Hello everybody, E here welcome back to another book review. Unfortunately, it is yet and I know two this week I apologize, but sometimes that's just how the cookie crumbles. This is another negative review Just tell you straight off Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pacell This hurts my heart to say one of my favorite books my number three spot for my favorite novels of all time is night film by By Marisha Pacell. I really love special topics in calamity physics also, which was her first book This one I have no idea what happened here It almost feels like being a Stephen King fan Who someone who has read his share of trunk novels because Stephen King will tell you in like in blaze He tells you right off the bat that this is a trunk novel. You're not getting something new This feels like a trunk novel This feels like something that it was packed away that the author didn't have any faith in because it didn't go anywhere And didn't have anything else to publish so they threw it out there Now I'm not saying that's the case. I'm not really trying to disrespect her because she's an amazing author The problem here is this book goes absolutely nowhere. There is nothing interesting that happens in this book If you go into the synopsis, which I read before and I don't usually but I want to know what I was getting into It does say that there's There is something you know supernatural something fantastic that happens to the to the young adults in this book and Right off the bat. This book isn't bad because it's young adult I didn't I didn't care for anything about this book and that had absolutely nothing to do with the young adult aspect The problem was the characters are so empty and vacuous. They're just but they're it's not in a villainous way There's just nothing interesting about them and I thought to to one extent.  It's like, okay, so you checked off that box. Let's keep moving. There's a nerdy character in here Is it everything that you will find in your typical, you know, like basically what you're dealing with here Scoot this cast of Scooby-Doo is what you're dealing with to a tee Now that I think about it and I think about it even more after I wrote my review It feels like they should all have gotten in the mystery van and driven off but the problem is the focus of this book is a Maybe somebody that committed suicide didn't actually commit suicide kind of deal But that wasn't the focus that I was looking for it's called neverworld wake not the possible murder of so-and-so And neverworld wake it the the neverworld wake It's a it's a place kind of a reality an alternate reality It's just our reality that just keeps on happening over and over again. It's Groundhog day or that Tom Cruise sci-fi movie. It's been done so many times over and over again And she does absolutely nothing new with it until the end But in the middle of this they bring up a book called the dark house of elsewhere bend first off That's an amazing title. I'd read I'd read the hell out of that book In in this book. It says that that book is 1394 pages. This book is 324 pages It's also about half as long as both of her other books And it feels that way too with the character development and the story and the plot progression everything It just feels rushed and you know slapped together but with With this one the book in the the book inside the book the dark house of elsewhere bend That's what I signed up for that's the the crazy weirdness that I signed up for especially in like in books like night Films she does the same kind of thing where she she dumps into this whole fictional world jumps not dumps She jumps in this whole fictional world and she owns it Like the all the Stanislaus Cordova stuff if you read that I don't want to give you any spoilers We're talking about this book, but with this one. She doesn't she doesn't commit It's like they well it's not like they use this book as an instruction manual and This really super cool concept becomes a plot device instead of actually being the story And of course at the end of the book the person that everybody everybody who reads this is gonna know who gets voted for There's not a spoiler everybody who reads this knows how this is going to end And then at the end you get a super brief glimpse of that crazy wacky not wacky Sorry that that other worldly type of thing you get a brief glimpse of it just about 30 pages of it And then it's over So yeah, I waited five years night feels night film came out in 2013. I waited five years for this book and I'm actually upset if you read my Goodreads review That's a little more passionately upset than I am now because I got I was able to get out in the links down there In the doobly-doo. I was able to get all that out in the writing of it, but I'm really I'm really pretty pissed off about it Especially since I made a case of it to just scream on Twitter about how excited I was about it I pre-ordered it. I jumped through all the hoops trying to get everything, you know Putting putting myself out there going I can't write part of this book just to get this crap anyways, so If you've read it, let me know down there And if you have a differing opinion than me, please explain your differing opinion and please don't go. Oh my god I loved it. Tell me why you loved it. Okay, so until next time. I have any you've been you it's been to the book review I'll talk to you guys there. Bye. Bye


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 Wednesday, January 4th, for another edition of our news roundup for today. Thanks for joining me. I hope everybody's having a fantastic week. Let's jump right into it.  Three votes yesterday could not confirm a speaker of the House. Kevin McCarthy, who has insisted that he is the Republican nominee for Speaker, can't get enough votes. Twenty Republicans landed up voting against him in the third round, voting for Jim Jordan. Jim Jordan probably cannot be Speaker of the House because I think a lot of Republicans would vote for him. So far, it's a stalemate overnight. Frantic efforts within the Republican Party to try to solve this problem, to try to negotiate a deal. I mean, Kevin McCarthy had basically given in to every single one of the requests, desires of the people who oppose him. It didn't matter. They just oppose him. There's a segment in the Republican House calling themselves Never Kevin. You know, following the Never Trumpists, Never Kevin. And so we're going to see, we're going to see today what happens. I don't think McCarthy is going to give up just yet. He's going to have to be much more thoroughly humiliated for him to give up. And then the question is, who do they have? Who do they have? So we'll see. I mean, the Never Kevin started with five, six, something like that. Enough to stop the vote given how pathetic Republicans did in the midterms and has grown to 20 people voting against him. So 19 in the first two rounds, 20 in the third round. It's really suspenseful. Jordan can win. Jordan can win the votes for moderate Republicans. Scalise, I don't. We'll see. Who knows.  Okay, Donald Trump stepped into this as the nominal leader of the Republican Party. He wrote this morning, I guess, on Truth Network. He wrote some really good conversations to place last night. And it's now time for all our great, great all-capitalist Republican House members to now everything's capitalized vote for Kevin. Close the deal. Take the victory and watch crazy Nancy Pelosi fly back home to a very broken California. Don't speak in your sister's. You have lost the house twice. Republicans do not turn a great triumph into a great and embarrassing defeat. It's time to celebrate. You deserve it. Enough with all caps. Kevin McCarthy will do a great job, a good job, and maybe even all caps. Great job. Just watch. If Republicans are going to fight, we ought to be fighting Mitch McConnell and his domineering, China-loving boss. I mean, wife. Coco Chow. Coco Chow, by the way, was in Trump's cabinet. But after January 16th, she resigned. And as you know, Trump hates people who are disloyal to him. Today, he couldn't be elected dog catcher in Kentucky. Sadly, only one because my endorsement went up 21 points. Sorry. So Donald Trump passionately backing Kevin McCarthy and using the opportunity for us to bash his perceived enemies. And I mean, it's interesting that this whole segment of the Republican Party that's ignoring him and it's the segment that is most Trumpist. That is the people who are most Trumpist are the ones ignoring Trump. And, you know, that is interesting. And again, it's a question of how does this play out? How does this play out? How does this play out once we move into, you know, primary season? It does Trump have the kind of support that makes him the frontrunner. Maybe somebody else like DeSantis has it. Hard to tell. DeSantis, of course, will stay quiet on issues like this because he does not. He wants to alienate anybody at this point. He wants to stay loose so he can go either way. Republican politics. Super crazy right now. Super interesting. I'll keep you updated on who gets elected house. But I do think there's some significant implications for this for the rest of Republicans. One interesting issue is, okay, let's say they choose the house, they get the committees, they start going. What is going to be their priority? I mean, one of the things that I was hoping would happen is what happened in 2011 when the Tea Party Republicans took over the house. And the first thing they do is they use the debt ceiling to basically negotiate a deal with Obama to cut $1 trillion off of government spending in exchange for the Republicans voting to increase the debt ceiling. And that I thought was a major victory. And really, I think, saved the economy for a large extent, allowed interest rates to go really low without anybody worrying too much about inflation. And if you look at Obama budgets following that as a percentage of GDP, they actually go down. And it's not just because the first few years were big stimulus. It's because the Republicans put in mechanisms, not big enough, not strong enough, not important enough, but some mechanisms that actually reduced government spending. Is that even possible? Is that even possible today? That is, is it possible that Republicans would actually fight and actually insist on cutting government spending? And even in the midst of inflation, where you think, yes, they would support cutting government spending, I don't think so. I don't think there's fighting Republicans over government spending. In that sense, it's why I'm a little pessimistic about inflation. I think if they don't cut spending, you're going to have more inflation. So I don't see the Republicans standing up for this. I don't think the Liberty Caucus, the Freedom Caucus, I think they call themselves, is anymore about fiscal austerity or cutting government spending. I think the Liberty now, the Liberty that Jim Jordan and others in the so-called Liberty Caucus represent is all about going after the left and investigating Biden and investigating this and investigating that. I don't think any of them think that they have any political, anything politically to gain from insisting on cutting government spending. I think the deficit hawks are not the same as the Freedom Caucus. The Freedom Caucus now is mostly Trumpists who are dedicated to government spending and Trumpists who are dedicated to attacking the left, and that's all they really want to do. They have no real positive agenda other than the social realm. So we're going to see, it's going to be interesting to see what does the Republican Congress do, can it resurrect the spirit of the Tea Party? Remember that most, maybe not most, maybe most, I don't know, but a huge constituency within the Republican Party today are recipients of Medicare and Social Security.  All right, let's see, that is the mess that is the Republican Party right now. I don't know if you've heard about these illegal immigrants, I should add of course, that have shown up in the Florida Keys, there are hundreds of them, boats from Cuba. They shut down I guess a state park over there for the state to handle them and to deal with them. I have a feeling that these immigrants are going to be dealt with with kid gloves, that the DeSantis authorities, the DeSantis people are going to treat these immigrants, these illegals, they're not going to ship them to New York, they're going to treat them really nicely, they're going to settle them somewhere in Florida, they're going to expedite the asylum requests. I mean Florida is going to go out of their way not to alienate a big voting block, the Cubans who voted for DeSantis. So Cubans are not going to be treated the same as other illegal immigrants, even though there's really no big difference between all of these illegal immigrants. Anyway, there are hundreds of them and it turns out that a large percentage or significant percentage of the people crossing the border from Mexico turn out to be Cubans. There is a massive out migration of Cubans right now leaving Cuba. It's actually bigger right now than it was in the Mariel boat lift, it's a bigger exodus of Cubans now than ever before. They have a variety of different ways out, one is by boat to Florida. The Coast Guard has stopped many of those boats and sent them back to Cuba, a record number, but some have made it and you're seeing those in the state park. But also it's also from the southern border coming across since the Cuban regime allows Cubans to leave the country if they leave by plane. They are getting on planes and flying to Mexico and then walking to the border and trying to cross that way. So we're having a record number of Cubans. The big motivation for this is the complete other economic disaster that is Cuba right now. It was always poor, it was always bad, but now it's a lot worse. COVID basically killed off the one industry that they had going for them, which was tourism. The Trump administration sanctions, reinstatement of the sanctions that Obama had lifted has made things worse for Cuba. Demonstrations last year partially as a result of what happened during COVID resulted in thousands of Cubans being arrested and putting in jail and that has stimulated more people to leave. So people are leaving Cuba in mass. The socialist haven, the socialist ideal state is on the verge of collapse. At least if the number of people leaving is any indication of what is going on in the country itself. Over the last year, about 250,000 Cubans, more than 2% of the island's 11 million population, have migrated to the United States. Most of them arriving at the southern border by land, according to US data. Even for our nation, this is for a New York Times story, even for our nation known for mass exodus, the current wave is remarkable. Larger than the 1980 Marielle boat lift and the 1994 Cuban rafter crisis combined, until recently the island's two biggest migration events. 250,000 people leaving Cuba. So good for the Cubans for leaving. I wish we made it a lot easier for them to be integrated into American society to get a job, to actually become productive members. As they wait for asylum, they can't work. They become basically a warfare recipient. This is true of all the migrants crossing the border who are seeking asylum. What they're becoming is, until the cases heard in court and that could take years, they're basically not a lot of work and they're basically on welfare, which is just the stupidest immigration policy imaginable. But people are leaving Cuba in mass, not surprising. All right, let's see Iran protests. The protests are continuing on, you know, maybe a slightly lower level, but they are continuing. And, you know, I expect that there are fewer and fewer stories as always in the press about them. But they are there. The regime continues to threaten to execute and is executing protesters that have been caught. So two teenage protesters have been sentenced to death and they appealed and that sentence has been upheld so one can expect them to be hanged. So the protests continues, the regime's brutality continues, over 500 people have now been killed, close to 100 of those being children. And the real question, we've talked about this a little bit, the real question has been, well, so what now? That is, how does this become something more? And it's still not clear. The biggest challenge I think the protesters have is that they have very little positive agenda. Their primary agenda is to get rid of the current regime. They don't want to live under theocracy. But what do they want? They have no real leaders. They have nobody standing up for them. They have nobody organizing them. The protests primarily are still spontaneous. And unfortunately, it is pretty sad. So they don't have that leadership. There's some leadership outside the country that is trying to master this. I think the son of the Shah or the grandson of the Shah who lives in the United States, who has a lot of following within Iran and is supported, who is trying to master some organization and some positive vision, how to tell if he can be successful, how to tell how much impact he's actually having. There's another opposition organization that actually has an arm that is involved in violent attacks against the regime. They are trying to take on leadership, but it doesn't seem like they've succeeded. And again, no real positive vision, no clear positive vision of being articulated by the demonstrators. The real question is, how does this all collapse?  I think one way in which it collapses is that, you know, is if the Republican God decides that they don't need the mullahs anymore. I mean, the fact is the one way this regime could go into the history books is that the Republican God is worried about a total replacement of the regime and a replacement of themselves. That is, that they become, in a sense, victims of whatever revolution happens or whatever comes next. If that happens, then you might see the Republican God overthrow the regime themselves and take control, establish a secular regime, but one focused on nationalism rather than religion and create basically a nationalist authoritarian government in Iran to replace the religious-based one and take away a major claim of the protesters against religion, but not give them complete freedom, but give them the kind of freedom that doesn't require a hijab and gives them a modern life. And all of that, probably against music, are gone. And of course, the Republican God has a huge incentive to do this because they control the Iranian economy. Over the last 40 years, the Republican God has taken over more and more of Iranian businesses, the oil industry, infrastructure projects. They are the biggest beneficiaries of the economy, and they have an interest, for example, in lifting the sanctions because they have, in getting rid of the sanctions, and they could play, they believe more effectively the nuclear card against the West and negotiate a better deal. So one way in which we could get rid of the theocracy is the Republican God taking it over. I think right now that is a more likely scenario than a democratic revolution. The fact is that there is no leadership. There is no mechanism by which I think a democratic revolution can happen. You know, the revolution that unceded the Shah had a leader behind it. I told Khomeini it had a coalition of leftists and Islamists behind it, and ultimately it captured the military. But it had a charismatic leader who even had support from the West. Certainly intellectual support from some in the West. The current revolution has no such charismatic leadership. It has nobody to coalesce around, and that will create a vacuum which the Republican God can take advantage of. Now that would be a huge improvement. I think much better a nationalistic Iran, a authoritarian nationalistic Iran, both for the Iranian people and for its position in the world, for its threat to other countries, than an Islamist Iran. A nationalist Iran is less likely to commit suicide, less likely to develop nuclear weapons, less likely to use nuclear weapons if they had them. So anyway, that is one path to watch and to see what happens. But this is a slow process. We'll see how long it takes. And again, sad that we get very little. I think people are bored with Iran's story, so they're not broadcasting it as much. But it's still happening. It's still out there. People are going to get executed. People are going to demonstrate this tug is going to continue. This quiet revolution is going to continue, or not so quiet revolution, is going to continue. Now, it is interesting that in the Senate, there was a resolution 47, resolution that reaffirmed American support, quote, for the Iranian citizens who have taken to the streets in peaceful protest for their fundamental human rights and condemned the Iranian security forces for their violent response. It called for, quote, the international community to speak out against the Iranian regime's human rights violation and urge continued efforts to hold those violators accountable, including through additional court in its sanctions. Both the Center for Relations Committee approved this, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved this. It was a bipartisan resolution. And no American troops on the ground, no American military intervention. Nothing, just support for the Iranian people. And yet one U.S. senator has worked to block the resolution of coming to vote and actually do anything about it. So there's one senator who's blocking this. And I wonder if you guys know who that is. Anybody know who the senator who is blocking a resolution? To basically state our support for the Iranian people in this time. Not boots on the ground, not some weapons, not anything like that. Anybody? Nobody, nobody. It's of course, Rand Paul. It's Rand Paul. It's not Bernie Sanders. No, it's Rand Paul. And this is why I don't like Rand Paul. This is the kind of stuff that I don't like Rand Paul. It's the same kind of stunts that his father, Ron Paul used to do. It's not AOC, it's not the left, it's the right. It's Rand Paul. This is why I consider the Libertarians in this kind of, he's not being principled. This is a complete repudiation of any principle. He stands for liberty and freedom. No, no, no, no, no. Only in America and only sometimes and only when it's convenient. He doesn't stand for liberty and freedom for other people. He doesn't stand for the American government using its moral authority to state that. He is an anti-liberty. It's ridiculous.    And all we're asking is for a show of verbal support. A show of verbal support. And verbal support makes a huge difference, huge difference. Just ask Lech Valenza. Providing moral support for America makes a massive difference. But Ron Paul, of all people, stands against it. Now you understand why I dislike, one of the many reasons I dislike Ron Paul as much as I do. And the whole Paul family, I mean, his father is much, much worse. All right. Finally, just a little story that I found interesting. I talked, I think, on yesterday's evening show about the fact that one of the trends in the world is people moving to cities, people moving to cities, freeze up land out there. That land is then recaptured by, quote, nature. And this is something that the environmentalists celebrate, but it's also something that is just happening. And you don't need any kind of environmentalist policies for this. It's happening primarily because of the massive advantages that cities present to human beings. They increase productivity. They increase social connections. They are the place where people want to live. And that indeed leaves a lot of nature untouched, particularly as we need less and less land for farming. Well, it turns out that there are a lot of countries that are trying to reverse, and some states, that are trying to reverse this trend. They want people to move back into the countryside. They want people to move back into their villages. They want to revitalize rural communities. In Japan, for example, Tokyo is paying people to leave Tokyo. As long as they're willing to settle in a village somewhere in rural Japan and live there for at least five years, they'll rate them a check. A check is not huge, but they think that if you take a family of two children, which is rare in Japan, granted, and they move and they stay there for five years, they could get $38,200 for moving out there. So there is a real effort right now to move people to rural communities. There's something similar going on in Switzerland, in Australia, in Italy, in Spain, in Portugal, in Ireland, where either local communities are paying people to come. Please come to our little village.  Or cities or local governments or state governments are paying people to go out. Oklahoma, Minnesota, Vermont, and Kansas all have grants to people to move that specify remote work, that specify they have to move away out of the cities and to these rural communities. More government attempts to manipulate us, more government attempts to regulate and to try to, you know, in this case, not use the tax system but use direct subsidies in order to try to motivate us and incentivize us to live where they think we should live. This is going on all over the world, but it's kind of an interesting trend that goes against what the environmentalists want. The environmentalists want the world to die so that people just live in these clustered cities and the rest of the planet is just allowed for the animals to roam and for the plants to grow and so on. So it's this counter, what is it? This is counter to the environmentalist policies. The governments are putting this together because these rural communities are dying and people upset by that. All right, we are way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way behind on the Super Chat. So I'll just put in a reminder here that we're supposed to get $250. We're about halfway and there are not that many questions because I think these are not really questions. So let's see. Curell says, hi, Iran. Is there a book that you would recommend that teaches about history of philosophy like Lenin-Pikov's history of philosophy course? There's nothing quite like the history of philosophy course. So there's nothing like that. But there are history of philosophy books that you can buy. They're not going to match Lenin-Pikov, but they're going to give you an overview, not from an objective perspective, but from kind of a, it depends on the writer's perspective. I think Durant's book on the history of philosophy is something I read in my early 20s. Let me just see. Yeah, I mean, I can't just quickly, I don't see them, I can't remember which shelf. Oh, here we go. So I mentioned the history of philosophy of World Durant, so that is something I recommend. This is one Lenin-Pikov recommended. I think Lenin-Pikov recommended it. It's a history of philosophy by William Winterbond. So it was written this particular edition which came out from the paper Tiger, so an Objectivist publication. You might be able to find it elsewhere. It was originally published in 1901. 1901, so I would recommend this. I don't think the cave in the light is a history of philosophy. It's a history, it's a combination of history and history of ideas, but from a very particular perspective. This will give you a real deep dive into, you know, as much as you can in one book, but really, you know, chapter one, which is 209 pages, is all about the Greeks, right? So those are two recommendations I would make. All right, let's see. All right, today is, we've got 102 people. If everybody did $2, we would make the 250. So 102 watching live right now, you could easily get us to our target by just doing $2, either asking a question for $2 or just doing a, what do you call it, a contribution without a question. All right, thank you, Marilyn. Let's see. The American philosopher says, do you have an opinion on Lex's book list and the amount of backlash you got? It seems to me it's rooted in envy from academia. I don't know what it's rooted in. It's just bizarre. It's rooted in envy. It's rooted in an inferiority complex because, you know, I bet you the people who've, the backlash is from many of them don't read as many books as Lex does. I think it's disgusting broadly. You know, so I don't know how many of you know, but Lex Friedman posted a list in Twitter of the books he plans to read over the year and I think he's doing one book a week. So something very, very ambitious in terms of reading. And the books are very ambitious. He's got a couple of Dostoevsky books. He's got some other, you know, some other books, some books that I think he's reading for the first time. Some books maybe he's reading for the nth time that he's read many times before. But in any case, you know, it's an ambitious book list. Let me see if I can pull up, that'd be interesting. Let me see if I can pull that out of the book list because I think it is indicative and it's stunning to me kind of the response. Oops, it's not what I want. Alright, let's see. Internet is suddenly slow. I don't know if, hopefully that's not affecting the video. But let's see if I can get it, Lex. And it is, it might be rooted in some academics not seeing their books on there or their preferred thing or their, you know, maybe it's too many white, dead white men or something like that. But I thought it was quite an impressive list. And again, it's not like you read only books that you agree with. That's the other ridiculous part of this, right? So now, how he's going to do it in one week is a big question, like the Brother Karamazov in one week. But that's not the issue. It's not what people object to. See, here's what Lex Friedman wrote. I'm reading a book a week in 2023. Classic, sci-fi, nonfiction or anything people highly recommend. I'll keep adjusting the list. Start on Monday, done by Sunday. Might make low-key videos of takeaways. If you want to read along the current list this year. Now, you know, Lex has, I guess he has the time to do this. He might be a very fast reader. I know people who read very fast. I couldn't do, couldn't come anywhere close to this. But okay, 1984. Great. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Fun. Brave New World. The Stranger by Camus. He's reading a couple of Camu books. By Marcus Aurelius. On the Road by Jack Korak. Foundation by Asimov. And then people say, well, why are you only reading the first foundation book?  You usually start with number one. God. I mean, the complaints were bizarre. Bizarre. 13,900 comments. I think a lot of them complaining. Old Man in the Sea by Hemingway. 2001 Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. Animal Farm. That makes two old war books. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Sapiens by Haravi. Metamorphosis by Frank Kafka. Wow. The Plague. It's another Camu book. So it's two books by Camu. Player of Games, which I don't know. Fight Club. The Little Princess. Brothers Karamazov. Siddhartha by Hesse. Dune by Frank Hobart. And Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I mean, all of these are classics. They're significant books. You know, like Sapiens is one of the best-selling books.   I have no desire to read Camu again. But I can understand why you want to read Camu if you're interested in the intellectual history of the last 100 years. Camu is really, really important. And then some of them are things like Dune, which is a big science fiction foundation. There's a big science fiction books. And so I don't know what people are complaining about. I mean, the only complaint I want to have is, how's he going to do it? That is, it seems like too much, right? So, yeah, there's a lot of hardcore stuff here. But what's the complaint? It seems bizarre to me and ridiculous.  I mean, whoa, he's asking for accommodation. You can recommend Atlas Shrugged. He's read Atlas Shrugged before. He could read it again. That would be nice. But why the complaining? Why the bitching? Why, you know, here's what he wrote later. A bunch of folks mocked me for including basic books in my reading list, or Camu, Hess, Dostoevsky, et cetera. I picked many books that I love and have re-read multiple times. They're not basic. They're profound. In 2023, I hope for less mocking and more celebrating. You know, I like that tweet. So, yeah, it really says a lot about the culture and the culture on Twitter in particular that this is kind of the attitude. All right, a buck 50 from everybody online right now would get us to the target. If we can get, we've got 108 people watching live right now. And only Rob came in with two bucks. Frank came in with 20. So thank you, Frank. Really appreciate that. Okay, Shay says, Constitution doesn't require the speaker to be a representative. You're on for speaker. Yeah, I'm available.  Catherine says, I'm sending an email to Ron Paul to protest. Good. Good. That is excellent. If any of you live in Kentucky, that would even have more power if it's Kentuckians you sent in a complaint to Ron Paul as his constituents. Frank says for $20, mocking criticism is annoying. Clarification is cool. Absolutely. But why assume he's never read these books? You know, people read more books more than once. And it's just, it's just awful. Thank you, Ian. Really appreciated, Mike. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, this is, it's a sign of more, of more cultural deterioration and decline. Thank you, Volta says, I changed my name so you don't have to pronounce Khmetija. Thank you, Volta. I appreciate that. Thanks for the, thanks for the ongoing support. Really appreciate it. All right, let's see. I had a thought it's gone. All right, let's go back to this super chat. Thank you for all of you who are stepping up right now. And so I'm just chipping in. One of Lex's big detractors was Nasim Taleb. And Nasim is so obnoxious. I mean, I've met Nasim, he was really nice to me.  And of course, Nasim claims he's being asked by Lex to be on a show 10 times, which I'm sure has happened. And he's turned him down because he refuses to do an interview with Lex. What does Nasim have against Lex? And so it says a mixed bag to say the least. Taleb has some interesting points but has the air of a huckster. Yes. I mean, Nasim has the famous black swan book. I read the book. It's got some brilliant points in it. But its underlying thesis is skepticism. We don't know anything. Unless Nasim Taleb says it and then we know it with certainty. There is no, I mean, this is pretty much what you learn from the book. What you learn from the book is there is no certainty in the world. There's no certainty in the world. It's complete skeptic. And inductive knowledge is not knowledge. You can't learn anything from induction. Unless the only certainty in the world is certainty you gain from Nasim Taleb from what he tells you. It was the most explicitly arrogant book I've ever read in my life. Now, and he's like that. He is super arrogant. He's a, I think he's a Christian from Lebanon. So I met him in Serbia of all places. I met him in Belgrade at a Students for Liberty conference. And we hung out a little bit and we chatted and everything and we got along fine. But God, I see him on the internet. He gets into fights with Cliff Asnes and others.  Ever, right? And most of the people who have interacted with him have said the same. Again, he wasn't to me when I hung out with him. Richard said, have you seen any movie reviews by the critical drinker on YouTube? He makes good points in a very rough around the edges style. No, critical drinker. I'll look for it. Sounds interesting. I like people who do movie reviews is definitely interesting. I will look for that. Thank you. Thank you, Richard. And thanks for the $20. Jeffrey says, went to Iida at the Met last night. Incredible performance. Thanks for just suggesting it. So happy. You go with your dad? I wonder if his dad was in town because his dad's a big opera fan. So excellent. Really, really, really happy you made. You got to see it. I'm glad it was a good performance. All right. Pitch it sideways. I'm interested in your public speaking course this summer. Where can I find out more about it? IynranUniversity. Sorry, university.Iynran.org. I don't know if they're advertising it yet, but they will start advertising it sometime in the spring. Sometime in the winter or spring. So university.Iynran.org. You can send them an email. Send them an inquiry and find out more about it. And hopefully, yeah, hopefully some of you will join that course as odd it is. That will be terrific. Dman. Please look into the SEC versus Ripple case going on. I will. SEC versus Ripple case. FTX is getting a lot of the crypto news, but this is a huge case. So it's huge SEC overstep, in my opinion, plus many fishy angles. It affects XRP and the whole crypto market. So this is Ripple SEC. I will look into that. Let's see. Let me just copy-paste this so I have it down because otherwise I'll forget. SEC versus Ripple. Add it. Copy. All right. All right. Let's see. Great. I mean, we're like 37 bucks away from making our goal. I mean, we came back from the depths of impossibility and made it. All right. Bree says, the culture can't stand individual preference. I guess not. Not, yes. I mean, I like your individual preferences as long as they're the same as mine and as long as I approve of them. By the way, you should all go to university.invand.org and check it out and see if there's something there that would interest you. Themasta, thank you. Vladimir, thank you. Fred Harper, thank you. Ken, thank you. Marilyn, thank you. John, thank you. Yeah, I think I'm caught up. All right. Jerome, how are you? I'm confused about objectivism and objectivity. Objectivity meaning like study an object and objectivism holding principles in while putting mind effort towards achieving a value. Thanks. All right. So objectivism is the name given to a philosophy, a philosophy that has a view about everything, about most of what philosophy deals with. Metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics. So objectivism is the philosophy of iron rand. It's philosophical writings. That's what objectivism means. It doesn't mean holding principles. It means it's the name of the philosophy. In terms of what is objectivity, objectivity is how we, you know, the approach to reality. It's how we use reason. Objectivity is respecting reality, respecting facts. You know, I'm committing yourself. Objectivity means committing yourself to going by logic and reason and facts, evidence. That's what objectivity means. It doesn't mean hearing both sides of an argument. You only want to hear both sides of an argument when both sides have something relevant to say to discovering the truth. But objectivity is the respect for facts and reality in one's thinking. So when thinking is used as a long word, but uses facts, evidence, reality, not emotion, whim, faith, you know, anything that is not based on, you know, complete speculation and the arbitrary. So commitment to, here's the definition of objectivity is volitional adherence to reality by the method of logic. What does that mean? You choose to focus your mind on reality and be committed to reality, i.e. facts. And how do you do that? How do you figure out what is true and what is not? What is factual and what is not? By the use of logic. So both inductive and deductive logic. So, you know, so that is a transform of definition of objectivity. Again, it has nothing to do with looking at all sides, which is typically how people view objectivity. All right. Frank says the cosmic skeptic. The cosmic skeptic might be an interesting interview, Oxbridge graduate secular. I'll look into that. Thanks for the suggestion. I am looking for people to interview me on their channel. So please, if you have any suggestions, let me know. All right. Final super chat. The American philosopher. You should try to get on Tim Cass. Believe me, I've tried. I think some of those guys and their fans are convertible to objectivism if it were explained right. I don't think Tim is convertible to objectivism. Certainly some of his fans need to be exposed to objectivism, whether they can be converted to it or not. All right. We've got $15 to make our goal. Somebody can step in with a sticker for $15. That'd be great so we can get to the $250. But in any case, thanks, everybody. Thanks for being here. I need to run. Hopefully you enjoy the show. I'll be back tomorrow at about the same time, sometimes around this time. And it's great to see 126 people on live right now. So it's good to see that these shows are getting significant reach and people are watching live and then they're watching afterwards. These shows typically do about 1,000 to 1,200 views. And then there's also another 1,000 on the, what do you call it, podcast app. Thank you, Fred Hoppe. Thank you, Shazba for putting us over the goal. Really, really appreciate that. We are now officially past the goal, even though it doesn't seem to adjust. All right. I will, yes, 265. Thanks, guys. See you all tomorrow. And we'll continue to follow the riveting, suspenseful story of what will happen to Kevin and who will be Speaker of the House.