The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. Everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Sunday. It's a Sunday. Weekend's almost over. And I hope everybody's having a great weekend. We've got Nikos in the house today. Hey, Nikos, how's it going? Hi, Yaron. Hi, everyone. So we're going to be talking about, we're going to talk about tribalism, identity politics, and anything you guys want to talk about. So feel free to use the super chat, ask Nikos questions, ask me questions. We'll get to that in a minute. In the meantime, let's see. We're going to have, so we're going to, we're going to be talking all things tribalism. Maybe we should start our own tribe since, you know, you now are the world expert on tribalism. Maybe we can figure out how to do this. The, all right. We got a bunch of people excited to hear Nikos. So that's good. Thanks. All right. A few things. One, go on, go right now on. Twitter or Facebook. You can do Facebook too. And let the world know that we're live and encourage people to come listen to us alive. I'm typing as we're talking. I'm typing in Twitter live now. And just so everybody knows, and they can come on over and, and, and, and watch the show. So you, you, you all can help us get the numbers up by letting everybody know that we're live. You can also, you know, first like the show, you can do that thumbs up thing. Next, the like button, you can, of course, share the show. And don't forget we will take questions on, on the super chat. The super chat is open and available. And we're taking questions and, you know, we've got a usual, a usual $600 goal for the show. Let's see what else do we have to talk about before we get going with the show. Yes. On, we'll have a show on Tuesday. 8pm, 7pm Eastern time. And on Thursday, 7pm Eastern time. I still haven't decided if I'm doing a show on Christmas day or not, probably not, but we'll see. I'll do a short, like Merry Christmas show or something. Just, we can sing Christmas carols and stuff and then, and then we'll get off, right? So, so, so we can see, I was just accused that I have no sense of humor. So I'm trying really hard today. And I've got Nikos on who hopefully will make us laugh. Part of his job because, you know, I have no sense of humor. Let's see. So we're doing that. We got theses on theses from London. And I don't know if that's, that's better than to listen to Nikos right now, geographically, than anybody is, to, to me, particularly in Puerto Rico. But Tuesday, Thursday, 7pm Eastern time. Then we'll definitely have a show on Sunday. It's like a Christmas hangout. Contributors who contribute 25 dollars or more, a hundred dollars. Anybody contributing 25 dollars or more on a monthly basis will be invited to the hangout. We'll just hang out and do a Christmas stuff. I don't know exactly what that means. We'll figure it out as we go along. All right, so we are here with Nikos. Nikos, how do you pronounce your family name? It's much easier than you think. You just read the hyphens one by one. Sotiracopulos. Sotiracopulos. OK, there's a rather. Sotiracopulos. Sotiracopulos. Yeah, that wasn't bad. Or just Nikos. OK, so you know how in like sudden realms in life, people go by just one name. It's like football, Spanish football players. Exactly.  Right. The Brazilians are very good at just one name. Nikos is just Nikos. Forget the family name. It's just not worth the effort. It's way too long. Generally, I've noticed Greek words are very, very long. And there's probably a reason for that. I don't know what it is exactly, but maybe Nikos can enlighten us. All right, this is the book we're talking about. It's got Nikos as a copy as well, not surprisingly. It's called Identity, Politics and Tribalism, the New Cultural Wars. You can get it on Amazon. I see now I've got Amazon open right now. Only 14 left in stock on Amazon. So if you want an actual copy, because that way you can get Nikos to sign it for you one day. Mine is signed. Mine is dedicated. Actually, oh yeah, it is signed. Is that your signature? That's pretty pathetic. Just like Nikos. Why would I put my signature? It's not the contract. It's like, it's me for signing. You've got to develop a signature for signing books. I can show you how to do that. Okay. It has to have some flair to it. It has to have something. So you can buy a paper copy and then get it signed by Nikos. And Nikos, for those of you who don't know, you see the boxes back there? That's because he used to be on the verge of not being anymore. A lecturer at York University. York's and John. York's and John, which is in the very north of England. It has some of the most depressing weather in the universe, I think, certainly on planet Earth. It's not great weather. I've only been to York once. It was cold, bitterly, bitterly cold. I thought I'd walk around because York is like this nice old city and it was so cold. I found the closest Starbucks and I just hung out at the Starbucks and so I was giving a talk. I was doing a debate at the University of York. So he's leaving York going back to Greece and he is becoming fully employed by the Ironman Institute.  Fellow, is that the title? Visiting fellow, mostly teaching in the Ironman University and doing the things I've been doing till now, which is working with ARI Europe and making sure that we spread objectivism in Europe. So Nikos is in charge of Europe. He's the boss at Europe. So if you want me to come and speak in your European country, somebody yesterday suggested a university in England that I come and speak at. If you want any of that, email me or email Nikos. We will make it happen. There was a budget for it. So you don't have to worry too much about budgetary issues, but if you want me to come to your country, any country, I will go anywhere in Europe, I think. Is there anywhere I won't go in Europe? Belarus maybe? Pretty much anywhere in Europe, I'd go maybe not Belarus, other than that. I am open and we could talk about the season. I was, we were just talking about this before the show. We were planning for me to come to Europe in January and do the tour we had because of the range of events for me in Amsterdam and Rotterdam and Paris and maybe Germany and maybe Bulgaria and Romania and all over the place, right? Certainly, and now because of this, I won't even say because of COVID, because it's not because of COVID. Because of our cowardly, pathetic, unscientific, ridiculous politicians, we just decided to cancel the trip, which is depressing because I have, you know, I have, I'm addicted to London and if I don't get like my shot like every three, four months of a trip to London, I go into this withdrawal and I'm starting to feel the withdrawal and the idea of going to London even for two days in January, was really, really, I was getting excited and... But literally every single country we had organized an event. If the event happened today, you wouldn't be able even to enter the country because of the new restrictions. It's insane, it's insane. Talk about tribalism. Maybe we can connect our topic today.  I mean, Netherlands, where we had two events scheduled, shut down until January 14th.  And why for something that seems to be mild, that if you're vaccinated, you're probably not gonna get hospitalized if you've got a booster shot. It's mostly a non-event. Why shut down a whole country? I don't know. And remember, they didn't let you in Netherlands even in September when things were mostly back to normal. We had to cancel Netherlands also in September. Yeah, so the Netherlands, it's interesting. I just read that the Netherlands has the highest inequality rate in the world, right? Based on this Gini coefficient, it's the highest inequality rate in the world. So old money, a lot of old money. And I think a lot of very powerful families and I don't know, very paternalistic, probably, you know, very, I don't know, very defensive. At the same time, the one country that there are two towns and not one, that one you're on to talk. So it would be in Rotterdam and in Amsterdam. Maybe the more desperate a country is, the more they want me to come and talk. Maybe. That's part of it. All right, so enough about bitching and complaining about my inability to come and speak in England, in Europe, I am now planning a two week trip in March and then another trip in April, May potentially. So we will get there. I'll just have to hold off on my craving for, you know, for Europe, but we will be there soon enough. All right, so Nicos is gonna become full-time employee at the Institute, gonna be teaching at the Ironman University, OEC. So that's super exciting. You're moving back to Greece? Yes, I'll be based in Greece because why not? Why not? Yeah, I mean, after spending a few years in York, yeah, why not? Athens, York, Athens, York, certainly in terms of whether it's no competition and also in terms of culture and warmth of people and food, food, God, you must have suffered really badly in York. We had some good flanks in Athens in September so you can understand. We did, all right. So Nicos is heading out to Athens, but today was Zoom and everything, it doesn't really matter. All right, so the book. Let's start with what led you to write it. I mean, what was the motivation to write this book? So the motivation to write the book was we would see all these concrets in terms of toxicity in the public sphere and weird events, people being de-platformed chaos on campus, sometimes even violence. And the question was, are these concrets that have a reason that has to do with one political side? So for example, if you asked someone at my university an academic, what is the problem with the world? They will tell you, it's very clear there are these populist right-wingers who have gone completely wrong and this is what is poisoning the culture. Whereas at the same time, if you would talk to someone who is a conservative, they would say, it's very clear what is happening. There is this other side, the left, who have become intolerant, dogmatic, and so on. And this is what is causing the problem. And yet you would see quite a similarity in some of the different expressions of these culture words. For example, you would have people who see, feminism has gone a bit too far, the women, they see men as a group, they are deterministic, and this is bad. This is causing a toxicity to the public sphere. And these same people, then they would form a different group, let's say the manosphere or red pill or meagre, however you want to call them. And you would see them following some of the similar ways of thinking that men are one group with their own interests, women are a different group.  And then they would adopt the victim mentality. So this made me think, if we see different groups acting in different ways, could it be then that the problem is not the left or the right, but the problem is a way of thinking and a way of viewing the world? And this is what led me to tribalism. Tribalism being the mindset, the way of viewing the world that can connect the dots in the culture words, that can connect the dots between, for example, white nationalists and people who follow critical race theory or between Marxist and nationalist between the red pill and the walk, meagre towns and families and all that stuff. So there's one mindset that characterizes our culture today. And this is what's led to the idea of the book. So let's define tribalism. What do we mean by tribalism? So I agree. I mean, as you know, I constantly say the political spectrum is collectivism, individualism. Tribalism is a particular form of collectivism. It's what characterizes tribalism and how does it, how do you differentiate from other forms of collectivism? Yeah. To put it in, let's say, party line language, it's an epistemological choice or to put differently. It's the prism through which you choose the world and you choose to use that prism. So it's not an instinct. It's not unavoidable. It's a choice that you make.  I will judge them based on what is my group interest.  And this is for example, why we see very often double standards, which is let's give an example. Let's say, remember with Brett Kavanaugh that the left was saying, look, we have to believe women. Here we have a serious allegation and we have to take it very seriously. Maybe there's a merit there. There is a merit there. Let's say some years, last year, someone said something in allegation about Biden. The same people who were saying when it came to Kavanaugh, believe women and say, come on, that's one allegation, it doesn't look to stand. And the same people who when it came to Kavanaugh, they said, well, they're trying to ruin him, one allegation cannot mean the end of his career. The same people would say, we need to very much examine this allegation against Joe Biden, this cannot go. So same situation or similar situations, completely different way of dealing and judging the situations. Why? Because again, your arbiter, the way your mode of thinking is not, what do I see there? What is actually happening in reality? Your mode of thinking is, which group is that person? Oh, is that group? Then I already know what the answer is. So this is in simple terms, what I see as tribalism. But there seems to be another dimension of this, which is implied by what you say, but it's not, we should make explicit. And that is that by doing that, you're implicitly and really explicitly rejecting your own individualism, your own individuality and yourself identifying yourself, that is you're making your nature, you're giving up your epistemology, not to your thinking. It's not like you're evaluating the groups. You are now a member of the group. And to a large extent as a member of the group, how do you know who the bad guys and who the good guys are based on what others in the group are telling you, based on what's the dogma of the group? Exactly, and this is very important. Most people think that tribalism is bad because it makes Twitter a toxic place or because it makes politics annoying. No, the number one problem with tribalism is what it does to your mind.  You are operating at a level which is way beyond what your mind should operate on.  Tribal, and I see this with myself, quite often I'm tribalistic and I have a deep path, sorry, past in tribalism.  And you say, I will give up the thinking, someone else who is going to do the thinking for me. And for example, this is very clear, particularly in, let's say, in a communist party. I had an experience with a Greek communist party and part of any Marxist group is that party discipline means that once the party decides something, it is correct. And you could even say that, let's say the five people who take the decision individually, they're not clever, but because they are, let's say, the political bureau, somehow they have this common wisdom that is going to come up with the right decision. And then you have to persuade yourself that I can see that this is wrong, but I have to follow the line. And actually to persuade yourself that you are wrong and the line is correct. So it's something very destructive to your mind. And that's the number one problem with tribalism. It's not that it makes politics what they are today, which is bad enough.  Yeah, and given that epistemology, integration is so important to epistemology. Even if you do it a little bit, it's only gonna get worse. And it's only gonna be the destruction will spread. The destruction will go into every part of your epistemology and destroy your capacity to really think as an independent being. And we saw that over the last five years, people dabbling with a particular tribe, not really adopting them, but slowly, slowly, slowly. And then within a few years, they're completely mindless followers without any self-identity.  How is it possible?  No, it's just that that person has given up their minds. That person is now thinking, they're taking their marching orders, not from reality, but from the group or from some other people. From some authority that represents the group. So what do you think, have we always been tribal? Is tribalism just kind of the default for human beings? Is it, you know, so, and then, you know, and if you want to touch on the kind of the evolutionary question, is this what we evolved to be? And it's inevitable that we'd be tribal? So the problem here is that many people confuse tribalism with the idea of it's important to have communities. So when they say tribalism gives an evolutionary advantage, you could see it two ways. You could say it is important to form communities, but forming communities and tribalism is something which not only is not the same. I would say it's almost contradictory. The one contradicts the other. Because what do you want from a community? When you come together with other people and you have a name, you have a goal, you want to make sure that these people are people who can think, who can have independent objective judgments. So for example, we need to do this. And the higher the stakes, the more important this is.  You need people with this independent judgment and you have similar values. For example, you value freedom and you say, okay, we come together for this goal. But I don't give up my mind. I don't give up my values. We go together to war for a common cause, but we know what this causes and we know why we want to pursue this cause. That is one thing. That's, let's say, a community. A tribe is, I just happen to be with these people. And because they're my people, I have to go with them. An example that I got from a common friend of ours from Greg Salimieri, he mentioned the example of Robert Lee. And many people say that Lee was someone who didn't really believe in slavery. He was a good guy and all that stuff. But what did Lee do? He said, these are my people. Therefore I have to fight. These are my community. Therefore I have to fight for my community good or bad. What a tragedy this is. You recognize that your community is doing something immoral, slavery. So supposedly Lee recognized slavery as immoral. And yet he said, but it's my community. I have to go with the community. And they owe it 600,000 young people who are gonna die as a consequence. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's real evil. Yeah, it's because it's one thing to say, I'm with my community because I understand why we're on the right side. And I will go to my death with them. And it's another thing to say, well, they're my community. I understand they are wrong, but you know, what can we do? They're my tribe. So confusing the tribe with a community is not something which it's a mistake. Now, the other thing that you mentioned is tribalism and instinct. If tribalism was literally an instinct, this would mean that I don't have free will. If tribalism is an instinct, it means that I cannot switch it off, but we can switch it off. You see, for example, people starting as being tribalists and they're not being tribalists, being independent thinkers, although it's super difficult, but it happens. You see people going the opposite direction and you even see societies being poisoned by this poison of tribalism. And then 20 years later, and massacring each other, Rwanda is an obvious example, but not the only one. And you see the same society 20 years later, different culture, different ideas, or they have learned the lessons and they see the world differently. So no, tribalism is not an instinct. It's not a gene. And I think this is what many people who tried to understand tribalism make a mistake. And they also make the mistake. They say, we need a little bit of tribalism. Why do you need a little bit of tribalism? Why do you need a little bit of surrendering your mind to someone else? So if, let's say, the peak of tribalism is Rwanda and Masetes and massacring other people, merely because they're part of a different group, why would you need a little bit of that? You don't need any of that. And that's how we should see. Yeah, any individual is good, tribalism not good. Okay, yes, I mean, any bit of poison, any bit of tribalism is destructive to you. So let's go through a few examples today because if we think about historically, historically tribalism is focused on ethnicity, group affiliation, kin, family, it's focused on who you grew up with. That was the history of tribalism. I mean, as a species, we used to live in tribes, tribes of multiple family members and family groups. And that was the community in which we lived. But something unique, I think has happened, I'd say over the last, I don't know how long, maybe you can tell us where tribalism is now moved from the sphere of ethnicity, from the sphere of people who look alike or come from the same background or share the same family genes to a point where tribalism is now ideological and all over the place. So talk a little bit about that and then we'll get into some specific examples of both left and right. Yeah, so the question is why now? And to answer the question why now, we need to understand again, what is the need for tribalism? The need for tribalism is that the world doesn't make sense. Therefore, I need to cling to a group to make sense of the world. So... Well, more than it doesn't make sense, right? It doesn't make sense. And I can't trust the tool that's supposed to make sense for me. Exactly. I've been taught my entire life that I can't trust my reason. All I have is emotion. I feel fear, which means I need to cling to the group to reduce my fear, right? Exactly. And if you combine this, let's say from the sixties with this idea of identity politics, with this idea that different group, not only they are victims of injustice, in which way we should say, yeah, let's get together so that we alleviate this injustice. No, they are victims of injustice and they have to be victims of injustice because that's how they view the world and this is how the world is set up. So for example, if you hear people who talk about the patriarchy or who talk about white privilege and all that stuff, it's almost as if this is a static situation that can never really be alleviated. So you have this idea that's of group interest identity politics. At the same time, more and more and more and more that you cannot trust your reason.  As a human, I think as, as a black person, I think yes. But also from people who, you would think there are more on the quotes, our sides of the cultural wars, people who don't like the left would say, who also tell you there is no free will. Who also tell you you are determined. Who also tell you you can't make sense of the world. And this is when the world becomes a very scary place. This is where the world becomes like this painting by means like the scream where you're like, oh my God, what am I going to do? And what are you going to do? You look around, as Ayn Rand said, when, if I cannot trust my reason, somehow I have to make sense of the world.  That's what you see today with walk, anti-walk. And basically whatever the other group says, I'm the opposite. And we saw this with the vaccines, right? I mean, how interesting and pathetic that the same people who in October of 2020, they were saying the vaccines is the best thing in the world because God, Denver or Trump gave us this vaccine in record time, within months, they would switch their position all together. That's what I found very interesting. They would switch as a group. So we are, there looks like in the culture, there is urge to cling with some people and form, let's say, your existential meaning together with them.  And you are constantly encouraged to view yourself this way. I mean, think about the university. You think about, for example, the things like diversity training and all that stuff. So, or that your skin color or your gender is having your life choices in a way very severely, it has a very severe impact on your life choices. And then you tend to believe it. Then you say, oh, it turns out, yeah, then I am my genes. Then I am my genitalia or my skin color. So it makes sense if you are bombarded with this and you have no intellectual defense to this to say, well, yeah, turns out, how can I make sense of the world? And also you are constantly reminded how scary plays the world this environmental disaster, the patriarchy, capitalism, or what are the fears of the right? Like a great replacement, immigration, globalization. So scary plays and risks and fear everywhere. And this is a very fertile ground for tribalism. So walk us through a little bit of kind of how we got to where we are today in terms of let's start with the left, the tribalism on the left. How do we go from Marxism, which was supposedly intellectual, but how did we, how did Marx kind of lead to where we are today? How did the new left in the 60s lead to where we are today? What's the story there on the left of the evolution of kind of the woke world in which we live now? So there are some germs or some roots already in Marxism because Marx epistemology is very unclear. He talks about this thing as false consciousness or some, this idea that you've got working class consciousness and bourgeois consciousness. Now, he never explicitly says that the world cannot make sense, but it is somewhere there. But at least Marx had this idea of universalism, which is at the very end of the day, somehow will manage to make sense of the world. He's not sure how, he doesn't tell you how, but at least there is this aspiration of universalism that with the working classes, let's say is going to encompass the human spirit. Now, from the 60s with a new left, you don't have this anymore. So if you read the Frankfurt school, it's this depressing idea that the world doesn't make sense and the world cannot make sense because they say that- There's no utopia. So the Marxist utopia is written out. There's no end game. There is no end game. There's no success. There is no end game. And I mean, you could say they are, they have the sell shock from the Second World War and Nazis. So they said, look, you people believed in enlightenment, but look where enlightenment has led us. The Holocaust, the Gulag and the nuclear bomb, as if the Nazis and the Stalinists were the embodiments of reason and the enlightenment. But anyway, so the new left sees that since we gave up on enlightenment, we have to give up on the idea of these big narratives like freedom, reason and all that stuff. Therefore they say the best you can hope is that you deconstruct the current modes of oppression and then what? Then black, then we don't know what to do. So there's this almost inherent, almost nihilism that the best we can do is to fight the powers that be, but we can't really know the truth. We can't really know what is right. And then you have other movements who say, well, we can't really know, but our reality as this group is different from the reality of this other group. Therefore, the best you can hope is to understand reality based on your group. So this is how we go from something like Marxism universalist to the idea that we can't know the truth, to the idea of, well, since we cannot know the truth, the different groups live in their own different truths. And this is how we find ourselves today with this black thinking and white thinking and female thing and all that stuff. And what do you think the, what are the main manifestations of tribalism on the left today? The most obvious one I think is what most people understand as critical race thinking or, and why is this though? Because it's an open admission. It's an open acceptance that yes, indeed, the world does make sense through the prison of the group. And this is the idea of lived experiences. Now, because we have to be very careful to not straw man them. You could see that it does make sense that quite often you don't know how bad things are if you're not in this group. So for example, I've been reading the biography of Malcolm X and I thought, oh my God, things were really bad. I knew that things were bad, but I never imagined they would be that bad. But the critical race theory will take a step further. They will say, even if you possess all the facts, even then you're not in a position to pass judgment. We see the same discussion, for example, around the sexual assault and all that stuff where you tell them, look, the statistics, my statistics say, it's not about your statistics. It's about the lived experience. If you're not a woman, you cannot really understand. And again, on a superficial level, there is something to it. Yeah, I will never be able to understand how scary it is, let's say, to walk alone at night. But this doesn't mean that I cannot make the value judgment of this is good and this is bad and this is how we can try to solve this problem. So in a way, we live in a tower of bubble where communication is important. Sorry, it's impossible. I cannot understand you. You cannot understand me because it's impossible to share lived experience. And then what can we do? We can be in a constant conflict on whose quote truth is going to supersede the other's truth. Well, that's why tribalism has to lead to violence. Tribalism cannot lead to peace. Rand writes about this and the roots of war. She writes about it in global vulcanization. The more we become tribal, the more we give up on reason as a measure of truth, there's nothing to debate. There's nothing to argue about. If I have a white mind and somebody else has a yellow mind and we each have our own truths and we each have our own reason, then we can never agree. And there's no mechanism by which we can show each other that we're wrong. So the only way to resolve any disputes is to see who's strongest and to use warfare. And what I find very shocking is that this was exactly the way of thinking of people in the past that all would agree was horrible and wrong. So for example, you have Carl Schmitt, like the Nazi days where he would say, look, I can understand that someone who is an alien, that's the term he would use, an alien would have his views, would make, let's say, a piece of art and it might even be a good piece of art or he would even make a good piece of argument. But it's alien art or alien argument.  And then in the next class, they would be taught the similar mindsets in a different package where we would talk about cultural appropriation and things like that. We would say, yeah, yeah, that does make sense. So the inability to see how bad these are, what is the bad history of these ideas, I find this very difficult to comprehend. Like it doesn't even require a very deep analysis to understand the parallels between how these ideas in the past were shared by some very, very bad people. Well, some of it is the issue of morality. Some of it's the issue of the tribe. That is, no, no, no, Nazis was a bad cause. This is a good cause. So in the name of a good cause, it's okay to do things that in the name of a bad cause would be horrible. But the problem here is that I don't know of anyone in history who would wake up one morning and say, today I'm going to follow a bad cause. Of course. Everyone rationalizes that their cause is good. So just thinking, oh, I'm on the good side of history, therefore anything goes. I can give up my mind. No, that's not the way to go through life. That's exactly why it leads to violence and it has to lead to violence and there's no alternative. It leads to some form of authoritarianism or another. There's no good outcome from, you know, tribalism. So that's the left. Let's go through the same thing on the right. I mean, the right historically, and some people still argue this, the right represents individualism. First was this ever true as opposed to tribalism or the right always being tribalistic? And if it is true that once it had an individualistic element in it, when did that go away and how did we get to where we are today where clearly the right is tribalistic?  If you think about it, people would put under the umbrella of the right, people like, I don't know, Carl Lyle and Anne Rand, or people like Trump and Lincoln. So it's difficult to make sense. Although we can discuss later what is right and what is left. So the right most of the time has been a reaction to something, to the French Revolution, to the liberalism, then to communism. So from very early, you see in the right an uncomfortable tendency towards reason, an uncomfortable tendency towards the industrial society because then what happens to the traditional virtues of the fighter? Like is the industrialist a hero? Then what happens to the warrior? So the right very early on is a bit cautious with these ideas. So you have the tribalism of the right when it comes to, let's say, the blood and soil nationalism or the idea that there is, let's say, a German culture and a British culture, not in terms of distinguishing, okay, this is different, but that this is ours and this is them. And we cannot communicate, we cannot understand them. And the right also has its good moments when it makes a way with this skepticism towards reason. So if you think about classical liberation, you would consider this the right. This is a more or less secure path to stay away from tribalism. The other thing was the right. What's interesting about classical liberals is they're hated by both left and right, particularly today. And that's why I wouldn't consider them right. I think right, properly understood today, maybe 50 years ago is different, is the collectivism, just as collectivist as the left, but just with a different emphasis, different tribe. Yeah, so nationalism is, not nationalism in the terms of we create a nation state because we have different values, but nationalism as if kind of we are inherently in conflict with other nations, this is tribalism at its purest. So obviously, for example, fascism and Nazism are tribalism at its purest. Now many people will say, oh no, these movements were leftist in their philosophical lessons, but in terms of their politics, it's clear that they are on the right. And if you see in the last, let's take the United States, post, let's say the 90s. So what about this idea of United States has to, is kind of under attack from let's say immigration, or United States is what made us a country was, for example, not our common values, but that we were a white country. So this is a very obvious and clear example of tribalism and you see this from the 90s. So for example, if you see Pat Buchanan's famous talk in 92, which in a way launched the culture wars. So Buchanan is a tribalist and he's someone who would, probably wouldn't even revolt against the term. And the interesting thing is that the few things that really excite the right, that really create some enthusiasm in the right are mostly ideas that have to do with tribals. Trump's campaign, Buchanan's campaign back then. So you can say, okay, they were not very influential, but they were influential in terms that the only time that the right can give you something to be enthused about as opposed to the Mitt Romney's and the boards that they couldn't infuse anyone is when they turn tribalistic. And it is when they turn to the culture wars because that's the only area where they can distinguish themselves from the left. So that's why they can't wait to jump in the culture wars because it's the one area where you can say, we're different. They cannot be different in terms of we support capitalism because they don't, but they can be different in terms of, yeah, we support, as Rand says in the conservatism and obituary, we support the American way of life, whatever that means, right? No explanation, no particular values. We are for the American life. They are against the American way of life. So where do you see today tribalism appearing on the right? You know, appearing on the right, what are the most obvious appearances of tribalism on the right? So the most obvious one is obviously the white nationalist, but you would say this is a small percentage of the right, but I will give you another example, which I think- I think it's Trumpism is probably the most obvious one. Yeah, so Trumpism is, the difference between Trumpism and white nationalism is white nationalism has a coherent ideal. It might be wrong, but there is a coin. With Trump, you don't have that. So with Trump is- It's a tribe, I mean, that's interesting. Would you consider, you know, the adoration of a person and that person, a leader as tribalism? That is, if what unites people is we adore him and he is gonna guide us and whatever he says goes, is that still tribalism? Yes, and the test to understand whether this is tribalism is the following one. Is your point of reference, your point of judgment, your arbiter, is it reality, or is it a person, a group? If your point of reference is a person, then yes, you're in the tribalist mindset. For example, when you see Obama meeting Raul Castro and your reaction is treason, horrible, sanctioning, and then when God Emperor Trump meets Kim Jong-un and then your reaction is, this is for the chess. This is the greatest diplomatic victory since, I don't know when. Then you are basically telling the world, yes, I am a tribalist because similar occasion, completely different standards based on what? Based on who is the person. So people love a reality to put it in very simple terms, tribalism. Okay, so we've got a lot of super chat questions. That's good. 20 or 30, 20 maybe. Still less than halfway to our goal, guys. So keep the questions coming, particularly $20 and above. Those are the questions we like in particular. So what's that to do? Tribalism is on the rise. We see it everywhere, see it on left and right. It's unbelievable how unthinking people have become. How do we get out of this? How do we get out of this mess? So before we get to how we get right, we will get out of this. There are two favorite antidotes that are completely wrong. The one says, but why can't we all just get along? So it's as if the problem is polarization, where in a way it's lack of polarization because there are no two ideological points. So they say, why don't we just get along? And the point is, no, I don't want to get along with the racist. I don't want to get along with Bernie Sanders. I don't want to get along with someone else. So if you say, why don't we just get along? It's as if you're saying, well, ideas don't matter.  You are a communist, we're all friends here. And the other wrong antidote is this one that says, let's meet in the middle. That quite often it's even Jordan Peterson tends to say that the problem is we have too many ideologues. We just need to not be too strict. And again, this means that ideas don't matter. Therefore, let's throw ideas out of the window. Which interestingly, that's exactly what the tribalist does. The tribalist throws ideas out of the window to have people as their point of reference. So the solution is independent thinking. But the problem again is that no one wakes up in the morning saying, today I'm going to be a tribalist. And this is something that you have said so many times here on that. Being an independent thinker is very, very, very difficult. So the conspiracy theories, the person who watches Alex Jones, they are convinced they're independent thinkers. Because they say, look, I'm not someone who is going to buy into what Fauci is telling me. Therefore, I'm going to think for myself. So being an independent thinker, A, needs a commitment. And B, even if you have the commitment, it's still very, very difficult. So the commitment is to what? What is the commitment of independence? The commitment is I have to see what really is the reality out there. So for example, the issue of vaccines. I really want to see the facts. I really want to see, to understand the numbers. As opposed to, well, the people I follow on Twitter have changed their view. And now the left supports the vaccines, therefore probably I'm going to go against the vaccines. Or you see people who say, I've had the first two doses, but I'm not going to have the third dose because they need to get the message. If you are not taking the vaccines for anyone, you're taking them for yourself. If you don't trust them, don't take them. But don't tell me I'm not taking them because I want to stick it to Fauci. Yeah. All right, we're talking about Niko's book. Here it is. Identity, Politics, and Tribalism. They are only limited numbers of actual, now they're only 13 copies. So one of you has already bought one. You know, come on guys, it's 20 bucks and it would be cool if by the end of the show, there was zero copies left in stock on Amazon, right? That would be really cool. And Niko can make a little bit of money towards his rent in Greece. So he doesn't have to live with his parents over there in Athens, right? So go buy a copy, right? Go buy a copy. And I want to keep refreshing my screen and see that number going down, right? Going down. And, you know, don't spend all your money on the book because we also need to super check questions over here because I need to pay my rent as well or my mortgage is the case maybe. All right, let's see. Where are we? We've got a lot of super check questions and I'm trying to think how to organize them. Well, let's think the $50 question first, even though it's not exactly on topic, but it is $50, so you get priority. We have to give priority to the bucks. We are completely motivated by money here on the Iran Book Show. Liam asks, why are European welfare states so much more efficient than the American welfare state? And you're asking a Greek. I'm not sure that's the model. And is violent crime lower in Europe because Europeans are more sophisticated and civilized? Or is it because Americans have more balls and are more willing to engage in physical conflict? Okay, so first of all... Why are the European welfare states more efficient? So the interesting thing is the best, sometimes the best provisions for welfare is when the welfare state doesn't exist. The obvious example is Greece. Think about this way. What kept Greece afloat during the crisis? The black market. The welfare state, sorry? The black market. Exactly. Corruption in a good way and family networks. So for example, in Greece, if you don't feel well, even unless you're very, very, very, very poor, but almost everyone, you go to a private doctor. You pay them under the table, 50 euros, whatever. They don't declare this to the tax service. Everyone is happy. So don't confuse a very organized welfare state with a country where people in a situation of crisis are going to have a good outcome. But I'm not convinced that Europe has... So for example, it's less... So Denmark has a more... If you look at, for every tax dollar collected by the government, how much of that for redistribution? How much of that actually gets to a poor person? And I'm pretty sure in Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, most of Europe, not Greece, not Southern Europe, but Northern Europe, it's much, much higher than it is in the United States. And I'll speculate. I don't know the exact answer, but I'll speculate. One, these countries are smaller. So everything's more local, which just is easier to manage. The United States, because of the federal system that we have, welfare, you have multiple programs at the state level, then you have programs at the federal level, then you have programs that interact with both. And then the United States has a... It doesn't really want welfare, right? It kind of, particularly initially, it kind of passed welfare reluctantly in little programs, right? Like food stamps and things. And then instead, and then it keeps adding stuff, but it doesn't want to be a welfare program because it pretends, Americans are very good at pretending that they're capitalist, self-reliant, independence, and they, we're not a welfare state in America. Americans still believe that. So it's always done a little bit at the time. Imagine if you got rid of all the welfare programs in the U.S. and replaced them with one, that's Europe. Europe doesn't have this patchwork of, I think they're like a thousand different welfare programs in the U.S., each one adding a little patch, adding a little thing. Whereas in Europe, it's usually, they have no problem in, okay, we'll eliminate five and replace it with one. Because we know in Europe, in Europe they know they're all welfare state. They've acknowledged it, they recognize it, they've embraced it. In America, we have this, we live under this guise that we're not really. All right, second question is, why is Europe less violent than the U.S.? Is it because Europeans are less manly? Probably not. So I don't think there's a testosteron correlation with violence. So it has to do with cultural reasons. It has to do, for example, if you live in a small town, everyone knows everyone. So it's not easy to be violent. Guns definitely play a role in terms of fatality. In terms of fatality. Now you're going to be canceled. Now, Nikos, you just said the kind of stuff that gets me, 50 people unsubscribing in a moment. Well, I didn't say we shouldn't support guns. I'm just saying it's a fact that, although someone would bring up, for example, Serbia or Switzerland, where they have a lot of guns and not so much crime. Not as many as the U.S. and not the kind of guns you have in the U.S., but yes. Probably, yes. So this would imply, though, that the more manly you are, the more you engage with violence. So basically this would affirm the toxic masculinity theory, which I think it creates a package deal. But to be super honest with you, my friend, I don't know. I haven't researched a topic, so I can't answer with authority. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a history. It has to do with history and it has to do, unfortunately, a lot of crime in the United States is focused on particular ethnic groups, particular neighborhoods. I mean, a lot of the United States is less crime-ridden than even Europe, but other places are super violent. You'd have to really get into the sociology of it, but it's not partially it's diversity of diversity, cultural diversity, which leads to people lack of trust. And in a place, as you said, everybody knows each other, everybody's the same in some way, they tend to be less crime. But thanks anyway for the super job to our friend. Yeah, no, this is okay. So they keep coming in. Shali, thank you for the support. Didn't ask a question, but it gave $20. Okay, let's see, who else? Okay, Michael asks, combining nationalism, environmentalism, and socialism is not original in the slightest, right? So yesterday, I don't know if you heard the show I did yesterday, but it was about combining environmentalism and religion, environmentalism and religion and nationalism. Since it's combining nationalism, environmentalism, and socialism is not original and slightest, the national conservatives are Nazis plagiarizing their political strategies from the Third Reich. That makes sense to you? So in many ways, environmentalism is very inherently conservative movement. And even today, if you see, I was reading in preparation for the book, the identitarians, the self-described identitarians of the right today. So people who are, let's say, reactionary, and I use the term literally reactionary right, and they would say things like we need to save nature from the attack of capitalism and things like that. Or in the United States, the first radical environmentalist were more quote of the redneck type rather than the university educated, because again, the idea is we need to protect nature from this assault of industry and commerce and of human presence. So not to even mention the law hanging fruit, which is the environmentalism and the blood and soil philosophy of German national socialism itself, which goes back to German romanticism and all that stuff. So, yeah, definitely our friend has a point that there is a history of combining environmentalism and socialism. Yeah, but it's also dangerous, I think. That's absolutely right. But I think it's dangerous to call everybody on the right a Nazi. It just- Oh, definitely, definitely. I think it's just, it closes off conversation. It closes off discussion. They're not advocating for the annihilation of the whole race of people. They're not advocating for a genocide. But yes, the combination of nationalism, conservatism, and environmentalism, really, if you go back even to the 19th century German conservatives who didn't like capitalism, they wanted man to go back to nature. It's also on the left with, you know, Rousseau is somewhat of a environmentalist, somewhat of a nationalist and anti-capitalist. So, and conservative in the sense that, you know, he's anti-capitalist. Well, he's not, yeah, I guess he's not a conservative, really, he's anti-conservative. But the big question that, just to add to what our friend said, the big question is not how the right are environmentalists. The big question is how on earth did the left become environmentalists? Because the left are environmentalists who were the most unexpected allies in the 60s. So if you see the Bolsheviks, if you see Marx himself, if you see Trotsky, if you told these people that in 40 years, people will be anti-industry, anti-the domination of nature. So Maxim Gorky, the famous Bolsheviks intellectual, he says, once we are done with class struggle, the new Soviet humankind will have to deal with the ultimate enemy, which is nature. He means this idea of limits. So the Bolsheviks were openly that the heroic endeavor of humanity is to conquer nature. And you said this to a leftist today, they're going to freak out. Yeah, and even the Communist Party in China, which is not exactly communist, but to the extent that they are communist ideologues, they're not environmentalists in any respect. You know, so yes, there's nothing in Marx that's pro-nature. I don't think Marx ever saw nature. He basically lived in libraries and surrounded by concrete structures. And he spent half of his career attacking people on the left, what he calls the utopian socialist, which would be closer to today's environmentalist left. So what do you think caused the left to move towards environmentalism? So the one thing that caused them to move is that, again, this betrayal of the idea of modernity and enlightenment. So they said modernity and enlightenment leads to Gulag and the Holocaust. So that's one of the reasons. The other reason is giving up the idea of human agency. So if you see the working class, as again, the Frankfurt School did, you see them as a problem. You see them as these alienated people with their needs.  And the simpler explanation, which is not necessarily the deeper one, is that it was a convenient moving of the goalposts, that you would say, well, we told you that capitalism would bring misery. Oops, turns out it doesn't bring misery, but it destroys the environment. Therefore, capitalism is bad. Yeah. And I mean, I think this idea that giving up on the enlightenment, the left is giving up on reason, therefore the embracing emotion. And they go to the philosophers who embrace that stance. And that's much more Uso, and Uso becomes a darling of the left and still is. I think Uso kind of shapes a lot of the thinking on the left today. You know, Kant to some extent, Hegel, much more so, and Hegel, of course, with no free will, much more so than even Marx, I think today. Or Nietzsche, minus the heroism. Yes. Yes, minus the pseudo individualism. You know, it's Nietzsche. So they're much more about emotion, will, state of nature, naked in nature, civilization of destructive force. The whole defund the police is motivated by a Uso-like, let's get of civilization. It's a police, of course, crime. Police is not a responsive crime. Police is a way for the powers to be, to oppress people, which leads them to be criminals. And that's the rationale that they use. All right, we've got a few questions about Greece. Why do Greeks have such a fetish with multiple hard left political parties, including a Suiza, Communist KKE, Varoufakis Day 25? In most countries, one is enough. Why such an infatuation with the hard left? So first of all, to put it into perspective, in Greece, Syria is not hard left. In Greece, Syria is a revisionist left. So the hard left is from the Communist Party on the side. By the way, it's not completely crazy if you think about it in historical reason. So the left for decades had this aura of heroism.  And then you put us in prison, where you would torture us, but we would not give up our ideals.  So the one reason is that this aura of the left, which is accompanied by heroic music, heroic art, which has a very profound impact on someone's soul. So if the right is giving you statistics and the left is giving you, we are the heroes with the rifle in the mountain, guess where the hero warship is going to go, the young person, until they know better. The other reason is that, what's the alternative in Greece? So the right in Greece is parochial, boring with a dirty history. And what they tell you is, look, we understand the left is right, but their means is not good. So everyone in Greece agrees that the moral high ground is with the left. Well, if this is the case, why not go to the left? And why not actually go to the principal left, which is the Marxist Leninist and the 15 Marxist Leninist group beyond the Communist Party? And why are there so many different parties? Why can't they all get along? Well, that's the tribalism of the left. But so in Greece, for example, we have a Marxist Leninist Greek Communist Party and the Communist Party of Greece parentheses, Marxist Leninist, which are both different from the Greek Communist Party. So this would take an episode of its own to explain. All right, another Greek political question. Why is Varoufakis held with such high esteem by Greeks as a hip voice of the people? He charges $40,000 speaking fee, deposited to UAE Bank, United Arab Emirate Bank, and serves up repackaged anarchist Marxism, a Greek so gullible for his BS? Okay, so Varoufakis did something very, very clever. So the left is successful when it sells you a defeat. The left is very successful when it says we almost made it, but somewhere there was this betrayal. So what happened in 2015, we had the referendum, Varoufakis resigns the day after, literally the first days after the referendum. So he's not there in the U-turn. So he can say, while I was there, we lived the biggest moments of popular resistance that we have experienced since the 70s. And then I left before the big compromise. So if he's this pure uncompromising person, but he hasn't got the esteem that he used to have. So his party gets some like 3%, but he's in the parliament. I mean, his party is in the parliament. Okay, some quick Greek questions, these are short. Is the weather in Greece as nice as Southern California? Yes, but not in the summer. Summer in Greece is overrated. It's too hot, too many mosquitoes, so... Very humid, very humid. Very humid, it's better to... Yeah, better in the summer. California's got better weather. It's just, that's a reality. California's got better weather. But Nicos doesn't ever make a citizenship, so. And it would be far away from his tribe. We can get to that later. All right, here's one. What is Cyprus? Do Greeks and Turks hate each other? We hate each other historically. Interestingly, Greek and Turks on a one-on-one level we get along well. So Cyprus, most of the people in Cyprus who have some, let's say, right-wing allegiance and take this with many pins of salt would consider themselves Greeks. So for example, in football games, they wave the Greek flag, whereas those who are more like center-left or left, they would say, no, we are Cypriots, Greeks, we are allies, but we don't consider ourselves. First, we are Cypriots, then we are Greeks. So it has to do with what are your politics, but I'm no expert taking this with many pins of salt. Yeah, but there's also a part of Cyprus to consider themselves Turks, right? Well, they couldn't do, I mean, they don't have a choice because it's occupied by Turkey. I mean, apologizes to our Turkish friends. That's the reality. It's literally a military occupation. Yeah, all right, let's see. All right, I think we're done with, no, we've got one more. I was thinking questions about Greece. Okay, Nicos, are you going to live in Athens or Crete? I think he's living in Athens. Are you at liberty to talk about Ayn Rand University there? How big is the objective is influence in Greece? What are your plans to grow her influence? So yeah, I have roots in Crete, but I'll be living in, I'll be based in Athens because hopefully I'll be traveling a lot to do objective stuff. The presence of objectives in Greece is absolute very, very low. Although Yaron has spoken there at least three times. Maybe more. Yeah, we'll be working on it. And whether I'll be in liberty where I'll be conducting the classes through Zoom, so hopefully there's no problem. Yeah, I know any university is not going to be based in Greece. Nicos is going to be there, but it's going to be online. Yeah. And most of the students will be from all over the world and Nicos will be teaching through Zoom. Yeah. Michael, how is Ayn Rand viewed in Greece? Is she well known? If you bring up in your philosophy class, will you be viciously attacked? Not necessarily, I've given guest lectures to university in Greece. Most people don't know Ayn Rand. By the way, same thing with academia in the UK. I never had any trouble with my objectivist credentials, although they were open in my CV, in my cover letter. I think it's because most people don't know Ayn Rand, so I didn't have a problem in the UK academia. All right, guys, we're about $260 short of our daily goal. We don't want to make this the show that we don't make our goal of $600 bucks a show. So, we've got some questions, but it's plenty of time. You can come in for some questions. We've got $50 questions would be great. We'll make the goal that much faster if we can get there, but $20 also fine. I'm encouraging you not to ask questions below $20 just because we have quite a few, but go ahead and yeah, help us get to the magic 600. Can I turn to the last question you had on and ask your take on this. So, how would you evaluate the culture? Like the Greek one, very very much anti-statist in terms of people don't like authority, but at the same time with a huge influence of Christianity and the left in terms of, yeah, we have to live for the community and all that stuff. I think in the past you've said that corruption and this idea that you don't trust the state is not a guarantee that this society is going to be a freer society than other societies. What's your take on that? Not at all. Look, I think the Greeks have had very bad experiences certainly since World War II, but even before that of the state being corrupt, the state being violating their rights, the state being not a positive influence, right? Not something that adds value directly to their lives. And if you think about it, Greece was occupied for hundreds of years by the Ottomans and so there's a resentment of that. So there's a certain nationalism as opposed to the Turks, but it's mainly in opposition to the Turks. And there's a certain pride in being Greek and the history and what it means and so on. But that does not mean that they view the alternative as being, okay, the state sucks. We need to limit it. We need to constrain it. It's mainly a cynicism and a skepticism towards the state. So yep, this is the way it is. You can't really hope for better. There's never gonna be a better government. There is no such thing really as a better government. Yes, other countries seem to have it better a little bit, but you know, Greece, it is what it is. And the devolution is not towards individualism. It's towards skepticism, cynicism and a different kind of collectivism, collectivism around religion, around ethnicity, around a certain form of nationalism while not really trusting the government that's in charge. I do think it makes Greece susceptible to authoritarianism if the right kind of person came about, but that person would have to get by the skepticism and the cynicism, right? I mean, European societies are cynical. The more corrupt they are, the more cynical they are. So Germans are not cynical, but Greeks are very cynical. Israelis cynical, right? Mediterranean countries tend to be cynical because they tend not to trust their government and not like their government. But it doesn't make you an individualist. It does make you have to use your own wits to survive because the welfare state doesn't function very effectively and so on. Roland asks, is Greece more on the religious side or kind of relativistic subjectivist side? Well, I would have considered the one opposed to the other. Yeah, exactly what I was gonna say there. Yeah, so they are on a very religious part, but at the same time, they follow all the intellectual trends with some delay which says, so for example, for many years, the fashion in Greece, we all political parties need to sit on a table and find an agreement. This is how we go beyond political cycles. We sit down and we meet in the middle, which is relativism in politics at its purest. So unfortunately they're both. So people in Greece, even the hard left are religious? No, but there's always this unspoken, quite often spoken to respect between the religion and the left because they say, Jesus was the first socialist or they would say, look, they are martyrs. Communists never do something for themselves. When they kill and get killed, they never did it for themselves, which is true. So there were indeed martyrs and the religious people like this. All right, so one more Greek question, I guess. I think they keep coming in. Nikos, what is your take on Zorba the Greek? Fill. And how it accurately or inaccurately represents Greece? So Zorba is accurate description of an average Greeks. Steve, my queen, plays him brilliantly. I don't like the... It's cultural expropriation though. Yeah, but he does the expropriation very well. The queen is obviously not Greek, right? He's not Greek, but I can't imagine a Greek player, he better. But notice the very negative idea, right? That whatever you do, it's not gonna work at the end, but we will dance in the ruins, happy at the end.  I don't like that message.   Yeah, but it's compatible with this cynicism that comes from both religion and from kind of a leftist. One of the things that happens to the left, the socialist left, not so much the nihilist left, the socialist leftist, they were idealists when they were young. It never worked out. So what do they do? They give up on all ideals. They become skeptics, cynics. There is no such thing as an ideal. That's just when you're young, that's what they become. All right, Roland says, I meant relative to other countries in religious side, or relatively secular. Yes, so in this way it is very religious and religion also has an effect on politics. So for example, why was, if you remember the Yugoslav civil war, Milosevic was more popular in Greece than he was in Serbia. Why? Because they are the Serbian Orthodox brothers. So in the church in Greece has this idea that we are the guardians of tradition. We are the guardians of the revolution against the Ottomans. We are the guardians of what it really means to be Greek. Therefore, with our brothers in Serbia, we are both against this assault of modernity and of the West. So Greek church is very much anti-West and always has been since the Byzantium years. All right, so we are about $230 short on the super chat. We've also still got 10 books on Amazon. There's still 10 books on Amazon. So I just put up the link in the chat. You can go and buy Nikos's book called Identity Politics and Tribalism, the new cultural wars. There it is, Nikos is holding it up. I'll hold it up too, because I'm not sure the camera switched to you. There it is. So this is the opportunity. The only 10, they're gonna go. They might go today, they might go tomorrow, but they're gonna go. So you might as well get one today and it would be cool if by the end of the show, we were down to zero on the books. That would be really nice. All right, let's run through, says the link doesn't work. Okay, so just in the description in the video on YouTube, I put the link there and I just clicked on that link and that link does work. So when I copied it over to the chat, it must have cut off some stuff, so it's not working. Or Google my name and tribalism, Amazon, and it will come up. But you don't even have to write Nikos's family name because that's impossible. Just put Nikos Identity Politics and Tribalism and you get, it's the first book that comes up. So you can find it, it's up there. There were only 10 copies left in paperback, otherwise you can buy it on the Kindle. But it's cool if you buy it in paperback and then Nikos, one day when you meet him, will be able to sign the book. And I know the link doesn't work in the chat. I apologize. It seems to have copied badly. Oh God.  So I just watched it very recently and in some ways it is accurate, but also factual. Indeed, most of the words you use have a Greek origin. So in that way, the film is accurate. And it's pretty funny. I thought it was a funny movie. And there's something, there's something real in it. So there's something. That's why we find it funny. Greeks find it funny because there's something real in it. All right. Nikos is gonna lose his Greek following at this rate. All right. Bradley asks, what makes someone masculine? Here's a light question. And how is that different in the prehistoric material world compared to the conceptual capitalist world? Did Fight Club miss the power of masculinity in the conceptual world? Okay. I did a whole episode on Fight Club on the Daily Objective. Okay. So what makes someone masculine? I would say being able to impose your will on yourself and on reality. So to shape nature, to tame nature according to your will, but you have to do it in a way that is good for you. So that's what would be my one-second definition without having thought of it too much.  So for example, Dagny does exactly this in Atlas Rock, but also she has other feminine attributes. So what's your take, Yadon? What does make someone masculine? Yeah. I mean, I think that's right. It has to do with the ability to shape the world, the external world, and therefore it does have something to do with physical strength, at least competence with the physical world in some level. And that's associated with strength. I mean, the main difference between man and female ultimately is muscle, right? And that I think has deep psychological implications that have deep implications in terms of the kind of psychology one develops and the kind of, it has spiritual implications, if you will. But at the end of the day, the difference between men and women is both the reproductive and physical strength and to some extent domination, that that comes to some extent from the physical strength and from the nature of the sexual activity, that's the kind of the domination, but domination of the physical concept. Our friend mentioned Fight Club. It's interesting, as I was growing up as a leftist, Fight Club was the movie for the cool leftist anti-globalization kids. Yeah. And fast forward, Fight Club becomes this kind of red pill, redefining masculinity movie, which is mostly popular with the reaction that we write, and now the left has nothing to do with it. So it's interesting how within 20 years, the audience that find this movie appealing change. I think it's a good movie anyway. Rob Brad Pitt is great, but yeah, obviously philosophically, yeah, there are many issues, particularly with the book. The book is more scary in some ways, philosophically than the movie itself. Yeah. I mean, I think philosophically the movie's, I mean, it's very bad. And look, there's always a materialist power issue, muscle issue, and yeah, sometimes it's the left, sometimes the right. It's never the individualistic party that adapts it, but it's always some collectivism of the muscle. And I think we've moved from a Marxist tradition of the muscle to a kind of a fascist tradition of muscle. And I think that's where we are today. The fascists are much more engaged with that. You see BAP, the kind of reactionary go back to that. Not even to Greeks, right? The Greeks are too intellectual for BAP. You have to go to the Bronze Age, pre-Greece, right? Pre-intellectuality to get the pure, you know. Yeah, and interestingly, BAP brings up Alchivades or the Spartans, some Spartans, but none of the classical Athens people. So it's even in terms of seeing BAP and ancient Greek is an interesting kind of thing. Of course not. He's not gonna, I mean, he would love Sparta. We are lovers of Athens and he's a lover of Sparta and that's basically the difference. And that's not because Sparta is masculine and Athens is feminine. It has nothing to do with that, right? Because both are masculine, but Athens is a much healthier masculinity and a much more integrated human masculinity whereas Sparta is more animalistic, right? Remember people at the animal level. You'd expect that in the Civil War, Sparta would defeat Athens in like two days. The Civil War lasted decades and Sparta won only when it involved other people, other colonists. And I think Pericles says this in his famous speech that they spend all the time training and yet don't be assured that we're not better warriors than they are. Yeah, and the only reason they win in the end is because Athens tries to take Sicily or it has expansionary goals instead of focusing on the real enemy, which is Sparta. But if the Athenians had stayed focused, Sparta would not have won that war. All right, I'm sure we'll return to the issue of masculinity one day. It's an interesting issue. Unconstant, unpredictable lockdowns just as bad as limiting or abolishing free speech. Why are free speech restrictions the only standard for objectivists to become civilly disobedient? Okay, so it's interesting that our friend mentioned unpredictable. I think even if they were predictable, it would be bad. This is what Hayek says that, well, if you know the restrictions in advance then it's kind of okay. No, it's still not okay. But it's okay. Yeah, and I don't think that we are not, we are among the most constant critics of the lockdown from very early on, from very early on. So I don't know why many people think that either ARI or objectivists has been kind of, well, neither here or there with lockdowns. We've been shouting from the rooftops about lockdowns from day one. Middle of March when they started, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't understand. Yeah, we're here to protect free speech and we're here to attack lockdowns. Are we big enough and important enough and significant enough to engage in civil disobedience? No, it would be a waste of time. Nobody would pay attention.   Civil disobedience requires numbers. All right, Brie asked, the rejection of the enlightenment is the root of this kind of thinking, this tribalistic thinking. You discussed this happening in Islam, in your history, Islam, I guess that's me. My question is how many times does this happen? It might make a good book. What you mean is the rejection of reason, right? The enlightenment is just one historical period in which reason comes to forefront. I mean, clearly it happened to one extent or another during the Roman period, right? When they basically, they abandoned Greek philosophy or they abandoned our statillian influence in Greek philosophy and they embraced Neoplatonism, which really means they embrace Christianity. And that is the first that I know of because there is no reason before that, right? And then you have Islam rejecting reason and now you've got the West rejecting reason. So it hasn't happened many times in history because the fact is that reason as an idea has not been dominant very many times in history. It hasn't been, we haven't been in a position to reject it very many times in history. All right, guys, we've just gone over $400 for the super chat, which is good, but not good enough. Still 10 copies of Nikos's book on Amazon. So, you know, if I could, if I could find a way to copy paste the link, I'll try it one more time so you have no excuses. I just don't think it'll work. I think there's something when I copy paste that just makes it not work. So, oh, I know, there's a different way to do it.  All right, here, this is better. This link will work. Maybe. Yes, it works. I just clicked on it, it works. All right, no excuses, guys. The second link works. Go buy the book. It's 20 bucks. You know, it's interesting. It's really fascinating. It's a great topic. Just a few of the chapters, right? The Tribalist Mind, then the Left. So a review of kind of the history of the Left and how it evolved into the Tribalist Mind. And the Right, that's the next section. Then it's about free speech, right? And the new radical thinking. So progressive radical thinking, white nationalism and the alt-right. Racial thinking, not radical thinking. What's that? Racial thinking, not radical thinking. Yes, the new racial thinking, God. I can't read. The new racial thinking, progressive racial thinking, white nationalism and the alt-right. And then the gender wars. You guys will love this. Feminism and the manosphere. Up until like two years ago, I didn't know what the manosphere was. Now, I know because they hate me so much. I'm an enemy of the manosphere. So now I know what it is. I even went to spoke at twice at a manosphere conference. Not knowing what I was doing. And only later did I discover what the hell was going on and... Back then when you spoke to 21 Convention, it wasn't like there was no manosphere. It was more, hey, here are some people who talk about dating advice and by the way, that was a good to talk. I hope they haven't taken it down. It was a good talk. It's still up and I think it's actually on my channel. I think they let me put it up on my channel so they won't take it down. It was a good talk. I spoke twice. I think once in London, is that right? Once in London, it's in like Florida or something, or Texas, Texas, I think. And yeah, they had like personal training stuff and they had nutrition and they had some dating stuff. Although the dating was always questionable. It always treated women as not having free will, right? Dating stuff always was, in my view, questionable. Maybe we disagree about this, but I'm dubious. But of course, I know- There's a whole section of the game and on pickup artists in the book so people can find out- Well, I know exactly zero about dating. I haven't done it in 40 years and I was never very good at it even when I did it. I was pathetic at it. So what do I know about dating? Apparently it worked though. Yeah, I mean, yeah, because I, this is my advice for finding the woman of your dreams. Have her find you. That's my advice, right? So it wasn't because I was good at dating, it was because she was good at knowing what she wanted and going for it. So I had very little stay in the whole thing, right? All right, let's see. I was smart enough to know when I had a good thing coming, right? That was my contribution to it. Let's see, that was Brie. Eric asks, is this the cause of all the genders? Like men are thus, I'm not a go, I'm not a man. I don't understand this question. Women are thus, I'm not a go, I'm neither women nor man. I must be non binary, not non binaries are thus, I'm not a go at infinitum. I'm confused, but I'm confused. I don't know what that means. If you mean that there is this urge today to find ourselves supposedly through our identity, this is definitely a trend. And it's a bad trend because it's very static. It's like I have to find this box and unless I find this box, I don't know who I am. And in a way, who cares who I am? It's like, what do I become? What do I do? Why do I care what, in which box do I have to fit in? And it, but it's interesting that why do you think, how does this devolution of gender into 98 different genders or whatever the hell the number is now, how does that fit into tribalism?  Well, to unify you need some standards. If you don't have standards, then the more the merrier. And also when you have this need for recognition, which is what I run called second handedness, that again, my self worth comes from how other people see me. And unless other people see me exactly how I want them to see me. And unless they change their way of doing things and of speaking so that they recognize me, then I won't have any self esteem. This is the end of self esteem. You don't have, you are not going to get self esteem by getting the 98th gender that someone else recognize you with. So again, the main problem is not that this is annoying in the culture words, the main problem is what does it do to the people who want to get this recognition through their identity and through the eyes of other people? Yeah, it's also epistemologically a sign of the disintegration in the culture. So there's just no, there's nothing that will allow you to integrate. Everything is a unit. I am my own gender. There's eight billion genders out there because there's nothing to unify us. There's no categories that are unifying because I think the post-moderns and a lot of the thinking on the left has been towards complete disintegration. You see that with the intersectionality, how oppressed are you and you break it up into enough groups where basically each individual has its own identity and intersectionality score by which we rank ourselves. So it's a consequence of epistemological disintegration that they can't even identify themselves with an integrated gender with other people who are the same as them. And also it's a lower of your horizon because in a way it's your claim to achievement. So I don't achieve to do something to be remembered of but I will be remembered and recognized because of my identity. All right, John asks, to what extent are the ideas of Hobbit, Makusa responsible for the prominence of tribal thinking in the U.S. today? So first of all, Pete's that we have a new Objectives Academic Center course with Onkar Gatte called the Road to Critical Race Theory and people can sign up. And the first lecture will be on the Frankfurt School. So Makusa from all the- And is Onkar giving that lecture? Sorry? Is Onkar giving that lecture? We are giving all the lectures together. Me and Onkar. So Makusa was the most prominent from the Frankfurt School everywhere, not only the United States, because he was the one who was mostly, his writing were mostly political. So he has had an influence. And also he's the one that said that the end of one dimensional man, it is not the working class will bring the solution, but it will be the minorities, the third world, the farmers of the third world, black people, the people in the ghettos. And by the way, what the reversal of Marxist, right? So that's why I don't like when people say, oh, these are communists. No. Or they're all Marxist. Everybody's a Marxist. Yeah. They're not Marxist. It's lazy thinking. They're not communists and they're not Marxists. Yeah. So Makusa had an influence, a theoretical influence and even a practical influence. So Rosa Parks was, not Rosa Parks, what's the Angela Davis was his student. So he has had an effect on the intellectual level and on the level of being, let's say, the mentor of the new social movements of the sixties in the mind of most of the activists. And in his mind, he also saw himself as this kind of politicized intellectual of the Frankfurt school, as opposed to Adorno and others in the Frankfurt school. So Enric wants to know, how do people take the AI university critical race course? How do you take that? So go to the Enron Institute's page, go to the Objectives Academic Center and they have a list of modules, but very soon you will see on Twitter advertisements about this course. This course will be open to auditors and to students and there will be further announcements very soon. We start in January, but very soon you'll see in social media. Otherwise go to the Objectives Academic Center's web page and find the modules that are in offer and you will see there. That's great. All right, let's see, we've still got a lot of questions and we're still, well, we're still short a little bit, but it's getting closer. All right, Adam asks, Nikos, you'll take on the Hegelian synthesis of utopian left with theocratic right. How does this synthesis emerge from tribalism? Do you see the synthesis as a greater long-term danger? This was my argument yesterday on the show about this article by a national conservative called, I mispronounced it, I'm not gonna be able to pronounce it now. Anyway, this Harvard law professor, Vermoullian, anyway, about he wrote an article called The Party of Nature, where he wants to bring nature into the conservative movement. So this is back to the synthesis of utopian left with theocratic right. So first of all, I know very little about Hegel, so Yaron knows way more. So what he said yesterday, I think it's right. I never mentioned Hegel yesterday. That's Adam. Adam probably knows more than the two of us about Hegel. So he's making the... If you think about it, there is a big opportunity for the right in terms of many people don't want to go with the left because they consider, okay, these are crazy people. They don't talk my language. We don't have the cultural reference. So the right is going that way. Taker Calson is a very good example. So this is unfortunately the future of the right to win. It's not the boring mit Romney type of right. There was an article in The Atlantic the other day what happened to American conservative. The author claimed that with mit Romney, conservative died. Unfortunately, the only type of conservatives that can have an appeal is the conservative that looks a lot like the left in philosophy, but speaks a different language. So package is the same message, but in a language which is more user friendly to the masses of people who are alienated from the left and culturally miles away from the left and the walk. So we are giving the right the tools to win, unfortunately, but apparently they figured it out themselves already. Yeah. Colt, right. Colt, that's a cool name. Colt, a Colt Savage. Talk about masculinity. Imagine having a name Colt Savage. Very cool Colt. I used to be a tribalist on the right back in 2016, but with your help, I purged myself of tribalistic thinking. How else do I try to help purge others of tribalism? I've had trouble helping other people get rid of tribalism. I mean, I'll just say I think the most important thing you can do is offer them an alternative. That is, if they're going to abandon tribalism, what is for what? What you have to offer them is the happiness, the success, the self-esteem that comes from individualism for thinking for themselves. And you have to appeal to reason, encourage them to use reason. It can't be just negative. It has to be primarily positive. And I would definitely use Ayn Rand as a tool to pull them over, anything to add there. Well, try to think what I said that appealed to you, Colt. What did I say that moved you away from tribalism in 2016? So one of the big appeals of tribalism is the heroism. So they say, look, you liberals are boring and in a way, they're right. Liberals are boring, but the biggest, one of the big competitive advantage of Ayn Rand is it can offer you the heroism minus the tribalism, minus this mindless kind of marching drum focus. So this is the one thing. The other thing is it's beautiful to see reason in action. So the other day, there was this interview between Joe Rogan and that doctor. And there was a doctor who made an episode who debunked using a very good clear thinking, the arguments of that doctor. I don't remember the doctor's name, but some Harris tweeted about it. So when you see clear thinking in action, it is appealing. It's almost magnetic. It attracts you. And it's like, I want to be like this guy. I want to think in that way.  There's this aura, there's always this magnetic power in this clear thinking and it's attractive. Thanks, William, for the contribution. Jonathan made a contribution in support of Nikos. Thank you, Jonathan, Jonathan Honing. And let's see, we're about a hundred bucks short. I'm sure we can make a hundred bucks in the next few minutes. We don't have an endless time. I'm sure Nikos has something to do. It's evening over there. He's got to go, I don't know, find a date for tonight or something. He's got the dating game down. There's a chapter in the book. Now you guys should buy the book if only for the chapter about dating. This is important, right? I mean, this is- It's an intellectual history of the pickup community. So you don't want to miss that. God, I didn't even know there was such a thing as a pickup community. And I certainly didn't know they had intellectual history. That is revelation. That's a revelation for me. So yes, everybody, we still got seven books. So we've cut the number in half. That's pretty good. We've still got seven books to go. Nikos' book, Identity, Politics and Tribalism. I keep doing this not to bore you guys who've been on the show the whole time, but because people are coming and going, I can see from the numbers watching now, people are leaving and arriving. So for people who just joined or whatever, this is the book, you should buy it. Yeah, you can get it on Kindle, but it's kind of cool to have it paperback. I have a paperback copy. And then you can always catch Nikos at O'Connor, something and get him to sign the copy. All right, let's see, let's- All right, no $20 questions left. Okay, so we're going down to the lower numbers. Okay, $100 left, guys. Somebody could just pitch in and do $100 like often you guys do and get us over the hump. Otherwise, $5, $20 questions will get us there. $250 questions will get us there. All right, Bonnie says, I'm really enjoying your book. Nikos, thank you for being a champion of intellectual independence and objectivity. Thank you, Bonnie. Liam, who asked a $50 question earlier, now ask, is Trump a self-made man or is he just a trust fund baby feeding off his father's legacy? Let's agree on something. Even if Trump didn't have his father's legacy, he is talented in something. He is talented in communication. He is talented in creating a following. He's a soul man, he's a performer. So, but I would know that. To answer this question, I'd have to know the biography of Trump, which I don't so, but I don't think that if it went for his father's money, Trump would be a nobody. I'm not buying that. He would still have succeeded in so-biz or in any way through the, his personal and the communication skills. So, you don't have to like someone to recognize that they have a charisma in something. Yeah, he's got charisma and he's got a real sense of marketing. He's got a real sense of marketing and that's his real strength. But he is a baby, whether a trust fund baby or not, he's just a baby. And if you look at just the wealth numbers, we don't know how much he's worth, but by estimates, if he'd just taken his father what he's left him and invested in the diversified portfolio of New York real estate, he'd be as rich if not richer than he is today. So it's not clear that he's created any wealth, but look, he was a star on, was that your fired reality show? I think what he was called.  Um, Cob asks, what are your thoughts on red pill, manosphere and men's rights movements? And is the new right influenced by these in your opinion? Lastly, are they right that men are too feminized today? Is this a question to you or to me? I think to you, because I know nothing about any of these topics. Okay, so what's my thought on the red pill? Red pill, manosphere and men's rights. Okay, so first of all, they're kind of on the same trajectory, but not necessarily. So I'll start with men rights. They're dealing with some very, very real issues. So for example, issues that men face in court. The problem is when you have, when you adopt something that kind of looks like a victim narrative, it's not doing any good to anyone. So it brings into the fore from very real problems, which by the way, the same happens with feminism, but it shouldn't lead to this victimized idea. The red pill, many of the things in the red pill are factually true. The point is, how do you get there? So do you get there by how do you... What a red pill is. What does it mean? Oh, okay.  Now, and it could be the red pill in politics and the red pill in dating. So these are kind of different categories of red pill. The phrase comes from Curtis Yarvin, who is a figure in the reactionary right. And in dating, it means you understand what are the... Well, it comes from the movie, right? It comes from the matrix. Yeah, it comes from the matrix, the red pill example with the red and the blue pill. But the person who gave it this kind of political message was Curtis Yarvin. In dating, it means that you see through the lies that let's say Hollywood rom comes, it's telling you and you understand what is successful in dating and what is not. So what are the lies? I'm curious about the dating stuff. What are the lies that you see through? Okay, we're gonna get into trouble. Okay, what are the lies? So for example, what is the typical thing in the Hollywood rom comes? So the guy's kind of aloof and not super committing and then the girl is disappointed and then he falls on his knees and says, look, now I'll forever be with you and she's super excited and they're together. So the idea is that a lot of the things that you are taught about romance is not going to work in your benefit except if you are by nature, super charismatic. So I think that's why many people find some truth in it because it explained to them why they had not been successful with women. So again, if you take it with a pinch of salt and you see some truth there, it can be useful. If you adopt it as a mindset and you see again women as one class, you as another class deterministic that the women are hypergamous and hypergum is a power that cannot be reckoned with.  What is the monosphere? The monosphere is, let's say this loose network of people who give advice about dating and so if you see how they are today, they're split, a lot of stuff there, pro-Trump, tribalism, anti-vaxxing stuff. So you can get some good information, for example, about nutrition, about fitness, maybe about dating, but not a community that is super exciting or super, so yeah, take with many pinches of salt and safe. There's a real problem, I think with free will in these movements, and real problem both for men and women in terms of denying free will, rejecting free will, everything is conditional on how we evolved and evolution, psychology is big here and so they're asking, to what extent is the new right influenced by these ideas? Because of course, Mordberg, Mordberg is a new right figure, an important one. Yeah, and interestingly, by the way, lately all these people hate Mordberg because he's pro-vaxxings and a pro-very active role of the state on the vaccine. So- Oh, is he? He's pro-vaxxings. Yeah, and actually he's pro-an authoritarian that would put the Chinese, so he considers the Chinese state the most successful government in the world, so it's one of his latest. Anyway, it's interesting. Okay, it is. If you want to understand the new rights, you need to check out this guy. Okay, so why is the new rights close to this? Because what unites them is this idea that there's something wrong with this world and the solution in a ways this one simple thing. And actually, I think Greg Salmieri had said you could see a similarity between woke and red pill. It's kind of this simple thing that if you understand this thing, now you'd get everything. So again, even woke people have things that are factually can be correct, but the method of getting there is not going to help you if you adopt it as a way through which you see the world. And again, just to be clear, not everyone in the manosphere is related to the new right or many people have distanced themselves like Jack Donovan who writes and wrote, who's like a male tribalist and writes a lot about masculinity. And many other figures have distanced themselves from the new right. So just want to be fair with these figures. Now, do you think they are right in that manner too feminized today? And if so, is it because of the estrogen in the water? It's probably not because of estrogen or because of soy. Look, are men more feminized? I would say, isn't everyone less ambitious? Isn't everyone more coddled? More, there's more coddling. So it's more- I know some pretty ambitious women. Sorry? I know some pretty ambitious women. Yeah, but I don't think this is a cultural message we get. The cultural message we get is not one of agency, of overcoming, of strength, of resilience, of achievement. It's one of, well, let's try to cope and be, you know. So- Safety, risk aversion. Safety is a virus, let's wear a mask when we're outdoors and nobody's around us. So if you take these things as achievement, courage, resilience, as what define masculinity yet, then no question we live in times where the virtues that define masculinity are not very fashionable. But again, this has also effects on women. So the fempowerment movement, I don't think it's a movement of ambitious and individual achievement. So men and women would be better off escaping from this culture and from any form of determinism or kind of group infighting or of this coddling.  All right, guys. We're gonna try to end this in 10 minutes. We're still short 100 bucks. So let's see if we can make up the 100 bucks in the next 10 minutes. That'll be really cool. So we don't end our streak, I think, with seven shows in a row of meeting our goals. So let's keep the streak going. All right, capitalist Nick asks, what is the guiding principle of defining a proper political spectrum? Many objectives would use the degree of freedom in defining right and left. Any thoughts on what possible principle to use? First of all, the question is, why do you want to define it? If you want to define it to understand historically how politics have been, I think the right and left idea is helpful. So for example, I had this agreement on social media recently. Someone said, the Nazis were far left. And my point is, yes, philosophically, you could say there's something there, but if you try to understand Nazism as far left, good luck understanding the rise of fascism, good luck understanding Spain, good. So there's no point. Now. Yeah, I mean, it's important to note that Nazism in the right often rises in response to the far left. And if they're far left as well, then what are they responding to? So it takes away your ability to actually hold concepts and understand their interaction. Exactly. So the best way to understand the left and right today is not as groups, sorry, not as ideologies, but as groups. That's why you can see the right turning its position on free trade, all the left turning its position, for example, in the European Union. And yet the groups are still there because they're mostly groups of supporters against each other. So in order to understand what's happening around you, left and right is usual, but in order to understand their ideas, it's the axis is not, the axis is not usual. And what the ideal axis should be, yeah, maybe it's individual and collectivism, but if we are the only ones that keep this in mind, then again, as a tool of understanding politics, it's not gonna be useful. No, I don't think, I think we just have to understand that right does not represent individual rights and freedom and individualism. It just doesn't anymore. So in a sense, there are two forms of collectivism, collectivism of the left, collectivism of the right. And yes, we're the only individualists out there. So putting us on a spectrum doesn't matter at this point. But there are people of left and right who are more individualistic and they would be on a separate, but that's just for your thinking. In the culture out there, nobody thinks in terms of freedom or lack of freedom. All right, most people are stuck. What's so great about being popular? No, most people suck, Michael says. So what's so great about being popular? Well, you make money to begin with. So yeah, if I was more popular, I would easily have gotten to $600 today.  A show, they make that kind of money, right? So popular people have free will. The more people you access, the more people, the more things you can learn and they can learn if you have some interesting knowledge. Absolutely. Assuming they're good people. Okay, Nikos, thoughts on the movie 300. Again, go to the Iron Run Sanders channel. I did a whole show on that. So very good movie in terms of there's a clear distinction between good and bad. There's even the distinction that Leonidas is with the force of reason versus the mysticism of Xerxes versus the mysticism of the council of the wise people who are corrupted. So I love the movie. I think it's nice as movie. I think it's a movie that had a huge cultural impact in Greece in terms of what is expected, let's say from male beauty and male virtue. And it's a nice moral heroic story of good and bad. So I like it a lot. The second movie, not at all. The fall of the rise of the empire, how it's called. Not at all. The 300 movie, I like it a lot. And if you want the philosophical analysis, go towards the daily objective episodes. I think it was episode three, not episode 300, but anyway, you'll find it in Iron Run Sanders UK channel. So Nikos said I'll have to do a debate on the 300. Wasn't it Frank Miller? I liked it, but I didn't think it was great. Wasn't it written by Frank Miller? Yes. Yeah, and Frank Miller is an Iron Man fan. He's known as a big Iron Man fan. When is the audiobook version of Identity Pollux and Tribalism coming out? When it sends enough copies so that people, so that my publisher consider it's worthy for me to do a Greek Balkan accent audiobook of the book. So buy many copies and it might happen.  Come on guys, this is, you know, this is your own book show, we're supposed to meet goals here. Like six books have to go and somebody has to pitch in a hundred bucks. All right, Capitalist Nick says, what is your take on new democracy leader, Mistotakis? Mistotakis, yeah. Seems like it's spineless pragmatist but has initiated some free market reforms. What reforms do you specifically like that he has implemented? So let me tell you what I don't like. He's the typical centrist, liberal, technocrat leader. So anything that would come after Syriza would be a breath of fresh air. So he has done good work in terms of putting down some, putting down some taxes, making bureaucracies simply in some areas. But at the same time, again, he's a status, he's enlightened, he sees himself as this enlightened technocrat. And the idea is, Greece is this Balkan state, we need to make it a European country. That's why what's the first thing he does, he imposes the smoking ban, which I really, really, really hate. And the idea is we cannot be Balkans anymore, we have to be European, which means stronger state, stronger administrations. So he has some good things, but yeah, think about him as mostly a center-left kind of centrist, although new democracy is a conservative part. What are your top three restaurants to visit in Athens that are unique? What about top three islands to visit other than Crete? Any other must-do or must-see activities in Greece? Okay, my favorite restaurant in Athens is my mother's cooking. So anywhere where they have good gyros is a good restaurant. So to start from that, I'm not good. Probably I don't know more about good restaurants in Athens than I do. Top three islands. So I love Kithnos. It's a small one, but it's nice.  And if you have lots of money and you want to be romantic with your girlfriend, supposedly you have to go to Santorini. I've never been, I don't know. So any small island in the Aegean, like I like them. All right, so let me, you know, we gotta fix this, right? Santorini, absolutely number one on any list. It's spectacular. It's, I mean, go when the tourists are not there if you can find the time. The only disadvantage of Santorini is the tourist. It is magnificent and go there by boat. Don't fly in or something like that. You have to arrive by boat so you enter this crater of a volcano by boat and you see the sheer cliffs. It is, I've been there twice. It's magnificent. It's just off the charts. Any other must-see activities in Greece? Well, I think all the touristy places are worth seeing. The things in the garden. If you like basketball, go watch Olympiacos. This year they're great, but... The what? Basketball, we're a basketball powerhouse.  Yeah. We beat the United States in the semifinal of the World Champions in 2006. We were the last team who did it for 12 years. So if you got players to play in the NBA? What about the MVP, Yanis Antetokoumbou, of course? Oh, that's right. He's Greek. I forget. Yeah. All right. So stop promoting pick-up artists. Thesy is unhappy with me. We're not promoting pick-up artists. We're telling you that they exist and we're criticizing what they... Stop period, promoting period, pick period, up period, artist period. I don't know what that means. Let's see if there's a hidden meaning there. We have missed it. RDF, thanks for the support. Enric, thank you for the support. Let's see. Bradley, is a productive purpose to cure for gender dysphoria on the left and red pill on the right? If not, what is? Can you repeat the first part, please? Is a productive purpose to cure for gender dysphoria on the left and red pill on the right? Yeah. First of all, gender dysphoria is something very, very specific. I have zero idea how to approach it because it's technically, I think, a medical term, gender dysphoria. So I wouldn't know how to put it. Is a productive purpose the cure for red pill? Well, again, what do you mean by red pill? I don't... A productive person's purpose is good full stop. So let's put it this way. A productive purpose is a good starting point to cure everything. Yeah.  It's a take your life seriously and think it through. Productive purpose is one means for doing that, but it can be everything. I, you know, gender dysphoria to the extent that it's not a medical issue is a psychological issue or sex issue. You know, in the end, I don't think productive purpose is going to cure you of whatever problem that is. I think it's more about reason and it's more about self-esteem. Wouldn't it be about self-esteem, about being happy with yourself? Suddenly self-esteem, suddenly reason is a cure for red pill, right? It's to recognize what is reality, what's not reality and to engage with reality. All right, we are short about 70 bucks, six books and 70 bucks. But Thessie told me not to promote anymore. So I'm stopping. If somebody wants to give 70 bucks to get us the 600 Deadby Gate, I don't know how much 100 SEKs are. I don't know what, I'm not sure what currency SEK is. Ryan says, and this will be the last one, he says, just ordered your book Nikos. Thanks, great topic. And yeah, so we sold more than half the books that were on Amazon. That's pretty good. So there were only six left. We're only six left. Those of you listening after the fact, after the show, more of you listen afterwards anyway than we do live. So there are plenty of copies for you to buy. So you don't have to walk away empty-handed and you can support the show. Okay, one more question from, can't pronounce the name. No way I can pronounce that name. Off topic you're on. If you like the movie Queen's Gambit, it's a TV series. Watch Queen of Katwa, Katwe? Katwa? K-A-T-W-E. Similar theme, Go Rises From The Slums with the help of Chess. I've seen the movie. I've seen the Queen of Katwe, it's really good. I really enjoyed it. It's a slow goal in Africa. She discovers a passion for chess. She's really good at it. And it helps kind of overcome the life in the slums and rise up. I really enjoyed that movie, it was good. I think it was made in Africa. It's kind of a semi-low budget movie but it's actually very well made. And I love Queen's Gambit. The actress is fantastic. And it's just, in the middle of it, I wasn't sure I was gonna like it because it seemed going like in the wrong direction but then it saves itself at the end and makes it all worthwhile. So I really, really enjoyed Queen's Gambit. Great music and great acting by the Soviet, the guy who plays the Soviet massive. Yes, so she's great. So the acting generally is great. It's well photographed. It's got a unique color palette. It's not a boring movie. It's definitely stylized. It definitely has thinking going on in terms of the use of colors and trying to take a game like chess which is pretty boring and dramatize it and make it into kind of something you're riveted to very, very well made. Queen's Gambit, the series and then the movie Queen of Katwick, K-A-T-W-E, which is a slum in, I can't remember which African country. All right, Nikos, thank you. Thank you very much. I really enjoyed it. Absolutely. This was fun. It was a lot of fun. And let's see, the book is available for sale. Don't forget to buy the book. Don't forget to give the show a thumbs up before you leave. So like the show. Don't forget to share it and don't forget to support the Iran Book Show on iranbookshow.com slash support. Patreon, subscribe, stop and locals. You have no excuse everywhere. We'll take your money. So trade, trade with you. Trade with you. What am I talking? We're not taking anybody's money. Uganda was the country in Africa where this happened. Where there's, oh, we're down to five books in stock. We're already down to five books. But I'm telling you, within a couple of days that we know books in stock and then you'll have a problem and then we'll have to solve that problem. All right. You can follow Nikos. I'm not sure where, but certainly at the Iran Institute he is now a full-time faculty at the Iran University. He'll be co-teaching a class with Ankar Ghatte on critical race theory on its intellectual roots and its implications soon. So there'll be emails and tweets and stuff like that where you can register and sign up. I'm gonna take that class. I think I'm really curious and it sounds like a really, really interesting class. So I'm gonna take that class. Hopefully you guys will too. All right, Nikos, I'm sure we'll have you on again sometime maybe to talk about this class and congratulations on your job at the Institute. I know for you and more important, congratulations on moving to Greece and to Athens and to having an opportunity to live in Athens. I'm looking forward to visiting you there and figuring out what the three best restaurants in Athens are. That is going to be- Sounds like good fun. That is gonna be Nikos and my goal for the next few years is to visit Greece enough to be able to figure that out. All right, everybody. Have a great, great day. Have a good rest of your weekend. I will talk to you soon and hopefully I'll see you in Europe soon, Nikos. Bye guys.