Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 To the 68 episode of the Atlas society asks, my name is Jennifer Anji Grossman. My friends know me as JAG today. I'm very proud to be joined by Robert Cresinsky before I even begin to introduce Robert, I wanted to remind all of you who are watching us on zoom on Facebook, on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube. Uh, you can use the comment section to type in your questions, go ahead and get started. Um, we'll get to as many of them as we can. So I have to warn you. I have quite a few questions for, uh, Robert myself. Robert Sinskey is of course the author of the <inaudible> letter, a newsletter that covers culture and politics from an individualist perspective and the author of so who is John Galt anyway, a reader's guide to iron Rand's Atlas shrugged. He has been a writer lecturer commentator for over 25 years by now. Um, he's edited and published. It published the intellectual activist and objectivist review served as editor for real clear politics writing for the federal list and, uh, hosting a podcast, uh, and an editor app symposium. So Robert, welcome again. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1 00:01:33 Thanks for having me. I'm pleased to be here.
Speaker 0 00:01:35 So, um, I'd like to first cover a bit on current events because you have written so much about, uh, you know, what went wrong in Afghanistan. You, um, have discussed the role of our Afghan allies, uh, and there's a lot of, you know, current explanations and excuses. Um, what are those getting wrong about what's happened in Afghanistan from, from your perspective,
Speaker 1 00:02:08 Right? So the, well, how long do you have, uh, so, um, you as to what went wrong within Afghanistan, there's gonna be a lot of discussion, a lot of different things we can talk about. We can talk about the training of the Afghan army, where we trained them to fight with us, support us support disappeared. They were basically unable to, to continue. Um, there's all sorts of things we've done wrong, but I think the fundamental thing we done did wrong was like hot minute failure. It was a failure to think long term, a figure to, to find a strategy and stick to it over a very long term and find one that sustainable over a very long term. What you had really was I, I, I, this had a big impact in my career because I was just sort of starting to get an audience and purchase as a writer when September 11th happened.
Speaker 1 00:02:54 And so discussing what to do about the war on terror, what to do in Afghanistan, looms very large for me, but I found that the American public paid attention for about four years, and then they tuned out and they didn't want to hear any more about it. They didn't want to think anymore about it. And so when I hear people talk about the burden of the war in Afghanistan, well, the burden wasn't high for the average person, it wasn't noticeable. The only burden was a cognitive one that you had to continue paying attention. And there's a sort of an Afghan saying, um, it's attributed to various Taliban leaders that you have the watches, but we have the time. And this is the idea that, you know, we, America has all this high technology. We have, we have this material superiority, but what we don't have is we don't have the patience to see something like this through.
Speaker 1 00:03:40 And they figured if they just wait us out, uh, eventually we would get bored and we'd go away. And that's kind of what happened, uh, is that we have, uh, I think the last real attempt to focus on Afghanistan was a half-hearted one boat by president Obama. About 10 years ago, he sort of, he did the politicians that he couldn't commit to doing a search. He couldn't commit to doing withdrawal. He sort of did something in between. And since then, there has not been that sort of focus of let's review what our strategy is, how is it working? How do we achieve a successful result? It was just sort of temporizing and half measures. And it was always on the back burner. And eventually their result was well, since we haven't gotten anywhere, we're tired, let's just get out. And what you see is, you know, getting just getting out is, is what the last couple of weeks have looked like.
Speaker 1 00:04:28 And, um, I don't think it's going to be a very good ending. I don't think it's going to actually end our involvement because, uh, what you have now is you have the Taliban going around and saying, look, we're invincible, we're vulnerable. We struck, you know, the United States came at us with all of the power of a super power and then we won. Uh, so there's just going to be in Bolton done. I think I'll, you know, they're not going this idea. They're gonna, there's a fantasy going around right now that we're going to have them as a partner to help us, uh, uh, suppress Al-Qaeda because it's in their interest. In what way would it be in their interest?
Speaker 0 00:05:05 Well, uh, after nine 11 you anticipated a war that would be one on the battlefield and lost in, in Washington DC. Um, it seems like some what you've just been describing. That's, that's kind of what, what happened. You also said in war as an everything else, uh, one cannot choose outcomes, only actions. And on that note retrospect, uh, you said the man you miss the most was, was George W. Bush. Why is
Speaker 1 00:05:39 That? I might be a loaded that sentiment, but, uh, that's
Speaker 0 00:05:43 Why I wanted to hear it because, you know, you're, you've got a lot of, uh, unusual unorthodox, uh, unconventional sentiments. We're going to get to some of them, but I couldn't resist that one.
Speaker 1 00:05:54 Well, so the reason I Ms. Bush is that he made a lot of, but he was actually really trying, there was a sense with him that, you know, he was there at ground zero at nine 11, and he talked about the impact that had on him and the sense that he regarded the war on terror and the threat of terrorism as a real thing. Right. And not as a fact, the way the politicians think about an issue, politicians think about an issue. They think of it as well. There's a pressure group. And what is the media going to say? And I'm going to get criticized by this person and somebody will do something on Twitter. And they think about the pressures and the, um, uh, the sort of second handed you use the term for Objectivists the second handed, uh, influences on them to conform to one pressure group or another.
Speaker 1 00:06:37 That's how a politician thinks about it. And George W. Bush, he had that aspect of it. It wasn't politician, but when it came to the war on terror, he thought about things in a more real and more of it as a real thing that he really had to get. Right. And the one thing I give him lots of credit for was what happened in Iraq because when a rock things were going downhill and in 2006, he sat down and said, let's rethink the entire strategy. He can't use switch to a proper counter-insurgency strategy, found David betrayal implemented, and really actually had an impact of unusually successful impact of turning things around in Iraq for about a year in his last year in office. Um, so this sense that he was actually engaged in this, I thought it was important. And what I've missed about the war on terrorism after that is there hasn't been a president since then who has been engaged and actually thought it was important.
Speaker 1 00:07:29 They've all thought it was a distraction to the other things that they wanted to do. And like I said, you know, uh, Bama was the politician who would, wouldn't withdraw from the wouldn't withdraws from the war on terrorism, but he wouldn't really commit to it either. He just sort of stayed in between which path would get into the least criticism. Uh, and I think that's, that's what I miss about it is the idea that, you know, this is America so powerful that if we want to do something, we actually have the capability to do it. But what happens is that, you know, especially in foreign policy, because America is all somebody said on Twitter, the other day, something I liked, which is America as a country. So big, you could spend your whole life taking vacations inside of it and never get bored. Right? So it's very easy for us to say, let's just stay here and that's big country of ours and ignore the rest of the world.
Speaker 1 00:08:19 So when foreign policy, we have a hard time maintaining any idea, you know, beyond the moment of a crisis. There's a great story. I like to tell it's from Dashiell Hammett, the sort of hard-boiled detective fiction writer, uh, and one of the Sam spade story said, Sam spade talks about how he was hired once by a woman to find her husband that disappeared. And he was hired to find out what happened to the guy. And he finds out that the guy was walking on the street one day and a beam from a construction site, falls down a Lance inches away from him. He has this near death experience and he changes his entire life. He goes to this series of adventures, but by the time Sam spade catches up him, he's in a new town with exactly the same kind of job he had before.
Speaker 1 00:08:59 A new family of exactly this they've got very, exactly the same kind of life he had before. And if you've got it, he's gone back exactly to his old life because, you know, construction material stopped falling from the sky. He stopped having the near death experience. So he goes back into his comfortable rut. And I think that's sort of what we did as a nation. You know, in the years after nine 11, a skyscraper stopped blowing up. So we decided let's move on. We're not going to pay attention to this anymore. And I'm concerned that, you know, we've stopped paying attention to them, but they haven't stopped paying attention to us.
Speaker 0 00:09:31 Um, speaking of other politicians, including the current occupant of the white house, you had said that quote zero responsibilities should be emblazoned on Biden's tombstone, uh, as the way that we remember his, his legacy. Can you elaborate?
Speaker 1 00:09:51 Well, zero responsibility is something you said is passed to a question last year, uh, about, you know, do you feel that you'd have any responsibility for the results of a, of a withdrawal from Afghanistan and you literally said zero responsibility. And I think we're sort of seeing in the last couple of weeks, what zero responsibility looks like in practice that he has been seen kind of aloof and, uh, uh, distant. And like, he's not really engaged, you know, like this is an annoyance that he wants to be over with out of the way. And I think he's, he's hoping that, you know, a week from now when nothing is actively happening on our TV screens, uh, we'll all forget about it. So I think that, you know, Joe Biden is, uh, well, I think, uh, you know, he, he is somebody who could only have become a sane, uh, or, or accept a minimally acceptable alternative for president in the eyes of most people only in the sort of DBAs context of our current politics, where his opponents were, you know, Bernie Sanders in the primaries and Donald Trump in the general election.
Speaker 1 00:10:58 Um, I almost feel like he's like this. He was going to sleep, walk this way into the presidency because everybody else did such a terrible job that he was left as the only person that you would, that the last man who was the least offensive person, uh, at, but he's, you know, he's, he is a, he has the article of iron rants that I want to revisit sometime soon is the age of mediocrity because there should be plenty of Jimmy Carter, or I think she was complaining about Reagan. I think she was unfair on Reagan, but this idea of how is it that in this great nation of 300 billion people with this story of history, that these are the people who are rising to the top as our, as our choices, uh, for, for the presidency and how is it? We don't have something more, uh, people who are more serious and, uh, more engaged and more competent.
Speaker 0 00:11:48 Hmm. Uh, well, I have a couple of other questions on Afghanistan and also you've written, uh, one of your recent letters on China, which I'll recommend that our viewers, uh, go and check out, perhaps we can put a link to it in our, um, in our various threads on our platforms, but having just finished your book. So who is John Galt? Anyway, I want to spend a little bit of time on that. Um, you were mentioning to me the origin story for this book, uh, perhaps you'll share it with our viewers,
Speaker 1 00:12:24 Right. So, so, so who is John Galt anyway, as a series of essays that I wrote over a period of about five years or so, uh, for my newsletter, for the trust rescue letter, uh, originally for my subscribers, I actually kind of crowdfunded this, uh, effort from my subscribers, but, but the way it started out is I started another series called an atheist, reads the Bible. And that's just me going through the Bible, you know, book by book, chapter by chapter, coming up with some interesting, interesting things that came from the fact that I had a fairly secular upbringing and I never really read the Bible. So at one point I sat down, I said, I gotta find out what's really in this. And it turns out there's some very interesting aspects to it. Some things you might not expect, um, good and bad. Uh, but the, I started going through writing this series of books of articles in the Bible, and I thought, well, wait a minute, I've got all these subscribers who are Objectivists, they didn't necessarily sign up, you know, to get churched up here, to read about the Bible.
Speaker 1 00:13:14 I better, you know, as compensation, throw them a few articles about Atlas shrugged. And then as I got into it, I start coming up with more and more ideas of, oh, I should write about this aspect. I should write about that, that aspect. Uh, and I ended up with 20 chapters. Uh, so it, it turned it into a bigger project that has made it and went a lot faster than, than the Bible when the Bible, the Bible I'm only in, uh, uh, I just finished the book of Joshua writing about that. So I'm still well into the beginning of the old Testament. Um, so this went a lot faster, but it was my attempt to sort of cover all a whole range of, of issues of the literary aspects of Atlas shrugged, the historical contexts of it. Um, the philosophical themes in it. Uh, one of my favorite things was writing about iron Rand as a philosopher of the enlightenment, because there's been a certain rebirth of interest in the enlightenment in the last couple of years, you had receiving Pinker and Jonah Goldberg, a prominent people writing about the enlightenment and looking at iron Rand as a philosopher of the enlightenment, how she fits in with that tradition, uh, and going through over all this different aspects, sort of, uh, things that I've learned from twenty-five years of, of more than 25 years now of reading this of reading Iran's novel and, and thinking about it and, and about how, how it connects to the, to the events of the world that I'm covering in my, uh, in the rest of my work as a, as a commentator on politics.
Speaker 0 00:14:40 Well, let's step back then and, and share with us. We talked about the origin story of the book, but how about the origin story with iron? How did you personally get introduced to her ideas?
Speaker 1 00:14:54 Yeah, so, so I was dragged into objectivism kicking and screaming. Um, I, I, I initially started out, so I had a friend old friend name, Robert Garmin he's, he's still around as an objectivist. Um, but he and I were friends in high school and he encountered the Fountainhead and started getting high and round and Sergeant bringing up all these arguments to me and I started arguing against them. Right. So I was trying to refute Iran. Um, but I, you know, I sort of realized that, well, there's something there. So I said, okay, I have to read this and find out what it's about so I can refute it. Right. And you can see how all that worked out. Um, but the interesting thing is, and this ties into a little bit to, to what I'm doing in the book is that when I first I picked first, I picked up Atlas shrugged, and I started reading that I got about 200 pages in and I said, I put it down.
Speaker 1 00:15:39 And I said, you know, it's very compelling writing, but I don't think it's realistic. I don't think life is like this. And then there was this period of a couple of months where I'd be reading the newspaper or watching the TV and think, Hey, that's just like something from Atlas shrugged. And it just kept happening over and over again, it's this experience. I think, uh, all, all fans of the novel had had at some point of seeing something in the news, something happening in real life and thinking, you know, seeing the parallels to the novel. And that made me think, well, maybe life is like this. Maybe there is some, you know, maybe it's more realistic, realistic than I thought. So I read through all of that. I still wasn't satisfied because at, before encountered, uh, iron Rand, I would, I was already interested in my, my career goal was to be a philosopher.
Speaker 1 00:16:21 Uh, and so I was already very interested in philosophy. So I said, I had to go down to the deepest thing. So I'm perhaps unusual in that the second book of Iran's that I read was the introduction to objectivist epistemology. And I had this very vivid memory of getting to the chapter on axiomatic concepts, where she explains, you know, the, the, the, the basis of validity of the axioms of the basis of her whole metaphysics. And it kind of clicked for me there. And, you know, the rest, as they say, is history that that one was that clicks into place. I just, it was just absorbing everything else. Um, so I sort of, uh, set out to refute a objectivism and set up through a few diagrams philosophy and then ended up getting dragged into it. Uh, uh, despite that effort,
Speaker 0 00:17:04 We're glad that you did
Speaker 1 00:17:06 Connects to what I'm doing with the book is that I got dragged into it because I saw all the connections to the, to the outside world. And that was really what sort of, sort of pulled me in. And that's one of the things that I really wanted to get across and convey in the book that I in, in some of the chapters of this book.
Speaker 0 00:17:24 So I touched on earlier, how you are often an originator of some counterintuitive or unconventional takes on, on things. And, uh, w one of those was, um, in one of the more provocative arguments in the book, which was all an iron Rand hero really wants, is love, um, which certainly stands in stark contrast with some of the characatures, uh, some of which you mentioned in the book, including one by a conservative, who said that ran, believed quote, the parasitic week deserve to be tried upon by the capitalistic powerful. Um, so what did you mean by that? All nine ran hero really wants is love.
Speaker 1 00:18:16 So, so one of the sort of side purposes of the book is to refute a lot of the, uh, or answer a lot of the misconceptions that reason there are, there are so many misconceptions is people come to Iran to, to her books with certain categories, know pre-constructed in their mind if you're either this or you're that you're either left or you're right. You're either in favor of the retro in favor of the poor. And so therefore if you, if you have a bunch of heroes who are rich businessmen, then therefore you must hate the poor, right? That that sort of, or you're the materialists or, or a spiritualist. And therefore, if you, uh, celebrate material accomplishments and achievement, therefore you're, you are a total materialist in the, in the sense of not believing in anything, the spiritual value of anything. So a lot of this is basically saying Iran does not accept your categories, but the categories you go in with as your alternatives are not necessarily valid and challenging them is a major part of the point of, of her philosophy and her novels.
Speaker 1 00:19:14 Uh, so all nine right here are really wants his love is what I came up with in answer, starting out with the idea that one of the characters is that, uh, the Iran loves the rich people and, and, and being rich is the most important thing in Iran's philosophy. Now, if for those who started with the Fountainhead, you already know something that, that what that's wrong with this, because the Fountainhead is basically about a bunch of starving artists, right? Uh, and, and people who are going broke, uh, uh, at several points in the novel to, to pursue their artistic vision. But the thing about Atlas truck that I find interesting is that a lot of the main heroes in Atlas drugs are downwardly mobile. They give up massive fortunes, whereas a lot of the villains, I mean, at the end of the novel, uh, Jim Taggart, the main villain is, is, is probably the wealthiest man in the world, or one of the wealthiest men in the world.
Speaker 1 00:20:03 So a lot of the villains are, are, are, are themselves corrupt. They're corrupt will be called crony capitalists in the inexact, uh, language of today. Uh, but they're, they're politically collected connected businessmen who are very wealthy or they're politicians and political figures and bureaucrats who are not necessarily wealthy in and of themselves, but like the apparatchiks in the Soviet union, they still manage to live very well. Um, whereas a lot of the heroes are people who give up their fortune and, you know, we elsewise the oil Baron and we next see him swinging a lunch pail on his way to work on his, on his, uh, on this little small rig that he has in gold sculpture. So I was putting out that process. But in addition to that, the thing I noticed is that making money is actually not the main focus of the lives of the main characters, because they think that for granted, they know how to make money, right?
Speaker 1 00:20:59 Being able to make money, to be able to produce, being able to create a successful enterprise is not what's at stake for them in the novel what's at stake for them is primarily a set of relationships of love, you know, relationships of love for their work, and also have love for each other. So for example, the whole first part of Atlas shrugged, the, the, the main, first main section outlets drug is really about, I think of it as being about the loneliness of the producers. And you have Hank Reardon and daggy Taggart, you know, working hard to keep the roll, keep the economy afloat and keep the world moving and facing hostility or a difference from everybody around them, including from their own family members and having this tremendous sense that there's a scene early on. It's a scene where, um, uh, Dagney is seeing the newspaper reports that of Francisco Dancona, which hits her pretty hard, you know, because of their history.
Speaker 1 00:21:50 And she sort of, uh, the, the, the music of Holly's fourth concerto, which is about, uh, this, you know, struggle against pain and, and, and, um, and despair is playing and just as it's her song and her cry. So there's this tremendous sense of her being, being a lonely and of, of not of having a sense of being unrewarded and unrecognized and this work that she's doing. And then of course, you could see how that drives the whole plot of the second of the first part, because you have, you know, uh, these two lonely producers who basically find each other, uh, in their relationship between, Hey, between, uh Dagny and Hank Gruden. And so, and you can see that, especially, I think in the scene at the end of the first run of the zone vault line, where all the cow Colorado producers are there and they have, they're all greeting each other.
Speaker 1 00:22:37 And it's almost like she's found this family that she never knew that she had. Uh, so there's this sense that, you know, what an iron Grande here are really wants is the spiritual value that's behind the material values that he produced. And that includes, you know, the love of his love of his work, and also the love of the other people who share his values. And so it's very much the opposite of if you actually look at the structure of the, of the plot in the novel, it's very much the opposite of the caricature people have in their heads.
Speaker 0 00:23:10 Yeah. And I thought that observation took on added poignancy when you think of, uh, perhaps Iran's own loneliness, you know, and, and her desire for a community for other minds that she could, she could connect with another, uh, another counterintuitive take you remarked on quote, how much of Atlas shrugged was a tribute to the American common man. Do you want to elaborate on that? This
Speaker 1 00:23:43 Is something that I find fascinating, actually again, one of the caricature is here is Iran aided. They Everett first, the common man, I think it's actually, there's a fascinating evolution that happens as she comes from Russia. She, the United States cause early her very earliest things. She had, uh, unpublished notes for a short, the first story called the little street. And it's very much sort of, it's very much bit more, it's sort of like there are themes that are in the Fountainhead later, but it's much more angry and bitter. And there's much more of the sense of the, the common man being venal and corrupt and hating the extraordinary person. Whereas by the time you get to the Fountainhead, you know, you have characters thrown in like, there's Mike, the welder who are thrown in specifically to create a bond between the extraordinary man and the common man, and the idea of sort of this contempt for the common man being, um, being corrupted, vicious, that's embedded in, Hey Greer.
Speaker 1 00:24:35 I started that and I thought, Hey, that's invited to Gail widen, uh, portrayed as being mistaken. And that that's part of the, where he goes wrong. So there's this evolution interview with a common manner. I think it comes partly from her being from a Russian context because there's this whole Russian tradition coming up, you know, in the decades before, before she was born. And before she came to the U S of the know the Russia had the, the intellectuals in Russia generally had the idea of wanting something better or more liberal system or some kind of reform system or something other than the, uh, the tyranny of the czars, but they look, but they oftentimes, you know, when they would stick their necks out, they would find that there was no support coming to them from the common man, the Russian street, who seemed to like having a strong man and, you know, the more things change, the more things stay the same.
Speaker 1 00:25:23 Um, and so there was this tremendous bitterness and the Russian intelligence yet towards the common man. But you also saw that, uh, one of the, I know authors that she knew, I know she read is Ortega. You get, say, uh, Spanish writer who wrote about things called the revolt of the masses and S and which the sub theme of part of it is probably that the masses are revolting, uh, uh, in, in the other sense of the word. Uh, so there was this sense of the incidence, this very European sense of the intellectuals, trying to strive for something better in the country, man being indifferent and this tremendous bitterness, which right. I think she absorbed from the Russian context. And she got from some of the European intellectuals she read, but then she comes to America, right. And she just countered as the American common man, you see this evolution where by the time you go to Atlas, shrugged, you know, the, the one person that, that the one group of people that, that Deggy taker can count on getting along with, or that hae burden can counter getting along with, um, uh, uh, other than, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:26:22 And other producers like herself, are the guys on the track workers, you know, th the, the blue collar workers out there, uh, the, the American common man, or as I put, I put out my book, there's one of the, I think people tend to underestimate the role, Eddie Willers that how crucial he is to the plot and how much of the plot he's in, you know, and I point out if you, if you think of this as a movie, you know, if you can actually fill them all of Atlas shrugged as a movie, any Williams would have this enormous amount of screen time that because he spends all this time talking to this mysterious worker now, spoiler alert, I like to not, you know, for people who are new, but I think this audience is not going to be that new, the worker turns out to be John goal. So the greatest hero and your sort of every man character, Eddie, Willers, our close friends who spend hours and hours talking with one another. And that's the central thread that goes through and, and serves all sorts of purposes, uh, in, in the plot of the novel. So it shows that she went through this, this evolution on her view of the common man. And I think it was her encounter with the American common man who sort of embodied these enlightenment ideals and the enlightenment individualism that I think changed her outlook on that.
Speaker 0 00:27:36 Well, and speaking of a potential future adaptation of Atlas shrugged into a film, you offered up, uh, what was a very intriguing idea. I thought it was to cast actors who bore resemblance to current political figures, um, who matched the characters in some significant respect. So I think you had Paul Krugman for Wesley mouse, Bernie Sanders for, uh, Eugene Lawson. And, um, you had a special recommendation for the role of the president that the head of state, and that was
Speaker 1 00:28:16 Not the president. He's the head of the head of state. I know,
Speaker 0 00:28:19 I know you have that in here. Um, which I thought was really interesting and, uh, and I will quote it. Um, there's the relentless glad-handing, uh, w there's the low brow colloquialisms, there's the soul of the horse trading machine politician, but above all else, there's one thing has weakness for poorly thought through brainstorms that seem, um, really shrewd, but end in disaster. And you said that was the classic, uh, Joe Biden. So my question is that seems particularly precious, uh, particularly given what's happened in the last few weeks, but has your role, uh, has your experience actually watching Joe Biden in the role of head of state, has it changed or added to your casting recommendations? Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:29:18 I'm going to have to start referring to him as the head of the state for now, because, you know, I heard does something interesting there that when she has, you know, it's the legislature and not Congress is the head of the stage and not the president. So she wants to sort of subtly let us know you're not in Kansas anymore, that this American system in the novel is not quite what it is in our, the one that we're familiar with. But, um, I think Joe Biden has, yeah, he's lived down and I won't call it pressure though, because this is a guy who's been in politics since. Um, I don't know if, since I was like three years old when he was first elected to office, so he's been in politics my entire life. And at the time I wrote that I was observing him as I think he was just finishing up eight years.
Speaker 1 00:29:59 I was vice president. So this was retrospective identifying all those qualities of his character. And boy, does that, is that born out by what he's doing now? Um, you know, I, I think it's a line that certain about Wesley mouse, but it applies to, to, to Biden and to Mr. Thompson as well, which has something that he's the zero point at the meeting of opposing forces and he aspired to be nothing else. And that's sort of, you know, that's Joe Biden sort of sleep walked into the presidency. And I think that's what he has. He's the meeting point at that is the zero at the meeting point of opposing forces. Um, but, uh, you know, that, that came out that idea of casting the characters out of real life. People came from the fact that, you know, covering politics is what I do, uh, as a, you know, on a day-to-day basis, but also from I think the power of a movie, a short movie, and I've tried to sort of adapt it in that way is that you can make it fully realistic for the reader, because I find a lot of people will go through, especially with the character.
Speaker 1 00:30:59 So why I have, so who is John Galt? Anyway, as the main title of the book is one of the chapters is basically saying, addressing this fact that I think a lot of people, when they first encountered John Galt, they don't know what to make of him because a book requires you you're, you're reading words on a page and you have to take these characters and you have to translate them in your own mind into real living, breathing people. And John got so unusual and he's usual unusual and very specific way that I'd like to talk about later, um, that people have a hard time translating him. And so people will say, oh, he's an empty character. He's just a spokesman for this philosophy. There's no character. There, there is. It's just, it's very hard for somebody on their own to translate is harder than I think for some of the other characters for somebody to translate that.
Speaker 1 00:31:41 And so that's why I think coming up with these real life examples of saying, you know, like the Jean Lawson is the sort of humanity in Atlas trunk, he's the bloodthirsty humanitarian, right? He is the guy who, who, who is sort of this mushy guy who leads with sympathy for the common man, but it's always in favor of the most drastic and draconian, uh, possible solution to any problem. Uh, he's the one who said to it is that John Galt speeches vicious, cause it'll make people want to be happy, right? So he's the bloodthirsty humanitarian. And I always think of, uh, uh, of Bernie Sanders as that, that, you know, he's a guy who talks about how compassionate he is, but the dominant character of all his speeches is this incredible contempt and anger that he has for the world. Uh, so he's your, he's your bloodthirsty humanitarian.
Speaker 1 00:32:25 And, you know, Joe Biden is, uh, now this actually came out of, I did some work once on trying, trying to do a screenplay on, out for illustrations. Um, and when you do that and you go through all this dialogue and, you know, Iran, it's, it's part of the nature of the, the novel as a medium, that an author writes 10 times as many words as you could possibly use on an, a film on screen because, you know, film was a visual medium, this is a medium of words. So you have to take the dialogue of every character and filter it down. And in doing that with Mr. Thompson, I I've tried to visualize, you know, how would he talk? How would he act? What are the parts that I really need to keep of his dialogue? And I found I could get him spot on if I just thought of Joe Biden in my mind that he is the living, the characterization.
Speaker 1 00:33:09 I think it's important for the novel to realize that because, you know, Joe Biden is the guy who always has these brainstorms, these great ideas that seem convincing to him and turn in disaster and practice. And I think that sort of, if you get that, you sort of get how it is that Mr. Thompson lets himself get talked into doing this whole big, uh, event where he puts John Galt on live TV. And of course it ends in disaster, but why he would do that, the impulsiveness of that comes from this, you know, the foolishness of the character, that it is helpful to, to grasp. Uh, it helps using Joe Biden as a model to grasp that. And I think we've seen that it was this withdrawal from Afghanistan, that he had this idea in his head as how it was going to work. And it was totally unrealistic and ended it ended in disaster, but because he's such a, she's the zero at the beating point of opposing forces, he is not able to project the consequences and think of things, you know, I talked about how politicians, they don't think of things as being really real.
Speaker 1 00:34:08 They think of the opposing forces pushing it against them and how to appease these different forces. And I think because of that, because he's not able to see things as fully real, he's not able to do things that are, uh, in a rational way and project the actual consequences of his actions.
Speaker 0 00:34:24 Well, um, you had another chapter in the book on management secrets of Atlas shrugged, which was actually excerpted that as an article, which had caught my eye and that was originally what was going to be the subject of our interview, but that was before I delved into the entire book. Um, so I'm going to skip over those for now. Let's, we're going to put the link to that article in, um, in our comments section. So people can go out and check it out. But, uh, but I, as I said to you, I wanted to leave time to talk about objectivism and also to, uh, to get to some of our audience questions. Cause I think we had one of the, uh, the records in, um, our registration for this at least on zoom. Um, but I, I did want to get to one more, uh, chapter in your book, which was, did Dominique crank on when, um, because it has, I would say the best exposition that I've read juxtaposing, the benevolent and malevolent universe premise.
Speaker 0 00:35:35 And it helped me a lot personally, um, with what has always been my, my biggest, uh, sort of sore point, my biggest frustration in my job leading the Atlas society. And that's when I confront, um, the pessimism that so many Objectivists, uh, who seem to believe that, you know, the ideological battles are lost, that the victory of collectivism is now unavoidable. And so, you know, therefore there's, there's really no point in anything that, that I'm doing and also no point in, um, supporting such work. So it seems like you may have also encountered this attitude, uh, as well from, from those who you, you said, um, glory, glory, glory, a little too much in the end of days, atmosphere in the later chapters of Atlas drug as if that were the goal. And in the real world, they sometimes advocate voting for the greater, uh, evil as if the goal of politics were to hasten destruction. So what was helpful to me in providing me the moral fuel to keep fighting, um, was how you reframed the, uh, this phenomenon, not as a moral issue. And I think that's why I was getting frustrated, but as a metaphysical one, um, you can either muster that fuel or you can't. And so, you know, not to kind of get angry with people who, who can, it's not just like they're being perversed, but just they don't have it in them. So I'd love it if you unpack that a little bit. Right. I,
Speaker 1 00:37:27 I think, I think anybody who has been into Jeff objectives for a while has sort of encountered that, that strain of pessimism. And sometimes you want to sort of shake people wide by the lapels and sort of draws them out of it. Um, uh, and, and so to find a little bit about the, the, the title did Dominique Franklin, when, you know, so I'm somebody who read the Fountainhead, sorry, the Atlas shrugged first, uh, but other people have read the Fountainhead first. And it was in thinking about, well, how would you look at Atlas shrugged if you'd read the Fountainhead first, that one of the things that struck me is when you get to the early scenes where Francisco and Konya is basically saying the world's corrupt and we're deliberately going out and destroying things. So it will, it will crumble faster. You would immediately recognize.
Speaker 1 00:38:07 I said, oh, that's, that's Dominic Franklin from the Fountainhead. And when, uh, Dagney is saying, no, I'm going to keep working. I'm going to, you know, she wants to do her work her way, and you'd recognize her as, as, um, as Howard work. And, and, uh, but then of course, things get reversed that, that she's the one that comes around different Cisco's viewpoint and not the other way around, which is what we'd expect if you were a reader of the Fountainhead. So I tried to sort of use that as a springboard to, to analyze this huge issue of optimism versus pessimism. Um, and I, you know, I think in, in objectivism, it comes from a long that would object to this. So specifically as a movement, it comes from this long history of, I used to say that the, the standard objectivist analysis of current events or the state of the world for most of the time that I've been in the movement has been something along the lines of, you know, we're in decline, we once had good ideas and they've been, they've, they've gone.
Speaker 1 00:39:01 Uh, they'd been abandoned. Uh, I just hope the final class doesn't come in my lifetime, you know, have a good evening. Thanks everybody for coming to my talk. And that was sort of less pessimism. And it's not just objectivist though, because there's been a bit of a Voke recently, just, just starting out a little movement, uh, more broadly in the culture to recognize the existence of progress. And, um, you know, so like Steven Pinker has the book enlightenment now that you've watched recently. Yeah. And he spends like a hundred and hundred, 200 pages, the beginning of the book spending going through over all these statistics that show comprehensively how life is so much better than it was, you know, 20 years ago or 50 years ago, or a hundred years ago, basically the enlightenment and the industrial evolution radically improves human life instead of shaking people out of their anti-progress, uh, uh, attitudes.
Speaker 1 00:39:52 Um, I've, I've been alone. I've been, I forgot that for a long time. Um, and I I'm actually, for one of the other things I'm working on symposium, I'm actually going to start something on, you know, what would our debate look like? What would the arguments we have look like political arguments of cultural arguments. We look like we have, what would they look like if we recognize that progress was real and it actually has. And instead of, or what a lot of them bar, uh, discussion is now and what a lot of Objectivists discussion has been, which is how do we assign blame for the fact that the world is falling apart? Right? So it's like, well, here's this bad things happening. Here's this bad thing happening here, and it's all happening because you haven't accepted my ideas. And that's sort of been the model for debating this one Objectivists and in the culture in general, I think we should have as more of a discussion of given how much enormous progress has happened in the world in the last 200 years, who gets the credit for it.
Speaker 1 00:40:45 And we should be arguing for our share of the credit. Well, you know, it was because of reason, it was because of, uh, uh, uh, the advances of science. It was because of individualism and a greater degree of freedom. And that's what produced all these tremendous advances we've had. We should be all fighting over our share of the credit. You can imagine what a different conversation that would be, right. So, you know, we can, I can, I'm actually, I'm having these discussions right now with talking to welfare state people, uh, advocates of the welfare state. And, and they're saying, oh, well actually it's the welfare state that helped improve. And then we have to have an argument about, well, no, the welfare state didn't do it. It was actually done by, you know, free markets at greater production. And that's a much more interesting. And I think in some ways more enlightening debate to have, because it recenters things on not on the imminent collapse, but on the, the ways in which the power of human beings to make progress and to create and to achieve, which is really the underlying message of Atlas shrugged.
Speaker 1 00:41:46 So that's why I think the people who, who act as if Dominic Franklin one, right, the people who take the more pessimistic interpretation, you know, even Objectivists and fans of the novel, who take the more pessimistic message from Atlas shrugged, they need to look at it really, as it's a, it's a message about the power of the human mind, the power of human creativity and perseverance to, to triumph over adversity and to, and to improve things and make things better. And I think that's where we need to have the refocus onto and away from the pessimism.
Speaker 0 00:42:20 And then, you know, in your description, you'd also talked about different characters, uh, who maybe shared a lot of the values like Cameron. And for example, in, um, the Fountainhead, and it wasn't necessarily a moral failing, but that he just couldn't, couldn't find it within himself to, to share that optimism.
Speaker 1 00:42:45 One of the powers of where the real power of iron rounds, uh, writing and our philosophy is especially on morality, is that she realized that that morality is based on a metaphysical base. And it's a metaphysical based in the sense of your view of what the world is, and what's possible the human beings in the world and that completely, and it has such a profound effect in shaping your view of, of morality, uh, base to say what's possible to human beings. Uh, so, uh, fundamentally the pessimistic outlook is not a moral outlook. It is a metaphysical outlook it's that someone has let the bitterness or the frustration or the anger, or the sense of the existence of obstacles, overwhelmed for them, all the evidence of, you know, our ability to create into achieve. And I find that kind of now I find that kind of in a way now is the shaking people out of the Bible, the Pelz aspect of it.
Speaker 1 00:43:41 I find that a little inexcusable in today's context because we have it so good because life today is so infinitely better than it was, um, you know, 200 years ago. Uh, there are so many, not just technological improvement, but so many more opportunities that people have in life. I mean, just the fact that I'm, I'm broadcasting to you here. I I'm, you're in Malibu or you're in California. I think I'm in the middle of nowhere in central Virginia. And, uh, uh, I'm able to do this and I, I regularly have things. So I was reading, uh, some years ago I was reading a book by William Shire, a famous, uh, famous, uh, reporter from the 1930s and forties. And he talked about when CBS was this new startup radio show or radio network, how he organized the first world news Roundup. So the idea is they on the telephone, they got, uh, reporters from Rome and Berlin and Paris and London, and they were all broadcasting all at the same time, broadcasting to the listeners back in America.
Speaker 1 00:44:42 And this had never been done before. It was a totally radical thing. Well, the other day I did a podcast where I had one person in Paris and one person in Mumbai, and we were having a discussion back and forth. And I could just do that. You know, a regular guy, no major budget, no major technology, a regular guy out of a seller in, in, uh, in, in, in the middle of nowhere, Virginia, I can do that. We know so casually that the possibilities we have for us available to us are so vast that I think that, you know, there's a perversity and then saying, we're doomed. I actually call it cultural <inaudible>, I've got something coming out on that, uh, in a bit, uh, where our mouth is, Thomas Malthus famously had the idea that we'll population is going to expand, and it's going to create more problems and more needs.
Speaker 1 00:45:29 And our production can't possibly expand to keep up with it. And he was wrong because, you know, people come up with new ideas and new innovations. He was writing basically before the industrial revolution. It didn't realize that people come up with new innovations at such an amazing pace that not only would we keep up with the growth of growth of population, but we'd, you know, our production will grow vastly outpace the growth of population and people will become much wealthier. Well, I think there's a cultural or ideological malfeasance aneurysm behind this. The idea that our problems out in the world are multiplying at such a rate that it's overwhelming our intellectual ability to come up with new ideas and, and, uh, good ideas to counter those problems. And it implies that, you know, we, humans are just miss it back passively that we're not capable of coming up with and accepting and listening to the ideas that we need, uh, in order to, to cope with all the problems that we have. Uh, whereas I think we will come up with and accept new ideas. And I've got a fad we're capable of doing that at a faster rate than we have new problems.
Speaker 0 00:46:31 And I think that that is more consonant with the kinds of things that you hear, the characters, the heroes, and that was drug. They say, oh, you know, I'll figure it out. I don't know now, but I'm confident that I will figure it out. And I, I can't under emphasize how important I thought that that chapter is. And it's important as well, you know, for, for people who are in the business of promoting ideas, um, and, uh, and running think tanks because I've noticed in, in my five or so years, uh, at least in this think tank position, I was previously at the Cato Institute, uh, that there's almost a, a different two different kinds of models. And one is sort of, I call it the opera model, where you have products and services for your donors. You know, you have some, uh, conferences or you have fancy retreats, or what have you.
Speaker 0 00:47:29 And then there is, uh, the, the other kind of model, which is you're, you may never get to go to a fancy, you know, um, hobnob with other donors, but you're paying for actual products and services, which are about advancing a mission. And that's, yeah, that's what I'm trying to do with the Atlas society, although, um, while also preserving an opportunity for people to get together and given that we have, boy, we have just, this has absolutely flown. I want to get to, um, to talking about objectivism, but maybe a couple of quick hits here from some of our, uh, folks that have questions. Uh, George Barker wants to know whether the, um, an atheist reads the Bible. Might that also be coming out as a book. At some point,
Speaker 1 00:48:18 I had to get past that I have to get past, I have to at least do the whole old Testament before I can publish that. Um, like I said, it's in the back burner because, you know, it's not, my main focus is not religious studies, uh, at this point in my life. Um, so it, it, it will have it for now subscribers. We're going to have to, you can find it on the website. Um, and I think it's, you know, the print subscribers don't have to worry about the paywall. Um, but eventually that will be a book, but I'm not promising any kind of timeline on that because I've got too many other things that are more sort of central to my, to my work that I'm working with. And,
Speaker 0 00:48:53 And I've already put in a vote for, for getting this on to audible, which maybe might be able to help with, uh, David Horowitz, David, you didn't respond to my emails when I was in San Francisco. Still love to see you and Donna, but, um, here's a quick question. And when I know that you address in your book, uh, is if Iran had a love for the common man, why was there no room at, uh, for Eddie Willers at Gulf sculpture?
Speaker 1 00:49:24 I do address that cause I have a whole thing on the Gulf and Eddie relationship. Um, well, Gulf doesn't ask him, but the American fish, wherever they go knows any better than anybody else in the book, right. He spends hours and hours and hours talking with them in the cafeteria. Uh, he does get an offer. He gets the offer from Dagny. So, and so Iran dealt with that, like, well, why, why doesn't Eddie go? Cause you know, it's not that she had a ban on assistance going with people, right? So, um, one of the things I like to point out to tweak the conservatives is that, um, when, when, uh, uh, uh, Dan Konya copper collapses Francisco comes to the goal to, to the, to the, uh, to the gold sculpture. And he comes with a bunch of his top workers. So I said that, you know, a goal, John, uh, Gulf Walsh has population is expanded by an influx of undocumented, Latin American workers.
Speaker 1 00:50:14 Uh, but so it's clear that other people are bringing their assistants. I don't know when I, except for makes it to, uh, uh, that Rudin secretary ever makes it to gold sculpture. I suspect she would be welcome. So she puts in there a line where, where Dagny says to Eddie, don't you want it basically don't you want to come to, I don't remember the exact words, but aren't you going to come also? And he says, no, I can't. So she puts it in there. So we never get that gold makes an offer to them. But we, you know, I guess I built those in better than anybody else. And I think she wanted to keep them out there. Cause she wanted to, you remember, she's dramatizing the role of the great producers and creators and thinkers in the world. So she has to have a character who represents the common man and all the virtues of the common man, but she also have to then show what happens to him when all of the great producers that people who are above, you know, who are operating at a higher level when all of them disappear.
Speaker 1 00:51:06 So that's why Eddie has to stay literarily. It's required that he has to stay in the world. And you know, that's something people say, people treat, I will start sometimes like it's a documentary. And what happens to the characters? You know, it has to be what you would want to actually happen in the real world. And remember, this is an author, this is a writer, who's got a theme that she's trying to get across and all the characters exist to serve that theme. I said that the author is the God of her little world. And, uh, you know, the, the, the, the people are there to be used for her inscrutable purposes. So, uh, she has her purposes and the purpose of Edie staying in the world and not going with Dagney is that so we can be there at that last scene that he has with his uncertain fate of showing what happens to the honest, common man when the great producers and creators and achievers, uh, uh, have exited from the world. So she needs to be there to show that, and that's why she keeps up.
Speaker 0 00:52:01 All right, well, in the last eight or nine minutes that we have, uh, and we're not on any strict time table, so we can go over your schedule allows, um, I wanted to ask, why do you think it is that objectivism hasn't gained a greater influence over culture in political discourse? You know, you were talking about, we should be fighting for the credit, you know, of all of the progress that's that's happened. I think there is a, uh, argument to be made that Iran can lay claim to a good portion of that credit in the secondary influences that she's had. Um but is it, is it that sort of pessimism optimism? Is it, you know, politics, what
Speaker 1 00:52:53 It was a number of things? Um, I think th I was thinking about a couple with small things and I have a big thing. Uh, one of the small things is that I'm going to somewhat unusual as a writer in that a lot of what she wrote was tied into commentary of the events of her time. So for example, uh, there's articles, she did extremism, or the artists smearing, and the actual contents of the article is basically about a piss tamales and how concepts are formed. And she saw that she introduces the idea of an antique concept. Uh, but the actual article is commenting on the Republican national convention of 1964. So part of the problem I think we have right now, because I think I heard you have a huge influence on an older generation of conservatives because during the cold war, she was vitally necessary to them.
Speaker 1 00:53:38 She was the person when the conflict was individuals and versus collectivism, you know, the U S versus the Soviet union, she was vitally important, necessary, and important to help explain that. But I think what's happened is after the cold war, I've been noticing a younger regeneration of conservatives who have different concerns at different aspects that they're, that they want to address. And I think she leaves, this is a certain amount of relevance because she's writing in that context of the big political and cultural, the culture wars, if you will, of the 20th century, which is not the same thing as the culture war of the 21st century. So that's part of it. And I think one thing that I've been wanting to do is sort of do an updated series of saying, okay, let's take Iran's article. Somebody writes articles where she introduces some of these big ideas and let's show let's.
Speaker 1 00:54:25 I got a sort of series in the works of taking them and saying, oh, how do these apply to the current, uh, controversies and take her ideas out of that context of the 20th century, in which she wrote a lot of those things. And she, wasn't just an abject philosopher who would treat us, she wrote articles on, you know, current political events and then inserted his philosophical ideas into those. So can we update some of that? I think that would help, but the big one is that I think there's been too much emphasis spin, almost like problem with objectives. We've been inserted too much on Rand. Now, I want to explain that, which is that there's been a lot of emphasis to say, how can we take Iran to promote her ideas? And I think, I think we also have, we'll have to have just as much emphasis on how can we go out and create new, create new things that are, um, and, uh, she, she wrote a great wine and I'll shrug the line of dialogue into the mouth of Robert Sadler.
Speaker 1 00:55:25 It was like, one moment of dignity is he says, uh, last a crucial new achievement. That's not mine. And what we need is more emphasis on how can people who are Objectivists, who are influenced by iron man's ideas, how can they create their own achievements, taking her ideas and using them and applying them to create their own achievements that live an impact on the culture? Because I think that it's, I think it's a, it's a mistake about the way I think ideas spread. And it's one thing I noticed persistently one with the pessimism and objectivism, there has been a persistent idea that everything goes from the top down. So, uh, the idea that, you know, we get Objectivists teaching philosophy at Harvard, and then everything will flow just from that. And that Google won the battle and everything will flow from that. Whereas how a culture changes.
Speaker 1 00:56:11 And a lot of times it changes from the bottom up from people creating art from people, creating a history for people working in journalism from, from people who are inventors and, and, and, uh, scientists that all of the stuff comes up for all the different achievements. And, you know, my sort of view of how the culture would change is that you would have rational ideas in psychology and rational ideas and science and rational ideas and in history, et cetera. So by the time a person who reads Atlas shrugged or reads on one of Iran's, you know, works of philosophy, they'd say, well, Doug probably knows this. Of course, you know, of course the mind is the source of all wealth. Everybody knows that that's basic economics 1 0 1. Uh, you know, that if, if you had these ideas of rational ideas, percolating through all these different fields, all at once, uh, rather than just all coming down from, you know, the Harvard, the Harvard, uh, philosophy department, a faculty lounge that you would have, that's how you have a profound effect on the culture. So I think it's, it's more of the idea of Objectivists going out and Objectivists intellectuals and indeed individual Objectivists going out and accomplishing new things that will draw attention to the contents of those, of their ideas, uh, that, that would prepare the ground for that. Um, more, much more effectively. So I think it's, it's crucial new ideas that are not hers, is that that's what we need, uh, in, in that sense of, you know, people taking her ideas and using them to create important new things.
Speaker 0 00:57:39 Um, that that's, that's interesting. I hadn't quite thought of it that way. I would add to that, uh, my Tate, which is, um, you know, people need to be aware, they need to have some consciousness of, uh, of the author of her works. And I've noticed, um, in my 30 years or so of, of being interested in, in her work, going from any time Iran's name was brought up to becoming something very controversial and very negative, very adversarial to about 20 years ago, maybe 20, 25 years ago, at least in California, when I moved out here that I was getting a blank stare. And, um, I actually found that to be an encouraging in one respect that, okay, yes, maybe there's no awareness, but at least we could start re-introducing, um, the author and the ideas, uh, from our own perspective. And, um, in guiding my work, what I take is the, the metaphor, uh, that Iran uses in her address, um, to the graduating class of west point of a astronaut crash landing on a foreign planet.
Speaker 0 00:59:03 And, um, having the choice to look around and, um, examine, you know, what, what is, what is the new terrain or not? And to me, examining the new terrain means, okay, if these are the, this is our objective, you know, want to talk to young, where are they, you know, uh, oh, they're on Tik TOK. Okay, well, how do we get, uh, you know, our message on Tik TOK? Oh, they're on Instagram. They're, you know, uh, watching this kind of animated video there, this huge explosion of, of graphic novels. So that's kind of my, um, my, my take on that, but I also think we need a explosion of a lot of different ideas of competition of experimentation. Um, and that I think would, would just kind of help to pollinate and see, see what works and learn things last,
Speaker 1 01:00:00 Talking about optimism and pessimism is a great story. I like to tell on this, uh, pick that up from a guy named Benjamin Zander, um, a and he tells a story. This story is about two shoe salesman sent down from London to Sub-Saharan Africa in the 19th century. And they're tend to assess the market for shoes and they send back to different telegrams. And one says, situation hopeless. They don't wear shoes. And the other one sends a telegram, says unlimited opportunity. They don't have shoes yet. And that's sort of, I think we're objectives of is that, you know, it's an unlimited opportunity because people don't have to ideas yet. I think we have to have the confidence that these ideas have value that people need them, that they, they, they, people will, will, will seek that out even as an answer to the problems, uh, that they're going to be facing. So these ideas have tremendous value. It's a matter of basically letting people know that this is actually possible. You can, that this is available, but that, that making them aware of it. And I think, you know, unlimited opportunity because they don't have Atlas shrugged yet.
Speaker 0 01:01:01 I agree. And that's what I always say when I am at these student conferences where we exhibit at, you know, at least a dozen student conferences a year, and the kids come up and I asked, you know, have you heard of vine room? Have you ever read? They're like little shame face. No, I haven't. And I said, well, I wish I was in your shoes because you have your adventure ahead of you. I can't go on that adventure again for the first time. So, um, well, listen, we are past time. Uh, this has been spectacular, Robert, thank you very much. I want to encourage all of you to, to go out there. You won't regret it and get a copy of his book. Um, Robert you're on Twitter, any other places where, uh, people should go up and sign up for your newsletter?
Speaker 1 01:01:52 Uh, they should go to Trish Sinskey letter, uh, Tristan schilletter.com T R a C I N S K I E letter.com. Uh, that's sort of the, the main omnibus. I publish a bunch of different places, but everything will be announced or linked to their, uh, it's, it's sort of the main, uh, that's my personal newsletter. It's the main hub for my work. You'll get everything from, you know, the Bible to, uh, to current politics there.
Speaker 0 01:02:15 And also also I'll recommend a few of the, um, the, the interviews that he has on symposium there, uh, ranging from music to foreign policy, uh, to philosophy all over the place. But, uh, he did highly recommend those. And, um, I want to thank all of you who have joined us. Uh, if you enjoy this kind of interview and also the work that we're doing to introduce young people, to the ideas of Iran, please consider making a tax deductible donation to the Atlas society when perhaps you then come to our gala on November four in Malibu, um, and, uh, love to continue this conversation. Perhaps I'm going to send Robert and invite T clubhouse and see if I can lure him to spend a little bit of time with us there. Scott, I know you had a question that I couldn't get to, and perhaps we'll get to them in the conversation on clubhouse. So thank you, Robert, and thank you all. We'll see you next week. Take care.
