Right. So thank you everybody for joining us today for our event. Is social media censoring us in in recent months this topic which we've which we've discussed a few times in the past and I'm sure we'll discuss many times in the future. This is, you know, especially around the US election has come back into the public discourse with tweets being appearing with warnings and Facebook posts appearing with warnings. And the question is, is what social media is doing in those situations. Does that is that a violation of people's right to free speech is its censorship. Our speakers tonight are Toby young. He is a British journalist and he is the founder and director of the Free Speech Union. And Dr your own Brooke chairman of the board at the Iran Institute and host of the Iran Brook show Toby. Do you think when when Twitter for example when Twitter has, you know, warnings, let's say on a tweet by the president claiming that he won an election which for all we can tell he clearly lost is is that is that censorship or are they a private company, private platform and exercising their property rights. Yeah well I think I think it is pretty clearly a form of censorship, but it's not straightforward censorship. It's indirect censorship. And it's, it's, it's the most common form I think in the West anyway that censorship currently takes social media companies. And within the workplace, certainly broadcasters in the UK, across the media generally mainstream and social. The main rationale for censoring things isn't that the sensors politically disapprove of the views being expressed. It's that they can be classified as either false or misinformation or disinformation. And on that basis, they're either flagged as unreliable or removed. And, but I think it's pretty clear that nine times out of 10. This is actually political censorship by proxy. For instance, I'm a lockdown skeptic. I don't think that quarantining people, the healthy as well as the sick is a particularly sensible policy approach to mitigating the impact of this pandemic. I've been running a website called lockdown skeptics since the beginning of April, expressing this point of view. And I've run up against censorship against several things I've said on the grounds that I'm disseminating misinformation about the pandemic misinformation that could endanger public health. So to give you one example, YouTube removed a discussion I was having in which I was setting out the civil liberties case for not imprisoning us in our homes. Essentially arguing that if the state wants to remove any of our civil liberties, it needs a very good reason to for doing so. And the burden of proof should always be on the state because they are our natural rights which were entitled to in virtue of our status as human beings. And so the burden of proof should be on the state. If it wants to make an argument as to why our civil rights should be removed and I wasn't convinced that in this case, either in the UK or the US or anywhere else. The state had made a good argument that imprisoning us in our homes, suspending the right to protest in the case of English and Welsh law, the right to habeas corpus was suspended which dates back to the Magna Carta. So I was making the civil rights case against lockdown and YouTube removed that video on the grounds that it breached their terms of service. I complained and in my complaint or my appeal, I pointed out that the person I was discussing this with in the video was Professor Michael Levitt, who in addition to being the Professor of structural biology at Stanford is was the winner, the joint winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize for chemistry. So they then reinstated that video, but appealing to the credentials of the people who are accused of misinformation and censored by big tech companies like YouTube Twitter Facebook doesn't always work. So for instance recently, Carl Hennigan, who's the Oxford Professor of evidence based medicine, jointly authored a piece for the spectator about. I think it was about vaccines, which of course is is is a word and a subject that triggers the independent fact checkers on the social media platforms wrote a perfectly sensible reasonable piece. Nothing in it was remotely inaccurate or misleading. It was co authored with a doctor called Tom Jefferson, who was one of the world's leading experts in respiratory diseases and how to treat them and how to vaccinate against them. It couldn't have been more authoritative. The credentials of the people who'd composed this article for the spectator could not have been more impressive. I mean, there's little doubt I think that they knew more about the subject than the independent fact checker who deemed that what they were saying was quote unquote false, and it was flagged as such on Facebook. Now this doesn't just happen as you know with respect to dissent from COVID orthodoxy. It also, it's also been happening to Donald Trump and to a number of people who've been challenging the US presidential election result. And the rationale is always that you are polluting the body politic. You are engaging in a form of corruption, that if you if you disseminate misinformation, often they assume with kind of your because you're a bad faith actor, you're in the pay of Putin or China or God knows what the people need to be protected from that and they see themselves as the custodians of people's welfare, and it's their duty to protect people from being exposed to this misinformation because they could easily be manipulated Now, that's I think a standard argument against free speech that's been made many times before. And Louis Brande is, as I'm sure your Aaron knows, made a very persuasive argument against that argument for censorship in a Supreme Court case in 1927 I think it was in which he said that the fact that you think the free speech in question that you want to censor is false is not a good reason for censoring it the solution to too much full speech is not less speech, it's more speech. And I think that applies to, you know, say the anti vaccine case. This calls recently in the UK to criminalize people who disseminate anti vaccine information. So if they're anti vaxxers and if they say something that's clearly wrong in the eyes of the pro vaxxers. They should merely be silenced but they should be prosecuted and in some cases jailed because we need to roll out this mass vaccine. So very urgent public health priority and anyone who gets in the way has to be silenced and in some cases jailed that seemed to be the argument and it's got an extraordinary amount of support, even the Labour Party essentially endorsed that policy recently and and and you know the argument there is okay. If you let anti vaxxers use the public square use platforms like Twitter and Facebook and YouTube to disseminate their arguments against getting vaccinated against COVID, it's possible that fewer people will get vaccinated. And that could induce cause cause I suppose pose a public health risk. But the solution is not to ban them, let alone jail them. The solution is to let them set out their arguments in the public square and if they're going to rebut them. And I think if you if you censor them or worse jail them. You're not going to persuade the fence sitters when it comes to getting vaccinated, that the vaccines completely safe, 100% effective, no unforeseen side effects, you know, you should give this to your children and line up to get it as soon as you can. You're not going to persuade the fence sitters who are anxious about those issues that there's nothing to worry about. If you immediately jail anyone who raises the alarm on the contrary that's going to persuade them that there is something to worry about. And the pro vaccinators don't have a good case because if they had a good case, they'd be perfectly able to rebut the disinformation as they call it in the public square. So it's a self defeating policy, but more importantly, it is an affront, not just to the free speech of the people who want to set out that case in the public square, but an affront to those of us who might want to hear it and might want to see an argument about whether these vaccines should be taken unfold in the public square so we can make an informed decision about it. And I do think incidentally that I do think I mean I'm not an anti-vaxxer, but I am concerned that the COVID vaccinations are being rushed through so quickly. So the UK government announced today that it was going to approve the Pfizer beyond tech vaccine in time for people to be vaccinated by Christmas. It's going to be extraordinarily fast and of course the risk if you approve a vaccine, particularly a vaccine using a relatively novel technology as this one is, if you approve it extremely quickly. There is of course a greater risk that there may be some unforeseen side effects. I mean, you'll probably recall that when the swine flu vaccine was rushed out I think back in 2009. It caused narcolepsy and there's a court which is part of the England and English and Welsh courts and tribunals system that exists to compensate people who've been harmed by vaccines because of course the drug companies are always granted absolute indemnity by governments. And this court has already paid out over 50 million pounds for people who got narcolepsy as a result of taking the swine flu vaccine. I'm not saying that there'll be an equivalent side effect if you take the Pfizer beyond tech vaccine, but there could be.  If the vaccine does turn out to have unforeseen consequences I imagine that even though the drug companies won't be liable, the people trying to suppress anyone expressing concern about this vaccine might be liable so I think it's very imprudent as well as for all the other reasons for not doing it for people to call for anyone who dissents from this kind of big government underwritten effort to promote COVID vaccination programs that anyone who dissents from that should be silenced let alone jailed. Anyway, I could go on for longer but I do think as you say that removing content from social media and the mainstream media on the grounds that it's false is not a good argument for censorship and in many cases it is political censorship by proxy. You're wrong. Is it censorship. So I think it's important here to differentiate between two different activities and Toby discussed them both so I want to make sure we separate the two. And the one is what the government does and the others what private individuals or private companies or private entities do clearly much of what Toby discussed or the latter part of what we discussed was government government passing laws and criminalizing certain speech and putting people in jail. Well of course that is a massive violation of individual rights it's clearly censorship. It is evil and should be fought, you know, voraciously I mean that is, that is how you slip very quickly into dictatorship into authoritarianism. When you start in and of course the UK and Europe or wherever you have a variety of different hate speech laws and a variety of different, you know, for example, Holocaust denial in much of Europe is is banned. And that is a censorship and a violation of rights and needs to be abolished in you should be able to speak your mind, you know, publish, you know freely as long as you're not, you know, committing fraud as long as you're not violating people's rights is not you're not inciting directly inciting for violence. The state has no business dictating what you can and cannot say and and even if some people think it's hate speech.  Some people deserve hatred. So I think when it comes to the state we'd probably agree that the state just has no business in speech. It's not the state's business to regulate speech in in in any way. However, YouTube is not the state. YouTube is a private company. YouTube is created a private platform, a platform that it sets the terms of service. And YouTube could set the term of service as and from all I can tell these are the terms of service at YouTube. Basically, the terms of service as I understand them in YouTube is, if YouTube doesn't like what you say, they can take you off. It's false, not false. They just don't like it. They just don't like the way you look. I, I, for example, have said that, you know, I think it's criminal the lockdowns are criminal that you know that people should rise up against them that people should demonstrate in the streets they should refuse to do it. And in my case they haven't taken it down in but I do but but I don't have any doubt that they took down Toby's right. So, you know, it's somewhat arbitrary what YouTube takes down or what it doesn't take down or what Twitter flags and what it doesn't flag. It's completely arbitrary. Everybody is motivated there's no question it's motivated by a particular political agenda that the people who work at YouTube and Twitter have. There's a bias, as there isn't probably every company out there a bias in some way and they have to have some standards to decide what they're going to put on what they don't, unless they say everything is okay and that would get them in trouble as well. And therefore I think that it's completely legitimate for YouTube to decide that you're on stuff is hateful or false or we just don't like it and therefore not carry my channel. It's completely within their right. It's not censorship. It's the application of a property rights to YouTube to to the platform that they actually have censorship only pertains the government action it does not pertain to individual action. It is not true that the New York Times by refusing to publish my op ed is committing censorship. It is not true that a university that refuses to let me speak at the university is committing. I mean a private university if there is such a thing. Let's assume there's such a thing as a private university by refusing to let me speak at the university is committing censorship they are just like it's not true that if I say, and to some extent I do say this. Communists don't come into my house.  I don't want you in my house. I don't want you speaking in my house. I don't even want you present in my house. My house is not does not have an open invitation to communists and fascists leave you're not welcome. That's not censorship. I'm not censoring them and I'm not violating any of their rights is my house I get to set the rules. It's YouTube's channel. It's YouTube's platform. They get to set the rules. It's Twitter's chat platform. They get to set the rules. Now I don't think the rules are very good the way they're set up. I don't think they're making good business decisions. I don't like the way Twitter and YouTube run their platforms. I you know the idea that the Toby having such a discussion about lockdowns would get taken down even if on appeal they brought it back up. I think it's ridiculous.  You know, I think if we all decided to boycott YouTube because of it, I would, you know, probably join in. But it's their right. It is not the same as the government jailing you for speaking. It's not the same as the government excluding you. It's not a violation of individual rights. Indeed, the opposite is true. That is, if we said the government is now going to step in the courts or whatever and tell YouTube. No, no, no, you have to have Toby, you have to have your on you have to have them on your channel. You have to be able to give them the ability to speak doing that violates YouTube's right rights. It violates their speech rights. They have a right to decide again on their platform who speaks and who doesn't. And the government is not in a position to tell anybody a, you know, if you own a movie theater, you know, they're privately owned in the United States. And Mel Gibson comes out with one of his Christian movies. And you don't want to carry that movie because you don't agree with its message. You have every right not to carry the movie.  Or if I write a play that's an objective as play and, and, and, you know, a theater in London says no, no, no, we don't want objective stuff on our stage. They have every right to do that. And there's no difference between that stage that theater and YouTube and Facebook and all these other platforms. If we don't like the way they run their business, we should start our own or move to another platform. And indeed they are platforms that seem to be more welcoming to, to alternative ideas. You know, we can have a discussion about vaccines. I'm actually critical of the fact that I'll just mention vaccines for the sake of it. I'm critical of the fact that they're not available yet. I wish they, they made them available two months ago, and it would be up to you and me and each one of us as individuals to figure out our risk tolerance. And whether we wanted to take the vaccine or not the real danger. And I think Toby will agree with this the real danger is that the government is going to force us to take the vaccines. Then I think you've got a problem. If they force it and it's not ready and it's unsafe if they force a period. It's bad. And if they force it and it's bad and it's not safe, it's horrific. But it's a violation of rights for the government to force us to take the vaccine if it's voluntary. I wish the vaccines were available two months ago and let individuals make the decision about the risk tolerance and I agree I don't know. I'd have to ask my doctor, I'd have to consult, I'd go do research online to figure out if mRNA is indeed dangerous. I mean, it's already been used to deliver cancer treatments and other treatments. I don't know. I'm not a medical doctor, not expert. But my point is it should be up to us to decide what's risky and what's not. Not up to the government and yes, make the drug companies liable so that they have an incentive not to provide me with a vaccine unless they're pretty confident that I'll tolerate it well. But we're not here to debate vaccines and I'm not sure how much we disagree on that. But on the censorship again, censorship is only something government does. Violating rights requires force. YouTube is not using force. YouTube is using contractual agreement. When you sign up to YouTube, you agree to a certain contract with them that basically gives them the right to decide what content is acceptable and was not. And I have, while I don't like what YouTube is doing, while I think it's obnoxious and wrong for YouTube to do what they're doing and include Twitter and all of that. And as much as I dislike Trump, I don't think Twitter should be mocking up Trump about what's false and what's not. I don't think that's appropriate. But it's certainly within their rights and we have a right to leave them and go and use another platform. Before we go on, I just want to say if anybody in the Zoom chat has a question, please raise your hand and we'll try to get to it. We don't have much time. Same for YouTube. If you have a question, use Super Chat and we will try to get to it. But Toby, I do want to follow up on a point that Yaron made because you did say that you think that it is censorship in some cases. Yes. What would be the solution to that? Would it be government intervention? I think Yaron is completely right that if the New York Times doesn't publish your comment piece in its pages, that doesn't constitute censorship in any shape or form.  If the publication of that article means that an outrage mob forms up and brings pressure to bear on the Guardian via social media and through other channels to remove that article and sack the author of that article or agree not to publish them again, then I think that would be censorship, even though the Guardian isn't a state-owned newspaper, although it is almost entirely funded by government adverts. So I think there can be forms of censorship where the state isn't directly involved. I mean, in the Free Speech Union, for instance, we, when we object to a speaker being no platformed by a student society or a student union or even university, the response is often the university, the organization in question, doesn't have any obligation to platform that person. So there's nothing wrong with taking away their right to speak. And that's actually a misleading response. It's a straw man argument. Our argument isn't that the institution in question is obliged to invite this controversial speaker to participate in a particular debate. No platforming isn't that. No platforming is when someone who has been invited is then disinvited after various activists bring pressure to bear on the institution, the society in question. And even if that happens in a purely private university, I still think that is a form of censorship. Now, what can we do about it? In the case of private non-state institutions, I think sometimes you can appeal to their own statements saying that they believe in free speech. In the case of private universities, that's one avenue. For instance, the Free Speech Union recently started a petition because a group of grad students and postdocs at the University of Chicago, which is a private university, wrote an open letter calling for a professor to be stripped of some of his teaching responsibilities, his jobs on various academic committees and so forth, because he had challenged affirmative action at Chicago, essentially. He had said, I think that missions to Chicago should be on merit and recruitment to faculty at Chicago should be on merit. We shouldn't favor some identity groups over others, not least because it's not fair on the people who aren't members of the preferred identity groups. A perfectly respectable classical liberal criticism of affirmative action. This group of students, grad students and postdocs in his department, wrote this open letter to the department head, calling for various punishments to be inflicted on him, because what he'd said endangered their emotional safety, their sense of well-being. Students of color, members of historically disadvantaged groups would no longer feel safe in his classes. We're familiar with these arguments. And so the Free Speech Union started a petition and asked President Zimmer, the president of Chicago, Robert Zimmer, if he would make a statement, reiterating his commitment to the Chicago principles which defend academic free speech. They're really the gold standard. All universities pretty much in the Western world, even across the world say they believe in academic free speech. Some do, some don't. Chicago is generally held out as the load star in this regard because of its Chicago principles, which robustly stand up for academic free speech. So we asked President Zimmer to reiterate that he believed in upholding the Chicago principles and that no harm, no detriment would come to this professor for simply expressing his perfectly legitimate, fairly mainstream point of view on an important development. Taking place at the university. And three or four days later, the president of Chicago University did exactly that. He issued a statement. I mean, we started the petition on Friday, got a quickly got lots of signatures, including some some pretty heavy hitters like Steven Pinker psychology professor at Harvard. He got about 6000 plus signatures. And on Sunday afternoon, President Robert Jay Zimmer issued a statement reiterating his commitment to the Chicago principles and not naming this professor but essentially affirming that no harm would come to any professor at the University of Chicago or indeed any student for expressing a point of view which other students disagreed with. It was a perfectly lawful point of view. So that's that sometimes how you can persuade private institutions, not to censor not to cancel people in response to demands being made by woke outrage mobs. I think in the case of big tech social media platforms. I do rather like the proposal of the Trump administration to remove the all the exemptions that social media companies currently enjoy from legal redress because they're classified as essentially telecommunications companies and so therefore aren't responsible for what appears on their platforms and that limits the legal redress for people who think they've been libeled or who think they've been unfairly censored or they've been removed unjustifiably from those platforms and can no longer post or tweet on them again. So I quite like that idea and I don't think I'm like like you're I'm not a great believer in in regulation. And one of the difficulties one of the many difficulties with state regulation of the internet is that the regulators will invariably be left of center and so political bias will creep into the regulation and that's one of the things that the Free Speech Union is doing in England at the moment is is campaigning against the government's proposals to create a fairly sensorious internet internet regulatory regime which it is proposing to do and instead it intends to do. So I'm not in favor of state censorship of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. But I do like the idea of changing their status so they no longer enjoy all these legal privileges which prevent people from seeking redress in the court for the most part if they feel they've been harmed in the way they've been treated by a social media platform. I do like the idea of changing that so they are treated like publishers rather than telephone companies. Aaron you were shaking your head through some of that. Yeah, so first I, you know, I'm a huge admirer of what the Free Speech Union does and of Toby. So, so I don't want to, you know, as to be viewed I mean what they did at the University of Chicago is amazing and and it sounds like you need to do the same thing at Eaton. We're currently working on it. There's a big deal now at Eaton similar grounds. And I think, you know, I'm a huge supporter of using voluntary action of using pressure of using organization to put pressure on institutions to change their behavior. What I'm not in favor of is using government to do it. And I'm also not in favor of, and I'll mention this. I don't know if it's worth the, but I'm not in favor of using the word censorship. I think it's very, very dangerous to use a word of physical force, a word that connotes the government, shutting you down the Catholic Church doing what it did to Galileo with what YouTube does and Twitter does. It is not the same category. It's a different category of things. We might dislike it. And I, we do dislike it. I agree with Toby. I don't like what they're doing. I don't like what the University of Chicago did. But the University of Chicago is within their right to fire that professor. It's a contractual issue between the professor and the university. They didn't fire him. If they wanted to fire him, let's say, if they fired him, I think it's within their right. And then it's a contractual issue between the professor and the university, just like to contractual issue between us and YouTube. And, but I'm all for putting pressure on the University of Chicago not to do it because it's wrong. It's wrong to fire him over ideas, but to equate what the University of Chicago would do to its professors with what the government potentially is talking about doing to anti-vaxxers, let's say, I think is a dangerous confusion and doesn't help our cause. I think it's important to differentiate between government action that involves force, involves coercion, and contractual action where we can dispute it in court and and where I still think it's based on voluntary principles on market principles. So I think those two, I think this is why I don't consider it censorship, even if I consider it bad. Right. And I think using the right word is important. But with regard to big tech, here we disagree. I mean, I think it would be an unmitigated disaster. If they got rid of section 230, putting it in has been a massive boon to the internet. It's not just big tech that benefits from it. It's everybody in the internet benefits from it. Everybody who has a comment section, everybody who has a chat, everybody who has where other people post to your website is benefiting from section 230. The legislation was put in place because of something that appeared in a chat. The company that had the chat was sued for the content of somebody's post in a chat, and found guilty and the government stepped in it, saying I think completely legitimately this makes no sense. And this would be destroyed ability to communicate online. If the platform was liable for everything people put on the platform. So I think it would be a disaster. It is section 230 has been a huge boon to the internet and a huge boon to all of our, you know, ability to communicate. You know, these these institutions are not publishers. The fact that I say that the fact that I exclude certain content, or even that I put a little post saying it's this is false enough does not make me a publisher publisher like the New York million do a lot of things that YouTube and and and Facebook and Twitter don't do they they commission the pieces they most of the people writing for them or employees, they edit the pieces they review the pieces they fact check the pieces. Every single thing that goes up online, not just the ones that they choose to not just the ones from Donald Trump, but everything is fact checked if it's published in New York Times. You cannot treat a platform, which does have certain standards, let's say, as the same as a publisher, you would really, I think destroy the internet and and you destroy a lot of the competition to YouTube as well. If you put those kind of liability constraints on them, Paula and minds and all the other niche platforms would basically, you know, I think Facebook and Twitter would survive, because they can handle changing of the rules they would they would somehow do it it's a little guy who would be crushed and of course it's all the little services that provide for comments and discussion groups and chats and all of that they would be in big trouble in the Internet so no I think I think section 230 is done exactly what it's supposed to do. It's been brilliant. I think it should be preserved it should be protected it's basically a protection it's the recognition that not everything you write on Twitter, Twitter has indeed fact check that hasn't fact check some stuff but not others. And it can be liable for my stuff if I put stuff on Twitter and your liable laws are not disregarded.  If I libel you on YouTube if I level you on Facebook if I libel you in Twitter, what you can do. And what upsets people is you can't go for the deep pockets you can't go for the people who really have money, which is Twitter and Facebook and but imagine the lawsuits. If every time I wrote something that offended people on Twitter and they got to sue Twitter that would be there would be no end and then. So, and there's no way to tell these platforms you can publish anything you have to publish everything. Because then I mean one of the reasons they stopped the section 230 was put in, because there's certain things they don't want to publish legitimately pornography. They don't want to publish ISIS bomb making, you know recipes whatever. There are lots of things they don't want to publish. And what you would get to and what if the government did away with section 230 this is my prediction. And I'm pretty sure this would happen is they would form a government committee, and you three letter agency that would then decide what was it appropriate for the for the for these platforms to exclude and what wasn't. So getting into the government regulation of speech and I am not only worried about left wing. You know about the left regulating speech I'm equally worried about right, the right regulating speech I mean I've given where the right is gone I don't consider myself of the right anymore of the left. And I worry about both sides regulating speech I just don't want speech regulated I don't want the government to be involved in the aspect of speech, including telling platforms what they cannot cannot host, and what they cannot cannot comment about. So, I think private action is great demonstrating using social pressure all of that. I think the government changing the rules right now would be a disaster. And generally I'd like to see the government stay out of this completely and then there's a disagreement about the word, the concept of what censorship actually means. And Nicos, you are unmuted. Yeah, thanks I have a question. So, first of all, many thanks to Toby for the free speech union existing I'm an objectivist in academia so whatever the yearly cost ease it's a very good insurance policy so, and I would encourage people to check it out. So, here's a question though so you both mentioned different kinds of situations that fall under the title, cancel culture. So for example, we wouldn't say that Harvey Weinstein was cancelled because there was enough reasons for him to face whatever he has faced is also the legal aspect. So what is the, where is the line though is it that quite often the people who are quote cancelled shouldn't be cancelled because they didn't do something bad. Or is it that, for example, that a society of more tolerance. For example, we should be okay with also fascist or Nazis or white supremacist having a say. I mean, by having a say I mean maybe also on mainstream TV or something so if it is not for the individual judgment of the people who own the platforms. How are we to draw these rules and where is this line to be drawn if it is not the individual judgment of every person who owns a platform, big or small. Yeah, I think that's, that's a really interesting question and it's something we've been having an internal debate about at the free speech union. So the question is, at what point does legitimate democratic engagement spill over into something less legitimate something resembling cancel culture because it's perfectly possible as you say that someone could say something offensive on Twitter. And lots of people could just object in quite robust language simultaneously and to call the object as an outrage mob or which finders wouldn't be appropriate because they're just exercising their democratic rights. My sort of rule of thumb is that if the objectors are smearing the person attributing beliefs to them that they don't actually have. If they're taking things they've said particularly things they've said in the past out of context, in order to discredit them offense archaeology. And then it then it begins to resemble something uglier, but but the kind of critical point is I think that if people are saying that the person in question should lose their livelihood or lose their position, even if it's a voluntary position at an organization. And then it's cancel culture. And interestingly for those who are interested in this particular question that was a really good interview with Jonathan Roush, the author of kindly inquisitors, a great free speech manifesto in a recent copy of reason, which I would recommend people take a look at those into detail about exactly when legitimate democratic debate spills over into something uglier and less legitimate. I mean I think it's, it's very tricky and I worry about our overuse of the term console culture, because of it I agree with Toby but I don't know whether line with it with the line exactly is drawn for example, I can imagine situations where it's completely appropriate to demand that somebody be fired from the job. And I also can imagine that the line I draw for when it's appropriate to demand that somebody's be fired from the job is different than the line.  But the world out there is very tolerant of communists and very offended by by fascists. I wouldn't you know and to me. So, I think it's very tricky to make those calls I think as individuals, we need to decide when is something appropriate when it's not. And this is why I want to keep the government out of it. But look, outrage mobs. So they're outrage mobs. I mean, I don't like it. You know, I don't think it's, I don't think it's, it's, it's the right way in a civil society we should engage in debate.  Now, if they're calling to have me fired, then my bosses should have a spine, right. But, but to say, you're now not, you know, the danger is that we start saying the outrage mobs should be illegal, it should be illegal to demand it.  I think we have to fight against them with our own outrage mobs and this is why I'm not against outrage mobs I think I think being outraged at what the University of Chicago did is appropriate that's, you know, and is it a mob to put a group together and get signatures and everything. You know, some people standards it might be, but that, you know, so I'm less worried about people organizing because they're offended and demonstrating. It's when they cross the line to violence that to me is the line.  That's when it's, it's violence basically they're not making it possible for me to deliver what I'm there to deliver the violating rights at that point if they're outside demonstrating. It's completely within their rights. So, as long as these outrage mobs a lot using force are not violating other people's rights are not initiating force. I might not like them. I might find them offensive, and I certainly might want to fight them. You know, and object to what they're doing. But again, we need to be careful not to encourage government action when it comes to these mobs again unless they engage in actual violence, which they often do. I think you are more purist than me when it comes to protecting the private sphere from state interference. I mean, I think that I certainly grew up holding that view and held that view of my 20s, my 30s, even my 40s. And that was partly for pragmatic reasons not entirely for theoretical philosophical reasons. And the pragmatic reasons were well, governments tend for the most part to be quite liberal, and certainly civil servants, quite liberal, whereas the private sector is quite conservative and we all see conservative. And so if if if your political objective is to preserve our rights, you would, I think, generally want to resist the the dominion of the state over private companies private institutions. But now we're looking at a situation in which that poll has almost been reversed, whereby in England for take the United Kingdom at the moment, Boris Johnson is the Prime Minister. He won a pretty large majority in December at the last general election, partly because he fought on a culture war platform and he won over a lot of former Labour voters who decided to vote conservative because they were aligned with the government on a lot of these culture war issues. And now we have I think a government that, at least on paper, is fairly conservative, I mean it hasn't covered itself in glory in the way it's managed this particular COVID crisis but But the private sector, the corporate sector, the business world is now almost uniformly quite aggressively left wing. The woke virus, if that's not putting it too strongly, has infected large swathes of the private sector, the portal through which I think the virus entered the private sector was probably HR companies but not exclusively HR departments. So now we have a situation in which the conservative government wants to protect people's rights, particularly their right to free speech, but the private sector doesn't. So frequently, as a condition of taking a job, particularly at a job at a large successful rich company with many employees, a condition is you have to sign up to the social media policy and the social media policy essentially gives the company cart blanche to fire you. If you say anything on social media, even in a purely private capacity in which you're not representing the company in any way. But if you say something that in their eyes brings the company into disrepute which means anything remotely conservative. They are within their rights to fire you. And the Free Speech Union, I think is going to petition the UK government, perhaps without much success but nonetheless petition them to pass a law whereby it makes it illegal for employers to penalize their employees for things they say whether in the pub in person on social media in a purely private capacity provided they're exercising their lawful right to free speech, it would be illegal for the company to fire them for saying something that the HR department happens to disapproval because it's politically incorrect or because it dissents from some tiny aspect of public orthodoxy. So, and I think I think, you know, given the that we're in a new environment in which the state is now more right of center than the private sector. Isn't there a case for being a bit less purist about laws being passed to make sure that private companies don't run roughshod over our rights particularly our right to free speech. No, I don't think so and I don't consider myself and I've never been motivated by holding back the left. I'm motivated by violation of individual rights whether they come from the left or the right, it doesn't matter to me. And the law you're describing, I find horrific. I mean, I run the Ironman Institute. Imagine if some employee of mine goes on Twitter or Facebook and advocates for world culture. They want to be able to fire them immediately. I don't want somebody on working for the Ironman Institute, who's a leftist or fascist or communist or variety of different things or, or religionists, right. We have standards, and there are standards and we get to pick them and we get to decide them. And we have a contract with employee and if the employee doesn't like it he can leave. So, no, I think it would be horrible for the government to get involved in any way and they're always going to be these so called unintended consequences maybe they're intended I don't know, by which what if what if the Catholic church wants to fire one of its employees because they're speaking out against Catholicism as an ideology. Oh, I mean you can think of a thousand different examples where this is the case I think it would be incredibly wrong for the government to try to formulate a law that will make an exception for churches and we'll make an exception for think tanks or make it. I mean there's no end to that.  Yes, go ahead. I guess the pragmatic argument is that yes your hands might be tied. If one of your employees started advocating for woke orthodoxy on Twitter. But for every woke employee of yours that was protected by this law, there would be 999,000 random woke corporations like Nikos who'd be protected. But the whole goal of my work is to make us the majority. And what then I'll do away with it because then it's okay. I mean that's such a hypocritical and unprincipled and lying to draw. I mean and this is the difference I think between us you're much more of a pragmatist and I'm much more of an idealist. Right. I have an ideal and I'm not going to compromise an ideal because right now it fits me and particularly because I know that if you give that law once you give that power to government. Well, next time let's say I had a president I've never had never this has happened but let's add a person who I trusted. Well, but the next guy I might not trust. So once I give that power to the government, then then clearly I'm going to suffer the consequences because I'm the minority and minority and the fact that that that we are outnumbered a thousand to one in the world out there. Just means we have to work harder. It also means that if the majority has the right to dictate to the minority what they can and cannot say they're always going to be in the majority and they're coming after us. And they're going to get us and so I don't think it's evident terms of short term pragmatic consequences I think you lose in the long run and you suffer in the long run. What I want to try to educate people about the principles that are behind free speech and the principles of free speech. First and foremost mean that the government should have no involvement in speech, which means it cannot tell private individuals what speech to allow and what speech not to allow including companies, including corporations. You know, in the fact that all our corporations are leftist, you're right that it came in through the HR department really came in through our universities. And that's where the battle is. And until we until we change the dynamics of the universities, you can play around with politics. I mean, look, you elected this conservative government, you elected a conservative government with a majority. They could do anything they wanted. So what's the first two things they do they lock you down and they institute climate change regulations, which means you've lost so it doesn't matter who you elect they're coming after you, because the left dominates the universities and you know, as long as that happens. It doesn't matter who's in politics. It doesn't matter who's in in 10 Downing Street or in the White House, the university that left will dominate or those ideas will dominate, but I come from it from a purely individualistic perspective. I want to protect my rights.  I'm much more concerned about who's going to protect my rights and who's going to violate them. And in some realms, the right wants to violate my rights more than the left. And in some realms, the left wants to violate my rights more than the right and I need to fight both of them constantly. And yes, you could argue the left wants to violate my rights more fine, but I'm not going to give power to the right, because I know what will happen then. I don't think that you cannot rule out the state having a role in protecting our rights and that licensing the state in some cases to prevent those rights being violated, even by private companies. One of the I think in what in in in locks second treatise of government. The reason we relinquish some of our liberty, the reason we lay down our arms and agree to enter into the social contract is because we think that the state would be a better role of our rights overall than we might be as gun-toting individuals. And I think asking the state to step in in some cases and and protect our right to free speech from woke commissars in private companies isn't isn't, you know, I don't think it's as dangerous as you do. And I think I think one thing to bear in mind is that, you know, you're not at risk. It doesn't matter if an outrage mob forms up on Twitter and calls for you to be fired.  I run a financial company. I could I run a hedge fund. My investors could could could take their money out of my fund tomorrow because of my political views. You're less vulnerable than Nikos, I'd say. Yes, less vulnerable than Nikos. And, and, and yeah, and look, outrage modes are brutal things even when you're not vulnerable. I mean, look what they've done to JK Wallens and she's not vulnerable. And yet it's still brutal. Yeah, what they've done to. I mean, I guess, you know, since the Free Speech Union started in February, more than 7000 people have signed up.  So we had a huge upsurge in membership during the BLM protests in June, because lots of people who challenged the BLM narrative were immediately punished, and in some cases lost their livelihoods just because they dissented from that particular point of view. And, you know, some of them work for public institutions and we can do our best to defend them and we have done and in some cases successfully. Some of them work for charities and charity law gives slightly less protection than the laws that obtain in the public sector but nonetheless that gives them some protection and then some of them work for private companies and there's that's where they have the least protection. And I think that, you know, I have a I feel I have a kind of responsibility to our members to people up and down the country, not just here but in the US across the Western world, whose rights, particularly their right to free speech are being consistently, persistently violated by their employers, who have no compunction about trying to expel them from their companies their institutions, just because they say something they disagree with they say something unfashionable, they challenge prevailing orthodoxy. And I think that's wrong and they do need protection and if we can get the state to intervene and protect them in some way then that's not such a horrific prospect. Toby, since I know you you need to leave. Can you just let us know where people can find out more about the Free Speech Union and about your work in general. Yeah, thanks, Rosie. I do have to go unfortunately my that was my son just coming in a few seconds ago to tell me that the food is ready and they're all waiting for me. I've got four kids. So yeah, if anyone is interested in joining the Free Speech Union. The website is free speech union.org.  It only costs 2495 a year. The normal rate is 4995. And we can do a number of things to help you if an outrage mob comes for you, including in some cases providing you with legal protection. And yeah, we're currently involved in trying to help this young teacher at Eaton, who was fired a few weeks ago for creating a video lecture in which he challenged the prevailing woke orthodoxy about masculinity. He was saying there are some people, including some quite respectable academics who don't think that masculinity is fundamentally toxic, who are willing to in certain respects defend the patriarchy, who don't think a world without men in it would be in every respect, better for women. And because he expressed or introduced his students to these alternative points of view. And he's essentially been fired. And we're trying to he's a member of the Free Speech Union and we're doing our best to defend him at the moment and his appeal hearing is on December 8 so we'll see. We'll see what happens then but that's just one example of the kind of thing we can do for you. If, if you get into trouble, particularly if you lose your job. Yeah, I think it's particularly important now I said at the very beginning of the year when I set up the Free Speech Union that I didn't think that free speech have been in greater peril than at any time since the Second World War. And that was in February and since then it's become much more imperiled the combination of the kind of ideological self righteous further surrounding the BLM protests with all the free speech and associated with COVID, mean that it's now even more urgent to stand up for free speech than it was everyone's free speech is currently in jeopardy. And unless we start pushing back will be living in a very different world very quickly. Thank you Toby and so free speech union.org is the website and thanks for joining us and I will let Nico since his woe credentials have been put into question Nico Nico's if you want to unmute. Thanks thanks thanks Toby really appreciate this. So, monitoring a bit the chat and the questions you're on one of the themes is students, a companies who receive funding from the government be somehow related to the protections given by the First Amendment so people say if if you if the government supports you you should, you should be neutral to all of us. How do you make that work. I mean what is a count the government gives you money. If you make deductions in your taxes because they're loopholes. Does that count that the government is giving you money I'm sure it does.  Amazon pays less on delivery through the post office than it might have otherwise done which is questionable. That means now Amazon is basically a state run organization that should be deemed a part of the US government I mean that would be bizarre and it would be outrageous and it would be because all of us. I mean I, you know I don't anymore but I used to deduct huge amounts of money from my taxes all the loopholes I used to take advantage of every loophole I could. And does that mean that I now owe. I, you know that that I am now a government employee and should be treated as a government employee and a company that gets.  You know, unless I'd say this the only time that would be true is if the government provides you with monopoly power. That is if the government basically says, we will prevent competition, we will not allow competitors to rise up. Then, you know, maybe you know you'd have to find the right context you could say okay, so so they're basically being protected so they have to behave themselves in some way, but I don't even know how you apply that how you enforce that. By the way, people you can also ask questions live by raising your hands so another question, mostly in the charts on YouTube so what about this disagreement between platform versus publishers so they say okay whatever we get it publishers should be free to do whatever they want, but there is a specific piece of legislation we made clear that social media companies are platforms. Therefore, either they are exempt from this piece of legislation or everything goes. No, no, no, people should actually go and read they shouldn't just mow it off what they read on Twitter. You know, it's called section 230 go do some research figure out what it is right. It's just unbelievable the amount of misinformation about this section 230 was passed before there was such a thing as social media. So it's not passed for social media. It's not benefiting social media the only reason we have social media is because section 230 established certain groundwork that allowed social media to arise. Section 230 protects the the person who has the website forget platform the website from being liable for what people other people post on their website. So if I have a website and I post stuff I'm liable for everything I post. But if Nicos you come in and I have a chat feature I have a comments feature, and you put in a comment that liable is Bob.  Imagine if I'm at a. I'm at at the convention center in Las Vegas giving a speech. And in the speech I liable Bob Bob can sue me for liable but can he sue the convention center. He'd like to because the convention center has a lot more money than I do. Right. So he'd love to sue the convention said it's called the deep pocket theory of, of, you know, of liability which is very prevalent in the United States. Section 230 says you can't do that. So it's an amazing it's a good law. It's a law that defines clearly what your liable is for and what you're not. It's a law that is consistent with individual rights and consistent with property rights. Right. Even if you go to the New York Times website. And you comment on an article there and you liable Bob Bob can't sue the New York Times. He can sue you for making the liable so it doesn't apply just to social media. It applies to everybody who has comment section. If you did away with 230 what would happen social media would die or would be very restrictive or would have pornography on it. I mean, unless that an exclusion for pornography and given the Republicans want to write this bill, the one thing they'd exclude is pornography they wouldn't exclude anything else but pornography they exclude. All that will die and we would stop having comment section certainly you wouldn't have a zoom comment section because I don't want to be sued. Right, because somebody put on and I happen to be organizing or part of this event and now you're going after my wealth. I mean, the whole way in which we think about the internet the whole approach to the internet would be would be completely So these if you are not a publisher by providing people the opportunity to comment on your website and all YouTube and Twitter and they are allowing you to comment on their website. They're providing you with and I mean, I am thankful to YouTube Twitter and Facebook every day for giving me a platform that allows me to reach hundreds of millions of people at a cost of zero not only a cost of zero. YouTube actually sends their minions to sell advertising for me for which they charge me nothing. And then I get advertising revenue.  So, I don't understand this the whole approach. Yes, they do stuff I don't like. All right, a lot of companies you know Apple does stuff I don't like they release these products. And I update my computer and my computer crashes in the middle of a podcast. I mean I'm pissed off the government should regulate Apple and stop them from releasing products that crash my computer. I lots of private companies do things you don't like, but you don't want the government then intervening at every step of the way unless they're committing fraud. And we've got to get this and Toby, and I know, you know, I'm going to minimize my comments on Toby because he's not here, but Toby is equivocating between private action and government action. And he is, he has a completely wrong view of rights. I mean, Locke was wrong on rights, but Locke was far further along in his understanding of rights and Toby is unfortunately, Locke would have never thought that private companies are violating your rights if they don't, if they don't, you know, if you sign a contract. But Toby thinks it's a violation of rights and that's wrong. That's not what rights are. We have to define clearly what rights are just like we have to define what censorship is. So there's so many comments on YouTube. There is a super chat question. That's what I'm about to say to quote Razi Ginsburg we don't only how do you say we don't only preach. We don't only preach capitalism we practice it so since there is a super chat question we will prioritize that. So capitalism just means money grubbing. I mean, what's about what's up with that. Well, we did have a couple of guys. Yeah, we did we did offer the people to raise their hand on the zoom chat but since they haven't want to put money at it will take the money. Absolutely. Not that I'm going to see any of it.  So, by someone with a very good nickname the analytics synthetic dichotomy only cool objective is kids will get it. So the question is, can you contrast john locks view of rights as being natural with runs view of rights as being a social concept. Well, you have to put objective in there that you know, social concept sounds weak but you know I could. Do you really want me to do that now. I'm not an expert on this I'm saying this in advance I'm not a philosopher, I you know this is not my expertise I still need no expert a job lock, but the natural view of rights is that somehow rights are intrinsic to being human that is part of a part of us. It's a it's a it's a faculty that we have it's a it's a something that is that is part of our nature that in case of religion is God is taken rights and put them inside of us and we have them, we just have them. Right. And you know lock explains why we have them which is good I mean he does a better job than some natural philosophers he tries to give us an explanation why we have them but but at the end of the day. It's an intrinsicist view it's just a feature of being human. It's part of what you are you're born with these rights, Rand views rights as a moral concept. It's a concept that is of a requirement of human survival within a social concept construct in in a society. So, in order for you to live in society. You have rights in order for you to be able to live the life using your mind. In order to be able to use your reason in order to be able to advance your values in order for you to survive, given that your survival is the moral purpose of your life that's implicit in the idea of rights.  And therefore, because other people constitute a potential threat, because they can use force against you to stop you from acting in pursuit of your life. We need a concept an idea of how we should relate to one another in such a context and and the idea is here that rights recognize our freedom to pursue our freedom to pursue our values are rational values, free of coercion free of force, free of other people trying to impose they will on us. That's what rights are there. They're a concept, they're a true concept, their concept consistent with human nature, their concept derived from human morality, the true morality, but they're not. You know, you have a Ferrari, the famous Israeli philosopher who's a really big shot these days. His criticism of right goes like this he says, there are no such thing as rights. How do I know they know such thing as rights. When you open up a human being when you do an autopsy. There are no rights in there. There's can find rights. Now, you can't find consciousness and you can't find you can't find love you can't find any abstract concept but put that aside. You know, rights are a concept derived from the needs of human beings to survive and thrive in a social environment. So before we go to Stephanie, let me quickly let people know what's coming up on our YouTube channel tomorrow. Nicos will be joined by Lisa van Damme as a co-host for the selfish lovers and Monday we have on zoom and on YouTube. We have Lee Pearson for discussion on artificial intelligence and human consciousness. What computers can't know for those of you who are worried that the computers are about to take over you really need to be there. So join us for that on Monday, Stephanie, you are why do we why do we not why are we worried about computers taking over. Some people are but that's why Lee Pearson will be there by the way, Adam Reed will be there discussing Lee's ideas with him. I don't know if Adam thinks they are taking over but that's why you need to tune in on Monday. Oh, well, that sounds like the price of admission those two that they'll go on for six hours. It'll be good. Okay, you're on section 230 how concerned need we be about this how advanced is the push forward or is it just Trump flailing about for a last gas before they push him out. Well, I mean he's already put some regularly some some executive orders in place that I think are pretty bad. I do think it's a last last flailing around, you know, I think changing 230. I mean Republicans, I put aside Ted Cruz's. You know, demagogy. Most Republicans, I think understand that they can't do away with it. And if they do away with it they'd have to replace it and replacing it. Nobody has any clue what to replace it with. I'm not too worried about it. I am very worried about the regulation of big tech. I think that's coming. There's no question in my mind it's coming. I think it'll be bipartisan. I think both parties I think have already gone after Google for antitrust they're going to go after Facebook, Apple, who knows who else for antitrust and there's going to be a big, big push in a in a Biden administration to regulate and to go after for antitrust reasons that big tech companies and Republicans are going to go along with it because they they uphold big tech as well and and antitrust is something Republicans have always supported. So I'm very worried about Silicon Valley I'm worried about the one place still on planet Earth with the way they innovate. I'm worried about biotech I'm worried about what's going to come out of the with these vaccines and the whole attitude of public private partnerships. That's just codename for fascism. I think there are plenty of reasons to be worried. And I'm an I'm an I'm an optimist so question by UK Liberty Park because that's a question I also wanted to ask so it's about terminology. So the question is if someone refuses to accept definitions of words, such as censorship, how can you debate them effectively. So you're on we notice that you and told me we're using different basically the same words in a different way. How can so how do you react also as a debater when someone you think most people think you're saying the same things, but actually you don't. You have to remember that you're not debating the guy on stage. The guy on stage is just props for the audience. So it's an important concept, define it for the audience. The fact that he won't accept it doesn't make one Iota difference. What matters is whether the audience is now saying huh censorship okay. So you're on view censorship is different I should think about that or I should research that or I should look it up or whatever right. It doesn't matter what Toby thinks I mean I don't want to sell Toby but it doesn't matter what the audience is not Toby. He's not going to convince me when I go up and debate a Marxist I'm not trying to convince the Marxist he's not trying to convince me. I'm technically debating them, but the only people I care about are the audience. So I'll define the terms that I think it's important for the audience to get I can't do it on every word often you go in a debate, and you disagree about the definition pretty much every concept you're using. So you have to pick and choose the ones that are important, and the ones that you want your audience to get right so if you're debating capitalism, make sure you define capitalism.  So the only thing that matters, and people always say you only debated this guy why did you say this why did you say that you didn't beat him. My point is not to beat him. My point is to try to convince the audience to look more deeply into my ideas. What he does is his business. It's only relevant to the extent that I can affect the audience. So you have to view your debate partner as a prop, not as somebody you're trying to convince if you try to convince him, you're finished. Because what the context of his knowledge is not the audience's context of knowledge. He's coming at this from a different now if everybody in the audience agrees with them and you know that, and they all have exactly the same knowledge as him then fine maybe you're trying to convince him but mostly people in the audience that you're talking to in the audience they don't know. They're confused. They're unsure. That's who you're talking to. So when you look at me debating, at least when I'm successful, I'm not trying to go after him. I'm trying to go after the undecided person in the audience. David asked in the chat, why should New York Times be liable for anything they publish? What is the principle that makes New York Times liable but not Twitter? They published it. It's their statement. They own every word in the newspaper. Twitter by contract and by the way it's set up does not. It allows you to say whatever you want to say and it is not, it does not own the text. So for example, if I took a New York Times article and published it somewhere else, I'm violating a copyright. But you can take anything written on Twitter and put it somewhere else. You're not violating Twitter's copyright. You might be violating the guy who wrote it copyright, although it's a question once you put it on Twitter. But you're not violating Twitter's copyright. Twitter doesn't own those words. New York Times owns everything on the page. It is their property and therefore they are liable for it. Again, it strikes me as interesting that it's okay for a cinema owner to say I don't show communist movies in my cinema or I don't show conservative movies in my theater. Okay, he's just got a theater and then people being in the movies and he excludes certain people. That doesn't make him liable for everything that's said in the movies. So let's say he shows a documentary and somebody says something liable to send the documentary. The theater owner is not going to be sued. That's Twitter. Okay, I don't know one last question. Have you got any good idea about a term that wouldn't be censorship but would indicate that I wouldn't even call it intolerance because this would mean that being tolerant is a virtue, which is not always necessarily. So what is a good term to describe this weird atmosphere? It couldn't be cancel culture because it's not a good term. So how would we describe the quote censorship that Toby was referring to? I don't know. I don't have a good term. I don't have a good term. I don't know if somebody else does. But we need, there are lots of terms we don't have, we need. Okay, Razzi, outro. Yeah, so I want to thank both our speakers. Yeah, that's not actually a word, by the way, but we use it anyway. See, that's us coming up with a term that we needed. I want to thank our audience, by the way, for bearing with us through some difficult technical difficulties at the beginning and the Iran Institute for sponsoring this event. Yaron, do you want to tell us where we can find out about your work and your show? Yes, you can find me on YouTube at your on book show. No, actually just your on book on YouTube, where I have a podcast, a YouTube show, I guess, that is four times a week, an hour and a half to two hours of a show. You can find me on Twitter, you can find me on Facebook, you can find me on Paula, you can find me on Minds. If there's a social media platform, I'm not on please let me know I'm sure we can get me on there. Are you on Tik Tok? I'm on Tik Tok, definitely there are one minute videos of me on Tik Tok, so I'm definitely on Tik Tok, I'm an Instagram. You know, I luckily, I have people to do that for me, so there are people who work for the Iran Book Show who do that stuff. You know, and of course you can find my books on Amazon, just put my name in there, the three or four books on Amazon, and I've got a website, you're on bookshow.com. So thanks again, Yaron. Thanks guys. If you enjoyed this event, please like it and on whatever channel you saw it because it will be on quite a few and subscribe, and we will see you soon.


Next question is from Dr. Aloe. How do you make shin splints go away? What corrective training do you recommend to prevent future flare-ups? Combat stretch. Yeah, this is a good example of how different I approach certain things between the beginning of my career and then towards the end. In the beginning, you had shin splints. All right, let's stop running. Ice and elevate. Yeah, that was my answer for everything. Yeah, ice, elevate, stop doing whatever hurts them. Then later on, I learned that shin splints come from just muscle weakness and imbalance and the ankles and the tibialis muscle. That's the muscle in the front of your shin. You do have a muscle there. Maybe tightness in the calves. Not strong enough. Feet. That's it. And so the very first thing that I figured out with this was when I learned that it was maybe a tibialis weakness, I had my clients do toe raises where they stand on their heels and lift their toes up as high as they can and just do reps. Very silly basis. Not the best thing you could do, by the way. I think combat stretch is superior. But it was all I knew at the time and I would do what my clients would shin splints. Then they'd go jogging and they'd come back like, whoa, my shin splints are totally gone. And then my mind was just like, yeah, exploded. But combat stretch has got to be. Combat, so important. Yeah, I mean, in a perfect world, I know that the goals that I used to go to before this COVID thing was going on, they have a. Oh, a tibialis raise. Yeah, they actually have one.  And you do that coupled. I mean, you could take somebody who's been suffering from shin splints and damn near eliminated completely for them. So it's, but normally even the combat stretch alone by itself will do wonders for somebody who's battling it. Yeah, and it's a lot of the mechanics too. I know when I would be just a little bit overweight going back into season for playing, I used to blame it and attribute it more to the hard ground. Like, because the hard ground really had like a damaging impact. I mean, I would get shin splints almost immediately, but I didn't have the muscle support there for that kind of impact. And so, you know, if I were to go back and work on the musculature there to support myself in that environment, it would have been such a better strategy. Yeah, cause the tibialis acts a lot like a shock absorber in some ways. It's a stabilizer, especially when you're running. And, you know, you have two bones in the lower leg and the tibialis is kind of in between them. And when it's not doing its job, you get a lot of inflammation in that area. And that's what a shin splint is. And if you run on a hard surface, you need more stabilization. You need more shock absorbing. And that's why people say, oh, if I run on a hard surface, right, I get more pain. But if you just strengthen them good enough and you've got good control on your feet and your ankles, you shouldn't get any splints, shin splints. So if you have shin splints, you probably should reduce your running and then focus on strengthening your feet, your ankles, working on your tibialis. As it gets stronger, start running more and more again. And then you should find and if you can hear your footsteps, that's already an indication. Yeah, you better work on that. All this stuff is addressed in Prime Pro. Like this is, I mean, this is kind of one of the things that we do is we look at every major joint in the body and this is a common area that this would address and fix. So, you know, here's the perfect example. This is where you would be working down in the ankle area and doing all the mobility drills that are related to that and strength training exercises. You do that and, you know, 90% of the people that are listening that are battling shin splints, it'll go away.


Market Mondays is huge huge yeah it's one of those things like we always joke about it people walk up to us and they're like earn your leisure man I watch out every Monday and it's funny like we put out episodes every Tuesday but they're really talking about Market Mondays because we put that yeah and so again it was the timing was perfect people's knowledge uh for this information was there and people were home they had nowhere to go and people were losing their jobs and it was like well this is opportunity for you to stay home and make money. I feel like uh there's so many people who hear the words financial literacy or money management management or whatever it may be and they start to get a headache the anxiety starts to creep in you know it takes it takes some time to get into it really understanding and appreciate and understand what it can do for you and what you guys are doing and teaching out everybody is a blessing and the avenues and the areas that you're trying to reach out and help people with an understanding we're going to get into how earn your leisure is blown up but let's get back to the origin for both of you um Rashad where did your relationship and the understanding of financial literacy where did that spark? I started in my household honestly my father was always an entrepreneur and he was he he was like the first one to really teach me about um investing and from there I just always fell in love with investing in stock market I always like since I was a little kid I was always fascinated with stock market investing stuff like that so the information um once again going back to home you know I was fortunate to have that early on in a lot of my peers wasn't but um for me that's where it started and then I just you know ever since then just have been on a journey to learn as much as I possibly can about investing about business out you know something that I always thought was really interesting as far as business and um you know learning the inner workings of of how business actually works so that's where it started for me. Yeah so for me it's kind of a I learned through my peers um and so a lot of my friends are entrepreneurs I was a teacher you know going to school from 730 to 330 every day um and so you know I got to watch them be entrepreneurs and understand business through them but also just took time and dedicated myself to understanding it on my own um so I was super encouraged um because I was like wait I'm grasping these concepts they're not that difficult I just got to keep adding time to it um so my parents worked uh but they never knew about investing my parents are from Jamaica um so they never taught me anything about finance but like save your money save your money save your money uh and so the one thing that I watched them do was work hard and so I figured like that would be the way like my parents in middle class if I work hard enough this could be a lifestyle that I could have until I started investing I realized wait this is the this is not something that was being taught to me but I think this could be a route for future success and especially generational wealth which is something that wasn't talked about at the dinner table um but it definitely is a part of the conversation now how did you guys meet and what generated the idea to earn your leisure um yeah we met we grew up together um the same town so uh we met at an actual um it was a group of kids from our community that went to film um it was extras in a movie called Eddie without a remember that movie Goldberg yeah classic classic I see like you know to me any basketball when we're coming up now was that was that was big time big time now we're going to go for coach the next yeah so we went to Madison Square Garden and we filmed a um a scene so um and I'm a little younger than him so um I was in sixth grade he was in eighth grade so it was different schools and he had just moved to the neighborhood so I knew a lot of the other kids but I didn't I didn't know him um but you know he came up to me and you know you act like he knew me his whole life so ever since then we just been rocking and rolling so yeah you know we just pretty much grew up grew up together our whole lives um played sports together hung out same mutual friends so when we was um after you know our our college was over and you know he went to become a teacher and I went to become a financial advisor so as I was building my financial advising career I understood the power of social media um and I really wanted to you know become a rock star financial literacy rock star social media while at the same time he was developing um you know programs and curriculum for children so he had a program that he did every summer for six weeks and um you know it was it was a lot as far as like give kids internships and college tours what one of the one of the things in the program was financial literacy so he asked me to come in and teach the financial literacy class so that was like you know the first time that we actually combined it um my expertise with finance his expertise with education and really had financial literacy and you know we taped a lot of those sessions put it on instagram um and yeah that was like the beginning of us actually working together in the financial literacy world and um as I said my aspirations of you know building my social media was growing and you know it reached a point where everybody asked if I had a podcast already so I didn't have a podcast at that time so you know I thought it would be a good idea to start one so you know once again we had the relationship already of you know doing the class work work and you know we just speak every day anyway so you know I asked him if you want to be my partner in it and um yeah the rest is history how crazy is it the way I'm you mentioned Shadji your social media problem was already rising but to see the podcast Troy take off the way that it did you know what I mean still still young is you know put it together for years ago how how crazy it to see the way it's blown up it's humbling it's humbling um but it tells you there's an appetite for it yeah every every day that when we go outside somebody's telling us about the information that they heard that sparks something in them or help change their family's life and so like I tell people all the time like that's the fuel so we all we we never went into this this process saying like hey we're going to be wealthy and we're going to make money off this we was like we kind of talk about these things um naturally every day let's let the people in our conversations we thought they were like conversations that everyone had and it wasn't really commonplace so we're like look let's just add value to people's lives let's get some information hopefully they'll execute on some information it'll make a change and um so once we started it was like great I remember the first week we put out an episode I was like wow thousands of people listening like this is crazy like this is crazy and in every week since the numbers are just keep going up and going up and I was like oh we got something special here like people are ready for this type of knowledge this type of education and they're ready for it from people that look like us I mean we take we take great pride in that we're not in suits and ties we're in rugby's and hoodies and Jordan boomers and we're talking about on high level topics but in a way that people can understand and so just being in education and I got I can say to show shy is an education now we know we have to explain things at a level that people can understand or they'll be scared to run away from it and this is not a topic or a subject that people should ever want to want to run away from because at some point that you're going to have to make money to survive in this world so we wanted to make it digestible I think we've done a pretty good job with that no no question no question did you guys know off jump this is we're wearing what we we're being ourselves you know authenticity being so important uh was that just something you knew what you were going to do off the jump yeah yeah something that you know we did um from the beginning was uh you know just kind of true to ourselves and that's something that we've been pretty much a whole lot of just true to ourselves but the way we look at parents how we talk the music that we listen to everything has really shaped our um mold as far as who we are as people so it was one of the things that actually separated us at that time and financial literacy now it's pretty common but there wasn't a lot of people that was actually talking about financial literacy and especially the way we were which was actually like really doing deep dives and you know talking about very complex topics um dressed in just a t-shirt or hoodie and you know so it was an interesting dynamic that people what wasn't used to seeing at that point in time so you know it kind of brought people by surprise and then we used you know case studies of different business models from celebrities and sports figures entertainment and that caught people's attention even more because you know there wasn't anybody doing that at that time so you know that was all part of our packaging all part of our marketing and um it's worked out give me a mistake that people commonly make when they with their relationship with money and how they view money I think they they operate out of a scarcity mindset instead of abundance mindset meaning like they hoard they hoard their dollars they're scared to um invest money they um you know they're trying to work as much as possible for money and that's not really uh an abundant mindset that's going to lead to more money down the line as opposed to figuring out how to make more money as opposed to figuring out how to invest money you know as opposed to figuring out how to work less and have your money work for you so you know that's that's the difference between I think you know poor middle class um environment as opposed to more wealthy environment they understand that it's not really about working for money it's about having the money work for you where a lot of times you know in our environment we was actually taught the other way around the opposite and um that's just kind of like you know a heaps doing the heaps of well just running around doing the same thing over and over again yeah it's that it's like a paper soldier we like to call it that right it's a paper soldier and so we've worked so hard to get the paper soldiers we can't just let them sit right we have to have them going out there working and one of the other things I'll add to what Sha said is people understanding what savings actually is right it's good to have savings six to twelve months obviously for emergency expenses but we should also have money that's investment and so we're talking about having it work for you that means putting in sound investments so that it can come back in abundance and not just keeping it short term um and so we we stress that having long-term investment and understanding that having a positive relationship with money and knowing that it can appreciate over time which is a goal where is that where does that fear come from uh you mentioned that you know it's kind of we've been taught the opposite but where does that fear that misunderstanding about how to be smart about money and letting it work for me where does that come from I think it comes from lack of education and financial ignorance um that's just been passed down from generation to generation it's like you can't teach what you don't know so if your parents wasn't financially savvy and your parents wasn't financially educated and they were taught that you know in order to succeed in life you just have to work as many hours as you possibly can and save as much money and you know just keep money under the mattress you know they're not necessarily doing it on purpose to try to hurt you but that's all that they know so I think that most of it just comes from lack of exposure and lack of education and um it's the same thing with diet if you really think about it it's like some might have a bad diet eat you know fried chicken every day and you know um for the bad food and it's like what is that not times I attended comes from your environment your family right so you know we're we're really creatures of habit and creatures of our environment so when you know better you do better so now we're in the age of information so even if you and this is why I said like breaking generational curses breaking generational you know curses is not just a thing of you know mental situations it's financial as well because a lot of times we've cursed ourselves financially and it's also spending habits as well right like you know as part of just a lot of cultural influences and things of that nature where we were taught to view money more as a voucher and then as a seed meaning like as soon as you get it it's meant to be spent as opposed for it to be a seed to actually grow more money that wasn't something that was always cool so I think it's a combination of things from you know our environment parents cultural influences all of those things kind of um have led to a lot of people having bad money habits yeah I'll add to that um historically we just haven't had a positive relationship with money if you take back to the early 1900s and as far as railroads and banks and how we manipulated into savings and our savings were put into investments that didn't turn out to be great ones it actually hurt us and then banks had insurance and they got money but we got left with the short end of the stick and so historically you know we we haven't had the best relationship but that goes back to being educated once we start to have mistrust then we hoard and we're very tight and we don't have that growth mindset and so once we know the history of our relationship with money we add that to the education that we're providing a lot of people in our space are providing now you'll start to see that change happening and it's happening right now with young people you know you can be any age and there's a lot of folks who just kind of ignored financial literacy for a long time so you can be in your 50s and jumping on board you can be in your early 20s um how how early should you know parents be really communicating with their kids and giving them lessons on watching their money how what's a good age to start there as early as you possibly can um definitely I would say you know one child turns eight nine um that's probably a good age and you're going to introduce that you know some some level of financial education and um definitely preteen 11 12 um and by the time they're teenagers definitely so I you know I'll put it in different stages but I feel like um the younger the better even if it's just new stuff like you know just taking them with you um you know to the bank open up a bank account just show them um you know what that process is or how to write a check for you know what a stock is it doesn't have to be something that you know is ingrained in them every single day but you know just sprinkle it in there everything just like with your own personal tasks whatever you're doing financially just show them and you'd be surprised you know how they'll remember that and then um by the time they're in high school they should have you know a firm grasp because what you don't want to happen is that you know a lot of children get to college and they have no idea about financial literacy and they run credit card stuff and they make all kinds of financial mistakes that it's hard for them to get out of there you know it takes years a lifetime sometimes to get out of a some mistake that you made when you was 19 20 years old so you know if they have more education then they'll be um well prepared yeah get them as early as possible and meet them right where they're at and so most parents with both parents um I think it was easy for me it was like all right my kids watch Disney it's a great entertainment tool but it's also a company that you can own so like there's an explanation in that my kids love playing Roblox all right well instead of paying $9.99 every week which I'm sure you have a child who has Roblox that's what you're doing this is now a publicly traded company well let's explain what a publicly traded company is there's always little timbers that you can throw like you said you don't want to overwhelm them but you can just add these little pieces um because as I said education doesn't stop in the schools it expands way beyond that and most importantly it should be in the home and so any piece of like you said that you can add whether it's taking them to the bank to pay the mortgage or even showing them how to pay a phone bill right everything at long term you guys have a lot of amazing stuff going on tell me about um assets over liabilities yeah so assets liabilities that's kind of been our slogan since we started the show and um right now it's it's our new show on the vote uh where we take a dive into the lives of entrepreneurs and celebrities and kind of have like an MTV cribs meets uh a show that you probably see like a profit on on CNBC or something like that right where we're actually talking about the assets how they turn them from liabilities into assets and seeing their future aspirations with some of the money they're making uh because a lot of times people make a lot of money but they have no education and when you don't have that education you do what you know right it was like I got money let me spend it I'm going to spend it I'm going to spend it and so we get to take a deep dive into to the world of people that you know are have somewhat of a status in the celebrity world um and take a deep dive into what their world and see their vision because a lot of times they don't have a platform to speak about what they do in business right they just get to show you that they're entertainers or they just get to you know that they they're athletes but they have a lot of things going on they just didn't have a platform to express it and so we we hope we will become that for a lot of people in the near future man and talk about blowing up where you guys going to be on the 26th of November funny you mentioned we got a live show uh at the Apollo at the Apollo man that's big time thank you I appreciate that so that's that's almost sold out so we definitely going to sell that out god willing so that's going to be an amazing experience you know to you know grow up you always hear about the Apollo watch the Apollo I used to watch the Apollo um so you know it's one of these these iconic venues probably one of probably the most iconic venues especially for black culture um in america so you know all of the great musicians and performers and entertainers and comics that have you know come through the Apollo so now you can add Market Mondays on your leisure today it's amazing the thing about that that three years ago I was a gym teacher man the performing at the Apollo like that's a power of education like I always say that like people I don't want anyone to discount that like education can take me anywhere it opens doors that nothing else can like three years ago I was with kindergarten students three years later we're going to be on stage at the Apollo and it's crazy because I say he's an educator I still say I'm an educator the difference now is that there's no ceiling on how far we can go with the education I used to think like man if I could just impact my class man if I could just impact my school maybe if I can impact my district great but now it's like there is no ceiling right I couldn't impact the city in New Jersey I couldn't impact the city in Connecticut being where I was and now with this platform that we created we can educate the entire world and we're seeing it that we just came back from Africa and we're seeing the impact and we're hearing the stories there right we're in Cairo uh Egypt and we're hearing the stories it's like this message is really growing and it's hitting our people which is desperately needed because you guys are teaching I want people to uh continue to check out the podcast those who are just getting introduced to it check out what you guys are doing and can't thank you enough and I'm gonna try to check you guys out on the 26 for sure man thank you guys so much we don't see you on the 26 we don't see you at that bar place that that's a fact hey yes yes yes let me know let me know we'll come through let me know I appreciate you guys thank you brother I appreciate you


And as we look outside and see all these big buildings in Silicon Valley when you arrived here, I think it was quite different though. Yeah, I would have been looking at lots of trees of, you know, apricots, walnuts, orchards and all sorts of things, you know, and prunes and so on, right? It was essentially mostly orchards here. San Jose, which is a few blocks away from here, was in those days was probably 150,000 people and mostly, you know, it was in the country, so to speak, in the agricultural area. And so, you know, it was like you wouldn't want to go to San Jose, right? And now it's over a million people. So, you know, 50 years have changed this valley in an unbelievable way. So by 1969 you were still at SGS Fairchild, correct? And then you made a move outside, right? But, you know, at SGS Fairchild, yeah, I was until first of July of 68 because in June, Fairchild decided to sell their interests in SGS Fairchild. So they asked me to stay in those days that was in the middle of developing the Silicon Gate technology, which is, you know, is the technology that really changed the way we do integrated circuits because it eventually surpassed bipolar. And so we place even bipolar that in 68 represented 95% of the sales. So the Silicon Gate really was the way to go. In one shot, we had five times the speed and twice the density with the same power dissipation, same design rules. I mean, that's a big change. That was a game changer. We had what allowed to make microprocessor dynamic RAM because the leakage was about 100 to 1000 times less than metal gate because you could do gathering, which you couldn't do with metal gate. And then the floating gate transistor, so all the non-volatile memories, they needed Silicon Gate because you needed a good oxide to protect the, you know, as an insulator of the few electrons that you could sneak into. But everyone was believing dynamic RAM was the priority, not microprocessor. In those days, most people didn't get it, especially people in the industry, but we'll get it where the customers, they had a problem before they had to make a hardware solution, typically a state machine, to solve the problem. Now they could use the same components and just develop a simple software. So instead of taking two years in order to have a prototype or a year and a half to have a prototype, they could do it in a month. So it changed the game. So you decided to stay in Silicon Valley? I decided to stay in Silicon Valley because here was where the action was. And I also wanted to finish the Silicon Gate technology, it wasn't done yet in June when I decided to stay.