A former member of the House of Representatives, Farouk Lawan, gets seven years in prison for the 2012 rival of businessman Femi Ute Dela. An analysis of the case is coming up this morning. Also on the breakfast today Major General Farouk Yahya confirmed as the Chief of Army Staff. We'll be talking about the challenges before him and the Manjuran Army. And of course, somewhere in our top trend in this morning, we get to speak on the National Assembly Rehabilitation and the leaky roof situation that showed up yesterday. Good morning from the city of Lagos and thank you for joining us this morning here on the breakfast at Plos TV Africa. I am Usagi of Bahwa. I am Anata Felix. Good morning. Thank you very much for joining us. Good morning to you and good morning, Usagi. Wow, today really is a beautiful day. Wednesday, even though lots of tensions high due to one or two things in the country and in our personal lives. But we're glad to say it's a beautiful day. Anata is dealing with a situation of, you know, robbery and a pot of rice this morning. But, you know, let's get to talk about national issues. Hopefully my name wasn't all watching. Let's get to talk about national issues. It seems like it was going to rain this morning. So if you're going to be heading out across Lagos this morning, you may want to be prepared for some rainfall, just in case it still does. Let's get into it. Yes. We talked about an 18-year-old en-taz protester who had been in prison custody since last year, 2020. And she had been arrested on the grounds that she was an en-taz protester who had destroyed some property in Ondos state. Her name is Kemi-Sola Oguni. And the news broke and went viral because she reportedly gave birth in prison. You know, the news said she was two months pregnant when she was arrested. Lawyers were behind her, Nigerians were behind her saying it's unfair. It's against, you know, all the human right laws you could think of for a pregnant woman who has not even been charged for any crime to bring police custody for so long. So the good news, a top trending story, is that Kemi has finally been released on bail temporarily. The naming ceremony of her baby would hold today, Wednesday. And the police say she can come back after the naming ceremony to prison to perfect her bail condition. And she's been given bail to the tune of how much? That's a lot. 10 million nair, 10 million nair bail, which, you know, I feel was very, very unfair.  First of all, the time that she spent in custody without being charged to court and of course being sentenced, you know, to anything. And then if her story didn't make it to social media, then she probably would have still been there without anybody taking up a case and ensuring that she is granted bail. Eventually she has, of course, been granted a 10 million nair bail. And it really just tells that there's not very much that has changed with criminal justice system over time. The conversation concerning NSA has expanded beyond just ending the Special Anti-Rubbery Squad into also fixing the issues with police brutality and fixing, you know, the issues here and there with the criminal justice system. And it's important that, you know, not just the protesters back then, but also the Ministry of Justice, the NBA and everybody who was concerned, they've been on strike for a long time, you know, seeking higher salaries and, of course, you know, enforcing the judicial autonomy perspective. But I think they should go beyond all of that and, you know, and ensure that there is, you know, a reduction in the number of people who are in police custody for many, many months, you know, without being charged for anything, without being taken to court and, of course, being sentenced, you know, if found guilty. It's unfair, you know, like you said, you know, to keep a pregnant woman in custody and police custody for so long and even eventually even let her give birth in police custody. But it also doesn't excuse whatever crime that she may have committed. During the protest, it was, you know, deemed to be peaceful until the 20th of October when, you know, all hell seemed to break loose. There was destruction of property, not just in Lagos State, but in other states across the country. But the thing is how likely is it that she committed that crime? Yes. She was a pregnant woman, right? Exactly. She's 18 years old. And the story from her perspective is that she was going to collect money for her mom. You know, so I really, it doesn't really seem to add up to me, you know, why a pregnant woman would be involved in a protest and cause destruction. You know, but we saw the video of her carrying her baby. She seemed like a gentle, peaceful person. That's just the assessment I made just from looking at her. I don't know her personally, but really it has a lot to say about our own judicial system. And she's 18. Yeah. We've seen statistics about number of teenagers, children that are being locked up, that are in prison custody. It really doesn't speak well for us as a country. Makes absolutely no sense that I have no point in the last couple of months.  And we probably should do something about it, you know, to either just let her go or hasten, you know, the process. So she gets to court and, you know, she's charged for whatever it is. Why would you keep a woman who's pregnant, two months pregnant when she was arrested? You watch the pregnancy grow.  Yes, I know the courts have been on strike for a long time, but still no excuse, you know, because 48 hours is what, you know, the law says. And the courts just didn't go on strike in October 2020. So there has been enough time for all of this to have been sorted or to have been, you know, solved. I am not, you know, going to say that, oh, she maybe is completely innocent. It doesn't make any sense. And, you know, like you've mentioned, it's not very, very likely that a two month old, you know, pregnant woman will be, you know, participating in the destruction of government property and all of that. But there's also that possibility that she was part of the loot in that two place. There's a possibility of so many things. But it's not for us to determine. That's why they need to investigate.  If it's found guilty, then yes, she should be sentenced. If there was no actual evidence, if she's just one of those people who was picked up by security agencies while trying to solve the security crisis back then, then I don't know. It just doesn't make any sense. And also granting a poor pregnant woman a 10 million Naira bail. Does she have 10 million Naira? She obviously doesn't. You know, also, you know, I see that very, very unfair. And they say bail is free. It's plastered all over police stations in the country. Bail is free. But a poor woman who probably lives, you know, below the poverty line or is just struggling to get by a 10 million Naira bail. And then the worst is... It depends on what she's being charged. You know, the release is chambering. She's going to have to return to prison after her naming ceremony, which is going to hold today. So it means there's a lot of advocacy that still needs to be done to make sure justice is truly served in her case. And for the, you know, probably hundreds of people who are languishing in police custody for doing nothing. For just simply walking by at the wrong place at the wrong time. Yes. And we saw that, you know, when I covered one of the protests at the tour gates, we saw, you know, a couple of those incidents where people were just simply just picked and thrown into a police vehicle for walking by when there was supposed to be a protest. And of course, you know, Nigerians have continued to say that these things aren't fair. You know, that's not the way policing should be done.  And we should be able to do better with our police system, with our criminal justice system. We're doing it to do better.  Exactly what a kidnapper would do. The same modus operandi, they pick you up, take you to the police station, ask you to call your family to come bail you out. If they don't have the money to bail you out, they're going to leave you there for as long as possible. Yeah, and there's nobody in the whole police station, including the commissioner of police, including the DPO, including the IPO. There's nobody in this space that looks at these cases and says to himself, oh, maybe, you know, this person, you know, should be let go.   I'm not expecting that, but we need to do better, generally. All right, moving on, let's move into the National Assembly now where tens of billions of Nairas spent on the National Assembly over the last few years still, you know, doesn't seem to have changed much as it still has a leaky roof, not just a tiny hole, but leaks big enough to disrupt sit-ins at the Senate. Cleaners at the National Assembly were kept busy yesterday as water poured through the roof as it rained heavily outside. Some senators had to go through the House of Representatives in order to get into the Senate chambers. Thirty-seven billion Nairas, if you remember, was approved in 2019 alone for the renovation of the National Assembly complex.  See, take a look at the books when it comes to, you know, budgets and things like this, especially for the National Assembly, your jaws would definitely drop. I mean, look at that. Thirty-seven billion Naira approved for renovation. And just take a look at, you know, all these earnings of the National Assembly allocations just to the teams of billions. So if the money is really not allocated to doing what they say it would do, then definitely means the money is going somewhere. It's been diverted to the pocket of someone or some people. Because how would you have a thirty-seven billion Naira renovation fund? And then, oh my God. Well, so, you know, my own angles to this, you know, first of all, not every amount of money that is approved or that you see in the papers is actually released. You know, a lot of times they approve, you know, budget for health, budget for security, budget for, you know, computers, budget for spoons and plates and whatever it is. But not every penny, you know, eventually gets released. You know, so, you know, it's now left for us to figure out how much has actually been released since 2019 out of that thirty-seven billion. There's a Freedom of Information Act, you know, that should be able to get those figures out. There's also expected to be, you know, some level of auditing for every single penny. Unfortunately, we don't get to see a lot of auditing concerning finances in Nigeria. In every sector, across the country, MDAs across the country, the National Assembly, the State Houses of Assembly and all of that, we don't get to see a lot of auditing to show, you know, where money has been misappropriated or money has been stolen or maybe forms have been used, you know, wrongly. So there is that. But also, it's not, I don't think it's the first time rains have fallen in Abuja in 2021. So my questions really are, is this the first time that this has happened or was yesterday's incident just a one-off? Maybe something went wrong in the roof of the National Assembly yesterday and that's where all this happened. And then it overlooked the roof during renovations. Say that again? And they have the overlooked the roof during renovations. Yeah, you know, but if this, if it's been raining, you know, for the last few months of 2021 and so if the roof has been leaking all this while, then it should have, you know, been in a situation. I guess everything has a breaking point, you know? I can't explain it. It should have happened in the past. It should have happened two weeks ago when it rained. Should have happened a month ago when it rained, not just yesterday. So has this always been happening or is there something that happened yesterday? Was there a structural defect yesterday that led to all of this? It's really, really embarrassing. And, you know, as of course in Nigeria, you'd expect that another one billion would be, you know, budgeted for, you know, just fixing of the roof. So remember when in 2020, conversations about the 2021 budget came up, and the president actually went ahead to a budget of 128 billion Naira for the National Assembly. There was, you know, an outcry saying this is too much. Why are lawmakers earning so much, getting so much for just a, you know, a National Assembly complex? But it's just unfortunate to see that despite all these allocations, we still have things like these sessions disrupted by rats and mosquitoes and flies.  You know, I really don't know what to say. I'm not forward regarding this particular issue. Many see it as embarrassing. And definitely you cannot take away the fact that there's definitely a hint of corruption in there because where exactly is the money going to? Who was the contract allocated to? So these things really are conversations that we need to talk about regarding this particular issue of the National Assembly complex. But let's see just how long is it take for them to fix this? In the news, it would announce exactly how much budget you would definitely be shocked. Well, I don't, you know, and I cannot, you know, authoritatively say that there has been billions released yet. Even if yes, then someone was approved. I cannot also authoritatively say that there has actually been a renovation carried out on the National Assembly in the last long while. But, you know, this might be one of the reasons why the Senate President might say, oh, yes, you know, this is why we're asking for 37 billion last year. You guys are complaining. You know, now we need a 37 billion. You guys should, you know, release it so that we can fix our leaking roof and start embarrassing ourselves. Well, anyway, we need to, you know, take a short break. When we come back, we're moving into off the press where we get to look through some of the major stories making headlines across Nigeria today. Stay with us.


Hey it's Alex here from AlexFergus.com and today I'm going to test the EMF levels from the new OroRing. So I've got my Litrosmog Kornet ED88T Litrosmog meter here so I'm going to use that to test how powerful and potentially dangerous the transmission is from this new OroRing. So if you've seen my videos in the past you would have seen I've done something similar with the Gen1 ring that was a couple years ago. So yeah I thought I'd do the same with the new updated Gen2 ring. And if you have no idea what the OroRing is check out my other videos on YouTube where I review it or head over to AlexFergus.com and look at my extensive reviews over there. If you are looking to buy these I highly recommend checking out those reviews. I have a lot of time, experience and knowledge around the OroRing and have documented my experiences and thoughts and feedback both good and bad in all those platforms and channels. So check that out or just leave a question below. So first things first many of you will know that there is an airplane mode in the ring so what that does is it allows you to turn off the transmitter just like your phone you know when you're flying or you know in the movies you can send it to airplane mode which disables the Wi-Fi, the Bluetooth and the cell phone transmitters. The OroRing has the same thing but the only transmitter in here is the Bluetooth transmitter so that's all it's disabling there's no Wi-Fi or anything like that built in. It is for that reason why I continue to wear the OroRing and don't use other devices like Fitbit because they're always pulsing and effectively potentially causing a lot of damage to the body and that's a whole other subject that I'll report on one day but you know if you're concerned about EMF this is what this video is for. So right now the ring is pulsing so I'm going to show you how you turn it off. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn on my EMF meter and let's see if we can get a shot here without me having to move everything. I'm going to get this in focus or I'll keep the screen on. So I'm going to test the microwave reading. Okay so with the ring not in picture we can see here it is quite low or rock bottom low. We don't have Wi-Fi on or anything like that my phone's in airplane mode as well so there should be no readings. As I bring the ring close to the sensor we're going to see some spikes happening here. Alright so this ring is right up against the sensor on the back here. So it's spiking into the yellow zone which is you know not ideal. Green is obviously where you want to be in terms of constant exposure. Now some might be saying oh well it's right up against the sensor of course that's going to be high but effectively if I had this ring on and then was sleeping you know on my head or had it in my pocket because it's on your hand remember that that pulsing that's the exposure I'm getting on my body on my head my brain. So I mean it's not super high I think the Gen 1 ring was actually a little bit higher so it's good to see that they have lower deck but it is still a constant pulse right so all the rings doing is looking for a phone so I can sync the data with and if you have like activity alerts on obviously you know it's going to be syncing to the phone all the time saying hey look you know maybe activities low seeing a notification to the phone and I know a lot of people like those sort of features which is great but personally I just don't think the downside of that pulsing transmission going non-stop is worth it. Now there's a big spike there or maybe that was me moving so anyway so you can see those numbers on there with the ring for those who want to like crunch the numbers I'll leave that on there for a little bit longer so you can see it's just a constant pulsing pulsing it seems to be a little bit higher now I move the ring slightly higher anyway so what I'm going to do now is I'm actually going to sync it with my phone so if you're not too worried about those numbers sure that's fine but if you use your phone to just constantly sync with the ring the readings going to be much higher because the phone's also going to be on so what I'm going to do here is I'm going to leave this in shot and focus so you can see the data my ring the microwave sensors on this side my fingers going to be on this side so it's not going to be the highest reading and then I'm going to have the phone just out of screen right so I'm going to turn the Bluetooth on and I'm gonna leave this on the screen here alright so here it goes I'm turning right now my phone's on airplane mode I'm going to turn Bluetooth on now and you've seen a big spike up there that's obviously the cell phone the iPhone Transmanus Bluetooth and you can see that's right up in the read and it's quite high and that's without the war ring at opening opens okay so now I'm going to open the ordering app and I the app is telling me it's updating so now the tour communicating so obviously those numbers are quite high and we're up in the read there which is a dangerous level and you don't want too much exposure from that especially on it you know if you're sleeping at night so if you're sleeping at night you aim if your phone is on Bluetooth and your ring is on the transmitting yeah you're exposing the body to a lot of a lot of potential damaging radiation so what I'm going to do now is so that you guys can see what's exploding what what's what level of sorry I'm twisting my words here what level of exposure you're exposed to what I'm going to do is I'm going to put the ring into airplane mode alright so I'm gonna leave all this as on so the rings on my finger I'm in the app it's currently connected and I'm going to turn into airplane mode alright and what we should see is a big drop off but because the phone is still on Bluetooth it should it will still say stay high so I'm going to put into airplane mode and I'm going to turn the phone on to Bluetooth disable Bluetooth as well alright here goes so it's turned to your airplane mode so the rings in airplane mode now and I'm turning Bluetooth off on my phone boom and just like that we're rock bottom again so nothing's moved the phone still in the same hand the ring is just here out of shot or behind the sensor and you can see there's nothing so this is how I have my ring 95 99% of the time alright with the airplane mode on and I know there's nothing transmitting from it so I'm going to put it back over this side close to the microwave sensor just to make sure there's no reading coming through and there's still nothing right so there's no pulsing at all which is great that's awesome so yeah if you're concerned about MF exposure microwave exposure which you should be great that the aurorine has the airplane mode and as you just saw there is no output like it's rock bottom I mean you couldn't get lower maybe if you went in the thick rainforest in the middle of nowhere you might get a fraction lock but anyway that that number I'm perfectly happy with and I've spent a lot of time looking into it or not so that's what I use with the aurorine hopefully those of you who were concerned about you know the MF output of the ring were curious as to how high it was or how low it was in different modes hopefully that video has helped explain those numbers if you still have questions or you want me to do another test just let me know I know I promised this video a long time ago so sorry it's been so late to get it up but it's here finally like I said if there's something get something I've missed or some clarification just let me know one final thing to put the ring back into transmission mode so if you wanted to sync the ring now obviously it's not transmitting so you can go on to the phone turn the app on you've got no way to connect all you do is take the ring off and then put it in the charger like so and then the charger will start charging the ring you see the white light there and check the email me there again there's a bit of movement yeah alright and now if I turn the phone back on you can hear the email me to go and visit we're up in the red and the phone's sinking and we're back to where we were before I don't want that because I don't want that exposure so I'm going to go back put it back into airplane mode it's an airplane mode you heard the drop off there it's still in the red the blue tears off my phone and there's no sound so that's what I do on a day-to-day basis it's in the airplane mode there's no transmission I wear it all day I sleep with the ring on I get up in the morning and then I take the ring off put it on the charger sync my phone it only takes a minute or two to sync I'll leave it on there for a few minutes to charge you know I'll go have a shower do some stretches or whatnot come back grab the ring put it back into airplane mode put it back on my finger so when it's on me it's always in the airplane mode I freak out if it's not and I'd hate to sleep with it on transmission mode because it is pulsing especially if you sleep with your hand under your head anyway I've talked to talked enough if you want to know more about these rings head to my reviews or on YouTube or alexfurgus.com like I said I've got a lot of information over there if you are interested in buying one of these use code alexfurgus so it's just my name Ali X F E R G US and that will give you a discount on the code at the time of videoing it's a $50 discount I don't know how much longer that will last it might just go down to a five or 10% discount in the future so if you're keen on buying it use that now heads up though I do get a commission if you use that code so you're saving and I get a cup back it's a win-win but if you'd rather not support me in my work then don't use the code and give your money to ordering the pay the full price anyway please subscribe give me a thumbs up if you liked it if you want more updates about the ordering I'm gonna do a few more videos like training with it comparisons and whatnot subscribe sign up to my email list leave questions I'm gonna have breakfast bye


In this video, I'll be talking about what it means to be a student author of an open educational resource. As I've discussed in earlier videos, open educational resources, or OER, are teaching materials that are openly licensed, which means they are available under a copyright license that lets people share and remix them. As a student, you make content all the time. You create quizlets for your classes, put together flashcards for yourself for your peers, and you work on assignments that showcase what you've learned. You may not be thinking about publishing or otherwise sharing this work with others, but why not? And how would that work exactly? Some of you may already know this, but the second you create a piece of content, you hold the rights over how that piece of content is used or shared. This copyright is meant to protect you from having your work used in ways you don't want. You don't need to register your work with the U.S. Copyright Office for it to count. Copyright over your work is automatic, and even more importantly, you get to choose what you do with your work and how others can use it. Do you want to keep it for yourself? Publish it, share it with others freely? You have a lot of options. So what if you want to share your work? You can use a license. A license is a way of giving permission for someone to use some or all of a work. And there is a spectrum of options for how copyright law and licenses work together depending on how open you want to be. On one end of the spectrum is all rights reserved works. No one can adapt, remix, or share that work without explicit permission from the creator. And every reuse of an all rights preserved work has to be spilled out in detail. This is how games like Marvel vs Capcom get made, through licensing deals. On the other end of the spectrum, we have works in the public domain. You can build upon or create new additions to the work, but you can't lie and say you wrote the original. You don't need to ask for permission and you have a lot of leeway in how you can adapt the original work as well. This is how things like pride, prejudice, and zombies get made, for example. And in the middle, we have works that are available under a license like a Creative Commons license. You can think of these as some rights reserved works. Through a Creative Commons license, anyone can share a copy of your original work as long as they follow the rules of the license you apply. Having a CC license on your work means that it can be shared more broadly and more people can find your work. And even better, through adaptations others can build upon your work in exciting ways. By translating it, updating it, or providing additional context. And if you like those additions, you can always come back and make a new version by incorporating what those other people made too. Another cool thing about Creative Commons licenses is their variety. You have a few options for which version of a Creative Commons license you'll apply to your work.  The buy or attribution piece states that users have to give attribution to the original author when we're using their work. The essay or share alike condition states that users must use the exact same license when we're using or adapting a work. The in-see or non-commercial piece states that users cannot profit off of the resource or any adaptation of it. And the in-dee or no-derivatives piece states that users cannot alter the work in any way. As you can tell from those descriptions, some of these pieces are clearly more open than others. It's important when you're creating and sharing OER, or any open content really, that you understand what the different licenses mean so you can decide which you want to assign based on how open you want to be. So how do you add a CC license to your work? First, you choose the license you want to use. If you're not sure, you can meet with a librarian to talk through your options or use the Creative Commons Choose a License tool to walk through your options in more detail. Next, you need to mark your work with the license you've chosen. Usually, this involves a short line of text or a bit of audio like this. Open Licensing for Student Authors by Abby Elder is available to reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. A link to the license terms is available in this video's description. That's an important point too, making sure to link to the full license so others know what they're allowed to do with your work too. For text-based projects, you might put your license information in a footer or on a copyright page, and in a PowerPoint, you could put your license on the title page or at the end with your references. Finally, you want to make sure to provide attribution for any other openly licensed works you've incorporated into your own. You can find openly licensed videos, pictures, and other materials with tools like Openverse or Wikimedia Commons. Once you incorporate them into your own work, you just need to add an attribution statement. This should include the item's title, its author, a link to the source, and its license information. You can remember this with the acronym TASL, or maybe rearrange the letters and call it SALT. Whatever makes it easier for you. In some cases, like the screenshot I have here, an example attribution will be provided for you, so you can just copy that into your work. But otherwise, you can follow the TASL rules and you should be good to go. Thanks for watching! In this video, we've talked a bit about how copyright works and why you might want to openly license your work. We've shared information about different types of Creative Commons licenses and how you can mark your own work while providing attribution for other people's works that you adapt as part of your own. There's a lot going on here, so feel free to read up on the resources in the description or ask for help if you have questions about any of the topics we covered today.


One of the last remaining independent hospitals in the garden state is set to merge with one of the two largest health care systems in New Jersey. And that could mean big changes for the hospital in Englewood. Fios ones Steven Maluski is in Englewood for us this afternoon with the details. For 130 years Englewood Health has served Bergen County as an independent hospital. Now it will merge with Hackensack Meridian Health. The merger agreement includes a $400 million commitment by Hackensack Meridian to invest in new operating rooms, expanded cardiac facilities and outpatient sites for Englewood physicians. Hackensack Meridian has also agreed to take on Englewood's outstanding debt of $182 million. We believe that this merger will transform health care in northern New Jersey. We're going to expand access to care. We're going to enhance the quality programs that already exist up here and we're going to make health care more affordable for the residents of New Jersey. Englewood Health currently employs 3,400 people. None are expected to be laid off as a result of the merger. Englewood Health CEO Warren Geller says this deal is all about the communities they serve. We're going to push access to care out into the communities that we serve. Our friends, our neighbors, our families are going to receive the highest level of care close to home. This merger follows a period of growth for Hackensack Meridian. Last month, it announced a partnership with St. Joseph's Health, whose facilities are in Patterson and Wayne. A year ago, Hackensack Meridian merged with the Carrier Clinic, a statewide provider of mental health and addiction treatment. The merger was unanimously approved by Englewood's Board of Trustees. The agreement must be reviewed by the State Attorney General and Federal Trade Commission, a process expected to take about a year. Hackensack Meridian Health CEO Robert Garrett tells us the goal is to expand care both inside and outside the medical facilities. More and more health care is being provided outside the four walls of the hospital. So we will be expanding together the ambulatory care network because people want care closer to home. They want convenient care. They want urgent care. They want behavioral health care services closer to home. After the merger, Englewood will be known as the Hackensack Meridian Health Englewood University Medical Center. In Englewood, Stephen Maluski, Fios 1 News.


Kalid kuulete vaate, et tada on meil eriline, küllaline Amerikast. Jaron Brokkes on Aindrendi instituidi juht, autor ja ütteminimade, et kapitalismi eest kõnalee. Hello, Jaron. Hi. Really nice to have you here in Estonia. Nice to be here. What is the kind of main thing that pops in your mind when you think about Estonia? I think the things that I've heard that's most interesting about Estonia, and this is a while back, is that you're all electronic. All digital. All digital. Insurance and driver's license and all that stuff is digital. So that's kind of a cool aspect of what I think of as Estonia. Other than that, a small country bordering Russia that Russia would love to get hands on. And not far from where my family originally is from, which is probably Northern Lithuania. That's awesome. Is there any kind of bad idea that comes to mind when you think about Estonia? Not really. I don't have that much experience with Estonia, so I haven't developed any bad ideas yet about it. Probably from the ex-Soviet Union countries, Estonia is the most pro free market and capitalist. Do you think that's true? It's hard to tell. I think the Czech Republic has lower taxes. I think Georgia, at least for a while, had a free economy. And I don't know how Estonia ranks. It would be interesting to look at all the post-Soviet countries and rank them based on economic freedom. But Estonia certainly has the reputation of being high on the list. We love startups, companies, entrepreneurs. That's really awesome because this is driving our innovation and making people happy. One of the things about Ayn Rand that usually average people get pissed off is about the happiness, the selfishness, the kind of individual responsibility. Yeah, getting pissed off at happiness makes a lot of sense. Yeah, why do you think there's so much people that are actually not willing to put time into their happiness and pursue their dreams? They'd rather be in a kind of negative echo chamber with all the destructive ideas? Well, I think it's a number of things. One is, unfortunately, a lot of people are lazy. Happiness requires effort. And taking care of yourself requires real energy. It requires actually thinking about it. It requires engagement. So there's real effort and energy required. I think the second is that it goes against all of our teachings, everything we're taught from our priests to our family to our philosophers. We are taught that to be happy is to be selfish. Selfishness we're taught is bad. Our moral responsibility, our primary ethical responsibility for the people and the most noble thing you can do is to be selfless. You become a saint, so you become a good person by sacrificing, by giving up your time. And that is kind of baked in primarily through Christianity. But even secular people, while they have maybe abandoned the mysticism of Christianity, they hold on to this moral code because that is all they know. And they have been taught that the alternative, the only alternative to it, is a kind of nastiness. That is, if you're not going to sacrifice, if you're not going to be selfless, you're going to be quote selfish, which means to them, you're going to lie and steal and cheat and exploit other people and just be a horrible human being. And between those choices, they don't want to be a horrible human being, so they give up on life in a sense and they'd rather do that. And it's hard for them to think that there's a third alternative and that is to be self-interested in a kind of a rational sense to be somebody who cares about one's own well-being and that doesn't mean exploiting other people quite the contrary. It means trading. It means creating win-win relationships with other people. But that requires effort and it's hard and it's a new philosophy. It's a new set of ideas. Look, for 2,000 years, since Aristotle, 2,500, 3,000 years, nobody has thought of morality as egoistic as a pro-self-interest other than a invent. So it turns out it's quite an achievement to think in those terms, particularly with the background of Christianity. So it's going to take a while for those ideas to filter through. So it's actually more moral to be egoistic in that sense. Well, I would say the only moral thing to do is to be egoistic because the morality is for what? What's the purpose of morality? Morality is for the purpose of living a good life. Who will live a good life? You, right? It's centered in you. This is Aristotle's whole view of morality is it's a set of principles to help you achieve a flourishing life, to help you achieve success in life. And that's Rand's view. It's how do human beings survive, how do human beings thrive, how do we achieve great things? Well, how do I survive? How do I thrive? So the beneficiary of your action should be you. That means personal responsibility.  And that is morality. So the idea of self-sacrifice, the idea of being self-less is in that sense, it's anti-morality. It doesn't make any sense. It's a morality of death. It's an anti-life morality which is kind of a contradiction in terms because the whole point of morality is to teach human beings how to live. Interesting. I think it's somehow correlating with the thing from that the people are too much tied to their bodies and when you are producing always the stress and the stress hormones, just like sinking and you cannot get out. So basically, the more you are influenced by your body hormones, the less it's a chance that you can get out. So basically, the more ideas you are able to process, the less you are attached to your body processes because your body automatically wants you to basically feel the stress all the time and be destructive and when you have some cheap meal, you want to go for 10 cheap meals and so on. So you're programmed for destruction inside your body. I don't think you're programmed for destruction inside your body. I think, again, bad ideas lead to bad body processes. So I think there's a mind-body integration. But self-control is hard. Yeah, but if you're taught, not to have self-control, but also if you're taught to follow your emotions or if you're taught that reason and rationality are beyond you, you're not capable of them, if you're taught that your body is sinful, then all of that creates conflict and creates problems. But if you're taught the harmony of body and mind, if you're taught that pleasure is good, if you're taught that reason is what guides you towards proper pleasure, towards long-term satisfaction and towards long-term happiness, then it's far easier to skip the silly temptations of the moment and to structure everything in terms of how of your long-term happiness. And you're not doing it in the name of anti-pleasure, in the name of something above and beyond the body, some mystical spirit. You're doing it because this is the best thing for your body and your mind. So it's all about the ideas we have. It's all about the habits we pick up as children, which are guided by our parents' ideas. So it's very much, our bodies are guided by the set of ideas we have and when we have conflict in our mind, that manifests itself in stress because we have conflicts, then it manifests in conflicts in our body. Is this set of worldview, is this for like minority of people and it will never be mainstream, we have to always struggle to get the idea of reason out there? I don't think so. I think it can be a mainstream idea, at least in a certain sense. That is not everybody's going to be a philosopher, not everybody's going to dig deep into this. But if it becomes the norm in society, if the intellectuals hold these ideas and convey them to the public and people start doing them because that's kind of the norm, then I think they're self-enforcing and then I think it becomes a second nature. So I think that the fight really is, the battle really is to capture the intellectuals or really to replace the intellectuals. It's to create a next generation of intellectuals so that what people hear are these positive messages about their self-worth, their positive messages about the effort required and the reward that the effort achieves. So if we can capture the intellectual high ground, if we can replace the current intellectuals, then I think it's easy then to get the rest of the people on board with these ideas. It's like managing well your finances, being the good health, basically the same thing is with ideas, right? Yes, and it's funny because people do listen to podcasts about how to manage their health and how to manage their finances, but that is all in the background in which says, don't take care of yourself too much, don't be too self-interested. Remember you should feel guilty about your success because you're not being Mother Teresa, you're not going out into Africa and saving poor people. So there's this constant conflict inside of people's minds which generates guilt, which I think is part of what creates these disharmony within the body, the stress that relates to, on the one hand, yeah, I have this feeling, I have to take care of my finances, I have to do self-help, I have to learn how to meditate, whatever. But on the other hand, I feel guilty because I'm taking care of myself and I'm supposed to do these other things and that creates all kind of cognitive dissonance. Right, that's interesting. But it's kind of always the struggle with these destructive forces, but it's true that they're getting started in your ideas and then they're extrapolated to the body. Yeah, the destructive forces are self-imposed, there's nothing natural about them. We're not born for destruction, quite the contrary. We're born for growth, we're born for harm. And that's interesting because we have so much influence from probably Christianity that was so much indoctrinating these ideas that you are destructive in your core and so on and so on. Yeah, original sin. Original sin is what? To some extent original sin is sex, right? It's the very pleasure that is sex, it's a celebration that is sex. So much of our natural inclinations. We view as negative, we view as sinful, we view as kind of dirty and that creates real internal conflict. Instead of viewing human beings as, we're fundamentally pro-life, pro-growth, pro-progress. Sex is a beautiful, amazing thing. And if we're raised that way, if we grow up that way, if we abandon original sin and the idea that somehow a baby is sinful, there's something bad about just human life, then I think we can grow up with much more of an integrated approach to life with ideas integrated with our body and our soul. And as a consequence be psychologically and spiritually much healthier. Right. Speaking of the ideas, I mean in our society here, even in Estonia, I think I consume 90% of the content that is coming from the US. So basically all the podcasts, navy seals and everything. But I try to choose the constructive content but there is so much things coming from the West that is so crappy in terms of the gender and all these ideologies. What's going on on this battle of ideas? Why these ideas appearing? What's going to happen to them? Because we can see that these are directly transported even to the smaller countries like Estonia and you have all the ideologies pretty active here as well. Yes. I mean once they get a route in the United States they tend to spread all over the world. And the reason is that our modern ideologies are dead. There are no modern ideologies. We have been cruising, if you will, on the ideas of the enlightenment for a long, long time. We have science because of the enlightenment, we have because of the rediscovery of reason and because of the secularization of society and yet in the United States and in the West those ideas of the enlightenment have slowly been abandoned. The idea of reason has been undermined. We have postmodernism. We have subjectivism. We have emotionalism. We have ideas that basically say that there is no objective reality, that there is no objective truth and these ideas that came out, they've been developing for a long time, the anti-enlightment started immediately. It started with Rousseau and with Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, a whole line and then you get the postmodernist and all of that leads to a fragmentation of ideas, no cohesive integration of ideas and it leads to a distrust of reality, a distrust of our own capacity to reason, a distrust of truth, so we now live in a so-called post-truth era. It's a complete disintegration of human knowledge and that leads to crappy ideas, all kinds of crappy ideas. There's no theme to the crappy ideas except that they're crappy and that they're integrated, they're non-universal so what you get is this intersectionality type thing where people now compete, they take this morality that says that the needy, out of Christianity really, that the needy are virtuous, that need is a claim against everybody else, that people should be self-less and they should devote their lives to helping the needy and then they take that and they create hierarchies of need and so if you're a minority, you need more than if you're a white male and if you're a trans and a minority and all the combinations of neediness, that gives you the ultimate but it's all based on a combination of Christianity with post-modernism, a complete negation of human reason and we're critical race theory survive in some form, most of it everybody can see as crap will it be abandoned but what will replace it? More crap, a different variation of crap because the fundamental is unless we're willing to go in a sense to rediscover the idea of one reality of objective reality, reason as a means of knowing that reality, logic as a means of discovering truth, real truth and existence of truth and then the fact that we're not identified by our needs and our weaknesses and our failings but that each one of us is individual but there are certain universal principles that guide us all, certain moral universal principles certain epistemological universal principles that's what has to be rediscovered kind of the ideas of the enlightenment but better and I think Ayn Rand takes the enlightenment and makes it better, she fills in all the gaps all the philosophical gaps in the holes and that's what needs to be kind of discovered, rediscovered and only when we abandon the kind of German romantic philosophies we abandon kind of the post-modernism the subjectivism, the moral and epistemological subjectivism can we get back on a path towards reinvigorating our ideas and reinvigorating philosophy and reinvigorating science and getting back to a pro life path Yeah, it's sometimes it gets absurd in that sense that even like here you have people who are talking about the critical race theory even though our society, our history is really off from all these topics but people engage to them and they kind of think of these problems as their own even though they don't have any connection with that but it fits because you know Estonia is part of a Christian tradition that says that you have original sin original sin transmutes constantly what that constitutes original sin is being white it's being European it's you know you're inherently an oppressor you're inherently quote privilege you're inherently bad because you happen to have a certain color skin we used to call this racism identifying somebody based on the color of their skin and associating and it is it's basically a new form of racism it truly is horrific but this is kind of the fragmentation and the anti-reason I mean how can you be against racism and then accuse all white people of acts or anything else it's completely illogical irrational negation of reason and look it comes from a background that there really was racism that there really is racism today so it's not out of nowhere but it is another mutation of the Christian idea of original sin the Christian idea of your moral commitment to selflessness so you're not part of a group what identifies you is not your moral characteristics as an individual human being what identifies you is a membership in a particular group you're blonde and you're white therefore you must be an oppressor you must be part of a majority and nobody cares about who you are as an individual you're identified as those parameters but again that's all the same philosophy we've been dealing with since the end of the enlightenment hashed over mutated into its various ugly forms yeah that's interesting but it feels like we're just in a specific phase of the history where we will get over these ideas and come with the new ones well the question is will the new ones be better or will they be worse it seems like the trend is towards worse ideas not better ideas there was a sense in 1991 when the Soviet Union fell apart that bad ideas were dead and that socialism was dead but generally with socialism died a lot of the bad ideas associated with socialism and it turns out no that unless we're willing to advocate for new good ideas unless we're willing to educate people about good ideas and their importance and their importance to the individual unless we're willing to go beyond politics and really delve into philosophy and epistemology and morality and the nature of human beings we have to teach the world what the alternative is it's not just gonna happen automatically because what tends to happen is the Soviet Union falls yes everybody's against socialism for a while but then there's no alternative there's no other ideas to come in there's no new ideas that introduce you have to work on this because you have to work on this and people have to adopt those new ideas and they have to be intellectuals to teach these new ideas and so people start looking for alternatives to socialism and they don't reject the foundation they don't reject the collectivism the anti-individualism they don't reject the anti-reason ideas of communism so they adopt some other form of collectivism and that's what we've seen over the last 30 years communism morfing into now critical race theory or tribalism or fascism or religionism or whatever but other forms of the same thing just rehashed and constructed differently is government involved much in spreading all these ideas and being the cause of basically having involvement in all parts of life telling basically people what to do how to think because usually when you see the spread of the bad ideas you see that they're not coming from private capital or kind of private sources arguably they are arguably a lot of our tech companies are following these ideas so I don't think it's purely government but certainly government has a huge role to play here and the biggest part of that role is government controls education most of our educational institutions are run by government they're government schools and even private schools are often guided in the curriculum through the department of education and education curriculum and I think that undermines I think even in the best schools in Estonia suppose he has very good schools Finland suppose he has the best schools in the world but my guess is they could be so much better and the education in them could be so much better and my guess is that in these schools they teach math and science pretty well but what they don't teach is these other ideas and particularly the ideas of personal responsibility the ideas of taking responsibility over your life over your mind over everything that's involved they don't teach you how to while they teach you math and science they don't teach you how to properly reason about life and about the world so I think the biggest way in which government influences is through education and the second biggest it encourages us not to be independent it facilitates it facilitates this dependence it says don't worry be happy we'll provide you we'll solve all your problems it encourages laziness and encourages unthinking and then when you get the latest fad ideological fad government seems to embrace it in the United States certainly on the left with the democratic party they try to codify it into law they try to codify it into particular behaviors I think a lot of what's happening today around race is a consequence of the laws that were passed during the civil rights era things like affirmative action and things like that that kind of created a whole culture that was looking for that looks at race and emphasizes race and focuses on race and makes a big deal out of race in the name of doing away with racism and the actual result of it is that it's actually embraced racism and made racism worse so I think government does make these things worse by institutionalizing them and turning them into kind of governing habits Interesting I want to talk a bit about Ukraine in the sense that there's one guy whose name is Alexi Aristovich and he is a advisory to the president office and what he is saying now is basically after the Ukraine will win there will be the new set of ideas spread from Ukraine since they have fight for freedom to the Europe and Europe ideas will be replaced by the new ones that will come from these territories because people have been kind of setting up a new life with the new world view Do you believe that something can come from there? I think if Ukraine wins good will happen but I don't think Ukraine winning is going to challenge the fundamental ideas that dominate you because he says that the European ideas are rotten and it's kind of I agree but what are the ideas coming out of Ukraine Ukraine believes in freedom but what does freedom mean right now it means not being ruled by Russians but does that mean not being ruled by Ukrainians that is are Ukrainians willing once they defeat the Russians are they willing to establish real freedom in Ukraine Ukraine wasn't the freest country before the war it was incredibly corrupt the government did a lot of things it shouldn't have done the government was involved in a lot of life the government was involved in a lot of industry it wouldn't privatize it held a lot of land it held a lot of natural resources when the war is over is the government suddenly going to become capitalist and want to sell everything and really challenge Europe so maybe what Europe will learn from this is that appeasement is evil at least in the short run but you think they would have learned that from World War II so it's not clear to me that they actually learn the lessons and for how long I think I think that they will learn the lesson with regard to Russia they will learn the lesson maybe about appeasement maybe they'll interpret that in a positive way in terms of how to deal with China maybe they'll be some shake up but the fundamental ideas behind this the fundamental political ideas the fundamental ideas behind the welfare state the fundamental ideas behind our mixed economies with heavy regulations and so on I don't see how I don't see intellectuals in Ukraine advocating for something very different and challenging the west ideas about the welfare state and about the mixed economy maybe I'm wrong maybe there are better thinkers in Ukraine and we'll discover that certainly they're courageous they're winning the fight that's an improvement and you're already seeing certain ideas in Europe shaken up a little bit Germany announcing that they will increase the defense budget although we'll see if they actually do it talking about it and doing it are two separate things but I don't see coming out of Ukraine a new set of intellectuals with real fresh ideas about a new role of government and a shrinking of the role of the state and individual freedom again they're fighting for their country's freedom which is different than they're fighting for individual freedom probably maybe his ideas is that there will be certain refreshment because they couldn't do so much when all the government was corrupt so there's a new page where they can probably start I hope so I think there's always been a lot of potential in Ukraine they seem to have they have a memory of the Soviet Union they have a memory of communism they have a memory now of corruption and kind of what that leads to they know how evil Putin is they've just fought a war against Putin does that ultimately lead them to establishing a better government and a rational government or one of the things that could happen is that at the end of the war they will look to the west for money they will look to the west to rebuild and with all the money they get from Germany and the United States and other places there will be a lot of strings attached and those strings maybe there will just corruption in Ukraine but they will also try to make Ukraine into another just another European country so I'm not sure which direction the influence will flow European ideas are very powerful the European Union is very dominant Ukraine wants to be a member they've already applied for membership if they become a member of the European Union if they become a member of this regulatory somewhat authoritarian kind of economic system it will do them good because they come from such a bad place in terms of corruption but it will reduce their ability to impact the rest of Europe so to some extent it's already impacted Europe because it's woken Europe up to the fact that they're still evil in the world and they're still really bad players in the world but where there wakes it up I usually ask my guests who were born during the Soviet times about the difference between the lifestyle back then and today and all of them say that during the time when they were going be raised as a kid and go to the university and have a job the people were more friendly the life was more meaningful and they are struggling today to find the same values so what do you think or even though they were under this regime but they're still nostalgic about the human relationship and all this stuff that sounds bizarre to me completely insane friendly when your neighbor might be reporting you to the KGB friendly when the state is all powerful and looking over your shoulder and monitoring what you do and what you say and what you think I don't know if you've ever seen the movie The Lives of Others it's an excellent movie about life in Eastern Germany during communism it's anything but friendly everybody is your enemy everybody could call you in I think people are delusional it's best that they feel today and they when we're children everything seems wonderful but they don't they don't project it back as adults they don't think about what life was really like what their parents would really go through and older people that's all they knew so yes I think it's completely delusional I think it's completely wrong I have no doubt in my mind that free people are friendlier now they are struggling to find meaning and this is where we started the conversation by saying it takes effort life takes effort, likes to take focus life takes real energy and under communism it didn't in a sense you were told what to do you were told where to go, where to show up how to live you were told what's possible to you and what's not possible to you everything was dictated to you so mentally it was but there is joy in thinking for yourself the whole idea of finding meaning what's more meaningful than thinking for yourself what's more meaningful than a life of thought than a life of effort than a life of pursuing your own values people are looking for some external meaning out there to come hit them over the head again a remnant of Christianity I think Europe is dominated by Christianity even though it's rejected it the meaning is out there somewhere I have to go find it the meaning is inside of you the choices you make about life meaning is about the kind of path of life you choose for yourself meaning is an independent thoughtful life of reason that is what meaning is but that requires thought, that requires effort and that requires risk taking because it's about you and there's no safety net in terms of thinking and that avocates a certain independence and unfortunately because they grew up under communism they were not trained to be independent thinkers they were not trained to find meaning in their own lives they were trained to look to the state to look to others to look to authority for meaning for ideas so in that sense they're lost hopefully the generation that's been brought born under freedom has more of a chance to be successful than the people born under communism but yeah it's completely it's completely delusional interesting they live in a fantasy world but it's probably right because so much stuff was done for you but that doesn't lead to happiness that leads to dread and that leads to boring and that leads to meaning less lives not meaning full lives meaning less to have a meaningful life you need to exert effort meaning full life you have to actually pursue values when you don't pursue values when things are just given to you your life becomes meaning less it's boring, it's dull and it's ugly but people forget the ugliness people forget that they become nostalgic because the stress of the moment leads them to think that something was ideally in the past it was not the last question or the comment I want to add what will be your message for the people who are now being refugees from the Ukraine I believe that many of them will become entrepreneurs what kind of message would you encourage them with I think the main message is to take their life seriously and to make something of their lives in a sense they have an opportunity they've been welcomed into countries that tend to be free countries relatively speaking because they are being welcomed by these countries they have many opportunities they have many opportunities to take control of their lives to become entrepreneurs to make something in a peaceful environment some of them will go back to Ukraine some of them will never go back to Ukraine they'll stay in these countries but this is an opportunity to rebuild your life it will not only be an opportunity for Ukraine once it wins to rebuild the country but now for every Ukrainian has an opportunity to rebuild their life to reimagine their life and to take responsibility for it and to really make the most of it at the end of the day life is for living I like to say with a capital L every moment of your life is a moment you will not get back there is no second chance of life you've got to embrace it you've got to take it seriously you've got to use your mind to figure out the best way to live you've got to choose your own values and maybe the war is a wake up call that life is short it's precious and you've got to embrace it and you've got to be passionate about it and you've got to make the most of it thank you very much Sharon Brook for being in our show my pleasure thanks for having me