 of freedom, rational self-interest and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show. Hope everybody is having a great week. Thursday today, week is almost over. One more day. I've got the flight from hell tomorrow. I'll tell you about that. But, yeah, after that I can relax a little bit and rest up a little bit. It's been intense. It's been intense. All right. Yeah, the music's not properly connected into the system. I don't know how to... Anyway, music is not really working properly on the road. All right, let's see. What do we want to do? I've got that. All right, so today I'm going to give you a quick update. Today is... We're going to talk about day four and day five of my crazy week in Europe. Fifth country in five days. Tomorrow will be country number six. We'll talk about the two events I did yesterday in France and today in Scotland. And I'll give you updates on those. We'll talk about the content a little bit and then I will answer your questions. So today we'll see how long the show is today. My main constraint is that I've got to catch a 6 a.m. flight out of Edinburgh on Ryanair, which is one of the shittiest airlines in the world. And then I flight to Berlin and then for Berlin I have to catch another flight to Tel Aviv on EasyJet, which is like the second shittiest airline in the world. Well, I shouldn't say that. They're not the shittiest in the world, but they're pretty bad. It shows how they treat people. I'm pretty sure they're safe. And which means I have to get up at 3.45 to get to the airport at 4.45 so that I can... Ryanair won't give me an electronic boarding pass. I have to go to the airport to get a proper boarding pass and who knows what they'll want from me when I get to the airport. I actually got a test today, a COVID test, one of those COVID tests just in case they would need a COVID test. So I got one. So that's tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be hellish. I then land in Tel Aviv. In Tel Aviv I have to get a PCR test and that PCR test I have to isolate until I get the result from the PCR test. I go to hotel, isolating the hotel until I get the result. If it's negative, then I can go see my parents and actually have a life. Anyway, that is going to be tomorrow. Tomorrow is basically going to be in airplanes and hotels and I doubt I'll have the energy to do a show but we will see. We'll see tomorrow. And tonight I'm probably going to get three hours sleep so maybe three and a half hours of sleep. All right. On top of all that, in addition to all that, don't forget that you can ask questions. You can participate in the show. You can engage with me directly. Through the Super Chat feature, Ryan has already pitched in a buck 39 Canadian. So I guess that's $1 US. You can pitch in as well to support the show. Catherine was here before. Maybe she's still here. I don't know where Catherine went but Catherine is supposed to be here. To monitor and make sure that you guys behave and make sure that we reach our goal, which is at least $600 for the night in Super Chat contributions. Brian, thanks for becoming a member of the Iran Book Show YouTube channel. You can also become a member. There's Catherine. She's right there. So you can ask questions. $20 questions get preference. It's better to do $20 questions. We'll get to our goals faster that way but we can also get a, I'm also open to more substantial contributions. Anyway, yeah. So capitalism, which was the topic of my talk yesterday in Paris and we're going to talk about art, which it was the topic of my talk today at the University of Edinburgh. So that's going to be the content and that's going to be about art. Okay. If you want to support the show monthly, which is really helpful, particularly when my live shows are like crazy and nobody knows when they are and it's hard to support me live. Then you can do so on your onbrookshow.com so I support you. You can do it on Patreon. You can do it on Subscribestar. You can do it even on locals. But yeah, I mean the main job at the same time and it's keep shifting around. Anyway, let's talk about capitalism. So yesterday, I was, yesterday I was in Paris. I was at the airport, stayed at the airport and drove out to Rimes. Rimes is about an hour, an hour and a half, now I'm 15 out of Paris, kind of East, East, Southeast. And it turns out that in Rimes, there's a campus of one of the top universities in Europe. It's a kind of university in the branch in Rimes focuses on political science. And it's a university that draws a global cohort of students. So we met their students from Argentina and from Brazil, from all over Europe, from the United States and several places in the United States, even a student from Puerto Rico. And these are particularly ambitious, particularly smart students who in this campus are interested in going to politics. So this would be like the PPNE, Politics, Philosophy and Economics, students at Oxford, they're likely to be very successful in life. They're likely to go into politics. If they go into politics, they're very, very likely to hold significant positions in political parties and have significant influence. So it was a great group. I mean, you can't ask for a better young group of people who are clearly smart. And yet, of course, completely 100% conventional in their thinking about capitalism, about morality, about the world. I mean, their professors are conventional French intellectuals. Of the left, they're almost all leftist, just at any university, and I think in particular a university like this. So while they're super smart, they also have no clue about history, about economics, about... Yeah, but the history of economics about what works, what doesn't, and they have no clue beyond kind of conventional morality on how morality works. And it was a blast. So there were about 40 to 50 students, all highly motivated, highly smart, really smart, and all virgins, ideological virgins, all people who've never heard Ayn Rand, never heard of Ayn Rand, or never read Ayn Rand, or never taken Ayn Rand seriously, all skeptical about capitalism and ideologically very opposed to kind of what we all hold. And, you know, they sat through, I did like a 20, 25 minute presentation and there was Q&A, so the fun really started in the Q&A because they asked all these standard questions that I've heard a million times. But these smart kids ask in the questions and they fought back. And we could have gone for the whole night. I mean, they did not want to stop. They kept at... I mean, basically we were kicked out of the room because, you know, they were locking up, they were locking up the building and they had to kick us out. And when the thing ended, they stood in the corridor and they closed the kind of the lecture room. They stood in the corridor to keep on talking and debate me and discuss. And, you know, a few of them said, okay, now they have to read Ayn Rand and now they're going to read Ayn Rand. A few of them are going to come to our conference in London, I think. One of the things we're offering is that all my talks, you get a barcode and you can scan the barcode and order an Ayn Rand book for free. So that's available on a number of them. I don't think we'd ever considered reading Ayn Rand. You know, use the barcode to get an Ayn Rand book. And it was just the most fun I've had at one of my talks Q&As in a very long time. It was just back and forth and back and really fast. And I was super passionate as I often are when I'm engaged with a intelligent but somewhat hostile audience. And so many of these kids who in the middle of the thing wanted to kill me, I mean, literally thought this was unbelievably bad by the end of it. We're asking questions and wanted to hang out and wanted to talk and all of that. So it was super fun for me. I think it was super valuable for the movement, for whatever movement we have towards liberty and freedom and objectivism and so on. There is a video. The video is being, they've already sent me a link to it, the videos and photos. That video will be going up in the next few days. So we will have it. The entire Q&A was filmed. I think it'll be high quality. We'll see everything else. So it was a fantastic event. It's one of those events where you go, yes, this is what it's all about. I mean, other events are good, but too many people at the other events were objectivists or familiar with Iron Man or of the right. So I think in Ghent, it was kind of the liberal student association with some of them at least were libertarians or argued with Heike and about Hayek. Here they were truly, in some sense, innocent. They were just mouthing what their professors were telling them or what they read or what, you know, climate change and what about the poor and what about sweatshops. Sweatshops and sweatshops and more sweatshops and everything. So it was just terrific. And it's exactly the audience. We still have 500 of them. That's my only disappointment is that I'm not getting very large audiences. But, you know, it is what it is. I mean, we get as many as we can get and hopefully over time it'll grow again. I think COVID kind of slowed things down. I was really hitting a pace in Europe and we're really having an influence in Europe and I think COVID slowed it down. And you know, for those of you skeptical about Europe, a significant number of the Objectives Academic Center students are Europeans. So a lot of these people that we influence then go on to come to America or to become students at the Ironman Institute or to become intellectuals, writers, teachers, speakers. This is what these are the kind of people we want and there are smart people everywhere in the world. And we think about the intellectuals at the Institute. Most of us, if not all of us, are immigrants. Anko from Canada, myself from Israel, Elan from Israel, Keith from Canada, Aaron is an American, Ben is an American. But yeah, you can see there's a significant number. And I think now you're going to see more and more of our intellectuals like Nikos and others who are Europeans and they're coming up the ranks because of what we're doing in Europe. It's really, really important. So that was all I found. One of the things that came out of the French event in Rims was I guess they know the Piketty family because the Piketty families, I mean all these kids were from rich families and the creme de la creme of the global economy. So these are influences all over the world. But they go to school. At the university is one of the relatives, close relatives of Thomas Piketty. And they said, okay, the next event will invite Piketty to debate you. And I said, if you could convince Piketty to debate me, I will come from anywhere, anytime, and I will do it. And that would be a huge event. That would be huge. That would be next level. So maybe they can pull it off. Maybe they can't. I hope so. That would be really fantastic. Anyway, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. It's what I do, what makes what I do worthwhile. It's fun. It's valuable. You're getting instant feedback. You're having impact on people's lives and you're building some momentum around these ideas moving into the future. You've got to expose these kids. You've got to expose them young. So that was yesterday. This morning we flew from, or Nikos is traveling with me, Nikos from the Andrean Institute is traveling with me. And we flew from Paris to Edinburgh. Edinburgh, of course, is the home of the Enlightenment, of the Scottish Enlightenment. And we think about the English Enlightenment, but the Enlightenment was primarily Scottish. This is where they were just amazing thinkers at the early part of the 18th century who taught the ideas of liberty, who taught the ideas of freedom. John Locke, I guess, was British, but everybody else was really, or many of the others were Scottish, heavily influenced by Locke. This was a vibrant, intellectual, and commercial centre. Now remember that Scotland had one of the most successful free banking systems in the history. So they had a very pro-free market attitude here. Edinburgh is really one of the, historically one of the great cities of Western civilisation, because it's one of the great cities of the Enlightenment. This is where so much of it happened. I mean, the scientific revolution happened in England, but the many of the great thinkers of the philosophical thinkers, the economic thinkers, were here in Edinburgh. Nathan, thank you. I really appreciate it. Jeremy, thank you. I really appreciate it. So we came to Edinburgh. There's a statue here of Adam Smith and David Hume. The lecture tonight was at the David Hume Tower. So one of our philosophical enemies, but at the same time, a man who had a positive impact, I think, on certain aspects of British life, who was a good economist, he had good views about economics, but was generally pro-liberty, but his scepticism is still haunts us to this day. But Edinburgh is a beautiful city and a great university. So this evening I gave a talk at Edinburgh University on art. And I've never given a talk at a university about art, and this particular talk I've never given anyway. So this was completely made up from scratch. It was basically a talk of... What was the title of it? Let me see if I can find you, because I don't remember the title. It had a good title. But I was basically contacted by one of the students here who is an objectivist who's been... I've spoken here in the past, and he's a good guy. I think he's a student at the OEC, I think. And he said, I really want you to come. I'm part of this society called the Classical Art Society, and I'd like you to do something on art. So he came up with this title. It's The Artists Have No Clothes, Why We Need A Second Renaissance. And the idea was really to present the case that modern art is not art. That it's a fraud. That it's a con game. And he helped me. So Morgan Carter is his name. He helped me put slides together. We chose some artwork. And basically what I did was I made the argument that modern art is not art. And at the same time, I made the argument that art is a reflection of values. The values, obviously the metaphysical value, judgments of the artist, but also of the culture in which the art is made, with extent that that culture influenced the artist. And we literally did a historic survey from ancient Egypt to modern times of the various artworks during every period. And very much paralleling the work that Mary Anne Sewers did in an essay called Metaphysics in Marble, which you can find online. If you type in metaphysics in Marble, you can read it very much worthwhile reading. And, you know, I was very wary. You know, I'm not an expert on art, so I probably am, is the bottom line. But I'm not, I don't speak much about art. When I do, it's usually quick recommendations and short analysis and not very deep. I spoke at Ocon about arts for the romantic manifesto when we celebrate the romantic manifesto. So I have spoken about it. But this is the first time with slides and illustrations, and I was wary. And it came out, I think it came out great. I mean, I'm curious what you guys will think. The audience loved it, at least the audience that was inclined to like it. I think it stimulated a lot of thought with the audience that wasn't inclined. Again, there were about 50 people, maybe a little bit more. And it was fun to prepare. It was fun to think about. It was fun to put together. And it was fun to deliver. It was fun to talk about something different. And people were engaged. So even the people who clearly disagreed with me were engaged. As somebody said, you could hear a pin drop while I was speaking. I mean, it was just complete silence. People were absorbed and engaged. And so I think somebody who was there is on the chat right now. Ryan was there. So Ryan can tell you what he thought. But at least two people who've heard me speak many, many times said it's one of my best talks ever. So yesterday, one of my best Q&As ever. Today, one of my best talks ever. Not bad. Not bad for a couple of nights. So that was good. I did the whole thing about sculpture. I think it's easier. It's more immediate. Sculpture is a simpler art form in the sense of, not simple, but simpler in a sense, as somebody appreciates art, to appreciate, to make it, it's as hard as any art. But in terms of evaluating it, in terms of talking about it, because it's bare. It's usually the human figure. And it's usually only the human figure, right? And there's not a lot of stuff going on. There's not color to distract you. Color is very important in painting. It's the key to painting. It's usually a simple theme. A straightforward theme. It isn't three dimensions. You have to walk around and slides are not ideal for sculpture. But it is bare. It's why sculptures, I think, sculptures should be usually sculptures and nudes. Because it is bare. There's no, the clothes add very little to most sculptures, depending on the theme. And the theme is more direct. You know, painting the trees and the mountains in the background and there's three figures and they're talking to one another and there's a whole back, you know, you have to analyze the composition. Now here, you still analyze the composition, but it's a composition of one. And it's the movement of one. And it's the projection of whatever's being projected by one. And it's easier to get at the theme of it and to analyze it. So I chose sculpture. I did Egyptian, Greek, Middle Ages, Dark Ages, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Renaissance through the 19th century and then 20th century into modernism. And it was interesting and it got some pushback in the Q&A. You know, because people, some people enjoy certain modern works. But my argument was, is, will continue to be that, yeah, you might enjoy them. They might have aesthetic value. They might be smooth. They might be relaxing, whatever. They're just not art. They're just not a reflection of the artist's metaphysical value judgments and they're not a recreation of reality. Now you have to appreciate it. You have to see the slides. I can't just talk about it without the slides. I'm super glad that Morgan talked me into doing the topic and talked me into doing slides and helped me with the slides. I could have never done without him. So thank you, Morgan. But it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun to kind of do something different, talk about something different. It's not war or, you know, or capitalism or all of that stuff. Unfortunately, while initially we had expectation of over 100 people showing up, it turned out there was about half of that. And the reason I think was that people kind of Googled who I was and they found all the stuff on Wikipedia about, I don't know, torture, Palestinians, Israelis, war, and they decided to boycott me. So that's too bad. That's too bad for them. It's too bad for me. I would have enjoyed having doubled the audience. We're going to have to do something about my Wikipedia page. If there's somebody out there who wants to volunteer, you know, basically what somebody needs to do to my Wikipedia page, and anybody can do it, right? Anyone of you could do it. But somebody should go onto my Wikipedia page and just edit it. So there should not be so much emphasis on foreign policy. You know, my statements about bombing Iraq and about torture and stuff like that, you need a full context for that. You can just throw them out there. And there's almost nothing about my work in capitalism and inequality and my defensive capitalism and my work on art and all these things. If somebody wants to, I mean, a volunteer, hopefully, that if somebody has the time and the skill and is willing to do it, I'd be in the debt to go on there and clean it up, take some stuff out, but really build it up and emphasize the stuff and then link to all my videos and link to my YouTube channel and link to all the stuff at the bottom. That is meaningful because the worst stuff, which is now front and center on my Wikipedia page is not the meaningful work I've done over the last X number of years. It's not the most important work I've done necessarily. And it frightens people and they don't come to my talks as a consequence. So we have to highlight other controversial things like the capitalism, the inequality, the arts, the other stuff that I've done. So that's a project. It would be great if somebody just did it. You don't even have to, you know, anybody can go to Wikipedia and start editing. So yeah, if somebody volunteers, you can let me know. I'm glad to help you do it in terms of providing you with information, or you can just do it yourself. Either way is cool. John Bales asks, what is your opinion of Omelav sculptures at UT? It creeps me out. Yeah, I mean, Omelav, there's a museum in Austin, Texas of his works. I haven't been there in 30 years or close to 30 years. But yes, it's creepy. The figures are distorted a little bit, but at least it's representational. I can say with confidence that it's art. It's not art I like. It's not art that reflects my values. It's definitely got kind of a malevolent sense of life. It's definitely anti-human in some deep sense, but at least it's art. So, you know, I went, in spite of the sculptures at the University of Texas, I went to his museum and it's worth going. You get a sense of, you know, I sometimes don't mind seeing art I don't like. If it's art, if there's clearly something the artist is trying to portray, if clearly there is a metaphysical value judgment coming across and maybe some of it is interesting. Even if I don't like it, I can enjoy the experience of it. Alright, so we continue to fight. We continue to engage with people on the issues of capitalism, continue to engage with people on art. And as I said tonight, and I meant this, one of the things that people don't appreciate, and my guess is that most of you don't appreciate this, we live in the richest of times. We have the highest standard of living, highest quality of life. We're rich, all of us are rich. We have an unbelievably high standard of living. We have amazing technology. We're generally wealthy. But we are poor when it comes to our spiritual values. We are poor when it comes to art. We are poor when it comes to architecture in our streets, in our neighborhoods. We are poor when it comes to the quality of the sculptures that are outdoors wherever we go. They're not even art, they're mangled metal. That means nothing. We are poor when it comes to the quality of our aesthetic experiences. And this is not trivial. Aesthetics is an important crucial part of life. It is a way in which we can experience, perceptually and emotionally, our most important values, our most abstract of values, our philosophical values, our metaphysical values. And part of the problem with the world today, the short attention span, the inability to think conceptually is to a large extent, I think, the lack of art. Elena Picov, I think, put it once. And maybe this is in the romantic manifesto. Art helps stylize your consciousness. It helps stylize your consciousness. Stylize how you see the world, how you integrate, how you think, your benevolence, your view of man. So it's a crucial part of living. It's a crucial part of enjoying life. It's a crucial part of making it possible for you to think well, to experience the world well. And most importantly, to experience your own life well. And we're fed a diet of silly, superficial, shallow movies and TV shows. And we think, oh, we're getting art. Well, almost none of it is art. And when it is artistic, it's usually, we don't get it in the form of art. We don't get it in our music. Our music is shallow, superficial. It has no, requires no attention span from us, requires no real engagement. We can listen to popular music anywhere at any time, doing anything. It doesn't detract or it doesn't add anything. It's not music that requires focus. It's usually just a thumping beat in the background. Indeed, the very fact that it requires a constant beat is all you need to know about how superficial and dull it actually is. Beat is the most primitive of all musical forms. It's the most visceral. It's the one that is the least deep. That's why rap and in almost every piece of popular music is nothing. Nothing. In terms of real spiritually fulfilling art. It's why I encourage you and encourage you in many shows to listen to classical music. Yeah, rap, I mean rock is fine. It's fine, but it's fine. It's not good. It's not great. It's not spiritually enlightening. Yeah, Beatles made art. A lot of rock is art. It's just not great art. It's not deep art. It's not super meaningful art. It's like dessert. See, the problem with art today, the problem with music and film is there were fed a constant stream of candy, a constant stream of sugar. It's actually quite fun to watch how many people are leaving the show as they talk about all the bad art today. George Harrison does it. In fact, none of these guys, it's all sugar. It's all candy. It's all dessert. You need nutrients. You need real food. And what we get today in popular art is not real food. It's not real food for the soul. It's not real energy. What happened? The light came off. Anyway, so, oh, SB, thank you. 50 bucks that'll help out Catherine. Appreciate it. Really appreciate the support. Thank you. So we're way off our targets with just over $100. So if you're going to support the show now is the time to do it. Why is this going out all the time? Maybe it's not being charged. One second. Oops, that's not it. Oh, Dave. Wow. Okay. Dave just put us at 500 bucks. Thank you, Dave. $400. That's amazing. We'll get to that in a minute. Thank you. Wow. Thank you. And Fendt Hopper. $20. Thank you too. Really appreciate it. So anyway, I will have the art talk was videotaped. The slides will be available. I'm just going to keep the light off. The slides will be available. And, and we will, we will have it up and running hopefully by sometime next week. I hope you guys watch it in spite of the fact that it's an art. So I don't expect it to do as well as my other videos, but I will put it up. I hope people watch it. I think, I think it's, I think it'll be interesting. I think it's something different. I think it's not what you're used to hearing from me or from anybody else. And please share it, like it. We don't talk politics in it. There's no Trump bashing. There's no warmongering. There's no talk of torture. Just talk of great art or bad art and it's evolution over time. And why I think, you know, modern art is not art. So all of that will be available next week. I hope you, you share it and you get it out there and get it out there. So people, so people see it. Let's see. So I'm going to take some super chat questions. I think I've only got two because a lot of people gave money, but didn't ask questions. So feel free to ask about anything. We can ask about Ukraine. More good news, I think, coming out of Ukraine is actually talk about Ukraine winning now and what, what happens if that happens and how it happens. So that's, that's really interesting. Again, I'm waiting for the, I'm waiting for the apologies from the people who thought Russia would crush them quickly. I am at an ice hotel. This, this is an Edinburgh. This is the glass house hotel. It's the hotel I would recommend if you're going to stay in Edinburgh. It's a really, really nice hotel. They upgraded me to a suite as the most hotels do these days, given how often I spend at these hotels. And yeah, Scott asked, was there some online campaign or something else that led people to the Wikipedia page and what's reason for people not attending? I think so. I think some people noticed it and led other people know there's definitely an online campaign to boycott my talk. So that's too bad because I think people missed out. But there definitely was an attempt to silence me or to cancel me to the credit of the organizers. They wouldn't have none of it and they kept the event on and they kept it going and, and they refused, they refused to cancel it. So that's, that's their credit. But look, if I want to know something about somebody, I Google them and the first thing that comes out is Wikipedia. I think the same thing is true for me. So anybody who says, who's this year on book talking about this, should I go? It Googles me and then finds my Wikipedia page. It's not the best introduction to me. So again, if there's somebody up there, if there's somebody out there who is willing, has the time, has the knowledge of how to update the page properly, then it would be great if you did it. I'd very much appreciate it. So yeah, that's, that's my one request. All right, let's see. It's a super chat. We've got Dave who gave $400. So he gets priority. Okay. The problem with the Tableau-Rossa concept is that although the human mind may come into being without any content, it does come into being with many appetites, cognitive styles, preferences, et cetera. These might not be content per se, but as soon as they begin to interact with the world, content quickly coalesces around them. Yeah, that is all true. And it's absolutely true that much of the content that starts being created in our minds very early ages is not content that we have consciously curated. It's not content that we have consciously, logically, rationally. Is this true? Is this not? So we come to all kinds of conclusions when we're children. We come to all kinds of conclusions, decisions. We observe things. We come to conclusions about them. That might be completely wrong. Oh, Troy. Wow. Thank you, Troy. Really, really appreciate that. Troy just gave $500 Australian dollars. So we're killing it today. That's great. Killing it is a bad term. We're doing fantastic today. Thank you, Troy. Really appreciate it. What was I saying? Yeah. It's absolutely true that a lot of the content that ultimately shapes our emotions and our shapes, you know, much of what we are and who we are later on in life is content that is developed when we're not critical. Content that's developed when we're not thinking consciously about things because we don't have the tools to think about them because we're still too young. And, you know, this is why I think partially why you go through a teenage period where everything is on the table and you challenge things. This is why many good people land up having to see psychologists because, you know, some of these bad conclusions that you come to growing up are very hard to dislodge once you get to a point where you can see, oh, but I'm responding to this in a wrong way. And it's why changing your sense of life is almost impossible or very, very difficult because it's kind of content that's ingrained in you from a very young age and it's very, very who you are. So all of that is true. But what isn't true is that the content is there to begin with a lot of evolutionary psychology is about content that is not genetic. And therefore, for example, if a father has certain traits or certain ideas or certain beliefs, that's not automatically passed on to the children because it's not in the genes. And the father can influence the children through education but not through the genes in terms of ideas. But there's no question that much of the content is created in periods of time where we can't monitor it. We can then change it. So people are changeable. No question about that. But it requires skill to change. And again, you list here appetites, cognitive styles, preferences, et cetera. I mean, hopefully the field of psychology will at some point get finer tuned in terms of what it is exactly that we inherit what it is exactly is in our mind. What does it mean to say appetites, cognitive styles, preferences? Do those have real content? And then the field of psychology would fill us, fill that content. That is the role, I think, of psychology at least as a theory to explain. And I don't think we have the concepts right. I'm not sure if appetites is right. I don't think we're born with appetites. Cognitive styles, I don't like that one either. Preferences based on what? So I know what you're getting at, but I don't think any one of those terms actually captures what you're getting at. And we need those terms. Those terms are crucial. One of the reasons I'm suspicious of evolutionary psychology is because they should have those terms. They should know exactly what is inhibited, what is not, or what is an idea and what is not. They don't have any of that. They don't have any of those concepts. And as a result, I think that the whole field is gobbled, gobbled. I think that's a word. Brian says, YBS, while I study, thank you for your educational entertainment value. You're on another question about government bonds. Is it more to invest in them, given that the world we live in, not asking advice, of course, just ethics? Yes, I think it is. I don't think, I think it's, you know, it's a safe form of investment. It's safe in some regards. And as such, it is, you know, the government is everywhere. You can't avoid it. And alternatives to government bonds don't really exist, not with the characteristics of government bonds. And yes, I think it's completely moral to invest in government bonds. Just to give you a sense, Inrand had most of her savings in government bonds. She did not like the stock market. She didn't like the risk involved in the stock market. And she invested everything in government bonds. She had no problem investing in government bonds. And at the end of the day, governments are legitimate beings. Our existing governments might not be, but governments per se are legitimate beings. Yeah, I mean, I don't have any money in government bonds. I don't invest in government bonds partially because of the risks involved with inflation and so on. But partially because while I think it's okay to invest in government bonds, you know, the idea of financing the government government is unpleasant. And if I can find, if I'm sophisticated enough to find alternatives, I do. Most people are not sophisticated enough. I think it's fine. I think it's fine. It's part of the consequence of living in the world we live. All right, other $20 questions. By the way, gangbust today, we're, I don't know where we are. I think we're very close to $1,000 for the evening. That's phenomenal. Thank you guys. Jennifer, do you think that serious complex, popular music such as Pink Floyd, classical is more than me a candy? Yes, I think so. I think so. You know, music is tough. It's hard to define clearly. But I think if it's longer, if it involves more complexity, then yeah, sure. I still don't think it quite rises to the level of a 50 minute, you know, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. But, but yeah, Dockside and Moon or what's the other album? God, I can't believe I can't remember. My favorite Floyd album. Yeah, there's definitely, it's more than candy. You need focus. You need to concentrate. You're getting more complex. Friend Harper says, I was trying to think of a question, but I couldn't. But now I must go. So I have the dollars anyway. Thank you for Harper. I appreciate that. Appreciate it. That's great. Katherine, where are we? How are we doing? If we, you know, if we need a few dollars to get to $1,000, then we should, we should, we should point that out so we can encourage people to get to the thousand. All right. I don't think there are any other $20 questions. So let's do the same. Can you please give update on Ukraine Russia? What is the latest status? Mixed messages from the news. Who is winning? I think it is very difficult to tell right now. I think we are probably at a turning point in the war. I think we'll know a lot more in the next few days. I have not followed it quite as closely as I did before I traveled just because God, I mean traveling is exhausting and it's difficult. I've taken more naps in the last week than, than maybe in my life. It's like every day I take a nap because I'm barely sleeping at night because the intensity of everything I get all and then just everything is exhausting and it's tiring. So I've decided that, you know, I've got one other trip that's pretty intense, very intense actually. The one I'm supposed to go to Ukrainian, which I'm not. I'm doing an event in Warsaw instead with some Ukrainians. But that's going to be very intense. That's in May. But after that, I have officially decided to, in a sense, slow down. So if I'm going to do, so this week I did five countries in five days and those five days included the day in which I flew into the first country. So really six countries in six days because you include the United States from where I came. I've spoken in every one of those places. So I speak. I fly. I speak. I fly. I speak. It's too much. Ed, thank you. Getting up to $1,000. We really appreciate it. We would 990. Ed pushed us over the thousand. So what I want to do is maybe do trips that are, you know, one week worth of talks into a two week framework. So I have a little bit of breathing space. Like I would have loved to go and see Edinburgh this trip. And I haven't, I haven't seen any of it. I mean, I walked to the university, which was nice, but it's also cold. But I would have liked to go see the Adam Smith Statue or would have liked to go see the parts of Edinburgh that are associated with the enlightenment, maybe some of the homes or some of the libraries. It would have been interesting. And I didn't have any time, either the good restaurant. I've been eating hamburgers and even a pizza today. Disgusting pizza at the student union, at the university. So I see the castle. I've seen a lot of that before, but I think it would be, you know, I'd like to see it again. And I'd like to have the time to see it and do it properly. So I'm thinking that next year, next year, meaning starting in the fall, I'm going to figure out a way of how to do it. You cannot do them cheap. But how to do them, how to do them and not kill myself. Look, I think right now the Russians seem to be bogged down. The Ukrainians seem to be counter, seem to be some counter offensives in the east and some in the south. I don't know how successful those counter offensives have been. It sounds like Ukraine is now getting drones from the U.S. I think drones from the U.S. can really be game changers. The U.S. has drones. I don't know if you're familiar with this, but the U.S. has these kamikaze drones. Iran uses these drones. So they're quite popular out there in the world. These are drones that basically are missiles. So they are drones that crash into the target and blow up. That's a great way. They're small, they're stealthy and they can destroy. So the whole drone is basically a bomb. So they can destroy significant targets. So they are right now getting those kind of drones from the U.S. I think that'll make a big difference. They've used the Turkish drones that they have very effectively, but now they're going to get these other drones. They continue to get Western equipment. I think the more of this equipment they get, the more devastating they become, and the more potentially superior to the Russians they become. Russia has suffered unimaginable losses. You wouldn't use the drones, I don't think, although I don't know what weapons they carry. The Kamikaze drones I don't think are against tanks. You need special weaponry for tanks. But maybe the Turkish drones can carry anti-tech missiles, I don't know. But for that you have other ways of doing it. The nice thing about a drone is it has a camera, you can guide it to your target. I think they're just wrecking havoc with the Russian Army. And I suspect and I've suspected from day one that the Russian Army is not motivated, not incentivized, underpaid, under supplied, weapons suck. And they are unmotivated to fight. And I think that's what we're seeing. We're seeing the Russians in disarray. They have numbers and they're getting reinforcements supposedly from Russia and maybe some reinforcements in Syria or whatever, though I don't think much of that. But I think Ukraine has the upper hand here and it really is possible. It's unimaginable but possible that Ukraine actually pushes on the Russians and push them out. That would be the end of Putin. It would be a great victory. It would be one of the great victories suddenly in European history. It would send a powerful signal to the world. It would send a powerful signal to China. I mean, one indication that the war is not going well for Russia economically, diplomatically and militarily is the fact that China continues to back away. I've told you again, I hate to say I told you so. Why do I hate to say I told you so? I should actually relish saying I told you so. I told you so. But China is distancing itself from Russia. It is not resupplying the Russians like people expected them to. It is not a safe haven for Russian oligarchs. They're not flying to... I mean, the place they're flying to is Dubai. I don't know if you saw today the reports. Again, hard to tell how accurate these reports are. But there are reports that Russian oligarchs are flying out of Moscow in large numbers. They're getting on the private jets and they're flying to Dubai. And Dubai has become the place where they're all going. But they're all leaving. A few days ago, they were flying in. A story of Abramov, the guy who owns Chelsea, flying to Moscow from Israel. I don't think he's welcoming Israel anymore. I think they're afraid to stay in Moscow because they're worried that if Putin falls, they will lose their power and they'll come after them. And they are flying to Dubai where they feel safe and they can spend money and where money matters, right? And they can shield their money. So it's really interesting. And I think we have to watch it... Abramovich, thank you. We have to watch it in the next few days and see what happens. But if the Russians don't move aggressively and with some success against Kiev, then what are they there for? Right now, it's become almost trench warfare. They're stuck in their positions and they're not moving. Maybe there's some movement in the south. One of the other things that's completely surprising is why haven't they attacked Odessa yet? Clearly, one of the goals of this was to completely detach Ukraine from the Black Sea, to take over all the ports and to drive to Kiev from the south and to basically split the country into two between east and west. And the key to that was taking out Odessa and they haven't moved on Odessa. Not from the sea. There was some talk of amphibious landing. They're so bugged down and so the other cities in the south on the Black Sea coast that they're not even going for Odessa which is the crown jewel of the south. So it does not seem like it's going well for the Russians. I don't know where you can find anything good happening. So that's my update on Ukrainian Russia. I think it's going bad for the Russians. It has been going bad for the Russians from the beginning. Michael asked, this is the opposite of Blitzkrieg. Hitler conquered Poland in a day. Russia is moving at a snail's pace. Why was the Nazi army so much better than the Soviet army? Because it was more technologically advanced because while the Nazis were authoritarian, they had been free. So, you know, Hitler comes to power in 1933. But before that, Germany is an industrial powerhouse. It's an industrial powerhouse in the center of Europe. It's very technologically advanced. And Hitler basically utilizes all that. He utilizes all that to build an army in a military that is the best in the world at that point in time until the British and the Americans get involved. Or really take it seriously. And the Russians have always been poor, never had an industrial base, never had the capacity to build proper weapons systems. So the Nazis were better because the Nazis were authoritarian for the last time before the war. And it came from 150 years of industrialization, whereas the Soviet Union was calming us for much of that and czarist for the rest of it and poor and didn't have the technology and industrialization that Germany had. Germany is, you can't compare Germany and Russia in terms of civilization. The only good things about Russia are music, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, even Shostakovich, and literature. And the literature is super dark, but it's good, right? That's it. You know, the good mathematicians, maybe, some good scientists, but they didn't build anything, they didn't create anything, they didn't make anything, they didn't do anything substantial. Yes, Wanda Freeman reminds me, that's a good thing that Russia produced. Chess players, but chess players are no value to the world. There's no value to the world of having a good chess player. I mean, how many people watch chess? Maybe I'm exaggerating, maybe some people do. Sorry, maybe some people do. What did I skip here? I skipped something. Oh, Colin says, come on, Iran, get to a dance club, house music mixed by a really good DJ is as good as music gets. No, it's garbage. Sorry, it's barely music. House music? Barely music. It's a beat. It's dull, boring, and the whole point of it is to dull your mind. This is why everybody in a good dance club looks like they're on drugs. I mean, half of them are. But even the other half looks like they're on drugs. Because they're detached from reality. Because they are, you know, what the music does is it, in a sense, puts you in a trance. That's why it's called trance music, or some of it's called trance music. And it completely, it dulls the mind. The whole point of it is to dull the mind. The whole point of it is to make your conscious less sensitive to what's going on around you. It's, yeah, somebody says it's purely tribal and primitive, super primitive. It's man dancing around the fire. That's what house music is. It's what? Sorry. Gene says, I need philosophical travel tips. Do I choose economy or first class? I love saving money, but I also love comfort. How do I get uncontradictory joy? Oh, well, it depends what you're flying. Anything over two hours, you should fly first class. Or business class. Anything under two hours, it's just not worth the extra money and the lack of. And then, then what you do is you pay a little bit extra to make sure you can book the seats and you try to get the best economy seat you can. I only fly, I try to fly always in Isle and I try to get exit seats because exit seats have more leg room if I'm in coach. But anything in the U.S., I typically try business class, everything in the U.S. is business class. And in Europe, I try to have everything over two hours of business class tomorrow because Ryan and EZJet don't have business class and it was the only route I can make that was reasonable from getting from Edinburgh Airlines that are just a disaster. So, in coach. So tomorrow is going to be hell. Tomorrow will be hell. You'll talk to anybody. I'm going to get my hotel in Israel and I'm going to go to sleep and it's going to be really bad. I will be in Budapest. I will be in Budapest the last Monday in April. I think it's April 24th, something like that. So it's Monday, the last Monday in April. Free trade ask. Do you multi-stream to platforms other than YouTube? Yes. Facebook and Twitter. If not, why not? I do. I think you can pick up more random followers by diversifying your output. I do stream to Facebook and Twitter, two pages on Facebook, my page and my personal page and my fan page. If there are other platforms you think I can stream to, I'm happy to try it. It has to work with restream. Restream is the platform I use and if the other platforms work with restream, then I'm happy to stream to them. Do you see a video? Somebody seems to think I vanished. Am I on? People, am I on? Am I on? I think I'm on. All right. Could you do a show reacting to the Bill Maugh Ben Shapiro interview? It will get you a ton of views and there's some interesting content there to comment on. I'll try to watch it and I'll do it. I haven't seen it yet. You could also pay me $1,000 and sponsor it. How long will American people tolerate inflation? I don't know. They've tolerated it in the 1970s for 10 years. Will the 2024 Republican administration eliminate it? It's not an issue of Republicans, indeed. What it needs, I think, is... 2024... No, but I think that 2022, having a Republican Congress with a Democratic president might eliminate it. Once the Republicans get everything, they don't eliminate it. People forget that Paul Volcker, who ultimately eliminated inflation at the Federal Reserve, was appointed by, not by Ronald Reagan, by Jimmy Carter. So it's not a... Reagan did not eliminate inflation. Volcker did. And Volcker did it. And Volcker was the nominee of a Democrat. I see Ron DeSantis being Reagan-ish in that department. I hope so. Cutting spending, that'll be the day. I'll be very, very impressed if they cut spending. Any... To Budapest for the Free Market Roadshow, yes. Just the Free Market Roadshow, unless somebody organizes other events for me. If there are other events, I'll do them. But right now, it's just going to be the Free Market Roadshow. And then from Budapest, I think we're doing Bratislava in Slovakia, and we're doing Warsaw and we're doing Tbilisi. I think those are the four cities. John Bale asks, computer problems in Poland have stopped trains today, evacuating Ukrainians, but no suggestion as to anything to do with Russian hackers' thoughts. Hard to tell, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was Russian hackers. But I don't know, I have no kind of information about it. Wouldn't be surprised. Colt says, when are you going to come to North Carolina to hold an event? I would love to have a conversation with you about art. Also, two of my best friends are actually composers, as they're older than me. Does that work to my benefit? Yeah, it certainly works for your benefit. If they are composers and if they're older than you and knowledgeable, you can learn from them. When am I coming to North Carolina? You know, when I'm invited. We need to find an entity, some entity in North Carolina to invite me to give a speech. Ideally that pays me, but if it's a university, I can probably find funding elsewhere. So get Chapel Hill or Charlotte or one of the universities in any way. I've spoken at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington. So just get one of these programs in North Carolina to sponsor a talk by me. If it's a university, they don't even have to pay me, although something would be nice. And there are lots of North Carolina objectivists and I would love to come. I have a great fatherness for North Carolina. Duke University would be a great university. North Carolina State, there are lots of them. Frank says, in an inspirational speech by George Lucas, is he right in saying that pleasure is doing things for yourself while joy is doing things for others? No, it's complete bullshit. It's complete nonsense. Joy I think is sustained pleasure. And what could be more joyful than doing things for yourself? Yeah, often with the people you love, but that's doing things for yourself. And which others? Your enemies? Does that bring you joy? Strangers? Does that bring you joy? Your loved ones? Does that bring you joy? Yeah, but maybe not strangers, maybe not your enemies. So I hate one-liners like that. They really are meaningless. And they're wrong. Don't know if you've answered this, but should the current sanctions be put on Russia when they annexed Crimea and would they have prevented this Ukrainian invasion? Yeah, I mean, why are they reacting the way they're acting now and they didn't react like this when they invaded Crimea? Crimea is just as part of Ukraine as anything else. Why? Why? Because I think the real difference is that when you invaded Crimea, the Ukrainians didn't fight. And what's going on right now, the Ukrainians are fighting and that is going to, if you're going to stop a bad actor, then the sooner you do it, the better. If you're going to stop a bad actor, you need to do it early and you need to do it harshly. So it would be better if you did it, if you had done it back then and not today. But I think the reason was the Ukrainians didn't stand up for themselves. You didn't have a Zelensky. All right. I think we'll call it tonight. I'm fading a little bit here. My voice is going a little bit and I need to pack up all this stuff and go to sleep. So I'll get, you know, if I get to sleep in the next, in a half an hour, then I'll have maybe four hours to sleep, four hours to sleep. That'd be pretty good. Four hours is good. All right. Thank you guys. What a terrific. We got to 1,071. That is really terrific. Really appreciate it. The next show I do will be Farm Israel. I still have to figure out exactly where it partially depends on how good the internet is in my hotel in Haifa. I'll be spending most of my time in Haifa at the hotel, at least that's where my parents are. And so I'll do at least, I'll do a few, two or three shows from Israel, maybe also for one from Tel Aviv, from the offices of Iron Man Center Israel. But we'll see. I will keep you informed, keep you updated about the progress on Twitter and on Facebook. Thessie asks, Tazie, Tazie, keep getting that wrong. Tazie asks, do you think you or others make judgments that will carry to people individualistically per philosophy? Are you, we invariably influenced by your social circle and if you, where do you draw the line? I hope I'm not influenced by my social circle. I mean, I appreciate input from my social circle. I appreciate input from people that I admire and respect. So I take that into account. If somebody that I admire and respect, the person that I don't necessarily see, I take that into account if I respect the person. But at the end of the day, I make the judgment. I don't make the judgment because others tell me, I don't make the judgment. We shouldn't make judgment. We should ultimately make judgment based on our own evaluation. That evaluation should take into account input from people we respect. People in our circle, but it shouldn't be determined by them. It shouldn't be determined by them. Tessa says, one thing I love about Europe is all the options of getting around, cars, buses, metros, bikes, even walking is easy to get around. I love my car, but why do we not have more options in the states for transportation? Well, primarily because we built the interstate highway system which drove people into the suburbs and by driving people into the suburbs, we basically made them dependent on automobiles and then we structured the suburbs around places where people live and places where people work and different places where people shop and you had to use a car to get from each place. There is a movement in the United States to create more mixed use towns and neighborhoods where it's residential, but there are shops and there are schools and there are also office buildings. There's a really, really nice area in Austin, Texas called the Dominion which has condos at the top, restaurants and shops at the down floor and just within walking distance but just outside the residential neighborhood, office towers. And I don't know where the schools are but I assume they also have schools. So you could basically walk everywhere. You wouldn't have to drive at all. I don't bike in Europe. I don't take buses. I haven't taken a bus in a long time. I typically don't take the metro. I walk a lot in Europe. I don't know how many steps I did today but I walked a lot today. So I tend to walk a lot in Europe. I tend to walk a lot generally in New York. I tend to walk a lot in these kind of cities. I did 13,000 steps today. That includes me pacing during a lecture but I did 13,000 steps today. So that's also walking through airports. So we don't have it because of the way American cities were built post World War II. Once we built the highway system. That changed the way cities organized themselves. All right everybody, $1,111. Thank you. You've been incredibly generous. Love you all. And I will see you from Israel tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday. We'll see. We'll see. We'll try to do as many shows as I can for this continued travelogue. I'm happy some of you are sticking with this. We're getting clearly lower live, but that's to be expected, giving the difference in times and given the topic is not as clear in advance. I do a lot of this as Q&A. Thanks everybody. Have a great rest of your week. I will talk to you very soon.