 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, what is it? It's Thursday, February 15th. I hope everybody's having a fantastic time, a fantastic week. I had a horrible day today, just a horrible day. I know you want me to get to the news, but I got to get this off the chest. The only time I really regret being in Puerto Rico is any time I have to deal with healthcare professionals. I mean not all of them, some of them are fine. But God, I went to dermatologist today and what an awful experience. I waited four hours, didn't get what I wanted. Just, and it's all because really, it's all because it's not because the doctors are no good or the nurses are no good or any of that. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do everything with the fact that Puerto Rico has kind of a socialist system where doctors have to be willing to see pretty much anybody who's on the state insurance plan. There's a state like Medicaid plan. Everybody has to be able to see them and they get like 10 bucks a patient for that. And they get long lines and it's just, yeah, anyway, not happy. You know, I need to beef up my US doctors and just see doctors in the US, unless it's an emergency and just do that because it's soul-sucking experience. All right, let's jump into the fabulous news so we can get into a better mood. Anyway, a lot of reverberations around the interview of Tucker, of Putin, a lot of commentary around that. We'll get to that. And a lot of follow-up from Tucker about his experiences in Moscow. We talked about him saying how wonderful of a city he was. We'll talk in more detail about that because he's released a couple of videos, one in the subway and one doing shopping, grocery shopping in Moscow. And Tucker is ready to pack up and leave and move to Moscow. And I really, really, really, really hope he does. I mean, it would be good riddance. It would be fantastic. Anyway, Putin had an opportunity to comment on his interview with Tucker and kind of Putin agrees with me in terms of the quality of the interview. Speaking to Russian State TV, Putin said he had thought that Tucker was like an edgy, kind of dangerous, kind of tough person. But he says, quote, I honestly thought he would be aggressive and ask so-called sharp questions. And I wasn't just ready for that. I wanted it because I would have given me the opportunity to respond sharply in kind. But he chose a different tactic. He thought the interview was not very satisfying. He didn't view it as challenging. He wanted to go toe-to-toe with a real opponent. And the Kremlin had picked Tucker Carlson because they thought Tucker is kind of right-wing and going to be tough and everything. And he turned out to be, you know, nothing. And so Putin is having a good time trolling Tucker. I think you'll see more of this. He continued to go on, quote, he tried to interrupt me several times, but still surprisingly for Western journalists, he turned out to be patient and listened to my lengthy dialogues, especially those related to history, and didn't give me reason to do what I was ready for. So frankly, I didn't get complete satisfaction from the interview. What can you do? You know, Tucker's going to have to go back to school to figure out how to please Putin more. This was not an interview that satisfied Vladimir Putin because Tucker just didn't live up to his... For cost. Everybody hears from the United States. He had to live up to his, you know, I guess, reputation of being a tough guy, of being a tough guy who asked tough questions and is sharp, quick, fast. So in the meantime, Tucker, when he was in Moscow, he kind of went around, he went to the Bolsheviks. I'm sure we'll get a short video about that. It is quite an impressive place. It's pretty much every Western has gone to the subway system in Moscow since the old Soviet Union because it's the one place that's really nice in Moscow. And particularly if you compare it to, let's say, the subway system in New York or subway systems in some other places in the United States, it's all kept. It's clean. It's got this old architecture, which we know, right? So in the United States, just a door, anything that's old and has like old looking architecture, they consider that civilization. So, you know, for many on the right in America, anything that dates before, I don't know, 1960 and particularly if it's got a little bit of a Greco-Roman sense to it or Gothic or something like that, if it's something old, then they go gaga over it. They just love it. Gothic in particular, cathedrals, they just, you know, orgasm over it. That is real culture to them. Anything modern, no, no, that's leftist, woke, nonsense, Frank Lloyd, right? No good, no good, throw him out. You know, so, you know, he was at the subway station as was Bernie Sanders in 1988 and both of them gushed over the subway station. It was clean and amazing and looked great. And then, Taka also went grocery shopping. He went grocery shopping in Moscow and you already heard about white streets and how clean they are and just how wonderful Moscow is. And when he went grocery shopping, he was stunned. He spent $100 and he bought a lot of food in the United States. He couldn't have bought so much food for $100. And Taka Carson gushes over this. And I don't know, you know, I feel stupid even having to bring this up. I mean, Taka Carson and the people who admire him have now descended into, you know, an abyss of stupidity that is really hard to comprehend and hard to catch up with. And again, this is the Trump effect. The Trump effect is to make people stupid. That's what Trump has done. He's made people stupid. Because he says the most nonsensical things and he says, yeah, yeah, he's tough on the left. And Taka just does the same thing and he goes, yeah, yeah. Taka basically is saying the West sucks. Moscow is amazing, amazing. Interesting. I always like to run this thought experiment. You know, maybe you guys can participate in this thought experiment. I can ask you Russian friends. If American Russia had open borders and Putin was still in power and Biden, incompetent, awful, horrible Biden was still in the White House. In which direction do you think people would move? Would Americans go to Russia or would Russians come to America? And to me, the answer to that is simple and straightforward and easy and you don't have to think very long for that. It's no question Russians would flood into the United States and basically the country would be emptied. Certainly it would be empty of anybody with brains and indeed the number of Americans going to Russia would be trivial and minimal. I mean, you could do the same thing with the left. If you opened up the borders of the United States with Cuba, you know, who has, according to what's his name, more the best healthcare system in the world. Just like Taka thinks that Russia has the best subways and the best food and the cheapest food and everything else of anybody in the world. You know, same thing. You know, more and Taki Carlson are the same type of mindless propaganda. Anyway, if you open up the border between Cuba and the United States, where do you think people would flow? And it's kind of obvious that everybody in Cuba would come to the U.S. and nobody would go to Cuba. You can even do this with Sweden. You know, just in case some of you think Sweden is heaven or Denmark is heaven and there you wouldn't get a flood. But there's no question in my mind more people of Sweden would come to the U.S. than Americans would go to Sweden. A lot of budding entrepreneurs, Swedish budding entrepreneurs or Danish budding entrepreneurs would rather go to Silicon Valley than anybody really want to go live in Stockholm although some people would. So Jennifer says, I hate Michael Moore. I do too, but I now hate Taka Carlson more. I have to say it. I hate Taka Carlson more than I hate Michael Moore. They're the same. They're the same. But Taka Carlson is duping people who at least used to be kind of maybe a little bit on my side. Michael Moore just duped people who were gone for anyway. Anybody who was duped by Michael. And so now the world is really split up between Michael Moore dupes and Taka Carlson dupes. That is the split now. That is the split. Anyway, the reason $100 will buy you more in Moscow is because cost of living in Moscow is significantly lower. So the problem is, if you do the actual analysis, is that first of all, I don't think Taka Carlson knows how far $100 go in a grocery store in the United States. I mean, when did any of you think was the last time Taka Carlson actually went grocery shopping? I mean, Taka Carlson is a snob from a relatively wealthy family, lives in a wealthy town, has other people I think I expect to do his grocery shopping. But $100 is a fortune in Russia. And $100 in the United States is not that much. And there are a few examples of this. I mean, you could slice this in different ways. You can look at the exchange rate between the ruble and the dollar. You have to exchange a lot of rubles, a lot of rubles, particularly today for that $100 as compared to how many rubles you had to exchange for, you know, before the war and further back. I mean, one of the things that Putin has done is he's devastated the rubble has gone to hell. I will also note, we'll get to that in a minute. So $100 is a fortune in Russia. So very few people could buy what Taka Carlson could buy. Just to give you an example, before the war, it's much worse today. Before the war in 2022, a food expense accounted for 33% of Russian household spending. So whatever Russians brought in, they spent a third of everything they brought in on food. Americans, this is median household, 13%, 13%. So about a third. In other words, food in America costs a third of what it costs in Russia when you adjust for cost of living, when you adjust for cost of living. So, I mean, that's not hard to figure out. Now, after that, that you look at the grocery store that Taka Carlson went to, and he went to a grocery store in the center Moscow. The center Moscow is where, you know, the richest 500 people in Russia live who control something like 75% of the wealth in Russia. It has really, really nice grocery stores for the very, very rich Russians. But 99% of Russians, 99.9% of Russians don't live in the center Moscow. A large percentage of them live in those old housing complexes that the Soviet time, they're ugly, they're filthy. Their grocery stores look nothing like the well-lit, beautifully cleaned, fully stocked grocery store that Taka went into. I mean, Taka is participating here, not in communist propaganda, as many Americans did during the USSR days. He's participating in Putin fascist propaganda. But it's so propaganda. And he is now part of the Putin propaganda machine. It's not only that Taka went to Moscow and gave Putin this amazing platform of his, 200 million views, I think it has. But now he's creating videos on top of that to make Moscow look like, wow, now there's a city I want to live in. And maybe Putin's not that bad if the city he lives in is so cool. Maybe having a fascist government is not that bad if you can buy groceries for 100 bucks. Maybe fascism generally is not that bad if the subway system is clean and the trains run on time. Maybe, maybe we need somebody like Putin, a strong man like Putin in the West. I mean, literally propaganda. You know, he's talking about high standard of living in Russia. There is no high standard of living in Russia. You're crazy. I mean, you're literally crazy. You're literally buying into the propaganda. And now this is not a mistake. It cannot be a mistake. This is not, you know, figuring out the dollar exchange rate, figuring out how much a Russian, typical Russian pays, and how much, you know, GDP per capita I think in Russia is 13,000. GDP per capita in the United States as well over 60,000. I mean, God, they are so much poorer. The middle class Russians are significantly poorer than working class poor, you know, the working poor are in the United States. Significantly. I mean, Taka, I hope is going to fly out of Cuba and, you know, following Michael Moore will declare it amazing, a paradise, a free healthcare. And maybe he could go to China and tell us about how there's no crime in the streets in China and how orderly everything is and plus maybe he can admire the modern architecture. I mean, it would be great if he went to North Korea, maybe they'd keep him and tell us how wonderful it is that nobody in North Korea criticizes their, you know, presidents. I mean, maybe we need more of that in the United States or maybe he can go to Afghanistan and tell us about how wonderfully religious the Afghans are and what we need in America is a little bit more religion. And maybe also, and here he could follow Matt Walsh and tell us how wonderful the Afghans treat their women and finally in Afghanistan, you've got some masculine men. I mean, it's the haven of masculinity. And maybe the next documentary Taka does, maybe he can do it with Matt Walsh and they can talk about masculinity in Afghanistan and the role of women in society. I think that that would be absolutely, absolutely perfect. So anyway, I don't know. The world is nuts, completely and utter nuts. Oh, and of course you remember the dollar stores. I mean, it's absolutely true. Russia doesn't have dollar stores. Well, that is proof that Russian society, Russian culture is better. Look, you can criticize America. You can be anti Biden. You can criticize the administration. You can criticize the cost of living. You can criticize the cost of housing. They shrinkflation. You can do a lot of things about how things are bad in America. I'm happy to do it. We'll be doing it in a few minutes once I finish, you know, talking about Taka. But to elevate Russia is sick. Russians have, again, $13,000 per capita GDP. Alcoholism is chronic. They have a point seven birth rate. It's where South Korea is, but here it's all because of depression. They are waging a war of aggression in which tens of thousands of Russian boys, young men have died for what? For Putin's delusion? That would have been a good question for Putin. And yet, Moscow is this amazing, beautiful place, much nicer than New York or any American city, any American city, according to Tucker Carlson. It's just, again, mind-boggling, crazy, really crazy. They have good vodka, you know, I hear from people who actually know vodka. All right, a few other things. You know, not to be left kind of, you know, not to let Tucker do this all by himself and so on. Here's some other people's commentary on what happened, particularly, you know, Matt Walsh, 2.7 million followers on Twitter. He tweeted this. Tonight, as Putin gave intelligent, scholarly answers that delved into a thousand years of Russian history, President Biden was babbling incoherently about how president of Egypt is actually the president of Mexico. No mention here about the sheer falsehood of much of that history. The irrelevancy of it to a war of aggression, to the fact that tens of thousands, really hundreds of thousands, if you think about all the injured, Russians are suffering from Putin's megalomania and fanatic nationalism. Irrelevant for Matt Walsh, any opportunity to take a stab at Biden, I'm sure Scott would be thrilled at this tweet. I mean, yeah, Benny Johnson, a Republican YouTuber with more than 2 million followers on Twitter, 2 million. He said, quote, Tucker may literally bring peace to the world with this interview. And quote, lies create war and slavery. The truth shall set you free. The truth is spoken by a dictator, literally a dictator. And yet the truth shall set you free. We no longer believe in liberty and freedom. We now believe everything dictators tell us. I mean, if only we'd listened to Hitler, maybe we'd have understood him better. And maybe we could have prevented and saved ourselves a whole war. We could have just, we should have just listened. Just sat down with the guy. I mean, how bad could he be? And podcast host Joey Manarino. People have never heard of it. But anyway, 456,000 Twitter followers that he'd quote, take Putin over Biden any day of the week. Well, guys, we're going to get Putin over Biden. We're going to get an authoritarian in this country. It's people like Walsh Johnson, Manarino and Tucker Carlson, who are laying the groundwork, creating the foundation for a right-wing authoritarian in this country. The left, we know, has those tendencies. But this is the right. This is here. In many ways, this is worse because they're doing the name of Americanism. And they're laying the foundations and they're saying it would rather take Putin over Biden any day of the week. Well, then, of course, if we had a Putin who wrapped himself in the American flag and declared himself a good Christian, who could resist him to hell with freedom of the press, freedom of speech, to hell with economic liberty? I mean, it's much better if we just give all the wealth of the country to a bunch of our friends and have them run it. Isn't that better? I mean, the problem with capitalism is a lot of these people who become billionaires then turn out to be leftists. That's a real flaw in capitalism. Obviously, we should reject capitalism because it creates leftist billionaires. I don't know. I mean, I don't know how. I used to be, not that long ago, and I keep fluctuating. I used to be kind of the guy who everybody thought was kind of optimistic. That optimism is fading fast, I have to tell you. Every time these people, Trump and his accolades become more prominent in the world out there, it just makes me go, All right. This story jumped out at me because it's just perfect, right? Because this is what happens. Ford CEO, Ford Motor Company's, you know, Jennifer works for Ford, Ford CEO said that given the union's behavior last year, given that the union purposefully went on strike in the most profitable factories that Ford has, given that the union doesn't care one aota about Ford or its success or its profitability, given that they cut a deal where the wages have gone up dramatically way higher than is justified by increases in productivity. Well, Ford CEO basically said, okay, given what the union did last year, we're really rethinking where we're going to build vehicles in the future. In other words, I don't think we're going to providing a lot of union jobs in the future. I think we're rethinking that. I think we're going to go to places, build cars, and think about who our workers are, and maybe just go to Mexico. Maybe just build the cars in Mexico. Easy to bring them back into the United States. But we're not going to build more car factories in unionized states. That is the CEO of Ford. They don't usually talk like that to CEOs of auto companies. They don't like to piss off the unions. But things are so bad is my expectation. And you're already seeing some pretty bad earnings come out of Chrysler post the union deal. I expect that to be true of Ford and what do you call it? Other American auto companies that have General Motors, of course, other auto companies that have this. You cut deals like that. You embolden the unions. You're not going to do as well. And all the other auto companies are slowly suffering from this. Let's see. Yeah, this is a story that'll make a warm your heart. This this one will warm your heart just just for those who think I only Stelantis Stelantis is Chrysler. Sorry, I still call it Chrysler because I can't actually pronounce Stelantis. I don't know who came up with that name. It's like the dumbest name ever. All right, so be it. It's a bunch of Europeans came up with that name because Chrysler was bought by Fiat, I think. California, California, all good things these days. Well, not all good things because obviously Tucker doesn't come from California. So only some good things come from California. But California, of course, is leading the charge on anything leftist and cool to the left. And California has decided that by that it is it has big ambitions around ethnic studies in high school. So I think studies is typically being a niche academic discipline that basically studies a pressure oppression, different narratives in history and, you know, pretty nichey and pretty very, very, very, very leftist. Anyway, they've decided to take ethnic studies and make it required in high school. By 2025, the state's public high schools, 1600 public high schools must teach the subject. They must teach it. By 2030, students will not be able to graduate high school without having taken a class in ethnic studies. Now, you might think I think studies, you know, makes the mind of broad exploration of our ethnicity and race, you know, shape the human experience. You know, there's no validity to that, but okay, you can kind of imagine that. But no, this is much more ideological and much narrower than anything like that. And it's a it's a focus primarily on black Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans. The whole aim is to draw attention and to critique forms of oppression, systemic racism, if you will, around issues around black, Latino, Native Americans and Asians. And it's often used for activism. That is to spur students to engage in action, in activism, to suppress this kind of activism. And guess what challenge the ethnic studies program in California has encountered? Well, it's pretty obvious when you think about it, but the problem they've encountered is a problem, I guess, that the West has had for 2000 years. And, you know, and that even Karl Marx wrote about this. What do you do about the Jews? What do you do about the Jews? On the one hand, you got Jews who have experienced anti anti-semitism in America in the early part of the 20th century and certainly in the 19th century, who experienced a Holocaust, who experienced 2000 years of anti-semitism and modern and clearly oppression. And yet, in spite of that, somehow, I don't know how, Jews managed to be, first of all, white. They've got white skin. Now, not all Jews, but that's a technicality. We can't really get into those dark-skinned Jews or maybe even those black Jews like Ethiopian Jews. We won't even talk about them. That's way too complicated for a high school course, after all. Jews are white, for the most part, and here's the devastating part. They're successful. And when it comes to Israel, they are clearly the oppressor, and they're oppressing people who are brown. Now, again, we don't know exactly how to categorize Arabs because they're not exactly black, Latinos, native, although there's some similarity with Native Americans. Americans colonize Native Americans. Israelis, Jews are colonizing in their own historical homeland. Anyway, that's complicated again, too complicated. So what are Arabs? Well, maybe they're Asians. Maybe we'll call them Asians. Different kind of Asians, different issues, and they don't know what to do. Of course, there is quite a large Jewish community and quite an influential Jewish community in California, and this Jewish community is like saying, wait a minute, you can't make Jews out to be the oppressor. Remember that academic views of ethnic studies basically view the Palestinians as a good guy, Israel as evil, as horrible. You could argue that the academic ethnic study programs are anti-Semitic, and yet there was a push to bring these academic ethnic studies into the high schools, they're called liberated ethnic studies. So ethnic studies is far left, liberated ethnic studies is far, far left, which I'm going right, it's left. Anyway, so what do you do with these Jews? And a lot of the districts in California are basically going to teach that Jews are oppressors, the Jews are, you know, evil, colonizers, that not only Jews in Israel but Jews, any Jewish support Israel are bad guys, and even Jews who stay silent about the Jewish support for Israel are bad guys. The only way to be a good Jew is to be an anti-Zionist Jew. But it'll probably be the case, and I can, maybe I should write this book because it'll be a bestseller, but it's probably the case that you can't really be an anti-Zionist Jew until you recognize that by very being Jewish you are a Zionist, just like by very nature being white you are racist, by the very fact that you are a Jew you must be a Zionist, and if the only way in which you can somehow overcome that is to grovel, beg, cry, you know, self-flagellate, you know, just make clear to the world how much you hate Israel, Zionism, and other Jews who are all racist pigs, right? It can be pigs because they're Jewish. Anyway, something like that. What are the public schools with the high percentage of Jews going to do? What is going to happen to the few Jews in overwhelmingly non-Jewish communities? A number of California still districts, as I said, are working with liberated ethnic study groups to determine the curriculum. So, you know, I guess don't worry. If the right doesn't win out, if the Tucker Carlson's of the world don't win out, then we shouldn't worry because then, you know, the Michael Moore's and the California ethnic studies nuts will win out because those now seem to be our choices. Take a pic on what kind of fascism you want. The anti-semitic. Oh, no, wait a minute. I think they're both probably ultimately going to be anti-semitic. I think that's pretty safe. I don't know if you've heard Tucker Carlson's criticisms lately again of Ben Shapiro. Now, he's actually making stuff up about things saying Ben Shapiro said XYZ, things that Ben Shapiro has never said. And he's accusing him of all kinds of stuff that Ben Shapiro has literally never said. Ben Shapiro, of course, being the calm, considerate, moderate that he is, has offered Tucker Carlson to come and show and discuss this. Now, Ben Shapiro would never do that to pretty much anybody else. You accuse them of the kind of things that Tucker Carlson has accused him. He'd probably call them an anti-semit and not want to talk to him at all. Why is Ben Shapiro so nice to Tucker Carlson? Because their audience overlaps quite a bit. Ben Shapiro, I think, feels that he is losing his grip on his audience. His audience is becoming more of Tucker's audience, maybe more of Matt Walsh's audience, maybe more of Candace Owen's audience. And maybe because Ben Shapiro is Jewish, maybe because Ben Shapiro is pro-Israel, even his groveling before Trump and his groveling about Ukraine won't get them on his side. And he has to somehow come to peace with a scumbag like Tucker Carlson. Anyway, choose your fascist day. You can have ethnic studies in California or you can have Moscow in Washington, D.C. Those are your choices. Isn't the world a wonderful place these days? All right, as you can see, turning more and more and more pessimistic as I do these... I guess the mistake has been for me to do these daily news shows, what other outcome could there be other than me starting to completely lose it in terms of any semblance of optimism? Anyway, here's a kind of optimistic story. These are the kind of stories I like because they show that there are people out there who are not going to be completely doom and gloom and they're going to look for solutions for things. I've got two stories like that. One is around climate change. Now, let's put aside the question whether climate change exists or not, whether it's catastrophic or not, all of that. One thing we know, we know, and if anybody has taught us this better than anybody else, Alex Epstein, although most of us knew this to some extent before, but Alex has really nailed this, right? He's really made this point is that whatever issues might exist, the solution cannot be. It just cannot be to stop using fossil fuels. That solution is worse than the problem by fault, even if there is a problem. And the reality is that, you know, that stopping emitting CO2 is a death warrant. It's guaranteed to destroy Western civilization and to prevent the poor from the world from ever achieving any kind of prosperity. And that, by the way, includes those poor Russians who can't afford the groceries the Tucker just bought. So what do you do? What do you do? Let's say climate change is bad. And let's say we, us, we underestimated this and it turns out that it's worse than what we expected. Well, there's a bunch of scientists out there in the world who have a bunch of ideas on how you cool the planet without stopping using emitting CO2. Here's a few of them. Three field experiments are currently underway. The first one is on a ship off the northeast coast of Australia, of Australia, near, near the, you know, Great Barrier Reef, where they are spraying a tiny mixture through high-pressure nozzles into the air in an attempt to brighten low-altitude clouds that form over the ocean. So they want to make them wider. Scientists hope that bigger, brighter clouds will reflect sunlight away from the Earth, shade the ocean surface, and cool the waters around the Great Barrier Reef, where supposedly warming ocean temperatures have contributed to coral die-offs, although I've read that that's vastly exaggerated. So that's cool. They'll increase clouds and brighten the clouds. It'll make it, you know, and that way the Earth will cool and we don't have to stop using CO2. Cool. Now, this research project is led by Southern Cross University. You know, and they're spending like 64, they've got 64.5 million dollars for this Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program. This is one of the things that they're doing. And yeah, let's see what happens. That's one. In Israel, in between kind of dodging bullets, there's a startup called Stardust Solutions. And they began testing a system to disperse a cloud of tiny reflective particles about 60,000 feet in altitude, reflecting sunlight away from Earth to cool the atmosphere. It's a concept known as Solar Radiation Management. This is, by the way, I'm reading from a story in today's Wall Street Journal. Solar Radiation Management. Stardust Chief Executive is a former Deputy Chief Scientist at the Israeli Atomic Agency Commission. These are real scientists. They won't disclose what the particles are made of, right? So they're putting glitter, good one, Jennifer. They're putting glitter in 60,000 feet, right? They've aged 15 million dollars so far from two investors to conduct low-level aerial tests using white smoke to simulate the particles, path in the atmosphere. And after they complete the indoor safety testing, they intend to conduct a limited outdoor test of the dispersion technology, monitoring devices and particles, hopefully in the next few months. So this would be at 60,000 feet, not changing the clouds. This is above the clouds. And this would reflect the sunlight back. And you could probably find ways to either increase the number of particles or decrease the number of particles depending on how much you wanted to reflect back. In Massachusetts, researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, they're a hood of the place, planned to pour 6,000 gallons of a liquid solution of sodium hydroxide. A component of a lie. This is great, right? And they want to pour it into the ocean 10 miles south of Martha's Vineyard this summer. They hope the chemical base will act like a big tablet of Tums. You know, the Tums when you take in the Tums, they're anti-acid. The idea is to lower the acidity of a patch of surface water in the ocean. And therefore, because the lower acidity, it would absorb 20 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, storing it safely in the ocean. That's three ideas. I have a feeling there are probably 100 others. The beauty of this, it's a solution. They don't require you or me or any of us to change our behavior. And yet, if there is catastrophic anything, here are solutions to... And they're testing them. They're testing them. Just like they test any other new technology. And, yeah, startups are doing this, they're raising money. I'm not sure what the profit potential here is, but I guess carbon offsets maybe. But if you don't believe in carbon offsets, I don't know. Maybe there's something they could do that would actually, maybe they just take contributions from people who love coral reefs or who believe stuff is warming. I'm sure this is much cheaper than stopping using carbon or a million other things that governments and individuals and companies are trying to do stupidly to address climate change. This seems like a cheaper, better, easier methodology, innovative... The human mind is endless in terms of what it is able to do and what it is able to project. I'm sure, though, I have no question, that on this, both the right and the left will unite against it. Both will argue that this is playing God with nature. That this is altering nature in ways that are very, very dangerous. What if we get it wrong? What if we create the next Ice Age? What if, what if, what if you can always come up and the precautionary principle will be adopted by both sides to stop this? Of course, this also reduces the amount of power governments have over our lives. Governments have a lot less incentive to go the scientific innovation method than to go to lockdowns. They love lockdowns. That would be, by far, their preferred methodology. By the way, somebody was asking about my rant on lockdowns during COVID. All you have to do is do your unbroke lockdowns on YouTube and you'll get a bunch of videos where I talk about it and you can listen to them and see what I said about lockdowns. They're all labeled because I talked about it a lot. I know there's a lot of misrepresentation of what I actually said, but you can listen for yourself and figure out what I actually said about lockdowns during COVID, 2020 and 2021. Again, there's probably five, six, at least, different videos in which I talk about this. Okay, final story. Another one that's positive. I don't know, I'm going way too long, but the Tucker thing overtook me. You remember how everybody was panicking? Just panicking hysterically about China and rare earth materials and they're going to squeeze us and they dominate these and we won't be able to do electronics without them and China dominates the world. Well, guess where they found the largest store of rare earth materials on the planet, at least so far. Who knows where else I'll find them. I mean, I don't think they've really checked Mongolia where there's a huge amount, but the biggest, the mother load. Well, it turns out the mother load isn't Wyoming. Wyoming has the largest. It's called the Halleck Creek. It's in Halleck Creek. It is the world's largest supply, potential supply of rare earth, not in the ocean floor, right above ground. You know, I don't know that the environmentals will let us extract the rare earth materials, but they are there. And it's a 2.34 billion tons, billion metric tons of rare earth elements. It's near Weakland, Wyoming. And this basically what you're going to see is the price for rare earth materials is going to go like that. It's going to plummet. It's going to go way down. Because they're discovering them in Mongolia and in Australia and in Africa and in Wyoming. And they will discover more and more. Now that we know they're valuable and their price is expensive, we'll discover a lot of them and then prices will come down. And it will take all the leverage away from China if they ever had any over uses of rare earth material. All right. I did end on a positive note. I mean, the positive is always, the positive is always. The thinking human beings, the positive is always technology and science. Those still manage to progress in spite of Tucker Carlson and Michael Moore. They still move forward in spite of, you know, Biden and Trump. They move forward in spite of Scott on the chat who's not here today for some reason. They move forward in spite of the stupidity of a vast majority of the people on planet Earth today and a overwhelming majority of Americans as much as I hate to say it. It's absolutely true. Where you find the positive is where politics hasn't yet polluted. Now, and that is, you know, in tech, in medicine to the extent that government hasn't already polluted it, often it has in, you know, fracking and, you know, we talked about yesterday, the amount of natural gas that is being extracted in the United States because of innovation and entrepreneurs and just amazing stuff that they're doing. Rare earth materials and you could go on and on and on. A little bit of freedom, it turns out, goes a long way, you know, even a little bit of freedom, even a little less freedom like in Moscow goes a long way for the rich. They get to shop cheaper than in the United States. Cook, because Scott is not here, Cook felt the need to write, but he did pay $2 for me to read this. But at least Tucker's not the left. Thank you, Cook. I needed that. So, yep, at least Tucker is not the left. Who needs a left when you have Tucker Carlson? You don't need a left. All right, let's do the super chat. We're running really late today, but what the hell? I've got so much to do, but we'll do that. I guess I'll do that later. And it is, I have to take my wife out of Valentine's Day dinner because we didn't go yesterday. So tonight we're doing our chocolate dinner. It's going to be a lot of fun, but that's it. That's later tonight. So we'll get to that. All right, Shahzbad, Shahzbad is usually the optimist in the room and always has something funny and interesting to say. You said you were losing optimism. What if Putin went down in flames and they succeeded with flying colors? Could we throw in Tucker going down in flames as well into that and maybe Trump as well and Michael Moore? I mean, just those three, put aside everything else. Tucker, Michael Moore and Trump going down in flames. I'm optimistic again. Yes, that would go a long way to putting me in a better mood if Putin dropped dead and me lay, you know, just did phenomenally well. And, you know, and maybe me lay comes to my talk in Argentina, where I explain why anarchism is anti-liberty. And he says, you know what, you're on, you're absolutely right. And he repudiates his anarcho, whatever, and then succeeds enormously in converting Argentina into the richest country in Latin America and beyond, right? And the world, why not hide this GDP per capita in the world because of his policies? That would make that would make my decade. That would be pretty cool. I'm hoping Millet comes to hear me speak about anarchy. Hopper Campbell. Oh, another question on me lay. I was discussing me lay with an end cap and mentioned how me lay phenomena is only possible because of Inland and at the shrugged. And he replied me lay is far more influenced by Murray Rothbard than I ran. That's true. I think he's influenced by both. I think you get you certainly get kind of that moral energy, his defensive businessman, particularly in the end of that speech. You don't get that in Murray Rothbard. You definitely get that in in Iran. You get a little bit of it in Mises and Kurtzner. But yeah, I mean me lay has said that he's very influenced by Murray Rothbard. There's no question about that. And it's why he's he considers himself really considered self anarchist. That is the problem with me lay. He's not influenced enough by Iran and he's too influenced by Murray Rothbard. But Murray Rothbard is the person who converted him away from statist economics to Austrian. And then he read but he also read Mises and a lot of the other Austrians who I think are much, much better than Rothbard. And look, Rothbard economist is not bad. He's a terrible historian. He lies in his history in order to support his points. He doesn't believe in objectivity about history. He's a terrible philosopher. He's a terrible moral thinker. And he's a terrible political thinker. But he is a pretty good economist. Give him that. And he is very influential, much, much more influential among young people, libertarians than I ran this unfortunately. Shahzad, what would a college individualism class look like? I mean, it would teach the political theory of individualism. Because individualism think is primarily related. So it would have a section and a morality of self-interest of egoism. Maybe we would present, I ran and we'll present maybe a few other attempts at kind of a self-interested, the kind of attempts that were made in the Enlightenment. Present those as failures and then I ran. Then it would talk about the concept of individual rights and the necessity of individual rights to manifest an individualistic morality into an individualistic politics. And then it would basically describe and discuss capitalism and what capitalism looked like and how it is a manifestation of an individualistic morality. And how politics, economics relate to individual rights and how they function. So it would be a course around something like that. It would be a great course. It would be a fun course to teach. People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds. It is something one creates. Yes, that's right. It's something one builds. And I think there's too much emphasis among people in finding your passion, finding your values rather than creating them. Figuring out what the right values are. And following your passions, but you can't follow your passion. If your passion is based on an irrational philosophy and therefore is somehow detached from reality, detached from objective values, values that are life-promoting. So you have to do the work of setting up your value system and your value hierarchy and creating a soul, setting up your moral values and committing to living by them. And only then will your passions evolve to be consistent with those values. And that's the sense in which you have to create your soul and passion, happiness and a focus. And even your values will shift to adjust to the new you, if you will, to who you are, to what you have created. Shahzabat, there was a movie called Snowpiercer in which a method to cool the earth, work too well and turn everything into ice. The survivors all lived on one train. Yeah, I watched that movie. It's a real Marxist movie. It's really fascinating. And it's also brilliantly portrays conspiracy theories because it's all a conspiracy theory. I think I've given the movie away. So sorry, that was a spoiler. I think there's a TV show as well. It's just a TV show would be ridiculous because the whole point of the movie is to see a progression and then realize that it goes nowhere, the progression. I don't know what a TV series could add to that. But it is. Everybody's on a train because the earth is so cold. The experiment in global cooling failed and it's so cold nobody can survive. They're all in a train that's heated by some mysterious mechanism, I think. And anyway, there's the working classes. There's the middle classes and there's the upper classes. And it's a whole thing about class struggle, which is interesting. But in the end, just conventional, way too conventional. Anna asked, did you believe Trump was colluding with Russia? No, but I thought Russia was colluding with Trump, not Russia colluding with Trump. Russia clearly wanted Trump elected because it wants upheaval in America and it wants conflict. And there's no question in my mind that they had misinformation and bought farms and all of that to so dissent and to try to elevate Trump and reduce Biden. I don't have a problem with that. I think it's all part of free speech. You have a right to do that, so misinformation. But I do think they did it. But I don't think Trump was colluding with Russia. Although I was skeptical and I still am skeptical about, you know, I do think Trump likes Putin. Not colluding. I just think he likes Putin. He admires Putin. He thinks Putin's our man's man. And that, I think, shaped some policy. All right, let me just thank some stickers. GIF 37, thank you. John Parker, thank you. Gail, thank you. Oops, what is going on? Let's just go. Work. Come on, work. There we go. John Bales, thank you. Jackson Highlander, first Super Chat, $20. Thank you. Really, really appreciate that. Stephen Harper, thank you. Ben, thank you. Maryalene, thank you. Silvanos, thank you. Friend Harper, thank you. And of course Jonathan Honing got it all started. So thank you guys. Thank you to all the stickers. Thanks to you plus Silvanos asking a question. And all the other questions that were asked. And no, Wes, I think, got us over the targets. And now we're well over it. So I appreciate that. Of course, we can keep going. There's no reason we need to stop at 282. Isn't it healthy to have a little mysticism in your life? Can you isolate it into one facet of your life or not? No, no, no, no, no. It's very unhealthy. You cannot isolate irrationality. Mysticism is irrational. And it will infect your mind and it will destroy you one way or the other. It will seed doubt into your reason, into your rational part. And it will slowly creep into areas you don't want it to go to. You cannot allow for one iota of irrationality and you shouldn't want to. Reason is man's means of survival. Rationality is a tool for achieving everything we've got to achieve in life. Why would you want to take on your consciousness into your mind, into this precious tool that you have, your brain? Why would you want to infect it with something anti-reason, the opposite of reason which is mysticism? So no, no, no. It is absolutely unhealthy. It's a sickness. It's like saying, is a little bit of cancer okay? No. And a little bit of cancer never stays a little bit of cancer. It always spreads. Mysticism is a cancer. But even a little bit, even if it stays a little bit, it's sucking energy from the rest of your body and makes the rest of your body unhealthy. It's a little bit of poison. Bad, bad. Roland said in Switzerland, $100 will get you a shopping cart filled with about one-tenth of the way. Yeah, I mean, I hope you've come to the right conclusion, Roland. And knowing Roland, I think he's packing up right now and moving to Moscow. Because in Moscow, he can fill the shopping cart and that's what matters. Of course, you'd have to also get a salary in roubles and maybe then you could only fill up your shopping cart one-fifth of the way. Or one-fifth is more than one-tenth, but you have to live in Moscow. Anyway, yes. Filling up, Switzerland is a very, very expensive place to live. Yet, Switzerland is a magnificent place to live, certainly in comparison to Russia. And again, if they had open borders between Russia and Switzerland, which direction do you think people would go? Switzerland is basically free? Russia? Not so much. Switzerland really, really rich? On a GDP perspective and a capital GDP perspective? Even adjusted for cost of living is rich? Russia? Not so much. Even adjusted for cost of living. Not so rich. Roland says, no way am I going to Moscow. Good for you. Well, I knew that, but there's no way any sane person would go to Moscow. I mean, to live, you might want to go to visit. I've been there twice, I think, once or twice. I can't remember if I've been to St. Petersburg twice, maybe to Moscow only once. Never wanted to go back. Only country in the world that I visited and said, ah, never want to come back here. Never want to come back here. Pretty much every other country there's some good in. I enjoyed some aspect in. Russia? Almost nothing. Didn't like it at all. Women are beautiful. What does Tolstoy say about beautiful Russian women? It's a shallow beauty that doesn't last very long. Aik. Doesn't last very long. That's Tolstoy. I mean, I know nothing about the beauty of Russian women, but Tolstoy did. Tolstoy wrote about it quite extensively. And, yeah. Not my type, anyway. Not my type. It's not, I don't find them attractive. But that's just me. Liam, did you see Candace Owens' response to Super Bowl ad condemning anti-Semitism? She was basically implying big Jewish money is out there trying to manipulate us. I'm not surprised. I did not see it. I did not see it. I will look for it. But it doesn't surprise me. She has bought into the big Jewish money, big pharma money, big, you know, anything money. But, you know, she's an anti-Semite. She's anti-capitalist. She's just a horrible, horrible, horrible human being. All of you who urged me years ago, oh, Candace is the future. She is amazing. She's brilliant. She's this and that. And I warned you about her. I warned you and it's coming true, sadly. I wish I was wrong. But I wasn't. Clark, thinking is an achievement and most people never achieve it. That is true. Sad but true. James Taylor, as Joe Biden's health declines, I think there's a greater than 70% chance Trump wins. Why haven't the big shots in the Democratic Party forced him to step down? I think there are no big shots in the Democratic Party. I think they're all cowards and idiots and weak and I think that's true in the Republican Party. Why hasn't the Republican Party forced, you know, promoted somebody to replace Trump? Because they're cowards. They're weak. They can't stand up to Biden. They can't stand up to Trump. They can't do it. Long gone is the machine that basically picked the candidates. Now we'll see. There's still time for Democrats to do it. I don't think the Republicans doesn't matter how much time you give them, they'll never do it. I mean, literally, I think Trump could be in jail. By the way, his criminal trial about paying off the porn star starts in March. He tried to get the case dismissed today in court and the judge said, you know, still going, still happening. You don't, you're not getting off. He was in the courtroom trying to turn into it because he believes, and sadly, it's true, that the more court cases against him, the more passionate his base becomes. So he's using other court appearances as basically to drunk up support for his campaign, which is succeeding. So he could run from jail and he would still get a lot of votes. Savanna says, don't embrace the black pill you're on. We can escape to Mars as soon as Musk gets us there. I'm too old to go to Mars. Too old to go to Mars. Plus I fear heights. Can you imagine how I'd feel on Mars? I mean, God, the fall is in a moment. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Yeah, I'm too old. It won't happen in time. And I just, you know, I just don't think I'm up to the trip to Mars. I wish you guys all the best of success in going to Mars. I think I'm going to be right here. Eel says, what are my favorite chocolate? What is my favorite chocolate? My favorite chocolate is a Spanish chocolate, but I don't remember its name. I think it's Spanish chocolate here. They sell it here in Puerto Rico in one of these speciality grocery stores. It's 99% chocolate. It's basically, you know, just cacao. Cacao butter and cacao. It has very, very, very little sugar. I think one gram for 100 grams or something like that. I mean, almost no sugar. And it's 100%. It's 99% cacao. And yeah, I mean, it's fruity. It's got, I mean, one thing you happens as you go up in the percent cacao and you go down in the amount of sugar is you actually start tasting the chocolate. And what you discover is the chocolates really do have all kinds of flavors. And yes, it's bitter, but it has other flavors there as well. And you can start telling the difference between different chocolates. And this one has definitely a fruity sense back there. And it's bitter, but not, I don't find it overwhelming, but it's a little dry, you know, it sticks a little bit, but not too bad. But it's, yeah. I also like the 95% lint. Lint has a 90%, but I also have a 95%. And 95% again, very little sugar. And, but lint has a smoothest to it. Lint, the Swiss chocolate maker. Swiss chocolate generally has the smoothness to it. So that's very different. But I like high cacao concentrations. You get the, it's like drinking coffee with no milk and no sugar. Coffee, you should never drink coffee with milk or with sugar because then you lose the flavor of the coffee. Then you're just drinking milk. People pour milk into it to hide the flavor of the coffee. Or with sugar, you just get a sweet bomb. So I, for decades now, I've been drinking coffee with no milk and black and no sugar. And then you get the flavor of the coffee and different coffees from different places, different way produced, have different flavors. And that's what makes it interesting. Anyway, that's just me. Pickaxing on Europe. Nature article that global trust and scientists is high from yesterday, which is good news. Average of 3.5 out of 5 score in a server of 70,000 individuals. That sounds really good. And yes, I mean, I'm surprised, I guess. I thought post COVID, the trust and scientists is way down. Maybe that's only in the United States and maybe they're only among some people in the United States. Roland's already told us he's not going to Moscow but we should emphasize that he's not going to Moscow. He is coming though. Roland is coming too. I think this is okay to say. He's coming to my public speaking seminar in Amsterdam. You too should come to my public speaking seminar in Amsterdam. And yeah, here's one other thing I want to say. It looks like when I go down and speak in Argentina, I'll be in Buenos Aires. I'm trying to meet me late, but I'll be in Buenos Aires for three-day, three-day conference. Two days public and one seminar. And hopefully you guys who live in South America can come and participate. I will also be in Chile in Santiago for two days for a conference in Chile. I'll be there for two days. And I've just added a talk in Curitiba. Curitiba. Curitiba. I think it's Curitiba. Curitiba in Brazil. So I will be in Curitiba. I think it is April 3rd for a talk. And I wanted to say that if anybody, I guess Rafael, I saw Rafael's name pop up. But if anybody wants to invite me to come and give a talk in that part of the world, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, then let me know. If you can raise some money to pay me, that would be good. I might be able to get money elsewhere. But if you can raise money, that would be amazing. And in any case, I would love to come and give a talk wherever. I'm coming to Curitiba. Why don't we do a talk in São Paulo? I probably have to fly through São Paulo to get to Curitiba. Anyway, so I could do another talk in São Paulo on the way. And so if you think about that, where do I have to go on the way? São Paulo is obvious. If anybody wants to organize a talk for me in São Paulo and can pay, you know, I don't know, $4,000. It's a lot, I know, but something, then that would be great. Make me an offer kind of thing. I have to be there anyway. So I'm open to negotiations. And that'll be on my way to Curitiba, which is on my way to Buenos Aires, which is on my way to Santiago, which then leads me back home. Deal? We're going to do something in São Paulo? Let's go for it. All right. Let's see. Roland says, I'm very much looking forward to this public speaking seminar. Me too. That is going to be in March. That's coming up very soon, March 11th in Amsterdam. There's already five people signed up and paid. And we've got a location, which is basically just across the road. Two minute walk from the conference hotel. And I'm looking for up to four more people, five more people. Right? So top is 10. Six, seven is kind of an ideal number. If I could get one or two more people, $750 for the day. I've been thinking about it. That's way too low. I should have asked for more money. But anyway, 750, you get a lot of one-on-one time. You get to actually practice public speaking. You get homework assignment in advance. You get a lot of feedback. And there's even a part two for some future to do. I'm doing the part two in London on March 7th, I think. All right. So anyway, if anybody else is interested, Amsterdam, Sao Paulo, Kochiba, let me know. Rio, I don't know. Invite me. Savana says, I had the same conclusion, but I encountered a surprising coincidence that I found inexplicable. Take some thinking, escape the law of mystery. Yeah, you know, coincidences happen. Coincidences are not that rare. And they happen because it's a small world. And the probability of a certain number of things happening is not of something unusual happening at every given point in time. It's not that low. It's pretty high. That of all the possible unusual things that could have happened, that one of them happened at any given point in time to somebody here, is not very... Just the probability of that is quite high that it happens. So no, don't give up because of a coincidence, which happened all the time. Rafael says, I think the main way to win an objectivism is to explain to people what they are losing by rejecting the live and egoistic life. Yeah, fundamentally, that is the key. That's the main thing. To the extent people are open, we hope that that's what they're open to, but sometimes they discover that through a discussion of capitalism or through a discussion of foreign policy or through a discussion, a political discussion, and then you can, you know, which they seem interested in and then you can get them there. But you're not gonna get anywhere unless you really delve deep into the egoistic life, into what that means and what it adds to human life. All right, quickly. Please, if you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. 153 people watching right now. If you want to support the show, you can use a sticker like Chad just did for $1.99 or $1.99. And use that to support the show. That would be great if you've never done it before. Value for value. If you haven't liked the show yet, liked the show, it helps enormously with the algorithm, really, really does. Comment underneath. Write a comment. Just to show interaction. All of that helps. And yeah, share any active activity like that. If you've never supported the show, you can also support the show on Patreon or you can go to uranbrookshow.com slash membership and support the show through PayPal. All right, everybody, thank you. You guys, as usual, were great and I will see you all tomorrow for another News Roundup. Bye, everybody.