The Ricochet Podcast - Distant Worlds

Episode Date: July 15, 2015

This week, a discussion of the many wonders of the universe, from Donald Trump’s candidacy, to AEI president Arthur Brook’s vision for the conservative heart (buy his book, The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America), and of course, Pluto. On that topic, let’s just say that Rob and James have a more romantic outlook than Peter. Music from this week’s... Source

Hello, everyone. I'm not going to get I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't have any information on that. They don't understand what you're talking about. And that's going to prove to be disastrous. And what it means is that the people don't want socialism. They want more conservatism. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lileks and our guest today is Arthur Brooks. And then a conversation ranging three billion miles and beyond. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast, number 267. Notable because everybody, all three of us, are awake. We're brought to you by The Great Courses.

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we just never answer the phone. So don't worry about that. Yeah, you end up talking to some guy in India. Gentlemen, it has been the sort of week that is difficult to wrap one's calvarium around and you don't know where to begin. A nice piece of calvarium, I guess. Well, that's part of it, yes.

You have people who wake up and rub their hands with glee because they found a way to make nuns pay for contraception. Ha ha ha ha ha. You have people on the left who are falling all over themselves to defend a procedure which, even if it was followed to the exact letter of the law, which is questionable, still results in the most gruesome outcome you can imagine. And we have civilized men and women shrugging their shoulders and saying, eh, you got the Pentagon cutting 40,000 troops, but saying, on the other hand, we're going to let transgendered in because that's an essential part of the fighting force. You have the worst possible deal you can imagine with Iran now being flouted and touted and praised as the next thing that's going

to provide us with peace. You almost wish that you'd hitched a ride with Pluto because it seems to be headed for a saner place than the one we inhabit now. And then there's Trump. Peter, join in here. And which of these particular topics of perfidy and decline today spark your interest? Oh, the end of civilization is, of course, of some interest. But what's really compelling is Donald Trump, of course. A friend of mine sent me an email that ran to about 10 words. I put it up online on Ricochet and we got, what, 60 some replies. It's a pretty bracing, chastening email. I quoted in full, Peter, what on earth are we going to do about the Donald? Well, we're all wondering that. Ha, ha, ha.

He's amusing. But then my friend continues, runs third party, takes 5%, we lose. Save us. If Donald Trump runs third party and takes 5%, we probably will lose. It'll be Ross Perot all over again. Ross Perot took about 9% and cost George H.W. Bush the election, and we ended up with eight years of Bill Clinton putting in position Hillary, on and on and on, all because Ross Perot – actually, there were two, in my judgment, bad actors in that campaign.

One was Pat Buchanan. I say this of a friend, but Pat had really no reason to run in the primary in New Hampshire and damage George H.W. Bush. That's what encouraged Ross Perot to get into the race. And we all know what has taken place afterwards. I would like Donald Trump – of course, Donald Trump isn't listening and doesn't care what I say. And if he did listen, he'd insult me by Twitter. But I'd like him better. Which you wouldn't see anyway because you don't do what I say. And if he did listen, he'd insult me by Twitter. But I'd like him better. Which you wouldn't see anyway because you don't do it on Twitter. Which I wouldn't see anyway.

I'd like him better. I'd almost be willing to take him seriously if he said, I'm running for the Republican nomination. And if I do not get it, I will support anyone who does. I ruled out categorically the third party. He has? Yeah, he said that in an interview a couple of weeks ago. Did he? How about this as a policy towards Donald Trump? Everybody chills. I mean, look. I come pre-chilled for your convenience on this, ignoring the entire thing.

Yeah. I mean, look, the guy's got one issue that touches conservatives right now, and we're only talking about conservatives. Conservatives, I should say specifically Republican primary voters who tend to be more conservative than general election voters and tend to be more conservative than general standard issue Republicans. issue republicans uh this guy's got one issue right now which touches them and that's illegal immigration but he's really not any more tough on illegal immigration than scott walker or ted cruz but he's but he's the one talking about it and he got a fit in a fantastic piece of timing that he couldn't control he was talking about it right when we had we have a classic case of this ridiculous sanctuary city nonsense in san francisco where the the sheriff of San Francisco declared it a sanctuary city where you could be – if you were an illegal immigrant, you could go there and I guess commit crimes and the one guy committed murder, which completely vindicated – or not completely but almost completely vindicated Donald Trump's point. What's surprising to me is that Donald Trump is more of a rhino

than I am. You're leaving out Chapo. Don't you want to work in Chapo while you're talking about his work in China? I mean, the one thing that surprises me about my conservative friends who like Donald Trump is Donald Trump isn't conservative enough for me? That's just that should worry you. I didn't vote for Obama. I would never give money to Hillary. I don't support single payer. I mean, like this is like eventually. Look, here's what I think is really happening kind of psychographically.

And it's completely understandable. The right wing, the not the right wing. The conservative base, the Republican primary voters are spoiling for a fight. They're ready. They are ready. They are in the pens. Like in horse races, they are just chomping at the bit, champing at the bit. Sorry.

They are ready to go and they are impatient for this thing to start. And Donald Trump just started it. And that's why they like him. He's the only horse running on the field and they are impatient for this thing to start and Donald Trump just started it and that's why they like it. He's the only horse running on the field and they're thrilled. That is not a reason to support Donald Trump for the presidency of the United States or to vote for him in a primary. The first vote, by the way, is not for what, six months? But it's good theater for now. Everybody needs – your friend. I would send this email one word back for his six-word email, chill.

But yet if you say that you are not in favor of full-throated endorsement of what Donald Trump is doing, then of course you are worse than a rhino. You are an establishment conservative, which I just adore, absolutely love. And you're part of that NR crowd that's always trying to say what is and is not acceptable in conservative thought, as if the NR isn't the home to Mark Krikorian, who on immigration is pretty much, I think, where people think that, you know, the applaud his authenticity. He tells it like it is. He pushes it in their face. And that's true and that's good and that's something for the others to take heart. Carly Fiorino. I am a pathetic rhino squish. I am a pathetic rhino squish. Donald Trump is too liberal for me.

I understand. That's all you need to know. But it's also the fighting that people like to know. Yeah, that's right. That somebody doesn't come buffed and manicured and all of the rough edges sanded off that he'll say a few outrageous things. You take that temperament and you put it in some other and see which other presidential candidates can manifest it. Carly Fiorina is somebody who is, I think, tough and smart. And she does not back down. You don't get the sense that somebody is carefully tailored in the back of their head what she's going to say.

She says what she believes, and it's refreshing. And Carly Fiorina is stripping the bark off Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the person that these people seem to love so much, has been giving her money for years and praising her and calling her the best secretary of state ever. So when it comes to the others, which can manifest that degree of genuine authenticity or at least fake it? Scott Walker announced this week. Were either of you particularly impressed with the tenor, the tone, the speech? Did it leave you rah-rah or did it seem like another iteration of the introduction speech with requisite cues for America and applause lines for getting back and et cetera, et cetera? Speech was nothing special. I watched him on Sean Hannity. Hannity's been giving an hour to each of

these guys after they announced. And he was pretty good on Sean Hannity. I was impressed by Scott Walker in the same way that I was impressed by him 18 months or two years ago when I interviewed him myself. There's nothing to Scott Walker in the way that there often is something to other politicians. He's not especially sophisticated. He's not especially poised or smart or good. There's nothing to Scott Walker except what he's done. And that's pretty impressive. He's not particularly telegenic.

His hair is – he's got the strangest hair of anyone short of Donald. Donald Trump hasn't beat by some, but, but Scott Walker comes second. They're just sort of oddness is about him. And he does seem a little bit like the fellow you're sitting next to at Jiffy Lube while you're, you're getting the oil change. You're just chewing the fat. Could this man be president of the, could he be the leader of my nation? Could he be inspiration? All those are good questions. But I found him able to connect. He talks common sense and there's a certain kind of intensity to – purity to him because there's nothing to him but what he believes in and what he's accomplished on the basis of those beliefs.

I find it an impressive package overall i agree and he and and and i mean look i've how many of these podcasts have we done we've done 260 something and i'm at least for 250 of them i've been talking about how much i like scott walker i i have all those reservations that that peter has about you know the star quality part part of it and sometimes you know the spotlight makes the star and the spotlight isn't there yet and we're all very – everybody is still in the makeup table. But there is something amazing about what he did in Wisconsin. But there's also something amazing about how hard he fought in Wisconsin, how dirty they fought against him and how tough he fought back. This is the one guy in the entire – I mean if you want a fighter, if you want somebody who punches back hard, he's the guy. This is not a talker or a debater.

This is not a guy who is going to give a great speech maybe. But he is a guy who will punch hard back at the opposition. He's done it. They tried to kill him. I mean they threatened to kill him there. They had armed guards. The armed guards took his children to school. That's how bad it was in Wisconsin for him, for balancing the books, for standing up to

the public sector unions, for destroying these ridiculous tenor rules and for actually putting Wisconsin back on the path to some kind of fiscal sanity, which the next president is going to have to do, whether it's Hillary Clinton or Mickey Mouse. It doesn't matter. This guy did it and I don't know. I mean look, you want to know who's got the fight? Who can fight back or even in words? Like I don't know. We got a lot of conservatives running. I mean that's what – look, I really think that the Trump thing is that he's out ahead because he started ahead and people like it and he's got the field to himself and he's just a big galloping horse on the track all by himself and the other horses are still in there. And that's fine too because it's only July.

But – Well, as far as his hair goes,llswing a gullswing that has been dusted with nacho cheese but and scott walker may have guy next door jiffy loup hair but what i'm interested in is when he's presented to the mushy metal the people who pay no attention the low information voters the liberals as we like to call them uh how will his persona come across and while he's a genial fellow and a female friend of mine noticed that he's adorable when he smiles because his nose crinkles a little bit. You never, ever underestimate the power of things like that. And I like him a lot too. And I saw a speech.

James, you don't have to make up a female friend to say that sort of thing. Hi, Laura. Feel free. Waving at you. When I saw him recently at a speech here in Minneapolis close up, I mean it was impressive stuff. But I'm wondering when I listen to his speech, there is a certain tonal consistency. There's the place where his voice is,

and maybe I'm just listening to this because I fixate on things like this. It's a little bit too high up in the nose. And I'm wondering exactly whether or not that it's going to be something that people just instinctively associate with something other than the folksy, one of the people, I'm on your side kind of guy. Next time you listen to him, listen for that tone because that's important.

I mean I think one of the most potent weapons we have is telling people, do you really want to listen to Hillary Clinton for eight years? Is this the hectoring, dry, stumbling, passionless, blood-drained voice you want nagging at you for the next eight years? But when was the last time a presidential election was really decided on that? I mean I know we talk about that a lot. But the big issues are change, not change, old ideas, new ideas this guy speaks to me and my my worries and my fears and my hopes for the future and that guy does not and that's usually what it is i mean if barack obama had sounded like michael jackson oh no well let's barack obama was a was a change candidate in a change year and in the middle of a crippling recession and he promised all sorts of change and he was

incredibly soothing i mean yes he did have he did have a persona that was reassuring but it wasn't this that was not his that was not the deciding factor this is very odd for the one of the for the the professional the hollywood professional on the line right now to be telling us that the performance aspects here don't matter we had um which isn't quite what rob is saying, but I'm hoping to poke him. Not so much that he cuts me off, but that he comes back when I'm finished. We had last week here, we had a big event here at the Hoover Institution. We had Charles Moore, who's Mrs. Thatcher's biographer, speak to us. And one of the things that I found striking, Mrs. Thatcher, before she became what we think of as Mrs. Thatcher, when she was running for party leader, everybody recognized that her voice was a little bit annoying.

And one of her advisors, this is the sort of thing that can only happen in England, one of her advisors happened to find himself on a train in a compartment with Laurence Olivier and mentioned this problem. And Olivier said, no trouble, dear boy. Send her to me at the National Theater. We'll get her a voice coach. And they did. And Mrs. Thatcher worked on lowering her voice, slowing down her speech and lowering her voice by a register. Ronald Reagan, we know, that hardly needs to be, but every bit of what Ronald Reagan did, very curious combination of somebody, as was Mrs. Thatcher, somebody who was totally authentic in his and in her beliefs, but who at the same time paid very close attention to how you put yourself together, how you present yourself. Ronald Reagan will walk into a room and he didn't know if the lights were right. I think actually that every single anecdote with Laurence Olivier includes the phrase, dear boy.

I'm convinced of it. Well, as Pat Summerall said, I think that's going to be a factor in today's game when it comes to the voice, but we'll see. Brooke, no argument on the matter and reminds me that speaking of Brooks, Arthur C., he's with us again and we're lucky for it. President of the American Enterprise Institute, the Beth and Ravenel Curry

Scholar of Free Enterprise at the AIE, and his new book is The Conservative Heart, How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America with More French Horns. That's the sequel. It's actually the audiobook version that he's doing. Welcome back, Arthur. Hey, great to be with you guys.

The French horn part was extraneous, but I should have put it in. It's a codicil or an epilogue. Well, if you wanted to sell books, you'd put it in. Everybody loves the French horn part was extraneous, but I should have put it in. It's a codicil or an epilogue. Well, if you wanted to sell books, you'd put it in. Everybody loves the French horn. That's the bonus chapter. The bonus track. How is the conservative heart different from compassionate conservatism, something that people have chafed or explained over the course of the few years? Well, that's one of the things I explained in the first chapter of the book.

In point of fact, conservatives had a really hard time getting around this label, compassionate conservatism, that was so discredited, which it was precisely because it was appended to conservatism as if compassion were an unnatural thing. And to acknowledge that from the right is a really shocking, it's something that offended a whole lot of conservatives. And, you know, quite frankly, it offended me, too. Conservatism, by its nature, helps people. That's why I came into the movement. Like you guys, like some of you guys at least,

I started out on the left in a liberal family in Seattle. I guess you weren't in a liberal family in Seattle, but everybody starts someplace. And I found when I studied economics in my late 20s, that's when I went to college, that conservative ideas, particularly conservative economic ideas, have pulled billions of people out of poverty, which is the most compassionate thing we could ever do. The greatest anti-poverty achievement in the history of humanity is because of what we think of as conservative ideas of free trade, globalization, free enterprise. These are things that are a real gift to the world.

And if we don't spread the facts on that, we'll never win the debate. And then we need to work on our communication skills, which is what this book does a whole lot to help people understand that our heart is oriented toward lifting up the poor as well. Arthur, Peter Robinson here. You know who you're up against, who you're up against right now. And it'll only get worse between now and his visit to this country in September, when it comes to talking about economics and the ravages of global capitalism and the heartlessness of the market, you are up against the Pope.

What do you say to him? Well, the Pope hasn't asked my opinion, and I will continue to pray for his holiness. And to the extent that we can, we're working with officials from the Church, because we have many of the same goals. I personally have all the same goals, lifting people up who are being left behind, as Christians say, the least of these are brothers and sisters. The problem that the Pope has is he grew up in a society, and he was educated in a society where capitalism is predatory. Argentina, a hundred years ago, was the richest country in the Western Hemisphere per capita, and it quickly became, over the pursuing decades, was in a process of underdevelopment.

It spent all its gold and it ruined its economy, and it was because of cronyism. It was because of the predatory system that people tend to associate with capitalism. We have to show, the only way that we can show people that the American-style free enterprise system does lift people up is by starting from the point of view that what we care about the most is poverty. In my own case, the reason I'm a conservative, the reason I'm in the free enterprise movement, the reason I'm at the American Enterprise Institute is because poverty is what I care about the most and that's why I wrote the book. How do you make the point? I think I was listening to – this is on my mind because, because like you, I'm a Catholic and the Pope has been driving me cuckoo, frankly, but that will separate that out. But how do you

make the point that the nature of poverty, this is such a rich country, markets have succeeded to such an extent in this country, also in Western Europe, but let's just say this country, that the nature of poverty in this country is different. This is the first place in all human history where the poor weigh more than the rich, where obesity is a problem of poverty, where poor people, poor households still have televisions, they still have air conditioning. Poverty is not poverty in this country as understood in any way at any point in human history. Something different is going on here. It's family breakdown. It's a social psychosis.

It's not a pure lack of enough to eat and enough and shelter and clothing the way it has been elsewhere and throughout human history, right? Yeah, that's right. No, that's right. And it's completely historic and totally unprecedented and not understood by people in most of the rest of the world. That is absolutely true. What we need to address in the United States, therefore, is not the fact that poor people

need more food as a rule. I mean, there are some that do, but generally they don't. And nor deny the fact that it's better to be poor in America than it is to be poor virtually anyplace else in the world. But rather to address something that is true and something that is a problem with American poverty, which is that opportunity isn't what it once was. Conservatives are really weak on this. Conservatives in America tend to look the other way. You look at the 2012 presidential Republican convention, if you could stand it, and it's all about everything is great as it ever was. This is the Horatio Alger story.

Now let's listen to the Oak Ridge Boys. It's not useful. It doesn't speak to the experience that people in the bottom half are having in the Obama economy. They're being left behind. And that's what we need to take on. Say, look, opportunity is not good enough. Mobility is not high enough. And we have a solution to that. We actually understand that this is a scandal for the bottom half. But Arthur, pardon me for butting in here, guys. But the problem seems to be is that the Republican conservative narrative is always going to be we're going to give you the tools. We're going to provide the right environment.

It's like we're going to give you the wind-up toy and the key. The liberals are always saying that we're going to proactively intercede into your life with laws that will make things better. We will make a law to raise a wage. We will make a law to cut your health care or provide it. They seem to be on the offensive when it comes to the things that we will do as opposed to just creating a climate in which these wonderful things will happen. A lot of people would look at that and say, why should I take the situation where some stuff might grow out of the furrows

that you've just plowed where these guys have already got the harvest and they want to hand some of it out to me. Yeah, sure. And this is, I devote a whole chapter of the book to this whole, the subject of helping people to understand that our, helping people who are hurting understand that our ideas are better. And you know where it starts? It's shockingly simple, according to a lot of studies on this at this point. It's helping people understand that

you care about poverty. It's amazing. There's a guy at George Washington University, he's a political scientist named Danny Hayes, and he's done this wonderful work on political traits, and he finds that political independence, which is really who conservatives need to win, but true believers can vote for Republicans and hostiles think we're stupid and evil. It's the true believers that can kind of go either way who were turned off by Republicans who are angry and divisive and pessimistic or they're perceived to not care about poor people or think they're takers and moochers. These people, they don't need to even agree with our policies according to the studies.

If independents, if persuadable independents believe that a Republican and a Democratic candidate for president are equally compassionate people, that fact will swing the independents by 10 percentage points to the Republican category. And if we can do that in the United States in 2016, it's game over. Republicans win. This is not something that can win to show that we have a heart. This is the only thing that will win. So, Arthur, how does a candidate do that? Lord knows Mitt Romney tried saying everything, doing everything, and it just didn't work. Well, Mayor Romney, he didn't try hard enough. The 47% comment was truly terrible for Republicans and truly terrible for Mitt Romney. He talked an awful lot about economic growth and good management. He didn't

talk about who needs economic growth and good management in the economy the most, which is poor people. By the way, he gave a pass to Barack Obama. Barack Obama speaks about the poor one third as much as Ronald Reagan did. It's shocking how marginalized the poor have been in this administration. The Republicans have to take the lead. What I'm getting at is, would it have made any difference, would it have made any difference what Mitt Romney said? Because he'd been rich all his life. Is it something that, whereas Reagan, you say in your book that Reagan was able to do what we need a candidate to do now. But of course, Reagan had grown up poor, really poor. He knew what it was to have not to be able to make the rent and not and have to

scrimp on groceries to make ends. He knew what that was like. Must it be part of a candidate's life story? And if that's the case, then Jeb Bush is done, right? You see why I'm asking the question? Yeah, I sure do. Now, I don't think that it's a necessary condition that somebody grow up poor. I would just as soon have more candidates in both parties who are not part of family machines, to be sure. Not to say that I don't think Jeb Bush would be a very fine president. I just think that it would be a good and healthy thing for this country to have not just family businesses that are running these things. Now, Jeb Bush, however, can get past this. He can get past this by making this one of the truly central ideas, criminal justice reform,

poverty alleviation, education reform, and actually speaking over and over and over to these particular issues. Not everybody's going to agree with him. You're not going to get 100% of African Americans voting for Jeb Bush, but can you get 5 percentage points more? Go from 96% voting Democrat to 91% voting Democrat? Can you get 5% more Latinos and single women and unaffiliated, non-religious 18 to 29 voters? If you could do just five percentage points more of these who might think for themselves, might take a chance because you're talking about these issues,

once again, this campaign is done, Jeb Bush would win just with those five percent in those original groups. So, Arthur, again, I'm just, I'm trying to apply the lessons of your book to the field because what you have in mind is a practical manual. It's intended for candidates, but it's also intended for us who are evaluating candidates. You would, at this point, if I understand your argument correctly, give, for example, Rick Perry very high marks for going

before the NAACP and giving that very thoughtful speech about poverty and race, right? Yeah, I would. I think that that's a smart thing to do. And if he makes it sticky by doing it five or six more times, it'll be helpful for him electorally. Got it. Got it. So Scott Walker, middle class guy. Scott Walker is Scott Walker right now is speaking largely to the conservative base. He can do a lot more to reach out to other groups. Again, because you want persuadable people who are watching, you go to groups that are traditionally hostile. And when you're talking to hostile groups in a way that shows that you have a heart for a lot of the problems that they're feeling, notwithstanding the fact that they don't trust you, persuadable

people are watching that debate. They're watching that interaction. If you answer anger with love, and it's clear that you care about the issues that a lot of these groups are talking about, persuadable people will take a chance. And that's an electoral reality. That's not theory. That's based on historical precedent for people who have stolen the language and icons of the other side. One more question, Arthur, for applying the lessons of your book, The Conservative Heart. This is kind of a hard question, I think, but well, you'll do just fine. Kevin Williamson wrote an absolutely brilliant, heartbreaking, but brilliant cover story, a national review, oh, what would this have been, six, eight months ago, to mark the 50th anniversary of the war on poverty.

And Kevin made the point that although we tend to think of the problems of poverty as an inner city problem, largely African-American, Kevin traveled through Appalachia and said, boy, oh boy, is there white poverty, rural poverty, white rural poverty, and boy, oh boy, are they as enmeshed and immured as the welfare system as any other group in the country. As a hard, practical, political matter, is it the case that a Republican candidate applying your lessons, talking about poverty, demonstrating heart, really ought to devote his scarce time to Appalachia rather than to the inner cities? I don't think that he needs to do that. I think that most Americans understand that poverty is poverty, that need is need, and that vulnerable people come in all shades.

I don't think that most Americans, particularly those who are in the middle class, make these huge racial or geographic distinctions. It's true that it's a nightmare what's going on in a lot of the rural parts of the United States with drug abuse, with a lack of education, with a lack of jobs. You find that one of the great unsung scandals of the Obama administration is the explosion of disability insurance. This is largely taking place in rural communities and small towns, mostly in white communities, where people have given up on ever working again and will take $900 a month all the way until retirement because they're so desperate. That is a situation that mirrors what's going on in the cities. The truth is that the Obama economy is the worst period we've ever had for people falling behind in the post-war period, and that has to be taken on its face.

If we really do believe that we're all brothers, then white people in Appalachia who are poor and black people in cities who are poor all lack the same set of opportunities. And we need to talk about this as a seamless fabric of a country that needs to bring itself together through unity and optimism. And that's the theme of The Conservative Heart, How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America. Read it and hope that all of our presidential candidates read it as well. Arthur, thanks for coming by to the podcast today and we'll see you again down the road. Thanks, guys. I'm a huge fan. Thanks, Arthur. You know, it's unfair that he has a last name like Brooks. A man with his depth and breadth should be named Rivers. And then we could all talk about the great course of Mr. Rivers' intellect as it winds its way through the American landscape.

But speaking of great courses, of course. I like it already. Well, you know, we had to do what we can with the material that we have. The great courses. College, sure, you get that when you go there, if you're lucky. Maybe you can pick one up ad hoc here and there with a little auto study.

You might learn something. But if you really want to learn something, and a lot, then you want to go to thegreatcourses.com, where they have assembled some of the most marvelous lectures on topics ranging from that thing to the other and everything in between and up and down in all directions. You got to go there to find out what you're really, really going to want to read. But you might want to start with The Philosopher's Toolkit. It's a book about how to be the most,

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You can order from eight of their best-selling courses, including the Philosopher's Toolkit, at up to 80% off the original price. Wow, but this offer is only available for a limited time. So Hurley, did I say Hurley? Hurley was a character in Lost. He wasn't a particularly learned man, but if he'd listened to The Great Courses, he would have been.

Go today to thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. That's thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. Don't forget, greatcourses.com slash ricochet. And Hurley. Well, gentlemen, no more Trump, please. We've had our Trump. And the idea that we would be talking about the Donald, the short-fingered Bulgarian spy, so memorably called him back in the 80s. At this point, when we could be talking about Iran, let me just put that on the table there.

That's a cheerful topic. I'd rather talk about Trump actually. Trump seems – at least President Trump doesn't end in a mushroom cloud. Actually, maybe. Claire asked the question where this is all headed and I said that the only thing that remains unresolved is the location and the number of the mushroom clouds. And Valut in the comments said that he said, well, no, I think they can probably detonate one underground. That was my point. My point was whether they'll just be one over Tel Aviv or a couple over Tel Aviv, an EMP over New York, say a little exchange with the Saudis, because the Saudis have now said, well, if that's the way it's going to be, then we're

going to get one too. And they can just probably buy one off the shelf. We're looking at the beginning of a new nuclear arms race in the Middle East if they're smart, right? Well, this is actually the product of smarts. I mean in inverted commas they say and cleverness in quotation marks. These are – this is a clever, smart – clever, smart person's clever, smart strategy, right? They've matched the strategy with Iran against the strategy with North Korea and they've said that no deal with North Korea has resulted in rapid advances of North Korea in their nuclear program and zero leverage on the part of the interested parties in keeping them from using a nuclear weapon. And they then calculated that actually a deal even with holes in it, even with loopholes, even as flimsy as this one with Iran still gives us some kind of international leverage to later go back and tighten the screws if we want to, blah, blah, blah, right? This is like – this is smart people being smart about smart things and thinking they're

outwitting and being very clever. That's what this is. They're not stupid. They're not – this is not Inspector Clouseau. These are people who believe that they have outwitted Iran and I actually heard somebody give a little talk in Cambridge and I was there for a weekend. A sort of clever person in the clever Obama sort of liberal democrat kind of foreign policy think tanky world say – and a side benefit of all this is that we're seeing for the first time ever the Israelis and the Saudis have never worked better together. So as far as they're concerned, this is win-win-win all around. Iran is now knitted into us in a series of conferences we have to have in Vienna and yeah, they're going to get a bomb.

They're going to get a bomb anyway. Israel and Saudi Arabia now are like our friends and they're joining forces with their security forces to probably be the watchdog, the pit bulls against Iran. Everything is fantastic. This is the smartest, smartest, smart people in the smartest room making the smartest possible, cleverest, most sophisticated analysis and coming up with the best, cleverest plan. Unfortunately, it's idiotic. OK, Rob. You made Unfortunately, it's idiotic. Okay, Rob. You made such a good argument for it. You now have to tell me how it's idiotic.

Because life doesn't work that way. Because actually the truth is that what we have with North Korea is much better. No agreement is better than an agreement because it's clean and clear and because you can't actually war game out all the different variables and all the different turning points the truth is that saudi arabia and israel were already will already have been working together because both of them hate the the revolutionary fundamentalists now spreading throughout the middle east now the saudis hate it because they like their monarchy and the Israelis hate it because they're evil.

But they both hate it and they're both realists in that sense. So you would have gotten that for free. And the idea that what you want is one more power, uncontrolled power run by potentially irrational – I mean I don't know. I've never seen his Rorschach test but potentially irrational leaders in Iran with a bomb and you want to process this out. I think it's silly. Why not just – I don't think the North Korea situation is bad. I don't think it's a bad outcome actually. Well, define rationality. I mean the reason for existence of the North Korean regime is to keep themselves at the top of the pyramid so they can have all the cognac and the good movies.

Yeah. Right? Okay. Now, if you look at Iran, though, from our perspective, having a few of them with an apocalyptic mindset that wants to bring the 12th Imam back after enough chaos has been created, that may strike us as irrational, but it's profoundly rational to somebody who's steeped in that particular belief and believes it wholeheartedly. Likewise, it may be rational for them to destroy Israel once and for all because it clears the way for their hegemony over the area. Those are rational things. And if they are factoring into this now the likelihood that America, as it is currently constituted, would do nothing in response, that does not seem to be an irrational reaction. In other words, is there anything about America today on the world stage as manifested through its elections that shows that we would nuke them, that we would nuke them? It works if you have a leader who – a leader or at least a culture or a tradition as we had in the Cold War of leaders repeatedly reiterating their adherence to the position of deterrence. Well, now Fred Cole makes a point in the member feed, which is good.

I've heard this elsewhere, that the deal is a good thing. And he points out that they've got a baby boom in – they had one after the Iran-Iraq war depleted the stock. And so now they have all of these young people who are – as we've always been told about Persians, and if you've known any, you know that there's a Western tilt, that there's an intellectual curiosity. It's a fascinating culture. And they see the world through the internet. And that these people eventually will chafe under the whip and the lash of their Islamic rulers and eventually rise up. Well, there's a couple of things about that.

One, I read a piece on Medium the other day about an Iranian blogger who just got out of jail after six years for writing something the government didn't like. That government is still there. And that government today, I'm sure, put somebody in prison for six years for something they didn't like. And what he described was just what Fred was talking about. People who are Western-oriented want participation in the larger world, but should they rise up, there's no guarantee whatsoever that they would have any success whatsoever. As I wrote on my blog yesterday, it is as odd as this seems. The only people I could really trust to get the Arab spring right would be the Persians, but they can't because they're going to be beaten and

they're going to be whipped and they're going to be whipped and they're going to be shot because the government is interested in keeping in power in order to get for themselves either, A, the religious validation of being the heirs to Khomeini, or B, the money that comes from sitting atop a kleptocracy. And we would do nothing about it. We would just simply sit back again and watch them fail. So it would seem to me that you would want to make the regime weaker, that you would want to put pressure on the regime so that it is more brittle, so that it would crack. Not to bolster them with 60, 80, however many billions of dollars and international validation over the idea that they just finally got one over on the great Satan.

I can't see this where it leads to the younger generation to decide, oh, well, now is the moment because if anything, they look stronger. Right. The population of Cuba is young. The population – the demographic in North Korea is young. It is true that in the Soviet Union, what finally happened was a collapse of belief in communism. But it wasn't because people down low in society rose up. It was because the people who were running the place began to give up on it. It was because Mikhail Gorbachev said, this game is over. You do not have young people rising up and overthrowing people with guns pointed at them.

What happens every so often in history is that the people on top themselves give up the game. I don't see any evidence that the Iranians – They did it once. They did it in 1979 and they did it against the shah and they did it where they were absolutely incredible moved and impassioned by religious fervor right which remained which remains to this day oh but the shot the shah gave up excuse me yeah okay i take your point but this but it also makes my point the shah's regime had given up it had given up but it was the kumani had been living in paris for many years and sending cassette tapes of speeches and incendiary rhetoric, but religious. He had basically waged a religious war against a decadent leader who was too westernized and had taken the people, taken a proud people away from what was their traditional religious underpinning. That was the base of his message, and it was a compelling

message to a bunch of people who felt that the Shah represented Western despotism, which he did. I had a friend who went back to Iran after the revolution, and he believed that Khamenei was a great man and that Khamenei would do great things for the country, and he was a patriot and he was a good Muslim. And I'm looking at this guy saying, you are sitting in a bar with your American girlfriend and her great tracks of land. You draw, you are as Westernized as they come. You dance,

you, you smoke the herb. You are, you are not of the, I mean, this is in the back of my head, you know, and,

and, and he went and he vanished and we figured that he would have been swallowed up in the maw of war. And I just always remember him saying, Khomeini is a great man. Well, about 35 years later, we got a call and he was in town. And so we all went to see him and I said, what happened? He said, went back after about six months. I didn't like it.

So I moved to LA and got into rugs. You mentioned something before, Peter, about the leaders of the Soviet Union lost their faith in communism. I would argue that for some that may have been true, but I'll bet it's because they lost their ability to lie. They just – they lost their faith in what they knew to be a lie. They lost the ability to pretend. They just got tired of pretending that this BS worked. Well, I think it was actually more – I think it was actually more specific than that. The entire –

Have I said anything, Rob? Everything I say you argue with. It's always the same. I never get a point across. I always – It's one thing for a slow movement, right, a slow Cold War to be in a stalemate based on mutually assured destruction. We have 17 missiles and they have 17 missiles and then we have 1,000 and they have 1,000. And we kind of know that there's a failure rate of 95 percent on both sides.

But that's OK and scary enough and we're all going to – and basically a missile is just a gigantic tube with a big fat bomb on the end and they're probably going to be able to get it to Detroit. But then when we make these technological leaps and they are gigantic and Ronald Reagan says, we're going to build Star Wars and half the people in America say, well, that's crazy. That will never work. But enough people believe it will work and the most important person who believes it will work is Mikhail Gorbachev and his science advisors and his military advisors. They come to him and they say say this is going to work. And he knows that the jig is up because if that works, that means that we've made a – in all technology, right?

Technology doesn't march in stair-step equal fashion. It makes quantum leaps all of a sudden and we made a quantum leap and they, of course, were communists. They didn't – they were still talking in two Dixie cups with a string. He didn't think this invalidated communism. That's just the point. He just – he realized that it invalidated. Oh, no. I mean he did it at the political science department at Harvard.

The odd thing about Gorbachev is in my judgment, he was the last true believer. Stalin was a real communist. Khrushchev was a real communist. By the time you get to Brezhnev, they're so corrupt. All they believe in is power. And then along comes Gorbachev. And on my reading, Gorbachev really was a true believer. There was a kind of naivete about him. And he looks around and says, wait a minute. This isn't what Marx predicted. By now, we should have a few revolutions to our credit. The West should be dying. The West is in fact coming. It was a serious blow to his faith. There's a kind of,

in a funny way, an honorableness about Gorbachev that you couldn't have ascribed to Brezhnev or Chernenko. But the point I'm trying to make with regard to Iran is that the revolutions took place in 1989 in Eastern Europe peacefully for one reason. And that is that Gorbachev kept the Red Army in the barracks. Had he chosen to use power, he could have put them down. It was a question of his will. I see no doubt. I don't know that I could be wrong, of course, but the way it looks to me, the people who are running Iran are more than willing to use any power they need to use to put down any uprisings among the young. It's probably very similar to the situation in Cuba, where there's an informer in every single apartment building. You can't get started with any kind of movement against Fidel and Raul, even these days, even 50 years later, even with this opening to the United States. Because if two or three people are seen having a conversation, that gets reported. I'm quite sure something like that is going on in Iran right now, which is why Fred Cole, God bless him, saying embrace this deal and just wait for the good pro-Western youth of Iran to – no. It just won't happen that way.

It just won't happen that way. And people have been saying that for 20 years, at least 15 years. I can remember people say, oh, they have protests in Iran. When I was in Azerbaijan for the first time in 2000 in Baku, everyone in Baku told me, oh, Iran is going to blow up anytime. Oh, Iran is going to be free anytime. They have protests there every couple of weeks. We hear all about it. Oh, yeah. North Iran, they're already protesting.

Western Iran, all the young people. The country is one-third young. They're all – they don't believe any of that stuff. 15 years they've been saying that. I don't think it's going to happen. But I mean look, this policy though is the – I mean the Obama policy is this sort of grand, clever strategy of chess masters who think they're going to outwit things and they think, OK, well, Iran's big enemy, it's not the great Satan. That's their big rhetorical enemy. It's not even Israel because Israel – they think that we're going to protect Israel. Their big enemy is ISIS and so they're going to spend all their time killing ISIS and that's fine by us. All of this stuff is just too clever by half. The world doesn't work that way. You end up with this bizarre, nodding, weird,

overly wrought, too complicated by half worldview that ends up probably in some horrible complication in the region. Which unfortunately for them is maybe in the cards. And I hope fortunately for us

it's something that we can stay the hell out of. Well, Peter's point that he made earlier about Gorbachev keeping the Red Army in the barracks is a great one because the reputation of the Soviet Union, even amongst its apologists in the West, would have taken a serious hit, shall we say, if the Red Army had been shooting people as they tried to clamber over the wall in East Berlin. And you know that those people, once they finally got their foot on a place where there was freedom, where there was prosperity and opportunity, everything else would start to fall. And it was a mad rush of those guys who came over the wall to get right to the factory where they made the razor blades and said, are you guys hiring? Because I'd like a job. Brilliant. I'd like a job. And I would. Can I interrupt for a real reason? And just bookmark this because I do have one little story to tell when you're finished. What was in fact a brilliant segue? Go. Well, it was. I'm going to let you finish, as Kanye West said, but somebody else should have won the award. Anyway, that factory in Germany that we were talking about,

and I have been talking about as long as Harry's been kind enough to sponsor the show, makes the best blades in the world. Harry owns it. So they're always going to get the best blades. They're not going to have to cast about for steel from here or there. No, it's direct from the factory to you. And a lot of people say that, but it's true in this instance, and it means you get a quality razor at a great price. Now, Harry's.com was started by two guys who were passionate about creating a better shaving experience. And you're wondering exactly how passionate? Well, not just two forms of emollient for your face. Well, no, actually,

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And start shaving smarter today. And Rob, I'm going to let you get to that anecdote in just a second. But again, to go back to what Peter said, if Star Wars destroyed Mikhail Gorbachev's faith in what communism should have done, then does that mean that Israel nuking Mecca means a reevaluation in the corridors of Tehran about the power and the protection of their particular god? Does it mean a reevaluation of the corridors quarters is that what it takes in other words no no we don't want we don't want i we don't want israel to nuke mecca that i think i'm pretty clear on that much i think i'm pretty clear just tossing it out there as the person who had the long as

usual the ricochet podcast has made progress we know more at the end of this than we did at the beginning. By the way, on the politics of this thing, I understand it, they don't get to vote it up or down. It's not a treaty, but they get to vote a resolution of disapproval should they wish to do so. And they have 59 more days in which – 60 days from the day of announcement, so now it's 59. The most important person in the United States of America right now and for the next 59 days is not the president of the United States, not the secretary of state, not Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader. It's Dianne Feinstein because Dianne Feinstein is a Democrat's Democrat. And yet at the same time, she has always been very strong on national defense. And to add one more wrinkle, even another wrinkle to it, she is herself Jewish. She has always been very strong on national defense. And to add one more wrinkle, even another wrinkle to it, she is herself Jewish.

She's been very forthright in supporting Israel. She comes from – she was mayor of San Francisco. Many of her friends, the people that she – these are people who are going to care a lot about how this deal affects Israel. She's a patriot and a liberal and a democrat and people will be taking their cue from her, I think. More than the senator from New Jersey? More than Menendez or Cory Booker? Menendez. Yeah, I think so, because Dianne Feinstein is just such a senior person. Menendez has this – he's under indictment for goodness sake. The other question would be Chuck Schumer who of course wants Harry Reid's job. her and part of why somebody like me, a Californian, is able to put up with her because she's so liberal on every domestic issue is that she's very strong on national defense.

I believe she commands a certain respect within her party and within the senate on those grounds. But we will see. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Rob, you had an anecdote related to Germany. Robby Soave, Jr.: OK. My anecdote related to Germany is just simply this. East Germany, since its formation, was the most eavesdropped,working way of spying on each other and central places for all sorts of information. Everybody knew everything about everybody. People were informing on people all the time. It was simply the most watched and spied upon country ever.

And one hour before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Stasi who controlled all that information and read all that information and read all the files and copied the files and had 24-7 meetings about what was happening in the country, they had no idea it was about to happen. They had no idea the Berlin Wall was going to fall. They had no idea the Cold War was about to end. They had no idea what was happening in the Kremlin.

They had no idea what was happening across the street. That is – the lesson there is not just that communism is bad and commies are bad and it's impossible to run a society that way. The lesson is that the experts and the people who think they know everything are almost always wrong. Well, let's keep that heartening fact in mind as we go forth to another expert. You're welcome. I just thought I'd give you a great day. No, it's a great little anecdote.

Right. And I change. That's what I want to do. Well, it is. It's the rays of sunshine are bursting through. I learned something anecdotal the other day that I was going to put it in a ricochet post, but I'll just leave it here. I went to the Apple store to have my phone fixed because it had schmutz in the charging port. And the guy who was extracting –

Is that a technical – schmutz in the what? Schmutz in the charging port. Which sounds like – I've suffered from myself from time to time. A Mel Brooks character. At a certain age, you get schmutz in your charging point. What are you doing with the thing? You got schmutz there. So I had the schmutz taken out so I could recharge. And the guy who's doing it is a neighbor, as a matter of fact. And he's talking about where he recently had been, which was Greece. Because he has a house there. I'm'm thinking to myself the guy who's doing technical repairs

on my phone at this store in this mall has a house in greece this is america to have a house in greece uh and he was and i was saying you know the last time i was there i noticed a new architectural innovation that the greeks had given i mean it's enough really that they gave us classical architecture with the ionic and the dic and the Corinthian capitals as well as the Corinthian that was more Roman. But you know what I mean. They created those great capitals that formed the foundation of our architecture. And when I was there, it seemed as if they'd come up with a new one.

And that was the cement post with a bunch of rebars sticking out the top of it. Because that's what I saw when we were driving around. Everywhere you would go, you would see these houses that would end in complete stages. And I thought the crash had meant that all the construction had ground to a halt. And he laughed and he said, you know, that's so they don't have to pay property taxes.

I said, what? He said, if they have that concrete thing with the rebars coming out of it, they don't have to pay property taxes. Wow. And so naturally, everybody makes the rational decision to put a concrete post with rebars coming out of it in the four corners of their house to make it unfinished. Wow. And I loved that because all of a sudden it explained why things looked the way they did. And it also explains an awful lot about the culture and human nature. And he said, you know, the Greeks are allergic to paying taxes. We went to this tavern and we went there all the time. We know the owner.

She's a wonderful woman. She was saying that she knows that people have to make some sacrifices and yes, there has to be some contribution to the public good, she said, but taxes, taxes, they don't want us to pay them this year. They want us to pay them every year. But the Germans pay them, yeah. And you think they're doomed. They're absolutely doomed. You have to have, as with Iran, you have to have a cultural change and at least in the case of Greece, there's not going to be anybody in the streets beating kids who don't want to pay – say happy to pay my fair share usually an advocate for paying more taxes or having somebody else pay them but i i would love then for the americans uh who believe in the young americans who believe in a in a strong powerful all-consuming federal government to go to greece and march up and down the streets demanding your taxes taxes now yeah occupy uh wall street that's that i think they that rebar rule is true everywhere or many, many countries.

You see it in Central and South America. You see it in Mexico. You see it in Italy and you see it in Spain. The rebar – I told it to my wife and she said, well, why don't they just repeal that law? God bless her, you American you. It's because there's no advantage for anybody to do so because it would take too long, because it would constitute actual work, and because I'm sure that everybody in a position to repeal that law themselves takes advantage of another one, which they think is totally fair. So here's the way it works.

Like with that – while they're constructing that house, the government can say, well, there's home construction so we can project property taxes next year when that home is completed of X. So they can say to their creditors in Germany and Bonn or Berlin now, I guess, hey, listen, we're going to get all that money because obviously look at all the home construction, but just that it's never finished and the taxes are never paid. And the poor, poor central bankers in Europe have to wring their hands and find the money somewhere else like Germany. Yes, the pockets of Germans, the sofa cushions of Germans, the bank accounts, hardworking – Before we go, can we just at once – just once before we leave, marvel at photographs of Pluto. Yeah, that leaves me cold but marvel away. Tell me why we should be – because it's so far away. It leaves me cold but marvel away tell me why we should be because it's so far away

leaves you cold yes it does yeah i i just i i look it how could it leave you cold talk me into it so okay so it's a rock it's a long way away we took a photograph of it well that's just the well if you say that about anything it's the uh you – it's just a – well, it's a – I'm willing to – It's far away and nine years ago, we sent a machine to fly and the laws of physics were the same and they got there and the pictures came back and it's going to circle around and in the nine years it it's not even a planet anymore it's just one of those things down there in that belt that thing that belt they call i see why it's so and it's and it's cool because it's part of it's the last thing in our solar system and then this this probe is going to go out into interstellar space and we've

discovered that pluto is mostly ice and we don't know what it's ice of we don't know what the what the what it's made of we're going to find out what it's made of but the thing is it's made of the same stuff that we're made of you just and that's amazing you just revealed yourself rob the reason this so astounds you is actually because you're not only a rhino deep within your heart you're a bit of a Neanderthal. You weren't sure that the laws of physics would work way out there. That's it. That's exactly right.

Almost a decade ago, America decided to do something that may, might yield results a decade hence. And so Foresight, instead of just looking at the bottom line of this quarter, they built a ship, and using the extraordinary calculations of the machines at the time, they calculated a route that would take it from a very small point on this little blue planet, through the inky black, and perfectly lanced through the orbits of the

moon of a planet so far distant that it could only be held as a small dot in our best telescopes before. And we did that. As a technical achievement, it is miraculous. As a piece of civilizational accomplishment, it is extraordinary because we're the only nation to have gone to every planet in the solar system. And as a message on behalf of humanity, it says that we will not be confined to this place. We will look elsewhere for things, for new mysteries, for new answers, for new places to gaze upon. It is a stirring expression of mankind's yearning desire to go beyond his front door and seek

the world. And Peter, your arguments would have been those given to somebody who wanted to build a ship and sail across the limitless sea. I haven't even made an argument. All I'm saying is it leaves me – so to each his own. This may be a pure character defect on my part. But on Monday, I interviewed Condi Rice in the Bing Concert Hall with her piano teacher, a friend of mine called George Barth. And the two of them sat at grand pianos in this magnificent space and they played a transcription of Schumann's P concerto in A minor. And there two human beings sat playing a piece of music that someone wrote two centuries ago, 10 fingers in time, hundreds of notes, and they hit all the right notes.

And it was staggeringly beautiful. And that to me was a neurological and civilizational feat. I'm not saying you have to choose between Condi playing piano and going to me was a neurological and civilizational feat i'm not saying you have to choose between condi playing piano and going to pluto all i'm saying is that was what excited me the two are not mutually exclusive no they're not i'm excited by both and i would i would argue that the second one is actually made important by the first one in as much as you can take a recording of that incredible piece of music or any other fine piece of work that mankind has done and you can put it on a ship and you can send it out there where it will survive our own planet billions of years hence and if there's no life elsewhere in the universe if there's nothing if it's nothing but an incredible bare space with

death every with not a living jot anywhere then imagine the universe as something that contains one small singing voice that carries humanity's message through the inky void for eternity if that's all there is that's just all takes and there's nobody oh no please that's the universe by way of camu no please well what if it is what if peter what if james by the way that was brilliant. And I plus one, as they say, as the nerds would say. Could we wrap, please? No, we can't.

Let me finish this way. For those of us – this is real stuff, Daphne. For those of us who gaze upon the heavens and say, I don't know. I don't know if there's anything up there. I don't mean other worlds. I mean a higher power. I mean for those of us who are questioning and who wonder and who aren't believers, capital B, of unwavering faith, for those of us who have no faith or that it wavers. When the machine goes to Pluto and sees this rock and the rock is made up of whatever it's made up of, probably like liquid nitrogen or something or solid nitrogen. And it's the same thing that's us. And we realize the universe is made up of the same fabric as us. And if it's empty, it's ours to figure out how to

fill with that music that you heard. If it's full, it's us to whatever, to meet and greet. It's hard to think that it's all just random, that the periodic table of the elements is just the periodic table. That's just a random assembly of boxes and cart and bins the way the treble clef or the bass clef is just a bunch of lines that somebody arbitrarily drew and put some dots on there. So there it is. And I made that argument and you have poo-pooed it with your rationality and frankly your suspect. If pictures of Pluto

move my friend Rob to wonder, then double NASA's budget. I'm on. But pictures of a rock heretofore unseen is just the start of it. There's the mysteries at the Hubble Space Telescope with its deep field analysis where they pointed it at a single black empty patch in the sky for 100 days. And when they finally got the picture, they found innumerable galaxies, each of which was filled with innumerable stars.

And again, if we're alone, then that's extraordinary. If we're not, then that's extraordinary. If we're not, then that's extraordinary. If you want to look at it from a theist point of view, you can say that this is one iteration of the world that God has created in which the only meaning is made by mankind beholding its beauty. I'll buy that. Fine. Or it's something that we have to go. Well, if that's what it says, but go ahead. Go ahead. I don't know. Why is that nonsense exactly? Oh, please. That's just a little bit of Camus tarted up. I don't know why you have to keep insulting me with french with french nihilism here wait peter you say that you you believe in little spacemen out there no no i'm quite sure there are none i feel that's what

james is saying that's what i just said if there is no no no but this business that there's no meaning in the universe except what we impute to it ourselves that's sort of warmed over existentialism that's no no no no he's saying if He's saying if there's nobody there, that it's enough that we can look at it and marvel at the amazingly – at how amazing – what the amazing creation was. It is invested with meaning and beauty through the act of beholding and discovering it. That's not a nihilistic idea. Oh, OK. Got it, got it, got it.

I misunderstood what you're saying. A cold, empty universe. These things would be unseen and unheralded and un, and, and, and uncelebrated were it not for human beings to perceive them. If indeed we are alone, but if you want to just come back to a matter of civilization,

other civilizations gave us Daedalus, you know, Icarus fly high, burned, fell. Prometheus tried to invent something, got his liver pecked out for eternity for his trouble. America came up with a guy from a heartland part of the country

who strapped himself to a candle and got shot to the moon and planted a flag and then came back. That enough says something about America that we want to take forward into the 21st century. And when you want to take this into the comments, that's fine. Let's have a big knockdown drag out versus Peter who cannot lift his eyes above the eyes of the line of the horizon and far-seeing thinkers like Rob and myself who stare. I can't believe I'm the one. Yeah.

I expected this from you, James. You expected what from me? I expected you to stand up for Pluto in the interstellar space. I knew you were into all this stuff, but I didn't think that I was – ordinarily I would be the one saying, oh, rock, who cares? But it was quite moving yesterday to look at those pictures and today. So anyway, I interrupted your sign-off. I'm sorry. It was just simply a sign-off and that's all there is to it except to remind you that thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet is where you'll go to get up to 80 percent off your favorite 8-off. I'm sorry. It was just simply a sign-off, and that's all there is to it. Except to remind you that thegreatcourses.com

slash ricochet is where you'll go to get up to 80% off your favorite eight top titles there and learn a lot and come back to the Ricochet program prepared to pick holes in our rational arguments because you've been trained by the experts at greatcourses.com. And brought to you, of course, by Harry's Shave. Harry's Shave.com. I'm sorry.

Harry's.com with the coupon code Ricochet gets you $5 off the already low, low price of your monthly shaving kit and visit the ricochet store. Lots of great ricochet swag in there. So you can swan around town with the emblem on your chest or on your coffee cup and tell the world that you're a proud member of this, the greatest center, right? Civilized discussion for things that matter.

All things that matter, even Pluto on the internet. See you in the comments, everybody, and thanks for listening. Next week, fellas. Next week. I don't think I've ever heard so much scorn from Peter in my life. I stand utterly unmanned and revealed. At the heavens. I know. I'm pleased.

There were rocks. It rocks. It rocks. love and the same old story with a new set of words about the good and the bad and the poor and the times keep on changing so I'm keeping on top of every fat cat who walks through my door I'm a space

cowboy bet you weren't ready for that I'm a space cowboy Cowboy, bet you were ready for that. I'm a space cowboy. I'm sure you know where it's at. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Ricochet.

Join the conversation. I was born on this rock and I've been traveling through space since the moment I first realized What all you past talking cats would do if you could You know I'm ready for the final surprise There ain't no way around it, ain't nothing to say It's gonna satisfy my soul deep inside All the rares and sobares keep the whole place uptight Thank you. I'm a space cowboy I'm sure you know where it's at