If you have your Bibles, you can turn to Acts chapter five. We're not gonna read it right away, but we're in a series called Wind and Fire, and we're going through the book of Acts, and that is the birth of the church of Jesus Christ. And so it's an incredible section of scripture that just contains so many miraculous moves of God, so many things that are really the foundation of who we are thousands of years later as a church. And that's what I appreciated so much about Pastor Lee's message last week when he talked about Christians have always been counter-cultural. The church has always been a different kingdom, and so we value things like life, we value people, we love unconditionally, and that's not something that's recent, that's not something that's been a blue and red topic, it's not a governmental, it is at the core of who we are as followers of Jesus. And so that's what the book of Acts does. And so this week, I've entitled the message praise and persecution, because we're gonna talk about the two responses that always take place when the gospel of Jesus Christ is faithfully declared. And so again, I told Pastor Lee, like man, last time I spoke on misunderstandings and how we deal with that, and now I feel like I don't wanna be the resident, like persecution expert, but I'll do whatever you want, so no, we are gonna talk about, hey, how do we respond to those who are not Christians, who may not be wanting to hear the good news of Jesus, because I'm gonna start the message this way, as I said, when the gospel, and this is the gospel that we cannot save ourselves, that God created us, perfect, an imperfect unity and fellowship with him, but sin entered the world through the disobedience of Adam, and even since that time, all of mankind has been infected and affected by the presence of sin. And so we know that, we know that internally, the Bible says that eternity is in the heart of every single person, and so there's this disconnect and brokenness in every single person, and the good news isn't that you can do enough to save yourself, isn't that, hey, as long as you're better than most, you're gonna be okay, it isn't that, hey, if you really try hard, no, the good news is that Jesus Christ came as a spotless lamb without blemish, and he lived a perfect life, and he sacrificed himself, he gave his life, and he said, I will become sin so that you can become righteousness, and all who believe in me, though they die, yet shall they live, that is the good news of Jesus Christ, that you don't have to save yourself because you can't, and Jesus did what only God can do, and we are the recipients of that grace, and when that message is declared, one of two things happens, first, people will praise God for it, people will be convicted by the power of the Holy Spirit, people will recognize I am broken, I am sinful, I do need a savior, and Jesus comes in, and the Bible says that as soon as you call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, you're saved, your spirit is reborn, it isn't a process, it isn't, hey, now you gotta check enough boxes or do enough things, in that moment, the Spirit of God comes and enters and becomes one with you, the dwelling place of God is your body, is your spirit in that moment, and we see that, but then there's another response when the gospel is faithfully declared, and it is one where there's a fence. There are going to be those who don't wanna hear that they're broken, don't wanna hear that they're sinners, don't want to hear that they're in need of a savior, and so they are offended, and they begin to attempt to marginalize or misrepresent mock or even malign the message of Jesus Christ, and both of those are responses that have been universally true in the church, so we're gonna see it in the book of Acts 2,000 years ago, and we see that today in 2022, that is always going to be the case.  So in the first three chapters of Acts, and I'm just gonna give us a quick recap, we see the first response, we see the praise, and we see the power of God moving mightily. Here's, I mean, it started with Jesus being raised from the dead, he, for 40 days, is walking around, he's ministering to the disciples, 500 other people witness Jesus being alive even though they knew he was dead for three days, and then at the end, he looks at his disciples, and he says to them, Terri in Jerusalem, you're gonna be the carriers of this message, but I want you to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit to come, and when he does, you're gonna receive power so that you can be my witnesses, in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, even to the ends of the earth, and then he legit just does like a David Blaine special and moves up into the clouds, and he just goes away, and the disciples are like, they'd probably still be doing this today, but two angels show up and they say, hey, why are you just staring into the clouds? Why are you gazing into the clouds? The same Jesus that you saw going to heaven is gonna return in the same way, and now there's work to do, and now there's a mission that has to take place. Go and do what he says, so they pray, and they're in a prayer meeting, and it's 10 days, and then they're gathered in the upper room on the day of Pentecost, and the Holy Spirit floods that place like a rushing wind, and they're all filled with the Spirit, and it says, divided tongues as a fire are landing on every one of them, and they're speaking in other tongues, and they're prophesying, and there's tons of nationalities represented in Jerusalem at the time, and they all can hear people speaking in their native tongue, and they're like, this is crazy, what's happening? How is this possible? They're amazed, they're marveling at the work of God. Some other people are like, well, they're just drunk, and then Peter rises up in that moment, and he preaches the very first sermon, and he says, these are not drunk, as you suppose. It's only the third hour of the day. If it was the fourth hour, I could see why you might, no, I'm just kidding. It's only 9 a.m., but this is what's happening, and he preaches an incredibly powerful message about who Jesus was and how they crucified him, but in glory, God raised him from the dead, and now all who would believe, and the Bible says in verse 37 of Acts 2, that they were cut to the heart. They were cut, there was like this, and they said, what do we need to do? They began to praise God, this was their response, and Peter said, repent, be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, every one of you for the remission of your sins, and you'll receive the same Holy Spirit, and 3,000 people come to know Jesus from one message, 3,000 repent in one day, and they're crushing it. I mean, there are miracles that are taking place. There are signs and wonders. There's insane unity among the church. Nobody's saying, hey, this is mine, and I'm keeping, no, they're generously giving. They're meeting the needs of others. They're marked, the Bible says, by joy and by gladness. Man, I want that for me. I want that for Christians. Like, John's life was marked by just joy. In the presence of God, there's joy that is unfailing, that is not marked by, that's what's happening in their midst, and everything is going great. I don't know if they had a church name yet. I don't know what they put on their youth van, but it was probably something like the literal first congregational temple of the Terri in Jerusalem to the spirit comes with dunamis power church of the Apostolic Christ. That's probably what it was. And it was on their van and they were killing it, and everyone was like, this is amazing. Then, in chapter three, Peter and John are just going to prayer as they normally would. There's a man, Pastor Lee talked about it last week, who's being placed there every single day at the gate called Beautiful, near the temple to Beg, because he's crippled. He's been lame since birth, and he looks at them and he thinks he's going to give them something because Peter locks eyes. Oh, they're going to give me some, here, give me, and Peter says silver and gold, I don't have, but what I do have, I give to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, rise up and walk, and this guy gets up and walks, and he starts praising in the temple, and he goes with them into church, and he's worshiping God, and sometimes we can read and be like, okay, yeah, he's worshiping. No, listen, I remember once I had a Charlie horse for like 10 seconds, and when away, I was like, thank you, Jesus.  What's going on? And they knew him, they've seen him every day as this crippled beggar, and now he's jumping and praising and doing yoga and insanity and P90X, and Peter takes that opportunity to give another message. Hey, this was in our work, this was in our power, this was done by the power of the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus Christ whom you crucified, and like 5,000 people come to know Jesus. So the gospel is spreading, the disciples are revered in the eyes of the people. Like, it's an incredible move of God that's happening, and that's our first response, this praise, but then always when the gospel of Jesus Christ is presented, there will be those who don't want to hear it, who reject it, and who ultimately want to marginalize what God is doing, and that's what we see beginning in chapter four. And interestingly enough, it's happening from the inside. It's happening by the scribes and the elders and the Sadducees, the religious leaders. Why? Because they don't care about people. They don't care about the message of God.  So they're upset, and so they gather together and say, what are we gonna do? We can't deny it, like this guy was crippled and now he's not, and everybody's freaking out about it. So what's the plan?  That was never on the list of things to do. Instead, they bring in the disciples and they say, by what authority are you doing these things? And Peter again, boldness comes upon him and he goes off on the religious leaders. And in Acts 412 he says, and there's no other name under heaven by which men must be saved than the name of Jesus. And the Bible says these religious leaders looked at them and they're astonished. Like, who are these guys? They're fishermen. They didn't go to Bible school. They're not trained, they're not educated. And it says when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and the disciples, they realized they had been with Jesus. And they warned them, they sternly warned them and said, do not speak anymore in the name of Jesus, or you're gonna get in big trouble and they said, you decide whether we should obey you or obey God, but all we can do is talk and do what we have seen and heard from Jesus. And they go back and they keep doing exactly what they're doing, all right? And then we're in chapter five. So there's a little backstory. You're all caught up in Acts. All of you have a slight Bible degree. Okay, Acts five, verse 12, it's gonna come up on the screen. It says, and through the hands of the apostles, many signs and wonders were done among the people. And they were all with one accord and Solomon's porch and none of the rest there joined them, but the people esteemed them highly and believers were increasingly added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women so that they brought the sick out into the streets and laid them on beds and couches that even the shadow of Peter passing by might fall on some of them and heal them. Also a multitude gathered from surrounding cities to Jerusalem bringing sick people at those torment of unclean spirits and people were all healed. Like the gospel is just spreading like wildfire. Verse 17, but the high priests and those who were with him, the sect of the Sadducees were filled with indignation, jealousy, anger. They're not accusing them of false teaching. They're not accusing them of, hey, that what you're saying isn't actually working because it was, they're more upset about what's going on and how it affects them. So they laid their hands on the apostles. That's not like, let me pray for your brother. That's like WWE chokehold. And put them in prison. So here we see this is the first instance of persecution in the early church. First they were kind of yelled at and warned, but this is now they're in prison for their faith. They're in prison for preaching the gospel. They're in prison for doing exactly what God asked them to do. And it says, but at night, listen to this, an angel of the Lord, this wasn't like, hey, I'm gonna, someone will hopefully make bail. We're gonna be in here for 30 days. That evening, this is how important it was that the gospel got out. An angel of the Lord opened the prison doors, brought them out. And this is what the angel said, go stand in the temple and speak to the people, all the words of this life. I love that. The angel didn't say, hey, go to the temple and tell everyone to just pray a prayer and then live however they want. Hey, go to the temple, tell everybody, hey, go to church when you can. It was, no, this is an entirely different way of living. This is an entirely different way of existing. There is an entirely different way of surrendering to who Jesus is and what he's done. And that's the way of life that's taking place here. And so what do they do? It says, and when they heard that, they entered the temple early in the morning and they taught, they were obedient. So the high priest and those with him, verse 21, called the council together with all the elders of the children of Israel and they sent to the prison to have them brought. I love this part. So they don't know that this happened. They don't know there's been a Shawshank redemption that took place. And so they're like, what are we gonna do? Here's what we're gonna do, we're gonna get those guys, they send someone, go get the prisoners and bring them back here and we're gonna figure out what we're gonna do with them. But when the officer came, he didn't find them, verse 22, in the prison and he returned. I love this, I want you to think about this. There's all these religious leaders and they're all freaking out about what's happening.  And the guy comes and he's like, look, I got good news and bad news. What do you want first? Good news is all the prison doors are still locked and the guards are where they're supposed to be. Bad news, they're not in there. Look at, listen, it says, we found the prison shut securely and the guards standing outside before the doors but when we opened them, no one was inside. Now when the high priest and the captains of the temple heard these things, they wondered what the outcome would be. I love the Bible sometimes. I can imagine them in the meeting going, hmm, I wonder what this outcome will be. I'm sure they were freaking out way more than that. But verse 25, so one came and told them saying, look, the men who you put in prison were standing in the temple and teaching the people. So the captain went with the officers, brought them without violence, for they feared the people. This is so interesting. They could not lay their hands on them. They could not because the people were revering the disciples at this point. They were enamored by what God was doing. And so the high priest didn't want to jeopardize what might happen to them. And it's a complete flip from just a few weeks ago when the religious leaders were able to incite the entire crowd against Jesus. Remember? They were like, this man is dead.  This man is a false prophet. And they were like, yeah, crucify him, crucify. And now we're just a few weeks out and they're seeing the power of God. And now the religious leaders are afraid of the people. So they did it without violence, lest they should be stoned. And when they brought them, they set them for the council. And they said, didn't we strictly command you not to teach in this name? And look, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine. And you're trying to bring this man's blood on us.  Verse 29, Peter and the other apostles said, we have to obey God rather than man.  Him, God, has highly exalted to his right hand to be prince and savior and to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are his witnesses to these things. And so also is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him. Peter, just again, bold proclamation, bold in the face of this persecution, tells them, no, this is what's happening. And they're furious and they plot to kill them. But then one from the council, Gamaliel stands up and I want to just go to verse 40, verse 40.  And verse 40 says, and the religious leaders agreed with him and they called for the apostles and after beating them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus and let them go. Verse 41, so the disciples departed from the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Jesus. And daily in the temple and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that Jesus is the Christ. Just an absolutely amazing testimony of what it looks like to face persecution, what it looks like to be an ambassador of the gospel and how we are the recipients. These, the boldness of these 12 men and then the thousands who came to know Jesus, that is the foundation that billions of people who are worshiping today on a Sunday morning are the fruit of their boldness, their declaration, their unwillingness to bend in the face of persecution and in the face of trials and difficulties. And now 2000 years later, I want to take the time that we have to talk about how do we navigate the waters of persecution? How do we respond to those who are not wanting to hear the good news of Jesus, who are going to come and attack us, marginalize us, make us out to be villains and make us out to be racist and homophobic and haters and all of the things that are being attached to what it means to be a Christian. We have to understand that that is going to happen. It is happening and it's going to get worse before it gets better. That's just the reality. And so just as Peter and John and the apostles and later we'll see Paul stood strong in the face of persecution and in the face of the trials, we have to adopt the exact same power of the Holy Spirit. And I want to say, how do we do that? Three things I'm going to give you of how Christians need to navigate persecution. And look, it's going to look different. We're not at a place where we're going to go to prison for believing in Jesus right now, but there are pastors in Canada and Norway and other places that have gone to prison for speaking what the Bible says is true. So it's not far from the truth. We're not that far from what was happening 2000 years ago, but again, persecution may look different. You may have jobs that you can't get based on your religious beliefs or what you believe about Jesus.  There may be those who are in school or in universities and you're just bombarded with hate speech about what you believe is Jesus and who he is and what he's done. So this is a reality. It may look a little different, but this is what's happening in the world around us. And so the first thing as Christians we need to do is we need to be prepared. We need to be prepared for persecution to come. The disciples were not surprised. They were not like, wow, where did this come from? The Bible says they rejoiced that they were able to suffer for the name of Jesus Christ. Like that's incredible. They weren't like, God, why is this happening? We're just doing what you said.  They were like, no, this is what is going to happen when you're a Christian because Jesus warned them that it would happen. Jesus told them to be prepared. Listen to Luke 21, I'll read it quickly. But Luke 21 verse 10, this is Jesus speaking about the end of the age. He said, nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and there will be earthquakes, famines, pestilence, signs from heaven.  You'll be brought before kings and rulers for my namesake, but it will turn out for you as an occasion for testimony. Therefore, settle it in your hearts, not to meditate beforehand on what you will answer for. I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist. You may be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives, friends, some of you will be put to death and you may be hated by all for my namesake. This is not what you necessarily want to hear when you're a Christian, but this is the reality that we live in, is that there are going to be those who do not understand, who do not agree, and are not going to say, well, you have your way and we have ours. No, there is going to be direct opposition to the gospel of Jesus Christ, direct opposition to what God wants to do in our city, in our nation, and in the world around us, and we have to be aware of that. That's all I'm saying is be prepared.  I don't want to be crazy about it. I don't want to be psycho for Jesus. No, we have to be prepared to take a stand. The environment that you're going into is what requires the preparation. So we're going into a dark environment as Christians. The Bible says that we're pilgrims, sojourners, this world isn't our own. And so we're entering in, in many ways, spiritually into enemy territory. And so you have to be ready for battle. I mean, Mr. Mike Flick's a firefighter. He's in the front row here. He doesn't show up to a fire in shorts and a wife beater, right? Hey, I'm ready, put me in. No, he's prepared. There's a suit that you put on. There's fire retardant things. There's boots, there's all of these things. Why? Because he knows the environment he's about to go into.  You know, put me in there. You don't go into space. Elon Musk probably doesn't go into space. And then show up and go, you know what, I should have brought some air. There's like none up here. This is crazy. No, you prepare. You prepare for that. And too many Christians think that life is all a cruise ship when it's supposed to be a battleship. That's the reality. And we're on a Christian cruise ship where all we care about is comfort. All we care about is my safety. All we care about is, hey, I don't want people to be mad at me. And then all of a sudden the captain's like, hey, we're heading into enemy waters here and there's a nuclear submarine with warheads and missiles. But don't worry, our boat has a splash pad. So we're gonna be fine. No, at that point you're like, wait, we're on a cruise ship. And we're in a battle. And listen, I'm not saying you can't have fun. I'm not saying life. You can't take vacay. I'm not saying every second you have to be like, oh no, the end of the world. But you better be prepared that we are living in the last of the last days. And persecution is gonna take place. And we're living in a world where even Christians and many churches and denominations rather than standing on the solid rock of God's word are saying, you know what, it's just easier to say, look, everybody's welcome. It's fine. You don't have to change. Don't be uncomfortable. You're fine just the way you are. The Bible never says you're fine just the way you are. It says you're loved just the way you are. And when you come to Jesus, you say, I surrender to you. I pick up my cross and I deny myself. And now I can be a follower of Jesus. But we have an entire generation that thinks, you know what, this is my life. And if things get really bad, maybe I'll call on the Lord to bail me out. And that is not the gospel. That is not the gospel. So we have to be prepared. It's gonna happen. You're not always gonna be popular and it's not always gonna be easy. And what I can tell you about Radiant Church is we will never change our stance about what God says, what the Bible says, the word of God is true.  That has to be our stance. It has to be. It has to be. But the second thing that we do when we're prepared, but secondly, we have to respond the right way. There's a way that we have to respond as Christians because sometimes we can be like, that's right. And we're good and they're bad and we're righteous and they're evil. And we can point at people and say, they're the problem and it's not our fault that they're that way.  And then we just kind of hide in our Christian bubbles. No, there are two ways that we need to respond. The first is in obedience. Like I said, we don't change our stance. We don't change the message of the gospel for culture, for the masses. What did Peter and John do when they were warned, when they were threatened? They went right back to preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. They went right back to doing what God asked them to do and what the angel told them to do. And then they were beaten and flogged. And what did they do? They rejoiced that they were counted worthy. Sometimes when we experience suffering or conflict, we're like, oh, I can't do this. And I'm not saying it's fun, but at the same time you can recognize, look, if I'm being persecuted is because I'm on the devil's radar. And if you've never experienced persecution, if you've never experienced conflict in your Christian walk, I would submit to you that maybe you haven't been as bold as you need to be in your walk with Jesus and in your stance. Like that's just the reality. It will happen, but you have to respond in obedience. You have to respond in a way just like Peter and John that continue to do what they did. But the second thing and maybe even more importantly is we have to respond as Christians in love, in love. We're not in a battle against people. We're not in a battle against people groups or different denominations. We're not in a battle against atheists or Muslims or they're not the enemy, they are the prize. And they're not who we're fighting against or who we're fighting for. I am convinced that our leaders, government leaders want us to hate each other. I am, I think that that literally might be the goal. It might be like written on their wall of here's what we're working on today as we want people in our, to hate each other. And that is not the way of the cross and it's not the way of Jesus. That's what he was talking about in Matthew five on the Sermon on the Mount. Sometimes like we read that sermon, it's beautiful, it's so eloquent. Oh, it's just poetic. No, it's brutally counter cultural and hard. It was not a crowd pleaser. Let's put it that way. Jesus wasn't like, now look at your neighbor and say your breakthrough is coming. That was not the message. It was blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those when you are, you're persecuted.  Well, why are you blessed? Well, because they did the same thing to the prophets before you. They did the same thing to Jesus. And so what are we supposed to do? Do we get arms? Pick up our weapons? No, we bless them. We pray for them. We love them.  Ephesians four 15 says, we speak the truth, but we speak the truth in love. So in the kingdom of God, you can be right and still be wrong. You can be right factually. You can be right theologically, but if you're not communicating it in love, the Bible says you're still wrong. Jesus in John 13, 35 said, they will know you're my disciples by the way you vote, how many bumper stickers you have on your car, how many times you've used the word phrase turn or burn. Like those are not what the Bible says, by your love, one for another. We have to be marked by love. We have to ask God to break our hearts. And I'm not up here saying it's easy. I'm not up here saying I get it right all the time. It is a difficult pride swallowing siege many times. And I'll just speak frankly, we have some, and it's not the first time, but some people who are sharing some Facebook posts about match head and our downtown presence and that we're all racist homophobic haters and we're taking all the profits and keeping them and we're driving out every other business and we are, you know, categorically, I don't know, there was like 11 things and at least 10 of them were not true. One about parking illegally, I've done that a few times, fine. Forgive me, Lord, okay, downtown. I've also paid a bunch of tickets. I should have a brick somewhere that just says paid for, but again, you can go and you can go look, lady, Karen. No, I'm just kidding, I'm kidding. I love Karen's, all of them. This isn't even true, but you know what? We've decided we're gonna respond in love. God is our defender. God is our witness to this and we love our city and we wanna bless our city and we wanna be a presence of God. That's why we pray morning, noon and night downtown.  I'm not liking this.  And so how do we respond to persecution? We do it in love.  We'll buy them coffees. We'll give them, like this is the heart of Jesus. No one has ever been beaten or bludgeoned or battered into the kingdom of God. That isn't gonna work. They'll know we're Christians by our love. Last thing and maybe most important, how do we respond to persecution as we have to access the secret weapon given to us and it's this, the spirit boldness. The holy spirit boldness is the defining difference in the book of Acts.  Like he's scared, he's watching from a distance. I don't even know Jesus. And then three weeks later, he's preaching boldly. He's yelling at the Sanhedrin.  It is the spirit of God. And when the Pharisees looked at Peter, they said, what is going on? He's uneducated. He doesn't have a degree. He's not from our lineage. What'd they say? He has been with Jesus. Boldness for your journey. Boldness and persecution. Boldness and the darkness that we're gonna face as Christians that we're walking into is going to only be possible through connection with the Holy Spirit and intimacy with Jesus. The disciples walked with Jesus. They knew his heart. They got it wrong a bunch. Like, should we call fire down on them? No, no, no, no. You don't know your own heart. That's not what we're doing. But they learned and they were with Jesus. And then the Holy Spirit, when he fell in them, it confirmed that and they walked in that power and they walked in that boldness and enabled them to rejoice when they were persecuted. Enabled them to see, to perceive totally different what was happening. The most important thing you can do is build equity and relationship with God in the secret place. That's how you get boldness. It's not a personality type. It's not like, hey, I'm loud, but, you know, so I can be bold or I'm more quiet and reserved. So no, no, boldness is internal. And it comes from a place of knowing Jesus. Let me just say this. You will never, another word for boldness is confidence and you will never be confident in something that you don't have knowledge of, whether it's something or someone. I haven't told this story often. It's not one of my proudest moments, but I will say it to you because I love you God and I trust you. Anyway, I think it was at least 10 years ago, I have a buddy who's in the medical practice and he was like, bro, I'm going to a conference and it's in San Diego and I want you to come because my wife can't go. And I was like, bro, I can not be your wife. And he's like, listen, all you have to do is just pay for your flight and we're going to stay at this hotel and it's going to be in May, you know, and it's March in Michigan. So we have like four more months of winter.  Just hang out with me and da, da, da. So I go, well, long story short, somewhere along the line, it was communicated that I also was in some sort of medical field. And it was like, dude, I kind of had to tell him that you work in a lab. I was like, what? Bro, you told me I was your wife, bro. And so I'm freaking out and we're at dinner with all of these people and they're having conversations about things I know nothing about. So you can, and I'm a pretty vocal person, but I had the, I was like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And then literally someone was like, so what do you do, John? Like, what's your role? And I was like, I take things to the analyzer and I have them labbed. Like I didn't even, I was like, I have a lab coat, I know what a stethoscope is, like I was not confident in that moment because I didn't know anything about what we were talking about. I was like, please, don't make me do a surgery. Don't make me prove. And then it came out pretty quickly that that, and it wasn't a big deal and it was fine. But I say that to say there's too many Christians who, when they're faced with something, they just don't, they don't know God. They don't know Jesus. They don't have intimate relationship and you will not last when persecution comes. You will not survive when opposition comes against you if you only have a surface relationship with Jesus. You just won't.  The reward of a Matthew 6-6 lifestyle is you know God. And when you know God, you can trust God.  And you belong to Jesus. And that's what happened to the disciples. That's what happened to Shadrach, Meshach and Abed and go, what did they say? You're gonna get thrown into the furnace if you don't stop worshiping. They didn't stop worshiping. You know what their response was? Our God is able to deliver us from this furnace. He is, we believe that. But even if he doesn't, still we will not bow. We will not change. We will not shift our position. We worship and serve Jesus. And if that means we get, and they got thrown into the furnace, but there was a fourth man in the fire. And the presence of God never left him. Listen to me, the Bible doesn't promise. Jesus doesn't promise life will be easy. Life will be all roses. You're not gonna have opposition. You're not gonna have difficulties. What he promises is, even in the fire, I'll be with you. Even in the storm, I'll never leave you. I'll never forsake you. And when you know God, you can trust God. And when you trust God, circumstances of life do not move you off of the reality that Jesus Christ is Lord and he's for you. Will you stand with me? I wanna pray. And I wanna pray for boldness, honestly. Everybody's journey is different. If you're not a Christian in this room, we wanna pray for you to become one. We wanna have an opportunity to lead you. But right now, this is for those who know Jesus and walk with Jesus and wanna have boldness to be able to navigate the persecution and opposition that's coming. Maybe it's at work, maybe it's at school, maybe it's a family member. Everybody's journey and story is different. But if First Peter says it, those who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will face persecution. So if you've never faced persecution, it may have something to do with how loud you're living and how bold you are in your relationship with Jesus. But if you are, you'll face it. And my prayer is that we do not shrink back. We do not shout at darkness. We're not angry with the lost. But we love like Jesus and we live like Jesus and we operate out of a place of relationship with Jesus. That is where boldness comes from. So I just want you to just extend your hands. And Father, we pray right now as a church, the church of Jesus Christ. You would strengthen us supernaturally, God. Just like you did in the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit would come and fill us with supernatural courage and boldness. God, we don't want to pray safe prayers. We don't want to pray, God, God, help us be safe or keep us comfortable. No, we want to pray, Holy Spirit, strengthen us with boldness to preach and speak your word, to do what you've asked us to do, to be light and salt in the nation's God and in the world among us. And Father, we ask as followers of Jesus, it's not by might, it's not by power, it's by your spirit. We ask for a greater measure of your Holy Spirit, a greater measure, greater measure of intimacy with you. We want to live out of that secret place so that God, when trials come, when opposition comes, when persecution raises its head, we respond with love, with grace and with obedience because we serve the Lord Jesus Christ. You are King forever. You are matchless and you stand alone and our lives belong to you, God. Fill us, we pray with your Holy Spirit in Jesus' name. Amen.


So let's talk a little bit about stream flow, or actually flow through any sort of conduit or channel, and the relationship between flow and the speed of the fluid that is flowing through the channel. So let's consider the flow of water through a channel. Maybe this is a stream. Notice there's sort of a little cut in there. And we're representing the flow of water, again, the volumetric flow of water with the letter q. And I have three views here. You can sort of see the top view, the side view, and the front view sort of representing here all the different perspectives of our isometric view of this water. And we're only going to consider a chunk of this stream. We're going to slice into the stream and consider a chunk of it. It continues to flow down here, and it continues to flow in from up this level up top. But we're only going to consider some sort of chunk of that flow of water. And if I look at it here from the side, I'm going to take this side perspective and think about this chunk of water from the side. And if it's flowing, it means after some period delta t, if I wait for a little bit of time, the water that was in the chunk that we're thinking about is going to have moved downstream a little bit. So here I have the chunk, and then here I have the outline of where that volume of water was and where it is now. And notice in that time frame, it's going to have moved some small distance that will label delta x. And now the water may not all move at the same speed, but in general, the entire chunk of water will be moving on average a certain distance x. And that means that the speed that the water is moving, our velocity of the water is going to be equal to delta x over delta t. That's how fast all the water is moving downstream. So notice there is a change in the amount of water that's in our original boundaries in our original area. There are some that must have flowed out. Here's the water that's flowed out. And we're assuming that water will also flow in. But let's just consider the water as it flows out.  Consider this as being a little section right here. I'm going to translate it down here. That distance that the water flowed, there's my delta x where the new water is sort of extending out from our little section there. And if we look at where the water is, we have the cross-section of the water, A. The cross-sectional slice where the water is basically where we're looking at the water. We're cutting across this cross-section. It has a cross-sectional area, A. Well, if I think about this as being a prism, like a cylinder or a rectangular prism, in this case it's sort of shaped like a triangle, I can use the relationship that the volume. And I'm going to use a little slash here on the bottom of my volume to help distinguish it from being the velocity v. And in fact, maybe I will try to add a little bit of cursive lettering to the velocity v to help distinguish those two. But if I have my volume v, and I can basically relate that by taking it, multiplying the area, this cross-sectional area here, times the thickness of this little wedge, delta x. Notice from our earlier relationships we know that our flow rate Q is the change in volume. And in fact, this volume I'm talking about is a change in volume. Notice it's the amount of water that's flowed out. Here's our little delta volume, the water that's flowed out from past our boundaries. So this change in volume is equal to the area times that change in x. I know that my flow rate is equal to the change in volume over the change in time. Well, if I plug that change of volume in here, that's equal to the cross-sectional area times that little position that it shifted divided by the change in time. And we've just defined that change in x, that shift in time as our velocity up here. So we can say a times small v, our velocity here. In other words, the flow rate is equal to the cross-sectional area times the velocity. Now that velocity is an average speed. It's an average speed of the water as it flows through. Let's check our unit, shall we? Let's just make sure that our units make sense. If you remember, our units for our flow rate are volume meters cubed as an example over time. Let's say it's in seconds, for example. Whereas our units for area are something like square meters, and our units for speed would be something like distance meters over time. Notice meters squared times meters is going to be the equivalent of meters cubed and seconds times seconds, well, there's seconds on the bottom in each case. So in both cases, we have meters cubed per second and meters cubed per second. So our units do indeed check out. This equation here, or this relationship here, is sometimes known as the continuity equation. And usually, we apply it in a situation where our flow in is equal to our flow out. Remember, that's our conditions for equilibrium in an Eulerian system, where the amount of flow in, here's our flow in, is equal to our flow out. If we do not want the overall volume to change, and something like a stream, generally, we'll consider equilibrium conditions. Well, if this is the case, qn equals q out, one of the relationships we can use by plugging in our new AV relationship is that our area in times the velocity in is equal to the area out times the velocity out.


I am Josh Sypes. I teach high school and middle school math at Oxford Junior Senior High School.  A lot of mental math is an understanding of place value and the fact that the 7 is in the 1's place and the 6 is in the 10's place. So what this means is it's not just 6 and 7. It's 6 10's, which makes it 60 and 7. Likewise, this would be 90. So to do this effectively, mentally, what you can do is you can take 7 plus 4 is 11 and 60 plus 90 would be 150. So in your head, you can do 150 plus 11 would be 161. Using the fact that place value is important to when grouping and those types of things will help you effectively do mental math better.


This study proposes a novel platinum nanosyme, point NP, loaded reactive oxygen species, ROAS, responsive prodrug nanoparticle, CPTTKHPPH slash point NP, which can efficiently catalyze the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide, H2O2, into oxygen to relieve hypoxia and enhance photodynamic therapy, PDT. This point NP-based prodrug nanoparticle can also be used as a tumor diagnosis agent with desirable long circulation and enhanced in vivo targeting. In vitro and in vivo experiments show that CPTTKHPPH slash point NP can effectively inhibit tumor proliferation and growth. Therefore, this study provides a promising strategy for chemotherapy and PDT synergism and may lead to a new cancer theranostic agent. This article was authored by Inghao, Yuwen Chen, Xinlong He, and others.


The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to The Iran Brook Show on this March 28th. It's Thursday. Week is almost over. Next week, we go to Latin America. Should be a fun trip. I hope you are having a good week. Even before the show got started, John had already done $175 worth of super chats. And I mean, that's amazing, John. Thank you. And he finishes it off. He puts it at the end. He says, I forgot to mention that this money is specifically for you to spend at restaurants. So I have now spending money for restaurants in Latin America. So thank you, John. And I appreciate that final comment. It's great. And then Remo added to that. So we're almost at our target, and we haven't even started the show. So thank you, guys. You guys are fantastic and great. We do have a new sponsor for the show. I'll talk about him later before we get to the super chats. We'll talk about that, about the new sponsor. It's in the description below. So you can find him down there. And yeah, let's jump into the news. We've talked about this before, but there's a big story out about this equity in math in California. So you remember, there were certain school districts in California that for a few years now, particularly in San Francisco, were not teaching anybody algebra at eighth grade. That is, they had banned algebra from eighth grade from middle school. And algebra was only offered in high school, even for kids who were ready for algebra, even for kids who knew algebra, all in the name of, we don't want to treat the smart kids, the able kids, the kids who know math better than the kids who don't. So all in the name of, quote, pseudo equity. And then there was also this attitude in California that we shouldn't segregate classes by ability. So I mean, when I went to high school, you had three levels of math. You had very advanced. You had intermediate. And you had beginners. And you picked which one of those. And you were tested and graded based on the level of math. So people who want to go into sciences and engineering picked advanced math and so on. I did advanced math, but you had that option. You had that option. But in California, they have embraced this idea that, no, we need to have everybody in the same class and teach to the lowest common denominator, again, in the name of equity. So that the kids who are not that good at math don't feel bad because they're in a different class. They're in a less advanced class. We need to treat them all the same in the name of equity. And of course, study after study after study is shown that not only is this hood the able, hood those kids that are good at math, we all know that. That's obvious. And I don't think anybody who supports these kind of things cares, but also shows that it doesn't help the other kids. So it's lose, lose, lose, lose, lose proposition. Anyway, all of this is being encoded in a set of curriculum recommendations. They don't have to adopt it. It's a set of curriculum recommendations that's being adopted by the state of California called California Math Framework that basically has been distributed around the state. Some school districts are paying attention to it. Some others are not. But this idea of no algebra in middle school, classes with all students teaching lowest common denominator, all of that is part of this California Math Framework. Now it turns out that a lot of this, and I think we mentioned this before, a lot of this is based on the work of one Stanford academic, not even work based on the advocacy of one Stanford academic, a woman by the name of Joe Bola, who is a professor of mathematics education. Well, last week, I guess, there was published 100 page complaint by an anonymous source, so unauthored, but anonymous source, that claims that Joe Bola in her research, the research on which and in her citations, all of which this California Math Framework is based on, are fraudulent. That is, they've been misrepresented, her research has been misrepresented. Even her title, she often presents herself as a PhD in mathematics. No, she has a PhD in education of mathematics, not in mathematics itself. She's not a mathematician. But the 100 page document, which is well sourced and published, as I said, anonymously, is basically claims that these citations that she uses are misrepresented. And all of these misrepresentations have made it into the California Math Framework. So what you have here is that it is, I mean, this shouldn't be shocking to anybody, what you have is major math recommendations for the state of California, how to teach in the public schools and the government schools in California, based on flawed work, based on distorted, perverted work that has no basis in reality, and that basically misrepresent what is going on at the expense of students, particularly students of ability, but really at the expense of all students. Now, I say particularly students of ability, that is what should be particularly shocking. It used to be that we cherish students of ability. We invested in students of ability. We realized that students of ability, people were particularly smart and particularly able or particularly motivated, contributed an enormous amount to all of us, that we all have a selfish incentive to support them and to see them flourish and to see them succeed and innovate and grow and discover new knowledge these people change the world. Most of us, 99% of us, who are average within one standard deviation or whatever, are not going to dramatically change science, change the business world, change the world. It's a certain percentage, or 1% probably, of the population that has an overwhelming majority of all the impact, positive impact, through science, technology, and business and medicine and things like that on the world out there. And yet, we rely on geniuses. We stand on the shoulders of geniuses. And yet, the state of California, as I think many states are, trying their best to subvert that, to undermine that, to repress those people. I mean, this is part of kind of a whole philosophy, I guess, of stagnation, all in the name of it's not fair that some people are smart and some people are not. And of course, once egalitarianism is your standard, that is equality of outcome is your standard, then all there is is the destruction of ability and destruction of talents and destruction of genius. Again, for anybody who hasn't heard my spiel on the Khmer Rouge, check out my talks on inequality. I mean, the fact that we are different is a fact of existence. It's not fair or unfair, it just is. And the fact that they are among us, great geniuses, makes us all better. Many of California wants to end that, destroy that in the name of equality of outcome, in the name of the most nihilistic, anti-life, anti-human being, anti-man philosophy ever. The philosophy that should all be have the same outcome and destroy those who have ability who might be better than us in some capacity. So, yeah, super horrific. I'm glad that Joe Boller is being shown for what she is.  I don't know what drives her. I don't know what the motivation is. But I can tell you this, she's not subverting herself. So, for example, she sends her kids to a private school that costs $48,000 a year. And to help make money for that, she charges school districts, including some of the poorest school districts in California, $5,000 an hour for consulting. So, we're talking about somebody who has above and beyond just the evil ideology and the willingness to lie in order to get that evil ideology hearing. She also has the audacity, which is, I guess, consistent of making as much money as she can for herself at the same time. Anyway, another despicable human being. Another despicable human being. And I hope, I really, really, really hope that this kind of starts building a momentum against the whole new egalitarian approach to mathematics that I'm sure other states are looking at, too, particularly other states dominated by the left. But we need to crush this in California, and we need to crush it everywhere it appears. I mean, these people really hate. That's what drives them, right? So I hope the California mathematics framework, which has been approved and now circulating, I hope it is ignored. And I hope that ultimately nobody else adopts it and the California drops it and that we get more reason in mathematics. All right, we talked the other day about squatters, right? It's pretty stunning, this squatting phenomena. And I have to make a correction. I was wrong. It happens. It's rare. It's very unusual. But once in a while, it happens and you guys catch me on it, which is great. So I love it when you guys correct me. I said something about I don't know if this happens in Europe, and people said, whoa. This phenomena started in Europe. And it makes sense because intellectually, the whole idea of squatter rights comes from the negation of private property. And that, of course, is such a European idea, leftist European idea. So Spain has a massive squatter problem, has had it for a long time. There's a period in which Germany had a big squatting problem. Italy has a squatting problem. I think Portugal does too. I think primarily southern Italy, but generally Europe has. Any place where communist parties have had some kind of success in the past or radical leftists have had some kind of success in the past, those areas, those areas are places where they have very, very strong protections for squatters. So it's not a uniquely American phenomena. It's recently come to America. A bunch of states have these squatting laws that really protect squatters and make it very, very difficult for landlords to get rid of squatters. And it's just horrible.  Anyway, anyway, yeah, I mean, Clark has something to say about this. Let me just quickly take this question from Clark or Comet. If you had a squatter in your home and the police refused to remove them and going through a housing court would take years and cost a fortune, what would you do? I'd hire these people who harass squatters until they leave. So one of the ways, I saw this article I mentioned at the other day, there is this guy who will basically go squat in the squatter's house. He's got a license to carry. He'll take a gun. He'll wait until they leave the house. And he'll break in and he'll go in and he'll declare himself the new squatter. And he'll basically say, I'm sharing the house with you. But he'll harass them to such an extent that they just leave.  Of course, you could do it yourself. You could just harass the squatters until they leave. Although some people who've tried to do that have been arrested. So it's best to hire a professional squatting harasser. Yeah, something like that. Hire somebody to go squat in the squatter's place. And then give him a lease, right? Give him a lease because that's what the squatters do. They fake. They download a fake lease. They sign it and they show it to the cops. Oh no, we're leasing. He's just trying to evict me even though I've got a lease. And then you have to go to court to try to prove that that's not a legit lease and you never signed it and it takes forever. So I would do stuff like that. You have to, in a sense, take the initiative and just go after it. Anyway, the state of Florida is coming to your rescue. State of Florida has just passed a law basically dramatically weakening their squatters rights laws. They had laws like other places. They had hearings recently in which people who've had their homes taken by squatters testified. And the Santas has just signed a law basically dealing with this and making it possible to get rid of the squatters quickly and effectively and protecting property rights in the process. I expect other states will follow suit. Some states don't have squatters laws. So some states are already better. And then it'll be interesting to see the pressure building up in some of the left-leaning states to get rid of squatters as homeowners threaten the legislature. We'll see how much noise this will make. But yes, California, Governor DeSantis, have indeed, as far as I know, the first to pass a law removing so-called squatter rights and streamlining the process of being able to get rid of the squatters. I think this is the right approach. The approach should be always to err on the side of the property owner. And if the property owner has done something wrong by evicting somebody, if they violated a contract by evicting somebody, then let that somebody sue in court for violation of contract. All right.  So there's a massive push to try to hire people who understand AI, who know how to program AI, who know how to improve AI, work on improving AI, and so on. The paid packages for anybody who really has an expertise in AI in the millions, signing bonuses. Literally, Mark Zuckerberg is sending personalized letters, which he is signing. So letters from him to AI experts at his competitors trying to lure them away from other companies and come to work at Facebook. But all the big tech companies, every single one of them has an AI program going, and they're searching for talent. And then you've got probably dozens of startups that are in the space, also searching for talent. Indeed, just at the same time as in Silicon Valley, they have been, and I think it's even ongoing, layoffs at large tech companies for, I think, regular programming jobs. The demand for these AI jobs is spiking. And it's, you know, if you're in the field, it must be so exciting time to be around. People are out there to try to hire you. They're competing to hire you. The jobs, I think, are exciting. There's a lot of energy. There's a lot of new companies. There's a lot of startups, which is always exciting and thrilling and a lot of competition. A lot of them will fail, but that's part of the way Silicon Valley works. And yeah, some of the companies are trying to pull whole teams out, just hire a whole team and just move them from one company to another. I guess it's a super exciting time to be in the industry. Median salaries for AI, this is a median for engineers. In non-AI is about 180. That's the median. And for AI, it's closer to 300,000. Again, the superstars are getting seven figures. So yeah, and again, there's all kinds of AI. What we made familiar to all of us are the chat boxes, right? These natural language chat boxes. They're almost like search engines that are chat boxes that understand ordinary language. But that's just one piece of the AI puzzle. There's a massive application of AI to pharmaceuticals, application to AI to engineering, application of AI to call centers, this application of AI, to a million different, to every single realm of human endeavors that can be transferred to a computer, which is a lot, to an AI kind of algorithm. All of those companies applying AI to all these different things, they're all looking for talent. So if you're looking for something to go to school or something to specialize in, there's a huge future here, because this is not going to go away. Not going to go away. All right, let's see. All right, let's do a few things from out of the United States. OK, Russia. I mean, it's interesting what's going on in Russia right now. So you have this terrorist attack. The terrorist attack is committed by ISIS and they recruited for Tajikistanis. Tajikistanis from Tajikistan. Tajikistan has a border with Russia. It also has a border with Afghanistan. And Afghanistan is, of course, where ISIS is based. So it is a Muslim country. It is on the, what is it, East Asia, so out there on the east side. And it has a population of about 10 million. It's a pretty poor country. It's a pretty poor country. And it's, let me just see something. Let's see if we can do this. What's that? Here we go. So, you know, Tajikistan is, let's see, where its borders. It doesn't actually, well, it does border with a piece of Russia. It borders with Afghanistan. It borders with China. It almost borders with Pakistan. You know, it's got a very narrow piece of land that's Afghanistan between it and Pakistan. And it borders with Kyrgyzstan. Anyway, 10 million people, poor country. And there's been a lot of migration out of Tajikistan to Russia, so at least a million to a million and a half. So over 10% of the Tajikistani population actually lives in Russia. And they are temporary workers. And Russia is very dependent on immigrants from Central Asia. People like Tajikistanis, Kyrgyzstanis, and others to do a lot of the work, Turkmenistan and these other countries to do a lot of the works that is Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and you can go on with all the stands. But a lot of the work that Russia needs done is done by these foreign laborers. Just like many countries, actually, scrap what I said. Tajikistan does not have a border with Russia. It has a border with Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is this massive country in Central Asia, which basically is empty. And Kazakhstan has the big border with Russia, so they would have to go through Kazakhstan to Russia. Anyway, Russia is importing. And Russia wants them. It's not like here where there's a border crisis. In Russia, it's not a crisis. It's actually something they want. They want, right? And these are workers that are coming into Russia and working in a variety of businesses. And as a consequence, they are helping the Russian economy at a time where Russia needs them. Because not only has Russia sent a lot of its people to the front, but Russia's birth rates are very, very low. Russia is one of the fastest-growing, fastest-shrinking countries in the world. So Russia needs workers, just like Europe, just like the United States. But we don't pretend otherwise. They don't pretend otherwise. They just allow them in. Anyway, so Russia needs the Central Asian workers who are Muslim. Russia also has a vast Muslim population. It has certain regions in Russia, predominantly Muslim. This is a heritage of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire used to occupy Crimea. It used to occupy all of the Caucasus. It used to occupy a lot of the area around the Black Sea and around the Caspian Sea. And a lot of those people are all Muslim. And they now are part of Russia. So Russia has to be very, very careful to emphasize that it is what they call a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-ethnic country. And they are making a big deal out of this. Putin mentions this in many of his speeches. Putin emphasized right after a terrorist attack that this will not hurt and not damage the fact that Russia is a multi-ethnic that he barely mentioned. He didn't mention ISIS in his first speech. And he de-emphasized the fact that the terrorist was Muslims because he does not want to spark an ethnic warfare within Russia.  So Russia has to tread this fine balance. And one of the reasons it's easy to blame Ukraine is that that really solves a lot of the problem. Because it's better to blame Ukraine where they're really at war with than to blame Tajikistan, whose workers they need. They're also afraid that they'll stop being racism against the Tajiki workers. They'll start that people start harassing them.  And Russia needs them. It's also interesting to note that much many of the troops at the Ukrainian front are not, quote, ethnic Russians, but are Chechens, the Gadestans, all the stands, and many of them are Muslim. And Russia finds that the Russian government finds it easier to go into these places, offer them money, and try to recruit them sometimes by force than to do the same in Moscow or St. Petersburg, because the backlash would be greater.  But it's trying to, and Putin has to have this balancing act of, well, Muslims attacked me, but I don't want to blame it on them because I have a large Muslim population inside Russia. I don't want my Russian nationalists going after them because they are the troops they use in Ukraine. And I don't want a civil war while I'm fighting in Ukraine. And I don't want to turn any of these additional Muslims that live in Russia, who are Russian citizens, into terrorists. So he's got a lot juggling a lot on his plate as he deals with the catastrophe that's, to a large extent, self-made because of the way in Ukraine. Otherwise, it would be a lot easier to deal with all this. All right, I thought that was interesting. And then finally, there's a lot of news out of Israel and a real crisis in the Israeli government. So here's the story. I'll do it quickly. We can spend a lot of time on this, but I'll do it quickly. In Israel, the ultra-orthodox, those people that wear black and wear these big hats and live in their own neighborhoods and don't associate with anybody, you've got them in L.A., you've got them in New York, you've got them in Toronto, you've got them in Europe, in London, and they constitute 14% of the population in Israel. Anyway, when the Israel was founded, there were very few of them. And they demanded in order to support the creation of the state of Israel, in order to support the Israeli government, they demanded that their young people be excluded from military service and that their young people, instead, go and study at their shiva. In other words, they go pray and study the Bible and the Talmud and religious stuff. Also, they demanded, and have demanded more and more and more over the years, a subsidy for these young men to go study because they're not working. And many of them don't work into their 40s, or well into their 30s at least. And they need to be subsidized. And so the state of Israel has subsidized these people. One of the great horrors and injustices in Israeli society.  And Ben Goyon, in order to create a coalition, in order to create a new state, said, fine, OK, I'll do it. But they have gone to 14% of the population partially because they have, on average, 7.1 children, where secular Israelis have 2.2. The ultra-orthodox have 7.1. So they are growing fast.  Anyway, so today, 14% of the Israeli population is not drafted. Now, look, I'm against the draft. I believe Israel should have a volunteer army. But if you're going to draft, then you should draft everybody, you shouldn't exclude people based on religion.  They can volunteer, but they don't have to serve. Jews have to serve. And ultra-orthodox should probably serve together with all the other Jews that have to serve, given equal treatment by the law. Anyway, post-October 7th, this is really hit a boiling point.  They're in uniform, and they're in combat, and they're putting their life at risk in order to defend Israel. And yet, there is this population in Israel, 14%, that not only is now represented among those fighting, but also receives massive huge, particularly Netanyahu has given them massive huge subsidies to do nothing, not even to be productive workers. That is, Israel's facing a huge labor shortage because all the young men are in Gaza. So there's a huge labor shortage, and these young men are not working because they're studying at the Eshiva. Nothing's changed for them. Anyway, there's a huge outcry. And there is a demand to pass a law that requires them to serve. And indeed, the Supreme Court of Israel has stepped in and basically said, look, if they have to serve, unless you pass a law that clearly articulates that they don't, against the previous law, that allowed them not to serve expires, like on Monday. And the Supreme Court has asked the Israeli government to provide them with an explanation or pass a new law or do something, but the old law is expiring. And therefore, it could very well be that come Monday, if the Netanyahu government has not passed a new law, because it knows that if it passes a new law, it basically is history with regard to the voters. And parts of its coalition said they would resign. The ultra-orthodox, or members of the coalition right now, very, very active politically, have said they will leave the coalition if no law is passed. Netanyahu is between a rock and a hard place. And there is the stalemate. But in the meantime, the Supreme Court says, look, if this is not resolved by Monday, you have to go and start drafting, conscripting all these young religious men. So Israel is very tense right now in terms of whether this will happen or not. Netanyahu has asked for a 30-day extension to resolve the issue. Not clear if the Supreme Court would give it to him. But in any case, even if he does, it's not clear how he is going to resolve this, given the ultra-orthodox insisting on extending the law and everybody else saying, uh-uh, we don't accept it. But this has always been one of the many issues at the heart of Israeli society that had the potential of imploding that society, this real, real philosophical difference between the secular nature of the state of Israel, the liberal nature of the state of Israel, and a small minority, well, not so small, a minority, a 14% minority that is growing that could reach 30% by 2050, or 2060, that basically says, no, we don't want, we don't want people driving on Sabbath. We certainly don't want buses driving. We don't want our men going to army. And we want basically a religious Jewish state. We don't believe in a separation of state from religion. This is a conflict that's only going to get worse in Israel. It's only going to intensify. It is horrible. I, of course, stand with the secular separation of state from church. Some of the ultra-orthodox have threatened that if they are going to be required to serve in the military, they will leave Israel. And to that, I say good riddance. I hope they all leave Israel. I don't know where I want them to go, but I don't want them in Israel. So good riddance to them if they leave Israel. Are we streaming? Whoops. Do you guys see anything? Is there anything? When did it freeze? I'm not sure what's going on. That's not a problem. All right. Anybody there? Hello, hello. One, two, three. All right, I'm back. Can you guys see me? Hear me? Everything OK? I know what happened. It's happening again. All right. Yes, you can see me. Oh, all right. Cool. I apologize. I apologize for that. Let me just fix something. Basically, my web browser Chrome just completely froze. Everything, depending on Chrome, including the Super Chat Tracker and everything else, my YouTube feed and everything else, froze completely. So I apologize. Let me just, I need to fix something. And then we'll get going to, all right. So you heard of all of that. Everything I said about Israel, that is good. So yeah, so let's go to the Super Chat at this point. You guys saw it all. It was just bizarre. Everything here froze. Everything, Chrome froze. Everything else was fine. So I wonder if Chrome needs an update. Well, I've updated it. So I'm not sure what is going on. But hopefully it doesn't happen again. It's never happened to me before. So that Chrome just freezes like that. But I will look into it. Maybe it's time to move to a different browser. But I can't imagine Safari is better. All right. Let's go to the Super Chats. And before we do that, quickly, I want to remind you all that we basically have three sponsors, one new one. The new sponsor is Alex Epstein. 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I can use a VPN to get to the US Netflix and watch my shows. So ExpressVPN, it's great. Go ExpressVPN.com slash Iranbrook. And you can get the extra discount. All right, let's jump in. All right, so John asked this question before the show even started. It's a long question. I'll read it all. It's like $175. So thank you, John. It's amazing and we really, really appreciate it. So let's see. John says, when you say you don't believe in world building, do you mean a country not throwing their own resources into a country that we just destroyed? Is it because that sort of thing is for them to earn back themselves? Not coming into this ideological chain of, what is it? And then you've got, oh, it goes into, I'll say, you're on, I've heard you say you don't believe in world building after a war on a podcast where you were being interviewed. I was hoping you could expand on that and for those who might have misunderstood. So earn back themselves. And then it's much like you wouldn't give someone who's hit hard rock bottom gifts like a con of the things that would only succeed in robbing them of those achievements and their own self-esteem. Not committing to this idea, and then the way I currently understand it, you believe that sticking around to ensure there's a real change on the conceptual level is an absolute necessity. Not committing to this ideological change is disastrous, like Israel's multiple existential victories over Islam in the past. And then afterwards, they are unwillingness to re-educate and drive the self-destructive ideas out of the minds of the enemies, only leading to, yes, perpetual warfare as the old elites and ideas reassert themselves. I heard on Inland, UK, that the US stayed heavily involved in Japan's rebuilding for the culture for seven years before leaving them to their own. Thank you so much. All right, so that is that. That is that. And John answered by saying, I forgot to mention this money is specifically for you to spend at restaurants. Thank you, John. All right, so let's dive into this. So there are a few reasons why I don't believe the victorious country should spend a huge amount of money like we did in the Marshall Plan and like we did to some extent in Japan, the equivalent of a Marshall Plan to rebuild the country. I think one of the reasons is what you said. They just don't deserve it. They initiated a war. They have suffered the consequence of it. Now they need to create a mentality of rebuilding, a system of rebuilding. What the occupying power should basically enforce is contract law and property rights and free markets and let the locals determine their own values and what they want to build first and how they want to build it. And they should work up to that. Now there's no harm in or there's a lot of good in companies maybe coming into that area, hiring people, building factories, doing things from the victorious side. But there shouldn't be any just charity by governments because that's not the role of government. So charity organizations could come in in terms of private charity could come in. But again, nothing on the scale of the Marshall Plan which basically brought central planning to Europe. It was centrally planned. How would we be allocated? Where would we put? How would we be spent? What factories would be built? And it indeed denied markets for a long time. The American military occupying Germany had price controls. And it took the Germans to a bell against the Americans to eliminate the price controls and let their economy grow and let their economy gain the flexibility it needs. So what you need is freedom, right? What you need is to get out of the way. You need to impose peace. You need to make sure there's no violence and let the market flourish. I mean, if we believe that markets do better than central planning, then this is a good opportunity for that. The second reason not to do it is, of course, the fact that it's not the job of my government, the American government, let's say, to take my tax money and use it to build Germany. That's absurd. Let Germans build Germany or let the Germans ask me as an individual to help them build Germany and I might contribute to a fund. But tax money and government's government money that is taken from taxes should only be used for the protection of individual rights in the country that is being served by this particular government. It's not their job to build up and to sacrifice. Look, America, let's say after World War II, a lot of Americans died. A lot of Americans were injured. A lot of families destroyed. A lot of people placed in a poverty because of the war. And then billions and billions of dollars go from the United States to Europe in order to beef them up. I mean, how is that rational or logical? So what should have been done is massive tax cuts, deregulation in the United States until the Germans will abide by the rule of law and will protect property rights and contracts and go build yourself a country. And that should have been done in Japan as well. So Japan, we did stay for seven years. I can't remember how many years we stayed in Germany, but also for, I think, something similar to seven years into the 1950s. And in Japan, as I mentioned the other day, we actually, MacArthur, wrote the Constitution for the Japanese. He wrote it with his assistant in their office and crammed it down the Japanese throats, forced them to accept it. And that's the Constitution they still have to this day. And that's what needs to be done. The Victor, hopefully, are the good guys and they should determine how things are managed moving into the future. And assuming that the Victor are on the side of freedom, freedom is what should win. Yeah, economy wasn't booming. I mean, this is an economic fallacy that during World War II, the economy in the United States was booming. It was not. GDP was up, but the economy wasn't booming. The economy was struggling, because if you measure the economy in terms of the quality of life and the standard of living of the population, it was struggling. It was struggling. The problem is, the problem with the perception that the economy was booming was, yes, GDP was up, because GDP measures government spending. So when government spends money on tanks and on bombs and on things that explode and are sending troops overseas where 300,000 die, that's a big number, right? Then that is considered good for GDP, but it's bad for the economy. And it did not get better vis-a-vis the Great Depression. It got worse vis-a-vis the Great Depression. It just was paid for with massive quantities of debt and massive quantities of printing money and a dramatic reduction in the quality of life. The U.S. only recovered from the Great Depression. It only actually recovered from the Great Depression in terms of real standard of living while being improvements, which are what matter if you will, disposable income, which was what matters in an economy after World War II, starting in 1945, when all the regulations and controls that were imposed during the war were lifted and when all the troops came home, went back to work, went back to work not building tanks but building things that people use, things that are productive. So this is part of the problem of using GDP. We don't have a great alternative measure, but because GDP will always show an increase during wartime even though that makes no sense, makes no sense because the government is spending more and GDP captures government spending as a big portion of what it is. All right, let's run through these rest of the questions. Remo, thoughts on the CEO also having the function of chairman of the board? I think in most companies it's fine. It is the CEO is the one who knows most about what's going on in the company. Being chairman allows them to navigate the board and to be able to make sure that the board is dealing with the things most important. But there are situations, particularly when a CEO is particularly powerful or situations where maybe there is some worry about the CEO manipulating the board on his own behalf where it makes sense to separate the CEO from the chairman. And they have been, if I remember right, I haven't looked at the research in a long time but they used to be research that showed, right? When you separate the CEO from the chairman it benefits shareholders. That is it good for shareholders. Companies do better when the two are separated. So, I would generally recommend, suggest separating the CEO job from the chairman so that you have a chairman who is independent and who can actually help the board and guide the board to basically oversee the CEO which is a big job of the board of directors is to oversee the actions of the CEO, is to make sure the CEO is acting on behalf of the shareholders, is maximizing the shareholder wealth, is doing his job well. Sign for separating the two out for governance reasons. Remo, thoughts on stock parking. Look, I mean stock parking. Okay, so what is stock parking first? Stock parking is one step back. If you buy stock in a company that's publicly traded and you buy 5% of that stock, according to regulations today, SEC regulations, you have to announce to the world that you have 5% of the stock of the company. If you own 10% of the company, you not only have to announce the world that you have 10% of the company but you have to announce to the world what your intentions are, that is 10% or more. That is why you're accumulating so much of stock in the company. Are you getting ready for a takeover? Are you just an investment? Why are you accumulating the stock? Some people, if they wanna take over a company, would rather the market and the company not know about it until they've accumulated a lot of stock, a lot more than 10%. So they wanna get around the regulatory filing requirement. So what they do is they buy some stock and then they enter into an agreement with the third party and say, look, I will sell you this stock to get it off my books but here's an agreement that I will buy it back in a few weeks when I wanna make the announcement. So they get it off their books, they can buy more and get that off the books and ultimately one day they can buy it all up and they have 30% and they make an announcement then. Now this is of course illegal because it's getting around the filing requirement. So the filing requirement basically is if you own more than 10% you have to file and they're saying, well, I don't own 10% but really they do because they have these agreements to buy back these stocks. Now is this rational? Well, I mean, in a free market there wouldn't be no filing requirements. So it would be moot, there would be no issue. Nobody would use stock parking because nobody would care. Now, exchanges where you list might have different filing requirements and might even have stock parking regulations but then it would be voluntary if you didn't like the regulations of this exchange, you would go to another exchange, there would be competition in terms of the private regulation of the market. But today because you have to file, parking is illegal. Now the whole thing is wrong in moral that the government is telling us how much stock we can own, when we need to file, why we need to tell people what our intentions are. It's none of anybody's business what my intentions are. And if I wanna buy up 51% of a company and show up in the CEO's boardroom and tell him, guess what, you're fired because I own 51% of the company, why is that wrong? That used to be the case but for 1968 when in 1968 we had a security regulations that made all these filing requirements necessary, right? The SCC was created in 34 I think and 68 is when all these filing requirements were made necessary. So yeah, I mean it's complete BS, it makes the market less efficient, it makes takeovers more difficult, it makes everything more expensive and it should be abolished but it should be abolished together with everything else or much else that the SCC does. But 68 is, it's a big securities law, I can't remember the name of it, but it is part of it. And by the way, who lobbied for it? Who do you think lobbied for it? Managers of big companies, publicly traded companies who didn't want strangers buying 51% of their companies and firing them. So this is a policy that was lobbied for by business, that was created for and by business, right? So that's who wanted it. Kim says, more spending money for restaurants in Latin America. Wow, thank you, I'm gonna go to some nice restaurants in Latin America. Michael Sanders, haters, they don't like seeing people being better than them. Ultimately, it's a personality trait that holds them down a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, egalitarianists, I think deep down, are fundamentally haters and it's the most nihilistic philosophy of all philosophies. Hunter Hunter, have you ever read this short story? Harrison Bergstrom, I think some California legislatures stand to read it. Yes, by, it starts with a V, I can't remember the name of the author. I can't pronounce the name of the author, I can kind of see it, but yes, very good story about the evils of egalitarianism. Exactly that, weighing people down who have any, von Gut, von Gut. I used to read all these books when I was a teenager in my 20s, and in my 20s. Von Gut, von Gut. Kurt Von Gut, I think that's right. All right, Liam, $50, thank you, Liam, we really, really appreciate it. Let's see, all right. TK History has a video on YouTube titled from Plato to Hitler, which is phenomenal. He often quotes from Peacock's book, The Cause of Hitler's Germany. He stated, he started reading Rand because of that book. The video has over 150,000 views. Yeah, I mean, it's great. I've seen some TK history. He did one on, can history be objective where he cites on Rand? And he talks about the objective, it's the epistemology. And, you know, he still needs some grounding, but he's getting it. And if anybody knows how to, you know, get in contact with him, I would have him on the show. So, tell him, I'd love to interview him. He might be, I'd love to interview him on the show about his journey to discovering on Rand and what it's done and how it's shaped the way he thinks about, what do you call it? About history. So, if anybody has any, knows how I can contact him, let me know and I will try to get him on the show. Hop a Campbell, I mean, this is the way in which, by the way, you change the world, right? You influence influences, you influence influences and you influence influences by, yeah, by doing exactly what we are doing, by keeping this, keeping it, you know, talking and writing and discussing these ideas and hoping they come across them.  Well, I think it's a combination of both. I think they have convinced themselves that they believe in their own BS. But deep down, I think they know it's BS.  They are the authorities, they love the power that that gives them and they, you know, they evade the knowledge that they are full of BS and they convinced themselves that no, no, no, this is the way things, the same with anti-vaxxers is the same with a lot of these people who are full of BS but have made a lot of money and a lot of prestige among certain people by taking these ridiculous positions. Okay, Roland, anyone enjoy some Colombian food? I won't be in Colombia. Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. So I'm trying to schedule restaurants right now. Ryan reminds everybody, like the show. Don't forget to like the show, press that like button. And before you leave, it helps with the algorithms. It's one of the ways in which you can help elevate the show and get subscriptions up and all the good stuff. Subscriptions are going up, not as fast as I'd like but they're going up. And you can help by liking the show and getting it more visibility. Really, really appreciate that value for value. And this doesn't cost you anything. Just a click of a button. All right, I'm Mirkat, what in the legislators' houses? Yes, also Gaza must be destroyed. Yes, a squatter should squat in the legislatures' houses in the judges' houses and the people who, well, the people who passed a law that give them these so-called rights. It's ridiculous. James, everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. I think that's right. I think understanding why you're irritated by other people helps you know more about yourself. James, does time heal all wounds even if scars last forever? No, I don't think time necessarily heals all wounds. It heals some wounds, doesn't heal all wounds. Closure, really understanding what happened. Coming to grips with it, I think, is what heals the wounds. Harper Campbell says, I hope Biden wins. I don't hope Biden wins, but I hope Trump loses. Mindspan wellness, brave browser is superior to Chrome. They are both built off of a Chronium but brave blocks, trackers and ads, users less RAM, has HTTPs everywhere, activated quicker loading times, and offers Tor integration. I'll look into that. Thank you, Mindspan wellness. I'll look into that. Finally, Spymann 3000. I'm increasingly concerned about the anti-Semitism I see online but it's hard to get real frame of reference for how widespread it actually is. What's your sense of things in that department? Oh, I think it's really bad.  It's bad on the left and it's bad on the right and it's growing. It's not shrinking, it's growing. You can see it with Candace Owen and the people who kind of follow her and the huge following she has.  Somebody you actually got to visit Trump. How about that and have dinner with him? You'd think that that would have hurt Trump but it didn't. And you see it in the left. You see it everywhere in the left at universities all over the place. So I absolutely think that anti-Semitism is a very, very troubling phenomena. And I'm looking, Andrew, for your question. I'm not sure how I missed it. Somehow it didn't get captured here. So yes, very, very disturbing and getting worse, not better and much bigger than I think most of us realized, if you will. I, Andrew, I found the question. Andrew says, I respect Jonathan Haidt but his thinking on smartphones seems shallow. He's for parents banning them until high school smartphones expose deep issues like post-self-esteem that demonize tech won't solve thoughts. I basically agree with you. I think it's probably more complex than that. There are all kinds of issues around smartphones not just the issue of teen exposure to social media and issues related to self-esteem. I think it's more than that. But I basically agree with you. So I think there are other issues, the kind of, not addictive, but the habit-forming nature of relying on a phone, the lack of play out in the world, the lack of interaction with other people that smartphones encourage.  I think though also banning them is wrong, I think there has to be some balance and parents just have to develop the spine to limit kids' use of smartphones and of social media and allocate time for the things that parents prioritize higher than that, for example, play or human interaction. I do not think the government should intervene. I think it's horrible, I should say this, they're horrible that in Florida, DeSantis has not banned teens from having social media accounts or anybody under 14 I think having a social media account. I think that's horrible.  I think it's wrong. I mean, it's more of a paternalistic stage just from the right instead of from the left, but it could have been the left, the left is anti-social media too. And it's despicable. So I think parents need to develop a spine and I think any attempts from above to do this and I think again, like every cell phones are a tool, it can be used for good, it can be used for bad and parents need to manage that tool. They need to take control over that tool and not let their kids rule them, which I think many kids rule their parents. All right, guys, thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate all the support. We blew away the target today. There will be a show tonight, 8 p.m. East Coast time, topic to be determined. Sorry about the glitch in the middle, but I think we survived it. And let's see what else. Don't forget to go to Alex Epstein's link, which I gave you, right, the alexepstein.substack.com. Go for the premium subscription and get that Alex Epstein AI chat. I mean, that is really cool. And yeah, sign up for his talking points and don't forget if you are a student to apply for a scholarship for OConn. Even if you're not a student, if you just don't have the money to go to OConn, apply for a scholarship. If you're a serious student of objectivism, not student as at a university, apply for a scholarship. All right, everybody, I will see you tonight. And tomorrow, have a great rest of your day. Bye, everybody.