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 a Sunday night. Hopefully, everybody has had a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend. It's been a long weekend. This is fourth show in a row. I hope you guys appreciate that. I hope you're all awake, awoke, or whatever it is. That you're supposed to be. We'll be talking about wokeness, wokeness in the medical profession, wokeness in the media, wokeness among elites, and why they are so woke, why they want to be so woke. But first, before we get to that, we'll be covering two topics. I know you're probably tired of this, but we'll talk a little bit more about ivermectin, because you know that I just can't stand irrationality, and I'm just going to go after you guys on the ivermectin stuff. So a couple of things that ivermectin will cover that. And then we should talk about Hanukkah. Today is the first night of Hanukkah. Some of you, maybe, have lit in that first candle for Hanukkah. I have not, but Hanukkah is an interesting holiday worth commenting on. So I do, I think, every year. So some of you might be familiar with my commentary on Hanukkah. But we will talk about that in a little while. Of course, I don't know who voiced over the show. I mean, some marketing group did it for me a while back. Was it Action Jackson? Oh, I think we inherited that. But anyway, I'm not your friend Hoppe. All right, before we get started, a quick reminder. You can ask questions. You can make comments. You can make suggestions. You can yell at me or you can just support the show by using the super chat feature in YouTube. Those of you who are live, can you do that? It makes the show fun and exciting. We've got a goal. We've got a goal to get to $600 a night. I don't see my support team here to get us to $600 a night. Where are they? Action Jackson. Maybe Action Jackson will serve the function of riling you up. I see he's here. But anyway, $600 is the goal. We're behind this month. We've talked about this, although we've done really well the last three days. So maybe we can get to $800 or $1,000, as I think we did the other day, maybe yesterday. Action Jackson said Catherine will be here shortly. So Catherine Mendez will help us out in a little bit. I guess Ali is permanently being obstructed by power outages in Venezuela. Let's not become Venezuela. So Catherine will be here in a little bit. But don't forget to use the super chat to support the show. So just a quick reminder about my debate next week. I'm hoping some of you guys who live in Texas who want to come over to Texas for this, I think it'll be a lot of fun. And that is my debate with Yoram Khazani, who is a big superstar within the National Conservative Movement. We'll be debating conservatism versus individualism. And I think that's going to be really interesting and a lot of fun. And in a worthwhile debate, we might also be appearing together on Lex Friedman's show still to be finalized. But yeah, that is December 8th. That'll be December 8th. So that's Wednesday, not this coming Wednesday, Wednesday after that. I don't know if the debate is going to be live streamed. I don't have any influence on that. It's being put on by the University of Texas, by the Salem Center at the University of Texas in Austin. I assume it's going to be filmed so that we can put it up online after the fact. But I do not know if it will be live streamed. I will try to find out and let you know on a future show. But anyway, if you're in the Austin area, I hope you come. I hope we get a very large audience. I think it's an important debate. And I think it would be great to support the Salem Center as they put on more and more events into the future and support, I don't know, support the objective presence on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin. So hopefully a lot of you will show up to that event. All right, a couple of quick things on ivermectin as we move forward. Hopefully this will be it. And I'll never have to talk about ivermectin again. Although the only possibility of talking about ivermectin again is if there's evidence to suggest that it actually works. And Scott Alexander and myself and 95% of the medical profession turned out to be wrong. Or maybe it's not 95%. I made that up. I have no idea how many people think it's wrong. Anyway, maybe if it turns out we're wrong, then certainly I'll discuss it again and apologize for being wrong. But I doubt that's going to happen. Anyway, last, I think yesterday, I think yesterday on the show a number of people were mentioning in the comments section, but what about Japan? And what about Japan? And what about Japan? So, you know, because I care about the truth and because I like to try to answer your questions and because I like to actually look at the fact, right, at the actual facts, I researched Japan. Notice this nasty comment by Scott, which is just unnecessarily nasty and just absolutely and equivocally wrong. He right wasn't. Scott Alexander referred to you by Amish Adulja. No, he wasn't. He has no relationship to Amish Adulja. Scott Alexander, somebody I discovered about a year ago, over a year ago when he returned to start a substack and has no relationship to Amish Adulja, although if he did, so what? They're both really, really smart guys, good guys who actually know what they're talking about. Of course, he's going to be anti, I've made an establishment bandwagon because, what, because Amish's establishment and therefore wrong, I'd like to find one thing that Amish has been wrong on or that the so-called establishment in this case has been wrong on. This is completely out of nonsense to wrap up everybody who agrees with medicine with fact-based evidence-based medicine actually agrees on that is establishment and therefore not to be trusted. I mean, that's just ignorant and silly, collectivist, non-individualistic, non-reason-based, not fact-based, not actually looking at the evidence. It happens that on this particular issue, but not on other issues, Amish and Scott agree with one another, mainly because they're rational, they're doctors, they look at the evidence, they look at the science and they evaluate it and it happens to be that the, quote, establishment agrees with them as well. Why? Because the establishment in medicine is comprised of generally, we'll talk about the exception in a minute, who are rational people, who are looking for evidence, who are trying to find the cures of the disease who are not eager to see you all die of COVID and are trying to treat their patients with the best available treatments possible. It's disgusting to attribute anything different to Amish. It's unjust and therefore immoral. It's just untrue facts. Japan, there is zero evidence, zero evidence, that there's been an increase in use of ivermectin in Japan over the last three months. Zero evidence. Go find it, post it, I will track this. There is zero evidence, no evidence, indeed negative evidence, just not true, that authorities in Japan have endorsed ivermectin for use against COVID. If you go to the official websites in Japan, the official websites of, quote, the Japanese establishment, you will not find ivermectin listed as a treatment for COVID. It's just not a treatment for COVID. It's not being recommended.  I saw John Campbell's report in Japan, he's wrong. He provides no evidence, no facts. Indeed, the opening statements underneath the video in his little commentary are wrong. There is no, no recommendation by official Japanese in terms of ivermectin. He claims there is, but there's nothing, it's not there. I'm tempted to call my friends in Japan and actually have them go roam around the web in Japanese and look at this, but there's nothing. People have looked at this. Yes, over the last three months, cases in Japan have plummeted. It's not super surprising. Cases plummet all the time. If you look at the graph of COVID cases, it goes up and then it goes down sharply, and then it lingers at the bottom, and then it goes up again. It goes in waves, nothing unusual about the graph. But what people don't mention is the fact that Japan has one of the highest vaccination rates. And most of the vaccines have happened over the last three months. Indeed, vaccination rates have increased indeed vaccination rates have gone up to 77% significantly higher than the United States, which has less than 60%. So it's much more likely that the reason COVID has gone down, COVID cases have gone down in Japan is because of the high vaccination rate. And that the vaccines are fresh. That is the vaccines have been done recently, the vaccine efficaciousness dwindles over time. But again, there is zero evidence, zero. And I don't know who this Dr. Campbell, John Campbell is who's advocating for this, but there is zero evidence. He presents zero evidence. He presents as a hypothesis 77% as of the end of November, 70% as of the end of October. This is vaccination rates. One of the female says it's 70%. It's not, it's 77%. It was 70% as the end of October. It's now up to 77%. There was a period where they were vaccinating, well, I can't tell you, 1% of the population a day or something ridiculous, some huge number. It's just, I mean, there are doctors out there. There are people with MDs out there advocating for all kinds of things. There are studies out there that approve anything. There are peer reviewed studies that show, that show that people can read minds, that people can know the future before it happens. Peer reviewed studies, it's nonsense. You actually have, if you really care, you have to read the literature, the critics, do the statistical analysis, think it through, evaluate. No, sorry, Ivermectin is not the miracle cure. It is not a cure for COVID. I wish it was, I wish it was. There are other things that seem to be better. I mentioned one yesterday. But people are gonna make outrageous claims, but you know, one of the things about outrageous claims is you need outrageous evidence. You need real evidence to make outrageous claims. No, doctor's first evidence, it doesn't count, because the fact is that if I have patients, and I give them my Ivermectin, and they all get cured from COVID, well, almost everybody gets cured from COVID. I mean, the best way to get cured from COVID is not to even realize you have it. Because most people who have COVID, who don't realize they have it, get cured from COVID. Indeed, by necessity, they get cured, because if they went to the hospital, if they got really, really sick, they would discover they had COVID.  She didn't realize she had COVID. She had a really, really bad flu. But she survived without Ivermectin. So is that proof that not taking Ivermectin? I mean, no. So no, the doctor's experience is not empirically significant, unless they're running real trials. They're testing. You know, I know this has nothing to do. I get no money from big farmers. I wish I did. I would take it if I get. It's just facts. And those facts are sometimes uncomfortable. And sometimes, bizarrely, weirdly, ridiculously, I agree with the establishment, because sometimes the establishment is right. You know, Newton was the establishment. And I think the laws of Newton's laws work in the, you know, in the world of molecules, I think, right? I agree with the establishment when it comes to the laws of physics. Well, some of the establishment when it comes to laws of physics. All right. Anyway, oh, one other thing I want to say about Ivermectin. So one of the things I like about Scott Alexander, and that I've liked about him with regards to lots of topics, not just Ivermectin. And by the way, I've used Scott Alexander as a resource for past shows. One of the things I like about Scott Alexander is that he responds to his critics. So a number of people have written long critiques of what Scott Alexander had to say about Ivermectin. And he's responded to them in several posts, and he might respond even more to them in the future. If you're really interested in Ivermectin and not just a blind follower of Dr. X or Dr. Y or of anecdotal evidence or wishful thinking or emotionalism or broadly, then I suggest you go to the Scott Alexander sub-stack, you subscribe, and you start following what he's written, what others have written to him, how he's responded, and evaluate for yourself. Evaluate for yourself. Charles Brown asked, is Ivermectin a fascination, a result of primae of consciousness? I don't think so. I think it's a fascination with being anti-establishment. I think it's a fascination with if Fauci says something, you've got to be against it. It's a fascination with Trump-like populism and being different and hating Big Pharma, which shockingly it looks like even some objectivists seem to be caught up in this. And then, yes, there's an element of primae of consciousness in a sense of putting your wishes above your reason. But there's definitely an element of not wanting to trust the establishment, the authorities, the people quote in the medical profession. It's certainly not the primae of biology or pharmacology because the primae of biology and pharmacology, the studies that suggest that Ivermectin is working are just really, really poor studies. They're really, really bad studies. And the people advocating for this are poor researchers. And the people provide, like I just said about Japan, no evidence. And yet relatively smart people get captured by this because they want to believe the conspiracies. They want to believe that the mainstream is bad for reasons that I'll talk about in a minute because, you know, with the American Medical Association going woke, who the hell wants to believe in doctors? And if my doctor's not woke, then I'd rather believe him than the quote establishment, which is becoming woke. So it's the combination of those things. Oh, it quickly in these things. Amy Peacock does now not recommend mRNA vaccines for COVID due to new studies. What are your thoughts on this? Amy Peacock is not a physician. I don't think she knows what she's talking about on this topic, you know, for what it's worth, right? I think she's wrong. I don't see any basis for those studies. Again, it depends. As I've said over and over again, I don't necessarily recommend vaccines for people under 25 or 30. mRNA vaccines for people under 25 or 30. But anyway, I, you know, don't ask me to comment on other objectives, what they say. It's just, what's the point? All right. There's a lot of confusion out there. And there's a lot of people who, you know, there's a lot of people on this chat and everywhere else who think they know stuff about medicine, about science, about statistics, about studies, about how to evaluate these things, who were not qualified. Now, I'm barely qualified, but I know a lot more about statistics than a lot of people because I used to deal with statistics. And I've spent a lot of time studying and researching these topics. Otherwise, I wouldn't talk about them in public. Yeah, I have taken a Moderna vaccine. I would take it again, and I intend to take a booster at some point. I will probably take a booster. Yes, I disagree with Tessa's Lawyer's analysis, if that's helpful, wonderful. I will, if that wasn't being clear from everything I've said so far. I intend to take a booster. I'm probably, as I said last time, I'm going to wait before I take a booster to see if this latest variant requires changing the formula for the vaccine. I would rather take a booster that covers the new variants. I'll wait a little bit, but I'll use it. Brie says, statistics is mostly lying. No, it's not. It's bad use of statistics is mostly lying. Statistics are very informative, very useful, very interesting, fundamental to understanding of things like medicine and biology and what works and what doesn't work. But a lot of other things in life, statistics, I couldn't do finance without statistics. You cannot do proper investments without statistics, without statistical models and statistics. But people use them sometimes to lie, but I find that more often than using statistics to lie, people use statistics out of ignorance. They just don't know. They don't understand statistics. Like any other field requires expertise. Kindred Amy says, thank you, Ron. I appreciate your views. I followed Campbell for over a year and he is not being objective with this issue. Thank you, Kindred Amy. I'm glad somebody who's actually followed him, because I have not followed him, I looked at this issue and he's just wrong in this issue. And it's shocking, it's shocking. It really is shocking to see so many people be non-objective about things like this. And so many people to portray drug companies the way they're being portrayed is just, I don't know, it's so disheartening. You think you make progress, you think they're moving a little bit, but it seems like if we step forward, we take three steps back. And that is discouraging. Anyway, if you're interested in Ivermectin, I'm probably not going to talk about it again. I'm done with the topic. I encourage you to read Scott Alexander. I encourage you to read Scott Alexander more broadly. I think he's an interesting writer. I disagree with him on a lot of things. He's generally left on economics and he's an effective altruist, which is something I reject, completely effective altruism. But his approach to many of these issues, his approach to many of these issues is super interesting. First-handed and often on non-economic issues and non, even on ethics, he's at least presenting and covering these issues from an interesting perspective. Yes, the head of the Tokyo Medical Association came all with a statement. That's what I said. But the head of the Tokyo Medical Association is the equivalent of the New York Medical Association coming out with a statement. Who cares? He's just a doctor. The official stance of the authorities in Japan is not to list ivermectin as a treatment for COVID. There are lots of doctors in the United States and all over the world prescribing ivermectin. By the way, I looked into Israeli paper as well. Again, it's never been published. It's never been sent in for peer review. The doctor has since left his position with the Sheba Medical Center wherever he was. He was a senior guy. He's left since then. He still stands by the study, but the study has been criticized. The ivermectin study, the Israeli ivermectin study, has been criticized significantly for biases in the way the results were reported, in the way he got the results, and that's why he's never submitted for publication, because it won't be published. So, there you go. I'm not saying listen to the government. I'm saying listen to doctors who know what they're talking about. Listen to scientific studies that actually do the job right versus scientific studies that are hack jobs, which is most of the scientific studies on ivermectin. Most. An overwhelming majority of the scientific studies on ivermectin are lousy, lousy, bad, horrible studies. All right. Let's move on from this ivermectin, bored with ivermectin. All right, Chanukah. Today is the first light of Chanukah. You light the first candle of Chanukah. Chanukah is a Jewish holiday that moves around in December. It's never on the same date. It's not on the same date in consecutive years, because it's on the Jewish calendar. So, it's based on the cycles of the moon. Sometimes it's during Christmas. Sometimes it's before Christmas. Sometimes it's a little after Christmas. But this year, it's early. It's in late November. It starts, it's starting today. Chanukah is a celebration of the Jewish victory, victory for independence over the Greek Empire that occupied Judea or Israel in those days. This is in, I don't know, 60-something BC, maybe 100-something BC. This was one of the empires that was carved out of Alexander the Great's empires. And one of those was an empire that ranged from what modern day Turkey, a southern Turkey, through Syria, Lebanon, Israel, all the way out to Iraq. And there was one of the Hellenistic empires that dominated, that kind of, the Alexander's empire was broken up into. It was ultimately defeated by the Romans, who occupied the entire territory, I think in 60, 60 BC. Chanukah is basically a holiday to celebrate the victory of Jewish fundamentalists over Jewish assimilationists. Basically, the Chanukah celebrates a uprising that was instigated by the fact that this one priest in his temple, a sacrifice was being given to one of the Hellenistic gods. A Jew was participating in the ceremony, a Jew that was trying to assimilate into the Hellenistic culture. The priest raised his sword, killed the assimilating Jew, killed the pagan priest, and launched a uprising against the Greek rule. As a consequence, the Jews occupied the land other than the Maccabee. They established their own kingdom under Yudah Maccabee and a long line that was ultimately ended by the Romans of Jewish kings ruled over Israel. The second temple was built. The Jews came back from their, they had been, what do you call it, kicked out of Israel. And it settled in what is today Iraq, on the, if you've ever, on the rivers of Babylon, if you've ever heard that song, On the Rivers of Babylon, that's a song by Don McLean. And of course, there is a Verdi opera that celebrates, or celebrates, kind of discusses the Exodus of the Jews to Iraq, what is today Iraq. They all came back, settled in Judea, and there was a Jewish kingdom during this period. And of course this raises an interesting question, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, if I had to think about what side am I on? Am I on the side of the Jews being, you know, myself from Jewish heritage, I guess? Am I on the side of the Jews? Am I on the side of the pagans? I'm on the side of the Greeks. And generally I'd have to say that I'm on the side of the Greeks. You know, I think I'm not sure what the value is of the Jews not assimilating, I'm not sure what the value is of them sticking to their ancient religion and not embracing kind of the Greek spirit and Greek science and Greek art and everything else that was associated with the Hellenistic period. But of course, to a large extent, the war that resulted in Hanukkah, was a war between Jews. Between Jews were, again, religious fundamentalists and Jews were more likely to assimilate as an atheist, you know, who's basically assimilated into American culture. I have to say that I tend to be on the side of the assimilationists, which places me in a tricky position when it comes to this holiday which I do not celebrate, I do not celebrate any of the Jewish holidays anymore. And while I have a lot of respect, you know, not a lot of respect, while I have a lot of fond memories of celebrating Jewish holidays, I don't feel connected in any way kind of to Jewishness other than, you know, a certain aspect of Jewish culture, Jewish humor and a Jewish kind of sense of life, which I do think exist as a consequence of the culture. All right, let's see. What else did I want to say? I don't want to say anything. Oh, Frank reminds me that the opera is Nabucco, of course it's Nabucco, and the famous call, see a passage where the chorus sings on the rivers of Babylon is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, so I encourage everybody to get out your appa musical, whatever you use, and dial in Nabucco the choral scene. All right, let's see. Let's talk about Wokeness. And let me just remind you, we're at about $100, I think we've raised through Super Chat, generally very few Super Chat questions. I know this is 4th Night in a Row, so you might be questioned out, but, you know, I'm here to answer anything you have. Wokeness. You know, Wokeness is everywhere. It is truly, if you will, a fairly scary phenomena. Wokeness really is, I mean, just the language of it is interesting. It comes from Woke, from being awakened and enlightened, you know, taking the right pill, I guess, to see reality as it really is. So Woke is suggesting a higher level of awareness of the world, a greater understanding of reality. It's sad that such a term is used for the exact opposite of that, for actually a more distorted, more perverted view of reality and of the world, which is what Wokeness has come to really hold. Being woke is just a kind of a... So it's interesting, right? So here's, I'm going to read your passage out of John McCrotha. John McCrotha, I think you know, is a linguist, a very smart guy and very anti-woken, very anti-critical race theory. And John writes about Wokeness. He writes, what was once a popular, about the word itself? What was once was once a popular adjective among left-leaning social media cognizati as part of the colloquial admonition to stay woke, to various forms of systemic racism, that is to stay aware of those systemic racism, first morphed into a general shorthand, not only today's left-leaning orthodoxy, and then a slur that underscored the overwinning obsessive nature of said orthodoxy. So it went from the interim of the left saying, you know, stay woke, we got to be woke, we got to be aware of what's going on. You know, to shorthand for the whole orthodoxy of the left, the whole anti-capitalist, anti-individualist, anti-reson, anti-science view of the left, to now a slur attacking the left from the right. So, oh, that's woke, right? He continues, woke is also followed a trajectory similar to that of the phrase politically correct, which carried a similar meaning in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Politically correct and surprisingly, went from describing a way of seeing the world to describing the people who saw the world that way to describing the way other people felt about the people who saw the world that way. So political correctness like woke has become, became like a bad thing, like how people who are not politically correct or not woke see and dismiss the far-left ideology. So that's just interesting about the word itself. But what is truly tragic about wokeness, political correctness, or more broadly, and I think more accurately, what is really tragic about the left, the far-left, is how dominant its ideology has become in the world around us. In a sense, and this is what wokeness and this is what the far-left has achieved, it has made everything political. How we talk, what we say, whom we say it to, how we address different people, and in every single context, everything is politics.  They indeed, you know, one of the great tragedies of the impact a leftist has on art, they have advocated for a long time that art is politics. Everything about art is a political statement. Inran, of course, rejects that idea by saying that art is primarily metaphysical. It's primarily about of-user metaphysics, maybe epistemology and ethics, but it's not polemical and it's not political. But for today's left, everything is political. And therefore, our entire language is political in every capacity. And one of the great tragedies of this is the way this is now being taken up by what's called the American Medical Association. American Medical Association, right? You are touting something that a guy said who was the head of the Tokyo Medical Association. Well, here is the authority of the American Medical Association. They have recently published a official 54-page document instructing all doctors on proper language, how to deal with patients, how to talk to them. This is the official opinion of a scientific professional society. A scientific professional society that represents, I forget, I think 25% of all doctors in the United States. I have this somewhere, let me just find that. Yes, represents 270,000 doctors, roughly a quarter of all the doctors in the United States. American Medical Association was founded in 1847 and it, both physicians and medical students. Now, it's interesting that, of course, maybe this association feels like it has something to atone for because many of its chapters at the beginning of the century and lead until the mid, until the 60s, well into the 60s. Many of the chapters block black physicians from membership. The Association of American Medical Colleges, which signed onto this document, which I'll read to you in a minute, which I'll read sections of in a minute. It was founded in 1876. Its membership includes 172 medical schools and more than 400 teaching hospitals, many of which have their own shameful histories of white supremacist racism. So here's some of the tables that they have presented in terms of what you should say. Actually, let me see. Let me see if I can share this. I think that'll be easier for you guys to follow if I share this. Let's see. There it is. All right, there you go. I think you can see that, guys. All right, cool. Okay. Don't say vulnerable groups. Say groups that have been economically and socially marginalized. Don't say marginalized communities. Groups that have been historically marginalized are made vulnerable historically marginalized. Hard to reach communities, uh-uh. Groups that have struggling against economic marginalization. And the privileged communities, no, no, no. Groups experiencing disadvantages because of, give the reason, high burden groups, no. Groups with higher risk of... Now, why? Why the change in language? Note that the words on the left are already pretty politically correct. Vulnerable groups. Why are they vulnerable? Marginalized communities. Why are they marginal? We don't want to say why. We certainly don't want to say poor. We don't want to say unskilled. We don't want to attribute any cause to the individuals within the group. They're just a vulnerable group. Now, that's already pretty politically correct. But that's not good enough. What we need to drill home is the reason they're vulnerable is that they have been marginalized by others, that they are victims. That is, we want to make sure that nobody can interpret this as meaning they might have done something that resulted in their own marginalization. The one thing that all of wokeness wants to do is divorce individual circumstances. From individual agency. You are not responsible for you.  You're the victim, victim, you're always victim of capitalism, of racism, of elitism, of something outside of your control. God forbid we attribute any agency to any human action. If some outcome is negative in your life, it's not your fault.  Then it must be your fault because you're responsible for all the evil in the world. This is anti-free will taken to a degree. This is not your standard anti-free will of a Sam Harris. This is the anti-free will that now places you in a position where there really aren't any choices, even the kind of pseudo-free will choices of a Sam Harris, where you are completely a consequence, not even of your genes now, you're completely the consequence of other people's oppressive behavior against you. This is all intersectionality.  There are no such things as individuals. We'll get to that in a minute. You are just a member of a group. As a member of a group, your group, if your group has a problem, if it's marginalized, if it's vulnerable, if it's hard to reach, if it's underserved, if it's underprivileged, if it's disadvantaged, if it's high risk, then somebody caused that. Somebody victimized you. It couldn't be, I don't know, it couldn't be that you didn't take your education seriously. It couldn't be that you're lazy. It couldn't be that you have low levels of intelligence or low level of productive ability. It couldn't be anything that might be associated with who you are. Every case of inequality is a consequence of some group oppressing another group. And that's why groups that have been economically socially marginalized, what does that mean? That means capitalism, right? Now, look at these. For example, you know, this is to get an article, this is some more, right? Workers who do not use PPNE, people with limited access to specific resources. That is, it's not that they chose not to use PPNE. Maybe. I mean, maybe some people don't have access. But what you've done here is eliminated the possibility that people have chosen not to do it. People who do not seek health care are workers under resourced. Right? They don't have resourced. They don't have access. All human agency, all human choices out. This is non-oxism. This is non-oxism. Set it over and over again. See, in a minute, I'll give you a Marxist critique of this. This is not Marxism 101. Marx wouldn't recognize this. He wouldn't know what you're talking about. I mean, he was a determinist, but a completely different type of determinist. Certainly not a determinist of this nature. He was a racist, but a different one. You can't use disadvantage under resourced, under served. You have to use historically and intentionally excluded, disinvested. Disparities are not disparities, they're inequities. Equality, don't use equality, use equity. No social problems, there's just issues of justice. Everything is moral. Everything is somebody else's fault. Somebody else's immorality towards you. Underrepresented minorities. No, historically marginalized minorities. It's other people's fault always. Every problem is an injustice, as in this case I'm showing you a page from the Grumpy Economist, so this is John Cochran's website. So here's some, let's see if I can do this so you can see it. Native Americans have the highest mortality rates in the United States. Don't say that. You have to make it a political statement. Dispossessed by the government of their land and culture. Native Americans have the highest mortality rates in the United States. Maybe that's even true in this case. I am very, very critical of the way governments behave towards Native Americans. But even if it's true, these are doctors, they're not political scientists, they're not historians. This is a doozy, particularly for us economists. Low income people have the highest levels of coronary artery disease in the United States. People underpaid and forced into poverty as a result of banking policies. Real estate developers, gentrifying neighborhoods, and corporations weakening the power of labor movements, among others, have the highest level of coronary artery disease in the United States. Really? Everything is political. Everything, everything. Every profession, every field, everything. Now serves a socialist, anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-individualist point of view, perspective. Factors such as our race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status should not play a role in our health. No, you can't say that. Social injustices, including racism or class exploitation, social exposure and marginalization, should be confronted directly so that they do not influence health outcomes. Now this one's also another doozy from an economic perspective, right? For too many prospects for good health are limited, but where people live, how much money they make or discrimination they face. For too many people, prospects for good health are limited. By where they people live, how much money they make or discrimination they face. That is just a factual statement. Not good enough. Not good enough. Decisions by landlords and large corporations, increasingly centralizing political and financial power, wielded by a few limit prospects for good health and well-being for many groups. So forget about actual facts. If you're not making a political statement, you're not achieving your goal. The website is John Cochran's, I'll give you the exact URL.  It's basically johncochran.blogspot.com. John still blogs rather than substacks. I wish he'd get a substack, it would be easier if he got that. But you can also find this, you know, there was an article in The Atlantic written by Conor Friedersdorf. Conor Friedersdorf, it's called, The Medical Establishment Embraces the Leftist Language. And let me see if I've got some good examples here. Yeah, that's the same example I gave before. They've got a section in this thing attacking, quote, the narrative of individualism, unquote. You know, usually doctors are taught to educate people as individuals, and the guide says you have to shift the narrative from the individual to the structural. To the structural. It's never the individual's fault. In order to more fully understand the root cause of health inequities in our society. I mean, it actually encourages doctors to ask political questions like, how can we promote healthy behavior? Don't ask that. You say, how can we democratize land use policies through greater public participation to ensure healthy living conditions? This is the American Medical Association. American Medical Association president Gerald Harmon explicitly endorses the new guidelines. Everything is political. Everything must be woke. Everything. I mean, what they'll discover very quickly is that they're overextending. They discovered this in the election a few weeks ago in Virginia and in Minnesota and other places. This is garbage. Everybody can see it's garbage. Everybody can see it's BS. Voters are not going to go for this. Normal people are not going to go for this. Many, many doctors.  So they might stay quiet. But how many doctors are going to practice this close to zero? It's really the leaderships that are scared and they'd invite these CRT and anti-racist consultants who have now have a whole industry associated with them into their companies and that are preaching this nonsense. But doctors, I'd be curious if anybody encounters a doctor who actually in practice when dealing with patients actually talks like this. I'd be really surprised. Anyway, one of the things that is going on with Wokeness, given the extent to which it is BS, is many people on the left, a lot of Marxists, for example, are pretty upset by all this. They don't like it. They don't agree with it. And they are looking for explanations. And I find it interesting to look at the left and see it fighting among each other and see the kind of explanations that traditional leftists, the more Marxist leftists, have in explaining why Wokeness is so popular. Now, where is Wokeness popular? I wonder if you guys, who do you think is woke? Who is most woke? Who is most woke? Who are the most woke people out there? Well, it's basically not. It's basically not. I just have to comment on this. Okay, so the conclusion that Scott comes to, which I think a lot of people come to, and this is what is completely irrational and completely unreasoned, right? This is illogical. Here's the reasoning. The American Medical Association is woke and irrational. Any recommendations made by the medical establishment therefore must be false. Anything spouted by people who are unconventional outside of the mainstream, non-conventional medicine, they must be true because they at least reject Wokeness. None of that lines up logically. None of that. All right, so I want to talk a little bit about, so who does this appeal to? Anybody know who this appeal to? Professors, obviously professors. Who else does this appeal to? Mostly the wealthy. This is Upper West Side New York. This is Silicon Valley. In some people in Silicon Valley, this is educated. Educated and wealthy people buy into support this kind of woke stuff. The more educated my guess is, the more likely you are to support it. It's popular among PhDs. Again, not all PhDs are probably not in the sciences, but in the humanities, partially because that's a reinforcing system. It's popular among people who graduated from degrees in the humanities, who still got jobs, often because their parents are fairly well off. So it's interesting the extent to which of course Wokeness has been captured by the media. Whether that media is the Washington Post and the New York Times or NPR or Vox or whatever. So in trying to explain this, they actually ran some analysis of articles in the media. According to this one article, this is in Barry Weiss, a substack from Barry Weiss. This is a writer by the name of Bachja Bachja Bachja Bachja Bachja. What was her name? Her name is somewhere here. Oh, I hate this when they hide the name. Anyway, Bachja. And you can find it on Barry Weiss, the substack. They did an analysis of words used by the press and she writes, For a long time, this is from the article, for a long time the notion that America is an unrepentant white supremacist state, one that confers power and privilege to white people and systematically denies them to people of color, was the province of the far left activists and academics. But over the past decade, it's found its way into the mainstream, largely through liberal media outlets like the New York Times, NPR, MSNBC, The Washington Post, Vox, CNN, New Republic and the Atlantic. The mall panic around race is everywhere, she says. Then she writes, it began around, and she said, yes, Trump exacerbated this because he was the enemy. But it really began a lot before Trump. It began, she says, in 2011. The year the New York Times erected its online paywall. And by the way, New York Times was struggling, which is not today. The fact is that Donald Trump was the best thing to ever happen to MSNBC, CNN and New York Times. If you look at profitability of MSNBC, CNN and New York Times, pre-Trump and during Trump, their profitability skyrocketed because of the amount of consumption there was for anti-Trump stuff. So they did very well under Trump. They all, I'm sure, missed Trump. She writes, so she says, it all started around 2011, you know, it was then that articles mentioning racism, people of color, slavery, oppression started to appear with exponential frequency at the Times, Buzzfeed, Vox, Washington Post and NPR. I'm not sure exponential frequency is right. It's a term. I'm not sure that makes any sense. Anyway, if you understand what exponential and frequency, I don't know that you can combine those two. I have to think that through. Anyway, computer science, by the name of Daniel Rosado, who's in New Zealand, actually created a computer program that trawled the online archives of the Times from 1970 till 2018 to track the frequency with which certain words were used. What he found was that frequency of words like racism, white supremacy, KKK, traumatizing, marginalized, hate speech, intersectionality and activism had absolutely skyrocketed from 1970 to 2018. Zack Goldberg, a PhD candidate in political science at Georgia State University, who found that in 2010 the term white supremacy was used fewer than 75 times in the Washington Post and the New York Times. But in 2020, it was used in those two newspapers over 700 times, so a 10x increase. And in PR it was used 2,400 times. The word racism appeared in the Washington Post over 4,000 times in 2020. That's the equivalent of using it in 10 articles every single day. Now, what's amazing about all this is that actual racism during this period probably didn't change that much. You could argue the client, you might be able to argue increased a little bit, but not tenfold. It's not like during the period from Obama to today, we have resurrected Jim Crow laws. Quite the contrary. Obama, the first black president in American history, was re-elected. Thank you, Andy. Really appreciate that. Really appreciate the increased support. So something else is going on here. Why the radical shift? Why is it that racism, wokeness, that attributes everything to racial discrimination, to systemic racism? Why is racism today blamed for everything? Well, Batya, who wrote this article, it's a very Israeli name. I'm looking for a full name. It's here somewhere. I apologize. Let me go to the substack itself. I'll find it there. Anyway, Batya Ungar Sagan. Batya Ungar Sagan. Batya is, I don't know that she's a Marxist, but she's suddenly a creature of, not a creature. For all I know she's an amazing person. She is influenced by class, looking at things through class. And what she notices is that people who advocate for these ideas are people from the upper class. Journalism used to be a profession of the working class. It used to be the ambitious, poor, the ambitious working class went into journalism. Today, journalism is dominated by, at least according to Batya, it's dominated by spoiled rich kids. It's dominated by kids whose parents are wealthy. It's dominated by people who might not make a big high living, a high salary, at least initially that they're starting off salaries, maybe 40,000 a year, but still managed to live in New York and Los Angeles, suggesting that they'll probably get help from their parents who are fairly wealthy. That's at least Batya's association. And therefore Batya sees this whole through the prison of race. And she says, why are rich people, why are rich people? God, we've already gone an hour and I've got a lot more to say. Well, I hope you guys are patient with me and it would be good if we got the numbers up a bit. With like 250, we've still got 350 to go. So, you know, let's see if we can make it again to 600 today, particularly if we go for quite a while longer because I've got a lot of super chat questions here and I've still got a lot to say and you guys should ask more super chat questions. But $20 and above, right? $20 and above. Try not to ask less than $20 questions. I appreciate it. So, Batya is saying, look, what happened is that, remember, she is a leftist. What happens is that what we noticed starting in 2010 is we noticed inequality. We noticed that the middle class and the working class stagnated. This is their story, not mine. Being exploited, the rich were getting richer at an ever-increasing rate. They were the exploiters. And yet the wealthy and the elites tend to be left. And there was this huge outcry following, and I'm riffing off of her statement. She didn't argue all this. I'm elaborating. There's this whole Occupy Wall Street. There was a clear cry for massive redistribution of wealth, for a massive penalty on billionaires, for reducing the power of the elites, a cry against the elites, against the money elite, and that there was a huge demand to resolve the issue of inequality through massive redistribution of wealth. And that given their leftist politics, the elites, the wealthy should have embraced, should have supported, and indeed for a little while did. The 1% spoke the right things. They said the right things. But they didn't do the right things. They lobbied heavily against the Democratic Party's attempts to raise taxes on themselves, to redistribute their wealth. You saw that now with the attempts at the Biden administration to pass a wealth tax, and it is the wealthy who objected, surprise, surprise, the wealthy who tend to be leftists.  They needed to shift the dialogue away from something that was easy to fix, wealth disparities, income disparities, to something that's impossible to fix. But did you can still get more credit for pointing it out? Systemic racism. So, if you are poor and I am wealthy, and we view that as a problem, we can fix it easily. We can take my money and give it to you. That's easily done. But if I am white and you are black, and by the very nature of my whiteness and the very nature of your blackness, I am oppressing you, there's actually nothing to be done. Being white and rich, what I can do is I can apologize. I can feel guilty, I mean sincerely I can feel guilty. I can grovel. I can teach my children that they are oppressors as I pay for their private education and make sure that they can get it to Harvard or Yale. I don't have to give up my Maserati or my condo or any of my money in my bank account. I can keep all those. But I can say the right things. I can give to the right charities. I can support the right causes. I can read the New York Times every day. I can take seminars about white fragility. I can have, what's his name, Kendi affiliated with my cause and send his new think tank tons of money to argue for anti-racism. And that's okay because you're not touching my bank account and you're not actually preventing my kids from going to Harvard and you're not preventing me from sending them to the best private schools in New York City. No skin. I mean, and it's not that they actually... I don't drive a Maserati, I wish I did. It's not that they actually think in that kind of cynical way. It's not that they think in that kind of cynical way. Thank you, John. It's that this is... they be provided a way out because think about if they care about inequality, if they care about unequal opportunities, then what they would actually have to do is take their kids out of private schools, indeed shut down the private schools. To outlaw private schools. They would advocate the nationalization of all their universities so that they're no good private universities anymore. They should advocate for giving away their wealth. But this gives them opportunity not to do any of that. Now again, I don't think they actually think that through. I think what happens is... wait a minute, you mean... you mean all I have to say is... and you know, they do feel guilty a little bit. It's real. It's not all an act. There's a sudden sincerity in it. So what Bhatia is saying is, this is not about race. This is about class. Which is a typical Marxist inspired way of looking at the world. Now in spite of the fact that I think I've done a pretty good case of presenting that, I don't think it's right. I don't think that's what's going on. I think what's going on is much deeper. It's not just... I mean, there's some of what this is going on, but I don't think it's just that. I think it's actually deeper. What is actually going on is altruism. The need of these people to feel like they're good people. To feel like they need to sacrifice. To feel like they are sacrificing. They're giving up something important. What critical race theory and wokeness gives them is an alternative that allows them to feel appropriately guilty, which I think they do. Allows them to feel appropriately ashamed of themselves, which I think they do. Allows them to exhibit some sacrifice, which I think they do in the form of the guilt and the apologies and the going to these seminars and giving money and all of that. Allows them to do all the virtue signalling they need, but also to act, quote, virtuously and altruistically. And yet, not give up too much of the comforts that they have, which I think is what people are constantly striving. Most people in our society are constantly striving between how to be moral, which for them means altruism of some form or another, and yet not take it too seriously, because that would be too cumbersome, too frightening, too painful. I don't want to sacrifice in a big way. I don't want to whip myself in little ways. I'll give more to charity. I'll say I'm sorry. I'll admit this structural racism. But the cost to them, at least their perceived cost, seems small. Of course, I think we understand human psychology. If you understand how human beings work, you know that the cost is large. The cost is large in a sense of guilt, in a sense of lack of integrity, in a sense of their own lack of integration. The cost is their soul. But at the end of the day, altruism is what drives these people. The need to show themselves. I like that term virtue signaling, but one of the most important people you signal is yourself. You're signaling to yourself, oh no, I'm a good person. Don't think that of me. Not to other people. You're saying this to yourself. I'm a good person. Look, I did this. I gave to that. I did all these things. And the thing about altruism is it's endless. There's no limit to the people you can't sacrifice to. There's no limit to the need of other people. There's no limit to the rationalizations that can be made around all those things. There's no limit to the amount of redistribution that can be done. There's no limit to how much we can so-called level the playing field. So what is driving all of this? It's not just class. The unwillingness of the upper classes to recognize the suffering of the lower classes and redistribute wealth accordingly. What's driving this is morality. It's the bad ethics. It's the negation of individualism, of egoism, of rational self-interest. So this is what drives these people. And notice, it's not the working classes. It's not even blacks who are woke. I don't know if you saw the father of the black kid who was murdered in Atlanta, Aubury, where he said basically he said all lives matter. No parent, no parent should go through what he went through. No matter the color skin of their kid. I think a lot of blacks understand the Martin Luther King dream of a colorblind society. I think the people who don't understand it or don't accept it, who it doesn't fit into their altruistic framework are educated elites, no matter what color skin they happen to have. And that's why the altruism constantly evolves. It evolves from class to race to intersectionality, sexuality, right? LGBTQ plus whatever are oppressed. Therefore we should sacrifice for them. They are needy. Therefore whatever they say goes, they own the truth. Why? Because they are the oppressed. Altruism conditions us, conditions us to elevate the needy, to elevate their needs, to elevate their views, to elevate what and who they are. Because they are the standard of the good. They are who we must sacrifice to. And as such, they are the standard of value. Altruism, the idea and ethics that you should live for others, that their happiness is more important than yours, is behind all of the evils on the left and the right. Now, it in and of itself is conditioned on a certain epistemology of mysticism and subjectivism. But in morality, which has, I think, the biggest impact on one's psychology, it is driven by this altruistic view of morality. And that's why we should be fighting constantly. It's fighting irrationality and altruism. Mysticism in all its forms and altruism.  All right. All right, we have a lot of questions, but not enough. Not enough $20 questions. So now is your opportunity. We are at $350, so we're $250 short. So at least we passed a halfway mark. We're already at an hour, 20 minutes. This could easily be a two-hour show. It's up to you. If you ask enough questions at the right amount of money. Anyway, $20 are more questions. Please don't ask at the $5 or $10 level. Please only ask at $20 so we can get through them tonight. Okay, friend Harper says, thanks for the longer show and your hard work. I have a song recommendation, Touch the Sky by Jeff Williams, Great Sense of Life, and it is about being one's best self. Thanks, friend Harper. I'll check it out. I'll check it out. I don't know if you guys know I did it my way. Frank Sinatra's I did it my way. I love that song. I don't know why I just remembered that. Okay, here's a question about wokeism. Liren Brown, do you think people, I apologize for butchering the name, do you think people superficial adherence to wokeism is similar to superficial adherence to religion? Yes, I think there are massive similarities to it. Again, religion gives people an out.  And you go maybe you work at the soup kitchen once a month and you give to charity and you feel guilty. You literally feel guilty and that cleanses you, right? You've done your virtual signaling. It's the same. Thanks for bringing this up. I mentioned this. It works in exactly the same way. And of course the beliefs behind the altruism are equally mystical on the left and on the right. So religion works the same way as wokeism in inspiring people, motivating people and justifying, providing them with justifications for their behavior and giving them an outlet for their altruism without them having to actually be Mother Teresa. Particularly the Protestant church allows you to not be Mother Teresa as long as you send them checks so that the preacher can buy a private jet. I just saw a video of a woman, one of these televangelist women talking about the fact that she was attacked by an alien and saved by Jesus and God, these people are certifiable nuts. Nuts and thousands, millions of people listen to them, send them money, grovel before them. And it's as irrational, if not more rational, then they woke people. But it's the same mechanism that drives people towards this nuttiness. It's salvation. They want some kind of salvation. Wokeism gives people secular salvation. Christianity gives people a different form of salvation. After life salvation. Both are destructive psychologically. Both are destructive ethically. I said only $20 questions. A moral pancake. I'll take it though because it's funny. Brie says the idea that we are products of our environment is also a justification for total government control over our environment. Yeah, and think about this, that the environment is not just natural environment. The environment is everything. Our schools, our neighborhoods, everything. And the government wants control over everything because it wants to shape us into good, moral, healthy human beings. And by the way, the right agrees on that. Again, listen to the national conservatives and you'll see how much they want to control us. They want to make us moral people. They want us to live moral lives. And they know that in order to do that, they have to control our environment. Okay, let's see. Any questions about woke? Okay, here's one. Have you thought about reading woke racism? I heard about it from Don Watkins on Twitter claiming it's persuasive on a controversial topic. I thought it was pretty good for fighting back against woke mob. Woke racism is McWither's book. Who wrote this? Fend Hopper? I think it's McWither's book. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I've got the patience to read it. I'm not a fast reader. I'm a slow reader. And I've got such a big stack of books that I want to read. And I have to say that the whole issue of wokeness and woke racism and critical race theory and all that are not the most important thing, not the most interesting things that I am interested in, right? So I'll read what I can, but I don't overdo it. I like McWither. I read his columns, but I don't know that I'm going to read his book. We'll see. All right. Adam, 50 bucks. Thank you, Adam. Very generous. Let's see. Adam says, I'm at school lunches. A high in diabetes induces inducing carbohydrates, corn syrup, sugar, starch. Which results in high rates of diabetes in low income groups? Am I woke if I see this? No. I mean, you're right about that. And it's horrible. And the sad thing about that is that this is, if you look at the government's food pyramid, it is to a large extent, diabetes and unhealthiness encouraging. So, but yes, I think government is doing things, government is doing things that exacerbates real problems in every field possible. And we should identify them. And of course, the fundamental problem is government schools. The fundamental problem here is the government choosing what a good diet is, like the food pyramid. There shouldn't be a food pyramid distributed by the government. Different health organizations can distribute food pyramids, but not the government. The government gives it some kind of authority. And that's what people are rebelling against when they advocate for ivermectin. It's like if the government said it's bad, it must be good. No. But yes, I think that you are being... Why use the word woke, right?  When there was redlining, identifying the redlining, arguing against it, is important. Richard says, you may not be interested in CRT wokeism, but CRT wokeism is just in you. I know, and that's why I talk about it all the time. But there's only so much I want to read about it, because it's just not that interesting. And the fact is that I think it's going to disappear here. As I've often said, CRT and wokeism, wokeism is already going away. They'll change its name. There's already been a rebellion against CRT in the schools, and that's only going to increase. This is not sustainable. The crazy left is not what is going to destroy this country.  But it's the response to the crazy left that is already destroying this country and will destroy this country thoroughly. And you can see that in what I find much more interesting, which is things like national conservatives, which I think are, in response to woke, want control over the curriculum. They want the same kind of power the left wants. They just want it in the name of Christianity. And don't confuse national conservatism with any kind of secular approach. They want Christianity in our schools. I don't want CRT in the schools. I don't want Christianity in the schools. But if I had to predict long term, what is more likely to be in our schools? I think long term, I think it's going to be Christianity. Long term is long term. Woke will win in the children. All right, we still have $240 to get to our goal. So keep it coming, guys. And you guys don't get it. I mean, I keep having to reefer. None of this is Marxism. This is much worse than Marxism. It's an insult to Marx. This is the worst kind of nihilism. Wokeism and the modern environmentalist movement are worse than Marx. Worse than Marx. This is nihilism. Okay, so yeah, identifying situations in which the government is systematically, systemically doing harm to people. The FDA is one systemic organization that does harm to people. Is something valid to do? All right, let's see. Anything else regarding... Pogtiki says, I made some mistakes about race and bigotry towards sexual orientation in the early 90s. But reading ran walk me towards individual rights. Yeah, and treating people as individuals. Absolutely. That's good to hear. All right. Okay, let's do some $20 questions unrelated. Michael asks, maybe Plato is right.  That's why dictatorships are so common in man's history.  His argument that they don't have the tool that makes knowledge possible. And only some people have it. He's wrong about that. People are not quite ready and motivated to use the tool, reason. But that's an issue of cultural evolution. And that's what we need to argue for. Don't give in. We mustn't give in. Fred Harper asks, on topic, and it's my favorite short audio book. It's How to Lie with Statistics by, I forget the author's name, he says. It's a very good book. Yes, I encourage that. Also, like to mention, Leonard Peacock's talk about use of statistics is very enlightening and valuable. Yes, as everything Leonard Peacock does is. Shazba says, oh, let me get to that in a second. Jennifer says, my Jewish dad was an atheist, but he liked matzah at Passover. He teased me for putting butter on it. That's right. That's supposed to put butter on matzah. But yes, I don't particularly like matzah, but I reject all the holidays. All right, we are still quite a bit short. We might have to, you know, let's at least make it at 400 bucks, which is kind of an old criteria. We were out of $20 questions. We've got one more by Shazba. But out of $20 questions, it would be nice if we get a few more $20 questions, at least two, so we can get over the $400 mark. If we're not going to make 600 lists, at least make 400 to make it somewhat respectable. But Catherine is not happy because Catherine wanted to get to 600 again today and she's not going to be happy with you guys if you don't make it happen. So let's get a few more. Somebody stepping with some support and maybe ask some worthwhile questions. Let's see. All right, Shazba asked, what's your favorite Mel Brooks movie? Favorite Mel Brooks movie. My favorite Mel Brooks movies are his first two. They are God. What's the name of the Mel Brooks movie? Wait, I have to look it up. I remember one of them, the less known. Maybe somebody can think of it. It's not that, it's not that, it's not that, it's not that. Oh, yes, there it is. Okay, so my two favorite Mel Brooks movies, and it's hard for me to choose between them, although I think one is better, are The Producers and 12 Chairs. Wow, Shazba got it right. Good for you, Shazba. 12 Chairs and The Producers, I think, are the best Mel Brooks movies. There's first two. They're both hysterical. They're both clever. 12 Chairs actually includes a critique of communism as part of it, makes fun of the communists. The Producers is just brilliant. It was brilliant as a movie. It's brilliant on stage if you've seen the stage play, which I saw in LA a few years ago. So those two are my favorite by far Mel Brooks movies. I think many of his other movies, the humor tends to be on the nihilistic side, although as compared to most modern comedies, I guess maybe not. One of the things Mel Brooks did is he took every genre of moviemaking and made it into a comedy into it that was hysterically funny. But again, if you haven't seen The Producers or 12 Chairs, 12 Chairs, you're missing out. They're truly, truly fantastic, funny historical movies and very clever as well. John asks John for $20. Thanks John. Do you see Democrats distancing themselves from walkers in the midterm addiction? Yes. I think you'll see that in the primaries, the far leftists will lose to more moderate candidates. I think they'll distance themselves from CRT. They might not completely, but they'll definitely change the name. They'll stop talking about woke. They'll definitely change the name there. But generally, you will see a lot less of this kind of racist language in the midterm elections. I think the Democratic Party outside of the maybe the coast, I think learned from the election a few weeks ago, learned that the American people won't tolerate this nonsense, the complete absurd part of their agenda. They will rein those people in. The true progressives in Congress just fight people. I mean, the CRT kind of wacky anti-American, about five people. The caucus is about 100, but most of them are not CRT-like progressive, wokeism type progressive. They're more old line economic leftists, which I think are quite different, more like the Marxists. All right, let's get at least another $20 question in before we're done so we can get over $400, but it would be cool if somebody came in with $220 to get us the $600. It's happened every night, the last three nights. It appears that this is the night where we're going to maybe fail to get there. Okay, we got to the $400. Friend Harper says, how an entrepreneur stay motivated if they know they could have their business destroyed like Bill Gates or Michael Milken? From that one friend again reworded his question because he said he woulded it wrong. It's hard. I mean, some of the evil that is the consequence of what they did to Bill Gates and to Michael Milken is that it destroys the spirit of young people and the desire to become entrepreneurs. I think most people overcome that because most people realize that even if they're successful, they're probably not going to be as successful as Bill Gates and Mike Milken. They're not going to be on the bad guys radar to that extent. And they do it because they love it. And even if it's going to cost them a lot, they do it because they love it. And they are eager to make a stamp on the world and to achieve something and to be successful and to make something of themselves. So I think entrepreneurs are going to become entrepreneurs no matter what because they love the process. And yes, if they get too successful, they might get hammered, but if they don't take them 20 years and enjoy those 20 years, they'll enjoy themselves, make a lot of money and do a lot of positive things. So I think most entrepreneurs are not discouraged. I mean, it reduces their motivation, but not... I think it reduces their motivation more by principle. The injustice of it, the horror of it. All right, Catherine, we've got another 200 to go. Start bugging these people. They're going to harass them, 200 bucks, $10, $20 questions. I'll stay here. If you're asking $20 questions, I'll stay here until I answer them all, but they've got to come. Otherwise, we'll end early. All right, well, they're long questions anyway. They're long shows anyway. Young Frank is saying it's funny, but not as funny as 12 chairs and the producers. Let's see. Okay, Michael asks, most educated people don't take introspection as a legitimate argument for anything. Maybe they're not as intelligent as they think, or as educated as they think they are. Introspection is how you know about yourself. There's no other way to know about yourself. And one of the aspects of know thyself is, I make choices. Yeah, we're short 200s. We can do it. Yeah, you got to wild them up. You got to get them excited. There we go. You're more panicking. Just contributed $5 towards it. We'll take them. $20 questions, but you can contribute any amount you want. You're on. Have you been to Calibre Island yet? I have not. I have not. I'd like to go, but I haven't yet. I am behind on my Star Trek episode. I've got it now lined up. I think I downloaded it on YouTube. I thought I'd done that before, but I feel guilty. You know, I've got to choose between three movies. It's hard for me to choose because I've seen all three. And I'm trying to figure out which one of them do I want to see again so I can review it. And should I see a rival, which is more philosophical, but I didn't like it. Or what's the one about the woman's baseball, which I like the movie, but it's not particularly philosophical or deep. And what was the third movie you asked for, Charles Ball? What was the third option? I can't remember. I've got it written here. What was the third option? Toy Story 3, which again, I liked. Maybe I didn't like it as much as Toy Story 1 and 2, but I can't remember why. So I've seen all three movies and I can't decide which one of the three I should watch. So Charles Ball, if you want to give me some other options, or if you want to tell me which one of the three you would want me to watch and comment on again the most philosophical of them is by far a rival. But you want me to see Toy Story 3? Okay, I'll watch Toy Story 3.  A league of their own, a rival or Toy Story 3. And he has now said I should choose Toy Story 3, so I will do that. He's also given me, I think, $250 to watch Star Trek The Next Generation Season 2, Episode 9, Measure of a Man, which I've seen in the past, but I don't remember. So again, I need to watch all these things again in order to do a proper review of them. What did I want to say? Yes, I should mention now that you can get me to watch and give you a review of a movie. It's $500. You get to choose the movie. I'll watch it and give you a review. And you can sponsor a show. If you have a topic you'd like me to talk about, based on articles, based on whatever, whatever you want me to talk about. Oh, then that's $1,000 and we haven't had a sponsor show in a while. So if you guys want to sponsor anything, just let me know and you can do that through PayPal. You can sponsor a movie or you can sponsor a show. Oh, you didn't say I should watch Toy Story 3. Okay, so let me know which one of those three you most want me to watch. Otherwise, I don't know. I'm not sure what I'll do. I'll probably re-watch Arrival because it was the most philosophical and I think interesting of the three. All right, Stephen asks, have you seen the movie The Family Man? 1999 with Nicholas Cage. It's like a wonderful life on steroids would make a good fired up review this December. I have not seen it. You know, 500 bucks and I do a review of it. It's one way to get me to see it. All right, let's see. We've got, let me just copy this a second. We've got two super chat questions left. Let me do those and then we'll call it a night unless you guys come in with some additional questions. We're at $446. We're almost there, guys. 150 bucks, we could do this. 153 bucks and we're there. Apollo asks, there is a phenomenon in psychology known as sub-personalities. Do you have any knowledge of this? Really? No. I don't. When I have a psychologist on, why don't you ask that question again? All right, last question. Yeah, you can get $480. Yes, if you want to get $480, I'll take that for the movie review, no problem. All right, last question. You've got a little bit of time. Does the Brook family observe the holiday known as Black Friday? Absolutely. Black Friday is the one day of the year that the Brook family makes sure not to leave the house and not to do any shopping unless there's an amazing deal online. So the only appropriate way to celebrate Black Friday is to avoid them all. Avoid Best Buy. Avoid the stores. You can get the same deals online, probably better ones. And the idea of going shopping on Black Friday is one of the most horrifying thoughts. One of the most ideas that I can think of. So no, I will not go shopping on Black Friday, but the opposite of that I'll do. All right, Andy asks, do you have a favorite historian? I don't know. I mean, I like Folsom, Burton Folsom, who wrote some really cool history books about the 19th century, about the so-called robber barons. One of his books is called The Myth of the Robber Barons. I like Durant because of the scope of the history. Like he has the history of the entire world in volumes, multiple volumes, bits and pieces, and they're very good. But no, I can't say I have a favorite historian beyond that. But I certainly love, I certainly like Folsom. And I wish there were more economic historians like him. I'm definitely looking for more. All right, J.J. Jigby's, yes. If you want to pay me $250 now and $250 after I review it, that is fine. I will accept that. I will accept that as a deal. And I will watch Akira Kurosawa's High and Low, which I want to watch. Yeah, which would be great because Kurosawa's movies are always interesting. I like Paul Johnson. Yes, good Carl Frank. I like Paul Johnson. I don't like Mario Atman.  When he covered the history of banking, which is something I actually know something about, the distortions and perversions in order for him to get the theme that he wanted were terrible. So, no, I wouldn't believe anything Mario Atman writes about history, anything. So, no. I like Walter Isaacson. I don't consider him a historian. He's a biographer, which I think is a different category. And I don't know. I've read a little bit of the Steve Jobs book and I don't like it. And I know that people who know Steve Jobs well didn't like it at all. Didn't like it at all. So, JJ, Jim Bees, you can do it here, the 250. I prefer that you do the 250 on PayPal. But once you do it, I'll definitely watch the movie. Shazmat gives me three more movie options. The Birdcage, that's a funny, I think. Oh, God. Shazmat likes to challenge me with his movie choices. Okay. The Birdcage, Masked and Commander, Django Unchained, Hot Fuzz. All right. Django Unchained is another one of, you know I don't like this director's movies, although Django Unchained might be one of my favorites of his. Hot Fuzz is really funny. The Birdcage, the original one in French, is that the one you want? I think that's the funnier one. So, the Birdcage, Masked and Commander, I've watched all those movies as well. Again, it's going to be hard. God. All right. I'll figure it out. Shazmat, try to pick one movie for me to review. Rather than give me choices, it makes my life more difficult. J.J. Bigby says, I work in hospitality. I've noticed that people who pay full price, no discount days or deals, are the most grateful and patient. Those who don't pay full price are always the most entitled and awful to serve.   I didn't say I like Hot Fuzz. It was funny. But, yeah, it's British. So, generally, I like British comedies more than other stuff. But it's not my favorite type of humor. But it is funny. So, I think that makes sense. I think people who are constantly looking for the deals constantly, they always think they're being screwed. They always think they're being screwed. And that's what generates kind of their hostility and their ungratefulness and their entitlement. All right, we are very close. We're $88 short, $420 questions and change, and we get there. But I'm out of super chat questions and out of things to say. So, unless somebody jumps in with an $80 question or a bunch of $20 questions, I don't think we'll make our goal today. Sean of the Dead. I won't watch zombie movies. That's a one category of movies. Horror movies, generally, I won't watch. You'll have to pay me a lot more than 500 bucks to watch horror movies. So, that I'm not doing. Yeah, Katherine, it's so close. It's just not there today. I don't know. I don't know. It's a two-hour show, but we just can't get them to the $600 mark. I could just stand here and keep talking until you guys came through, but I'm tired. So, it's time to go to bed, guys. Thanks, everybody. Don't forget, those of you who are not live and they are not participating in the fun of the super chat, you can support the show by applauding while you watch on YouTube, or if you are on a podcast, you can go to youronbookshow.com slash support and become a monthly contributor. You can also go to Patreon. You can go to Patreon. You can go subscribe star in other places and subscribe that way. So, support the show value for value. Hopefully, you get something from what I do. Show your love. JJ says, are you on? That's a deal. So, I will be watching high and low. I'll look forward to getting $250 on PayPal from you. See you guys soon. Tuesday. Tuesday, we've got a Q&A show. We've got $25 monthly supporters get to be on Zoom with me, ask whatever questions they want, and we'll also have the super chat open. Steven Porter says, I think you don't like Wathbub because he had disagreement with Rand. No, it's irrelevant to Rand. The fact is, Steven, thank you. Steven just came in and got us the $600. Really appreciate that. Thank you. But Steven, no. I don't like Wathbub because he was an anarchist. I don't like Wathbub because he lied about Iron Rand and admitted to lying about Iron Rand and did it in the most horrible, disgusting way. I don't like Wathbub because he fought and lied and deceived or fought with a lot of people within the libertarian movement. I don't like Wathbub because he made up history in order to make what do you call it, fraction reserve banking look bad. That's something I know about, and I studied his history of banking in the 19th century. He's just wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. That's why I don't like Wathbub. Other than that, he was a nasty character, but he lied about Iron Rand. He was nasty about Iron Rand and was a nasty guy, nasty about a lot of people. If you talk to people who knew him, he was an unpleasant fellow. Intellectually, he was a complete moral subjectivist. During the Vietnam War, he actually toasted every time a U.S. pilot was shot down over Vietnam. That's disgusting.  So he is a horrible, horrible human being. Stephen, thank you for the support. Really appreciate it. Thank you for getting us over the 600. Thank you, Fendi Hoppa. Do you count a plunge, super chat after the fact? I don't know what applaud. Yes, do I count them?  I count them for my monthly totals. I obviously don't talk about them here, but hey, we made 645 bucks. Thank you, everybody. That is great. You came through it the last minute. It was seven minutes short of two hours. See you all on Tuesday, and then we'll get back on the schedule.


So as Kevin mentioned, we are mostly tonight going to focus on things that we've used ourselves here in Singapore and things that have appeared on the radar this time. So we were lucky enough in the last year to work with the local bank on a voice platform. So they didn't come to us specifically asking for a voice platform, but they came to us because they had a conference coming up and they wanted to do something innovative to show off at the conference. So we went into the bank, we organised a couple of innovation sessions so, not loud enough? Yes, so we organised some innovation sessions where we asked a whole lot of thought workers as well as, we can see the innovation session here, as well as people from around the bank to come and talk about what we could build within the time available. I think we had about two months or so before the conference. So one of the things they had at their innovation lab was the Amazon Alexa that you can see here. So after a few days of talking about it, we decided that we could pair the Amazon Alexa and create a smart mirror. Now if you haven't heard about a smart mirror before, there's been quite a few showing up on the internet over the last year or so. Basically the smart mirror is a two-way mirror with an LCD panel mounted behind it. So a two-way mirror is the same kind of thing that you would use to build like an interrogation room or a UX lab where you have a piece of glass between the two rooms and you can see through from one side and not from the other. The reason that works is that if there is more light coming from one side, that will reflect and the user on the side with more light will just see their reflection. If there's more light coming from the other side, the light will come through the mirror and you'll see straight through as if it was a piece of glass. So we've used that here in the smart mirror. We've mounted an LCD behind it when the LCD is showing a black screen that looks like a mirror and when we decide to show some text on the mirror, it comes up and shines through. So what we were aiming to achieve here is something that you would have in your home. You can talk to it and ask it for things like your bank account balance and financial advice and it will show it to you on the mirror.  Make sure you've got enough money for your day's activities and then off you go. So I'm going to try and do a quick demo and then I'll talk to you a little bit more about how it works. Alexa, ask the bank for my account balance. No, account found. Alexa, ask the bank for my current account balance. You have $3,230 in your current account. I'm sure you can't all see that but the account balance is also shown up on the screen. So how do we achieve this? So what's actually happening here is that we're speaking to the Alexa device. It's streaming the audio to Amazon. Amazon is doing some intent analysis on what we've said and it's using the intent configuration that we've uploaded to the Amazon service to identify which intent the user was trying to achieve. So in this case, I was trying to fetch my account balance. Once the intent has been identified, Amazon will send our web service request. This is pretty much just a standard JSON call informing us of the intent and any additional parameters the user has provided. In this case, because this was an innovation project, we took an opportunity to try out some other technology here. So we're using Alexa and the Phoenix framework which I'll talk more about in a moment. So our service is responsible for fetching the user's account balance at that point and forming the words we would like Alexa to respond to the user with. So we will respond with JSON again back to Amazon. Amazon will convert that to audio and stream it back down to the speaker and that's what you hear in the response. So the account balance. So that's all well and good but how does this actually integrate with the mirror? So one of the reasons we chose the Alexa and Phoenix framework here was Alexa is very good at maintaining persistent connections. It can hold quite a large number of open connections, not that we needed it for this project. So we have a web interface that we display on the mirror and it has a web socket connection with the web service. So every time we receive an event from Amazon, we also forward that information down to the mirror through a web socket so it happens in real time and we can display the balance at the same time as Alexa is responding. So I'm just going to do another slightly more in depth demo. So one of the key differences with voice platforms at the moment, I mean voice platforms have been around for a while, we've all seen Siri and others but they're getting more conversationally aware. So the demo I'll try and do is a bit more conversation oriented. Alexa, ask the bank to transfer some money. Okay, to which account? To my credit card account. Okay, how much? $100. Okay, when shall I make the transfer? Transfer tomorrow. Okay, I will be initiating a transfer of $100 Singapore dollars from your currency account to credit cards account. Is this okay? Change the to account to Stuart's account. Okay, I will be initiating a transfer of $100 Singapore dollars from your currency account to Stuart's account. Is this okay? Yes. Transfer submitted. So you can see that there was really a conversation going on between me and the Alexa and as that was coming up each new piece of information was appearing on the mirror so I could maintain the context of what she was going to be doing. So moving on, as I mentioned we got an opportunity to use Alexa in this project which it's made its first appearance on the radar. Sorry, no, it was on the previous radar as well, my mistake. So before I talk about Alexa, I would also like to talk about Erlang. So I guess a quick survey, who in the room has heard about Alexa? Okay, there's a few. And has anyone used Alexa? Tried to write some Alexa code? Two. Okay, both thought workers. And I've both worked on this project. So Erlang is quite an old language. It's been around for a long time, as you can see here, it's been around since 1986. It was built by Ericsson and it was really designed from the ground up to be very fault tolerant, scalable and distributed. So it was really targeting telco exchanges. So they had some very high demands on how much traffic they needed to handle and they really didn't want those things to go down. It's not like a server today where you can remotely restart it.  So they came up with a pretty good model. Erlang has the Beam VM, which basically can handle a lot of processes within the VM and they're very, very lightweight. They're not the operating system processes or threads that we often talk about. One of the other cool features of Erlang is they can have zero downtime updates. So you can actually push new code into the virtual machine while it's running and it can pick that up and start executing new code without having any issues with the existing running code. It's a bit in depth to tell you exactly how that works at the moment, but each process can maintain its state and is basically a loop. So after it loops, it can actually change the code and when it next executes, it will have the same state but with a new set of processing code. And you can even include migrations for the state that's in there when it picks up the new code. Unfortunately, it never really got heavily adopted because as a common opinion along a lot of developers, it had a very strange and hard to understand syntax. But it really was a very effective language. So there's a lot of success stories about Erlang. You probably don't realize that about 50% of the telco switches are actually running Erlang on them to operate the switch. One of the flagship projects created by Erlang managed to achieve a 9-9's of reliability, which is pretty much unheard of. Essentially, this boils down to about one second of downtime over a 20-year period. That's not per server. This is for the whole server, so this is a distributed system. It's a very impressive number. So one of the apps that we have all probably used, that is written in Erlang, is WhatsApp. So they managed to build WhatsApp with about 32 developers, and they were supporting about 450 million users when they were acquired by Facebook. So that's also some pretty impressive numbers. And reportedly, they've said that they were running 2 million concurrent connections per server at that point. Some of the other success stories are Facebook Chat, React, CouchDB, and RabbitMQ. So in comes Elixir. Elixir was created by Jose Bellin in about 2012. It basically compiles down to bytecode that runs on the Erlang VM. So even though it's a new language, it's run time is battle-hardened and proven over the 30-year period. And he's really leveraged all of the great things Erlang had to offer, but has provided a much better syntax. So a lot of people compare the Elixir syntax to Ruby. There's some good reasons for that. Jose was a Rails core contributor before he started working on Elixir. So he's very experienced in Ruby, and a lot of that came over. But really the way the languages operate, almost nothing like each other. And you can actually integrate Erlang functions directly with your Elixir code. So there's no bridging, there's no cost at runtime. Some of the Elixir language features of note, it's purely functional. It's totally immutable. All the data structures are immutable. This is one of the key reasons that they can achieve what they do achieve in terms of the optimizations, the hot swappable code. It's got very powerful pattern matching, which I'll show you an example of. Unicode support, which you really need these days. The pipe operator, which is one of my favorites, which I'll give you a quick demo of. And just like Ruby, they've come with some really good tools out of the box. Mix is the package management tool, much the same as Bundler. And it's got an interactive shell, which all good languages should have these days. It's even got metaprogramming. So I'm not going to go into metaprogramming tonight, but it's quite cool that basically half of the Elixir language is written in Elixir. And if you know how to use it, it can be very powerful. Okay, so just jumping into some code quickly. I just wanted to demonstrate, give you a little bit of a glance at what some Elixir code looks like. This is a little bit trivial, but... So the pattern matching, if you haven't seen pattern matching before, these are two tuples that are... There's an assignment here, but it will pattern match. It's seen that the two okays match, and it will basically assign the value of this key into the variable. So this is a very basic pattern matching. And it comes in very handy when you're defining functions with Elixir. So this function, for example, is looking for a single parameter coming from a map with a key of a. And you can see here when I call it, I've given it two keys, but I'm only interested in the key of a, and it's pattern matched on that. So my input parameter a has been assigned with the value of food. So that's a basic example of pattern matching. And this is the pipe operator. So it may look a little bit weird when you first look at it, but basically what the pipe operator is doing is taking the first value and piping it into the second, piping it into the second function. So the input parameter now becomes the first parameter of the second function. This is much the same way that Unix pipe operators work. And you can see here, so we've taken a string, we then split it by the underscore, which gives us an array. We then pipe the array into the next function, which capitalizes each string. That produces an array, that pipes into the next, and then we join them back together in space, and we get our hollow world out. This is a trivial example, as I say, but it's very declarative. You can see what's going on, and it follows the same way you would think about it. This is kind of the reverse to a lot of object-oriented languages, where you kind of string a lot of these commands together, and it's not nearly as readable. Before I move on, I think this is a great quote. So Pinterest came out and said that they've been using Elixir. They rewrote one of their notification systems, and basically it went from 10,000 lines of Java code to 1,000 lines of Elixir code, and they ended up using half the service. If you want to know more, I can personally recommend these three books. They're very, very good. Jose himself was involved in the first book. Chris McCord is actually the author of the Phoenix Framework, which I'll talk more about in a moment. And this book right here is actually written by a Singaporean, so you can go out and buy it and support him. Now, I don't have enough time tonight to go through all the features of Phoenix as well, but Phoenix is essentially a web framework that's written in Elixir. So you get a lot of the benefits of what I've been talking about, scalable, distributed, purely functional. And basically it is kind of a clone of people. Some people talk about it as a clone of Rails, and in many ways it is. So they've taken a lot of the lessons learned from the Rails framework and applied it to this, but really the closer you get, they're nothing alike. But they have some of the great features of the generators that you get in Rails. You can generate a new project, get up and running really quickly. And it's a great way to get an introduction to Elixir. So I recommend you all go and give it a try, which is why it's in the trial radar. Okay, I'm going to hand over to Stefan.


Every religion every single thing people be like only my way is right or only my way is right. Oh, it's me versus them It's like no, we're all trying to find peace and love like we're all going towards the same goal We're just coming from different angles I I grew up Christian and I ran the other way as far as I could go in pursuit of truth and that only ended in addiction depression Suicide-aladiation eating disorders Etc and no other teacher gave me anywhere near the peace that Jesus Christ did and I'm here to publicate the No, this is just awesome Josh I'm so happy for you man now people rightly concerned that he got baptized at Bethel church myself included But it turns out Josh isn't connected with that church He doesn't attend that church and he was unaware about their unbiblical teaching now talking about his testimony I'm so glad that he found peace and freedom in Christ and only given a 10-second sound bite I trust there was more he wanted to say look I don't know Josh personally, but this is an awesome development and truly looks like God's working on his heart I think there's a great opportunity for him to use his influence for the gospel I'm gonna be praying for him and I I hope you do too


Do you feel like with the way the game is played now that your defensive versatility is as important or more important than ever before? Yeah, I think the stigma behind a utility player is not so much negative anymore. It's more of a role player and he's got an important part on each club. I feel like more teams are kind of having that guy. So yeah, to answer your question, I think it's important. I think defense wins championships is kind of a cliche saying, but at the end of the day, when it's a one-run game, you need good defense. How has that impacted your outlook on your career, maybe? Does it make you more willing to accept this role than maybe when you first came up and maybe wanted to be a regular player? For sure. I'm an athletic guy, so I like to use my athletic ability to my advantage. And I wasn't really a good defender in the minor leagues. I went through some learning curves and some failures. So I think the biggest thing I heard from I think many told me this, you have to have trust from your pitching staff and all these people. And I didn't want to be the guy that was kind of shaky. So I put in work and I love, I take pride in that. And I think it's important to have a good deal. What have you tried to work on offensively? I know it's kind of a constant thing for you to try to just be consistent offensively more than anything else. What are some of the things you kind of latched on to here? Yeah, I just think barrels, barrels with low in the middle of the field. I feel like the first couple of weeks was trying to get my timing right. Everyone's come out throwing a hundred. So it takes a little bit to get your timing. But I feel like the last couple of weeks for me just being on time consistently and putting good swings on the ball and knowing my strength. So I think just being able to put myself in a good position and just being able to barrel the ball in the middle of the part of the field because that plays for me and that plays everywhere else. So just being able to get on base as consistent as I can for the big guys.   But when you get in there, even in a lineup that is stacked as the Yankees, do you feel like there is a certain amount of pressure to hit in order to keep your job? I think you got to hit wherever you go. It's just not the Yankees. But I think the biggest part for me is knowing who Tyler Wade is and what he does really well and being able to hone in on those skills. So pressure, not really. I don't feel it.  So just I trust my work. I work hard. I know my work's been good and I know that translates in the game as just a matter of fact, getting your timing right and swinging at good pitches. So that's the biggest part for me. If you're swinging at good pitches and your timing's on and you have good timing, you're going to put yourself in a good position for success.


Would you rather pay $650 or $66 for a smart phone? Simple. With the Appalachian Advantage Plan, pay less upfront and then just a few dollars more every month. Better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless. We work with all the school systems in Floyd County and the family resources and they pick out the children that need it the most and they give us a list of their names so we go out and buy their shoes for them, label them with their names and stuff on them and they come in at a certain time, each school comes in at a certain time and we actually fit the, we get them a pair of socks and fit the shoes to make sure they fit properly and everything and then Shriners comes and does hot dogs and ladies, it's like ladies' auxiliaries coming and doing hot dogs and nachos and cheese. We have slushies, cotton candy, face painting, a balloon artist, hairdressers, local hairdressers are coming and cutting hair and I know there's plenty more, it's just we make it a very fun carnival experience. My son Dawson came home when he was little and one of his friends, his shoe, how do you describe it, was it flopped and he was so burdened by that when he was little and wanted to go buy that little boy a pair of shoes and we went and bought it and took it to his teacher and from that point on it made me realize and something that we take so much for granted, not everybody has and we just felt like that it, you know, we should start, you know, that's how we started it and just on a vision from him, you know, it's just a blessing to be part of and I'm glad that God chose me to, you know, try to lead it.