 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Tuesday, eight weeks so far. We're ready to rumble, ready to talk about the news of the day. As you know, you can support the show by asking questions, using the Super Chat feature, or just support the show with the sticker. All right, we are going to jump into some of the issues that I listed. Before we go to the actual listed issues, I suddenly came across my desk just the last hour with just commenting on quickly, just because it's funny. For whatever reason, well, I know what the reason is. I follow Candace Owens on Twitter, and as part of following Candace Owens on Twitter, I read this tweet today. It's four days old, but given how many comments it's getting, how many retweets it's getting, it finally popped up to my attention. Oh, sorry, no, yep, there we go, that's better. To my attention today. So this is Candace Owens' tweet. Remember Candace Owens? Female, successful, incredibly successful podcaster, commentator, massive following. Let's see here once again, let's just see. She has 3.5 million followers on Twitter. I follow her, but I haven't really read many of her tweets, but maybe I should. Anyway, so 3.5 million followers on Twitter, super successful. She's making a fortune, conservative, definitive, and rotate, and generally an icon, icon in the conservative world. I mean, she is revered and loved, I think by many even who listen to the Iran book show. Anyway, here's the tweet. Can you name one objective thing, one objective thing that has gotten better in American society since women were given the right to vote? Can you name one objective thing that has gotten better in American society since women were given the right to vote? She puts in parentheses, please contain your emotions and answer the question. I'm working on an episode and want to read aloud some of the answers. Okay, some of the things that have gotten better in American society since women were given the right to vote. You know, women are treated much better and therefore women can have careers and rise up both within businesses and as independent entrepreneurs like Candace Oren and have voices out there that are quite loud. That was not possible or very, very rare before women were given the right to vote. Let's see, what else? How about the fact that black, certainly black women, blacks were treated very differently in the early part of the 20th century. Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination, harassment, out and out, murder and lynching. So if you were black, I think American society is much better off since women were allowed to vote than it was before. But you know, this is a question about how many things have gotten better in American society? Well, we're much wealthier. I don't think it's because women were given the right to vote, but the fact is we are. Well, much wealthier. We live much longer. We live much healthier. Indo-plumbing has gotten a lot better since women were given the right to vote. Air conditioning, central air conditioning, local air conditioning, has become prevalent and used since women were given the right to vote. I mean, how stupid can you get? Sorry. What a stupid question. Now, you can ask the question, name one objective thing that women voted for that improved the life of America. I think many of the things I listed would include that, particularly getting rid of Jim Crow laws, civil rights, with the exception of the bad part, but at least good parts of civil rights and there are a lot of good parts in civil rights. You know, quality of life, standard of living, it's all increased. Could be much better. We could be richer. We could be freer. We could be a lot of things, but yeah, the right to abortion. We have a right to abortion. That's right. We have to abort. That's better. Not according to Candace Owen, of course. She's very much opposed to abortion. Now, this is the level, this is the level of, this is the level of stupidity that, you know, resonates with, with, I guess, conservatives today. Shabat says dentistry has much improved. I think that's right. I think that's right. You know, since when were we given the right to vote? God, this is insanity. We know the left is bad, but this is who your allies are. Candace Owen later retweets a tweet by Andrew Tate. Andrew Tate says, every superpower has to be reverse engineered. The masculine propensity to protect and be violent in the name of righteousness. Really? The name of righteousness? This is an important mechanism, but can be commandeered for evil. Yes, it can and often has. Female superpower is empathy, hijacked by mainstream media, clown world, agenda implemented. And Candace Owen adds to that, this is so true. I mean, just think about this woman retweeting Andrew Tate. This is so true. Women have had this superpower hijacked. We are supporting virtually every societal cancer because we feel bad. Transgenderism, fat acceptance, radical race ideology, CRT. Female emotionality begets social stupidity. How about just emotionality begets social stupidity? Isn't the way male propensity to be violent is commandeered for evil through emotionalism? It's so non-intellectual. It's unbelievable. Anyway, worth pointing out and that this is creepy, creepy, just creepy. And just in case you're not convinced of the creepiness of these guys, I mean, this is Ben Shapiro. Ben Shapiro tweets or Ben Shapiro is said on a show. This is a quote from a show. The Great Suspicion is, this is about Disney, about Disney. The Great Suspicion is that in Frozen 4, there are also a lesbian. If they do that, it is the end of Disney as a company. Predict it. You can write it down. It is April 17th. If they do that in Frozen 4, it will destroy Disney. Now, is Elsa not having a romantic relationship in Frozen 1, 2 and 3? Is Elsa being asexual in A1, 2, 3? Now, I don't know how old Elsa is. I've never seen Frozen. I have no idea what Frozen is. But is there no romance? Does Disney not believe in romance anymore? Can you not have romance anymore? This is it. If they turn into a lesbian, that is the end. That of all the things, of all the worries we have in the world, this is it. This is it. It's the end. The obsession with the sexual orientation of cartoon characters is quite intriguing. This is a story that broke. I've been reading about this story for a while now. I'd say for about a year now, there have been stories in the press about suspected police stations, or suspected Chinese government officials acting in a sense in a policing capacity all over the West. Policing basically Chinese who are living in the West. Maybe those Chinese are students. Maybe those Chinese have moved to the West. They might even be American citizens or Canadian citizens. And what these Chinese offices are basically doing, these Chinese offices, interestingly enough, supposedly report back to specific Chinese police stations back in mainland China. Oops, what happened here? Automatic fetching too many hours in a row. Okay, well, reload. They were put to police stations supposedly in China about the activities of Chinese citizens in foreign countries in the United States and Canada. And they actually have offices and they conduct business and the accusation has been that they've been running basically China's been running police stations in the United States. Well, we got the first prosecution or the first charges that relate to something like this in any Western country. These have been suspicious so far. They've been talked about. They've been reported in the media, but governments have done nothing other than to complain to Beijing about this. Yesterday in New York, two men were arrested on charges of conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government and obstructing of justice. They are said to have used and I'm reading from the New York Times. They have said to do. I know that's a sin, but there you go. They have said to have used the police outpost to intimidate Chinese dissidents living in the United States on China's behalf. Now, you know, they've also obstruction of justice relates to the fact that they try to destroy documents once the police identified the location and try to and try to take over the location. So it appears that China has operatives. Officially, these people reported to a Chinese station, a particular Chinese station in Fuzhou, F-U-Z-H-O-U, the municipal police security bureau, which is a branch of China's Ministry of Public Security. They're literally reported to them. The two men are citizens of the United States. One is, I'm not going to try to pronounce the name. Anyway, they're both dual citizens of the United States and China, but they are working clearly as Chinese agents to intimidate other Chinese living in the United States. And in conjunction with this, two other filings were made yesterday. One, accusing 34 Chinese police officers in China, accusing them of harassing Chinese nationals who live in the New York area. Remember, this is a New York state prosecution. And another against eight Chinese officials, also living in China, accused of directing a Zoom employee based in China to remove dissidents from the platform. So in other words, these are criminal accusations charges against Chinese citizens, Chinese officials who reside in China. There's no tradition policy, so we'll never see these people about their attempt to interfere in the lives of Chinese dissidents working in the United States or just Chinese students. I mean, Chinese students, if you go to universities in the US and you talk to them, they will tell you that they're constantly afraid of being followed, being watched by Chinese authorities and about speaking their mind, about talking about China and about talking about maybe the issues that China faces. They fear retribution from the Chinese government. Now note, this relates to government officials, government programs of the Chinese government interfering with American citizens or American residents, violating their free speech rights and harassing them on American soil. And what has been the response of our government? We've arrested a couple of people. We've filed charges against some Chinese officials for which there will be no outcome. Indeed, the same thing has happened in Ireland, Canada and Netherlands. And what have those countries done? They've called on China to shut down similar operations in their countries. But the FBI raid in New York was the first time this has ever happened where this was confronted with law enforcement. But what has the American government actually done? I mean, again, Chinese officials harassing, threatening American citizens or people living in America, the land of the free, the home of the brave, the land of the First Amendment. Well, the US government has done nothing, zilch nada. It's filed a complaint with the embassy in China. The embassy in China said, no, no, no, this was just a cultural center. You misunderstand what's going on here. The 34 officials that were charged are part of China's Ministry of Public Security, which operates a troll farm, and they attack Chinese dissidents in the United States. I mean, this is, from my perspective, not quite an act of war, but, yeah, effectively. This would be enough to kick the Chinese ambassador out of Washington, DC. This should be enough for severe diplomatic angst and uproar. This should be, this should be, you know, this should be a real big issue. It's buried somewhere in the New York Times. Nobody will pay attention to this much. And, you know, the government will go on sanctions on China, tariffs on China. We'll do this with China. We'll do that with China. We'll sign this agreement. We won't sign that agreement. We'll play cat and mouse in the Taiwan Straits. And in the meantime, we'll let them hack into our computers. We'll let them harass American citizens. We'll let them, you know, harass people in Zoom. We'll let them, what the hell, right? And yeah, we'll file charges, but charges will never come to anything. Why do we still have an ambassador in China? I mean, for that matter, why do we still have an ambassador in Russia? What is, what kind of foreign policy does the United States have? Are there any principles by which we'll need to stand? Principles will only need to the protection of Americans, or people living in American soil. Anything. Economic embargo, that, you know. But wouldn't you start with diplomatic relations? I mean, the whole thing is bizarre and ridiculous, and we have no foreign policy. I've been saying this for years now, but since World War II, America has had no coherent strategy of dealing with the world and dealing with identifying enemies or identifying threats and dealing with them. Nothing. And this is the consequence of foreign power feels completely no problem doing whatever it wants in terms of electronic harassment, hacking and actually having people on the ground with offices and buildings and in order to harass people who might challenge their interests. You know, while I'm against tariffs and I don't think it's time for an economic blockade of China and all of that, this idea that we continue to pretend as if China is a normal country and we continue to have diplomatic relations and we sit with them in the United Nations and we talk to their officials as if they're our friends and we've got something to work towards and to work with. It is ridiculous and it shows the complete lack of principles on the part of the United States. China is taking advantage of this and I think the rest of the world is seeing this as a sign of significant weakness. And as individuals, if you want to trade with China, that's your issue, but as a government, the government should have no relationship with the Chinese dictators and they should make that clear and they should make it clear to American businesses that they function in China at their own risk. Yeah, and that just brings us to more wonders of American foreign policy. So what did I just do? I did not mean to do that. That's okay. It doesn't matter. For years now, really since World War II, the United States have used Saudi Arabia as a major ally. Almost every president goes and grovels before the shakes of Saudi Arabia. Almost every one of them goes and dances with the princes. It was the first trip Donald Trump took internationally was to Saudi Arabia and to dance with the princes and to secure that relationship, ultimately leading to a massive purchase by the Saudis of very advanced American weapons systems that were and are being delivered to them as we speak. Saudi Arabia has been considered a strategic ally of the United States. Basically, FDR in 1945 kind of deal with them. You provide us with oil. We'll provide you with security. We will maintain you at the head of this part of the Arab world. Saudi Arabia now has engaged in the last few weeks in a systematic attempt to undermine U.S. interests in the Middle East and to undercut the United States and to send a clear message to the U.S. and to the world that it is not committed to maintaining good relations with the United States and it's not going to play the U.S.'s game or interest. It doesn't really care anymore. This is partially a result of Biden's weakness, but more than that it's a result of all of our president's weaknesses and in fact that we have basically groveled before them and made them think that they are all powerful and this goes back to basically every single president going back to FDR. So Saudi Arabia, as we know, we've talked about this on the show, has now reestablished diplomatic relationship with Iran. It has invited the Iranian president to Saudi Arabia. Now Iran has invited the king of Saudi Arabia to Iran. They're negotiating a peace deal in Yemen, which is probably a good deal, which gets Saudi Arabia out of that conflict but probably provides Yemen to the Iranian puppets. They have continued to attempt and I think will succeed in bringing Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, back into the fold. Again, an ally of the Iranians back into the fold in the Arab Union and in the Middle East making him a quote, legitimate party there. They have now invited Hamas leaders, the leaders of Hamas, the terrorist organization that runs the Gaza Strip. They have invited Hamas leaders who they have split with a long time ago, I think during the Bush administration. They have invited them to meet in Jeddah and they are going to reestablish ties with Hamas. With Hezbollah they will reestablish ties again through the Iranian regime. They are basically consolidating forces with Saudi money and Saudi ambitions to become the most important and powerful country in the Middle East with ties to both Iranians, the Syrians, the Yemenites, ultimately I'm sure the Egyptians and everybody else. And basically everybody cotiring to the Saudis given the Saudis have the money and the resources. And basically to help with the United States and to help with Israel. The ABAM Accords are in big question now. As Saudi Arabia becomes closer to Iran, you can be assured that the United Arab Emirates will become as well as will other parts of the Gulf Coast that might have had friendly relationships to Israel. I doubt that in five years those friendly relationship wouldn't necessarily still be around. Hope that Saudi Arabia would also join and sign a peace treaty with Israel are gone. And look, the Saudis played Trump. They played him beautifully. They gave him what he want. They got what they wanted from Trump. Basically, you know, the weapons galore. They got the respect they wanted from Trump. They got elevated by Trump. They then continued to be brutal and to do whatever the hell they wanted in the Middle East and in Israel, in the Middle East, they do whatever the hell they wanted in the Middle East. And Trump let him get away with that, including that brutal motive that journalist in Turkey, nobody cared. They got away with that. A Biden who actually says something negative about that, he's the one that was shunned and treated as an enemy of Saudi Arabia. Good for Biden for trying to stand up for Saudi Arabia. But then he collapsed. He capitulated. He capitulated because he can't do the right thing, which is to liberate the fossil fuel industry in the United States and then tell the Saudis to go take a hike because that's what we should be doing. That's what we should have done. Israel's relationship with Saudi Arabia soured significantly over the last few weeks, months. Saudi Arabia is cozying up to Israel's worst enemies. Iran, remember, if Israel is going to attack the Iranian nuclear power plants, it's going to have to fly over Saudi Arabia. Probably. If not, it will have to fly over Jordan and Iraq. Saudi Arabia reestablishing diplomatic relations with Iran makes it dramatically more difficult, dramatically more difficult for Israel to do anything with regard to Iran because, again, it has to cross airspace. Saudi Arabia was supposed to be an allied with Israel. They're supposed to have a common enemy, Iran. That has not gone away. No common enemy. Nothing. Mark says, wasn't Saudi Arabia a good check against Iran under Trump? No. I mean, nothing. The check against Iran is the threat of U.S. or Israeli force against it. Saudi Arabia was never going to attack Iran. Indeed, Iran attacked Saudi Arabia. Remember the drone attack on all the refineries? What did Saudi Arabia do about that? Nothing. Zilch zero. I like that Scott has Israeli military intelligence. He must have a background in this. He knows Israel has contingency routes to get to Iran that don't have to fly through Saudi Arabia because Scott knows. He has a deep, deep knowledge of Israeli plans for attacking Iran. There are only three routes unless they attack from Azerbaijan, which has its own problems. There are three routes. They can fly over Saudi Arabia. They can fly over Jordan and Iraq, or they can fly over Syria and Turkey. That's about it. You can fly over Syria pretty easily. You can fly over Jordan pretty easily. Flying over Iraq is tricky because of the U.S. presence there. Flying over Saudi Arabia is tricky. Flying over Turkey, a NATO member is tricky. Israel can do it. Israel can fly over Saudi Arabia. It can do a lot of things, but this just makes life much more complicated for Israel. And if you think otherwise, you just don't understand any... You don't understand the geography and you don't understand the capabilities of these various military forces. Yes, so American foreign policy is a massive failure again, not surprising. Remember how the Bushes sucked up to the Saudis after 9-11? Remember the 15 of the terrorists were Saudis on 9-11? Remember that the only plane leaving U.S. soil in the days after 9-11 was a plane that took members of the Saudi royal family from the U.S. back to Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia had, quote, special relations with the U.S. It's always used those special relations to stab the United States in the back. The United States has supported Saudi Arabia through thick. And, you know, this is what we have when we have unprincipled foreign policy. When we deal with kings, when we deal with autocrats, when we deal with people who, you know, behind our backs are subsidizing terrorism against us, which is what the Saudis did for many years. Anyway, that's a quick outline for that. And yes, this is all a reflection of the lack of foreign policy and its weakness under pretty much every president since FDL. All right, so I haven't mentioned this, but we do have a target of $250 for these news shows. We have about 95 people watching live right now. So, you know, two bucks from each person gets us there. We're about 180 short. So please consider supporting the show. You can do so with a sticker. You can do so with a question on the super chat. You can do it with five bucks. You can do it with 50 bucks to get us there quicker. But please don't let Wes shoulder the entire burden of funding these morning shows. We have to have a broad support to make these shows worthwhile and to provide an incentive to keep these shows going. All right, finally, let's talk about Clarence Thomas. This is big in the news. Clarence Thomas is the Supreme Court judge. You know, maybe the most conservative of all the Supreme Court judges or at least by some measures the most conservative of the judges has been now accused of accepting all kinds of gifts and accepting all kinds of vacations and money and trips and all kinds of things from a wealthy friend of his, what's his name, Crow, first name Holland, Holland Crow. I remember Crow because when I was living in Austin in the late 1980s, early 1990s, one of the most dominant companies in Austin, Texas was a company called Tramal Crow. Crow is the same company. Holland Crow was pretty young back then, but his father had built this real estate empire in Texas and they built most of their major real estate construction programs in Austin at the time. They were a major company in Texas. I actually interviewed with them for a job. I interviewed with Tramal Crow for a job in 1989. Luckily, I didn't get it and that set me on the path on which I am today. Anyway, Holland Crow, it seems like has given Columbus Thomas all kinds of gifts and goodies and trips and so on and the challenge there is not so much that these things were given but the Thomas never disclosed them. These were never disclosed as I guess Supreme Court judges are supposed to do. They're supposed to disclose gifts that they receive from people. It sounds like just as Thomas has a number of kind of financially regularities where he hasn't disclosed stuff in the past, income from a real estate company might have or income that his wife generated. Virginia Thomas is a real conservative, I think, wacky activist. I mean, while I have some respect to Columbus Thomas, I've met his wife and she's a complete loony toon. I met her at a conference where we were both speakers and yeah, she was just a loony toon. But this is a situation. Holland Crow himself has been portrayed as this crazy white wing radical, all out crazy. He does do a few crazy things. For example, one of his hobbies is to collect sculptures of dictators from like Eastern Europe and he has them in his home in Texas. So for example, as they tore down statues of Lenin and Chachescu and Romania and others, he actually bought them and shipped them to the United States and has them. He also has a collection of Nazi stuff and communist stuff, which is a little weird, I have to admit. But he says, Holland Crow says, yes, I have things from bad guys, he says. This is like a museum of sorts, a way to remember the lessons of evil. You know, I accept that as an explanation. Crow also claims that he's a friend of Columbus Thomas, that he has not tried to buy influence. There's no real evidence to suggest that Columbus Thomas has ever ruled in a way that benefits Holland Crow or that Thomas was a middle of the road guy who's been a part of Holland Crow's road up in his life and since then he's been this crazy conservative. I think he's always been conservative, so this is no change. Crow mentions, for example, that he's pro-choice to his pro-abortion, which surprised me, pleasantly surprised me. And yet Thomas is anti-abortion, dramatically anti-abortion. I never call the anti-abortion people pro-life because I don't think they care about life. So, for example, they disagree about abortion. Anyway, it seems like somebody needs to clean up Columbus Thomas's finances. There needs to be clearer rules about disclosure and if Columbus Thomas has violated some of the rules in the Supreme Court, he should be sanctioned for that. There's no evidence to suggest that he is compromised. There's no evidence to suggest that he has done anything wrong beyond not disclosing things he should have disclosed. But look, the reality is that we have lots of disclosure laws in this country and if I don't disclose certain things to the SEC, you know, I could go to jail. I could be fired. I could be sanctioned and forced to pay huge quantities of money as fines to the SEC. Our entire economy has lots of different disclosure to prevent so-called conflicts of interest. I mean, a lot of it is bogus, but this is the government and, you know, and these are the requirements. It would be sad if the Supreme Court was above the law. So, something, you know, somebody should figure this out. Hopefully, the Judge Roberts, who is in charge of the Supreme Court justices, should figure out if Columbus Thomas actually violated the law here or violated the rules and he should be penalized for it. I don't think he should lose his seat on the Supreme Court for it. That seems uncalled for, given, but yeah, there should be some consequences, right? I mean, the consequences for everything else seemingly that you do wrong from the government so why not for this? But overall, I think it's good that we know who is giving money to Supreme Court judges, right? Given the power that they have. I don't think that's a problem. I think, but I do think it's a problem that Columbus Thomas did not disclose that. He just should be disclosing it. Michael asks, is Columbus Thomas the best Supreme Court judge we've had in the last 50 years? I don't know. I mean, that's kind of a question that you would have to ask a legal expert. I have no idea. He's had some good rulings where he's talked about individual rights. There are a few judges of the last 50 years who've referred to individual rights. He's different in that sense from Scalia who thought individual rights were nonsense and stilts. Columbus Thomas actually has a view of individual rights, which is wrong, but it's actually a view. But he also is horrible on things like executive power. He's horrible on things like abortion. He's horrible on things like free, on some aspects of free speech. But Columbus Thomas has been good on some things and awful on others. So I don't know how to read him as compared to all other Supreme Court judges. Okay, we're $118 short. Just letting you know. Sylvanus, hey, Iran, love the news. Are you following SpaceX Starship news? First flight test was aborted yesterday. Yeah, I am. I figure I'd talk about it once. They actually took off. I'd rather report on the good stuff, the good news from SpaceX. Aborting takeoffs is pretty standard practice. In the space industry, these unbelievably complex procedures, it would be bizarre if you didn't have delays and if you didn't have aborted takeoffs. But yes, I am following SpaceX generally. I like the idea of going to the Stars if only just to escape the insanity of American politics and global politics. It would be cool to just go to Mars and forget about the BS here. I heard the Musk interview on Tucker yesterday was terrible. But anyway, you know, Musk with his anti-AI stuff and Tucker with his fawning over Musk. So probably not a great combo if you're looking for actual truth. All right, we've got a few, but not many, super chat questions. You'd still have an opportunity. We still have a few minutes. Jeff, thank you. Jeff, twice thank you. David, thank you. Tony, thank you. Wes, thank you. Shahzad, thank you. Jonathan, thank you. Those are all stickers with a contribution of support. Sivano, thank you for the $50. That was very generous. We really appreciate that. All right, we're still looking for 114 bucks. Catherine said on the road, spotty signal today. Try to listen. Thank you, Catherine. We really appreciate the support. Michael says, is racism D2 or M2? It's neither. Look, God, I wish Leonard were here to answer these questions, you cannot apply D2 or M2 to every particular specific position. You cannot apply D2 to M2 to people. D2 and M2, these are disintegration and misintegration. These categories that Leonard Picoff explains in the DIM hypothesis, DIM stands for Disintegration, Integration, Misintegration. They relate to an ideology that dominates a culture, an attitude that dominates a culture, but an ideology as a whole. It doesn't relate to particular specifics. Racism could be D2, it depends on the ideology it's attached to. If it's attached to a disintegrating ideology, for example, in my view, critical race theory is a disintegrating ideology, then it's associated with a disintegrating ideology. If it's associated, let's say, with, I don't know, a kind of nationalist fascist religiosity, then it's associated with an M2. So it's very much dependent on what it is latched to, and racism is not in itself an ideology. It's an attitude, it's a point of view that is associated with other broader philosophical views. Mike Alash, rudeness is a weak man's imitation of strength. Yeah, I think that's right. And by the way, one of the things that clued me off immediately to the weakness and the insecurity and the lack of self-esteem of somebody like Donald Trump, is how rude and ugly he is in the way he treated Kali Fiorina and Ted Cruz and others, just the ugliness of the whole thing, I think was acute. Mike Alash, is the goal to micromanage every aspect of our lives until we are miserable? I don't know whose goal that is, but no, I don't think anybody holds it in that sense. I think they believe that they're micro-anaging your lives because they're better at micro-anaging your life than you are at micro-anaging your own because they're philosopher kings and you are not, or they just enjoy the power over you, you know, whether you're miserable or not. They just enjoy the power over you. That power gives them a thrill. There are lots of psychological motivations for why people would want to micromanage you. Maybe some of them have to do with you feeling miserable and them enjoying your misery, but not all of them. So, based on the, I think, three Hayao Miyazaki films you've reviewed, Kiki's Delivery Service, The Wind Rises, Pinsis, Mananako, what is your broader assessment of him as a filmmaker? I mean, I think he's an entertaining and effective storyteller. I think there's definitely a benevolent streak, particularly in Kiki and In the Wind Rises, a very benevolent pro-man kind of streak. The Pinsis Mananako is more mixed because, you know, it's not clear that man winning against magic was a good thing or something that is applauded in the movie. But the heroes are heroes and all of those three movies, the heroes were really heroes. You know, the movies are simple. The plots are simple. These are not complex plots. They don't deal with deep psychological or conflicts or challenges. In all of them, the most challenging, the one that presents conflict and challenges the most is Pinsis Mananako. But even there, it's not within any of the characters. It's not that the characters change or change their minds or gain additional perspective. I mean, a little bit with the hero and Pinsis Mananako, but not much. So these are relatively simple stories. They are children's stories. I think they're very much children's stories, all three of them, in their simplicity, in their straightforwardness. They're enjoyable and entertaining and well done. But again, I think a level of children's story, not at the complexity which an adult would like to see drama. Thank you, Saul. Jeff says, not working right now, taking training for new objectives, still making small contributions because I don't expect something for nothing. Thanks. Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate the support now and throughout, you know, since I started the show. All right, Richard asks, I'm hearing a lot of fear and certainly a doubt about AI. I think it's only a threat in the wrong hands and if people blindly follow it, it could replace some knowledge, regurgitation jobs, what do you think? So I've talked about this quite a bit. I think it's going to replace a lot of jobs. I don't think it's going to replace just some jobs. I think it's an unbelievably powerful tool and maybe not in the next five years, but in the next 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, this is an unbelievably powerful tool that can, you know, run things like cars and maybe spaceships and maybe weapons and maybe soldiers, robotic soldiers, independently of human direct control. And so I think thinking about this is important and is worthwhile. I don't think it should be done from a fear, from the perspective of doubt, but it should be done from the perspective of we now have in our hands and we'll have even more so in the decades to come an unbelievably powerful tool. And no question this tool can be used for ill and there's no question that one can imagine scenarios in which this tool can do things it wasn't intended to do that will actually hurt us all. It could actually kill people or do bad things. One can imagine scenarios like that. So let's think as rational beings in reasonable ways on how to use this tool as efficaciously as possible in order to achieve, you know, the ultimate outcome which is to use this tool to enhance human wellbeing, to enhance human life. And I think ultimately that is what's happening. I think the people of Microsoft are very thoughtful. I think the people at Google are very thoughtful about this. I think the people at, what's the foundation, AI foundation maybe, that came out with the chat GPT that Microsoft has invested in are very thoughtful about this. I think most AI applications are going to be far narrower like replacing your radiologist or at least maybe not replacing every radiologist but replacing a lot of them and the OpenAI Foundation, thank you. And assisting radiologists, that's going to be a narrow application and there are going to be lots of other narrow applications. I want my personal assistant to be an AI. And I just tell AI, look, I'm going to Barcelona. I'd like you to book me restaurants. You know what kind of restaurants I like. I'd like you to book me in a nice hotel, not more expensive than this. You know the kind of price range I do and use only where I have points or whatever. I'd like to give complex instructions to an AI. And for that, it to go out there and do all the things that I need to do. And it'll save me a gazillion time and save me, you know, effort and time and energy and make me more productive and everything else that I do in life. So I am a huge proponent of artificial intelligence even though it's not intelligence, but of AI. But I do realize that I have risks and adults need to really think about how it's going to be used. Adults, not politicians, not regulators. We're talking about adults. Richard, thank you, Richard. Mr. Beginning, I'll watch the replay. Thank you, Richard. Really appreciate the support. Thank you for getting us over our target. Really appreciate that. That's terrific. Richard just did $100. All right, two final questions, and we'll call it a day. Does Musk's obsessive focus on only the negative of AI reach the level of cowardice? There's a sense in which it does. It also gets him a lot of press. Again, the profits of doom. I mean, Jordan Peterson has learned this. The profits of doom do better than profits of wonder, of positivity. It's always the profits of doom that do well. Doom cells, pessimism cells, disaster catastrophe cells. By the way, we'll be doing a show tonight. I think it'll be an interesting show. I think that'll be interesting. It's going to be on drug prohibition, organized crime in the police state and the relationship between them. There's some interesting stories that just came out about cryptography and about the networks that criminals are using in order to transact in drugs and so on and the technology that they use and then the police response to that, which I think is interesting. So drug prohibition, it's going to be called prohibition, organized crime in the police state because I think that prohibition leads the police state and I think that's this war on drugs is, I don't think we have a full appreciation at the extent to which waging a war on drugs is limiting our own freedom. So that'll be tonight at 8 p.m. East Coast time. So hopefully you'll join me, drug prohibition, organized crime in the police state. All right, last question is Dan's question. Hey, Iran, UK has private water companies recently so many issues with pollution in sea and rivers and things seem out of control. What's the answer? These companies seem out of control, no competition. You know, I don't know. I'd have to actually dive in and figure out what it is about these companies that is actually private to what extent is their real pollution to what extent is this real. I'm sure the rivers are not private in the UK and I'm sure the sea is not private in the UK. So sometimes partially privatizing a market creates more seeming issues and problems than not privatizing it. And it's also how you privatize at an extent to which you allow for competition and you make competition possible. So I just don't know what the market's like. Water is not easy to privatize. You know, anything that has to do with providing services into a home is not easy to privatize when there's kind of one pipeline going into the house and how you do that and how you do it smartly and I don't know any country that's done it probably smartly is important. I think people have written books on how it should be done. I think there's a lot of work still to be done on how to do it. But yeah, you know, the real question is also how much of these stories about pollution really true and how much of this is hype in order to criticize privatization. I mean, I'm not saying it's not true. I'm just asking. Mark, through the topics contributor, what to make of the shady going on around countries like China and KSA, that's North Korea I guess, and the ways terror networks and states like them threaten the knowledge and capital of the free world reading material. I mean, well, what we have to do is we have to deny them certain technologies, particularly technologies that can be used in weapons against us and we need to deny them the legitimacy that is provided to them by treating them as a normal country and that's why I called for many years now for closing the embassy, the Chinese embassy in Washington, closing the American embassy in China, allowing trade in most things but not in highly sensitive materials like the most advanced chips and making clear morally opposition against a regime like China and I think the worst thing that can be done is what Trump did with North Korea or what Trump did with Russia and to some extent what Trump did with China by saying how much he admired Xi or by saying how much he admired Putin and by giving Putin so much slack. So, yeah, I mean, you need to be tough, really tough and that needs to be expressed in how you behave towards them diplomatically and how you talk about them, how you talk about them. All right, thank you everybody and thanks for allowing us to reach the goal, in particular Richard, thank you for getting us there in one big swoop and I will see you all tonight. 8 p.m. East Coast time, talking about prohibition, drugs prohibition, organized crime and the police state. Talk to you soon. Bye everybody.