 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. Alright everybody, welcome to the Iran Brook Show on this Friday evening. A little unusual for us to be doing it on Friday, but here we are anyway. I didn't do a show yesterday, had an event, my wife and I went to, so here we are doing it on Friday instead. Reminder that we're going to be talking about some positive things today. Enough of the negatives, enough of the politics, enough of all that. We're going to do a little recap of Iran's Wolves for Life kind of show today. Let's spy you a little bit, hopefully get you out of the melee of all these, all the news roundups I do. It's pretty depressing, pretty depressing. So we're going to do that today. A couple of reminders. One is that tomorrow we go live at 1 p.m. east coast time. I'm going to be interviewing Fleming Rose. I encourage you to join us. I think you'll learn a lot. Fleming is really an expert on free speech in Europe. It's a depressing topic, so I'm glad we're doing something positive tonight. And we'll talk about Quran burning. We'll talk a lot about cartoons of Muhammad and we'll talk about the state of things in Europe. I'm also curious, Fleming is involved in some media start-up, so I'm curious what that's all about and what he's up to these days. I haven't talked to him since before COVID, so it's been a long time. So it's good to catch up. Let's see, what else are we going to do? So that is tomorrow and then next week, next week is going to be a mess. I'll do some shows when I can. I'm going to be in New York Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday basically I'm flying all day. So and then Thursday, Friday, I'm in Madrid and then Saturday I fly home. So I'll do some shows, probably not during hours that you will particularly appreciate. We'll see. But I'll just do shows whenever I can. So yeah, you guys will have an opportunity to save up on your Super Chat dollars next week as there won't be that many shows, so there won't be that much demand. Let me mention again, I know I do this all the time, but I want to mention it again, that I am... Yeah, it's a fun trip. Yeah, it should be a fun trip. I'm going to get a debate on Monday in New York. My wife's going to be with me, so we'll go to some nice restaurants. We'll have a good time. I'll go to the museum probably. And then I'm going to go alone to Madrid. That's going to be a little intense, but I'm doing another debate in Madrid on Thursday. I'll stick around at the conference on Friday and then I head home on Saturday. So it'll be a very, very quick trip to Europe. And so that'll be good. And then it's travel season, so it starts getting intense. We go... I've got a quick trip to Austin right after this trip. Then we've got a trip to California and then Europe. That's about three and a half weeks, maybe even four. So that's going to be a mess in terms of shows. Then November, I'll be gone for a week doing events in Chicago, I think. Champaign, Illinois, Michigan, and Detroit, I think. And then Denver, Colorado. So a lot of traveling in the United States. And then is that it for the year? I think that's mostly it for the year. So maybe some short trips after that to maybe Florida, maybe a couple of other places we'll see. But that's basically it. And then we'll start up the traveling again next year. Although I expect next year to be traveling less. All right. Also, one more thing. Yes, I want to give you a heads up about the London event, the public speaking, small group, intense. A lot of personal attention. It'll be on October 18th. The cost is $750. And if you write to me, you're on at youronbrookshow.com, you're on at youronbrookshow.com. I'll put you on the list for information. But $750 is set. And I'm just waiting now to finalize a location and everything else. So that'll be October 18th in London. Probably most of the day. So maybe from 10 to 4, something like that. And a lot of input for your particular speaking. You'll give a talk and I'll critique it. And I'll also give some theory. And it'll be a lot of fun. So yeah, join us. We've got a small group. We're going to keep it small. But definitely looking for additional people to participate. All right. Let's see. I think that's all the kind of admin stuff that we got going. Just to remind us, Super Chat, you guys all know the drill. Katherine has already started us off with a sticker and a bunch of cool symbols. Daniel and Hopper have already got us off with questions. Hopper with $50 questions. So that's cool. And so they've got us off towards our goal. And as I said, not going to be a lot of shows next week. And not going to be a lot of shows while November will be shows. But they won't be regular. And they'll be October. They'll be shows, but they won't be regular. And they'll be all over the place in terms of Times Update. All right. So I thought today we talk about, I mean, I've noticed a lot of kind of like sad comments. A lot of people like upset at me primarily because I'm too optimistic about the world. Which I find sad. And optimistic, not in terms of not telling you all the bad things that are going on out there, but just not willing to be catastrophizing and doom and gloom. And the world is coming to an end and everything is collapsing. And it's all over. That I am not. You know, people upset at me because I say I want to live in New York for a while, which I find strange. Not that everybody should want to live in New York. You guys, I mean, you got to make, as we'll talk about, you got to make choices based on your values. But it's strange to me that people would be upset by the idea that I want to live in New York and that I don't want to live in Iowa. That seems off somehow. And just a general sense of just, you know, Malay and a lot of men, a lot of men on the show, but also just in the comments and in the culture and videos that I see generally expressing the inability or the unwillingness to engage with women, you know, a lot of people withdrawing from the dating scene. And just a certain, I don't know, general, I get comments here periodically. And it's some of you, the super chatter. So this is not meant to be disrespectful in any way, but just things that just caused me to really want to try to inspire you. It comments around you can't make it anymore. Who can be a millionaire, can be a millionaire anymore, can be successful anymore. Life's a dead end in some way. And most of the people talking like this are young with their entire life before them. And then if you watch the conservative media, then if you watch Matt Walsh or Knowles or Ben Shapiro, we'll talk about the left media as well, but the right wing media is like culture sucks, men are screwed, women are awful, they want to have careers, how horrible is that? They want to delay marriage, how horrible is that? Some of them don't want to have kids. It's downright evil. And you know, women are just, you can't deal with women, modern women. This is all the consequence of leftist propaganda and corporate greed. And generally it's all a problem of selfishness. I was going to show you this video of Matt Walsh talking about women and divorce and all this stuff. I decided not to, maybe I'll do another show on it, but it was just too negative. But you know, here we are. The point is that it's all negative. It's all depressing. And it's so surprising the young men who tend to be on the right are like, yeah, what's the point? And if you watch the libertarians, particularly the kind of NCAPS, you know, this is like the worst time to be alive and the state is weeping you on a daily basis, just destroying your life. It's just so horrible to be living. And it's like, really? Are you living in the same universe I am? So I want you to put all that aside because all that is wrong. It really is wrong. You know, as difficult and as bad as things are, and they are difficult and bad. And there's certain areas in which they're worse than those are typically the areas that nobody really talks about, like culture and art and aesthetics, which in some respects are worse than they used to be. But even there, not as bad as some of the people on the right, I see these tweets. Do you see these? I think I talked about this, the cathedral tweets, right? Cathedral, that was, wow. That is the peak, the peak of human civilization. Now, I could get it if they showed me Michelangelo's David, I could get it if they showed me, I don't know, 19th century sculpture and painting or romantic music, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky or Khmaninov. And they said, well, that's it. I mean, look at the junk they produced today. And then I would go, yeah, I'm completely sympathetic. But cathedrals, 1220. So yeah, there's a lot of areas in which I think we are very poor in life. But even there, there's no excuse you should be poor in life. I think the culture is poor, but you don't have to be poor. And we'll get to that. So the question is, what do you do about this? And how do you snap yourself out of the negativity and pessimism and irrationality and just grayness and darkness of the cultural commentary? So I think the first thing we have to realize, and the first thing you have to realize is how amazing life is today. How amazing life is today. In a sense of how rich we are, how comfortable we are. And as a consequence of how rich we are, how many opportunities we have, the extent to which choices available to us that were just not available in the past. And all this conservative criticism about divorce and women, I mean, God. It's one of the great advantages of living in the 21st century that, yeah, you can get married and sometimes it doesn't work out. Maybe often it doesn't work out. Marriage, after all, is a pretty big commitment. So the fact that you can get divorced is a good thing. Now, I don't think you should get married to get divorced. I don't think I would encourage people to get divorced. And it's worth trying to fight for a relationship if there's real love there. But they never talk about love. Love is too selfish. They talk about commitment. They talk about obligation. They talk about duty. They talk about self-sacrifice. If there's love there, then it's worth fighting for. But if there's no love there, if it's gone, if it's not coming back, yeah, get divorced, absolutely. It's thought over. And the idea that women have careers is a bad thing. How is that that women can be productive, have a career, achieve the same kind of values that men can? How is that a bad thing? Have the freedoms to do all that? How can that be a bad thing? So we live in this world with immense opportunities for women, for men, for gays, for people of different skin colors, different cultural, ethnic backgrounds. It's never been easier to have a great life. Now, of course, the left attacks us constantly as well. But my guess is most of you guys who listen to me don't probably really listen to the left a lot. So you don't hear as much. Or if you do, you kind of mark them. I think what I have to do is kind of deprogram what you get from all the commentators on the right who tell you how awful things are because they seem to be aligned with you in some way, as much as I try to tell you they're not. Think of the access we have, the possibilities we have. And yes, the economy is becoming more controlled than yet. You can still be an entrepreneur. You still start a business. You still become a billionaire at age 20-something. Just ask some of the billionaires in Silicon Valley right now who are doing it, becoming billionaires. And yeah, you'll hear some people even some objective and say, oh, well, it's not real because the Fed and money and whatever. Yeah, tell that to the people changing the world right now, creating products that didn't exist before, services that didn't exist before, making life on planet Earth better, or maybe some of them even trying to take us to Mars. They're creating value. There's massive amounts of value to be created. And there's still the freedom to create it. And in spite of the fact of fiat money and the Fed and interest rates and everything else and inflation and everything else, there's still values to be created. And people can still evaluate objectively what's the value to them or not. Don't let the fact that we live in a mixed economy prevent you from going out and seeking your values, your goals, going out and becoming a billionaire by creating something new that didn't exist before. An idea that you can't just is not true because people are every single day in America. Look at the rush right now in the artificial intelligence space. It's a real space. It's a real value creator. This is not. Now, everybody will say it's a bubble because some companies will fail, but that's true of every new industry that starts. Some companies fail. But some are going to go on and they're going to change the world. It's kind of funny right now that there's a massive anti-trust suit against Google when it's very possible that right now Google's real competitor, the company that is going to destroy Google competitively is probably being founded. It's probably just starting out because it's probably in the AI space. So the government's always 30 years behind. So it's sad that because we're so focused on all the problems, we don't appreciate the wonders of the world in which we live. I've got to show you this graph. I'll do it quickly. I don't want to focus too much time on this. But this kind of cool graph, there was this thing on Twitter. People are supposed to post their favorite economic graphs, their favorite graphs and economics. Everybody has a favorite economic graph. And this is one that Scott Linsicum posted and I think it's terrific. This is a really cool graph. So this is household necessity, a percentage of a U.S. household that have this necessity. She have on the left landlines phones. Before 1916, almost nobody had a phone. By 1950s, almost everybody had a phone. But we don't have line lines anymore that much. Don't need them. Electricity. Electricity. You all take it for granted. Not that long ago, very few people had electricity. And not that long ago, nobody had electricity. Everybody in America has electricity. Almost everybody has a car. Everybody has a stove. Everybody has a radio, refrigerator. Washer, almost everybody. Dryer, almost everybody. But look how steep the curves are. Not that long ago, few people had all that. Let's see if I can, if I squish this this way. Doesn't really change anything. Okay. Air conditioning. There's one. People are concerned about global warming. I mean, it looks like 80, something percent of Americans have air conditioning, including poor people. Color TV, dishwashers, microwaves. Computers. Completely new. Look at the, look how many households have computers. Mobile phones, internet, smart phones. Miraculous. It's an amazing world. It's a world to be celebrated. And when you understand the value of the world that we live in, that should motivate you to fight for it. To fight to save it. To fight to make it much better. To fight to make it as good as it can possibly be. Because we all know, we all know it could be even better. It could be even more amazing. We could have even greater economic growth. And that economic growth and that success and that prosperity and that material over being can encapsulate most of the world out there. I mean, we're living in a time, I did the show on Peter Atea's book, we're living in a time where people are rethinking medicine. Where the potential to live longer is becoming real. Where aging is going to become less of a big deal. And life extension is going to become a real possibility. Where a lot of treatment for a lot of diseases that people just dread and we all know we're going to probably get. Treatments are going to be relatively easy. And many of us just won't get those diseases because we'll take care to avoid the things that make those diseases happen. We're living in a time with just immense opportunities for material growth. Now, that of course is not divorced from spiritual growth. The material growth makes amazing spiritual growth possible. I mean, think about the fact that I often mention about my iPhone. Do you can today on the Internet access every piece of music ever composed and listen to it and a module cost of that is basically zero so you can do it pretty much on any budget. So that even though I would argue there's very little good music written today and it's hard to find a performance and often to go see a live performance is very expensive. Who needs that? We can listen on the iPhone too with amazing sound quality to some of the best performances of the greatest music ever written in all of human history at a marginal cost of zero. On my Apple TV I can have access to channels that will show me concerts and operas and there's no limit to how much I can access. My only challenge in life is I don't seem to have the time to enjoy all these things. That's my problem. Carve out more time to enjoy music and opera. You can bring up paintings. I remember not knowing what art was out there in the world. Like if you took an art history class or you went to the library and you look at an art history book there's kind of the standard paintings they showed, the standard, the few what art historians considered the greatest stuff and it is great and amazing and it's fantastic. But it's just a fraction, a tiny fraction of the art actually produced and in the past in order to appreciate that art you'd have to travel to all the museums and maybe you took photos or as I did in the old days bought slides and had a slide project and once in a while you took out the slide project and you watched the slides and God, I mean that was cumbersome and difficult and hard. And travel is expensive and difficult. But today a travel is cheap, travel is possible and it's, you know, travel is cheap. It's incredible. It's possible. You can go to museums, you can travel everywhere but even more impressive is the fact that you can see, you can find reproductions of art from the greatest to the second, third tier but in any period of human history on the internet. You just do a search, it's all there. You can discover new artists, new forms of art. You can research, you can figure out which museums you want to go to, figure out where you want to go and it's just unbelievable. What's available to us today? In terms of that, I mean and beyond that you can purchase art. Now, you can't, you know, maybe most of us can't afford the originals but they're reproductions, really good reproductions. You can frame them nicely and put it up on the wall. You can even go and buy sculpture. I mean we bought some sculpture from the 19th century. You can find it on websites online for not that much money. So I don't know. It strikes me that we live in a world with unbelievable opportunities for human growth, unbelievable opportunities for you to take control over your own life and make something of it and create a life for yourself that you want. There are really no excuses. Sorry. I mean, yeah, I have a hard time meeting women if you're a man or men if you're a woman dating apps. You can sign up for like seven of them and I don't know, I don't know how they work but I mean I remember we had to go places and it was awkward and it was... Luckily, I didn't date for very long. Somebody says, my YouTube subscribers have gone down since I attacked a song I never heard about. I don't know what you're talking about Barry. Subscribers are up. They're not up a lot but they're up and me attack a song? No. Let's see. I've attacked lots of songs. So there are unbelievable opportunities. We live in a relatively rich, opportunity rich world. We live in a world where we access the information, data, knowledge. You've never had it as good. We live in a world where you've got an onion university where you could take classes, courses, not only take courses from Leonard Peacock by listening to his old courses but you can also take courses with life professors on all aspects of objectivism or objectivism's view of fill in the blank. I'm teaching a course next semester with Ankar Ghatir on analyzing current events at a cost of relatively low. You can watch my debate on Monday free. I think it's on reason TV or something. Oh, you can take a poll and you can participate in the poll. The way you win is by swinging. I think I'm out. I lost one and I won one. There's just no end to really the possibilities. You don't like the place you live. You live in Iowa and you don't like it in Iowa anymore. You're getting the economy move. I know it's hard. You have to sell your place. You have to go to a new place. You have to meet new people. It's life. That's exciting. That's energizing. And again, there are more opportunities like that than ever before. In human history, again, because travel is so cheap, it's so easy. Jobs are pretty plentiful these days and you can switch careers. There's less obsession with getting a college degree than ever. There's more openness to people just being good at something and getting jobs because they're good at something, not because they've been licensed, particularly in technology, that's true. I think we're living in a world that's opportunity rich. What do you do about it? You've got to take control of your life. You've really got to say to yourself, as I kept, I guess, repeating in my Walls for Life, which you can find all of them, there is a playlist of all my Walls for Life episodes, which I really, really, really encourage you to go listen to. I think those of you who have not, I think you've got an opportunity to do it. I think there are, what are they, 19 episodes, 19 episodes in my Walls for Life. You've got to really take your life seriously. And what do I mean by taking life seriously? You've got to be willing to sit down and really think about what kind of life you want to live. Really sit down and think and introspect and examine yourself and figure out what values, what are your values, what are the things that you care most about? And then you should add to that. Why? Why are those values so important to you? And are they the right values? Because I know that some of you deep down have values that are not right, that are not going to lead you to happiness, that are not going to lead you to success. And it's not surprising. We live in a particular culture, we absorb from the culture a lot of values. We absorb from the culture a lot of things that just ultimately are not good for us. And our culture is not oriented towards people being self-interested. It's not oriented towards people really thinking through what's good for them. So you have to do that work. You're not going to just get a biosmosis from your parents or from the culture, or from people around you. You have to do the work. So you've got to take your life seriously. And the younger you start doing it, the better. Because the older you do it, the more difficult it is to change. You've got to really think through what your values are. What do you want out of this life? What do you want to achieve in this life? What do you want to attain in this life? That requires work. It's not going to just happen. It's not just happen in and of itself. It requires introspecting and work and thinking and learning about yourself. And being willing to reject certain values. I don't know. A lot of us are raised with the importance of family. Family is the most important thing. We've got to take care of our brothers and sisters and cousins and nephews and parents and everybody else. And it's a drag. And it's something that the culture and our conservative friends think is the most important thing in the world. Is it though? How valuable is it to you? Are you your brother's keeper? Never mind your neighbor's keeper, stranger's keeper. So take your life seriously and be selfish. Be selfish in the way, in the sense of evaluate things from the perspective of does this make sense for my life? Are these values consistent with my thriving? Or are they not? Have I internalized some values that are antagonistic to my happiness? That are antagonistic to my success? And therefore I need to put them aside. I need to reject them. And then once you clean up your values and then focus on the values that really matter. Focus on the values that really lead you to success. Focus on the values that really matter to your long term happiness. And focus on them like your life depends on it. Because your life depends on it. Focus on them because that is the way for you to achieve happiness and success. That is the way for you to live with a capital L. A full life. Only have one life. Every second the passes you will never get back. That's depressing. But it's reality. It's not really depressing. It is what it is. It's metaphysical. The question is not the last second, the last minute, the last hour. The question is what's next? How do you make the next hour be more meaningful? How do you make the next hour be more successful? So you've got to orient your life. This is the exact opposite advice you're going to get. Then you're going to get from Matt Walsh or Knowles or Ben Shapiro or any of these guys. You've got to orient your life around you. Not you in the superficial sense. Not you in the terms of appeasing your momentary emotions. Not you in terms of satisfying whims or momentary desires. Yeah, the opposite of what you hear from Jordan Peterson certainly. You've got to orient your life around you. Your values. Your long-term values. Your long-term rational values. The values that will enhance your life and give your life your purpose. Start your own family if that's what you want to do. Have a career. Challenge yourself. Set goals. Be ambitious. Achieve stuff. Focus on being the best human being you can be. Be good at what you do. Attain and maintain a real self-esteem. But that doesn't come unless you achieve goals. Unless you challenge. Unless you're ambitious. Ambition is required for self-esteem. Self-esteem is required for ambition. It's a virtuous loop. Not a doom loop. A virtue loop. Indeed, virtue is loop. Upward spiraling. Keeps getting better. Once you practice the virtue, you get the benefits of those virtues. Which provides you with more inspiration and more motivation to practice the virtues. Which keeps going. And in every realm of your life do this. I mean, again, it saddens me when I see people who are young who have given up on ambition. Don't. The world is still open to you. And if one path doesn't succeed, try another one. Keep pushing. Keep trying. Accept the fact that you will often fail. But failure is an opportunity to learn, to gain new knowledge, to improve yourself, and to rise up and do more. Don't give up on your career people out there. Life's too short. And again, there's a massive amount of opportunities out there. It's easier today to start a company than ever in human history. It's easier today to do what you want to do than ever in human history. Just remember that your ancestors didn't choose a career. It was chosen for them by the parents, by the world in which they lived. Even not that long ago, there wasn't a lot of options. In terms of what career was acceptable, but also what career was possible. I mean, we live in this world with God. So many different things that you can do. How do you choose? I mean, I find that the biggest problem, right? Of all the opportunities I have, which ones do I do? I mean, I always thought that even when I was young. It was like, I don't know. I love history. Engineering is kind of fun. And, you know, teaching is good. Finance. I love finance. What should I focus on? My biggest problem probably in life, and why I'm not much wealthier than I am, is that I never really focused. I kept shifting from one to another. Never really stuck to one path and blew it up. But hey, I had fun in the process. So the real opportunity is out there. And again, you know, let's not be Pollyannish. There's certain fields where it's more difficult. You have to deal with irrational bosses. Some companies are just, they suck. Some companies are really good. So you have to take into account the irrational world in which we live and the irrationality that's out there. But the world has always been irrational for the most of history, much more irrational than now. As crazy as things are now. And now because people are more irrational, but because people just didn't have choices back then. Everything was dictated. Everything was determined by others. You know, if you read about, I don't know, even ancient Rome, how many people really benefited from the benefits of Roman civilization? A small fraction of an elite at the top. 90 plus percent of the population had no clue. Didn't matter that much. Middle Ages, even the Renaissance, life was hard. Really hard. Life is so much easier today. Life is so much more interesting, more varied, and you have so many more possibilities. So yeah, take your life seriously. Choose a career pursuit. Remember, you might switch careers in the middle just like you might get divorced. I wonder what Matt Walsh thinks about people who switch careers. Did you make a commitment when you were 18 to be an engineer? How can you switch now to be a, I don't know, history professor? Yeah, I mean, that's conservatives. Narrow-minded, single-minded, boring. No, life's exciting. Go and enjoy it in a meaningful sense. Not in the sense of partying and drinking all night and every day. That's the caricature that the conservatives love to make of selfishness. Selfishness equals subjectivism, shallowness, momentary pleasure. B.S. And there's nothing selfish about all that because that all comes to bite you. I mean, you just, I'll give you a small example. Yesterday we went to this special meal that was being done here, multi-course meal. It turned out it wasn't that expensive, but it turned out drinks were included so there was like a wine pairing. And like, all I do is sip a little bit of everyone. But I drank more than I usually drink. Maybe I drank two glasses of wine total instead of just one that I usually do. And it was like a non-wine alcohol drink in the middle. So I probably had more alcohol than I typically have. I wasn't drunk or anything, but I had more alcohol. Now, I don't get the tipsy, I don't get the positives of alcohol. It never affects me in any positive way. But anyway, but it tasted good and fit with the meal and it was great. But then I had a really, I mean, I slept awful. And like I also had dessert, which I never have. I also had dessert filled with sugar. And yes, I enjoyed a few bites and then, but then I slept terribly. And I felt awful all day today. I mean, not really awful, but just like though that's short term high that sometimes these things give you, you pay for it. So it's not selfish. It wasn't selfish of me to do those things yesterday. It was actually a little, you know, at a very small scale, self-destructive. So selfishness is not the shallow momentary pleasure because we understand that self is not just a momentary thing. It is your life. It is from now till you die. And that requires long-term and it requires a lot of thinking, thinking, thinking, planning. So do that with your career. Do that with friendship. Be active. There is what they're saying, they're saying there's an epidemic, epidemic of loneliness in America. And a lot of the deaths of despair, which are real, are caused by loneliness. And I believe it. There's a lot of lonely people out there and it is very easy to isolate yourself. And it's very easy because of TV and stuff like that to quote entertain yourself and be somewhat content. But the reality is it's an escape. It's not real content. It's not real, you know, values that they're seeking and people are lonely. We do desire and we do benefit and it's real value, human interaction and enormous value for us. Human beings need other human beings as friends and as lovers. We need sex and we need friendship. These are crucial values. And we don't need sex just qua sex. We need sex qua meaningful relationships. We need it for a variety of different psychological reasons. Life is difficult and very abstract and we need that reflecting back of our values. We need that camaraderie. We need that, you know, reinforcement of our values. It's great to have friends who like things that you like that share your values that you can talk with excitement about the good things. Not just friends. Now, some friends are just for bitching and complaining about how bad the world is. But those are not the valuable friends. The really good friends are the ones you can talk about exciting, wonderful things that are going on. Like, I just got pictures today from friends of mine who were supporting the show very generously and who are in right now in Japan and having a fantastic time in Japan. And it's just fantastic to see them enjoying life and going out and doing things and seeing the world. And they always have been like this. So this is not new, but it was great to see the photos and also reminded me of being in Japan and Kyoto in particular and liking it. And we share so many values. Some values, they love hiking and, you know, nature and adventures in nature. I like nature from behind the window of a car, much more. So they're real hikers, we're not. But it doesn't matter. So the difference is some differences in values and there's some unbelievable shared values. And the shared values are what's important and they're the deeper, more meaningful ones. But it's just fun to have friends like that that you can share those kind of values with and experiences with. You know, Jordan Peterson talks about friendship and he talks about particularly marriage as this, it's always a downer, right? You need somebody to be with you for the hard times. You need somebody with you to take care of you when you get sick. You need somebody with you, whatever, right? For all the bad stuff that's going to happen. No, I mean, you do, that's good. But you really need somebody to share the fun, to share the enjoyment, to share the passion, to share the excitement, to share the thrill of living. That's what you want somebody for. And fun, you know, don't take fun as the superficial. Fun is like doing something, you know, watching a movie together, listening to music together, you know, taking walks together. You're going to a good restaurant together. There are lots of things that are unbelievably enjoyable, having kids together. Sometimes enjoyable, sometimes pain in the neck, but a value nonetheless. So take finding a partner, finding friends. Seriously, go at it. Don't give up on life. Eight billion people out there. How many of you met? How many of them have you met? A lot of potential friends out there. A lot of potential lovers out there. And, you know, I'll just end with this, we're going late, but I say this a lot, but it's worth repeating. Take control of the things you have control over. Take control of your life, your space. You have control over where you live. Choose where to live. Go somewhere that's good for you. That makes sense for you. It might be New York. It might be Iowa City. It might be Houston. It might be Dallas. It might be, I don't know, California. I know some of you are shuddering at the thought. It might be Florida. Don't go places that Iran wants to go to. Go places you want to go to where you can achieve your values. Just make sure that you're ambitious with those values. Make sure you're not settling with those values. That you're trying to be the best that you can be. Do the best that you can. So take control over your life. Move to where you want to live. Pursue the career you want to pursue. Pursue the friendships. And create the space you want to create. Again, whatever budget you have. Put up artwork that you love. Put up by furniture that you enjoy that is comfortable that you also like to look at. Get flowers, put some plants. Do something good, beautiful. Surround yourself with beauty. Make your environment a beautiful environment. Or make your environment the kind of environment you want it to be. But that means you have to think about it. You have to plan for it. You have to consider it. You have to contemplate it. You have to really think. And you have to really think about your values. Think about what you want to achieve. Don't let it just happening. So, all right. Oh, Troy. Thank you, Troy. Troy just came in with $500 Australian dollars. Thank you. That, I think, puts us over a goal. Really, really appreciate it. Troy likes the positive shows. And he shows his appreciation. So, take control over your life. Take control over your values. Take control over the environment. That part of your environment that you have control over. And live. Live with a capital L. Be ambitious in every part of your life. Yeah, there are going to be disappointments. Yes, there are going to be failures. Yes, you won't achieve everything you want to achieve. You still got to try. And some things you will. Maybe most things. Maybe all things. I don't know. I don't want to bias this. But there's a chance you won't achieve everything. And the more ambitious you are, the more likely you are to fail at some things. But that's just life. And that's a sign you tried. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all is absolutely right. Is that from Shakespeare? I think that's Shakespeare. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. And you can take that and, you know, better to have valued and not achieved than never to have valued at all. You can spin at or you can change the words. But the reality is trying, living, striving is what it's all about. It's not just getting to the mountaintop. It's the climbing. It's the striving to get there, which is so much fun. All right, Richard said he thinks it's Tennyson. Maybe it's Tennyson. I should know this, God. Why do I think it's Shakespeare? I don't know. Somebody out there should know this. Come on, guys. Somebody who listens to the Iran book show should know if better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. It's from Tennyson. All right, Mary Alene. I believe Mary Alene. And who else said they think it's Tennyson? Richard said he thinks it's Tennyson. Good for you guys. It just shows that poetry is not, even though I love listening to poetry. I don't like reading poetry. I love listening to poetry. I love listening to people recite poetry. I'm not really familiar, that familiar, as familiar as I should be with poetry. All right, so yeah, let's turn to some of our questions. Hopefully that was a little inspiring. I know I do this all week. I talk about all the news and it's sort of depressing. Some positive news items, I don't know, artificial wombs and driverless trucks and driverless taxis. I mean, all that is very cool and new treatments for cancer and all that is exciting, but most of the news is depressing. And then even in my evening shows, I've done most of them around politics. I need to do more positive ones. I need to find new ways to interact with you. See, the problem is that I go, I've done that already. But the reality is repetition is not a bad thing, right? Unless you guys complain to me and say, no, no, you're on, stop it. You've said all these things before. You've done all these things. We don't want to hear it anymore. But I don't think that's what you're saying and the support for the show suggests that if anything, I should do more positive shows rather than fewer positive shows. So, yes. So thank you. Thank you, Troy. Thank you to all the Super Chatters. We've got a bunch of $50 questions, but let me, I know we've got quite a few, we've got quite a few stickers and some of them were pretty big. Obviously Troy, but we also had $50 for Ragnar, Ragnar Desert. I think it's Ragnar of the Desert. And we have Mary Aline who did a sticker earlier and we had Catherine. All right. I think that's it. Everybody else asked questions, but a lot of $50 questions, which is great. All right. So where do we start? Let's start with Hopper with $50 and we will go from there. But yeah, I mean, if even the questions, if you can think about questions now around pursuit of values around how to be optimistic about how to be positive about your life, how to get that energy to go for it. And let's leave the politics for, I know there's some political questions I'll ask and so then, but let's leave the politics for political shows and let's try to orient these questions to more positive topics. All right. Hopper says, what do you think will be the next exciting development that will bring a lot of people to objectivism? And overpriced when a crediting Iron Ransom epistemology, a great entrepreneur like Blake giving credit to Rand changes the world of aviation. I don't know. I mean, who knows? That's the beauty of this. You just don't know, right? It very well, it would be amazing if we had an Nobel Prize winner attribute winning, attribute his science to Rand's epistemology. I mean, that would be unimaginable how good that would be. That would be fantastic. I think that would suddenly cause people to think and to take her epistemology seriously. And scientists, kind of people who matter. The people who lead our culture. Entrepreneurs, definitely. Somebody like Blake. And that would be fantastic. But it's hard to tell. It really is hard to tell what the next big leap will be. You know, it might be something simpler, just a reminder to people, things might get worse, and a reminder to people of Atlas Shrugged and just an elevation of Atlas Shrugged back into the culture. Imagine a really, really, really good, I don't think this is really possible, but imagine a really, really good, really, really good adaptation of Atlas Shrugged into a mini series. Imagine if it was really good. Who knows what effect that could have on a culture. But I think, ultimately, the real next big step is just dozens of objectivist intellectuals just elevating the debate about issues and bringing it to the world. Just objectivists being out there constantly, every day, all the time, talking about the issues of the day and not being able to be ignored because they're making great points and it's really interesting and it's challenging and it's making a difference. I think it's that slow row that'll slowly build momentum and suddenly you'll turn around and say, whoa, there's like an objectivist on every equivalent TV station talking about something. Whoa, there are all these people teaching objectivist courses and all these different platforms and whoa, all these people suddenly interested in who ideas in one way or another and I didn't even notice it happening. It's like, I just see Mary Benz on here. It's like Mary Benz today, she puts up in the chat, she says, you're on, please don't do your shows on Thursdays at one o'clock because I'm doing my show on Thursday at one o'clock. It's like, whoa, like not that long ago I was the only objectivist on the internet. I was the only objectivist on YouTube. I was the only objectivist doing a show. Now, like half the time I'm conflicting with Harry and I'm conflicting with, you know, Iron Man UK and I'm conflicting with this and then there's a bunch of people doing stuff that I didn't even know. Now I don't know that everything is of the highest standard of the highest quality. I'm sure it's all, oh, and then the Iron Man Institute has constant videos that constantly releasing stuff and it's like, wait a minute, there's competition. That's not fair. I was here first. I want to monopolize the objectivism on, you know, objectivism on YouTube. Now I don't get to monopolize it. Everybody's starting shows and suddenly there are like dozens of people and it's like, when did this happen? Who are these people? How did they get shows? What are they doing? This is great. I mean, I love the fact that Mary Benz says I don't, you know, I should probably watch it, but I love the fact that all these people are having shows and they're doing stuff and they're expressing opinions and again, maybe I don't agree with some of it, but that's not the point. We're talking about Iron Man and we're using a particular methodology and we're advocating for reason and individualism and maybe some of us do it better and some of us don't do it as well, but suddenly it's everywhere. Think about an Iron Man University and it wasn't that we didn't think of it 20 years ago. It was more like, who would teach and who would be the students? And like today is, yeah, we've got all these teachers, how can we afford, how do we get them to teach for AORU and how do we, how can we afford to pay them and yeah, and the students are coming and whoa, yeah, it's real and it's happening and it's there and it changes things. So, you know, it's happening on a scale today that you couldn't do 20 years ago, just couldn't do it yet. Three, four, five teachers 20 years ago and today you have 20. Captain China thinks that your Ron Brook monopoly would be great. Thank you. So I think it's more gradual like that and you wake up one day and say, whoa, what happened rather than any one thing, one event? I mean, there's going to be things that we're going to be talking about over the next even year that I think are super exciting and potentially going to elevate Ron's view of the, you know, appeal in the culture significantly. I think there's going to be people associated with our movement that's going to elevate things significantly. I got to, anyway, I need to be careful not to express my excitement about something because it's not time yet. The day will come. Clock. Does Rand periodically bubble to the surface of the culture, to the point where both left and right feel the need to put it down? Michael knows, never used to mention Ayn Rand. Why does he feel the need now? People must be asking him about her. Yeah, and notice also that Matt Walsh keeps going after selfishness. When was that an issue? A cultural issue, right? That term. When was it like the culture's it's very much, I think, bubbling to the surface and it bubbles to the surface regularly. That's the thing. It bubbled to the surface in the when was it? After the financial crisis. Hugely to the surface. Everybody had a read Ayn Rand. Everybody had an attack Ayn Rand and they embraced it, then they attacked it. And then I think there is a certain respectability Ayn Rand has in certain intellectual circles where maybe it's not explicitly raised, but it's there under the surface. And was it? Michael Knowles said, yeah, this is all Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand did this, right? This is the impact of selfishness on the right. I mean, where else would the right get the idea that it loves a capitalism, a freedom? They got from Ayn Rand? Absolutely. There's a realization of it and also Knowles has been put in this horrible position, poor Knowles where he has been asked by the I guess by Prager or by whoever does the book club that he is involved in. He's had to interview twice recently people about Ayn Rand's novels. Atlas Shrug and the Found Head and he has had to appear interested and appear excited and appear even to have a positive view, potentially of these novels. So it's top of mind. He just interviewed Andy Pitzner. It was a well known businessman about the Found Head before that he had interviewed Eric Daniels on Atlas Shrug. Poor Michael Knowles. He kept getting forced into Ayn Rand. I remember years and years ago I was being interviewed for something and there was a guy who was also in the green room with me. He was going to be interviewed as well. He was like a black activist, really left really PC at the time would probably be 100% woke today in BLM and all that. And he said, you know, what are you doing? I said, Ayn Rand Institute. Oh, I love Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand's great. Like, really? Do you know what you're talking about? It's like everybody feels like they have to be their tackle or they embrace it. Depends on their mood. Depends what's going on. But she's there in the background one way or another. There's no ignoring here. And once in a while they try to suppress her. They try to put her down. They try to put her away. And I think conservatives are really trying to put her away. They're trying to get rid of her. She rose with the Tea Party and then there was a big effort to get rid of her and Trump and the conservative movement succeeded, I think, for a while and silencing her and silencing us. But now it's bubbling back to the surface. And they realize who the enemy really is. They realize who really is. And that will continue to go up and down. But the momentum long-term is with us. Because truth long-term is with us. Truth short-term is also with us. But long-term truth wins out and that's on our side and reality is on our side. And all these crazy ideas that the left and the right have are all going to play out in horrible ways. And they're all going to have to face reality. And we're going to still stand. We're going to still be there with our integrity uncompromised with the answers to the big questions that they are challenged with. So I'm optimistic about our future. Liam says, Einwand just posted sorry, ARI just posted Einwand's last televised interview. Yes, with Louis Rukaiser Louis Rukaiser I saw that interview years ago. Energy states that people are tired of the welfare state. Is that really true? People haven't rebelled against the welfare state in the 40 years since she did that interview. Well, it's not exactly right. I think it's why they elected Reagan. And of course you know the welfare state was young in those days. The welfare state is a creation mainly of the 1960s. And I think it's why they elected Reagan. But you know people forget but in the 1990s there was a real sense of whistic and tide of welfare. And welfare needs to be reformed. And welfare was a welfare queens or whatever. There was a big deal out of welfare queens. And who did welfare reform? There was a massive welfare reform done in the 1990s. And it was of all people, Bill Clinton the most serious reform to welfare. And one that basically was applauded by conservatives and consistent with what conservatives really promoted was done by Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Because people were sick of welfare state. And there was a real momentum around finding a way to reform welfare even further. And then kind of 9-11 happened and that diverted the conversation and then the financial crisis and that really diverted the conversation and people kind of gave up on markets and gave up on capitalism and gave up on freedom and then a tea party happened and they tried to resurrect it and remember the tea party is also people fed up with freedom and think about Richmond North of Richmond of all the things that come out of that song clearly comes out of it is being fed up with welfare. So there's something there you know welfare reform is actually more in a sense but in another sense it made the welfare system marginally better marginally less worse and it did. And there was I think real frustration with the welfare state. Real and I think it's left and right. I think it's why there was some traction for the what was it called where everybody gets a minimum something I forget the name of the term they use for it but there is a frustration with the welfare state the problem is nobody out there is willing to capitalize on it instead they keep devoting us away from it so 9-11 was the diversion and financial crisis was the diversion Donald Trump was the diversion and UBI thank you and the cultural was the diversion when the welfare state is to a large extent the issue it's what will kill us it's what will impoverish us it's what will make us poor I mean if you include in the welfare state Medicare Medicaid and Social Security UBI, universal basic income universal income, basic income all that's how they call it so people I think are fed up with the welfare state but the political parties have done their best and our intellectuals have done their best to divert people away from that like you can't talk about the welfare state now the only issue people care about is the cultural wars but that's to some extent a successful attempt by the promoters of the welfare state to divert our attention when the momentum coming out of the 90s was to really attack the welfare state and to rethink it and to consider getting rid of it or at least modifying it or reducing it so I think she was right it's just I think what she'd be amazed at is the ability of the mixed economy of the welfare state to keep us erecting itself and to survive and in some ways to thrive in spite of all this negative to have a successful economy to increase quality of life standard of living, wealth in spite of all these I think she'd be amazed that the resilience of the heroes she talked about in Atlas Shrug they're not being completely demoralized and they're not going to strike and they keep carrying the productive people keep carrying the world in their shoulders and they keep doing it and the world keeps getting better because they keep doing it let's not forget who's responsible for all that amazing progress it's the few great business leaders great industrialists, great engineers great innovators made the modern world Dave, thanks for demonstrating how to leverage opportunity to share value with others in a win-win context upwards and onwards, thank you Dave really appreciate the support and the appreciation, thank you Adam question on Rand's fiction if Dagnis stated a cabin retreat or Rourke stated the quarry could that be a fulfilling life or would an objective say is settling an untapped potential even if they thought they were happy it is certainly not a completely fulfilling life you could argue that given the external circumstances it's the best that they can do but Rand's point is it's not that's why she has them both to leave and the valley is a way you know in Atlas Shrugged and spoiler alert everybody has read Atlas Shrugged the valley is a way to both leave the negatives in society but still be productive that's what the valley is illustrating but to just stay in your cabin might be the only option you have if things are really really really bad but then things are really really really bad why not completely fulfill your life that is they can be external circumstances where it's impossible to live the best life that you can live or even anyway close to the best life you just are not flourishing because the circumstances are such I mean if you're in a concentration camp there's a limit how much you can flourish if you're a genius architect and you're stuck in the quarry you'll be okay happy you won't be as you know fulfilled you will never flourish as much as you will be if you get out of that quarry and go and build so it really is those are not ending places those might be stopping places and they might be places where you have no choice like Kudababa says we the living at some point you have no choice out and this is why to the extent that you are free to the extent that there are opportunities not to take them as a crime a crime against your life because there's so much upside there's so much possibility alright so I think I answered that question Adam if you have a follow up you know where to find me right here Andrew many lash out to you because they respect you and want you to validate their basis for inaction the world sucks and values are impossible I can relate to the feeling but we especially objective as much check up premises yes well and the world does suck in some ways in many ways in important ways but it doesn't suck so much that you can't achieve in it and you can't thrive in it so I get it I get it and you know the moments where I just want to throw it all and retire but yeah I know in many respects this is too much fun there's too much going on there's too much positives there's too much upside right but I get I get that the world sucks objectively periodically but it also doesn't there's also a part of it that doesn't and that's the part you have to focus on as I say often stop watching TV I am in TV news negative stuff watch movies watch TV shows and listen to your on-brook news round up and don't do any other news and that's the recipe for happiness Andrew American parents create paradise for a child cheating from pain and obstacles as he ages he gets sad and cynical that reality isn't paradise how should one reorient one's own pain and obstacles in the pursuit of values it's not the focus should never be in pain and certainly obstacles but not on pain the focus should be on the challenge on it's heart I mean it is true that almost anything worthwhile is going to be hard and on the joy of doing something hard and yeah there's pain involved but it's not so much pain as it is effort energy expenditure and yes for those of you who grew up in childhood they were pampered and it's very hard as a parent not to pamper your kids but those of you who grew up as pampered kids you got to find a way to psychologically break away from that you got to find a way to challenge yourself and push yourself and accept risk and failure risk risk risk you got to take risks you got to live on the edge not on the edge of life or death not on the edge of failure on the edge of great achievement think about you know think about Alon Musk running five companies and rockets and completely new process by which cars are going to be made and fighting his way on twitter I mean I have a lot of criticisms of Alon Musk but you got to admire the audacity the risk taking the grand scale vision that the guy has and the energy the energy and the ability to focus and the ability to do so many different things all at once it's stunning you know I go through these phases of massive admiration for him and then just disappointment and with him so yeah gain inspiration from Alon Musk even if you don't agree with some of the stuff he does like on Ukraine Twitter and stuff like that but wow I mean what a life he's lived what a life he's lived and he's not you know it sounds like he loves passionately and he works passionately and he takes his life seriously he pursues his values seriously I'm looking forward to reading his biography which I will do and I will review at some point I watched parts of the interview he did with Lex Friedman oh no parts of the interview Lex Friedman did with his biographer Isaacson who's book on Leonardo da Vinci and Daoudna the CRISPR inventor I've read and I'm looking forward to reading Alon Musk book he's a good author he's an interesting author although I have a feeling the way he's going to do is not going to please me but he also did Steve Jobs I didn't read the Steve Jobs book I know people didn't like it that much and Steve Jobs is a hero so I had no interest in reading a biography that would bring up all the dirt I'm not interested in the dirt Steve Jobs is one of my heroes and he will stay as a hero unblemished by some facts of reality yeah so you got to find ways to be inspired by the challenges and you know one of the things that Isaacson makes the points he makes about Alon Musk's childhood is that Alon Musk was not pampered in if anything he was psychologically abused by his father who berated him and put him down and a lot of this is motivated by some kind of I have to prove myself which is not the healthiest motivation to insult somebody else if Alon Musk can reorient that to proving himself to himself and to focus on happiness that would be great but I need to read the biography to have a full statement of that so there's too much of a this is to negate a negative but yeah too cushy of a childhood can make it more difficult to have ambition but if you know that then you got to we'll call it to overcome it demon cheers you on being pushing forward a mindset change many things have helped and some of that is what you do thank you upgrade to a better job in I'm in about three weeks off of more to come to the good in life for you and chat how some of that I didn't understand but the basic idea is demon is upgrading his life he's making it better he's on the pursuit of having a great life and part of that at least he's attributing to this show I appreciate that demon and thank you for the support Q Santos Q2 Santos from Brazil one of the biggest obstacles for objectivism nowadays seems to be the invalid concept of greater good anyone that pulls this card gets a free ride no questions asked I don't think it's a new card I don't think it's nowadays it's always been the case it's always been there and it's you know this is collectivism collectivism is back collectivism is back I don't know how much people really buy it and that's part of what upsets people like Matt Walsh that too many people are being quote selfish not in the way I want them to be selfish but they're not buying into this greater good you don't want to really upsets Matt Walsh is they're not buying into sacrifice they're not willing to sacrifice their life they're not willing to give up stuff he wants people to do their duty and to sacrifice and to do what he thinks is good for them god damn it they pursue their own values now I agree with him on some of these values are shallow but that's not the point the point is he wants to attack selfishness he's using them as a caricature of selfishness yeah I mean the greater good is a bogus concept it's the idea that there's something in a collective entity that is greater than you that you must sacrifice for that you must do your duty for the left and the right are guilty of this horrifically guilty of this for anyway yeah this is you got it anytime somebody says let's do it for the greater good run for the hills run for the hills Adam there's a follow up again thank you for the positive show great point that life is in binary there can be huge negative things in the world while at the same time one can live a happy positive fulfilling life absolutely absolutely now you know again Nazi Germany in a concentration camp I'm not Polly Anish I'm not absurd but we're not there it's not that bad find the good plenty of opportunities out there to live a successful happy life Michael you say people only evade so much like San Francisco homeless crisis but what about 1930s Germany the vast majority of the population sustained deep level of evasion regardless of a misery it was delivered them yeah but part of the reason they evaded and you know there's no question that this works part of the reason they evaded was because there was a gun put their head there were consequences and they were sold on a positive vision so as long as things are going well people can evade for a lot it's when people things started going badly that at some point they can't evade it's not surprise the German general started to try to kill Hitler when the war turned against them why didn't they try to kill Hitler at the beginning of the war before the war even started when the concentration camps were put in place why did they wait until the war they started losing the war because at that point their evasions kind of bashed up against reality reality being crashing upon them now they didn't succeed but imagine if they succeeded killing Hitler at that point better than not killing Hitler at any point so at some point things turned bad some people, not everybody wake up from their evasions, wake up and they try to do something now it's true that you can build a culture like Germany did in the 1930s where evasion is on a much bigger scale much more sustainable, much deeper but again we're not there yet in America we're not there yet like I said do did most intellectuals yearn for return to the dark ages they hate Jews because Jews have brought man out of the dark ages their culture has been a pro-progress force that collectivist intellectuals want to shut down no I don't I don't think most of intellectuals today or ever thought in terms of wanting to bring man back to the dark ages I think there are very few who think that very few when they're faced with what they're arguing, they're all backtrack almost all of them are backtrack they can't face that so none of them will actually recognize that as their motivation or what they're striving towards so they hate the Jews because Jews have brought man out of the dark ages I don't know if that's true Jews didn't bring man out of the dark ages the Enlightenment brought man the Renaissance brought man out of there the Renaissance brought man out of there not Jews Jews to some extent were part of that but that wasn't white people hated Jews Jews were successful they resented that charged interest on loans Jews killed Christ supposedly so there were lots of reasons and Jews were the other so they were convenient for blaming your problems on in a mystical superstitious culture it's not the Jews brought man I mean Thomas Aquinas brought us out of the dark ages the Renaissance Michelangelo brought us out of the dark ages I wouldn't ever say Jews did it Jews had a culture pro-progress not so much not so much you know Jews in modern times last 200 years have been some Jews have been very this worldly but I wouldn't say the culture is a culture of pro-progress I mean go watch Fidler on the roof Fidler is not pro-progress he wants to stay on his farm he wants his kids to live the same life he lived he wants to he doesn't want modernity he doesn't want change and that's Jewish culture of the 19th century and he's forced into recognizing the reality of change and the reality of having to move and his kids living a different life than he lived he doesn't go into it that way it's not part of the culture it's something that he accepts because he's oriented to this world and he's not willing he's only going to evade so much it's not essential to Jewish culture historically the Jews are pro-progress alright I should have done a poll today I haven't done a poll in a while I'll have to remember to do more polls alright yeah I changed the goal I figured why not we'd gotten this far Daniel asked how do you beat jet lag you're on here's how I beat jet lag I'm on the way to Europe so going now this is not going to happen in this trip that I'm doing from Madrid so ignore that but this is how I typically do it I take the night flight the later the flight leaves the better I fly business class when I get on the plane I take a 10 milligram of melatonin it knocks me out pretty much I sleep as well as I can sleep on the plane I take the red-eye to Europe and you know I don't sleep very well but I sleep then when I get to my hotel in Europe I'll take a short nap just to kind of get myself refreshed take a shower go out do stuff and then at my regular bedtime let's say 10 o'clock 11 o'clock I'll go to bed in this new place again take melatonin the first two to three nights I've never taken Ambien in my life the first two or three nights melatonin is a natural hormone it's part of your natural sleep mechanism so just reinforcing what nature does anyway and I typically I'm fine going that way when I come back it's a little harder so you can come back it's a day flight you get to the U.S. in the evening you leave in the morning get to the U.S. in the evening but it's already really really late at night and the challenge then is just to stay up to stay awake until your regular bedtime and again take melatonin you might not need it the first night but then take melatonin or just go to sleep have a good night's sleep and let yourself sleep as much as you can the next morning get up and then go back so in other words get on to the sleep schedule you want as quickly as possible now this next trip I'm taking I'm leaving very early in the morning from New York and arriving in London at 6 7 o'clock in the evening and I've got a 6 15 a.m. flight the next morning to Madrid so I'm basically going to go there it'll be 7 15 it'll be much earlier in the day New York time it'll be like 2 so I'll stay up a little bit but not too much because I have to wake up really early the next morning so I'll take melatonin to make sure I go to sleep and I'll sleep that night hopefully the melatonin won't knock me out I'll sleep that night I'll get up at 4 in the morning to catch my 6th flight I'll fly into Madrid do my debate maybe take a nap I'm not great at naps maybe take a nap and then in the evening there's a dinner a fancy dinner that I have to go to and then I'm back on the schedule I'm back I'm flying an afternoon flight from 4 p.m. arrives in Puerto Rico at 8 p.m. that is going to be tough because that I'm flying coach I don't know why I'm doing this but I'm flying that flight coach so it's going to be really really bad and I don't know we'll see I'm not sure how I'm going to survive that but I'll get home and I'll go to sleep so that's the way I do it and you know I do this several times a year Asia is different you're completely bamboozled by the time but again sleep when you can but try to get onto the regular sleepy schedule as quickly as possible and use melatonin melatonin is a natural way to get on that get your body regulated on the right time zone Michael says for a woman who rejects a supernatural rancid thinking ability seems almost superhuman it does doesn't it Michael says what do you make of democrat governor of New Mexico banning guns for 30 days following a string of gun violence she stated constitutional rights are not absolute well constitutional rights are absolute how they exactly relate to gun laws is an interesting and open question and what's interesting about the gun ban is that the police refuse to follow it because they said they were following the constitution they weren't going to follow the governor of New Mexico and it looks like a federal court has overturned her so her ruling is out anyway Liam says are you still going to interview Yomi Park thank you for reminding me yes I need to get in touch with her yes that is my plan anyway that doodle bunny do most objectivist intellectuals disagree with ran when it comes to a woman president given the support of Nikki Haley I think that they view it I don't know I have no idea I have never pulled objectivist intellectuals about the views but I do think that my position is that God we have such lousy candidates I'll take anybody who's decent so whether it's optimal ideal to have a one president you got to survive in the meantime and if that means a one president so be it and I just watched the movie Golda and Golda Mia was in some respects did a terrible job and in some respects did a really good job as prime minister of Israel Margaret Thatcher certainly did a great job as prime minister of UK Liam says why is there so much capitalism still left in America today well I don't know if it's so much capitalism so much freedom because of the American sense of light because capitalism works and it's very difficult to undo stuff that works I think those are the main reasons because we've got a good foundation because we have a decent constitution we still have people who somewhat understand the constitution at least when it comes to certain of the rights associated with it but some things break your heart but fix your vision yeah that's good James Michael says are there no slip and fall lawyers in Europe is that a unique American thing if you get hurt on a job it's harder to sue your employer in Europe yeah I think generally suing for damages suing for negligence suing because you had something bad happen to you so uniquely US and it's a relatively modern view coming out of Yale I think in the 1960s of this view that basically the idea that liability laws and lawsuits can be used to redistribute wealth towards those who suffer from those who have and that's what the laws become just another mechanism by which leftist can redistribute wealth Kevin Cutchler how did you know I needed the show today you need the show every day James says what part of Manhattan would you want to live in why not Brooklyn you can get way more space for the same money couldn't you do a month or two for your 64th birthday maybe maybe why Manhattan just because I think Manhattan is just a super unique that I'd like to have I used to want to used to have this building that you could rent out for like a month a year or two months a year a condo in right next to Lincoln Center in the west side of Manhattan the Upper West Side that would have been a great place but yeah I mean Brooklyn could be nice but I would want to be in Manhattan if I was going to spend a month a year I would want to be in the heart of the action um and I might still do that depends on how much money you have so keep the super chats coming increase the possibility that I spend a month a year in New York Clark says do you have any criticisms of Iron Man speaking style or the ways she approached interviews and Q and A's no not really not in terms of certainly not in terms of interviews and Q and A's I think she did those brilliantly and she could get into the core and heart of a question like nobody else that I know and really attack the essence of the issue I mean I don't think she was a great public speaker I don't think her talks were particularly good I think the best talk she ever gave was the West Point talk on who need philosophy who needs it that's the best talk as written I think most of her talks were articles rather than talks she was of course a genius writer and a genius philosopher but I don't think they're that presentable as talks but she was even good at that she was funny and she had great laugh lines in her talks and she knew it she played to the crowd I mean she was I mean it's hard to find anything to criticize about Ayn Rand and there's no reason to what percentage of marriage is today actually happy and healthy I think most people are passive aggressive and hate each other because they're too irrational to communicate properly I don't know maybe I have no sense of how happy people are with their marriage it's very difficult to make assessments like that of people it's very hard to to know what's going on behind closed doors hard to judge people Doodle Danny says did you watch Craig Biddle's hour long interview with Barry Weiss what a catastrophe she's probably now turned off objective ideas forever no I did not I really can't stand watching Craig but I am curious about Barry and was it really that bad I'm curious what other people think really that bad so that it would turn her off that would be horrific if she's turned off by it Barry is yeah what can I say it's sad that Craig is in a position because of the money that he has to make inroads with people like Barry Weiss where it's the Ayn Rand Institute that should be making inroads with people like Barry Weiss we've done the work we've done the leg work we've done the cultural work we've laid the foundations to have relationships with people like Barry Weiss and Ayn Hursey Ali and many others and started those relationships I established many of those relationships in the past and that Craig is leveraging that to some extent and getting the fruits of that and then maybe if you what you say is true screwing it up it's tragic and sad but he has the money to make it happen that's the reality people can sign up for live stream of your debate on Monday for free they take a poll before and after the biggest swing wins yeah you can do that on the SOHO forum on Reason TV you can probably find the link just by searching an alcohol capitalism debate SOHO forum Michael this country wasn't built on telling people they can't do things absolutely that's not the American spirit Michael an objective world has a lot less pain and arbitrary imposed obstacles an objective society is paradise and it will happen it is paradise although it's not paradise in the common sense of the term as being effortless easy easy in that sense Mary Eileen says of course the better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all is from Tennyson in his poem in Memoriam thank you it's great to have a cultured audience that can correct me and steer me in the right direction when I screw up James are you currently writing your autobiography or will you wait until you're old what's the purpose of it I don't know I can't imagine ever writing my autobiography no I mean yeah first of all I can't remember anything I have a lousy memory I've always had a lousy memory I can't remember many things about my life I can't remember the sequence of it it would be very difficult to recreate and I'm not sure what the value of it would be and if there really is a value and people are really interested and there's really a market then maybe somebody can hire a ghostwriter interview me and write the biography but I'll never write an autobiography it's not interesting I don't find it interesting it wouldn't be fun I don't like the past my past the past I've lived does not interest me what interests me is the future and what interests me is history what's happening in the world what's happening in the culture that's of importance to me is not important to me to me and I can't imagine why it would be that important to you guys but to the extent that it is important to other people then they will have to do the work to get it on paper because I won't somebody would have to come and interview me but I will never write a memoir or an autobiography it would bore the hell out of me and I'd be wrong half the time because I can't remember my wife would have to be with me in terms of all my memories my wife has a good memory Ryan says I'm 20 and a lot of my friends seem petrified of going against their parents will do you think this is a common problem and what advice would you give these people yes, it's a common problem and it's not just today it's always been the case but it's probably more today because you're more pampered by your parents you're more dependent on your parents but what would I tell them is it's their life is their life your life is your life you've got to live your life you can't live their life you can't live for them you've got to live for you only you can make choices that are for you if your parents are smart and they have experience and they're friendly and they're pro-you you can learn from their experience and you can take their advice or you can consider their advice, not take it but you are responsible for you you are responsible for your life you have to make decisions for your life so don't be intimidated by your parents don't do what they want you to do don't feel like you have to if that upsets them, they'll be upset for a while that's okay, they'll get over it they probably love you anyway and they'll probably support you anyway and they'll probably respect the fact that you have a mind of your own and you want to do your own thing I mean, I don't think parents want their kids to be mindless followers of theirs and if you're 20 years old you should be seriously being independent of your parents at 20 years old you should not be living with your parents at 20 years old maybe if you're in college you might still be supported somewhat for your parents, but at some point soon you should be independent financially from your parents they might help you here and there they might send you a certain allowance every month just to help you along because they love you and they care about you but you should be able to supply funds for yourself and you should choose your career and your girlfriend and your passions and your interests for you, not for them it's your life, not theirs you got a bed with you you live with you what is it that you're afraid of them what can they do to you cut you off? well, you should cut yourself off at some point anyway Mark Thomas says, how was tonight's talk been? I'm not sure who you're asking you're asking me, you're asking everybody else any interest in revisiting I think there are many facets to it German concept of Gellungpolitik not sure what that is but yeah, I think there's lots to talk about here again, if you're interested in more content like this, I encourage you to go to my Yuan's Rules for Life series there's a playlist on YouTube there are 19 chapters I think you'll really like them enjoy them go for it let's see Garrett says, thank you Yuan always love your shows looking forward to seeing you at Ocon next June, stay awesome I owe you far more than I can repay I appreciate that, Garrett, thank you for your appreciation Mark Thomas, how do we chat about quarterly one-on-one talks? God I don't know why you haven't been contacted by Angela by now email me at Yuan at Yuanbrookshow.com email me and I will forward your email to Angela and I will bug her until she gets you that quarterly one-on-one but email me now, send me an email right now and I will make sure she gets in touch with you Jennifer, love the positive shows thanks Jennifer, appreciate it Ragnar, thanks for everything Yuan appreciate it Ragnar, thank you Norwegian Ragnar with $37 away from $1,000 which is great that we've made $1,000 today on the show, that's fantastic it's rare we don't have $1,000 shows that often, so thank you guys this is amazing if somebody wants to put us over the top so we can say we made it to $1,000 that'd be great Ragnar just got us a lot closer with this $249 Norwegian Krona that's fantastic but $37 if somebody wants to get us there that'd be great Andrew Traga a rich inspirational quote of Rand quote, it's not who is going to let me it's who is going to stop me but many, actually it's not exactly the quote, it's from the fountain head people use that quote as if it's Rand's but it's not exactly what she says, I have to get you the right quote but many do think others have the power to stop them is that grounded in collectivism or why yes, it's grounded in second-handed thinking the importance of others otherism, altruism a moral code a whole orientation towards the other and the importance of the other in our life and this is what holds people back from baking away from their parents we talked about that a minute ago they somehow power over you they don't really, it's your life capture for yourself, capture that life for you Q.T. Santos which country is currently closest and objective ideal and how close is it no country is and they're far from it you know, I don't think any country is, I mean you can look at the economic freedom index to see countries that are more economically free but then there's also other freedoms, Singapore might rank very highly in economic freedom but not in other freedoms but you know, the the there's also just it's more than just economics and it's protection of rights and protection of life and that there's just nobody even close so the whole world is mixed economies, the whole world is grey there's no white and there's nobody particularly close to that so that I could differentiate, what's the difference between Europe and the US and Australia and New Zealand and South Korea and Japan I mean how different are they how common are they, how different are they some a little bit freer, some a little less free in different dimensions but it's not radical it's not a big change sadly Joel the Dreamer thoughts and claims Ein Rand was a masochist who was into bondage based on Dominique and Dagny no, I mean there's no basis for that I think she viewed sex as not in terms of in terms of there's an aspect of male domination there's certainly male penetration there's certainly you know, a female what's the right word, God the word is not coming to me but a certain acceptance and a certain not subjugation, it's not subjugation it's a certain submission a certain submission, a certain female submission to the domination to the dynamism of male you know, male penetration so there's an element of that and I think that that is that is part of how she viewed femininity masculinity and the various sex roles but I don't think it's an issue of masochism it's not about pain, it's certainly not about bondage there's no no evidence of that but there is about the male is the initiator and the male is the dominant one it dominates male dominates and there is an element of feminism of submission to the male of accepting that domination and that she definitely viewed as part of femininity masculinity as far as my understanding goes she viewed she viewed that as as part of what femininity masculinity was and what it meant and somebody says what about female writing where the female is on top I mean I don't think she would be opposed to that I mean that's certainly part of sex and part of enjoying sex and it's a different way but it's not the most common way people have sex it's not the dominant way people have sex it's one pose among many and it's the one that one of the few where the female has a control what I find fascinating is that in movies the female is always almost always on top like not in porn but in movies and that is that is interesting because I think it's a feminist perspective it's kind of a modern feminist perspective on sex and they purposefully do that they purposefully do it but it is almost every sex scene you see in the movies on TV the woman is on top but in real life it's great when the woman is on top it's a great pose I've got nothing against it and it's part of the repertoire but is that the dominant way in which people have sex probably not but it's probably kind of a politically correct way of showing sex my interpretation not Ayn Rand's MP creates what do you think of comedy as an art form I think it's great I love comedy it's funny it's filled with joy and you laugh I mean what's important is to laugh at what's deserves laughter the ridiculous, the absurd and not laugh at heroes not laugh at the good I think there's some comedies that always mix that but comedy is interesting it's difficult I have a guy I know in Houston I think he wrote a book about comedy from an objective perspective I wonder if he ever finished it I can't remember if he sent me a copy or not but it's not a simple one to think through humor is complicated just like any art you have to really understand it demon asks what's your poison you're on cold drugs are you just a foodie I think I'm just a foodie I think I think I don't like poison like my view of poison is why it's like life's too short I don't like drinking I don't feel good I don't enjoy it I don't see the point in it even if I feel a little tipsy I don't like that feeling there's nothing about drinking I like I've never tried hardcore drugs I've never smoked I tried marijuana once it made me laugh a lot I figured I could laugh a lot doing other things as well yeah I never liked smoking so I guess I'm kind of boring I mean I probably have a few but I wouldn't call them poisons and I wouldn't talk about them publicly no I mean I'm a foodie and even there I try to be a foodie who eats healthy I'm not particularly fond of I don't know food trucks that sell the latest greasy fried chicken even if it's the best in the universe I try to eat healthy food even as a foodie I mean if you consider like I do foie gras to be healthy which I do I used to drink huge quantities of Coca-Cola I mean huge eight cans a day or something like that I used to be addicted and I went cold turkey about 20 I don't know 24 25 years ago and I've never I don't drink soda anymore and I hate diet soda so I don't eat diets don't drink diet soda I only drink three things really only two I drink coffee a lot and once in a while I'll drink a glass of wine and you know once in a while I'll drink you know I don't know a smoothie or juice or something like that but that's it that's the only thing I drink I drink a lot of water stay hydrated guys yeah I mean it's very simple I don't get sodas and juice now is so there's so much sugar in juice I avoid it you know if I'm gonna drink a juice it'll be like some kind of protein smoothie or something like that so water and coffee what do you need more than that I don't need anything more than that in terms of drink and then yeah and I don't eat that many different things no Coca-Cola I haven't had a Coke in 25 years I think I sometimes miss it but if I tasted it now I wouldn't like it but I miss that feeling particularly of a really really really cold can of Coca-Cola it's nothing quite like that yeah orange juice is too too much sugar you have to really watch orange juice I mean sometimes you can do anything sometimes but if you make it a habit it can really be like a lot of people drink a glass of orange juice every morning probably not good for you because of the the quantity of the sugar in it better to eat an orange and I would I love food I'd rather eat an orange although I don't eat enough food I don't I hate Coke Zero I hate Diet Cokes I tried Diet Cokes I've tried Diet Zero don't like them can't drink anything with artificial sweetness I don't do artificial sweetness at all I but I minimize sugar consumption so um um you know I what do you call it I often I look at labels I look at what how much sugar there is and I don't like stuff that added sugar I don't eat stuff with added sugar I try to if it's going to be sugar it has to be natural part of it but I try to minimize sugar generally I eat chocolate but I eat very very dark chocolate like right now I've got I'm into this chocolate I think it's from Spain that I can buy here in Puerto Rico 99% 99% 99% cacao it's got this amazing um fruity flavor it's very bitter but it's got this amazing fruity flavor I really like it so I consume a lot of 95% and 99% chocolate not a lot like I have a piece at night but I I don't eat dessert so I like yesterday I ate dessert and I regretted it almost instantly um yeah I mean I try to take care myself I work out quite a bit I've started working out about an hour and hour and a half every day although today for example because of the meal last night because of all the because of a little bit of alcohol um I didn't exercise today uh plus I've been exercising a lot lately every day and and like all my muscles are aching every single one of them so so it's a little too much um anyway we could go on and on about food I love Spanish olives yes I love olives I could eat olives all day I hope olives are good for you because I eat a lot of them um Daria says I see you live at Soho for the rate on Monday in New York City P.S. as a finance Ph.D.'s do you have any research or opinions on quant investing I I mean I yeah I mean quant investing is makes you can make a lot of money look at what renaissance has done I I know many many others you know I don't do exactly quant investing but you could argue it's similar and uh yeah I'm I'm very pro quant investing of course it depends on the quant right quant just means quantifiable just means uh statistical analysis algorithmic investing but it depends on the quality of what you're doing and and the research and so on so huge opportunities there always they have been since since the 90s since you got big computers uh the opportunities keep shrinking because more and more people are taking advantage of them and that shrinks the universe keep shrinking the universe but uh yeah I absolutely a fan of it and uh curious where you're getting your Ph.D. in finance from what university NYU Columbia um Austin if a successful objectivist businessman decided to join the 2024 race which party would he enter what would his top issues be how would he handle the national debt deal with critics that his policies would lead to poverty I mean like that's a big question you know that deserves a whole show but look he'd probably answer I mean he'd lose it doesn't matter which party he'd enter because he'd lose in both of them um you know he might enter the Republican party he might be able to get away with more stuff over there but he's not gonna win he's not gonna win a nomination in any other party um what what would issues really focus on I think I think to I think the best thing is to be is to have a positive vision for America a vision that captures the spirit of the founding fathers I would use a lot of founding father language uh to have a spirit of freedom and liberty the main issue would be economic freedom and liberty deregulation and phasing out of the welfare state but the main thing would be separation of state from economics which means deregulation and but deregulation in the deeper sense of getting the tentacles of the government out of the business of business in every respect in every realm um creating a permissionless society in a sense of business can function and be permissionless really focusing on an amazing bright future I don't think taxation is that important I think reducing the debt is far more important I think uh I think reducing government spending is far more important you know and I have articulated in the past a multi-step process that I would go about if I were president or if I was a candidate and what I would do and you know and I can't resurrect it right now but you know you would start with separation of business from economics and that would involve no more subsidies no more elimination of the corporate tax and so you can't grant any favors to the corporate tax a complete redo of you know all the different favors and barriers tariffs to zero immediately tariffs to zero, corporate tax to zero and elimination every year of 20% of all the regulations that exist passing laws sweeping laws that eliminate regulations I would leave getting rid of programs that alleviate poverty to last I would get rid of corporate welfare first getting out of some money getting rid of the Fed those would be some of the first things I would do I would get rid of again by the way what's a what's a where am I gonna yeah if you want to fund me traveling around the world giving my political what do you call it my campaign speech during this election season then you know it's costly it's going to cost a lot of money but if we can raise a few six figures to do this. I would do it. I'd love to do it. I'd love to be able to give political stump speeches. And, you know, I've done it in the past. I just need a what kind of, you know, structuring the programs and how to do it. I've done that. It's just, it's after 10 p.m. tonight. And, but basically that's it. First liberate business to create massive amounts of jobs. That's the first thing you want to do. Only then do you eliminate welfare because there are plenty of jobs. The economy is buzzing. The economy is roaring. The solution to welfare is jobs. Always has been. All right. Maria Lien says you might like Francis Proulous 100% dark chocolate. I have to look it up. I might. I might. All right, guys. We crossed the $1,000 mark. That is fantastic. Really, really appreciate that. And thank you. So tomorrow, one o'clock, 1 p.m. East Coast time. Not that long for now. We will be talking to Fleming Rose. Please join us. I hope you join us. It'll be, I think, a really interesting conversation. He's a really nice guy. Bring your questions. Free speech. Islam in Europe. All the issues about Europe. Please bring them and challenge them. Bring them to the forefront. He's not an objectivist. So don't be surprised that he gives answers that are consistent with mine. But you know, come ask questions. Deria says, I have an MBA from a low tier school I don't use. I researched quantitative easing internationally in my thesis. No desire to be a doctor. I made a little dollars in crypto in 2021. But that was luck, not just Simmons level strategy. Yeah, I think most people who made money in crypto, it was luck. All right, guys. Thank you. Thanks, Deria, for filling me in. And I appreciate everybody's support. And oh, you're asking me as a finance PhD. I read your question wrong. I thought you were asking as a finance PhD, not that I had the PhD. I appreciate that. All right. Thanks, guys. Thanks to all the support. Thanks demons as cheers for positive life. Thank you. And I will see you all tomorrow. Bye, everybody.