Here we are again, ladies and gentlemen.
Blair:Today it's just Martin and I in the secular Foxhole podcast number 85.
Blair:How about that? 85.
Martin:Yeah, that's a good number.
Blair:Four years.
Blair:I think we're in four years.
Martin:Good.
Blair:Congratulations to us.
Martin:Yes, it is.
Martin:Clap. Clap. Yeah.
Martin:And we'll talk about that also, how they could, the listeners and co hosts, as you are
Martin:and I am, and the guests and returning guests and others could support our work and we could
Martin:support them in a trade.
Blair:That's right.
Martin:And value for value.
Martin:So we'll come, come to that.
Martin:But you have some news sandwich segment that, again, inspired by Amy Picoff.
Blair:Yeah. Well, I do have some few things to talk about.
Blair:Let's see.
Blair:The first thing I want to mention is I
Blair:subscribe to an email called notes from the middle ground by a gentleman named Damon
Blair:Linker.
Blair:Linker and his latest.
Martin:And what's the meaning of middle ground?
Blair:It's not the extreme left or the extreme right, I think, but it's not.
Martin:The middle of the road that we know about that.
Blair:Hopefully not.
Blair:Yeah, hopefully.
Blair:I think he's more, he's certainly in the liberal tradition, meaning the original
Blair:classical sense.
Blair:Yeah.
Blair:Yes.
Blair:Right.
Blair:I believe that's true.
Blair:But his latest, he, he talks about his, his
Blair:teacher, this gentleman, name is Mark.
Blair:I'm gonna call Lila l ill a mark.
Blair:Lila.
Blair:And he also has a, he has an article in the
Blair:New York Review of Books, but it's available in PDF form on Mister Lila's website.
Blair:But anyway, it's called the Tower and the sewer.
Blair:And this is about.
Blair:Let's read what Damon says about it.
Blair:It's a wide ranging review covering several recent books by Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Amari
Blair:and Adrian Vermeule.
Blair:I think that's how you pronounce a gentleman's
Blair:name.
Blair:The essay is a tour de force that places these
Blair:writers in broad historical context, situates them in contemporary, in the contemporary
Blair:american right, and combines generosity toward the psychological and spiritual struggles that
Blair:animate their thinking with nuanced is that word, and occasionally severe criticism of it.
Blair:Now, these gentlemen are all anti liberal, anti enlightenment people.
Blair:So they're no friends to America.
Blair:So that I do want to, I will provide the
Blair:Martin with the link to the PDF in the notes after the show.
Blair:But that's something I want to alert our listeners to because I think it's well worth
Blair:reading.
Blair:And then here we are.
Blair:And then I do subscribe to something else called the unpopulous, which Robert Tracinski.
Martin:Yeah.
Blair:Yeah. He often plugs on his in his writing and also his YouTube videos.
Blair:But they have the people that behind the unpopulous have a institute for the Study of
Blair:modern authoritarianism, and they are having their first conference in, of all places,
Blair:Washington, DC, next month, next month, July 11 and 12th.
Blair:So that's something we should plug, I think, and they want to, their topic for that
Blair:conference is liberalism in the 21st century.
Blair:And again, I will provide the links to both
Blair:the website and I guess to the conference for that in our notes.
Blair:And let's see what else.
Blair:There was something else.
Martin:Oh, you had to joke also because these two things sounds like a good.
Blair:Yes, that's right.
Blair:So here's, here's the, here's the good and
Blair:this is the bad and it's the joke.
Martin:Yeah.
Blair:And people around the world should pity the american people because their choice for
Blair:president is someone who's facing a sentence and someone who can't complete a sentence.
Blair:So that is indeed a very sad situation.
Martin:Yeah. Where did you see that one? That joke, actually, who read that?
Martin:I want to give credits to that.
Blair:We should, it was, it was a Greg Gutfeld on Fox.
Martin:Yeah. Okay. That's also, that's also a good one.
Martin:It's coming from Fox News.
Martin:That's, that's interesting.
Blair:Yeah, that's true.
Blair:Yes, it is.
Blair:So that's, that's the bad.
Blair:And now the, the ringer for the sandwich, the
Blair:top of the sandwich.
Blair:This is another kind of a funny little thing.
Blair:And I can't find the link.
Blair:I have, I have to search for it.
Blair:But here in America, we have what's called the Bible Belt, which is mostly southern part of
Blair:the United States.
Martin:Did it also reach where I was?
Blair:I mean, there's, you know how you also is that there's certainly, it's not nearly
Blair:severe in the midwest as it.
Martin:Is more deep down south.
Blair:Yeah, I think that's true.
Blair:Honestly.
Blair:And there is what I've called the buckle of the Bible Belt, which is little Rock,
Blair:Arkansas.
Martin:From Bill Clinton country.
Blair:Yes, that's, yes, sadly, from Bill Clinton country.
Blair:However, the secular student alliance is having their annual conference in Little Rock,
Blair:Arkansas.
Blair:So go figure.
Martin:Yeah. That's a good battleground, right?
Blair:I guess it must be.
Blair:It might be.
Blair:But I have to find that where I saw that.
Blair:So, and then I'll put that in the show notes
Blair:as well.
Blair:But that's my new sandwich for this episode.
Martin:Yeah. And I'm talking about news that I haven't listened to yet, but it's about the
Martin:podcast in Swedish called the Security Council, and they were talking about
Martin:deepfakes, distrust and democracy and about the artificial intelligence election year and
Martin:so on.
Martin:So that's something we could talk about
Martin:tomorrow.
Martin:It's European Union elections.
Martin:I voted so called against European Union, okay, but I'm for free trade and so on.
Martin:But now we are stuck in European Union.
Martin:We haven't exited yet as Britain.
Martin:But then you could then vote for somebody that could, a representative, a party that could
Martin:stop the worst and maybe do something good there.
Martin:And that's a new party that's not represented in the government or in the Riksta, as you say
Martin:in Swedish.
Martin:And that's called Mied Borg samling.
Martin:And that's like Citizens alliance, you could say, or something like that.
Martin:And it's a non socialist party because many of the non socialist parties, like the moderates,
Martin:so called the conservatives, and even the liberal that are more social liberal, have
Martin:problem issue whatever on their guidelines and the spectrum where they are.
Martin:And we know that there's no left or right scale.
Martin:In a way.
Martin:Tracinski have talked about that also and
Martin:others.
Martin:But anyway, so it's interesting if I'm
Martin:thinking of voting that and when I want to vote on a certain individual, if I could find.
Martin:So that's for tomorrow.
Martin:And then you said about the joke where in the
Martin:autumn it's following that.
Martin:And so we'll come back to that more and then
Martin:definitely have Robert Traczynski and others returning and talking.
Martin:So that's something about.
Martin:And then.
Martin:Yeah.
Martin:What is a deepfake, for example, we could talk
Martin:about and distrust for democracy could in a way be a good thing if it's not populist and a
Martin:solution for the future is like a constitutional republic and really
Martin:understands.
Martin:I remember, wasn't it Tracinski that had that
Martin:called something with the republic it's worth to save or something like that?
Blair:Oh, yes.
Martin:In paper form.
Martin:Yeah.
Blair:That I don't remember, but I know that Benjamin Franklin.
Martin:Yeah.
Blair:At the time of the signing, he answered someone's query, a republic if you can keep
Blair:it.
Blair:Of course, it hasn't been that for more than a
Blair:century.
Blair:Because of, you know, democracy.
Martin:Yep.
Blair:Which is the last in the last breath before tyranny unless you turn it around,
Blair:which anyhow.
Martin:Yeah. So that's something to come back to also.
Martin:And then we could, if you're open to listen to some stats.
Blair:Yes, please.
Martin:So that's from our podcast host provider.
Martin:I call it like a sound hotel.
Martin:And that's an audio and that's captivate and
Martin:there it's the listener behavior and the last 28 days is unique listeners, 129 and 148
Martin:downloads.
Martin:So some individuals have listened more than
Martin:once, and then you could see its statistics and you could see trends a bit because we
Martin:haven't done some latest episode is like two weeks ago, and that will have now download for
Martin:70 downloads with Brian Stevenson.
Martin:So that's great.
Martin:So I don't look so much in it, and you shouldn't be, how to say, paralyzed by it.
Martin:But it's interesting to see the trend so around.
Martin:In general, in the long trend, we have like 198 downloads average every 28 days, like a
Martin:month.
Martin:So seven per day.
Martin:Of course, in the long run, we want to have 77 hundred, 7000, et cetera, et cetera.
Martin:And we see the potential of that.
Martin:But we will not rush it as the band.
Blair:No, I love Rush.
Martin:But the new podcast app, in the latest 28 days, the fountain had 10% of that
Martin:listening and downloads, you could say.
Martin:So somebody out there is using a new podcast,
Martin:modern podcast app.
Martin:And a newly favorite of mine is Truefans Dot
Martin:FM.
Martin:And we will continue with this work.
Martin:And then also the founder and originator of that, Sam Sati, will ask if you could come to
Martin:the show and talk about the specific thing in the podcasting industry and how to arrange
Martin:conference and political correctness and other things that could happen out there and the
Martin:positive news, what he's doing, really doing great work with this.
Martin:Truefans FM, the onboarding for guests, for co hosts, for listeners will be so smooth.
Martin:And also you could have this value for value that you get something and you decide yourself
Martin:how much you want to send as a transaction.
Martin:So this is really interesting.
Martin:So we'll cover that in the future.
Blair:Yeah.
Martin:And great.
Martin:Again, great.
Martin:That fountain is a popular app and there are more out there, and we will include that in
Martin:the show notes.
Martin:So the stats here, the latest period is United
Martin:States, of course, is in the top.
Martin:And then Canada.
Martin:And these total are like around 50% of the listeners so far.
Martin:And then Germany, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Finland, Australia, Sweden, for some reason,
Martin:Malaysia and Spain.
Martin:That's the top ten.
Martin:I didn't check how many countries we are in total, but we are getting closer and closer
Martin:to, you know, how many countries there are out there.
Martin:We are getting better.
Blair:Well, that's great.
Blair:That is great.
Blair:I want to mention, I know you got to run.
Blair:Is it true, fans?
Martin:Truefans FM? Yes.
Blair:Go ahead and talk about that if you like.
Martin:Yeah, as I did, it's a great application, and it's a so called progress web
Martin:app, so it could work.
Martin:You don't have to download an app.
Martin:It will work when you create an account, a free account, it will work on your smartphone
Martin:also.
Martin:And I see this positive gamification of it
Martin:when you use it.
Martin:You will get Satoshis.
Martin:You could do all kind of things.
Martin:And in the future we have like one guest that
Martin:I'm thinking about, Warren Fahey and others and of course James Valiant.
Martin:And in the future will be able to have like audiobooks there.
Martin:You will be able to have courses, you could have conferences, all kind of things, and
Martin:music artists.
Martin:You could apply this value for value model on
Martin:this also.
Martin:So this would be really interesting in the
Martin:future to follow this.
Martin:Stay tuned and keep in touch regarding that.
Blair:Well, that's all I had today, Martin.
Blair:So I know, again, I know you got to run.
Martin:Yeah, that's okay.
Martin:And as the last thing then, and I thank you,
Martin:Robert Beagley, as a guest, whatever, several times.
Martin:Thanks for your email.
Martin:And this is one thing with having a podcast,
Martin:the relation you build and grow and so on.
Blair:Yeah, true.
Martin:And thanks to Robert, we had a guest that talked about this new educational, you
Martin:could say site and college and school.
Blair:Right, Marcia.
Martin:And also we got support thanks to that podcast interview and conversation.
Martin:And we appreciate that very much to get the support.
Martin:And then you could go to the link that we have on Captivate, that's in the podcast player.
Martin:And we include that in the show notes also.
Martin:And I asked here on Twitter, because I saw on
Martin:the podcastindex.org that they say like this, I will do a quote here, help us out.
Martin:None of these is free.
Martin:If you get any value from this project or if
Martin:you just believe in it and want to help us with hosting fees and paying the bills, a
Martin:donation of any amount would be great.
Martin:And I would say the same for us.
Martin:So, and then I tweeted here or posted, as you say now, on x to something called Conshax.
Martin:And that's also a service that you could look at when you after some time get like from
Martin:different streams and different podcast apps and whatnot, the donation, then of course, you
Martin:want to thank the donors, but then you have to keep it in, you know, some kind of
Martin:instrumental panel or dashboard or something like that.
Martin:And contracts is that, and you could create a similar page like this capture page support
Martin:page on contracts.
Martin:And there they could, you could set a certain
Martin:amount in satoshis, like, do you want to give us a cup of tea or a coffee or whatever your
Martin:favorite beverage or a beer or your deciding amount.
Martin:So you could have pre, how to say pre populated.
Blair:Predetermined choices.
Martin:Predetermined. Yeah. So it's very simple to do it, but I will wait for their
Martin:response there.
Martin:Okay.
Martin:Thanks, Blair.
Martin:It was nice to talk to you soon again.
Martin:And we have guests in the pipeline and new things coming up and.
Martin:Yeah, we will talk soon again.
Blair:That sounds great, Martin.
Blair:Thank you.
Martin:Yeah, thanks for now and talk to you soon again.
Martin:Bye for now.