Blair: All right, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, or good evening, and welcome to the
secular foxhole.
Today it's Martin and I, and we're just going
to go over some things that we picked out that we wanted to discuss, and we'll have some
Olympic discussion and some objectivist discussion and a few other news items of what
we think are of note.
Martin: Yep.
Blair: And how are you, Martin?
Martin: I'm fine.
And like you could say, label of description
on ingredients is that we have two formats of this podcast.
The main thing that we really enjoy and like is the guests that are adding value and
research, and then we have interview them or having conversation or a mix of that and so
on.
And we will add that also maybe extra
material, what we learn from that.
But we let the guests talk and take the stage.
When it's Blair and myself, we have so called do show, and then it could be some chitchat.
Hopefully we have some value and content, and we have the thing that called new sandwich,
the idea that we got from Amy Peacock that like the sandwich a good thing, something in
the middle that is not, maybe not so good, and then ending on good thing.
But sometimes we have only good things.
Sometimes I not a good thing and sometimes a
mix of strings.
And you have that right now.
You have digged up some news items here.
Blair: Yes, I have.
And they're.
They're mostly good.
Martin: Good to hear.
We need that.
Blair: And there's some very good things.
And then mostly good.
Martin: Yeah.
Blair: So. But I can.
I can start those off if you like.
Martin: Yeah, please.
Blair: There's.
I just recently watched two great YouTube
videos, both from the Ayn Rand Institute.
The first one is called the secular moral
alternative to Dawkins and Iann Hersey Ali.
And this was about a 40 Minutes show narrated
by Ben Baer, who's consistently doing outstanding work, in my personal opinion.
And he dissects, if you will, the recent debate that Richard Dawkins and Miss Ali had.
I guess it was in New York.
And I do want to point out, Miss Ali recently
converted to Christianity after being an outspoken atheist for many, perhaps over a
decade, and had a courageous stand against Islam.
But again, she recently converted to Christianity.
And this alleged, I don't know if it was a debate more or less.
It was more or less a discussion between Dawkins, the narrator, and mass Ali.
But again, Ben comes at it from an objectivist point of view, and it's very enlightening.
So I highly recommend that YouTube video called the secular moral alternative to
Dawkins and Ian Hirsi Ali, which of course, means objectivism.
And then the other video, this was, I think a recent certainly happened this year.
I think it was in Europe, actually.
Ankar Gate gave a speech called objectivists
wanted why we need more objectivists, and not just philosophers, teachers, lawyers,
whatever, but just in general.
And it was very uplifting to me.
Objectivism, frankly, is worth people taking a look at it.
I know what I. I was basically an aimless, drifting 20 something year old when I was
introduced to the fountainhead.
And just.
It changed my life for the better, I'm telling you.
It was quite an eye opening and a great experience, something I really, really, really
needed to focus my life and to better my life.
And so that talk is very, very good.
It's just over an hour.
And that was.
So that was.
I recommend both of those YouTube videos from
the Ayn Rand Institute.
Martin: And I have a point there.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Because we now talked about the different holy
scriptures and how you study.
You could study in a way, and you could be a
student of objectivism and Rand's philosophy.
And then it's to apply it also to your life.
Blair: Exactly.
Martin: And your profession and your hobbies, your passion, your interests, what not.
And because it's a. Pat ran said it's a philosophy here on earth.
Something like that.
Right.
Blair: For here.
For living.
Martin: For here.
Yeah.
Blair: For living on earth.
Martin: So that's something to think about.
And then I came as also news, you could say
now you could have the artificial intelligence and robots.
I know that Amy Peekov had a Twitter account called Randrobot or something like that.
Yeah, Randbot.
Yeah.
And now it's built on something from Delphi AI.
I think we will include that in the show notes, both Rand and also Aristotle.
And that was pretty fascinating to write.
Something I wrote.
Which book or work should I start with? Or could you start with.
And then it was in her voice.
Blair: Pretty close to her voice, I think.
Martin: Yeah. And what we recommended, either it was something from a lecture or it was
somewhere it's coming from.
And I thought that was really neat.
But then it said from the gecko that you should go to the source, read Rand's work, and
listen to courses and interviews and whatnot.
But this is really interesting, because you
could then use AI in a positive and productive and rational way.
So I was impressed.
And I will look into this Aristotle thing,
because if you are not a scholar or not, that's your career.
You could learn something from that also.
So, yeah, I thought that was a night.
Blair: I really appreciated that link to the Aristotle page, because yeah, I asked it.
Martin: And we could do also something.
I interrupt you, Blair, but what Rad has said,
has she said Thomas Aquinas? Is he.
Blair: Aquinas? Yeah.
Martin: Aquinas. Yeah. Is he like a full philosopher or she, she never mentioned
somebody that she say good, good enough.
But like a half or something like that.
Blair: Right.
He was only half.
Right.
Now I put it.
Martin: Anyway, he tried to, you know, he tried to use reason to prove God by logic, so.
Blair: Yeah. And it's not possible.
Martin: Yeah. Good luck with that.
But you have to then understand the historical
context.
Blair: True, true.
But again, that half that effort back in the,
in the dark ages, if you will, at the end of the dark ages, laid the groundwork for the
Renaissance.
Martin: Yep.
Blair: And the rediscovery of Aristotle and I, again, I think we're in the death throes of
the end of the kantian age.
Now, how long that's going to take a, it may
take, it may take decades, it may take six months.
Martin: Again, it's now interrupt you again.
But it's good that you interrupt you because
there we could then invite guests that are real expert and find value and interest and
passion and time and energy to dive into that.
Blair: Yeah.
Martin: That's how you and I, we probably have some.
Yeah, we know that.
Okay.
How many generations? And then you have to again, see the context
did Kant has lot, had lot of competition, so to speak.
And how did it spread like Aristotle's ideas that again, over again, I come back to that
book, the Aristotle Adventure.
Blair: Yeah. It was a wonderful book.
Yes.
Martin: By how his ideas survived and moved forward and ended up in all kind of different
places again.
I think it's interesting.
I hope so also that can't era is over, then the question is what will come instead?
Blair: Right, right.
And that's not looking too good either.
Martin: We should try to see positive.
And I see several positive signs also.
Blair: Absolutely.
There's no question that.
Martin: And you had something that sort of mixed.
It was like a rock musician, right?
Blair: Yes. Yeah. This Breitbart reported that Morrissey, in a recent concert, he accused
doctor Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum head Klaus Schwab, or Klaus
Schwab of being criminals and was tied to a song.
Let me see if I can find the song.
Let me see.
Where is that? Here we go.
All right, let's see.
He was singing a song called the World is full
of crashing boars.
Martin: Yeah.
Blair: And he had those three faces rotating on a screen behind him.
Martin: Yeah. We will not play the song because then it's you know, it writes, but we
have the value for value there.
But in the future, musicians could get
something for that.
Blair: True.
Martin: But it's also interesting if this satirical thing or a parody or freedom of
expression, if that's okay.
I recently saw, like Boss Fostwin had
comments, some political commentary about, you know, the political race now.
And these images was removed by Instagram.
Blair: Really?
Martin: Yeah. So something to think about.
Of course, they are private company.
They could do whatever they want in a way.
But it's interesting how this is coming.
Push to show.
Or how do you say push to show?
Blair: Yeah.
Martin: So it will be interesting in a way, autumn, and see what's, what's happening.
I mean, really, it's taking from like a Hollywood movie.
You could say everything what's going on right now, right?
Yes, but it's good.
But musicians like rock and roll and others
are really coming out and saying something like that also, so.
Blair: Yeah, that's true.
But those were the three items I wanted to
highlight today.
Good.
Go ahead.
You've got some good news around, so go for
it.
Martin: And we talked a little about that in green room.
And we will get to the content and we hopefully got to the content.
But some time ago, I searched for our own podcast, and I recommend that as a new media
advisor to do that.
And then I found on October, we'll see here.
It was 1823 and it was a review of our episode 72 by Dave Jackson on a podcast rodeo show or
something like that.
I think now it's called hot seat and you pay
for the reviews.
But we didn't ask for a review.
But we thank and give hat tips to pod fans.
Now it's called true fans.
So Sam Seti, I think he got that input or something, came into his, you could say,
stream recommendation to review this.
So it was interesting and I took some notes
and we will learn from that and get to the content and explain in the show notes and the
subject line and titles what the show is all about.
That said, it's also our show, so we could have chit chat and some back and forth.
Also, I will include that in show notes.
So please listen to that review and see what
you think about it.
Blair: I will.
Of course I will.
Martin: And also our listeners, for example, he said something about the bumper and what
you could have and also planning, and we do some planning and we have some document to
prepare.
And also then that this is, as I said, is a
duo show.
And then we have guests.
It's more a conversation and focused on the guest.
So, yeah, so I thought that and then congratulations to Dave for getting a gig here
on pod page.
And we are using that.
You bought that service?
Blair: Yes. Page I.
Martin: So we have that site where the secularfoxhole dot live, right?
Blair: Yes.
Martin: And we will do more about that.
I commented a little bit about different
badges and these new modern podcast apps because we will promote that more and more.
The listener decides how the listener wants to listen, but we want to promote new modern
podcast apps so we could adding this value for value model into the system.
So I think that was that and what more? Yeah.
Do you want to hear some stats? Stats and.
Yeah.
Stats?
Blair: What stats? Absolutely.
I like our stats.
Martin: Yeah. And I must say we had a record month and this is also to explain to the
listeners if I value this and what we are doing, especially with the guests.
Again, I want to onboard all our guests.
It's like 30 individuals, so they could get a
split office for the future.
But we had 300 downloads last month.
Blair: Nice.
Martin: And I often say we have around seven listeners per day.
So now that's more than that latest month.
And unique listeners, about 150.
So maybe every individual listened like twice on the same episode, on other episodes or
several episodes or parts of episodes and whatnot.
And with true fans.
As a side note, I had a conversation with Sam
Sativara there.
We could see lots of interesting features in
future with data and statistics and.
Yeah, so that could really be interesting for
podcasters, for listeners, for everyone involved in this so called industry and
category of programming.
Great.
And so in total we have ten k. 10,000 downloads and listeners in total since we
started.
Around 5000 individual unique listeners.
Blair: That's great.
Martin: Then I have the commentary.
You have to take it a bit of grain of salt
because you could do different things.
And I have a list of countries here and then I
will have a thought about that.
What did you say, Blair?
Blair: I was going to say that's 10,000 since our inception four years ago, right?
Martin: Yeah.
Blair: Well, I think that's pretty good.
Martin: I think so.
For the so called niche podcast.
Blair: Yep, niche is correct.
Martin: Yeah. So, but interesting with the stats also we want listeners to look at the
opportunity to have a new modern podcast app.
But also as true fans is a progressive web
app.
And there, so you could use it in your regular
web browser and on the phone and it will apply accordingly.
So you don't have to download an app, but most of the listeners are listening to desktop
browser and Chrome, for example.
Blair: Right.
Martin: So if we could get listeners to look into true fans and you could then sign up for
free and then you could get gamification and you could get satoshis that you could use to
us or to themselves or some other podcasters.
So to get into this system and thinking so I
see great potential here with true fans and that's the trader principle.
If we get new users to true fans and listeners and guests and they will get Satoshis, then if
they want they could have this tray the principle and say, oh, it was worth to be as a
guest or your content or your value, your information.
Yeah, but it will take some time, right?
Blair: Yes.
Martin: And then I'm thinking of adding something, a captivated feature called Amy.
Like I think it's standing for automatic insertion message or something like that.
Often it's for advertising and we don't have, you know, our podcast is not suitable for ads.
We're not big like that and we don't want to have interruption to have commercial breaks in
that way.
But we could have a call to action and then we
could change it over time.
So I will play around with that.
Sounds good, more clear.
And also we could have something what this
show is about and so on.
And we have to think about that now when I'm
talking to maybe update our so called trailer because that's long time ago now and pretty
long and maybe we have to do it more spiffy.
I don't know.
But still I standing for that first recording, the first trail and first episode got us
going.
Blair.
Blair: Yes, that's a long time ago now.
Yeah.
Martin: So with that said, the latest month here on countries is United States as usual,
like still over 50%.
But then the next one is China, 20%.
So do you think, do we have any objectivists and some others are in China that listen to us
or could it be to Hong Kong or I, because that I haven't seen before.
Blair: I would assume it's Hong Kong to be honest.
Martin: Yeah, that's great.
And that's really great that we could listen
from that.
And then the third one is other.
So I wonder if that's VPN.
And of course if you have privacy, if you
don't want to show we can't know and that we shouldn't and we don't want to an individual
listener, we can't have go by name that somebody.
Blair: Well that's true.
Yeah.
Martin: But if of course if they send a booster gram and say their name, then we'll do
a shout out to them.
So in a way that you could have this VPN and
privacy and say no other country.
But on the other hand we think it's fun to see
different countries.
So that was the third one.
So somebody out there or several have started using VPN or some country that maybe it's the.
To joke.
Maybe it's the Lieberland or seastead country.
Blair: Oh, maybe something like that.
Martin: To joke.
Yeah. And then Canada and then Sweden for some
reason.
United Kingdom, Portugal and the Netherlands,
Australia and Belgium.
That was.
Blair: I like that.
I like that.
I love Australia.
I'm getting old, but one of my bucket list
dreams is to go to Australia.
Martin: Yeah. When you could meet one of great podcasters out there, James Kridland.
And he's all over the place traveling, but he has pod news podcast and also with Sam Setty,
they have a show there.
So Orino from Australia and you know Karen
down.
Yes, I remember that great review of our
podcast.
He has recently been in Brazil, and now he was
in Nashville to this bitcoin conference.
And especially this value for, value for
musicians that they did close to this conference.
So he went there.
Yeah, Nashville.
And do you listen to lots of country music there?
Blair: I have termed myself a chronic channel changer on the radio.
Martin: Yeah.
Blair: So I listen to everything.
Yeah.
But I also, I have serious radio, which I do tend to not change so much.
I have, I love eighties music.
Martin: Yeah.
Blair: Sixties music.
So those two decades, and then my, the
National Football League channel on Sirius radio, and then one or two others, some
others, there's a prime country and so on and so forth.
But those four or five stations are worth the $6.50 a month I pay for a serious radio.
Martin: Okay. And where we talk about value, value for value again, in a way.
And it's interesting to see how the all time radio, how they are doing it.
And you have this national public radio and you have commercial stations, and it will be
interesting to follow what was going on here.
So.
Blair: Yeah, true, true.
Martin: And then we talked about the randbot, as I said, and we have to in the future talk
about what's happening in Venezuela and also what happened recently in Iran and Lebanon.
Blair: Aha. Yes, that's right.
Martin: Really interesting development, so to speak.
And the Olympics.
I will only say that some Christians, I think,
mostly got upset that they had, I got upset for another way because it was so called a
parody of a great work of art, you know, the last Supper.
But again, they could do it if they want.
But it was.
Yeah.
So it was a bit political, correct.
It was maybe not good taste, but the uproar by Christians about this, I have some issues with
also.
And overall, we should celebrate athletic, you
know, wins and development and.
Yeah, all things going on, the only.
Blair: Reason I watch the Olympics is to hero worship.
Martin: Good. Yeah, and we talked about that in the green room about table tennis, ping
pong and other.
Blair: I'm a swimming and gymnastics freak.
Martin: At.
Blair: Least in the Summer Olympics.
Martin: Yeah. So we will probably come back to that.
And now I see we have talked to a little bit, but we have some important, you could say news
and development.
And I'm really running with scissors here.
I have set up with help of an objectivist, or interested in objectivism and rans philosophy
Tolmec in Poland.
So he helped me with onboarding to get my own
hub or node on Albie.
So it's hard for me to explain what really is.
But I bought by my fiat currency, bought 80,000 satoshis, and that's around 500 swedish
crowns or $50.
And then I set up this.
They recommended to have around 250,000 in order to have liquidity and be able to receive
and send.
Because it's like channel, it's like open bank
system, you could say, in a decentralized financial way.
Blair: Yes, that's about all.
Martin: I am amazing and I am not the tech guy and I running with scissors, maybe I will
break things.
Of course, if I lose the satoshis, that's one
thing.
But it's interesting, if more individuals like
me, that not technical will do this over time, that will be very interesting impact.
Blair: Yes.
Martin: And that's again why I say that it was so great to have a real expert like Dave.
Or is it David Dave? Yeah, on the show explaining what is really
bitcoin and cryptocurrency and how you protect it and what we should stand up for and
etcetera.
So I got that.
So right now I have like 15,000 satouches in receiving capacity.
And that's meaning if somebody will send us a donation of 15,000, I could receive it, but
it's more than that.
Then there will be problem in the channel.
So that's something to think.
That's why we recommended to have 250,000
satoshis.
But at this day, age or time, it's around 1500
swedish crowns or $150.
To get that, of course you own them and you
keep them, but then you spread this out in these different channels.
So you could have receiving and incoming.
So now I have been spending off the 80,000 I
have been spending, and then they are going to this receiving capacity.
So for 80,000 approximately now I have 65 of spending.
So I have spent around 15,000 you know, so I will be able to receive 15.
Do you see what I'm saying? So it's like a channel, like a balance.
And I'm already lost in explaining it.
But that's why we should have guests on the
show.
Blair: I'll have David try to get David back so he can teach you.
Martin: So in order to really get this going, I have to open a new channel.
But then I have to get some satoshis in order to do that because I don't have extra laying
around 1500 swedish crowns or $150 for this.
So I'm already out of my league.
But it was fun to test.
And you now, acquaintance and a person, an
individual that's interested in Rand's ideas by chance and also explaining this, what they
are doing at Albie.
It's really fascinating.
So I'm happy to be alive in this day of age.
Blair: That's true.
I mean, regardless of all the negative
negativity.
Again, if we go to humanprogress.org, that
will boost everyone's spirits, if you will.
Martin: And you can.
That's good.
So maybe get somebody there from.
And also roots of progress also.
Blair: That's. Yes, Jason Crawford.
Yeah, that's become an institute now.
Yeah, that's right.
I think we mentioned that on the last show.
Martin: Yeah. So a case in point here now.
And I now I'm babbling a bit, but we'll see
here how we are doing.
Yeah, around a half an hour.
So 221905 satoshis.
And you know what that is?
Blair: I do, I sign Ren's birthday.
Martin: Yeah. So that's a booster grant that I've added to the GitHub page.
The numerology page.
Blair: Yes.
Martin: So when I back in the now it's around 1500 swedish crowns for $150.
Some years ago when we did.
When I did this, it was around 500 swedish
crowns or $50.
So my question is, what happened with the
value of bitcoin and the so called value of the fiat currency?
So that's something to think about and introspect and.
Yeah, maybe again have an expert on explaining what's going on.
Blair: Yeah. Okay. I'll do my best to get somebody.
Martin: Yeah. Thanks again, Tomik to help me onboarding on Albi and also to meet the new
objectivist.
Objectivist and interest in Rand's ideas and
apply it.
Really.
And so that's great.
So true.
Fans has an ending.
Sam said he's doing new features all the time
and I had a call with him and we are really getting close to so called top up your wallet
with fiat currency or any credit card.
So you could start playing around with this
and start getting into it.
So that's great because then it will be easier
for us to onboarding our guests and listeners and others.
So this will go around back and forth as a trader principle and then also adding the
split.
So I will do that.
So really interesting developments here.
And Sam is doing a great job.
And we talked also about that he will be a future guest on a specific topic when it comes
to podcasting and conferences and whatnot.
And then I wanted to talk in the future that
we should think about getting a new podcast artwork.
And I think we should find some fine artists out there.
What we have had on our show, and also I have had on my show ego netkost.
But for that, because we value their work and we know that they want to get paid for that.
We have to find some campaign or whatnot and so on.
But we were very open and transparent about that because I think the artwork, I like it as
it is, but I think it's time to get to the next level, so to speak.
Blair: Yeah, well, the original was my crew drawing, so to speak, that was enhanced.
Martin: Yeah. But it's been working fine, Blair.
Yes, and that again with free market.
I got it from fiverr with somebody, I think it
was in Indonesia or some other place doing it.
Blair: Yes.
Martin: They put their terms and settings and what you could ask for and how quick they
could do it.
And I'm totally happy with that.
Yes, I can do it myself.
But now as an ending with like AI, I am now
subscribed to service that is simple to use this chat, DBT and Dali and this image
creator.
So I'm really into this now to see what I
could play around with like podcast artwork maybe for your blog post, doing image features
image, a photo on a blog post and other things like that.
Because if you don't have that skill or artistic, you know, it's hard.
And that's in a way good because then you could find division of liber, but it's also
good.
But we could play around with it.
Blair: Yeah, yeah.
Martin: So and also to as you, we talked about music, you wanted to have up more upbeat.
Yeah, we have like it very much.
I like it.
I'm really getting in the mood when I listen to the bumper and jingle and hopefully the
listeners doing that also.
But we are thinking of a new song there.
And I will talk to Jim Johnson of J Tunes Productions if he opt for it.
And then I want to add him to the split also.
So every time somebody is listening with a new
podcast app streaming satoshis or sending a booster gram, he will get a split and a cut
off also.
Blair: Yeah. Thats great.
Yes.
Martin: So thats for now, I think.
Any ending note, Blaire?
Blair: No. Everyone stay cool in this hot summer and enjoy the Olympics.
And hopefully we'll have a guest on our next episode.
Martin: Yeah. So with that, thank you very much, Blair, and talk to you soon again, thank
you, Martin.
Blair: Appreciate it.
Martin: Bye bye bye.
Blair: Satan rain.