Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hello everyone, and welcome to the 152nd episode of the Atlas Society asks, my name is Abby Behringer, student programs manager with the Atlas Society, the leading nonprofit organization, introducing young people to the ideas of Ayn Rand in creative ways through our Atlas University seminars, graphic novels, and creative social media content. Today we are joined by senior fellow Robert t Zinsky for a discussion concerning the role of art and aesthetics and objectivist thinking. We'll save some time for the audience to ask questions. So throughout the discussion, please feel free to type questions into the chat on Zoom, Facebook, Twitter, or wherever you're joining us. I want to start today's webinar by letting you all know that the discussion with Rob is going to be a branch off from a conversation on art as the model and fuel for life that he hopes to present at Gulch Summit.
Speaker 0 00:00:42 For those of you who are not aware, Gulch Summit is the Atlas Society's inaugural student-centered conference that we're hosting in Nashville, Tennessee. This July 27th through 29th, we're bringing together all of our amazing scholar faculty, including Rob, who is with me here today, as well as senior scholars, Richard Salzman, Steven Hicks, Jason Hill, Atlas Society founder David Kelly, CEO Jennifer Grossman, and the CEO Ofia dot Atlas Anton, lm r t. We're also very excited to announce that James O'Keefe, renowned investigative journalist and founder of O'Keefe Media Group, will be joining as keynote speaker. Tickets are still available for adult sponsors and students, and we'll provide a link in the chat to the webpage with all the details. So without further ado, I want to bring Rob in to introduce today's topic, all you, Rob.
Speaker 1 00:01:29 All right, thanks a lot, Evie. Uh, so yeah, like she setting, I'm gonna be delivering this as a, as a talk at the, the Gold Sculpture Summit, the, the, the Student Conference. And I'm very excited about doing the aesthetics because I think aesthetics, aesthetics kind of gets thrown in there as a bit of an afterthought. You know, if you're listening here, here, listen, here are the branches of philosophy. You say, well, there's metaphysics and epistemology and ethics and politics and aesthetics, and it's kind of off there at the end, uh, and as almost like an afterthought. And, and the thing is that if you look at, you know, the history of objectivism, it's actually kind of the starting point in a way, cuz what did Objectivism started with? It started with Ayn Rand writing novels, right? She had this vision of the world that she wanted to express in her novels in art before she then was able to, and, and, and went on to define it.
Speaker 1 00:02:17 I, in non-fiction, philosoph works of philosophy. Uh, and that's also true throughout a lot of history. If you look at the, the history of, of civilization, you often see, you know, a leap forward happening in art before it happens elsewhere or contemporaneous with it happening elsewhere. So, you know, if you look at ancient Greece, you know, the very first philosopher, ancient Greece, like 600 ad or sorry, 600 BC very early on the first philosophers and scientists and mathematicians at the same time. And you had a little before that, you see this great leap forward in vase paintings, the Greek vase paintings, where they have this tremendous leap forward into the realism and the ability to, to observe the human figure and represent it in a way that looks they're accurate and, and lively and lifelike. And it's this huge leap forward that shows that there's something going on in the culture that then gets manifested later as, as, as our, as science and philosophy and history and all those other things so often has a big new idea, uh, often comes first in images and metaphors before people are able to put it into words.
Speaker 1 00:03:21 Uh, so that's why I think art is, is hugely important. It is in a way of a precursor to, or a, a beginning, a starting point, uh, for philosophy and for other big ideas. Now, the talk I'm gonna be giving this summer is about art as a model and fuel. Now this is based on some things that Iran said wrote about art, which she said, uh, she described art as building a model and as a kind of engineering for the spirit. Now, what does that mean? Well, what does a model do? It is, if you say a model of the design for a building or, or an airplane, it gives you a concrete specific vision of here's what this thing would look like, here's how it would work, here's how all the parts fit together. Now art does that, but for people, it does it for human life.
Speaker 1 00:04:08 It says, here's what you could be, here's what you could do, here's how you can lift. And it does that in this concrete specific way by giving you this concrete specific vision of here are the kind of people that I, that are presented in a, in a, in a movie or in a novel. Here's the kind of world that they're living in. Here's the kind of actions that they take. Now, I get couple a couple examples of this impact. Uh, one that's always str uh, saved with me is, so I'm gonna talk about Flight 93 and for people my age, flight 93, I say it immediately, you know what I'm talking about, I'm not sure the younger people have this is, so this is from the nine 11 terrorist attacks. You know, the, the terrorist hijacked four different airplanes. And the last airplane that hijacked was flight 93.
Speaker 1 00:04:48 And it was the one where before the could crash it into anything of what they did with the other three planes, the the passengers on board figured out what was going on. They figured out they're gonna use this plane for a terrorist attack. We have to fight back, we have to resist. And they did that. Now, they, the plane crashed, but they prevented the terrorists from succeeding at their goal of crashing that into think they're gonna crash it into the White House. Now, the thing that always jumped out from that story, the Flight 93 story, is there's one particular guy there, uh, Joey Knack, N A C K E. But he was, uh, you know, unassuming guy, a toy salesman. It was his job, but he was also a weightlifter who was known for having a Superman tattoo on his shoulder. So, you know, that it's that, you know, the s inside the Pentagon, the, the Superman symbol tattooed on his shoulder.
Speaker 1 00:05:35 And what always jumped out about me is that when that supreme moment came where it's like, we have to fight back, we have to take back, we have to storm the cockpit, we have to defeat these, you know, these terrorists. What role did that play, that Superman tattoo? What role did that play in giving him the courage and the strength to do that? Right? What inspiration did he get from that? Now, obviously it's not a literal inspiration, you know, there's some, clearly he's a guy who grew up on Superman, on the cartoons and that sort of thing, and it's clearly not a literal inspiration of, you know, he's not gonna be bulletproof. He's not gonna be able to, you know, jump out and hold up the whole airplane <laugh>, you know, and fly. It's not the literal inspiration, but it's the thought of having this, this role model in, you know, from growing up as a kid watching Superman, having this role model of an ideal of strength and of using that strength to fight evil, to, to fight for truth justice in the American way, right?
Speaker 1 00:06:30 And you can see how that would have an impact that when that moment comes, when he has to show that kind of courage to fight that kind of battle, that, that the, the symbol of Superman that he's always, you know, had, is so important that he put it on his shoulder, that that would have a role in inspiring him. Now, that's sort of a sort of pop culture, you know, level of art that we're talking about, but it's, you know, it's still art. I I we art affects people on all different levels. Now, I wanna draw another example that's more taken from sort of what you call highbrow art. Uh, and this is one of my favorite examples. This is one that I encountered many, many years ago. It's always stuck with me. And I'm gonna do a little, uh, screen sharing here. Uh, now let me see how well this works.
Speaker 1 00:07:15 Uh, here, here's where I put on my reading glasses and, uh, figure out, here we go. How to get to, so I'm gonna do a little screen share here. And the, this is gonna show you four works of art, and they're all based on the legend of David and Goliath. Let me just call up the first one. This is a version of David and Goliath, done in 1440, roughly 1440 by, uh, Donatello, one of the great Italian sculptors of the Renaissance. This is very, very early in the Renaissance. Yeah, depending on how you count, I, I count the Renaissance really is sort of formally beginning in 1421. So this is 1440. This is within the first couple of decades of the Renaissance starting in Florence, in Italy. This revival, it's a revival of ancient Greek and, and, and classical knowledge. And certainly this, the sculpt, the skills that sculpture, nobody had created something this realistic, uh, as a sculpture since, you know, since the Romans.
Speaker 1 00:08:09 Uh, and so this is very early on this sort of rebirth and, and, and creating new things out of this re-discovery of classical traditions. But it's with a biblical theme. Now, I think I've been told that young people today don't know biblical references anymore. So let me, I think everybody knows David and Goliath in a general sense, what it means. But lemme me get a little more specific on the story. So the story is that, uh, David is a, a shepherd boy, a teenage shepherd who, uh, volunteers to fight Goliath, who's like the champion, the big champion of the opposing army and Goliath. If you read the Biblical Accountant, take it seriously, take it. Literally, he's like eight and a half feet tall. He's, he's literally a giant. He's this enormous hulking guy. Everybody's terrified to fight him. And David says, oh, yeah, I'll take him.
Speaker 1 00:08:55 And he goes out and he's a shepherd boy. So he has a sling that he uses to, uh, to, you know, protect his flock. So he takes his sling and he, he lets the stone go and whack, you know, with, with great force and deadly precision. It, it smacks Goliath, straight written right between the eyes, and he falls down dead. It's this enormous unexpected victory. So it kind of, it's a story from the Bible, but it kind of stands for the idea of an underdog, a a seemingly weak and overpowered, uh, person taking on a much greater, much more fiercesome adversary and winning. Uh, and so this is Donatello's version of it. Now, he has a sword in here because after hitting him with hitting Goliath of the stone, he goes over and chops off his head with the sword. Uh, but you see, I think he's holding the stone in, in, in the one hand.
Speaker 1 00:09:42 Uh, but, so this is Donatello's version and from 1440 of, uh, of, of David. And one thing you'll notice here is David is very, very young in this version, right? He's, I put him at 10 to 12 years old, you know, he doesn't have very strongly formed muscular, he's very small. Uh, you know, if you look at the proportions, look at him compared to the sword. Look at him compared to the head of Goliath that's at his feet. You know, he's, he's a relatively small. Now, let's take a look at another version. This from Andrea del Verrocchio. And this is circa 1475. A lot of the dates here are kind of approximate because we don't know for sure, but this is circa 1475. So about a generation later, uh, another Italian artist in Florence taking on the same subject. Now, you'll notice this, David, if you ask how old he is, you, you probably notch it up a couple of years.
Speaker 1 00:10:30 He's 12 to 14 years old. Uh, he's got a little bit more defined muscular, uh, musculature in the legs and the arms and the, and the torso. Uh, he's a little bigger relative to the head of Goliath there. So he's a little bigger and stronger. And look at this cocky pose this kid has, right? This isn't just a, this isn't some shepherd boy with, you know, the other one had a hat with flowers in it. This isn't just, you know, this, this little weak, um, weak little shepherd. Boy, this is a, this is a cocky confident, uh, uh, teenage, uh, kind of, it kind of looks like, like frankly, Lukie kind of a smart ass. Uh, so is, this is tremendous. There's a greater size and greater strength and greater confidence in this figure. This is 1475. Now, let's skip forward another generation also still in Florence, still in the hotbed of the Renaissance.
Speaker 1 00:11:21 And here we get the most famous version of David, which is Michelangelos David. Now, if you had to peg how old this mc, this, this guy is the David here, you'd say, you know, 18, 19. He's, he's, he's clearly, you know, he's not, he still has some of that thinness of youth that, that many of us miss. Uh, but that <laugh>. But, but he's got a fully developed, you know, size and, and shoulders and musculature. He's much stronger. I mean, he, you know, he's got good abs, he's got a good pecs. He's, he's got very strong arms. So this is a, a more fully developed, uh, uh, older teenager. Uh, and you see also this tremendous confidence of the pose with, you know, he is got, it's a what are called the contra posto, where he is got, uh, the weight on one hip and sort of the other hip loose.
Speaker 1 00:12:07 He, he has a pose that exhibits a great deal of self-confidence, like he knows that he can do this. All right, now, the last, David, I'm gonna give you, we have to actually skip forward a lot farther. This is about 120 years later, roughly 1624. And this is from Jean Lorenzo Bernini. This is, now, this isn't in Florence, this is in Rome. Uh, if you wanna see this today, you'll find it at the, um, uh, uh, the Borghese Gallery in, in Rome. So this is Bernini doing, uh, doing his version of David. Now, if you ask, how old is this, David, you would say, oh, he is like 25, 28 years old. He might be competing in the decathlon. I mean, he, he looks like, not just like fully grown, but he looks like a, a well-trained athlete. He's a, you know, he's a big, fully developed, very muscular guy.
Speaker 1 00:12:56 And look at that determination on the face, the, the, the way he's piercing the lips, the, the brow, incredible determination. He's, and, and very much in Bernini's style, cuz Bernini liked to have people in these very incredibly twisting poses. He's, he's all wound up ready to go with that sling. Now, what do you get from these four different versions of the David? And I'm gonna put this up here. Uh, it's this way. You can see them all, uh, side by side. You see this like, it's almost like a time lapse. So I, you know, the same, same person just getting older and bigger and stronger. And when you think of, you know, now for, for a lot of these happened were both made in Florence. And in fact, the Michelangelo's version of the David for many years was kept, uh, outside the main government building in Florence.
Speaker 1 00:13:41 And it was sort of like a symbol of the city. And I think the idea is he was actually facing off towards Rome because Florence was this scrappy little republic that saw itself as the underdog, the David, to the Goliath of Rome, the bigger, uh, city. But also Florence was the center of the renaissance. It was the center of humanism. And this, this new renaissance outlook that said, you know, hu humanity should be at the center of everything that they were throwing off this sort of conformity to the Catholic church conformity to dogma. Uh, they were saying, you know, a greater idea of what's possible to human beings in life. And you can see that represented here in these progress, in these four sculptures. Now, like I said, Bernini's David, the last one was done in Rome, but it was done in Rome at a time where, where the church was saying, look, we gotta keep up with these, with these humanists in Florence.
Speaker 1 00:14:37 They just had all this amazing stuff they've just done. They were basically grabbing as many of the humanist artists and, and, and scientists and philosophers as they could in bringing them to Rome to say, Hey, you, you did this stuff for us. Uh, so this was them trying to catch up with the humanists. And what you see in this is this story of sort of a growing power and confidence. Uh, and David keeps getting bigger and more powerful in each of these because in the renaissance, the prevailing view of human potential of what humans are capable of in the world is growing bigger and more powerful. So you sort of see the, the whole view they have of what, what are human beings capable of. Uh, the change of that view over a period of, you know, nearly 200 years is sort of represented in these four sculptures that, you know, if David is a representative of what's possible to human beings in the world, he gets bigger, he gets stronger, he gets more confident with each time, with each, uh, iteration of this.
Speaker 1 00:15:40 Now, that's what I'm gonna be talking about this summer, about art as the model and the fuel. So Michelangelo was doing with this sculpture, my favorite version is Michelangelos. What Michelangelo was doing is he's showing you, you could be like this, this is the model part. You know, that, that this is what is possible to you as a human being. Um, now the other part of it though is he's also saying, and wouldn't it be amazing to be like this? You know, that's the fuel, that's the motivation. Now, one of the things you might not appreciate when you see the, if you just see these in photos, one of the things you won't appreciate is the actual scale of them in real life. So the first two, the Donatello and the Verrochio are actually smaller than life size, uh, in, in, in, in terms of how they were actually cast.
Speaker 1 00:16:27 The, uh, Bernini is about life size. The, I I looked it up, the sculpture is five foot seven. He's bent over a little. So he is like a six foot tall guy, you know, bent down a little, crouched down a little, but he is done life size. The Michelangelo David. And the reason, one of the reasons this is my favorite is he's 17, he's 17 feet tall, right? So he is, you know, it's kind of ironic that this is a story about a guy fighting a giant, but in this version, he is the giant. He's 17 feet tall. It's amazing when you're in this space with him that he is this large, literally much larger than life character. And so a friend of mine once summed this up, I think very well. He says that the, the theme of the David is that courage makes you a giant.
Speaker 1 00:17:08 And I think that's the real sense that you get from it. You know, if you have courage, the courage to take on this, this, this difficult task, you can be a giant, you could be this extraordinary person. So that's what I mean by the model and the fuel. It's saying you could be like this, and here's the motivation and the, um, uh, the, the reason why you should want to be like this. So that's what I'm gonna be talking about with art as the model and the fuel. So, um, I, I think that's something, and, and I'm gonna be going into this and, and in the summer going, I'm gonna be talking, giving you more examples and going into more depth and detail about what art is doing and why and how it does this. But that's, uh, sort of an introduction, overview to what I wanna talk about as the role and importance of art.
Speaker 1 00:17:55 And also that it's something that is as important as any other aspect of philosophy. And, and chronologically often comes before philosophy. You get sculptors showing you this is what you can accomplish before everybody. And you know, in advance of everybody else coming in and figuring out, well, how do we do that? You know, what specifically do we do to make human beings, uh, uh, more powerful and more confident? All right, so I'm gonna stop, uh, go on the slideshow and stop the sharing here. And I think we can take a break for any, any questions, any comments, uh, anything you want me to, to talk about or, uh, we can go on.
Speaker 0 00:18:32 Yeah, we've got a couple of questions here. So we'll start with, um, my modern cult on Instagram wants to know, it makes sense how culture shapes art, but is there evidence of when art shapes culture, such as during the Renaissance?
Speaker 1 00:18:46 Okay, so this is what I'm talking about is evidence of art shaping culture. Um, there's also, I would say, uh, one of my favorite examples is ancient Greece, cuz I think that's one, yeah. My revolution of this actually came, um, from visiting the British many, many years ago, visiting the British Museum in London. And they have this amazing collection and they, they had the elgan marbles there, which are from the, the, uh, the, the release from the Parthenon. Uh, which I think also also in our, an example of this. But the one that, the thing that blew me away, cuz I hadn't seen a collection this good, is the ancient, is the, the Greek vase paintings. And you said of, you know, the, the, the sculptures, the Greek sculptures, uh, are, are so amazing, you don't think of the vase paintings, but they had a great collection of them.
Speaker 1 00:19:30 And in chronological order you see this development happening of them going from what's called the geometric style, which is just, you know, so geometric patterns on these VAs to having these highly accurate, increasingly more realistic, more vibrant, more lively human figures that are on the, on them. And you sort of see that there's something going on in the brains of these people. And you know, like one of the first philosophers is thes of my elitist, while my elitist was a center at that time of these painting production. So you can see how, you know, there was something going on here in this environment that he was in that makes it possible for you to suddenly have these great philosophers and great scientists spring up because there's something going on in people's brains in terms of how they look at the world and how they're able to represent them.
Speaker 1 00:20:18 Um, another example I would pick too is Iron Rand herself. Um, and this might be sort of an odd one, but my wife is an architect and an architectural historian. And one of the things she's looked at is, you know, looking at the fountain head and the, how the fountain head relates to the real history of, of, of architecture and of modern architecture in America. Uh, cuz that's the setting, you know, in the twenties and thirties, the, the rise of modern architecture. And one of the things that she, that she's we we've talked about a lot is that, um, Ayn Rand writing the fountain head affected how people looked at modern architecture, you know, that the Howard Rourke approach to modern art, she, cuz she looked at compared, how does Howard Rourke's theory of modern architecture compare to the existing theories that are out there?
Speaker 1 00:21:01 And nobody else's theory is quite exactly like it. That, you know, people reading the fountain head and getting her vision of it had a different idea of of what, of, of what was possible and what it meant. And it was because of her creating this character of Howard Rourke. And I also view just Ayn Rand's whole development as a thinker, as coming from, she starts writing novels, and then as she writes these novels, she raced these characters. She wants to bring these characters, you know, more fully realize them and understand them. And her development of her philosophy comes out of that. She doesn't develop a philosophy and then say, let me write a bunch of novels, you know, to, to illustrate this. She starts writing a bunch of stories with the kind of heroes that she wants and then says, let me develop a philosophy to, um, uh, to, to, uh, uh, let me develop a philosophy to, to, to try to figure out what it is that I'm trying to do with these characters.
Speaker 1 00:21:57 So I think there's all sorts of examples of, of art having this tremendous impact on the culture and often getting underneath the radar. You know, the, I've, I've always been fascinated by the fact that you hear all these people saying they're fans of I Rand and fans of The Fountainhead, and they're people who, you know, pull, they don't agree with the politics. They may not even fully agree with the philosophy, but as an artist, she has this bigger influence than she did and bigger impact than she has had as a philosopher. Uh, because it, I think it sort of gets under people's defenses a little bit more that somebody would say, oh, I can't be a capitalist will still, you know, like Howard Rourke as a character. Uh, so, you know, I think it has this tremendous sort of pervasive influence in the culture
Speaker 0 00:22:40 That's really interesting. We often think of how, uh, somebody's art influences us, but thinking how Rand's art and, you know, kind of walking through her own stories may have influenced her as she was developing objectivism. That's a really interesting thing to think about. I'm not sure I've thought of it that way. Uh, our next question is from Candace Marina on Facebook. Is there a book or books that explore this evolution of artistic expression of these same subjects that you could recommend?
Speaker 1 00:23:03 Oh, gosh, uh, book to recommend? I don't know of a single book that really does this. Um, I mean, I've got a couple that that might end up being written. Um, uh, I, you know, just I guess said, I, I don't know that anybody has really set down something that I would say this is the definitive thing. Um, why I do recommend just going and especially books on the history of the Renaissance of Renaissance sculpture and history of Greek sculpture. Uh, I think that's a great way to really understand, just visually by understanding what it is that they were doing. And, and by seeing the developments is a great way to understand. I don't have a, a single book I can recommend. I've, I've had to co a lot of what I know about art I had to cobble together from, you know, a bunch of different sources.
Speaker 1 00:23:48 Um, I think, you know, the, now there's a couple of articles, uh, I, I, I recommend peop this kind of lead into what I wanna do next, which is, um, I recommend a Rand's, uh, book, uh, the Magic Manifesto, but with the proviso that, uh, the Magic Manifesto, the subtitle of it is a philosophy of Literature, right? So she was really writing about the, the, the, the kind of art she knew well, which was, you know, uh, novels and plays and, and, uh, she was a Hollywood screenwriter, so she was writing about literature, the thing that she knew well and was most interested in. And in there she has a lot of extra comments about sculpture and painting, and a little bit about architecture and a little bit about music. But, you know, the other stuff is a little more scattered. She doesn't go into a great deal of depth about the other arts.
Speaker 1 00:24:35 Um, but it will give you her sort of overview of what she thinks the role of art is. Um, but yeah, I, I think that there's a huge, uh, need for a much more interesting history. I'm, I tried to get my wife, she did, she started a series a while back on, uh, history of architecture, uh, and I'm, I'm at some point I'm gonna get her to finish, uh, do some more of that because I think that is, uh, summarizes a lot of the, you know, it's a, an interesting way to look at the development of different cultures, what kind of buildings they built and what that says about what that culture valued and about how they looked at the world.
Speaker 0 00:25:11 Yeah, I think it's, um, it's difficult. I, I study classics as a minor. You have people who study the history, people who study the literature, and people who study the art. Now, bringing these people together for one book would be a great undertaking. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:25:22 Well, you know, I think, yeah, well, and, and that's the thing is think there is a little too much specialization and separation of these things. And also that I think objectivism its view of our view, the objective view of art offers a very unique way of looking at what the, what the connection is about how, you know, art, how art is connected to history and how it's connected to philosophy and how it's select connected to literature and all of the different, all of the different things that are going on in a culture are really not separate things. They're all part of the same thing. And art is in many ways expressing and sometimes leading, sometimes following, and sometimes leading the way of all the other things that are going on.
Speaker 0 00:26:02 Very true. Our next question, we have Zach Allen on Facebook. Tying back to the flight you mentioned, how should we think then of modern art in terms of cartoons like Superman, this larger than life muscular person with special abilities that no one could emulate? The
Speaker 1 00:26:16 Interesting, well, yeah, I, I think that is sort of the, um, I mean I, uh, there Iran talked about, well, I don't think this is quite what she talked about with Bootleg Romanticism, but there is this sort of escapism aspect to it that she criticized that, you know, on the one hand, so on the one hand, Superman comic book heroes or you know, Lord of the Rings, now these days, you know, pop culture, these sort of pop culture superhero stories tend to be this sort of remnant of romanticism in, uh, and in this, this concept of a heroic potential for humankind, right? So it's something you often don't guess. Like if you look at what's style called Prestige TV or you know, the, uh, for a while there it was like you had the Sopranos and Breaking Bad and, you know, the, the Prestige TV shows were typically about some guy on a downward trajectory, right?
Speaker 1 00:27:04 Uh, some guy whose life has gone wrong and he's, he's sinking into a life of crime, and there's murder and there's mayhem and his life is a mess, basically. And this is, this was considered the Prestige tv. Uh, and you, you still see that's kind of the template for everything. You know, everybody has to have this, this flawed character who's flailing around and maybe there's some good things about him, but he's a, he's a total mess. And this idea of a heroic character being in the center of things, it's sort of, it's been sort of relegated to, well that's pop culture and that's, you know, the fantasy novels and things like that. Now, one of the things they did is, you know, Lord of you have Lord of the Rings that had this a aerobic vision in a, in a set, in a fantasy context.
Speaker 1 00:27:42 And then you had Game of Thrones that came along very deliberately trying to say, no, no, no, let's do the Prestige TV thing to Lord of the Rings. Let's, let's have the sort of medieval fantasy novel, but a set of heroes. Everybody's gonna be awful <laugh>. And, uh, so that it sort of catches up with it. But, you know, it's usually in comic books and in Marvel movies and uh, uh, Lord of the Rings and things like that, that you still have that heroic view. But it's at the cost though of it being unrealistic. I mean, by nature of the premise, you know, this is a superhero can fly or this is wizards and, and, uh, uh, elves fighting ORs in, you know, this fantasy universe, uh, or, uh, you know, superheroes with some sort of special powers, the the real, you know. But there, there is that sort of message under there.
Speaker 1 00:28:30 I mean, people, I, people take inspiration from it. So it's still sort of this function, but there is that sort of message there saying, well, this isn't a special reality in, in a special world that's different from the real world. You can be, you can have these heroes, but not, not in the real world. The real world is it's gritty and it's dark and everybody's, everybody's flawed and you can't really have heroes. So there is still that sort of message being sent that I think sort of undermines, you know, if, if the role of art is to give people that heroic view for the times that they're going to need it, which, you know, is not just fighting terrorists, but also for everything you do in your life, having to assert yourself and, and take risks and do big, big and important things, you need that kind of courage, that kind of inspiration. And you need that idea that you too can be heroic, you can be great. And to the extent that we need that, you know, having that message of, oh, that's only in a fantasy world, it, it does kind of undercut that. I think people still get a lot out of it. I mean, you know, the guy who, who fought the terrorists and nine 11 still got out of it when he needed to. But there is that aspect, uh, that I think sort of undercuts it
Speaker 0 00:29:37 Very interesting art as a, um, expressing self-reliance. I think people in, in the modern era are a little uncomfortable with, with self-reliance and actually
Speaker 1 00:29:46 Express that. I'll tell you the one thing I can really recommend as a great example of it not being in a fantasy world. And one of the, my favorites for recent years is, is the movie The Martian, the Matt Damon movie, the Martian, uh, it's actually based on a novel by Andy Weir and the novel has certain flaws, but I think is generally has a great plot. And I really liked the, the movie, uh, and it's, it's sort of, it's not in a fantasy world, it's, it's, you know, it takes place on Mars <laugh>, but it is, um, it, it's, it's what they call hard sci-fi, which is basically, there's nothing in there that isn't, that is beyond or, or speculative, um, there's nothing in there that isn't real existing technology that he's using. So it's something that's totally realistic or, or as realistic as they can make it with regard to being able to do this, you know, real humans with actual technology would be able to do this.
Speaker 1 00:30:36 But the really, the whole story, it's a sort of Robin Cru Robinson Cruso of Mars. It's about this guy stranded on Mars and just having to solve one problem after another and face one danger after another. And, you know, he gets in all sorts of terrible jams and has to get out of them. And it's really about, it's about courage and competence and keeping your head and solving problems. And it's, I think, tremendously inspirational. And that's sort of the, I think that's the thing we need, we need more of in our culture for, you know, cuz that expresses what what we're trying to do in our lives is we're trying to go out there and come up with ingenious solutions and solve problems and, uh, and to make our lives better and longer and, and, uh, more pleasant.
Speaker 0 00:31:14 Very well said. That was a great movie. Uh, before we do any other questions, I wanted to see if you wanted to move on to your next point of discussion where I believe you may utilize that instrument behind you, <laugh> for our viewers <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:31:25 Um, if we have a lot of questions, I'll do that and I can, I can do the, I can play the piano another day, but there's, there's like a little something I like to talk about with that,
Speaker 0 00:31:32 I'll do one more question then let's jump to your, then let's jump to the piano, cuz I'm interested to see that. So one more question here from, we'll do Jay Clinton wall on Zoom. Is there any work that traces Ayn Rand's vision of the ideal man from Captain Cyrus Poons to Howard work?
Speaker 1 00:31:47 Ah, that's interesting. Um, I'd have to think about that. I think there's been a couple of, uh, interesting articles. I think Shoshana Milgrim may have done something on this. Uh, she's very good on this, uh, cuz she's looked at the early, um, uh, influences on Ayn Rand and yeah, so this is somebody who knows his objective, his history. Uh, so Cyrus says it was this children's serial comic book, basically, well, it's not quite a comic book. It's like a short story with illustrations that, uh, a French, uh, it, it was in French originally, uh, that was produced in like 1910 or something like this. And it was given to a young Ayn Rand as a, an adventure story for her to read. And it's a classic sort of, you know, boy's adventure story kind of thing about these guys. Um, saving, uh, uh, saving a beautiful woman from danger and peril, uh, in, in India, uh, and, uh, it's called the Mysterious Valley.
Speaker 1 00:32:39 And the, the character ca the, the main hero of the story is, is Captain Cyrus Paulson's, uh, this very sort of swashbuckling, uh, uh, uh, uh, British, uh, soldier. And, uh, yeah, that was like one of the early things that she mentioned. And there was a great addition that was done of this. They translated it into English and reproduced original illustrations about 20 years ago, someone did this so you can actually get ahold of it. Um, uh, it's called the Mysterious Valley. Uh, and so there's, you know, there's this whole history of her sort of having this early vision of here's a hero, uh, Cyrus Poons is sort of becomes, you know, Cyrus becomes Kira. It's the, the ver same name in a different version becomes Kira her heroin in, uh, we the living. And, uh, Poons is potentially one of the sources for her choosing John Gat as a name.
Speaker 1 00:33:30 Uh, so the, uh, there's this development of her having this heroic vision. What I find fascinating about Ayn Rand's history on this, and Shohan Boro has written about this, I published an article of hers many years ago, um, called What E Rand's first novel and the novel she, and the novel she ranked first, and it's her talking about the Misra, which is Victor Hugo's novel. And I find lots of fascinating comparisons there, because of course, Victor Hugo was a Christian, and he was a socialist, or at least called himself a socialist. I'm not sure if he'd, he'd probably be on the right today. But, uh, <laugh>, uh, things have changed. But, uh, he was, you know, had very different philosophy from her, but he had this tremendous sort of heroic vision of man that had this big influence on her. So it's really interesting on that one to see sort of the, the compare and contrast of here's somebody with a, a different explicit outlook, but who provided this sort of romantic, uh, uh, and heroic, uh, approach to literature that had a huge influence on her.
Speaker 0 00:34:32 So I actually have one more question for you. This actually is, is my own question. I've been thinking of, you'll often hear today, uh, that there are, that, you know, there is no objective beauty standard. There's nothing objectively beautiful, whether it's in people or in art. Uh, and modern art is definitely very different than, you know, the sculptures you just showed us, for instance. We don't get a lot of that in modern art. What is your thought on, I know we've talked before about modern sculpture, modern art, and how it compares to, uh, the classics that you showed us earlier, and what does that say about where we are as a society <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:35:01 If you'll Well, yeah. So modern art represents the theory that art isn't about reality. And that based, that's basically the essence. Art isn't about reality. It isn't about us being able to, to grasp reality, to understand, to see things clearly, and to say things about the real about human beings in the real world. It's, there's usually some version of where art is in, in, in modern art. The art is about some sort of abstract pattern in design. And, and we can get it, I could do a whole lecture or a whole, uh, one of these sessions on the theory behind it. But basically what they did is they gave up having something to say about human beings in the real world. And there's a fascinating thing we're talking about Florence. So if you ever get a chance to go to Florence, and I think this is still set up this way, there's, um, uh, it's a, it's called the Prince's walk.
Speaker 1 00:35:47 It's a, a passageway basically built for the dukes of the, the Medici Dukes. So they could go from the, uh, main, uh, palace, uh, or the, the government building that could go through the ufi, which is now the Fui Gallery, but the, the offices, the government offices across the bridge and to their palace back on the other side of the river. And they could go through there without having to mix with the holo down in the street, right? So it's this just this long corridor, like a long hallway that goes like a, I dunno, half a mile or three quarters of a mile, but it's been converted into a fascinating art gallery. And it's an art gallery devoted to one theme, which is artists self-portraits. And so, uh, uh, and it's interesting to see, you see, you really see the development over time that, you know, these artists in like the 14 hundreds, you look at them and they, they look like brick layers or plumbers.
Speaker 1 00:36:38 They're craftsmen, right? And then later on they become sort of preening courtiers. And in the, in the, uh, in the re in the, um, enlightenment, they become naturalists s wondering around the countryside, observing nature. And then of course, the thing, big thing that happens is towards the end of the 19th century, the early 20th century, as you get into modernism, and I think they've got a a al there, one thing that happens is the artist disappears. He becomes less, unless he sort of fades away, he becomes like a hint or a car, uh, you know, a few lines at a hint of a person, but the artist kind of fades away. And I think it sort of shows art fading away. Art is no longer saying something about human beings and about the nature of the world. It's becoming abstract in the sense of really having nothing to say about, about reality.
Speaker 1 00:37:22 Um, now that's sort of a side note about what is their ob object? Are there objective standards? And I would say this, uh, you know, people get confused about what it means to have an objective standard if we understand what the purpose of art is, if we understand what art is trying to do. And this idea of art is trying to sum up and, and provide for us a vision of the world and that, that something so something so deeply enjoyable and rewarding to us to have this idea of this is what the world can be, this is what we can be. And, you know, I could spend hours just staring at Michelangelos David and, and have done so actually, um, uh, you know, just to, just in, in contemplating, you know, that this amazing vision that, that someone has created about what, what human being can be.
Speaker 1 00:38:05 If we understand that as the purpose, then you have a standard that you can use to judge things. And it doesn't mean, you know, that, uh, people used to ask me, does that mean there'd be one perfect work of art and that would be done and all alled art would be done? Well, no, there's, there's different ways of, you know, infinite different variety of different kinds of art and, and topics and, and figures that you can create in order to achieve this goal that we have for art of, of, of vision, of man and, and his potential and the kind of world he lives in. There are many different, you know, infinite number of different ways you can imagine to do it. But you have a standard to say, well, how well does this work of art do that? I even think there are great artists who I hate, uh, in the sense that there are people who do an amazing job of summing up a view of the world and are really giving you a sense of what it's like to be in their view of the way of the world as it really is.
Speaker 1 00:38:55 But I hate it. I don't like this person's view of the world. I don't, I don't wanna live there. Uh, I don't think it's, I don't think it's realistic or accurate. Um, you know, so, but, but they are, you can judge them as being great artists in the sense of being able to really fully sum up what it is that they're trying to get across. Uh, by the way, another movie recommendation, this is one, it it's about 20 or so years old, uh, Robin Williams movie called What Dreams May Come. And the premise of this movie, it's got a supernatural premise. So the guy, the guy ends up, the guy dies and ends up in the afterlife. But the fascinating premise of the movie is going to the afterlife, going to heaven basically means living inside your favorite work of art. And so everybody's afterlife is basically their sense of life, their view of the world, their, their favorite works of art brought to life.
Speaker 1 00:39:42 And I thought, yeah, and then conversely, you're hell in the afterlife, uh, that the fascinating part about it is the idea that it's not so much that you're being judged by some, you know, standard. It's that simply your pun, your, your reward or punishment in the afterlife is to live in the world the way you see it. I in, in your favorite art. And if your favorite art is your world is beautiful, then you live in in peace and beauty in this wonderful ideal paradise. And if your view of the world is, uh, is, you know, game of Thrones, then you end up go spending eternity in Game of Thrones, which is basically going to hell. Um, so, uh, I thought that was fascinating premise. There's think people should check out that, that it's kind of a weird movie, but it it's got a very interesting premise to it.
Speaker 0 00:40:27 Craig. Good. And somebody actually wants to know if you've seen the film a Most Violent Year, uh, that she says that I think while the character is not perfect, the main character Abel Morales is like a Howard Rourke type of character.
Speaker 1 00:40:39 Uh, I have not seen it, but on your recommendation, I'll go check it out. All
Speaker 0 00:40:42 Right, well, uh, I think if we want to go ahead and move on to, uh, maybe the musical piece, and then I know at the end we wanna talk a little bit about ai. So
Speaker 1 00:40:50 We might have only a few minutes left for ai, but I wanna talk a little bit about music. So I mentioned earlier that, um, you know, ENN Rand had wrote their magic manifesto. It's mostly, it's about art in general and about her, her fa her view of aesthetics, her her philosophy on aesthetics. But when it, you know, it's mostly about literature, cuz that's the area she knows. Well, it has only a few little tantalizing comments about music. And, you know, there have been some recent debates about whether you have open objectivism versus closed objectivism. And one of the reasons I fall on the open objectivism is there are so many areas like this, I think particularly in architecture and in music where, you know, Ayn Rand laid down these, these really important philosophical ideas, but only provided a hint or a clue as to how, you know, how would this apply to music?
Speaker 1 00:41:36 And I think music is fascinating to me cuz it works so differently from every branch of art. And so this is something I'm actually planning to start a podcast at some point. I keep threatening to do this. I'm, I'm gonna get to it soon, uh, a podcast on my hobby, which is playing classical music on the piano. Now, I'm, I'm not a musicologist, I'm not a composer. I am not a professional musician. I'm a ve very much an amateur musician. Um, but, uh, I, I, I'm, my interest in looking is looking at this from a philosophical perspective and say, well, what does music do? How does it perform? This function of sort of conveying to us a view of the world? Um, and I think that's one of, that's a really big and important thing that I think a lot of, a lot of interesting work can be done in.
Speaker 1 00:42:22 Uh, so the way I would sum it up is, and, and this is why it's so fascinating to me, is I think that what music does is it, it performs a brain transplant. So there's this sort of old philosophical conundrum that's asking you, how can you ever know what's really going on in someone else's mind? Is this something that's always opaque to us? You know, we could see people from the outside, we can hear, but they say, we could see how they act, but we're always just sort of guessing at what's really going on in the inside. We can never experience the inside of someone's else's mind directly. And my answer is, yes, you can. And the way you do that is through music. Um, so this is what I've been sort of, uh, uh, finding out and sort of learning as I educate myself about music is that the, a composer can basically capture his state of mind, his internal mental processes.
Speaker 1 00:43:14 He can capture that in music. And then when the music is played for you, he can cause you to experience that same state of mind. And that's what I mean by music gives you a brain transplant. So I'm gonna give you a short example here. I picked a, a piece that's, that's short partly cuz it's, you know, we can do it quickly. And partly cuz I know I could perform it reasonably well. Uh, I got, I'm gonna sort of tamp down people's expectations. I am an amateur pianist. I so don't expect Vladimir Horowitz or anything like that. Um, but this is, uh, what I've got here is, uh, Chopan, uh, Frederick Chopin's, his prelude in e miner. I'm gonna play it brief. Come give a quick summary of what's going on in this piece and give you an idea of what I'm talking about with this idea of a brain transplant. So just, uh, take a minute, I'll go over this. You'll be looking at the, at my back, but you'll hear the music. Alright, the prelude.
Speaker 1 00:46:00 All right, well that one reason will do well, uh, <laugh>, I'm smiling here cuz it's like, there's lots of ways this can go wrong. All right, so when I'm gonna talk about this piece, so this is kind of a sad piece, right? Because it's, you know, I hope that's surprise you, but it, it's chopan, he's kind of, I mean, he has, he's not always sad, but he's got, he's sort of known for, uh, pieces that do not, that have a sort of melancholy state of mind. But I want to talk through what's actually going on in this piece. So this is a, I said it's a prelude, an e miner, and as a, if you're a non-musician, you might hear that and think, okay, well what does that mean? Why do I care? And the important thing is you don't need to know that it's an e miner, but it is important that it's an e miner because that is what helps you, you know, you don't need to know it consciously, but your ear will be able to figure that out. And that's gonna be a major way in which this piece communicates to you because, uh, when you say it's an E minor, what you
Speaker 4 00:46:50 Mean is that e
Speaker 1 00:46:51 This note is the base note, it's against us, what you're comparing everybody else, everything else too. And in the very first
Speaker 4 00:46:57 Part, beginning of the, of the piece you here, and what that is, is that's a,
Speaker 1 00:47:04 That's an e minor chord. So it's telling you this is an e miner. Now what's about e miner? E miner is, it's a harmony. It's, it's got a, it's slightly, it's a minor key versus a major key, which means there's, there's complicated math of this that goes back to, to py risk 2,500 years ago. But it basically means there's a slight element of dissonance. It's not, you know, if I did an e major chord,
Speaker 4 00:47:25 It'll sound like this.
Speaker 1 00:47:27 It sounds bright and happy and everything goes together. It's all very constant when you just take it a little bit, you go, you get a little bit of dissonance to it and it gives you a sense of something being off, something not being a hundred percent right. And that can be experienced as a sense of mystery. It could be experience as a sense of danger. Uh, it can also be experienced as a sense of sadness. And I think sadness is the main thing in this piece. Now, the other thing to notice about this now, once we know it's an E major, is that the basic, uh, melody of this piece is it says downward. You start on this end. So you see it, you're keep, you're going down and you're basically going now just show you that your ear knows what's going on here, right? It knows once you have the cords and everything, your ear can figure this out. Now, if I gave you these notes now hum. The next note, you know, your ear knows what that next note is supposed to be. And so the main thing about this one is the melody is you're going
Speaker 1 00:48:38 And your ear knows, I'm going to try to get down to E so I'm going to try to get down to the base note. It's in the key of e e minor, I'm trying to get down to E. And so the whole piece is like keep, you keep going down to e going down to E, going down to E but you don't get there. You keep getting stopped. So you go down to,
Speaker 3 00:48:57 And
Speaker 1 00:48:58 Then you do, and then you do this one. You say, okay, I've, I've been going down the, I'm getting closer and closer, and then I'm gonna go back up to B and I'm gonna start going down again. And you do the same thing with this very, you know, dramatic, you know, this, this very dramatic sort of rebellion. Like, okay, I'm gonna stop, I'm gonna have another of this fit where I'm not going to allow myself to go to E And the piece keeps you from getting to E until this very last line where you finally get down to, but when you get there, you get it with like this. Now the thing problem is these are the wrong notes to go with E this sounded e minor chord, it's a different chord. So you keep trying, well maybe this, well, maybe this, maybe this, sorry.
Speaker 1 00:49:54 And then finally, where do you get to E minor? The very last note of the piece. So this whole time the, the melody is trying to get you from B down to E down to the bass note, down to the thing you know, is the home base of this whole piece of music. But it's delaying you for doing it. It's keeping you away from it. And then finally, you, you have this quest. Finally, in the very last note of the piece, you finally get down to that e minor chord. And there's just tremendous sense of what kind of relief. Now I won't say happiness because it's still e minor, it's still sad, but there's this sense of almost tranquility to it. Um, and, and, and you know, this sort of finally I'm home, I've finally gotten to this, to this base that I've, I know that my ear knows I'm trying to get to.
Speaker 1 00:50:42 Now, the usual interpretation of this piece is that what show CHOP's really writing about is, uh, what the piece of music is really about is that the process of grief. So you're sad. And this process of trying to get down to that base note, to the e minor chord is you're trying to see reach a sense of what we call in today's psycho babel psycho psychological terminology we'd call closure, right? You're trying to get to a sense of being at peace with your grief and, but you can't get there all at once. And you're even sort of like, you know, you keep going back to square one and I go down a little bit. I'm no, I'm gonna go back up. I'm gonna, so you keep getting close to it and then going back and starting over again, which is very much like an actual process of grieving, right?
Speaker 1 00:51:28 You know, that you're trying to sort of come to terms with your loss and you keep going back to square one and not being able wait to do it. And then you even has a point where you had to stormy interlude. You're sort of rebel against it. And that I think is also typical, the process of grieving that, you know, you're trying to get a piece to it. On the other hand, you don't want to be at peace with this loss. You know, if this somebody was important to you, if there's something that was important to you, you don't want to accept it all at once, so you will rebel against it. But finally you get down there after though, after the whole, you know, page worth of, of struggle, you finally get down to the point of, okay, finally I'm ready. I'm at, I'm at this home base.
Speaker 1 00:52:06 I'm at the e minor court. I can be at a certain reach, a certain degree of peace at this point. Now, Chopan, by the way, the, the reason why people take this interpretation, and I I think they're correct, is Chopan had a lot of grief in his life. Uh, I think when he wrote this, his, his beloved sister had just died of tuberculosis. He himself spent, you know, the second half of his life dying of tuber, dying solely of tuberculosis. He had a lot of grief in his life and he took this mental process of dealing with grief and he captured it. He wrote it into the music so he could say, this is how you do this. This is how you get through this process. This is how you reach that sense of closure or acceptance. So what he does is he gives you a brain transplant.
Speaker 1 00:52:50 He uses, you know, the mathematical relationship with the musical notes, the consonants and the dissonance, the things that your ear can understand. This is where these notes are supposed to go. This is how they're supposed to relate to each other. He uses that to recreate this thought process that's going on in his brain of how am I going to deal with this grief? And he puts that process into your brain as the listener. Um, I think it's amazingly powerful and nothing else, but music can do that. So that's why I want to sort of, uh, I, I try to play the piece again. I'm not sure if we have time.
Speaker 0 00:53:25 Well, we've got, we've got about seven, eight minutes. So I'm
Speaker 1 00:53:30 Ok. This is a short piece. So I'm gonna with in mind this discussion of my, just sort play it again so you can listen to it again and see what I'm talking about. So the basic idea is you, you, from the very beginning, you know, you're in the EMI cord, you know that e is the base note, and you're trying to go down, down, down, down to get to that e and you keep having obstacles and things start making you start at, at, at, at start again. At the beginning you have this rebellion against it. You don't wanna reach it. You finally get down to E but you don't have the right chord and you're struggling to reach the right chord. And then the very last note, you reach the right chord. So it says process. You're, you are going down towards e struggling to get there, and finally you are at peace and you're at home. So listen for that as I, all right. So that's the sort of thing I wanna start talking about with regard to, to music. Cause I think there's a, uh, uh, it is so unique and powerful in that way.
Speaker 0 00:56:21 Well, I think that you should start that podcast. I would definitely tune in. This is very interesting. And listening to it with those new ears, with that new information Yeah. Was definitely, yeah. And
Speaker 1 00:56:29 That, that's what I wanna do with a lot of things. I've got, you know, I'm gonna do a mix of things that I can play, uh, that are within my skill level and ability to, to memorize. Uh, and then I'm also gonna do some like, you know, Beethoven sy Symphony, which obviously I'm not going to be able to play, like if they rely on something else. But talk about what, you know, what are the elements of it? How does it work? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, and I think there's like a language of classical music that I think people haven't, aren't being taught now and, uh, that they need to understand that would, can increase your enjoyment to the music.
Speaker 0 00:57:00 Hmm. And I know that we're, we're not going to have enough time to do it justice, but just thinking of something that beautiful. Do you think that AI is ever going to be able to replace the creation of pieces of music like that, or great pieces of art?
Speaker 1 00:57:12 They have actually trained in ai, somebody trained in AI to write Bach cantatas. Now it's partly cuz it's a very simple, uh, sort of formula that you can do for it. But that's the problem with ai. So there's been a lot of discussion about this recently and they're artists complaining that, okay, you know, well, and sometimes legitimate complaints that, you know, you as an artist, you might develop some very unique style of art. And then somebody goes to mid journey or, um, what's, I can't remember the name of the other one, and ask them, oh, create me an, uh, a piece of art in the style of this guy. And suddenly, you know, they, the computer rips you off basically in 10 seconds. The computer could rip off your style that you struggled for years to create. But I do think, you know, the, the main thing about AI is it scrapes information from the web and it basically represents it to you.
Speaker 1 00:58:00 So it is by its nature is kind of parasitical on human knowledge and human creation. So it can, and it can sometimes put together things in interesting combinations, but ultimately it's imitative and it's formulaic. So I would say that, you know, the, the, if you're a hack writer, you know, <laugh>, your, your job is in trouble because you know anything that they've been done imitative in, in a formulaic way, AI will do it. It doesn't listen to a great job. Now, I think there was some science fiction, I saw a thing just recently, a science fiction magazine had to shut down its submissions page on the, on its website cuz they're getting flooded with really bad articles. Science fiction ar science fiction, uh, stories written by ai. Um, so, you know, it can't really do a good job now. It'll do a better job later. So anything that's really formulaic and imitative AI will eventually be able to do. And it's, I think gotta put like, like everything in the modern world is gonna put more pressure on you as the human being that your responsibility is to do something that's not imitative, that's not formulaic, something that is profound and deep and new and sees something that had nobody's seen before. So I think it's gonna put greater, greater pressure on us to do what we humans do best, which is to, to to be creative and to come up with new ideas.
Speaker 0 00:59:17 I think that was as good of an answer as as could have been done in that amount of time. Unfortunately, we are running out of time, but I wanna thank you so much for joining us. I think we should do more conversations, maybe continue where we left off on this topic. Uh, I really loved it and definitely I think you should start that podcast. So, um, I'm more welcome. I wanna thank you very much for, for doing this session with us and I want to, uh, let you all know that you, if you guys enjoyed this video, you enjoyed these conversations, please consider making a tax deductible donation to the Atlas society, atlas society.org/donate. And tune in next week when from Malus to Mars, Lars Tove will be our guest on the Atlas Society asks. So thank you again, Rob, and we'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 1 00:59:56 Thanks everyone for tuning in.
