology. Also talk about Stephen Pinker's book about rationality, which is really an ode to statistics and to again Bayesian epistemology as being the essence of reason. We're gonna talk a lot about that. We're gonna try to come to some conclusions about that. It's a tricky issue because there's something there, but what is there is not what the advocates think is there. But after that, so sometime in the second half of the year, I'll definitely do a show where we discuss that. Well, being Salmiere or whoever else, whoever else there makes it has a lot to say about this topic. All right, guys, congratulations to all of us, to me, to the show, to you guys for doing this. It took an hour and 37 minutes, but just on the super chat, an hour and 37 minutes to reach $10,000. I mean, that blows my mind. It's amazing. Thank you. I'm super motivated now for 2023. You have showed immense love and support and appreciation and I am now motivated to express that love back to you guys. So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. That is amazing. I don't know if any other, again, show that has, the number of subscribers I have that gets the kind of financial support that I get. So you guys are truly amazing and wow, wow, wow, wow. That's phenomenal. And then there's actually more money on the PayPal. All right, let's go through these. I'm committed to staying here until we get through all the questions. A little extra for, this is from Wes, a little extra for the person who designed your super chat log app. Yes, you know, he is here. I thought he was here. Maybe he's asleep. He lives in Prague, or at least in the Czech Republic, maybe in Prague, Mauritslav. So yes, absolutely. The super chat log app is amazing and it keeps doing more stuff for me. He keeps automating it more. So wow, it's a phenomenal, there he is, he is here. Mauritslav Uza is here. I don't know what time it is in Prague. At least it's not too bad because we started it so early here, but yes, it's amazing. So thank you, Wes, really appreciate that. All right, yeah, so thank you for the show. Keep me correctly informed about the current events and sharing your thoughtful opinions. Thank you. Let's see, Jason. My goal is that I will try to gather 365 points for government as a moral good out of your show next year. I'll keep the list and you can verify it index from time to time, happy new year. Okay, sounds good. This relates to a discussion we had a few days ago. I can't remember when it was. Doug, okay, oh, this is the song review. Let's see, did I capture this one? I wanna make sure I've captured all the song reviews. Everlast, captured, all right. PB, you're consistent, high quality intellectual productivity is impressive, I have ambition, but could never imagine producing in such a way. Can you offer any tips? All I can say is I could never imagine doing this. God, if you'd asked me 20 years ago if I would be doing this, no way. 30 years ago, forget it, forget it. So it's work, taking advantage of opportunities as they arise, focus on learning and getting better at what you do and understanding the philosophy and applying it and giving talks and studying it, join the Iron Rand University and study with, take all of, read all of Iron Rand's books study Leonard Peacock's courses, read OPA, read them and read the news, read books, engage in the world. Don't bury yourself in objectivism. Be out there in the world, engage with it. And then I think slowly work on it. And anything is possible. Again, I would have never believed I would be doing this and I could just, I could do it the way I do. So thank you, PB and good luck. I'm looking forward to having more. All right, Richard, thank you for all you do. Best wishes for a great outcome today. We got the outcome. Thank you, Richard, with you and everybody else's help. Okay, we got Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z. I got that one. Kids in America by Kim Wilde got that one. Okay, got that one, got that one. Let's see, was there another, there was another one. Handle Bars by Flobots, got that one. Okay, thank you, thank you, Doug. I mean, that's amazing. One, two, three, four, $100 songs and then I think you did another massive contributions after that. So, oh, this one I didn't get. Kids aren't all right by the offsprings. Oh no, I didn't get that one. Got that one as well, thank you. Got that one as well, great. Okay, Roland, so how will you spend all of this money? Maybe you can finally buy a tie. At any rate, a very happy new year. I own ties. I have a bunch of ties, less now because I think I gave away most of my ties when I moved from California. No, I've basically sworn that I will never wear a tie again unless I'm kind of forced to. I don't know if I attend a wedding and it's a formal wedding, it's a formal occasion. I'll wear a tie, but no, I'm never gonna wear a tie again unless I have to. I don't like ties. I've never liked ties. As a kid, my biggest rebellion was over clothes. I am a believer in clothes that are comfortable. Ties are super uncomfortable. They feel like somebody is strangling me. They feel like a noose around my neck. They also, the only reason they exist is because of some tradition that says that this looks good. I don't like them. I don't like ties and I don't like tuxedos. I've only worn tuxedo once in my life and maybe hopefully never again. But look, I wore a white shirt. For you guys now, I granted two open buttons, but I wore a white shirt. I'm comfortable. I'm in shorts right now. I'm barefoot and that's the way I like it and one of the great pleasures of moving to Puerto Rico and one of the great pleasures of living in this climate is that for the most part, unless I'm going out to dinner, I'm in shorts all day. I'm in sandals even for almost every restaurant I go to. And, you know, I don't know. Could I look better? Could I be more stylish? Could I be sure? Just not a value for me. Never has me. Never has me. And it's weird and stupid when I think about it, but my biggest fights with my mother used to be about clothes. You know, me not wanting, me not wanting to dress up, me not wanting to close my button, me not wanting to wear a tie, me not wanting to do this or that. That and my obsession with not using a knife, unless I have to, like if you have to cut a steak, you have to lose a knife. Those are my big arguments. I had a rough childhood. Hamad, happy new year, Iran. Hope you have a wonderful and successful year. Thank you, Hamad, you too. $200, wow, amazing. Tim, thanks for the contribution to the world you're on. This is the first live show I've made in a very long time. So thank you, Tim, really appreciate it. 130 Canadian, thank you. You guys have been amazing and you've, you know, we've crushed the $10,000 goal and we're still going. It hasn't stopped yet, so we're still going. All right, Colleen says, yes, this was from Frank. I'm not gonna try to pronounce your family name, Frank, but you know who you are. Frank, who's always on the show, is very supportive, asked lots of questions, lots of super chat questions over the years. But, you know, limited financial means, so Colleen is jumping in here with $100 and for me to review Pink Floyd's song, Money, that's about as big of a song as you're gonna get from me. So yes, I'm looking forward to that one, that would be fun. Kenny says, can't join today, but still wanted to support Happy New Year on. Thank you, Kenny, really appreciate it. Richard, who's, when he's there live, has been an incredible supporter of the show and given a lot of money over the last six months or so, something like that. So, yeah, Richard writes, Happy New Year, you're on. I'm thankful for the new format and the existence of viewers like you're on who has helped me and helped convert three childhood friends of mine, wow, wow. Doing my part to try and hit the target today, may 2023 be better than 2022, much better, much, much better. We're gonna make 2023 much, much better in every dimension. Seth, thank you for a great 2022, looking forward to the new year, see you in Austin next month. Yes, I will be in Austin in just four weeks, three weeks, something like that. Thank you, Seth. Liam, what do you mean by don't evangelize objectivism? I'm extremely passionate about being in my own random objectivism to new people. To what point would you classify evangelizing and being dramatic? Well, I think this is the point. Evangelizing by necessity is all about because evangelizing almost always is about religion. And it has the sense of emotion, of beating people over the head with a particular idea, of being somewhat obnoxious about it. That's all I'm saying, don't do that. Should you be passionate? Yes, but always present objectivism as a reasoned philosophy, present objectivism as a philosophy based on facts, logic, evidence, rationality. So as you know, I am an evangelist in a sense of passion, but you want to lead and you want to follow and you want to close with rational arguments, always. And I'm sure you do that, Liam. Friend Hoppe, I forgot to add a message when I did it, but I meant to add $100 towards removing ads from the podcast. When I started a $100 monthly donation, that's my goal for 2023. Cheers to YBS growth stats on monthly support. That'd be great if we could, I think I said $2,000, if we could raise $2,000 monthly to get us, and I would eliminate ads from the podcast. Yes, and I love the fact that your friend Hoppe does a lot of super chat, but I love the fact that you're also doing now the monthly contribution. I mean, if everybody did a monthly contribution, if we got a significant number of people doing monthly contributions, that would be so cool. And the more the monthly contributions go up, the less I'm going to bug you the less I'm going to bug you about the super chat. So the less interference there will be on the podcast, the less interference there will be on the show because I'll know that this money's coming in on a monthly basis. Hey, we hit over 200 likes. Very nice, thank you guys, really, really appreciate that. John says, I'm sure this isn't, oh yeah, you said this, I'm sure this isn't any of your movie review list. It's called Puss in Boots, The Last Wish. I went with my best friend and his two kids, not expecting anything special. It was great. Good lesson that the kids should know and fun and plenty of laughs. I can't wait to hear your opinion. Happy new year. Here is to a great one. So that was $500 for a movie review. Thank you, John, really appreciate that. Let's see, George, no, this is from Sparks. George Gamman has suggested inflation is not due to government money printing. He's pointed out that M2 inflation during periods before the gold standard was lifted was the same as more current fear periods. Can you explain? Oh God. I mean, that's complicated, but look, I have talked about this. One is I don't think that in the modern times, M2 is necessarily the right measure of the amount of money the government is printing. That is, I think one of the problems is given a world where we financialize, we can make so many different financial assets in a sense into money. In such a world, it is very difficult to measure the amount of money and the amount of money that the government is actually printed. And then I also think that part of inflation is the expectation. The expectation is what is the new match? There's a new match. Where did you get a match? We have another $1,000 match. Where did we see the $1,000 match? Who did the $1,000 match? What am I missing? Am I missing something here? Action Jackson, write to me in the chat here and explain to me what has happened because obviously I'm missing. All right. Oh, Robbie, Robbie Segler. Robbie Segler did a $1,000 match. Robbie, wow. Thank you, Robbie. That is amazing. Really, really, really, really appreciate that. So, okay, so we're $301, just super chat, he said, not PayPal. So $301 away from another $1,000 and another $1,000. So this will bring us up to $22,000 in total. All right, let's see. So inflation expectations, people raise prices in anticipation of inflation, anticipation of the government increasing the money supply. And a part of that anticipation, as part of that anticipation is the idea that, and this is something that John Cochran talks about, the idea that federal deficits, when people start believing that the federal government cannot pay it back or will not pay it back, and therefore will inflate it ultimately one day away, that creates inflation expectations and that creates inflation today because people start raising prices. So three parameters, if you will. Money supply, but money supply not as M1 or M2 anything because money is much more complex than any particular one of those measures. Plus expectations about inflation that result from the fact that prices have gone up and they're going to go up just kind of momentum and inflation, the rise of inflation expectations that result from spending deficits and the idea that the government cannot pay back. That's my view now. George might have a different view on inflation. I don't know what George's view is on inflation. I'll have to figure that out. Okay, Richard is back with another $100. I think your best strategy for maximizing the algorithm is by spending a bit more, sending a bit more notice and making the show's schedule a bit more predictable. Even though you're not going to find a time that works for all your subscribers, you might be able to increase turn out that way. Good suggestions. I've been trying to do that for a long time. I'll try more. My schedule in life has been difficult, but I'm going to try now with the daily shows and clearly evening shows. I'm going to try to get into a more regular schedule and I'm going to try to make announcements in advance about when the show's are going to be. YN, Happy New Year from Bulgaria. Happy New Year, YN. Thank you. Gabe, Happy New Year, you're on. Gabe, thank you. Really appreciate it. GabeC562, just in case they're more than one Gabe. Gene says, Disney plus Ando. Yes, I really enjoyed Ando. So here's a show recommendation. I agree with Gene completely. Ando is actually really good. I am not a Star Wars fan. I don't particularly like Star Wars. I think Star Wars is generally superficial and shallow. Good guys and bad guys, white and black. Why are they good? Why are they bad? Nobody can tell you. Maybe we know a little bit about why the bad guys are the bad guys, but we certainly don't know what the good guys are fighting for most of the time. Ando is different. It's focused on character development. We start out with a hero that doesn't want to be a hero, wants to have nothing to do with a hero, and runs away, doesn't run away from fear, but runs away from being a hero, associate with it, and just takes the money and runs, becomes a, he becomes a, you know, does his work thing for money and then escapes, and learns over time by the actions of the bad guys that he has to step up, step up, that is his life, his values, the people he loves, the people he cares for. He needs to fight for them, that that is a requirement of life, and he becomes a hero by the end of the show. He is a hero. And the support characters and cast are excellent. So I highly recommend Ando. It's on Disney Plus. It's really, really good, really, really enjoyable, heroic in a way that many shows are not, and one of my top, you know, 10 shows of the year easily. And, you know, again, this is from somebody who knows nothing about the, I mean, I've seen some of the Star Wars movies. I haven't even seen the Star Wars movie where Ando shows up, Ando shows up, ultimately, right? Ultimately, he shows up. But I haven't seen that movie yet. So, all right, this is from Robbie Suggler and Vonda Suggler. Sorry, Vonda. Yes, from Robbie and Vonda, not to be very clear that the match is from, the extra $1,000 is from both of them. Rogue One is, I think, I haven't even seen that yet. I will see it now, because I enjoyed Ando. And from what I hear, Rogue One is eh. But Ando, again, I think is very good. It deals with, what does it take for people to rebel? It also shows that authoritarian regimes always fold. Authoritarian regimes always collapse. And it basically is, it shows the resilience of people, the willingness of people to rebel. And in Ando, his story, and how he goes from, doesn't wanna rebel, doesn't wanna stick his neck out, doesn't wanna do anything all the way to a hero, is the story of a number of other characters in parallel who become rebels and who rebel against the empire, who stand up. And in that sense, it shows us what's possible. It reminds me of, it inspires me. Like, it shows the process that is happening in Iran, that is happening in China, that maybe has the potential of happening in Russia, where people are standing up for freedom, people are standing up against the empire, people are standing up against the bad guys, and they are doing what they can to being liberty and it takes heroes to do that. And the movie deals with what, the series deals with the process of becoming a hero and what it takes and how resilient society is and how pathetic, inefficient, self-destructive authoritarianism is and why they can't ultimately destroy the rebels, not ultimately, not in the long run. And I don't know that the rest of Star Wars does that. Ando does that, the series does it. Okay, James, not to gloomy and new years, but just to clarify, Islender pick up predicting a Christian M2 dictatorship, we can no longer reverse no matter what we do or that there is still a chance of reversal. No, he's definitely predicting reversal. I mean, Lennepika believes that ultimately, truth wins, ultimately, you know, we win, ultimately, objectivism wins, but it's the ultimately that's the question, when is ultimately, and it's a process and part of that process towards victory, it's likely that we go through an authoritarian phase and he predicts that that authoritarian phase is a religious one, is a religious one. But even that's not necessary, it's an M2 one, but and he thinks that's how history develops. You go to M2 and then there's a rebellion by the eye against the M2 and we get a better world on the other side. So no, it's not the end of the world. It's just the lays progress towards that great world. Wow, Abe just came in and blew away the match goal. So we're beyond 11,000. So we've gone beyond 11,000. Thank you, Abe, really appreciate that. Fendapa, Missionary, oh, here's I guess, these are book series, what are these? These are books, Missionary Position, Missionary Position, yeah, is that, what is Missionary Position, remind me, is that the book about a trans issue? Yeah, that was, okay, so these are books. Missionary Position is excellent. If you're interested in trans issue, if you issue about how a non-objectivist, but good, relatively good, philosopher thinks about it, who is rational. I recommend the book. It's definitely, definitely recommend the book. Chip Wars, my favorite book of 2022. I loved that book, I really enjoyed it. Again, didn't agree with everything, but really, really, an amazing book that got me thinking new thoughts about the world, got me, provoked me into rethinking my views on foreign policy vis-a-vis China and Taiwan, and well-written, entertaining, and so important when you read the book and you realize how important semiconductors are to the world in which we live. I mean, thinking about it a little bit, I think everybody realizes that, but the book really brings it to the forefront. What else? The rumor had happened, yes, it's a powerful book by God. The name is not there because names are never there, I can see his face, but by Trump's national security advisor about his years with Trump, being the national security advisor for Trump, it is a massive condemnation of Trump and the way he thinks and his foreign policy. And I think it's a fascinating book in terms of, John Bolton, thank you guys, God. John Bolton, I've always had respect for, I was disappointed that he took the position with Trump, but had respect for him leaving and then writing this book. Failing to confront, he's talking to Tertianism and A.R. Wright book, Gunsteel and Germs, read that years and years and years ago, were just the demands, he learns Juno's book is excellent, and the beginning of Infinity is God. There are chapters there that are some of the most, the best stuff, they're just brilliant. And then there are chapters that I just wanted to tear my hair out, but I highly recommend it for the good chapters, beginning of Infinity, there's some really, really, really good stuff in there. So highly recommended by David Deutsch. All right, Richard, I love the Andor, good, I did too. It's Star Wars, but better. But it's also revolting against the Tartarian government, yes, very explicitly so. I'm also watching Mr. Sunshine, excellent, with my Korean girlfriend, even better. Your first time watching and other people's money, the movie, excellent, Andor and Mr. Sunshine. I did watch Mr. Sunshine this year again. I think my wife and I are making it a tradition. We're gonna watch Mr. Sunshine every year. It's so life affirming, it's so enjoyable. We're just gonna try to see it every year. I love it. All right, Vladimir, thank you, really appreciate it. Let's see, J.R.K., okay? Thanks for the year of interesting and insightful shows. Thank you, J.R.K., we really appreciate this. Simon, Simon Federman, thank you, and happy new year, Simon. Whoops, whoops, whoops, there's a skip point. Steve, Stephen, Stephen Chrysman, happy new year, recent polls, such as a Pew Research Suggest, religion is in decline in America, especially among young people. Do you think these polls are accurate, and if so, do you see this as a cause of optimism? Yes and no, I do think the poll is accurate. I'm actually gonna do a show on this, because it is an interesting poll, and what's interesting too, is when the inflection point happens, when people become less religious. Now part of the poll is the massive increases in the number of people who don't consider themselves affiliated with a particular church. If you ask people if they believe in God, the number goes up significantly. So a lot of people don't belong to a particular church anymore, and don't affiliate with a particular church anymore. But the number of people who believe in God is still very high, although the number of atheists is increasing. I am optimistic about it because that gives opportunity, but then the question is what fills the void. Something has to fill the intellectual void that they are faced with. And if what fills the void is nihilism, as it does on the far left, or apathy, as it does, I think, for a lot of people, lack of values and just nothingness, then, of course, it's not good, but it does create an opportunity, I think, for objectivism to fill that void, for rational ideas to fill that void, and in that sense, I'm optimistic. And it's good to see religion starting to die in America. I mean, it's about time. This process happened in Europe a long time ago, and it's about time it happens in the United States. Now, the thing I'm less optimistic about is will this sustain a charismatic, dynamic leader, charismatic, dynamic movement that is fundamentally religious or mystical that tries to unite the country in some way and maybe combines, as I've said in the past, elements of Christianity with elements of environmentalism or something new like that. Will it withstand that? And given that the fact that most of these people still latch onto mysticism in one way or another, that worries me. That worries me that they're setting themselves up for something, maybe it won't be Christianity, but something new, different, or something that combines a number of different elements. Dave Goodman, in the long run, I am extremely optimistic about how benevolent, rational, and happy life will be. But in my lifetime, should I be? Happy New Year. Wish I had a mentor or a professor like you growing up. You're still growing up. What are you talking about, Dave? You're a youngster. You're a kid. Look, forget, there's a sense of it. Forget the long run, if what you mean by the long run after you're dead. Who cares? The long one you should be focused on is your life. And over your lifetime, there's no reason you cannot be happy. Over your lifetime, there's no reason you can't live a benevolent, happy, rational life. Could you live as happy, rational life as you could if you lived in a completely free, rational world? No, but you still can, to the extent that you can. And a lot of that is up to you. There's accidents, there's bad luck, there's bad things that happen, but to a large extent, it's up to you. And so go out there and do it. Live it. And you can, don't give up. And you're still way too young to give up. Merry Benz. This is a 20% down payment, it's $100, to the review of the novella Unromantics. Oh God, all right. It's a novella, so it's short, right? I'm worried about that title. By Megan Ribbons, she's got a PhD. All right, I'm copying, pasting it. All right, I'll check it out. Thank you, Merry Benz, thanks for the support. Fenharper says movies, his favorite movies are the Bell, an anime movie, don't know Bell. One Piece, Film Red, another anime movie which had a vocalized album that is my album of the year. Wow. And Three Batman, I didn't see any movies this year, haha. Batman is a movie, isn't Batman a movie? So you saw these three. All right, I'm going to see Batman. I'm skeptical, I'm gonna like it, but I'm going to see Batman. I'll let you know what I think of it. It's the only superhero movies I'm willing to see of the Batman movies when they're interesting and good and sounds like this Batman movie is at the very least interesting. Whether it's good or not, whether I think it's good or not, whether I like it or not, I will let you know. I do like the Christopher Nolan Batman's, so it needs to match up against those. So I'll go check those out, Fenharper, and let you know. Let's see, Jacob, happy new year. This one has been a rough one professionally for me. I was working on my people management skill with my new, much better manager, but people's opinions are hard to change. Have you ever experienced this before and how did you pivot? Yes, I mean, it's very difficult. At some point, you just need to do the best job that you can do, and you need to take the input you're getting, the critical input you're getting, you need to take it seriously, and you need to make your best effort possible to become the best version of yourself that you can be and become the best manager you can be, but you can never be everything to all people. You're not gonna satisfy everybody. There are always gonna be people who are unhappy, and you're gonna have to accept that, and at some point, as a manager, you might have to replace the people who are unhappy with people who you think you can manage better. I think the organization benefits from that. But first of all, take it seriously. Get good guidance, get good advice from people who are good managers, who admire, whose management skills you admire. Management is a skill set that you just need to learn. It is difficult to change people's mindset, but they will change as you change, and as they see the pattern change, and then be aware, because you can't please everybody. So decide on one of the most important things. Decide on one of the most important changes you're gonna make, and go make those changes, and stick with them. Stick with them. And do it like you do anything else in life where it's really, really important to you. Make it a high priority. Whoops, we've got a pawn troll. Oh, somebody got him before I did. Thank you. So I hope that's helpful, Jacob, but it is a hard situation to be, but I'm glad you've got somebody who is helping you out, because, again, find a mentor who is really good at it, and take advantage of his mentorship. Casey, best show I saw this year was Wednesday. I don't know Wednesday, no hood of Wednesday. The Last Kingdom, I saw The Last Kingdom. I enjoyed The Last Kingdom. I don't think it was a great show, but I enjoyed The Last Kingdom. It was fun. And The Way of the House Husband. I've never heard of that. God, I've never heard of Wednesday. I'm gonna write those down. Or The Way of the House Husband. Okay, let me see. Are there any other show ones? You've got books, movie review. Okay, let me just give you a few shows that I recommend quickly, since we're talking about it. As I said, Andor, I really loved. So here's some that are a little quirky, that are suspense ones that I really enjoyed. I thought that the stories were quirky. The cinematography was really good. They kept my really interest, surprise twists. Real kind of mystery. The Tourist, I thought was really good. Filmed in Australia. I think it was Australia, yeah, in Australia. The Tourist, I think you find it on Netflix. Old Man. I really liked Old Man. I mentioned this on the show. I really enjoyed that show. Really interesting cinematography. Really interesting twists. Excellent dialogue, just good, excellent characterization. Really focused on characters and surprising characters. Really, the kind of characters I've never seen on the screen before. And that's always something. When you see something and you go, wow, that's new. That's different. I've never seen that before. So the Tourist, Old Man. Okay, here's one that's going to be controversial. English, I think it's the English or English. It's a Western, in many respects, philosophically horrible. Except for the two heroes, the heroic characters in it. Everybody's awful. Everybody's like evil and bad. And so many evil people. And it portrays the West in the United States. It's just filled with evil people in it. I think the sheriff was a good guy, but just a lot of evil everywhere. And the fate of the good guys is you won't predict it when you first see it, but there's some malevolence there. But again, interesting, different original plot. Characters that I thought were interesting and I liked. I don't accept the vision that the portray of the West, but okay, in particular, they have a particular view of how the American Indians were treated, which they were treated bad, but this is over the top, what they do here. So I thought that it had a lot of virtues. And it was, again, really held my interest. I was eager to see the next show. And it was unusual. The characters were different. The characters were unusual. And the two lead characters, truly heroic, truly heroic. And some scenes there, the female characters, is just wonderful, just wonderful. Slow Horses, spy thriller on Apple TV, which I really liked. And I enjoyed The House of the Dragon. I didn't think it was as good as the original, but House of the Dragon was okay. I certainly thought it was better than the show on the Tolkien stuff, on Prime. So House of the Dragon on Netflix, I thought was quite good. All right, those are some of my recommendations. Thank you. Casey. Adam. I'd like to meet local objectivists again for discussions over dinner in a good restaurant. But now, local focus scattered, location unknown across dozens of original, of digital platforms. I'd love AORI to have an optimum option on member site to connect for small dinner, not lecture in-person gatherings. Yeah, I mean, we've tried that. Let me see if there's anybody at AORI doing that or interested in doing that. We'll see. Okay, Richard says, my funeral speech is inhibited by the donation limit. YouTube is repressing my speech. I agree, it's repressing my income. Thank you, Richard. Gail, Happy New Year, Iran. Thanks a million for the inspiring sense of life and sharing your extensive integrated knowledge. Thank you, Gail. And I do think part of the attraction of the Iran book show is my sense of life. I know some people, so I hope you enjoy it. Max, Max, 50 Canadian dollars. Happy New Year, everyone. 2022 is the best year of my life because I discovered objectives through YBS in late 2021. Unbelievable, that's so cool. I am 21, I'm still learning. So 2023 will be even better. Thanks for everything you're on. Thank you, Max. Love those stories, as you know. Very exciting. Yeah, Adam Cook-Barbera is the guy you want to contact. Cook does that and he could help you maybe initiate doing it yourself. So Cook is the guy at AORI who should be your contact for this. Andre, Andre, 100 euros, thank you. And the euro has gotten stronger. The dollar's gotten weaker lately. Just watch the executive suite. That was fun. Happy New Year, yes, executive suite. One of my favorite movies. Fun movie, interesting movie. Really great theme, great characters, great, great acting, good movie. All right, Len. Len has the books I read or listened to. Opa by Len and Peacoff. Yeah, everybody should be reading Opa by Len and Peacoff at some point. Two team by Alice Roberts. Don't know that one. Being You by Anil Seth, Kindred, Neanderthal Life, Life, Love, Death and Art. Interesting, by Rebecca Wagskipes. The incredible unlikeliness of being, evolution in the making of us. All interesting books, wow. All sound interesting. Thank you, Len. Thank you for sharing that. Appreciate it. Okay, Shazba wants me to do a movie review of Princess Mononoke. Mononoke, did I copy paste that? Please, wrong page was the other page. What am I doing? Let me get there. Yes, got Princess. Thank you, Shazba. Thank you for all the movie reviews you have encouraged me to do. It paid me to do over the last year. You've been great. Dan says, hi, Iran. Thank you for all the great podcasting and everything you do to spread objectivism. Love the morning news shows. They're always first on my list to listen to. Thank you. Thanks, Dan. Really appreciate that, John. A momentum trend following investment worked well this year. Thanks for the show, especially love the short 20, 30 minute segments. Yeah, I mean, momentum is one of the factors that works if you do it right and you know how to follow it. Certainly this year it did well for people who followed it. So did a bunch of other strategies. So there were certain hedge funds that did quite well. Michael, who dominates Super Chat over the year, has dominated Super Chat in 2022. All right, Michael said, could you start hosting a yearly dinner or brunch in a different city every year? So all the Super Chatters can meet each other, meet you, meet our future spouses and best friends and strengthen our network of trust in case we have to become resistance fighters. Yeah, I mean, I've thought of that. You know, as I travel, I thought of doing local dinners for people locally. We could do an annual thing, but it's pretty expensive to fly somewhere just for dinner. So let me ponder it and think about it and think what we could do to make that happen. But certainly I think one way to do it is as I travel, try to do little gatherings of the Iran book show, fans, supporters, Super Chatters in the different cities I have over dinner at a coffee shop, something like that. We'll start with that. Nathan, when the YBS show was new, you would regularly take questions by phone calls. Why did you decide to discontinue that? I think because the technology evolved, I was doing that on BlogTalk radio and it was, they had the phone built into it and it wasn't on YouTube. Well, maybe there was a period where it overlapped with my being on YouTube, but at some point I dropped BlogTalk radio and the new platform for podcasting that I picked up didn't have the phone feature. And it's not obvious how to do it with, I'm sure I could figure out technically how to do it, on this, the challenge with Talk is that the same people tended to call, it was usually the people who were most obnoxious would call. And so if there was a way to do that, super chat bit that allowed you to call in. Maybe one of my technical guys, maybe somebody out there can figure out how we can make that happen. I don't object, whoa, Steve, thank you. Whoa, I really appreciate that. And Lywin, thank you. So maybe we can figure out a way to make that happen. Make that happen, absolutely. Okay, Todd, $500, Todd, thank you. Todd says, short of the revolution, what would it take to reduce the federal government to its intended constitutional limited size? Well, I mean, it doesn't have to be a literal revolution, it could be just a, you know, a slow, steady change in the culture. But ultimately ideas have to change. There's no way for the government to shrink its constitutional size without the people wanting that, or the people to want it, they are going to have to have a fundamental shift in the way they think about the world. So if it's not a violent revolution, it has to be an educational, has to be a philosophical revolution. Something has to change ideologically among the people. There's just no shortcuts. There's just no magic bullet. There's just not something that can cause politicians to advocate for this, or for the people to want it, short of a new respect for the ideas of the founding fathers. A renewed respect for those ideas. And I don't see where that's gonna come from other than from objectivism. Richard, my favorite YB shows were the ones on Chip Wars. I love that show as well, because I loved it. And on biotech, the mRNA vaccines are an awesome technology and I'm looking forward to future applications. Absolutely. I think the mRNA vaccines are, and I will do a show maybe, a portion of a show later this, in 2023, debunking some of the stuff that's coming out on the mRNA vaccines and why it's wrong. But in some way, it's such a waste of time to have to do that, but it's so prevalent on Twitter, God, it's everywhere. And it's so easily debunked that it's sad. Sad that those are the things I have to do rather than focus on the positive stuff. Thank you, Richard. Yeah, I thought those were some of my best shows. Nathan, you once claimed, oh no, I skipped Dan. I finished Nathan, then I go back to Dan. You once claimed that Gates helped the world farm more by Microsoft than he ever could by charitable contributions. Could you can concretize that claim with specifics? I only have an abstract understanding of that claim. Yes, I mean, I do that in my talk, I think. So, Microsoft basically bought a personal computer to every desktop or every desktop in a country that could afford one. That changed the world dramatically and that did good for people. People now had access to computing power. And the fact that people had access to computing power made it possible for them to do all kinds of amazing things all over the world. But it made their lives better. So it made their lives, I don't know, of a billion people better because a billion people bought computers that wouldn't have been able to buy computers if not for Microsoft and Bill Gates and making it cheap and making it effective and making it user-friendly to the extent Microsoft is user-friendly. So that's the way, remember, and in the sense, I think this is true of every billionaire, right? Every billionaire in a semi-free market. You cannot become a billionaire unless you sell a lot of goods. Why are people buying your goods? Buying your goods because your goods they expect will make their life better. So when you become a billionaire, when you sell a lot of things to a lot of people, that's happened because they're making their lives better. So you have facilitated them making their lives better. And the richer you are, the more people you've made their lives better, the more people you've impacted, the more you've changed the world, the more you've done good in the world by making people's lives better. Whereas in charity, you can make a particular life at a particular given point in time. You just affect fewer people. It just doesn't have a scope. Microsoft affected every human being's life on the planet almost. Now, people say, oh, but some people don't have computers. Yeah, but the people in Africa who don't have a computer who rely, let's say, on foreign aid to get their food, how does that foreign aid get to them? Well, what runs logistics? And how come the logistics are so efficient and so effective at getting the food to them? Because the computers, they're running computers and Microsoft software that makes it possible. And Microsoft software that makes it possible to get the, so even charity is more effective and efficient because of Microsoft. But much more important than charity, our lives are so much more effective because of the computing power that Microsoft made possible. And not just, and you can go on and on, think of all the employees they hide, all the people who had great salaries, working at great jobs for Microsoft, but not only for Microsoft, all the companies that produce goods that live, things that live on Microsoft platforms and all the people they employed and all the people's lives they changed. This is a spiral that's almost never ending. And in that sense, I say, Bill Gates improved the lives of every person on this planet because he created Microsoft. He'll help a few thousand people with this charity. Maybe a hundred, maybe a million, not eight billion. Thanks, Nathan. It's a good question and deserves more time, but God, I'm way behind. Okay, we're gonna have to speed up otherwise. And I can't go four hours. I maybe can go three and a half because the anonymous, I promised that I will take my wife out to dinner. I would have taken her out to dinner anyway, but I've got dinner reservations for a fantastic place. So I can't go forever. So I'm gonna have to start doing quick questions. I should have just done, if I'd known there would be so much super chat, I would have not done my UN review. Who cares? Just done questions. Okay, Dan says, I am psyched that like in one day, the China protests went from lift the COVID restrictions to we want free speech and download the CCP. It was unbelievable, yes. I feel that the regime is doomed with freedom, ideas so prevalent, their thoughts. I agree. And this is the sense I had in 2018 when I was in China and why I was so optimistic about China. And then I turned much more pessimistic as Xi consolidated power and restricted freedom of speech in China. So I'm super hopeful that this will spur, and the fact that he folded will spur people to demand more and more and more and more freedom and liberty in China. And if China goes that way, watch out world, what a dynamic, amazing place that is, if they can shrug off authoritarianism. Every time I go to China, I'm inspired by the Chinese people. Was says, thank you, Yuan. Thank you, Was, really appreciate the support. Thank you. Ricardo, thank you for the immeasurable value you produce every day at true hero. Thank you, Ricardo. Adam says, gotta listen to the replay tomorrow while cleaning up post-New Year's Eve party cheers to a positive and productive 2023, all PayPal coming for more dollars. Thank you, Adam. Really appreciate all the support over the last year plus, really appreciate it. Adam also sponsors a lot of the shows, so amazing. Reggie, challenge most philosophical director, the fact that I said it's James Cameron. Andrew Nikolai for Gacha, the Truman Show in time, S1 and the terminal. Yeah, it's a good debate to have. Godica is a really good movie. I don't think it's as good as James Cameron's early movies. And it's definitely philosophical. The terminal I think is limited, it's good, and other ones I haven't seen. So I'm taking them down as just suggestions to try out and then I'll reconsider. Oh, the Truman Show I saw. So that is quite philosophical. You're right. Although I think they're all, let me give it some thought. Let me give it some thought and get back to you. All right, Nathan, back. Could the North have more thoughtfully defeated, thoroughly defeated the South in the Civil War to help establish the rights of minorities in the South? Did the North allow too much Southern culture to remain during the Southern reconstruction? Yes, I mean, Southern reconstruction ultimately was a disaster. The North capitulated to the South and allowed for horrible backward motion. I think the North could have behaved a lot more aggressively and eradicated the racism, particularly the Jim Crow laws when they first started and therefore they wouldn't have then blossomed to the way they did. So yes, reconstruction turned out to be a disaster. And because of the North, because of the North's weakness. And it's interesting, what would have happened if Lincoln survived? Ryan says, you're on. You have convinced me that all, we all need to speak up more about the tremendous value of objectiveness. I'm good, it brings to life when it's applied. In 2023, I'm planning to be more vocal and speak up about the success stories. Thank you for the inspiration. Absolutely, thank you, Ryan, we need that. Michael, how do you block out negativity to stay happy because there's a lot of people out there who want to see happy people miserable and unsure of themselves? You know, I just don't let it get to me. It don't let it go so deep as Rourke says in the fountain head. It's just, it's my life. Yes, some things are out of my control and some things I can't prevent bad, some bad things from happening. But if those things happen, you just deal with them to the best of your ability and you focus on the positive. You focus on living, you focus on succeeding. Reggie Wooddog, what would an objectivist church look like? There wouldn't be an objectivist church. You couldn't have an objectivist church. I mean, isn't the Iran book show the objectivist church, right? You can't have one, right? Because that would assume faith and that would assume everybody in the pews, nodding along and the nice thing about the Iran book show is you ask questions, you disagree, you push back. That's what the equivalent would be, but I don't think church is a term that we can save for a positive, in a positive way, to use positively. Jackson, $350, thank you, Jackson. You're on Happy New Year, everyone. Thanks, Iran, for YBS and exposing me to iron-band objectivism. That's amazing. Looking forward to further engagement and integration of this beautiful philosophy of my life in 2023. Excellent, thank you, Jackson. Liam, how do people have all the super chat money after taxes? Could you imagine how much disposable income and fund we would have without cause of taxation? It is unfathomable how rich we are running on 40% of capitalism and how rich we would be in 100%. Yes, I mean, taxes is the least of your problems. Regulations and all the controls and the government education, that, those are much greater evils and much greater drags on the quality and standard of living than even taxation. As evil and bad as taxation is. Kudababa, Kudababa. Thanks and Happy New Year. Thank you, Kudababa. Appreciate the support, anonymous user. Here's what I've left to give you. I wish you a Happy New Year. Hope to see you in Texas someday. I'm gonna be in Austin a few weeks. I remember that two is the best movie of the year. No, it's not. Thank you for everything you're on. Exercise, learn, love and be happy. Absolutely. Richard, you're on. You did a great job promoting the show. So we saved up so we could help you meet your goals as you've helped us. Definitely meet our, inspired us every day. May 2023 be a million times better than 2022. Thank you, Richard. And by the way, let me just say that even though I hyped up the show and announced it and everything, December even without the show is the best super chat month ever. So even without today, December is the best super chat month ever. And hopefully it sets a new ball for January, February and the months to come. But it was, you guys have been amazing this year. Benjamin Happy New Year and thank you, Yuan. Thank you, Benjamin. I appreciate it. Jayce, do you like sashimi? Specifically tuna fish sashimi. I like all kinds of sashimi. I particularly like the fatty tuna. What are your thoughts, tuna belly, sorry, tuna belly. What are your thoughts on private oceans in the United States and sell to private companies? Do you think they would increase supply of this delicious slice of fish? Yes, I think finding creative ways to privatize the fish stock, finding creative ways to privatize the oceans is something that we would do in a capitalist world. I think what we lack today is an imagination on how to do that. But in a private world, in a capitalist world, there'd be a lot of people with a lot of incentive to figure that out. Len, visiting the need, need the world monument with real-time translation of follow-up with documentaries explaining Europe for me, ominous parallels indeed, Russia is all that remains of that brand of evil, must be broken up and let regions decide their fate. I mean, that would be great, but unlikely to happen. That evil still persists in Europe, unfortunately. It doesn't have political power except in Russia and a little bit in Hungary, but yes, it would be good if that power was defeated completely. Ray says, longtime follower, fan of the show and monthly contributor, I thought I usually listen offline. I'm here in person to help make the 10K match. Here's to a banner year for the show in 2023. Thank you, Ray, thank you. Stardust, value for value, watch a ton of your shows and just improve my laugh. Thanks, thank you, Stardust. Oscar, favorite books of 2022, Men Without Work by Nicholas Abestad, The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haid. Jonathan Haid is interesting. The Gulag Acapello, oh, you read that? Wow, I read that 40 years ago. 40 years ago, wow. By Alexander Shudzenich and Shudzenich. I read him in my early 20s. It was very, very powerful stuff, very powerful stuff. I disagree with him philosophically, but very powerful stuff. Richard, I think I'm nearly at the limit. Thank you for covering the science and innovation and the news you're on. It makes everything worthwhile and I really enjoy ending on a positive note. It's so inspiring to be alive right now. Yes, it is, thanks, Richard. Dr. Pye, how do you plan on first using chat GPT to improve your productivity? I'm already using it to build computer programs, develop business ideas, organize my thoughts better, create entire lesson plans. That's amazing. I haven't thought about it yet in terms of how I can use it to increase my productivity, but that will be something I try to think about and try to find solutions to in 2023, but that's amazing, congratulations. Eric, Happy New Year, Iran. First saw you on Lex and been hooked ever since. Excellent. Excellent, excellent, which one? Paul, for the TSLA fund, when it hits $60, Blue Light Special, the show you're on, Brooke, and who doesn't enjoy a good stock market debate, especially if not, all right. I didn't quite understand all that, Paul, but thank you, really appreciate it. Linda, Happy New Year, Iran, and everyone. Corey, Happy New Year from Australia. I haven't caught you live in a while. Yeah, we've missed you, Corey, in a while, but still appreciate you all you do. Thank you, Corey, really appreciate the support. Tessa, Happy New Year, thank you. Tessa, Derek, thank you for all the value you've provided us this year, Iran. Greatly appreciate all you do. Best wishes for another happy and healthy new year. Thank you, Derek. Jennifer, so much style without substance, so much stuff without style. It's hard to recognize the real thing. It comes along once in a while. Those are Neil Pert lines. This show is the real thing you're on. Happy New Year and thank you so much. Thank you, Jennifer, for all the support and being such a loyal listener. Tyler, Happy New Year from Zurich, Switzerland. Great, thanks, Tyler. Alexis, thank you for all the value you've added this year, Iran, wish you a terrific year. Thank you, Alexis. See you in London sometime. Fender Varistato, great show. I love seeing you succeed. Thank you, Fender Varistato. Paul Cohen, Happy New Year, Iran. Love you and your show. Keep up the wonderful work. Thanks, Paul. Kirk, Happy New Year. Thanks, Kirk. John, Happy New Year. Thanks, John. Applejack, 815, Iran, best intellectual in the world. Thank you. Jason, Saliki, sorry, I horrible with names. Happy New Year. Abe, Johnson, Happy New Year, Iran. Thanks for everything you do. Jeff Bannister, 200 Canadian dollars. Thanks, Iran. YBS Capitalist, yes, Capitalist 101. John Wayne, always loved to hear from John Wayne. What is the future of AI ethics? AI ought to steal the effort of legitimate artists to transform into their desired products, but it's spitting out a completely new product. Should laws be amped up, more enforcement or reinforced? There has to be a way to figure out how to protect intellectual property rights in an AI world. It's not gonna be easy to do, particularly given the state of philosophy in the world, but that is something as it develops that's gonna have to be thought about and integrated into the AI world. Joe, just got here. Thank you for an awesome 2022. I've learned so much from you over the last year, which I found you and I ran earlier, but I'm thankful for a new outlook on life going to begin now. Thanks, Joe. Steve Rogers, keep up the good work. It's making a difference. Thank you, Steve. Lyron Brown, happy new year. Thanks, Lyron. Justin, just emailed one of my favorite quotes from Atlas. Read if you get a chance. Here's a productive, to a productive and flourishing 2023. Thank you, Justin. Tija, whose name I constantly struggle to pronounce. I apologize for all the time I've mispronounced it. Thank you. Happy 2023, Mr. Objectivism. Owen T, thank you for all you do, Yaron. Thanks, Owen and Matthew Stroud. I think reading 1984 in school primed me for accepting Randlator in life. Have you watched the movie V for Vendetta and he thoughts happy 2023? I mean, there's a real problem with V for Vendetta and that's how he treats the woman and how he tortures her. And I don't think that's moral even for good cause and that's such a really, really troubling part of the movie. There's a lot to like about V for Vendetta, but that really bugs me and really bothered me about the movie, about the story. Woo, that is the $20 plus contributors. Now I move on to the under $20 contributors. Okay, so we're gonna go through these quickly. All right, I think we're good. I said three hours. I think we'll do this in just under three hours. It's good. And we still have 183 people watching live. So people are holding out. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. It helps with the algorithms. It really appreciate it. We probably had four, 500 people in and out of the show over time. So maybe we can get that up to higher than the 239. We have it right now. Cook says, happy new year, Yaron and fellow Yaronimos. Thank you, Cook. Kathleen, who's a member, quietly supporting you from afar. Thank you, Kathleen. Whoops, what did I do? Action Jackson says, can you offer positive masculine role models as alternative to end-youtate asking for friend? Sure, let's do a show on that. A show on positive masculine role models. By the way, movies are a great place to find positive masculine role models. Role models generally, art is a place to look for that. So I will think about examples in art that we could do a show around. All right, Mr. Remortless, congrats on another year, Yaron. You've inspired me with reasoned arguments for why living to the fullest is important, much love from down under. Yeah, I mean, we've got a lot of people supporting the show from Australia. It's great in Canada. Have you explained, have you expanded your staff since 2017? Yes, I didn't have, I didn't have Action Jackson. Most love now is, I guess he's volunteering for us. Angela has been with me forever, so she's been here since 2017. But yes, you know, if we take the next big step forward, maybe I can get somebody who can help on some of the technical sides and scheduling and a bunch of that. Thanks, Finn Hopper. Cook, thank you for, thank you. Christian, happy New Year, so that's for Christian. Apollo Zeus, a general question of your understanding of psychopistemology. God, that's a complicated question for this late in the show. I mean, psychopistemology is basically the relationship between your conscious ideas, your conscious thinking and your subconscious, the content of your subconscious and your emotional and your emotions. So it's the connection between your conscious and subconscious, how the subconscious affects your conscious thinking. It's how you draw on your subconscious for information, for data, for memories, for things like that. And how you use that. But it's, Harry Binswain has a great course on that on Ayn Rand University that you should listen to. You don't have to take it live, you can just listen to it. All right, Dave, beginning next year, increase your pilates, private lessons to five times a week. Do an hour first thing in the morning, you will easily lift 110. Pilates is so good for your organs and bone density. Pilates is good, but at five times a week, I think it's too much. And it doesn't satisfy my need for cardio. And I worry that there's too much repetitive motion that I'll get knee problems if I do it five times a week. And it's not, it doesn't really build strength and muscles the way lifting weights can. So at least I find that, for example, on legs, I'm using the max springs on max settings and it's not enough. All right, let's see, TV series, The Peripheral on Prime Foundation, Foundation was good on Apple, I enjoyed Foundation, and Mr. Brain on Apple. Okay, I'll have to try Mr. Brain and Peripheral. Thanks, Len. Ian says, top TV shows, Expans, Expans was good. I love Expans, one of my favorite shows. House of the Dragon, I liked House of the Dragon, that made my list. And Gilded Age, that made the list we talked about earlier and I would add Ando, the truest old man, English and slow horses, for what it's worth. Marilyn says, TV Ted Lasso, yeah, Ted Lasso was fun. I enjoyed Ted Lasso, absolutely. Jason says, the only media worthwhile in my opinion, Top Gun Maverick, and then, I know YB is no big fan, the Batman and Better Call Saul. I'm not a fan of Better Call Saul, and I haven't seen the Batman. And, yeah, Top Gun Maverick was fun. Not a great movie, but fun, certainly fun. I mean, full of plot holes, right? Googly, xomos, slaughtering a name again. Thank you, thank you for your work. Really appreciate it for the support. Fredrick, greetings from Stockholm, Sweden. This is a minuscule amount, compared to the value you provide me. Thank you. Every amount is appreciated, Fredrick. Jeff became a member, thank you Jeff. Fend, Harper, any chance someone at ARI will reach out to Microsoft in an attempt to help them win the antitrust case? I'm sure they could help out and make a big change. Their odds are better with ARI support. We have tried over and over and over again over the years to try to protect Microsoft and other companies from antitrust. It's very difficult to get their attention. And to get their support for you supporting them because they don't want to be associated. What do the justices think the Ninth Amendment means? I don't know, I really don't know. All right, Frank says, best movies, the outfits. The outfit was good. It was about the tailor, right? The outfit was good. Top Gun was good, you know, fun, shallow, fun, full of plot holes. Fall, can't remember. Death on the Nile was good, bullet train. Seemed silly, so I never watched it. Fable's Men's was very good. Amsterdam haven't watched it. Best TV shows, Yellowstone haven't watched Yellowstone and Young Sheldon have not seen Young Sheldon. Steve, Christmine, do you think the downfall of Donald Trump will also be the beginning of the end of conservative nationalism? I don't know, and I fear not. I fear that it actually will make conservative nationalism more powerful because Donald Trump was a pragmatist. He didn't really believe in anything. They believe in something, and to the extent that they become more powerful, it's very dangerous. I'm not sure if they become weaker or more powerful. Anonymous user, best movies, Top Gun, Bullet Train, and Avatar 2. I'm not gonna see Avatar 2, but I hate it already, even not seeing it. Top Gun again was fun, but Shallow, Bullet Train, I'll see it, okay. I can't believe that, you know, yeah, it's not gonna make one of my top movies, I don't think. YouTube channels, one YBS, two Lex Friedman, three Den's, Davidov. I don't know Den's Davidov. I'll have to try to seek him out. Flatenik, remember to like the show. Yes, remember to like the show. Don't forget to like the show, guys. The surreal truth. Are there any other objective channels on YouTube you could recommend besides the obvious ones? Your content is great, but where is everyone else? Well, I mean, there's a bunch of people out there, so I would follow the ones that you like. I mean, certainly you should be following the ARIs and ARC and all the different ARU and all the INRAN different channels that are out there. Anonymous user says, was your civil engineering degree worth it? No, I never used it really except for one year, but I enjoyed it and it was good and it set me up. I could have done a variety of other things. It's not, nothing special about civil engineering in my life. Michael, would you consider going to space but not an astronaut? Not being an astronaut, but just going around the earth a few times in a few? Yeah, I would. I wouldn't pay a million bucks for it, but I would. A friend opposite says, if it's not inappropriate to ask about or for you to share, who are the top three donors in monthly contributions or at least the dollar levels at the top three donors for the monthly contributions? I'm not gonna give names because I don't think that's appropriate, but this year, the Iran's Rules for Life was sponsored by someone who gave $1,000 a month and on top of the $500 you already gives, so it's $1,500 a month for the last 12 months. I mean, we ended that series. It's not gonna happen in 2023, but in 2022, he was by far the largest donor and then a supporter. And then there were a number of people who give $500 a month, maybe one or two, and then there's a bunch who do $250 a month. So those are the biggest supporters on the, a few $500 and then a few $250s. Fenhopper most likes on a single show this year. Ooh, I don't know how to check that. I'll have to do some research and get back to you. Fenhopper, I listened to 28 audiobooks this year. Wow, some of them twice. A lot of books recommended by you and AOI podcast. I get $8 of headphones a day while at work. Shout out to factory workers. Cool. It's one big advantage of being a factory worker. Equal to reality, to a new year, I would give more, but I'm saving for my 30th. Completely understand, appreciate the support. Andy Black, happy new year. I just wanted to show support for the show, going into the next year and maybe add in a plug for C Bradley Thompson as a future guest to his plan. I think my assistant has reached out to him, so it's definitely planned. I don't think I've heard from him, which is a little unusual. But yeah, at some point, I mean, for the Thursday interview shows, absolutely. Paul says, what is the moral status of ad blocker? I don't see any problem with it. It's not, it's part of everybody using it. It's not illegal. It's not something that the ad people don't know exists. It's part of the calculation. Paul says, the only thing I don't like about AI productivity revolution is that it will increase productivity so much that we'll be able to print the money to monetize the debt without causing price inflation. Maybe, maybe we will see. We will see if they can pull that off. Let's see. Oh, Andrew did a $20, they didn't even notice. The ocean view of your apartment from your home, through it was quite impressive. What is the value, what is its value to you? Does it go beyond aesthetic to inspirational? Yeah, it's definitely inspiring and it's calming and it's very emotionally satisfying, the ocean view. And I had a dream, I've had a dream most of my life to live on a cliff above the ocean. And I don't live on a cliff above the ocean but I do, and then a lot of waves crashing below. But I do live in a tent floor of a condo right about the ocean and that's pretty cool and it's beautiful. And you know, a lot of my life going up, I lived with a view of the ocean. So this is home for me. The view of the ocean is part of being at home. And it's a real value to me, it's important. It doesn't mean that I'll always have it but it's a lot of fun to have it now. Apollo Zeus says, happy new year everyone. Thank you Apollo. Jackson says, thank you all for visiting my alma mater. IU Law School, absolutely, that was Indiana. This year, did you debate a particular person? IU needs objectivism. No, it wasn't debate, it was just me talking. It was good. Fern Halper says, mission position is my mother Teresa. That's right, that's right. I read that a long time ago. It's, what's his name's book? But yes, it's excellent. Everybody should read a missionary position about mother Teresa. God. Paul says, your own book, you should do live Hangouts for Reviewing Shows. Live Hangouts for Reviewing Shows. I'm not sure what that means. What would it mean to do a live Hangout for Reviewing Shows? Katharine, Katharine who's also part of the team. I forgot Katharine earlier. Also part of the Iran book show team. Thank you, Iranimos, 2023 is going to be amazing. Hit join button, yes, absolutely. So Katharine has been amazing in getting your support for the show and getting super chats up and getting everything like that. Amazing. I've got an amazing team. An honest user, what are your top three goals for 2023? For what? Personal show, you know what? I'm going to do a 2023 show because I'm not going to do my projection for 2023 and ask me that again then. Nikolas says, thanks Iran for your work this year. Happy new year. Best wishes, thanks Nikolas. Jason, I meant video entertainment, not all media in my top three. And the way saw tied into BB was poetic, baking bad. At best it shows how spin-offs can be well connected. Yeah, I mean I'm sure it did. I just couldn't get past the first couple of seasons. Kirk says, Wednesday, Adams on Netflix. Wednesday, Adams. Okay, I'll look that up, never heard of it. Everybody says it's good. All right, let me copy paste that. Wednesday, Adams on Netflix. Okay. Dr. Pai, are you on, would you or someone here be able to compile a list of your recommended TV shows, movies, songs, books on your website that can be referenced, especially the ones that get mentioned on YBS? I need to find a solution for that. My website is now very good at doing stuff like that. It's a little bit more complicated. But let me figure out a solution where I could just list recommended books, recommended movies, recommended TV shows that I've made recommendations. I will try. Cook, yes, says Adam Reed. I do that sometimes all over the country, so you guys connect. Jason says, a simple means to send a 72nd voice message, question, comment. You have it screened and categorized and play it back. We pay a fixed price, $20, not sure how to implement, but it would be a killer app. All right, we'll give it some thought. Paul says, Microsoft stole Windows from Apple Macintosh IP. Not true. And it was never as good as Apple's. What is the moral status of a company that creates tons of value by stealing the idea from a company? It didn't steal an idea, otherwise it would have been sued and it would have been horrific. You don't have intellectual property over the idea of using images on a screen. I don't think. Anyway, there were lawsuits around these things that were settled. I have no problem with what Microsoft did and there was a process by which those kind of disputes get resolved. Apple didn't lose because Microsoft copied it. Apple lost because Apple was a closed system and because it was a closed system, it was too expensive, too expensive. And because it was a closed system, there was less application, there was less software on Apple. What's your opinion on credit cards that offer points, miles, cash back? Do you recommend any in particular for travel and other benefits? Yeah. I use them all the time. I use gazillion credit cards. I get a gazillion points on all kinds of things. I particularly like the American Express Platinum and Business Platinum. And I like my Marriott cards, my Hyatt card, my American Airlines card. Yeah, those are the ones I use the most. But yeah, you can develop hope strategies around this and their websites dedicated to how to do it well. And yeah, it can become a hobby, all consuming. Paul says, Silicon Valley, funnier show of all time. Not the funnier show of all time. There are many shows that are funnier, but Silicon Valley was a good show and was quite funny. Even though it was, anyway, let's see. Zac T, Happy New Year, Iran, Happy New Year, Zac. All right, guys, three hours to the minute. Are we good or what? I mean, and 1,200, sorry, 12,000. The number's too large for me to even really get right. 12,465 dollars on the Super Chat. Another approximately $1,000 offline. 13,500 approximately in a three-hour show. That is truly amazing. You guys all crushed it. You were amazing. I did nothing. You showed a lot of support and a lot of love today. And this would go a long way to motivating me into the new year. I'm excited about 2023. We'll do a show about 2023 on Tuesday. We will look forward to the year. I'll tell you about my goals for the show. You guys can tell me ideas again about how to improve things and how to make it even bigger. And yeah, we'll keep at it. We'll keep working. We'll keep chipping away at the culture, at the world. We'll keep making the world a better place. Thank you to my anonymous contributor for the $10,000 match. I mean, when I first heard about $10,000 match, I was like, there's no way we're gonna be able to do that. And then thank you, Robbie, for stepping in with another $1,000. That is truly amazing. Thank you for all of you. 2023 starts tomorrow. It's exciting. What Ayn Rand used to do every new year during the day, she would write. And the reason she said is, a new year, I wanna do what I plan to do for the rest of the year. What I plan to do for the rest of the year. So I hope you have a phenomenal day tomorrow. I hope you get to do the things that you're planning to do for the rest of the year. I hope it's a happy day so that you can institute happiness for the rest of the year. I hope you do something inspiring, something beautiful. Don't forget, don't forget, at the core of everything we do here, is live your life to the fullest. Make every day count, make your life, make your life, produce your life, create your life, live with the capital L. That's the theme at the end of the day of the Iran Book Show. News, all that stuff. That's just trifling. The real thing is to live. So all of that I think helps you live. It's not a substitute for living. All right, enjoy, have a great New Year's Eve. I am off to have a great dinner. I hope you have a go to a party, watch fireworks, I'm sure we'll have fireworks here, and everything else. And just have a great time. And tomorrow we start over. And next show is Monday morning. We start the new shows. So see you all on Monday. You guys have been great. What a year. And 2023 is gonna be even better. Even better. Have a great night, everybody. Have a great, happy New Year. Here's to a fantastic, happy, prosperous, amazing 2023. Bye, everybody. And thanks again to Robbie and Vonda and to my anonymous donor. Thanks.