 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Saturday afternoon here in Puerto Rico at least. It's probably morning or if you're in California evening. If you're in Europe, hope everybody's having a great start to their weekend and had a great week. Yeah, here we go. So we're going to talk about the Kaka-Putin interview. And let me just say, the interview surprised me. I was surprised by the interview. I find it long, but actually quite interesting. And I'll tell you why in a minute. I learned a few things, I think. But here's the thing. So let me tell you what I expected going in. So I expected basically two things which would align with one another. I expected Putin to use this as a propaganda opportunity. I expected him to go after the West. I expected him to express how everything that's happening is America's fault, to go after Biden, to ridicule the West, to undermine the West, to express his concern about the values of the West, the decadence of the West. He's done this in other talks and stuff. And really just go after the West and use this as an opportunity for propaganda, anti-Western propaganda. And that I thought would completely coincide with Tucker's motivation for the interview. And Tucker's motivation for the interview was completely to get Putin to make MAGA points, to make the points that the new right, that the MAGA right, that the ult right, however you want to call the new right is, to make the points that the new right is made. Well, this is what would have never happened if Trump was in power. This was all caused by NATO. NATO is corrupt. This administration is corrupt. Everything would be better if Trump was elected or if Biden was replaced. The whole history of this is NATO's fault and ultimately Russia's in the right because it was aggressed against by NATO expansion. And those are the make-a-make-a-great-again points. And you would have expected Putin, the other thing was that Tucker, I think, was expecting part of the make-a-make-a-great-again points would be religion is crucial to Russian identity, religion is crucial to the future, religion is part of the West, part of the problem in the West is secularism. What makes Russia superior is its advocacy. So this is kind of the Christian nationalism that is so prevalent today on the right. So religion good, NATO bad, Biden bad, liberal, secular society bad, gays bad, I don't know, transsexuals bad, all of that stuff, all this meat that kind of, in as many of his speeches, Putin throws out that I think Tucker was eager to get this because it was going to make great MAGA new right points for him. So he went in, I think, trying to get this interview to justify all the MAGA talking points. And his primary point was this war is NATO's fault. That was what he wanted. That's what he wanted Putin to say. And I thought Putin was going to come in and play along with that and just give Tucker what he wants and make this about catchy, quick, easy propaganda in the West that's progression. And that's not what happened. Tucker did exactly what I predicted Tucker would do. The entire interview, he is trying to get Putin to say certain things. He even frames it for Putin and says, are you saying this in order to get him to make all the MAGA points? He brings up religion. He brings up NATO like 15 times. He constantly is trying to structure the conversation around the new right points that he wants Putin to make, that he wants to be reinforced. And Putin is having none of it. Putin refuses to give Tucker what he wants. And Tucker is super frustrated certainly with the first 30 minutes of the interview. You can tell and Tucker actually in the introduction to the interview says that he's frustrated because he was surprised. He's partially surprised because he hasn't done his homework. He doesn't understand what Putin really cares about. So Putin gives an interview that I think reflects. I mean, it's awful. It's wrong. But Putin gives an interview that I think reflects what Putin really thinks. I think he gives an interview that reflects his views rather than what he thinks will sell in the West. And that was surprising. That was surprising. I did not expect it. And Tucker has blown away. Tucker doesn't know what to do with it. Tucker is frustrated as he knows his laughs, doesn't get the answers he's expecting, keeps trying to angle to get the results that he wants and can't get it. But Putin just lays out what he actually believes. And what he actually believes does not line up with the rhetoric of Tucker and Kennedy so on and the rest of the, you know, anti-Ukrainian anti-American right. And it's fascinating. It's actually, you know, I watched it one and a quarter and then one and a half times speed. I think that's reasonable because Putin is speaking slowly. I actually recommend watching it to gain a little bit of understanding of Putin. Now, Putin is illusional and nuts and obviously lying and deceiving in terms of the concretes that he uses and his complaints. But if you want to understand what this war is about, the first 30 minutes Putin tells you what the war is about. And he starts, you know, 2000 years ago, basically, a little less. Putin, so Tucker's first question is, basically, why didn't you invade in 2022? Was it because of NATO, you saw NATO as a threat to you? And Putin says, really, no, no, no, no, no, let me tell you what this is really about. Let me teach you a little bit of history, right? Maybe 1200 years ago, I forget the starting date 654. 1654 is important, but the roots become Christians. I've got it written down somewhere here. The roots become Christians in the, when was it, 800? I think it's around 800 AD. But he starts before 800 AD. He starts before 800 AD, before they convert to Christianity. So it's more than 1200 years ago. It's maybe 1300, 1400 years ago. He starts with the creation of roots. Roots are the people that occupy the Ukrainian area. Kiev is their capital. And they convert to Christianity at 800 into Orthodox Christianity. But for Putin, basically, he talks about a thousand-year anniversary to statehood. He talks about the centers of gravity within the Russian world, the Rus' world. In ancient times, he talks about all the different peoples, all the different conflicts that evolved. He's really focused on dates. He really wants to make sure we get the dates and we get the sequences of things and we get names of people. And this is what animates him. This is what he's basically giving you, a history lesson in Russian history. Because for him, for Putin, and I've said this over and over and over again over the last two years. For Putin, the war in Ukraine is all about history. It's about reuniting the Russian people. It's about the Russian soul. It's about the motherland. It's about historical grievances that go back a thousand years. And who gave whom which piece of land and who does what land belongs to. At some point, he says, you know, there's a part of Ukraine that's really Hungarian. And it was given to Ukraine after World War II by Afghastalin, by the Soviets. And that guy asked him, have you told the obon that he should claim that part for Hungary? And Putin says, no, no, I haven't told the obon any of that. I haven't told him. But he says, but you know, they could. It could be part of Hungary. So for him, it's all about these ancient, you know, whose land is whose, whose ethnic group belongs where. And what I found interesting in all of this, what I found interesting in all of this, is you get a sense of who Putin seizes the enemy, at least from an historical perspective. And the enemy is not Ukraine. And the enemy is not the United States. The United States is too young. The United States is not a player. It's not the British, even though they fought a war with Russia in Crimea. It's not, it's not the Germans. What is really, really, really fascinating about it is that the real enemy that Putin sees when he looks west is Poland. Poland is the one that incorporated Ukrainian territory. Poland is the one that actually named Ukraine Ukraine. Ukraine means kind of the outskirts of a state. It means kind of the bad lands on the outskirts. And Ukraine was the outskirts of the Polish Lithuanian Empire. The Poles are the bad guy over and over and over again. It's the, you know, it's the Poles cooperated with the Nazis. So they're bad. The Poles then wouldn't fully cooperate with the Nazis. So, you know, the Germans, according to Putin, I showed this the other day, that segment of the interview. The Poles, the Nazis had no option but to invade. I mean, it's a pulse for the World War II started. And then in terms of why Stalin invaded Poland, that was just because, you know, that was just a kind of maintain, you know, maintain the peace in a sense. It wasn't an invasion. It was more taking land. It was historically Russian, you know, and the whole area was going to fall apart because of the Nazis. And plus it was to penalize the Poles for cooperating with the Nazis, even the Nazis invaded Poland. I mean, he has this unbelievably convoluted view of history, completely convoluted. So Putin takes history, nationalism, this idea of ethnicity, the ethnic Russians, and its importance. He takes that super seriously. He takes that super seriously. And if you use the Poles and historical enemy, because they seem to be always there to chop off a piece of Ukraine or chop off a piece of Russia. And Ukraine is just Russian territory. Suddenly everything east of the Naipa is clearly Russian. West of the Naipa, some of it's Hungarian, some of it might be something else. But clearly everything east of the Naipa, Naipa is the river that flows through Kiev, is Russian. So Putin's going through this half-hour history lesson. And Tucker's frustrated. Tucker doesn't know what to do with this. So he keeps pushing and he keeps trying to interject and he keeps trying to say, but NATO. And Putin basically keeps pushing enough. He really doesn't get to the NATO question until the very last few minutes of the interview, where Tucker is really now insisting. Where Tucker's really, really pushing him. And he says something about, yeah, NATO expansionism is really bad and they were asking for it. But everything else he talks about NATO expansionism is much more about how they promised about him being a victim, which we'll get to in a minute. Not about NATO expansionism being a threat to Russia. So I think it's, again, fascinating. If you want to get a sense of what motivates him, again, you have to read between the lines a little bit because he's not very emotional. He's a little flat. He tells it just flat. You don't really get the passion that's involved in his nationalism, but it's all there. It's all really, really, really there. Let me just see. So if you will, that is probably the number one thing to learn from this. And we're shocking. One of the things that's shocking is that Tucker found this surprising. But I have, you know, if you've read Putin's talks, Putin, I think I've talked to, I don't think I know I've talked about this, both in my talk at Ocon. And I also talked about this. I talked about this in one of the shows we did. Putin wrote an essay in, I think it was July of 2021. So I don't know, eight months before the war, maybe some of 2021. In which he basically examines why, you know, why war with Ukraine, why it's coming and what he thinks about Ukraine. And he lays this case out. He lays the historical case out. He talks about the Ukrainians and the Russians being the same people. He talks about a Russian soul and a Russian spirit and Ukraine sharing that with it. He talks about all of that. So if you've done and if you want to listen to his talks, particularly those talks targeted at Russia, this is what he talks about. He talks about this historical injustice that was committed by Lenin and Stalin, first of all, by creating this political entity called Ukraine under the Soviet Union. And then the great injustice that was created when the Soviet Union broke up and Ukraine became an independent country. These are the real grievances. But the grievances really go back to, again, old Rus in the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th centuries when then the Polish and Lithuanians. There was a Polish and Lithuanian empire that took pieces of Ukraine away from Russia. Putin constantly dismisses NATO expansion as a reason for what he did. And this, hopefully, I'm hoping that this will finally sink in and this will stop being kind of the rights excuse for what is going on. For what is going on. He's clearly motivated and has been about historical concerns. Now people who follow Putin, and this is just psychologically interesting. And I have no firsthand knowledge here. This is just me reading experts who follow Putin. They say he wasn't always like this. That history, he wasn't obsessed with history. That if you go back to the early 2000s, this didn't interest him at all. And he'd be much more worried about NATO expansion and things like that. That this whole history thing really came to the forefront in post-2012 when he became president again. And it was now a lot more paranoid and leading into the 2014 war in Ukraine. And that what it really took off, the whole historical thing, the whole idea of him being, I don't know, his whole grievance politics, grew dramatically during COVID that during COVID he isolated himself and he was truly isolated himself. You remember those long tables that he used to have meetings with, you know, so no germ could cross that divide. And during this period of isolation, he became more and more and more obsessed with this historical issue, with these historical grievances. So first, I think what you get from this is this emphasis on history. Now, that didn't surprise me. What surprised me was that this was the focus Putin put on it, that he's not playing games here, that he did not put a facade of propaganda onto it, that he actually stuck to it as is. Yeah, let me just know, I'm not reading the chat, too much going on on the chat, too much going on in my notes. And you know, I have to cover this topic. So if you want my attention, you want me to comment, you want me to respond, you're going to have to use the super chat because it's just, there's just too much going on for me. So use the super chat, $2 questions, whatever, comments, anything in the super chat actually read. You want to insult me, do it there because I'm not reading the chat itself. Sometimes I do, but today, it's just way too much. We've got 180 people watching. Hopefully, some of you will both support the show, choose to support the show through the super chat, which is what you do if you're live. Some of you should subscribe. If you're not subscribers yet, I hope you find this interesting enough to subscribe. Please subscribe. And then if you want to support the show monthly, there's Patreon and there's www.uranbookshow.com. membership where you can use PayPal to support the show. All right, let's go on. So the first point is history, he's obsessed and he seems sincere. Second point, clearly Putin feels like, I mean, if you think about it, there are three parts to the whole presentation. First part, history, 30 minutes, 30 minutes and he keeps going back to it. He self-references to it because that's the heart. That's the important thing. That's what matters to Putin. Second part is again about an hour. An hour. A Putin is the victim. Putin is aggrieved. He's insulted. He's snubbed by the West. He grew up Putin. They keep signing deals with him and walking away. They keep promising things, you know, and it doesn't matter what president, they all do it. Clinton did it to him. Bush did it to him. He's insulted for Russia. He's constantly slighted. And constantly they keep coming in, doing things. Why wasn't he invited to NATO? They promised him he would but then he wasn't. And missile defense. He wanted to be part of the missile defense scheme vis-a-vis Iran but they wouldn't let him in. And he's blaming everybody. He doesn't mention Obama but he goes after Bush. He goes after, you know, and he doesn't mention Trump early but he's basically saying it's everybody. And he really, every opportunity he's saying they walked away. It's the West walked away. He insists that in Istanbul in 2022, towards the end of 2022, there was a deal on, well, no, in the summer of 2020. There's a deal on a table. Everybody was willing to sign a peace deal. He was willing, he doesn't tell us what the deal included. The Ukrainians were willing, everybody was willing to sign a peace deal. And not as a gesture of peace, Putin tells us. And I don't know if he believes this or if he's lying to himself or this is just a blatant lie. But he says there's a gesture of peace. He withdrew Russian troops from Kiev and from north-western, north-eastern Ukraine. That was his gesture of peace. And then everybody was willing to sign and then Boris Johnson shows up and tells them, don't know, don't sign, keep on going, you can beat them. Hard to tell if he really believes this or not. But he is constantly committed to the idea that the West is constantly undermining him. The West is constantly lying to him, deceiving him. And it's him personally. It's almost all him personally. And he's like, he constantly gives you half of a secret conversation he had with Clinton or half of a conversation he had with Bush. But in Texas, what would Bush say? And he says, well, I can't say. I mean, confidentiality. Ultimately, you'd have to ask Bush. It's not fair for me to talk for Bush. I mean, he plays the diplomat here, right? I'm not going to say, you know, so why did Johnson suggest the Ukrainians walk away from the deal? He says, I don't know. You're going to have to ask Johnson. But so the second part of the whole thing is Putin is a victim. Poor Putin is just constantly screwed by the West. He wants peace. He wants to get along with the United States. He wants that he'd love to be part of NATO. He'd love to have a united missile defense system against Iran, his ally these days. He'd love to do all these things. And the West keeps buffing him. The West keeps turning him away. He is constantly moving forward with peaceful initiatives, trying to establish peace, and the West keeps blowing it. You know, when the Kosovo crisis happened in the late 1990s, Russia really wanted peace. But look, the Syrians are part of their blood. They're part of their people. They had to support the Syrians. And what does America do? It goes and bombs them. And you know, how can you, you know, Russia did its best. They're trying to negotiate something, but America always comes in and spoils it. But it's like the Russians, we're not that powerful. We're not that, you know, we'd like to work together. You don't want us to work together fine, but, you know, but we're constantly aggrieved. You guys are constantly screwing us. The third part of the talk is, you know, mistreating Russia hurts you. It's not good for you. If you keep mistreating Russia, bad things happen to you. I mean, people stop using the dollar, maybe. Energy costs in Europe go up significantly. You know, you're going to get in trouble with China. The bricks economies are growing. You know, mistreating China, Russia has consequences and it's not good for you. It's not good for you the West. You should really reconsider. You should be nice to us. And nice to Russia means, I think I understand it as he never says it, giving in to our demands, doing what we would like you to do. So he feels snubbed. And look, he feels snubbed by the other powers going back to 1654, right? Going back to the Polish-Lithuanian thing, going back to the Nazis, going back to post-World War II, even thinks, you know, Stalin just did a bad deal. So he, you know, Russia's being screwed. He's just trying to stand up a little bit for Russia. What did Putin not want to do or not do? Not do. I don't know if he thought about it, but what didn't he do? He didn't give Tucker the MAGA talking points. He just didn't. And in this sense, this interview is a complete failure for Tucker. Now, in a sense that he got, I don't know, 100 million views. It's a huge success for him. He's the biggest talk show host in the world. I mean, a number of times, Putin actually says to Tucker, are we going to have a real interview here or is this just a talk show? Like, I want a real interview. And Tucker laughs, but I want a real interview. And it's like, you know, let's go into depth. It's like, what Putin is almost saying to Tucker Carlson is, I wish you a Lex Friedman. I want a three-hour interview where we delve deep into the issues, cover history and philosophy and stuff like that. Stop trying to get me to say sound bites that appease your audience. I mean, it was humiliating for Tucker. I mean, really humiliating for Tucker. I mean, this should have been a Lex Friedman interview because given Putin's mood, it fit a Lex Friedman type interview because Putin just wanted to talk and talk. And he's not interested in sound bites. He's not interested in throwing meat to the American right. He's not interested in throwing meat to the European right. He doesn't really condemn the Europeans. He kind of says, look, I don't understand why Germany is doing what it's doing. I don't get it. He could have really gone after Germany cost of, I mean, he says their economy is floundering because of Ukraine, but he could have really leaned into that. He could have really leaned into that point. But it's just like a passing point. All in order to humiliate us, in a sense. All in order to, again, this is the grieved Putin. Putin is basically there to make a particular type of case. It's not the case Tucker wanted to hear. We didn't hear anything about cancer culture in the West. We didn't hear anything about gender ideology. And Tucker at some point asked, in a sense, I mean, I'm paraphrasing, isn't this all the Biden administration's fault? Wouldn't things be a lot better if we had a change of administration? And Putin says, no, no. All American presidents are the same. They've all been the same. They've all treated us the same. Nothing special about this administration. And you can see Tucker's face just drops because he's not, he's not getting what he wants. He's so frustrated. Now, I mean, the 2022 negotiations for peace deal keeps coming back, because Tucker, I think, thinks that's a way to find a way to blame the West for everything that's happened, because that's his agenda. This war is the West's fault. It's not Russia's fault. And Putin keeps repeating himself, but it doesn't come across as, yes, this is the West's fault. It comes across as, oh, at some point, Tucker says, he says this at least twice, maybe three times. He says, do you think Zelensky is allowed to negotiate with you? In other words, do you think the Americans and Europeans will allow Zelensky to negotiate with you? Again, Tucker wants Putin to say, no, it's the West's fault and the West. Americans and Europeans won't let Zelensky talk to us. He's just a puppet of the West. And Tucker says, no, Zelensky is the leader of Ukraine. He can negotiate if he wants. He's chosen not to. I don't understand why, but he's chosen not to. Putin keeps saying, look, we can get out of this. We can figure this out if only everybody's reasonable, if only everybody sees our point of view. But there's no, again, he's not doing what Tucker wants him to do. He's not out there blaming the West, blaming NATO constantly, constantly throughout the interview. Tries, as I've illustrated a few times, tries to bring up, tries to get everything to fit into his own worldview. Tries to get these pro-right wing, you know, views, points of view across. So he pushes NATO expansion over and over and over again. Who runs the whole thing? He's trying to get, he asks Putin at some point, who actually, who do you think makes the decisions in the United States? Trying to get him to say something about the elites, right? Trying to say something about the anti-Russian elites or trying to say something about the decadent, you know, decadent left or anything like that. And Putin says, I don't know who runs the United States. There's the Democrats and there's the Republicans. They run the United States, you know, there are people, there are different forces behind them. But you know, you'll have to ask the Americans who runs the United States. I mean, stunning, stunning in terms of Putin's unwillingness to engage in what Tucker wants him to engage in. It turns out surprising to me at least, and I think ultimately surprising to Tucker, is that Putin says the same thing to Tucker as he does to the Russian people. And Tucker thought that he would get him to say stuff to Americans that would be consistent with Tucker's view, interpretation of the world. And he didn't. And in that sense, this interview is useless in terms of the new rights attempts to really push this pro-Russia anti-West agenda because Putin refused to be anti-West. I mean, he hints here and there. Yeah, America has a large deficit. America's economy is fading. Not according to me, Putin says. American economists are saying this. China's economy is growing. He's big on China. But not with any kind of vitriol, not with any kind of passion, not with any kind of, he's not blaming Biden. He's not blaming the left. I mean, Jordan Peterson must be unbelievably disappointed in this interview. This isn't, this isn't the Putin, Jordan or Tucker or any of these people on the right expected or wanted. He had an historical opportunity here to really solidify their position about Russia and he refused to do it. One more question. Let me just find my note on this. One more question that Tucker asked that I thought was also really interesting. Let me just find this. I don't know if we can find it. We'll see. Yeah, I mean, I've got here. No, Tucker tries to get Putin to attack Biden. Putin says it's not about who is leader. It's about the elites and then Tucker tries to get him to name the elites and he says, I don't know who they are. Tucker says, who makes the decision in the United States? What are the power centers? And you know, Putin says, I don't know. It's a complex country. Who knows? Tucker then at an hour and 35 minutes in says, you know, he's trying to get Putin to say it was a Biden administration that provoked the war. And Putin doesn't, but it doesn't say it. He keeps it turning to men's skin. He keeps it turning to the history and he keeps it turning to the Nazis. Oh, the other big thing Putin keeps talking about. And you got to think maybe this is truly something in his mind that he really thinks this, but it's bizarre. He constantly in the second half constantly talks about the denazification of Ukraine. Ukraine is being run and is overrun by neo-nazis and nationalists. Neo-nazis are threat to Russia, but really a threat to the United States as well. So the US should fight them as well. And it's all about neo-nazis. We got to take the territory back from neo-nazis. You know, it's on and on and on and on about Nazis. I mean, God, where are these? I mean, yeah, I know there's some neo-nazis in Ukraine, the neo-nazis in America too, the neo-nazis everywhere. But neo-nazis are running Ukraine. And the interesting thing is as you listen to Putin, he's basically equivocating between nationalists, Ukrainian nationalists, and Nazis. If you're an Ukrainian nationalist, you are a Nazi, which is interesting in and of itself. He also throws in there, the US will always support those who antagonize Russia and so on. But let me find this other, oh yeah. So, Taka, again, is trying to establish right-wing talking points. This certainly is a Jordan Peterson talking point. Jordan Peterson has talked about this quite a bit over the last few years about Putin being a Christian, about religion being really, really, really important for Putin. And this is suggestive to Jordan Peterson that Putin must be a good guy and is virtuous and is better in some fundamental sense than Western leaders. So, Taka asked him, he says, what does it mean that you are a Christian leader? And Putin kind of looks surprised and bewildered. And he goes back and he starts talking about the Rus' being baptized in 800 and how religion is deeply rooted in the Russian people. But he says, oh, we're very respectful of other religions, particularly Islam, because we have many Islamic minorities. And really what Russia is about is the motherland and family and we're very, very respectful of family. This could have been an opportunity for him to attack the West around gays and stuff like that, which he's done in the past. We didn't. Patriotism is very strong. Not saying anything about his own beliefs in Christianity. He talks about the soul and the spirit, but nothing of that. And so Taka is trying to push this, right? Taka is not getting what he wants. This is super frustrating. So Taka says, in the way things are going on in the world right now, do you see God at work? Literally, this is a question Taka asks Putin. Do you see in the things going on in the world right now, do you see God at work? And yet you could have expected Putin to say, yes, it's a devil infecting the Europeans and infecting the Americans. And he says, no, I don't think so. I mean, I have to admit that listening to this interview, like on five different occasions, I started laughing aloud. Taka was so blatantly after a particular narrow agenda, Putin was so blatantly not giving it to him. And it was funny. I mean, you should have seen what Taka do when the guy says, no, I don't think so. And then he goes into another discussion of history. He starts giving him a history lesson about the history of Russia. God is not at work here. If you want to find it one hour, 47 minutes in the interview, do you see God at work? I mean, the only part Taka pushed back on, because Putin said a lot of things are just untrue, but the only part that Taka pushed back on. And there were lots of things that you could have asked Putin, what was in the peace agreement? Were you willing to withdraw your troops from Ukraine? What kind of peace do you want? There are lots of things you could have asked. But the only thing Taka really pushed was on the Wall Street Journalist. Where Taka's saying, look, he's not a spy. Everybody knows he's not a spy. And Putin's like, look, we caught him red-handed with classified information. And Taka's going, yeah, but he's not a spy. He's a 32-year-old kid, really? 32? Isn't that kind of the age of spies? Isn't that the age in which you become a spy? Or you maybe peak age of a spy? You have to be physically fit anyway and mentally into that. And Taka comes across as just dumb and stupid. And Putin and Taka says, are you willing as a gesture right now to release him and we can take him home? Right? So Taka wants the prestige of bringing the journalist home. And Putin says, nope. CIA and basically the equivalent of KGB, they're negotiating. They'll figure out a case. And then he goes into this whole story about this guy who's in jail in Europe and who shouldn't be in jail and he needs to return to Russia, clear an exchange. And he says, look, there's going to be an exchange. This kid's not going to be in Russia forever. We don't really want him. But we're going to have to exchange. I'm not just going to give him to you. You've got to be kidding me. And then finally, finally, Taka at the very end, you know, he gets Putin to say something about, I don't know, NATO, you know, NATO bad or something. And then to end the interview, Taka says, you want to settle negotiations, right? You want a negotiated peace with Ukraine. And Putin says, basically, yeah, I mean, look, a lot of those Ukrainians think of themselves as Russian and they want to be united, reunited with Russia. And they will be reunited with Russia. We're going to bring together our souls. And he says, bring together our souls. This is the negotiated end. And he says, let's stop here. All I say is thank you. Thank you, Taka, for doing this interview. This interview basically has vindicated everything I've been saying about the war since this beginning. I said since the beginning, it's not about NATO. I said since the beginning, this is about history. I said since the beginning, this is about this spiritual, soul, mystical BS about Russian ethnicity. I've said since the beginning that this is not the West's or U.S.'s fault and that Putin is a nut. That he believes, I think he really believes these lies. He is, he's psychologically damaged. He really thinks that he is aggrieved and the West is out to get him on a personal level, not on a grand level. That American politicians are lies. He's this honest, beautiful, amazing person. And everybody just lies to him. Everybody just deceives him. Everybody's just nasty to him. I don't know if he believes that, but I think he does. I think that's how he keeps himself together. And thank you, Taka, for showing the world that this is what he really is. Now, you could have done a better job of showing this by pushing him a little bit, by getting to be a little bit more explicit. By asking more probing questions. By going with it rather than trying constantly to go back to your agenda. An agenda that has nothing to do with the truth. An agenda that has nothing to do with facts. An agenda that has everything to do with a kind of a new right. Talking points. And in that sense, I thought Taka was an awful interviewer. I mean, he didn't interrupt as much. He interrupted quite a bit, but he didn't interrupt anyways as much. But Taka let him talk for the most part. But yeah, it was truly, truly fascinating. And I still think it's a mistake to do this interview, but I guess I'm glad he did it because I learned something. And it confirmed my particular beliefs, which is always good, right? When I tell you something and then you get third-party confirmation that Iran is not full of it. He actually knows what he's talking about. That's good. All right. That is my review of the Taka-Putin interview. I hope you got something out of it. I could have shown clips, but it's a two-hour interview. And just figuring out the clips and editing them and everything, too much work. I figured I'd just explain it. Anybody who wants to go see it can see it. I think it's worth seeing if only to see how pathetic Taka is. And you know how much I enjoy Taka being pathetic. It gives me a thrill when I see it. I also thought his opening where he says, I didn't expect him to talk about history, shows how ignorant Taka is. And it shows how little research he did before this big interview. The biggest interview maybe of his career, and he doesn't do the research. He doesn't do the research. He should have been able to pivot to the history immediately because he should have done the research and realized that this is what Putin really cares about. All right. If you liked what I did, if you liked what I do, then please consider supporting the show. Please consider making a contribution monthly through Patreon or yourunbrookshow.com slash membership. Or like John Parker just did with a membership in Apollo Zeus. Well, not a membership, a sticker, a super chat sticker. We've got 200, well over 200 people watching right now. So it's a great opportunity, yielded the same thing. And I think if I remember right, Jonathan Honing started us off with some stickers. So please consider a sticker even if it's $2 or $5, $10, $100, $500, you can go up to $500. Please consider doing that. I don't think you'll find this kind of analysis. I mean, no, there are other analysts that have seen the same thing. But you don't have to say I've been consistent for the last two and a half years, which is always nice to find out that you're not completely nuts yourself. That's always good. Doing this day in, day out, it's hard sometimes to get objective calibration. This interview gave me that, that's good. So please consider supporting the show. I don't think you'll find many people doing this kind of analysis, going in depth, both on Tucker and Putin and their motivations. I think this could be a real important point where at least a lot of what the new rights arguments will be shown to be empty and just wrong. By the way, Dave Smith, Dave Smith of the libertarian party in his profile now has, Tucker is a hero because he went to interview Putin. So Putin now it turns out stunningly is a libertarian hero. Putin is a libertarian hero as is Tucker. I mean that's how completely corrupt and completely bankrupt the libertarian party is and how absolutely, you know, what is a better word than corrupt? Pathetic Dave Smith has become. You know, Putin is the good guy. Putin and, and, and Tucker, this is what libertarianism strives towards. You remember libertarianism supposedly is for liberty. Putin is anti-liberty. Tucker is anti-liberty in almost everything both of them believe in. But the libertarian party is no longer about liberty. There are no longer about freedom. They're anti-America, anti-American, and they're anti-left. And they are disgusting and really disgusting. Troy, thank you Troy. Troy just came in with the 500 Australian dollars. Really, really, really appreciate that. Appreciate the support that you give every month and the support you give here on the Super Chat. Troy does both Super Chat and monthly support and is a crucial part of making this show possible. Basically this show exists because of people like Troy and of course, and people like Michael who, who before the show even started had two, four, six, eight, ten, I think 11 questions. Before it even started and put down more than a hundred dollars towards them. Thank you to all of you who support the show. It couldn't happen without you. Thank you, Darlene. Thank you, P. Eddie and, and, and so on. I will, we will get to the questions in a minute. I'm sure Dave Smith makes some good points and then, but he's, he's despicable and awful and horrible on many, many, many points. So he's a, he's a mixed bag, but the essential characteristic of that mixed bag is anti-liberty, anti-freedom. That is the fundamental. All right. So again, you can ask questions and I'll answer. You've got over 200 people watching ask anything about anything about any topic you want. I'm going to scan these questions right now to just see if there are any on this particular issue. And if not, we'll just go back to a general Q&A with, with everything. And as usual, I'll start with the people who put the most money in and then go from there. And Mekat says, comment, Taka, you invaded Ukraine because you were afraid of NATO, right? Putin. Honestly, I did it to compensate for my small, and Mekat really, really, that's cheap and low. Not nice. All right. Danielle, 50 bucks. Thank you. Enric, thank you. Thank you guys for the stickers. That's amazing. Let's see. Anything else on Taka Putin? I forgot. All right. Bolton. And Neil Kahn says, Bolton, John Bolton called Taka a dilettante. Putin made him look like a fool. No kidding. If Trump would be president, Putin would play him like a fiddle, just as Bolton said. I agree completely. I agree completely. Another reason not to vote for Trump, because Putin will. Taka says, Ryan says, Taka, this lack of journalistic depth is obvious because he does nothing to study Putin's psychology. Pretty sad, but on the level of his audience, sadly, that is true. Seth says, think it's Western nihilism that blinds them to the stated motives of people like Putin, that they're cynical and can't believe that they believe what they say. I think everything is, they think everything is political. Yes. I mean, there's certainly, there's a Western naivete, in essence, a cynicism that people don't have principles, don't believe in principles, don't fight for principles. Can't imagine that history would be important, that is inconceivable to them that history could play a role in something like a war. And I think that's absolutely right. It's Western nihilism. It's like, well, it's more cynicism, skepticism. It's like, oh, come on. Nobody believes in that, which I think leaves the West vulnerable to the ideologues of evil, because the West will leave an evil. Let's see. Ein Mikat says, don't forget about Khamenei Taka privately said he knows how awful Trump is, and that Biden lost his, lost the election. I know he said that in private. They are texting emails to that effect that were brought into court. And then Ein Mikat continues, the worst kind of pragmatist, nothing furthermore. I think Gaza must be destroyed. We know that. Ein Mikat, but yes. I mean, it's, you know, I've said what I think of Taka. I mean, he's awful. And yes, he did not believe the election was stolen from Trump yet. He played along with that story and continues to play that story and will continue to play it. So even though in private emails, you know, over and over again after the election, he expresses the fact that he believes Biden won the election. And again, those were all brought out in discovery in the court case against Fox. Biden can is counting on the American people's stupidity, the American people's ignorance. And there are millions and millions of people who fawn over Taka who follow Taka, who accept everything that Taka says because of that ignorance and stupidity. And so Taka by playing to that has become a gazillion. It has become a multimillion. It has become the most successful talk show host in America today by playing to the stupidity and ignorance. And that's what it takes to be successful in America today, sadly, in the media world. Vadim, thank you. $300. Wow. Hi, Iran. Your talk in the show about moral judgment was amazing. Wow. Thank you. The first minutes resonated so much with me. The first minutes where I talked about it's a survival thing. If you don't judge people, you're the one who gets hurt. If you don't judge and move away from people who are going to hurt you, who are bad or evil, if you embrace people who are going to hurt you, you will get hurt. No question. And when you take good people and you push them away from you because you're not judging them to be good and embracing them, then you do yourself damage because you're not benefiting from the goodness of the people that you could be surrounded with. He says this is particularly with the family. Absolutely. He says this was the fuel I needed to keep me going. Thank you. Vadim, thank you. Thank you for saying that. You know, I've said this before, but you guys need to remind me of this, I guess, and Vadim just did. I often think, you know, I've said this stuff about family and about justice. Why do I need to say it again? I've got whole shows about it. If you go back to my rules for life, it plays a big role in there. Years ago, I did a thing on justice where I talked about this. I think actually, you know, I think actually Troy, sponsored a whole series on the objectives, virtues. And this is, God, I don't know when this is. It's a while back. It's a few years ago. And I did, on every virtue, I did a show and one of them was justice. And I talked about, and I think, okay, I've done that. I don't want to listen. Do it again. Not realizing that you guys don't listen to everything I say. I created so much content. There's no way anybody could listen to literally everything I've said, although there might be a few of you out there. And that's one, which is an important point that I need to remember. And the second point that I need to remember is repetition is really, really important. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. So you'll hear me talking a lot more about justice, a lot more about family, a lot more about your own rules for life, a lot more about how to make your life the best life that it can be and how to orient your whole thinking and your orientation towards that and what it means and what it takes. Even though I've said it all before, I'm going to say it over and over and over again. I was talking to my wife yesterday and I said, yeah, I'm going to do this, I figure at least until I'm 75. So we've got 13 more years of you listening to me repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. And saying a lot of new things as well, applying to new applications. But we're going to keep pounding away at this idea of be egoistic, be selfish, be selfish with your time, be selfish with your relationships, be selfish with your attitude towards yourself, be selfish with the attitude towards other people, be selfish, not the selfishness of the caricature, but the selfishness of a rational being, pursuing their own rational long-term happiness, well-being, flourishing success at living. That is the most important thing I want to convey on my shows and I know we talk a lot about politics and stuff like that, but even there I'm hoping you take it from the perspective of all these people are bad people because they're hurting my selfish ability to live my life as I see fit, as I see fit. All right. Thank you, Matt. Matt says, analyzing current events is super helpful as well. Your response to October 7th taught me so much in a condensed time. I appreciate that, Matt. And yes, I continue to do current events and will continue to do so. And I think partially think of the way I approach current events as from the perspective of somebody who is selfish, somebody who wants to live in a world of freedom, free of violence, free of evil, in a world where rights are respected and a world of where we live with liberty. And you can only view that in the context... That's the only way I can approach current events. I approach it from that perspective, from the perspective of self-interest. People who don't want to be self-interested to hell with them, they can go what? I don't care. Chef TV says... And I know this is a super chat, but it is interesting. Where's the line between treating October 7th attack as war instead of a crime? The line is pretty easy. October 7th was committed by the government of Gaza. It was committed by the governing authority of Gaza, which was Hamas. And therefore it's an act of war. And it was committed by not just a random group of criminals, it was committed by a regime, a governing regime. All right, I'm abandoning the chat because we've got tons of super chat and we've got to cover the super chat. By the way, we're really close to $1,000 raised. That would be nice if we get to $1,000. So think about if you could ask a $15 question and we can get there. Michael says, did Kant make evil cool among the youth? That's why all the disgusting anti-Israel voices are dominant on social media. No, I mean, you know, I don't think you can think about the connection between ideas and people's actions in that kind of way. I don't know that anybody thinks Kant is cool. And I don't think anybody, you know, what Kant made cool, if you will. He didn't make it cool. What Kant instituted into our culture is one altruism that certainly in the anti-Israel, in the whole walk, in the phenomena out there, this altruism is behind intersectionality and really everything, you know, in the modern world. So in a sense, he made altruism cool among those who are not religious. Christianity, of course, is the origin of a serious approach to altruism. And he made reason uncool. You know, he dismissed the connection between our mind and reality. Real reason, not his version of reason. And by doing that, he opened it up to pretty much anything, any argument, any conviction, anything that people want to advocate for, they can't. So Kant is certainly ultimately the ultimate source of the nihilism expressed by our students today. But not a direct link. It goes through many iterations. You can't get today without it going through, if you will, Hegel and some Marx and the postmodernists and then their interpretation and the postcolonialists, all the people who come after that and do the things that they do. It's very difficult also to communicate Kant, you know, this. You have to write a whole book to show the connection, which is what, for example, Lenin Peacock did in the ominous parallels to take Kant nihilists, Kant Nazis. But he had to show it in a whole book. You can't just do it without all of that. Rousseau is important, but Rousseau is not important enough because Kant is the system builder. Kant is a real philosophy, builds old philosophy. Rousseau is anticipating certain elements and certainly the modern left and even some of the modern right. And, you know, latches onto certain formulations and certain ways in which Rousseau was thinking about it. But even that, that embrace is made, I think, possible ultimately by Kant. All right. Having that little sculpture that bugs me, so. Let me try it over here. Let me move this over here. All right. We're redecorating as we speak. I think that's better. I don't know. You guys tell me. I think that's better. All right. Let's see. Michael, another Michael. Jason Ryan seemed to think MAGA phenomena is a white Christian nationalist pre-Nazi movement. Whether the left are largely benign, whereas the left are largely benign mixed economy welfare status. Do you agree with that formulation? You know, I don't. I wouldn't have a formulated that way. And I don't think Jason would think that kind of some of the crazy left are just benign mixed economy welfare state. I think he completely recognizes the nuttiness of, I don't know, the true crazies, for example, on campus. So I don't think he would acknowledge that. I agree that most of the left is pretty benign mixed economy welfare people. I think that's probably true. I do think that MAGA is a pre-authoritarian nationalist conservative national Christian movement. I do think that. I don't like throwing around the label Nazi. I don't think it's helpful. Putin does it. Other people do it. I don't like it anymore than I like throwing around the label communist. So I wouldn't call them Nazis or pre-Nazi, but I do think they're pre-religious nationalists, which is, if you've read the De My Path to Buy, Leonard Peacock, which is the, what do you call it? Which is the M2 that Leonard warns us against. Christian nationalists is the thing that we should be scared of. It's what the Speaker of the House is. It's what Donald Trump doesn't believe in, but is a cultivator of. It is what JD Vance and Josh Hawley is a committed JD Vance has turned himself into. It is a real ideology and it is very, very scary. And it is what MAGA is setting the ground towards. That is what Trump makes possible. He is the vehicle. He is not there. He doesn't have any ideas. He's empty. He's the vehicle by which these really, really horrible ideas are dominating already the Republican Party and could become the governing ideology of this country. That's scary. Andrew, you've spoken of this before, but I think it's an important cultural psychological phenomenon. So I appreciate you repeating yourself. Why doesn't you right choose to rationalize away Putin's moral viciousness? Because I think they view it fundamentally as he is fighting for good cause. He's fighting for a Christian cause. And what primarily defines his good cause is that he's fighting the real evil in the world. And the real evil in the world is the left. The real evil in the world is liberalism. The real evil of the world is, I don't know, western countries that allow gay marriage and allow transsexuals and have democracies and have free trade around the world, thus depleting their own working classes. And you know, you can, on and on and on, you go, right? So that is the real enemy. The real enemy is woke. The real enemy is anti-colonialism. The real enemy is the left. And since Putin is fighting the left and stands up in many of his speeches, not in his interview with Tucker, but in many of his speeches, stands up for Christian values. He didn't mention family, motherland, patriotism. In some of his speeches, God and the church, family again. Because he stands up for those, he must be a good guy. And he reflects their values. And this is exactly what Jordan Peterson says. So if you want to understand the rights perspective, read, he both did a video and he wrote it up as an article. Read or watch, Jordan Peterson has to say about the war from about a year and a half ago or something. I did a show on it so you can watch that. He thinks Putin is trying to save the West because his conception of the West is Christian nationalism. And Putin is a Christian nationalist. And he's fighting Western Europe and the Biden administration who are not Christian nationalists. The antithesis, secularists, and internationalists, what is it, globalists? I mean, Putin is anti-globalists. He must be good. Globalism is the evil of our day. Europe is woke. Therefore, Europe is evil. Therefore, if Putin is fighting Europe, Putin must be good. That is the rationale. That is the supposed logic. And they buy into that. And it serves their purpose. Peter, thank you, Peter. I think the split between the Bundes-Sauer Wagenknecht Party, these are German political parties, and the old Left Party represents the fight between traditional Marxist leftists who have never been pro-immigration and nihilist woke Leftist thoughts. I think that's probably true. I mean, the Marxist Left is torn around immigration, right? Because on the one hand, Marxism is not a nationalist movement. Marxism, it's the international. It's an international movement. It's workers of the world unite, not workers of Germany unite, workers of the world unite. And in that sense, the true old Marxist Left would have been pro-immigration because they're pro-immigration of workers to join the workers and all of that. But then they're confronted by economic realities. And the economic reality is that the workers don't want immigrants competing for their jobs. So they give up on the internationalist aspect of Marxism to embrace a nationalist anti-immigration perspective on immigration in the name of the unions and the workers and so on. And I think that's right. So I think she, this Seva Wagenknacht, whatever, represents that old Marxist view of no immigration. We're going to stick to union. We're going to help the unions. We are big on the working class, and we're big on taxing the rich, but we're nationalists. We believe in a German nation, whereas the new Left is much more internationalist, pro-immigration, and much more woke. And in woke, you know, it's less about class and more about ethnicity, religion, race and things like that. So yes, I think that's a really good observation, Peter. Jennifer says, you are not full of what you are. No, I'm not. It turns out I'm not. Thank you, Jennifer. I think we always knew that, but it's always good to get reinforcement, to get to it, to get, you know, reality to play out the way you expect it to. Oivind, so many on the right are willing to forsake everything Americanism, and Americanism stands for. They see the USA and its leader, Russia and its leader forgetting every other building block and thus bowing to the authoritarian. No self-esteem. Well, yes, absolutely. But this is the point, which is, I think, really, really important. To have self-esteem, you have to have a self. That is, you have to know who you are. And the problem with the right and the problem generally with America today is America doesn't know who it is. When they say, make American great again, what is America? In other words, what does America stand for? What does America represent? Is America some kind of cohesive unity of something? If it is a unity of something, what is that something? They don't know. So they can't have self-esteem because they don't have a self. When Trump says, America first, I'm America first, absolutely America first, I knew I was America first. But to say America first, you have to know what America is. You have to know what it stands for. And otherwise, it's an empty slogan, and you cannot have self-esteem. And when you don't have self-esteem, authoritarianism is attractive. Putin is strong. He's masculine. He's courageous. He likes family. He's a God-fearing man. And he's tough. Nobody wants to mess with Putin. Biden is this old discrepid. So you know Putin's a good guy. Biden's a bad guy. That's it. Simple. You can't hold Putin's a really, really evil guy. Biden's a bad guy. And the American system is good. And what we need is an American president representing that system. You can't hold that. Yeah. So absolutely right. And it all comes from a lack of self-esteem. And that comes to logic then from a lack of self-knowledge. People have a full self-esteem of, I'm an American. I'm proud to be an American. What does that even mean? What does it mean to be proud of your birthplace? It means nothing. It's empty. Unless I'm proud of the fact that I've embraced the ideas that made this country great. I'm proud to be an American because the ideas of America are my ideas. But I know what those ideas are. And I know what makes them good. Let me remind you. Tomorrow there's a members-only show. Members-only show. It's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be about Weston's movies. It'll be probably a two o'clock, either one or two o'clock Eastern time. It'll be about Weston movies. I encourage you to come to the show and bring your top five. And let's discuss them. And it'll be a conversation with the chat. I'll tell you why I think Weston's are the, in a sense, American art form at least in movies. And what makes Weston so important and so great. Why we don't really have Westons anymore and why the Weston died in the 1950s. And why almost no Weston since then has really been a Weston in the proper sense of what it was back then. So bring your thoughts about that. And so if you're not a member yet, you can easily become a member. There's a button at the bottom of the thing to become a member of the Iran book show. And you too can participate tomorrow just by five bucks just to becoming a member. So please consider doing that. I hope a lot of you show up because it's, again, I think it's a fun topic. It's an important topic. I see Blazing Saddles already. Somebody's, but thought Colonel's not a member. So thought Colonel, you have to become a member so you can come and tell us why Blazing Saddles is so important to you. I think Blazing Saddles, of course, is an anti-Weston, but what makes it such? Let's have that conversation. But for that, you guys have to come over and become members, become members. Sign up. All right, I'm Mirka. 300 Israeli Shekel. That's pretty amazing. All right. He says, the way I was taught stakeholder capitalist theory was that while the stakeholders are the master stakeholders, the company needs to care about stakeholders for its own well-being. IE, Amazon makes delivery faster and cheap so I remain a customer. Is it still bad? Well, it depends what you mean about master and non-master. I mean, my view is that the purpose of the corporation is to maximize shareholder wealth. And you can say morally or ethically, maximize shareholder wealth, whatever. And then, so the purpose of the company is that, and now in order to do that, in order to maximize shareholder wealth, yeah, you got to keep your customers happy. But some businesses, maybe not too happy. Like it used to be in the old days. When you went to Nordstrom, Nordstrom is a big department store in the U.S., you would have like a personal concierge and they would come and they'd be your personal buyer, shop buyer. They would know what kind of clothes you liked and everything. And it was super customized, super personal. And Nordstrom was expensive. So here customer service was amazing. Walmart, customer service is not so great. But Walmart runs in a different business model. Both maximizing shareholder wealth. One's treat customers like lords because that's their business model. The other treats customers okay because that's their business model. Both the stakeholders, how they're treated depends on the impact that treatment, the cost of that treatment has on the bottom line. If you're going to maximize shareholder wealth, you have to treat your suppliers, you have to treat your bondholders, you have to treat your community. Well, because if you don't, you're going to be screwed. But what well means is going to depend on your particular business model and going to depend on the impact any particular thing has on the bottom line or shareholder wealth at the end of the day. So that's how I think about it. You can watch my debate with the founder of Whole Foods, John Mackie. You can find my debate with John Mackie about that. But I've also spoken about it in the past. You can probably find some of these shows that I did on that. So yeah, everybody's a stakeholder. But those stakeholders are treated in the context of shareholder wealth maximization. That is the objective function at the end of the day. Just like if I say I'm selfish, does that mean I beat my wife? No. It doesn't mean I treat my wife horribly because part of my happiness is going to depend on her being happy. So does it mean I go around and treat people like horribly? No, because I gain value from people. So I'm going to treat them decently because I gain value from it. All right, we've got a new member, pickaxing on Europe. I think that's the name of the new member. So we've got one more new member. But how about we get like 20, 30, 50 new members for the Western show tomorrow? That would be fun. Thank you, I am Mirkat. A lot more to say about that. Maybe we can do a whole show about it sometime. Andrew, Tulsi Gabbard often blames profit as the cause for problems. No kidding. That is those who profit from illegal immigrants for illegal immigration. What ideas lead to a person who seems to value freedom in some areas being anti-profit? Well, I think it's a mistake to view Tulsi Gabbard as believing in freedom in any realm. I don't think she is. I think she's an enemy of freedom through and through. She's also an emotionalist and I just don't think she's a rational defender of any aspect of our liberties. But what leads people to reject profit is self-interest. What does profit stand in for? Self-interest. I mean, Marx understood this and he writes about this. And again, I think the most interesting of Marx's essays is an essay he wrote on the Jewish question, which is a huge anti-Semitic rant, but it's really, really revealing. And he talks there about profit, capitalism, and that the essence of it all is self-interest. And that self-interest is evil. So if I benefit from something, I'm being self-interested and that clearly is wrong and bad and evil. Yeah, so that is, I think, the origin generally of a rejection of profit. It's self-interested. How dare you? It's also based on the whole Marxist idea that the people who profit versus just get a wage are exploiting those who get wages. So you've made the manager, the CEO, the capitalist an exploiter, and that's just a question of who do I exploit? And there's a whole section of who one would exploit. Marx did not consider himself Jewish. Marx converted, I think, I can't remember if it's family converted or he converted, he's very young. But Marx did not consider himself Jewish. If you go by Hitler's standard, he was Jewish, but if you go by the standard of what he chose, he was not Jewish. He rejected Judaism and he wrote, you should read, on the Jewish question. It's free online at Marx.org. It's a fascinating, fascinating essay. And by the way, Jews can be super anti-Semites. Self-hatred is a well-known phenomenon among Jews and among people generally. Scott says, Denzel Washington has stated to play in the remake, of course, so is high and low. What do you think of this? I think it's excellent. I mean, Denzel is a brilliant actor, one of the best actors, again, of his generation, maybe the best. He's old enough now to play that role. I assume the role of the businessman. And it could be fascinating. My bigger concern is that it deviate from Korsawa in that it could easily become much more Marxist, high and low. And so it depends who makes the movie, what the script is, who the director is, and whether they stick to the themes and the messages of the original movie, which have this amazing integrity and give the businessman this amazing integrity, or whether they bring in a modern kind of Marxist awoke or whatever leftist interpretation of it. That'll be the real issue. Denzel Washington as an actor, brilliant. But I don't know how the movie's going to be made. All right, going back to Michael's many questions, we're going to go down them now. It's hard to believe there are 8 billion people out on the planet, maybe 50 to 100,000 objectivists, who actually know the truth, the rest are still stuck in the missing link. Well, they may be not stuck in the missing link, but they don't know the whole truth. They haven't been exposed to it or they've chosen to reject it. I wouldn't say everybody's in the missing link. People achieve amazing things. Ooh, Spike Lee is going to make the remake. Then it's going to be horrible. It's going to be horrible. So it's part of believe, and it's super sad. But we keep shipping away at the number. We keep getting more people. We keep working at it, and we'll keep attracting more people to outside. At the end of the day, you don't need massive numbers. You need critical mass, and you need particularly critical mass among intellectuals in order to get to where you want to go, in order to change the world. But you don't need everybody, and you don't even need a majority. Yeah, the Western show tomorrow is for members on YouTube, not members on any other platform, members on YouTube. So a lot of you I know are members of two different platforms. I appreciate that. But yes, you can just come and remember the lowest rate on YouTube. It's like five bucks, I think. And it's like membership on both. So if you want to attend tomorrow's show on Weston's, you have to become a member on YouTube, even if you're a member on Patreon, a Subscribestar, or PayPal. Michael, Trump is like a Bible. People interpret him any way they want. I don't know. I think people interpret him pretty consistently. I don't think, you know, there are no left, you know, rabbits left us. There's no work. So I think that's an exaggeration. I think Trump is malibu. He's a pragmatist. He doesn't believe in anything. But the people who support him have a particular view. And for the most part, he accommodates them, not the other way around. Michael says, doesn't a scarcity mindset ruin your life? People who are so cheap, they look at prices on each item, each menu item rather than get excited about the food. Yeah, I mean, I think a scarcity mindset is a really bad mindset. It's a mindset that drives people to environmentalism. It's a mindset that drives people to be anti-human being. It's a mindset that I think the biggest threat is that it really makes people, it drives people to be anti-other people. Because if it's a zero sum world, other people are threat to you. Other people are taking resources from you. Other people are using resources you could use. So definitely a scarcity mindset is horrible. It's all zero sum and it places you in a position of fear and a position of resentment and envy of other people. Michael, what's the best work of Aristotle you could recommend? Which of Aristotle's work was Rand's favorite? I do not know. I mean, I would say the Nicomachean Ethics, but I'm not an expert. Nicomachean Ethics certainly, what I would recommend, I'm not sure what Iron Man's favorite was. I don't know. Millet got emotional and went to the Western Wall with the rabbi you debated. Can you reach out to the rabbi, Simon Jacobson? Maybe he can get you in touch with Millet when you're in Argentina. I'm trying to get in touch with Millet. Maybe there is a chance. He might even come to the conference and say a few words. We'll see. There's a chance we'll get a meeting with him. We'll see. I don't think the rabbi is the best way to get through to Millet. I think there are other ways. I'm not even sure. I know how to get through to the rabbi. Somebody else put me in touch with them. There was another relationship. Actually, maybe he could get me in touch with Millet. That guy is really well connected. I'm trying different avenues to get to Millet. I don't know if Millet's converted to Judaism, but he's obviously got a fascination with Judaism. And he's very connected somehow to Judaism. I don't get it, but there you have it. Michael, how did altruism resurrect mysticism? Does mysticism cause prior to altruism? I think mysticism probably does come prior to altruism. I think mysticism or altruism to a large extent relies on mysticism to a large extent. And to try and hold altruism without mysticism is very difficult. Because what is the source? So if I ask you, why should I sacrifice? What is your answer? And the simplest answer, the best answer is because God said so because the spirits have talked to me and they've said you must sacrifice because you'll be rewarded in afterlife. But there's no this world, the rational explanation why I should sacrifice my life for somebody else. So altruism to really become popular, to really succeed, relies very, very heavily on a mystical explanation and mystical, on mysticism. So the altruists will always seek some form of mysticism, often it's secular mysticism. The genes, our community, our nation, it doesn't have to be a God. But it has to be the Marxists, the what do you call it? The Paulitarian spirit, the Aryan race, those are some mystical beliefs. There is no such thing. So yes, the altruism requires mysticism and therefore keeps resurrecting it in different forms. I think this is Michael's last question. In the 19th century America, was altruism not the dominant moral code? I can't think of a time in history where altruism wasn't automatized with goodness. I think it was put aside. It was, altruism is for the most part put aside in our day-to-day lives. America, you couldn't exist just living as an altruist. Most people can't exist. And in the 19th century, the driving spirit, if not the driving fundamental ideas, but the driving spirit was an egoistic spirit. It was a spirit of achievement. It was a spirit of the pursuit of happiness. It was a driving energy to make something of your life. That was a result of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment wasn't egoistic. The Enlightenment wasn't pro-selfishness. But the Enlightenment was already skeptical of altruism, skeptical of sacrifice, skeptical of the mysticism that altruism often relies on. And it created a certain spirit without completely rejecting altruism that was pro-individual, pro-growth, pro-freedom. But pro-achieving something with your life, doing something with your life, pursuit of happiness. That is the defining characteristics of America in the 19th century, the pursuit of happiness. And in that sense, it's egoistic. The American sense of life is egoistic. The American spirit of the 19th century is egoistic. They haven't got anything. They haven't got a system. They haven't got an ethic to justify it. They're going by sense. They're going by emotion or some vague notion of an ethical system. And this is why it has to die. I ran in that sense. It comes too late. She comes out. She comes too late. She comes, you know, after that spirit is already dying. And she's trying to resurrect it. But this time with a solid foundation of philosophy. All right. Got a bunch of, a bunch more questions. Robert, looking forward to this, though it's good you got your positive show in earlier in the week. The only positive are Carson are by contrast. True enough. Apollo Zeus, your knowledge of life in Iran in the 60s and 70s. I'll just say generally was a fairly, for the elite, for the wealthy and for the educated. It was a very secular society. It was a dynamic society. It was very integrated, I think, culturally into the, into Western society. They admired kind of Western figures. You know, Iran was a place where Western ideas were taught and thought of and discussed and read and books were translated. It was a very dynamic and varied culture. There was a big chunk of Iran, though, particularly poor, rural, but also I'd say the merchant class, old merchants, traditionalists, conservatives. These are people who looked at the West as a threat, who viewed the West as a threat to the culture, a threat to the conservatism and a threat to religion. So there was always, even in the 60s and 70s, an element of what would later come with Khomeini, that is a religious conservatism in Iranian culture. And that is what Khomeini relied on and depended on in launching the Iranian Revolution in 79. On the Leroy, thank you for watching this interview and breaking it down. My pleasure. Thank you. James says, not a word about Snowden. That's right. Neither one of them brought up Snowden. Neocon says, Dave Smith is out of touch with reality. He repeated again the NATO expansionism talking point and he claimed he watched the interview. Is he so blind? Yes. I mean, he's not blind because he has no senses. He's blind because he sees what he wants to see. He orients what he sees in the world out there around what he desires, what he wants, not about reality, not about fact. He is a subjectivist and that shouldn't be surprising. He's a libertarian after all. He's an anarchist. Anarchist with body and anarchism, all subjectivist. And he's a complete subjectivist and in that sense he makes stuff up. So he watched the interview. There was a few places where Putin talked about NATO expansionism. He focused on that because that affirmed his biases and he ignored everything else. And he ignored Putin because Dave Smith is not a truth seeker. Very few people, it turns out, in the world are truth seekers. He's an anarchist. There is no such thing as an anarcho-capitalist. Capitalism requires a rights-respecting government. There is no such thing as an anarcho-capitalism. So I call them anarchists, which is what they are. And let them, in their anarchist, figure out what political, economic model they embrace, given that there can't be any governments, you know, maybe they'll be all communists or maybe they'll be exactly what I always say they'll be, which is the war of all against all, which is what anarchy actually is. Whether you put a capitalism behind it or before it or in front of it or whatever, it doesn't make any difference. Anarchy is anarchy, which is a disaster. Roland, repetition is good, but what I think is even better is showing applications of your principles to many different situations so people get them, core principles, rather than just floating mantras. I agree completely. I try to do that, but with repetition and also showing how these different principles apply to many, many, many different concretes. John, thank you for the sticker. So still getting stickers. Jeff, 37, thank you for the sticker. Jim Brown, thank you for the sticker. Paul, thank you for the sticker. Paul Per Tierra. Yeah, I think that's as far back as I can go. Thanks guys. I set a random new goal of 1400 bucks with 200 short, but yeah, we blew through the 650 goals. I figured I'd set something up differently if anybody wants to ask more questions. ChuffyTV2 asked, in what ways, if any, does Putin represent altruism? I'm sure he represents altruism. He represents altruism in many different regards. His willingness to send Russian kids to die in the battlefield for what? For some mystical cause. It's okay to sacrifice for the greater good of Russia. Russia is the entity to which you should sacrifice. The Russian people expect it to accept poverty, to accept the war out of a sense of sacrifice to the motherland, sacrifice to Russia. That's altruism. Nationalism generally is altruism. But also, he has this attitude of, oh, we're the victims of the West and so on. Again, why aren't they as sacrificial and altruistic as we are? We're willing to give anything. He plays to everybody's altruism, and he himself is altruistic. Other ways he's willing to sacrifice businessmen, he's willing to sacrifice opposition leaders, or for the sake of the state, for the sake of whatever. So he uses altruism to achieve power and to sustain power. Everyone, in everything. But I think his victimhood, sense of victimhood, is partially driven by kind of an altruistic view of the world. All right, Raphael. Hi, Iran. Do you know the Sadak in search of waters of oblivion painting? I do not. It's one of my favorites. Can you name a few paintings that really inspire you? I'm looking for inspiration. Oh, God. Paintings that inspire me. I mean, there's this. There's the Geographer and the Astronomer. This one's the Astronomer. The Geography is even better. By Vermeer, those are paintings that inspire me. There's a lot of paintings. God, but I don't know the names and the painters offhand that are having my walls all over my house that inspire me. I'm trying to look. I think Michelangelo Sistine Chapel inspires me. I'm looking just what I have here. But again, I think to be named Michelangelo, maybe. But I also like the Pre-Raphaelites, the English academics, the French academics. A lot of Jerome and Layton and Almatidema are beautiful. There are a lot of those paintings that are beautiful and truly inspiring. I will do a show on favorite paintings and try to bring some together so that you can experience them and see. But there are a lot of good painters out there, including, I mean, there's a lot of inspiring just in terms of the beauty in the Renaissance and in Leonardo and Raphael and just the beauty of what they make, what they produce. Frank, is a level of moral judgment the reason you didn't want to speak with Nathaniel Brenner when you met him? I don't think it was right to brush him off. Well, I'm not you, Frank. I brushed him off. I brushed him off because I did not want to have him believe that I thought he was a decent human being. I thought he was immoral. I thought he was immoral based on reading his own autobiography. I wanted him to know that I thought that of him and that I had no respect for him. And, you know, and so that is why I brushed him off. And I think, again, justice, again, be selfish. I do not want to deal with an Nathaniel Brenner. I mean, it's I find it. I mean, the guy, the guy was an enemy and became an enemy of, you know, the greatest philosopher ever. A woman I admire, changed my life. Why would I want to have any affiliation, any association with a man who lied and hurt her to the extent that he did? And then wrote about it and in writing about it, only revealed himself to be even a bigger liar and a bigger deceiver than I ever thought he was. So that is, Edward, you don't know what you're talking about. That is not what happened at all. So, you know, somebody, somebody can sponsor a show and I'll do a whole show on Nathaniel Brenner, if you want. Who is, I think, a really horrible person who set the objectist movement back decades with his attitude, his dogmatism and his dogmatism. But you really don't know what you're talking about, Edward. Read his biography and you'll discover that that's not what happened. Rand observed with severe disdain when Republicans added references to family in their platform. Now most dictated demagogues around family. Pernicious, I can't pronounce the word, was amazing. Yes, it was always amazing. Yeah, family is code for authoritarianism, it's code for nationalism, it's code for religion. It's a really, really bad code. But Gail, thank you, really appreciate the support. Paul is just asked, what are the galleries like in Puerto Rico? They aren't any good ones. So I haven't seen a good gallery in Puerto Rico, a good art gallery in Puerto Rico. So, if you want to ask me questions about Nathaniel Brenner, feel free to do it in the super chat sometime, you know, in one of these shows. Oh, and remember, tomorrow, show on Weston's, hope it should be fun, join us. If you're not a member, become a member so you can join us and just become a member. Generally, it's a good way to support the show. Membership means membership on YouTube, not membership on any other platform. So if you're a member on another platform, you still want to join the show, you have to become a member on YouTube. Ideally make it additive. YouTube is not the greatest platform in the world in terms of the percentage I get. So I prefer your bulk of support happen on Patreon and PayPal. So do a minimum on YouTube just to be able to come. There is a great museum in Puerto Rico. So there's no gallery, but there's a great museum in Puerto Rico in Ponce. In Ponce, right now, they're best paintings on tour. But they have Flaming June by Frederick Layton. They have a whole room full of pre-Raphaelites, some amazing pre-Raphaelites. And on top of that, they have a Bouguereau, two Bouguereaus, and they have a Jerome, and they have a number of other just phenomenal, beautiful, amazing paintings. You would never expect in Puerto Rico, but here they are, a rich, wealthy businessman, founded this museum and donated these paintings to it. So Ponce, if you ever come to Puerto Rico and you're interested in art and you want to go see a great gallery, the Art Museum in Ponce. Flaming June, by the way, will be in London. And you can go see it at the Academy of Art in London, Art Academy in London, right there on Piccadilly. It'll be there, I think, starting this month, late this month. So opportunity to see Flaming June without having to come to Puerto Rico, it'll be in London. Flaming June and a number of the other pre-Raphaelite paintings from Puerto Rico are on tour and they're in London for the rest of the year, starting in February. So encourage you to go see them. They're magnificent paintings, inspiring and beautiful. Inspiring because of their beauty. All right, everybody, I will see you tomorrow. The show will now be during the Super Bowl. The show will be before the Super Bowl. So I'm not going to take your Super Bowl time away from you. Thank you, Chris. Really appreciate the support. Won't take away from your Super Bowl time. But it will be either at 1 or 2 p.m. East Coast time. I'll finalize that soon. And Westons should be a blast. See you then. All right. Bye, everybody. Have a great weekend.