Welcome back. Now the International Monetary Fund and its most recent edition of the World Economic Outlook lower its global growth forecast for this year and next. According to its baseline growth forecast the global economy is expected to grow by 2.8% in 2023 from 3.4% in 2022 before recovering to 3.0% in 2024. Now these compare with its previous forecast of 2.9% and 3.1% for 2023 and 2024 respectively in its January 2023 WEO update. I am now being joined by International Finance and Economics Analyst Mukta Mohamed. Many thanks for joining us on Business Insights. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure always. All right. Let us just start by the figures that were released by IMF. Now this is the weakest growth profile since 2001 except for the global financial crisis and the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic but just how did we get to these low projections? I think like you said it right and rightly we're coming out from COVID then we thought that was the worst that could happen then the Russian-Ukrain crisis came in and I think that has been the game changer as far as the economy of the world is concerned because it came out with a lot of destruction to the economy especially to the developing nation. Energy went up and also affected the developed nation also and so we saw the agricultural sector also shrink. Remember Ukraine is the largest exporter of green to every part of the world. So Russia is the largest exporter of gas to European Union countries also. A lot of issues that came out because of the crisis especially the Russian-Ukrain crisis boiled down to then with that came the snowball effect of inflation, global inflexional pressure because of demands and supply and then also the high cost of energy especially oil price went up to above $100 just trying to stay there now and with that study you saw OPEC also cutting them output also to make sure that they maintain price between $80 and $90 per barrel. So I'm not surprised about what we are seeing especially with what the IMF have said it's something that definitely all of us know would definitely happen to the economy and we don't expect a quick rebound of the economy at the moment especially when there seems to be no headway in bringing Russia and Ukraine to the peace table. Right now with the forecast that is expected to slow from 6.2 or 6.0 percent in 2020, 2021 to 3.2 in 2020 and this year we are having a much lower percentage in 2023 that is 2.7 percent. With all of this what is the implication for Africa and indeed Nigeria? For Africa it's not good news you know because Africans have not been doing trade with themselves that much trade within themselves and so what we're seeing that a lot of African currency have been in value incomparable to euro or to pounds or to so we are seeing weaker currency especially from African nation we are seeing high depths from African nations also all these are part of what is affecting them African and structurally you know Africa also has its challenges that have to deal with cost of production because the higher even the countries the African countries that are among the producer of crude seems not to be African countries seem not to be getting this crude from them because of logistics so Africans are still getting their crude from the from the Middle East also so all this is affecting Africa generally. Then for Nigeria you need to look at inflation appraisal that has to do because a lot of our goods and services are imported into this country but I think the greatest concern for Nigeria at this moment is the inflation figure and also this is boiled down to one effect high cost of production high cost of energy and also high cost of petroleum product all this it comes in why then again must not forget our debt burden especially that we've not been able to attract foreign direct investor into the country and another major challenge that we are coping after inflation is our currency devaluation because by the day our currency seems to be struggling because we are not able to earn so much to even defend our currency like we normally do before because what we earn in terms of high crude energy high crude price we lose in terms of payment of subsidy for refined petroleum. All right Mokta as we round off sorry to bought it as we round off because of time you know with all of these projections and them effect on Africa and indeed Nigeria what curbs can the country do since it is actually planning on you know stopping fuel subsidy in June with all of these predictions now what curbs should Nigeria be putting in place as we look towards and getting a very viable economy for 2023 very quickly please. We need to do a structural adjustment and like you said the first thing is to look at the subsidy regime whether it's workable how much do we really have to spend on subsidy there we also look need to look at the non oil exports we need to improve upon it and we need to look at our capital our competitive advantage on that sector if we are able to do that too and then basically the major major thing I'm expecting the new administration to do is how can you how can you attract foreign direct investment and portfolio investment into the country then remove subsidy with that also begin to attract a lot of effects into the economy once we are able to stabilize the interest the foreign exchange market then we begin to see good and services begin to come down because then the manufacturer's order will begin to assess effects at a fixed rate both markedly determined with both in the official and parallel market once we are able to do this I think our economy will recover and I think we should be thinking towards that in the short term and in the long term we need to be thinking of quality that are going to touch both the rich and the poor all right thank you so much Mok Tao for all of the insights that you have you know given to us concerning the issues that are plaguing the world's economy this year would you appreciate your time and of course like you always do on the show thank you so much thank you and that's the size of the show for today I am Justin at Cadone Business Insights return same time tomorrow half past nine bye for now


I'm Rusty Kamori and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game and it's about leadership, character, and creating a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today was born with four impaired limbs and he will inspire you because he has inspired countless people throughout the world and Sports Illustrated named him one of the most accomplished physically challenged athletes in history. He is the one and only Roger Crawford and today we are going beyond your potential. Hey Roger welcome to Beyond the Lines. Thank you so much Rusty.  That's quite impressive 22 years so in winning championships. I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me. Well Roger I am super excited to have you. You are someone that inspires me now as well and I want to ask you if you can first share with us in detail about the condition that you were born with. Right so Rusty I was born with a physical challenge. It affects all four of my limbs from the elbows down and and from the knees down so I have two fingers on my left hand and one finger on my right hand. You know it's interesting my grandchildren are just fascinated by the fact that I have a college degree but I'm unable to count on my fingers. They don't understand how that worked.  You know but Rusty I was fortunate growing up that I had a mother and father that instilled in me that I wasn't going to use this as an excuse. They always said you know you got to do the best you can with what you have and it helped me understand that you know we're all challenged in some way. You know some challenges you can see like mine but there's also challenges that you're unable to see. So I think growing up with that mindset it enabled me to not fall into self pity to be determined and become the best version of myself. Roger you know for my coaching you know with a lot of my students the parents I would tell them the parents that I'm not going to protect your child from a challenge. I'm going to teach them how to face it and I'm so happy to hear that's what that's what your parents did. Absolutely and I think one of the great gifts that we can give others is facing adversity not trying to protect them not shielding them from challenges because what happens is as we walk through it we become more aware of our own capacity, our courage, our resiliency and so I think that's really a great gift and for the people listening I'd ask them to look back at their lives and some of the adversity they've been through and I'm sure that they could point to tremendous benefits that they've realized because of it. So I think you're very wise as a coach Rusty and as a leader that you place people in positions where they have to discover their courage. Yeah no that's because challenges it's inevitable we're all going to have it and and some of us will deal with deeper levels than others but Roger I feel it's so amazing that you picked up the game of tennis and you excelled in tennis through high school and then you went to college you played college division one tennis for Loyola Maramount University. Why did you have such a passion to really start and to pursue tennis? So Rusty I come from an athletic family my father was an athlete as well as my brother so it's why I really love sports growing up. I think for me sports were so important because they gave me a platform that helped me feel equal you know if I could go out and participate on the football field with the other kids or the baseball field or whatever just participating you know I felt like I was I was equal right I didn't have a physical challenge but I fell in love with tennis we moved to California from Ohio and there was this tennis court public courts across the street from our house and there was this backboard and I just became fascinated with the sport I would take the racket lay it against my right arm and then hold the grip to my right up with my left hand so that's how I began playing tennis but I fell in love with the sport I think part of my being attracted to it was the fact that it was an individual sport I could do it on my own and I just I just loved the whole I just loved everything about the game so that's how I got started yeah no I like hearing that and you know when I started I I did baseball then soccer and when I started tennis I thought to myself all I got to do is hit the ball in one more time I can do that and that's something you thought about right absolutely you know Rusty I think you really hit on really something key and that was that you know I realized you know obviously I'm not going to be the fastest I'm not going to be the most powerful but what I found was that if you could keep the ball coming back over the net one more time than the other person you win the point as you said so it really speaks to I think an important principle in all of our lives and that is that consistency is more important than perfection it's continuing to hit that ball over the net and I see I apply that in my own life and my work as well you know perfection striving for to be perfect can really be a demotivator because very rarely if ever do we reach perfection I don't think we're called to be perfect I think we're called to to be better and that's why I just think having that consistent mindset just every single day putting in what it takes you know the work before the work and um so yeah so consistency was was a huge part of me having whatever success I had you know as a tennis player also I got to tell you Rusty that you know my physical challenge in some ways worked to my advantage because you know as being a collegiate athlete when somebody walked out and realized I was going to be their opponent they started to get some butterflies because a couple things happened number one they thought what if I lose to this dude right how am I going to explain this to my teammates to my friends I lost to some guy you know with three fingers in one leg so that kind of worked my advantage and then you know the more consistent I could be giving him more chances to miss that also made him a little bit nervous. Roger I'm sure you have so many stories where people just cannot believe they lost to you but you know that's that's the heart I mean you have a heart of a champion and I love that and I noticed that on your rackets there's like in the throat area there's like a contraption that allows you to hold the racket can you can you tell me about that? Yes I'm glad you brought that up let me tell you where that that device came from when I was 13 years of age I walked into a tennis store and I saw what I think is the holy grail of tennis rackets the Wilson T-2000. Rusty you're probably not old enough to remember the Wilson T-2000 but it had two parallel bars that were open from the head of the racket to the grip my finger this finger got stuck in between the two parallel bars so oftentimes people will give me way too much credit they'll say Roger that was so innovative I mean how you how you learn how to hold the racket I said not really and my finger just got stuck so that's how I so that's how I secured it and from that I used Wilson T-2000 for years and years and then finally when some of the the newer rackets came out I was able to take that same space those same dimensions and put it into a racket today and so I still use Wilson rackets they've been really great to me over the years and so I just had that piece that has the same dimensions put my finger in just that's how I hit the ball. Wow that is that is absolutely amazing Roger I mean and you know for me as a tennis player I I don't think I could be able to do what you do like that as well so that that's tremendous but I want to ask you Roger you know people learn so many life lessons through sports and absolutely you mentioned consistency earlier what what are some life lessons that you learn through playing tennis so many being able to take risks you know it's fascinating and I'm sure that you've shared this with your students is oftentimes people think you know to win a match it's important that I don't miss any shots well the truth is to play at your best you got to miss a few shots you have to take a few risks so what that taught me was wherever there's opportunity there's always a risk you know some people look at that and say no no I'm not going to take that risk you know because I'm afraid of failing the people that achieve their very best look at a situation like that and say well if I didn't take this risk what opportunity might I miss so I think opportunity and risk is huge certainly preparation right you know I we say to people when they so I'm going into you know maybe it's a sales call or whatever and I'm nervous I say you know you want to reduce your nerve prepare more more you prepare the more that your mindset is going to be you know what I'm capable you're aware of your capacity your resiliency and you're ready to move forward follow through you know that's another one right I mean so important you know you complete your stroke well for people listening they can all point areas of their life where they see that value right a follow through it's not just preparation eye on the ball you got to finish the stroke no matter what you do follow through is absolutely crucial so that would just be a few I mean there's so many right that you can take from the game of tennis and I think really any sport yeah I love hearing your insights Roger and and you were a frequent guest on the tennis channel I mean I love seeing your segments on the tennis channel and what do you feel I mean you've shared already some incredible things but what is your big message to the world well I would think that the most important message that I could share with audiences is that and you said something similar earlier rusty and that's challenges in life are inevitable but defeat is optional I want to provide to audiences and to people some ideas on mindset reminding their them of their own power their own ability to achieve their very very best because oftentimes in life we underestimate ourselves and we overestimate our obstacles so I think sharing those messages of mindset because you know the better that we choose to think the better results we get you know I talked earlier before the interview about self-imposed limitations and and have you noticed that you very rarely if ever perform better than you believe you can you know when you believe that you can't do something you work really hard at proving yourself right in the same respect when you believe that you can do something you're going to work really hard at proving yourself right now it's not just thinking about it it's doing something about it but I really believe that mindset is the foundation for for success because we can often sabotage ourselves with with our thinking right and I know for me I've often said this I you know I'd rather have the physical challenge I have and a positive mindset than be able bodied with a negative mindset because I kind of pay I think that a negative mindset is a lot more disabling than my hands or my legs now as I mentioned it's not the only thing that you need for success but I do believe it's the most important thing and when I look at success it is to me it's becoming the best version of ourselves you know I've accepted that no matter how much I practice I'm never going to be the best Roger in tennis it ain't gonna happen so when we think about becoming the best version of ourselves we have to redefine what winning means and I think what winning means is becoming your very very best and the competition being you just trying to be a little bit better every single day that's what I think about success I love hearing that and I love that you you talk about mindset so much and I I do the same because the brain controls the body and Roger you're you're an author of multiple books and I love in your books how you talk about how so much things are imagined versus real and nowadays there's there's a big thing about mental health what are your thoughts about mental health issues well I think it's important and again I precious by saying you know I'm I haven't studied mental health and and I would say to people you know when they're in you know having bouts of depression they need to to seek out a professional to address that but I think in just looking at it in global terms I think it's important that you separate fear from anxiety here's what I mean fear is based upon something real fear is present based anxiety is future focused and anxiety is believing that something's going to happen in the future whether it occurs or not it's anticipating a negative event what's interesting about anxiety is it doesn't have to be based upon something real it just created your imagination it's often defined as the negative use of mental rehearsal here's why I bring that up rusty I think that for a lot of people we get caught in this cycle of anxiety and we are looking into future and we're projecting all these negative outcomes that happen what does that do that paralyzes us in the future now when we look at fear I think fear can actually be a positive emotion because if you're leaving the known and going into the unknown okay so you're trying to advance trying to do a little better known to the unknown you're going to face fear that's part of it but see fear is a good good barometer it's a good metric because it shows you that you're challenging yourself to be your very very best because when you stay where you are you don't really face a lot of fear usually when you're moving forward it's though you know it's that you know match point you know in tennis or yeah people can can see the equivalent in all of their lives um so it's separating the two and that really comes down to language that we use you know how do we interpret events in our lives you know oftentimes you hear people say well that's a catastrophe that's pretty big word is it a catastrophe let's take a hard look at that most likely it's not maybe it's actually an inconvenience is it Mount Everest well you know actually when you look at the facts it's really a molehill I just think that that's really really important we've seen that with COVID right who people have have absolutely gotten in this cycle of of anxiety and not to say COVID has been a huge challenge for all of us without a doubt but what we know from wisdom as we look in our past this too will end you know there's an old saying goes like this in times like these it's important remember they have been times like these we're going to get through it we're going to come out the other side a little bit better more knowledgeable more creative I think we're going to have more gratitude I love I love that I mean and I want to I want to talk with you a bit about my books Roger in the books you know because you definitely are somebody that goes beyond the lines and I talk about creating not just a culture of excellence but a superior culture of excellence and that's what you've done and I also talk about the difference between a victim mindset versus a victor mindset and can you can you talk about I mean because obviously you have that victor mindset and and it's a choice right we could choose to say hey woe is me and the world is falling apart or whatever or we can choose to look at that one positive among 20 negatives right absolutely I really like how you put that a victim and victor I think that's really great you know something I say with audiences is this one way that I'm absolutely certain you can increase results is by decreasing excuses because when you remove excuses right when you remove that self-imposed limitation it's amazing how these new possibilities emerge I like what you said Rusty about all of us could say woe is me and I so agree with you because for everybody listening we could all find an excuse to feel badly for ourselves all of us can however when we are in a victim mentality we feel completely out of control why because it's everyone else or circumstances doing this to us we're not empowered at all we've given up all of our power we're a victim right but when you become a victor when you have that victor mentality you see that your thinking is volitional your motivation is a choice excellence is a choice you know I remember Rusty I met somebody who had hands very similar to mine and this was years ago and I'll never forget during our conversation who was evident that he was bitter and angry and he blamed all of his unhappiness his lack of success his discontentment on his hands and his legs and I remember I left that meeting really a changed person I really was because here's the thought I had if he was given normal hands and normal legs in other words his circumstances changed but he had the same mindset his life wouldn't be any different he'd be at the same place his life that he is today because we live life from the inside out so that was a real epiphany for me meeting him and that really put me on a quest to continue to study and to learn about you know what makes people successful what makes them perform at their best I love that Roger and Roger you are a hall of fame speaker that have spoken to huge companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Nike just to name a few and when these companies have challenges how are you able to help them if you can give me an example of like a challenge they might have and how you would help them be better just to improve themselves. Often organizations will will ask me to come speak when they're going through change because change is also inevitable and change can be difficult and the reason change is difficult is we really value as human beings we value certainty that the truth is change is going to happen so the question is how do we respond to change and something I share with with organizations is the importance of a forward to normal mindset in other words not looking for everything to go back to normal because it's not going back to normal normal is going to be ahead of us and not behind us so afford a normal mindset is letting go of that myth that we're going back to normal it's being forward focused it's it's doing business as the world is today but also doing business as the world's going to be then nobody can predict the future you know there's an old you've probably heard the saying you know I mean it's easy to predict the future it's hard to predict the future correctly so we can't really predict the future but we can prepare for the future and one way we can prepare for the future is knowing and understanding that what brought us to where we are today is not going to keep us where we are today we have to continue in a change and evolve it's important that we don't let the change outside exceed the change inside and I know I understand the change can be difficult the change is necessary and here's why because the gift of change is it provides us with new opportunities new possibilities and it helps us do more and be more so I think change can be a great gift oftentimes we want to resist it pretend it's not happening and want to go back to normal the truth is we're not going back to normal your perspectives are absolutely perfect roger and so when you're on stage in front of let's say 15 000 people what what are some key things that you do to really connect with the audience well I really thank you for that question I think that's a great one and I'm not asked that very frequently so I appreciate it so I had been speaking for like 10 years and I started to experience some anxiety and what was happening Rusty was you know before my speech my stomach would get upset I'd start perspiring and it was really was really challenging for me and you know once I got started it was fine I don't think the audience really knew but I knew right and so I wanted to feel more at ease now I'm always nervous but I wanted to be released from that groups of anxiety so I talked to a friend of mine here's what he said to me he said roger the issue is you're focusing on yourself and not the audience and that was like an epiphany again I knew that word before but epiphany I mean this new awareness and you know Rusty when I made that shift to stop thinking about me you know I'm thinking about oh you know what if I'd perspire what if I and start focusing on the audience the anxiety went away now it's not to say that I'm not nervous you know when people ask me about that they say well gosh you know you're probably over the nervousness I said no not at all I'm still nervous before I speak absolutely but I'm not gripped by that anxiety yeah no and I think you know being nervous before speaking or before you know a sports competition or anything it just shows that you care about what you're doing I I think I would tell my players I would be nervous if they weren't nervous before a big match I agree and roger you know for me as a coach my goal was really to develop the potential of greatness for each player on my team and as a team as a whole and I want to ask you how how do you define greatness wonderful question and I and I would say this Rusty that as as you look at your life there are many dimensions of greatness okay there's personal greatness family greatness you know career greatness and what I would say to people listening is this I had someone ask me this question what do you want written on your tombstone and my response was I'd rather be speaking that's what I want on my tombstone but as you think about what you'd want on your tombstone I bet it would be something about contribution that you've made that you've made a difference that you've had impact I really believe that that's a big part of greatness because oftentimes we look at prominence but prominence it's all about us and it's usually about something on the exterior it's usually well for possessions thing is that that's fleeting but when you think about significance that's about others and so what are you doing every day to invest in other people inspire other people uplift other people I think that's a big part of greatness you know I think especially for young people today with social media you know their definition of what they think success may be I think in so many ways is an illusion right and what I would also say is that I think everybody has greatness within them I absolutely believe that and it's taking a look at your life and saying you know where do I where do I really want to be great what do I really want to what do I really want to excel and that that's that's what I think of as greatness you know not everybody can be a Roger Federer right not you know not everybody can be in a LeBron James not that those are not worthy goals but if that is our metric we're going to be disappointed you know there's but that doesn't mean that you don't have greatness doesn't mean that you don't have potential you've got a tremendous amount of it that's why I share with people that oftentimes we have to get out of get out of our own way we have to break through that limited thinking and start to say we know what's possible you know often say this to audiences say you know I'm sure people have said to you that something that you want to attempt is impossible I said I think it's important to keep that in perspective that's their opinion that's not a fact I love it I love your insights Roger and and Roger I want to sincerely really thank you for taking time to be on the show today I mean you're an inspiration to me and I love that you're going to the impact that you're having across the world well listen I appreciate being on your show and like I said congratulations on all the great work you're doing and the great work that you've done in the past and I was just thrilled to to be included today so thank you for having me thank you Roger and thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii for more information please visit RustyKamori.com and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble I hope that Roger and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs Aloha


Red Horse Ranch Life on Red Horse Ranch successfully combines a genuinely thrilling serial story with the colorful music of the Old West, a vivid moving story filled with suspense that stirs the imagination of every listener. Deftly woven into the script is the picturesque music of the open range by the Texas Rangers, music heard in its natural setting. Life on Red Horse Ranch has all the elements of a successful radio show, drama, romance, comedy, music, drama, the struggle of old Sam Carter to save Red Horse Ranch from land grabbers, the tense excitement of a deadly fight with cattle rustlers, the perils of the roundup, the sweeping rush of the stampede, romance, the deep affection of Alabama for Rose, lovely daughter of Sam Carter, colorful excitement of the rodeo with its bulldogging, bronco busting and wild steer riding, comedy, the colorful antics of Arizona and the lazy but lovable cookie, and music that excites the spirit of adventure in all of us, rattling horns and pounding hoofs in the big drive, soothing lullabies of the night herder as he beds down his doggies, the stirring rhythm of the thundering hoofs at full gallop, plaintive songs of the cowboy on the lonely range, rugged sentiment of songs around the campfire and the jolly companionship of the bunkhouse symphony. This is the music of the Texas Rangers around which is built the story of life on Red Horse Ranch. For the Old Time Radio Researchers, I'm Colin Campbell, www.coloncampelvoice.com. Now on with the show.


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


First of all, thank you very much to be here today at this Azure real-time operating system workshop. Let's go to the purpose of this workshop today. So the idea, guys, is to first of all introduce the STN32 Cube ecosystem and the Azure RTOS integration on it. And this is basically the first part. Then we will have a practical experience on the Azure RTOS. Thanks to our technical guys that will guide you on set-uping and testing the new operating system and the packages. And our purpose, final purpose, is to give you all the tools and the information and the experience to seamlessly continue your development with STN32 and Azure RTOS. Okay, so this is the target for today. Let's go to the agenda very quick. Okay, we are already on the first part, so this is a quick introduction. Then I will go through an STN32 Cube ecosystem overview and introduction as well. I will try to be quick on this part. And then you will have the technical part, okay? The real technical part where you will put your hands into the code, into the technical information. So it is divided in different sessions, okay? You have the first one is a 45 minutes part in which you will have an hands-on on the ThreadX, so the real operating system, a break, of course. And then you will have two additional hands-on, again, addressing a part of the Azure RTOS. Okay, in the afternoon session, we will continue with the technical sessions, okay? And we will conclude roughly at 5 o'clock with the wrap-up and the Q&A. As you can see here, we are going to touch also the additional packages such as FileX, USB-X, and everything that is connected to the TCP-IP stack in the afternoon.


The training we'll be doing today is air-based defense training. The purpose of this training is to ensure that all E-5s and below are prepared and trained to support security forces during exercises and also real-world events. I am Staff Sergeant Dejanique Fyerson, the air-based defense training manager here at Coulson Air Force Base.  What I like most about my job is training the airmen and the NCOs from different career fields on how security forces use their tactics to defend the base. We have all different airmen from different units, so a lot of them don't know anything about security forces. So having them come to our training course, teaching them new things, they always are so enthusiastic about learning new things. What I think the viewers should know is that this is a wonderful program and we as security forces appreciate all of the support from the units and the participation during this training.


Look at these traditional families all around the world. They all contain members, grandmothers, who are long past their child-bearing age. And archaeological evidence actually shows us that that happened frequently already before modern medical care. So while you may not have realized that your grandmother is something special, living past menopause age is extremely rare in other species. If you compare to these animal families, you'll see that apart from a few whale species, no other animals live past the point when they can't have babies. And that's because evolution doesn't really favor us to live beyond the point when we can't put on our own genes to the next generations. So what made us humans so different during the evolution? Well, this is my quite different modern family a few years ago in England when I was trying to fit together a career in science and being a single parent. Human babies take an extraordinary amount of care for a very long time. It is because of this that I was really missing my own mother to help me with this. And it made me wonder whether these old family members that we've always had have actually been in a key role for the success for their own families. So could evolution have favored us to be these grandmothers who can't have babies anymore but are needed there to look after their grandchildren? Of course, in modern ways, we hardly ever consider the grandmothers as the center of the family and the society. But it's important to remember that in many other long-lived mammals like the elephants, the success of this whole herd can depend on the knowledge of this old matriarch who runs the family. So to study human families, what ERC did was to fund me to collect thousands of family genealogies from these historical church records in Finland and to computerize them for multidisciplinary research. So what my team could then do is to compare the success of grandchildren living in harsh conditions like in our past who had or did not have access to their grandmother. And what we found was that grandmothers really mattered. Those grandchildren who were living close by their grandmother had much higher chance to survive to adulthood in these harsh conditions. And the daughters themselves had actually bigger families if their mother was there to help them. So it's exactly because of these benefits that the old family members bring to the success of the future generations that we've developed this very unique trait we have to keep living decades after menopause age. And we now know that these grandmother benefits are actually common throughout the world in different societies and different cultures. Of course, what's happening now is that we are living longer and longer. And there's a lot of really exciting research trying to understand how far can we push the limits of human lifespan. But there's surprisingly little known about the evolutionary limits to our lifespan. And the key question is there, until what age are these grandmother benefits to the family around there? So when we study this in historical population, we find that actually extending longevity only has benefits to the family members up to a point. We find that actually grandchildren who were living with grandmother older than 75 had a lower chance to survive, as was the case for those whose grandmother was in poor health and frail. So that really undermines the importance of healthy aging. What we've now done is bypass these old limits to our lifespan. And more and more of us are reaching these old retirement ages. And for politicians, that's often a sort of economic bomb they're worrying about. But what if the real bomb is actually something else? Because what we are seeing at the same time is a breakdown of these traditional families and actually people living further and further away from their relatives, like grandmothers, and involving them less and less in everyday life and childcare. So elderly today in many places spent more time with other elderly than with their families, like used to be the case. So maybe it's not so surprising then that we are wondering why are people having less and less children? Many are bypassing setting up families all together, or they move it to much older, less fertile ages. And often the reasons they cite is that there's a lack of safety network and difficulty in arranging childcare. Remember my mother? She was actually living in another country at the time. When the grandmothers and grandchildren do interact, actually benefits are often for both parties. So grandchildren can have better nutrition, better mental development, and so forth. And the grandmothers themselves, so less deterioration with age in their mental health and even longer lifespan. Grandmothers have always been important for the success of the families. And staying involved can extend their own healthy lifespan. So my idea is that if we had more healthy years and older people stayed more involved even in modern day, then perhaps more generations actually would benefit both economically, health-wise, and socially. Thank you.