All right, ladies and gentlemen, here we are again.

Martin and I am back in the Fox hole.

And today's guest is Kevin Osborne.

Kevin comes to us with a degree in

humanistic studies, a graduate degree in philosophy, I

believe, from City University of New York.

He's worked as a quality engineer in the private

sector and worked for the Department of Defense.

But for the last 15 years or so,

he's been selfemployed as a writer and artist.

And today we're going to talk mainly about

two of his most recent books, The Prometheus

Connection, published in 2014, United States history in

terms of famous myth, and The Prometheus Frontier,

published last year, which concerns visionaries for freedom

start the world over.

And Kevin, how are you? I'm fine.

Tickle to be here.

Well, great to have you.

It's great to have you.

Now, I thought it was really kind of

unique to unite Promethean myth with America.

How did you come about thinking

about that or creating that?

I wanted to write a nonfiction book

as to what happened to America.

I wanted to do a condensed history of America,

and I struggled with it for some time.

And by that I mean probably a year or two.

And I needed something to make it

not run on the bill, something different.

And I had the idea that knowing the

Prometheus myth, I had the idea that there

are parallels between us history and the metaphors

that are filled with Prometheus myth.

And when I made that connection, all of a sudden this

book project came alive for me, and that started it.

And it led to the Prometheus

Connection book published back in 2014.

Right now, that's strictly nonfiction, as you said,

but who are some of the characters that

you use in the nonfiction work?

Well, the metaphor of Zeus, the metaphor of Prometheus.

There's the metaphor of Prometheus torch.

There's a metaphor of chains

and the metaphor of Heracles.

Those five figures or objects are metaphors that

have a very real part in American history.

For example, Zeus is a great metaphor of authority.

And in America, Zeus was reincarnated as in the

form of God, especially the Christian God, and in

the form of government, a repressive government.

Prometheus is a great metaphor for defiance,

the great icon of defiance throughout history.

And the founding fathers took on one of

the greatest powers, the greatest power at that

time, by far England, and defied it.

Prometheus torch is a metaphor for reason and thought.

And our country, being a country of

the Enlightenment, was clearly a representative of

clearly set on fire by Prometheus torch.

You could put it that way.

The change that a figure is so big in

Prometheus, the myth Prometheus being chained to a mountain

when he stole a fire of the gods to

give it to mankind, he was changed.

And that metaphor of change, that change is

a metaphor for what happened in America.

We're changed by coercion and subjugation

in this country today, government subjugation.

And, of course, Heracles, this we all love, the

figure of Heracles, who in the myth freed.

Finally, after thousands of years of being in

change, Prometheus was freed by Heracles, another God.

And I think Heracles was the son of Zeus.

Heracles freed Prometheus from the chains.

And of course, we know who the Heracles

is in American history was Heracles figure.

It's Ayn Rand who freed who

released Reason Again on the world.

So it was rich in metaphor.

Blending them in into this nonfiction book was

what made it exciting for me and different

from a different treatment of American history than

any that I'm aware of before.

So that's the story of that book. Okay.

Well, I would say the fire that Prometheus

stole is the quote Light of Reason.

Yes, I should have made that

should have made that clear.

But absolutely, yes, that you mentioned, Kevin, because we

have played around to find a symbol and artwork

for our show with secular foxhole with binoculars.

And if it's what kind of

symbol is for science and reason?

Should it be light bulb?

Should it be certain symbol?

So that's interesting to hear you're saying that.

And the first book is available in Kindle, but you

have also done it for free in audio format.

So I listen to it there.

And could you tell a little bit, as you

mentioned, about the God position and the separation of

Church and state in the introduction of a book?

What's the question about the separation

of Church and state and the

introduction of the book Prometheus connection?

I don't remember what I wrote.

Refresh me. Yeah.

So there you have the myths about the role of

a religion and that you really separate Church and state.

You said that people are angry and maybe the gods also,

and Founding Fathers didn't do enough cut, so to speak.

And that's why nowadays could sneak in into the

system again, that people are trying to infiltrate this

wall with religious other non rational ideas.

Yes, the religious right is under the guys under

a term that they probably don't agree with.

But which scholars mentioned all the time, Christian

nationalism is the attempt by the religious right

to keep the myth alive that America was

founded as a Christian nation and remains a

Christian nation to this day, in essence.

So the defiance of America's history was that they stood

up to God and King and refused to allow them

authority in the new country that was being founded.

Now the Christian right will disagree with that

and argue that that separation never succeeded and

never really existed because the founders were God

fearing people and believing God and all that.

But that whole train of thought is

I address it in the Promise connection.

I think it was in chapter probably chapter two.

No, chapter three.

I forget that the idea that America is a

Christian nation, that whole concept has been thoroughly dismissed

by scholars, and I discussed that summarized the results

of that conflict in The Prometheus Connection. Okay.

They've gained more power under Trump, sadly.

But let's jump over to the newest book,

though, if you would, The Prometheus Frontier.

Now you fictionalized the story, so can you give

us some background on that and some of the

main characters and what they're all about?

If you could? Sure.

Let me give you an indication of

where the milestones were in my thinking. Sure.

In The Prometheus Connection, the book

we were just talking about.

At the final chapter, I cut the imagination loose

and imagine a society in which everything is free.

Coercion has been eliminated, and we

now have a free society.

What would that be like?

It was fun writing that chapter.

And after finishing the book, now I'm faced with a

certain amount of depression that this project is over.

So I start to think, oh, maybe I'll do a

novel and picking up where The Prometheus Connection left off.

And so that started my thinking.

And it started me thinking about things

like, well, is it really feasible?

Aren't we progressing towards that as time goes on?

Or is the current state of the country irreversible?

And I came to the

conclusion that it's basically irreversible.

We need to start over. Okay.

So that was one of the first milestones in my thinking.

Well, okay.

The second was that the gradual approach to

a free society is still absolutely essential.

We have to work towards free society bit by bit,

keeps the fire alive, and it keeps people motivated.

And the third realization in my thinking, the third

milestone was that how inspiring vision of an actually

existing new country free society would be to the

world, both for those who are working for incremental

change over time and for foreign countries.

And it would be the Empire State Building.

And that iconic, not the Statue of Liberty, that iconic

symbol that draws people from all over the world.

That is the value of having a

fictionalized presentation of a free society, potentially,

if it's done, if it's unreasonably.

Well, so that was what led me to get

into a fictional presentation of a free society.

And so basically the writing of the novel, to summarize

real quickly, and then you could take it from there.

The main force behind it was a vast

enterprise of industrial enterprise led by a man

by the name of Maurek Rankel.

And his enterprise within it, he

made a vast fortune over time.

And then within his company, he

formed a foundation with the charter.

Within his company, Michael Marie Enterprises, he

formed a foundation to drive and manage

the development of a free society.

Rankel himself had studied philosophy Besides science, and he

wrote a Declaration of Freedom as his statement to

the world of how a society should be formed.

Okay.

The next step, he acquired an island in

the Caribbean which had the name Orte, which

means excellence or virtue in Greek.

He acquired that island.

So I tell the story of how that happened. Okay.

After that, they form rankle within his company.

He forms a Pain society where the members of

which are Chartered to work through what it would

take to take the island of an impoverished Caribbean

Island and develop it into a free society, a

flourishing free society like Thomas Paine.

Kevin, that's it. Yeah.

When we are recording this, this

is around Thomas Paine birthday. Isn't that right? Yeah.

Tomorrow, I believe.

Great.

Perfect timing.

So the last bullet on this is after

the paint decided it was a ten year.

That charter was to have all the difficulties worked

out in the next ten years so that in

ten years time, they would be the inauguration of

the island of Arte as the first island nation

of the Prometheus Frontier, which was the vision was

that the frontier would eventually be a number of

Islands in the world that form free societies.

Adopt free societies.

What are they represents and former an actual frontier.

So that's the milestones to the Prometheus Frontier and the

story, the novel chapter, it's 21 chapters that deal with

each of these parts, each of these elements.

All right, well, listen, you've got some great points

here, and I want to know what do you

think or what do you hope that the readers

will take away from the Prometheus Foundation take away

from the Prometheus Frontier is. Thank you.

Is the power of the importance of

having a free society in the world.

At some point, if you really want to get a

free society model the value to happen, you need a

model for the rest of the world to see.

And for that, I kind of think of,

again, the Statue of Liberty, that iconic symbol

of freedom that the statue represented.

That would be the main takeaway from the novel is that

here is a fictionalized presentation of what it could look like

and what the steps were to get to it.

So to take away not only the fact that

here is a picture of it, but that there's

a certain feasibility to it that the book presents.

There's human capital in the world, an abundance of

it, looking for a free an island of freedom.

There's venture capital in the world.

We know that from all the wealth

that is in the world being invested.

And a lot of venture capitalists are Liberty minded.

They don't have to be Objectivist for this, but

there's a lot of Liberty minded venture capitalists.

There's real estate, there's impoverished Islands all

over the world who could be lifted.

And many of them are

paradises, yet they're impoverished.

Amazing, isn't it?

But that's the case.

There is the need to defend against

a very hostile world to freedom.

If you're going to do this,

you need to have defense capability.

The Prometheus Frontier gets into that and offers how

that was solved by Rankle and his pain society.

All right.

And then above all, there is the philosophy of freedom

that we all know and love for many years, right? Yes.

That now exists in the

world, the philosophy of Objectivism.

It is the most powerful philosophy for change, and that is

what drives this whole venture in the knowledge and as it

has to if such an activity is to be adopted.

And I pursued.

All right, Kevin, may I threw a coral

ball or be like a Devil's advocate? Absolutely.

I like the idea.

I like what you have done, created work, and

it will be like fuel for my spirit.

And I like the idea of the symbol of the

Statue of Liberty because you really know about the flame

and what it's representing, the freedom seeking individuals.

But where you have during the years, you have had all

kinds of projects, and we could name names, but we could

also let it be and people could search for it.

But it had been like oil platforms

in the sea with special passports.

It has been nation between nations, like no man's land.

And recently, some project in, like, an

ocean thing that's like a floating country.

And also in America, you have had, like, a

state project in a certain area of America during

the years, and some have been really scams.

Some haven't had the real foundation.

Some are developing and pivoting.

So my question is, is it too

late, too early or the right time?

If I read your book, it depends on how you look at it.

I think I struggle with this.

It's such a great question.

I think there are three crucial preconditions if

you want to get a free society started.

First of all, you got to have a Southern

Island and not a sea steady thing, not what

they did over in Dubai or anything like that.

So you need to have a sovereign island, and it

has to be more than a small Caribbean Island.

Arate in the novel is 1000 sq.

Mi.

It's 100 miles long, and it averages 10 miles

north of south, so it's a thousand square miles.

And that's a good size.

You have to have one.

I believe it needs to be

something on that order in size.

So right away, that's a difficult challenge.

Two other things.

You need to have an impregnable defense.

You have to be ready to

defend it against the hostile world.

And no one has an impregnable defense in this world.

So far.

I offer the possibility some

ideas that solve that problem.

It's a lot of science fiction.

So right now, the other thing that's essentially

preconditioned is that whoever starts this such adventure,

if they were going to do it, you

need to have a declaration of freedom.

My declaration of freedom, the one that we

defined for Prometheus Frontier, is chapter nine of

the book is dedicated to that.

It's basically a declaration that initiated physical

coercion in this society is to be

banished, completely banished from all human affairs.

So it's basically a declaration of

appliance for the whole world.

This is what we're doing.

It's completely free, and you better respect it.

So you need the three things.

Suburban island, the President of

defense, Declaration of freedom.

And your question, Martin, was

how feasible is this, right? Yeah.

Basically, Southern Island is hard to get

a Southern Island of 500 sq.

Mi to 1000 sq. Miles.

They're out there, there's plenty of Islands.

But when they're under the sovereignty of another country,

another sovereign country or so, many of them have

a long history of oppression, a lot of baggage.

How do you get around that?

I got an idea.

Now, I will prove that out for the universe because

you have the small island or big island, and nowadays

you could have every region or country or location.

We have joked about that and talked

about that with listeners to our show.

How many did we have now?

Was it 50 or how many places in the world, Blair? Right.

50 down the world.

And we joked some of we said,

are they a real country or not?

And some are maybe not in the list, but should

be in the list, like Taiwan and so on.

But there you could see what kind of location it is.

So every location on map when you

listen to podcast has a place.

And many of these have also

domains like in domain like T. O.

Is tobacco, I think, for example.

So out there is probably an island that

could be interested in trade, for example, with

domain names and draw attraction for that.

So my addition would be that you should have also a

physical and a virtual town hall where you could go and

talk about this, discuss things, vote and get the process there

and that you can do virtually and plan ahead.

Like here in America.

This is what we have talked about, Blair,

and I myself about the capitalist party, right? Yeah.

There you have the foundation where you have manifesto,

but it's not what I know about not active.

You can't vote for them.

You could plan and you have a seat where you

have a manifesto and people could read and understand and

apply, and then you could find somewhere elsewhere.

But, of course, as I said, you have to have these

pillars and the foundation and that I would be very interested

in continue to discuss in a civil and in a serious

and in a rational way, because that has to happen.

I imagine how the founding father did that.

And they have debates, they

have discourse, they have discussions.

They were not always agreeing with each other. Right.

It was firing, firing.

Later on, they United and they

had the United States of America.

And right now it would be very important

to have that because it could inspire others. Yeah.

So, yeah, I think that could be something,

and we have a place for that. Blair, right?

That's right.

I believe we do.

All right, Kevin, let me ask you I'm

going to combine a couple of questions here. Sure.

And if you'll take in order that I ask

you the way I ask you, that'd be good.

What is the hardest thing and the most enjoyable

thing that you found about writing these two books?

The hardest thing was anytime I write is

to actually say what I'm trying to say.

I have to edit so extensively any time I write.

And I find that I need to back off

and usually just simply state what it is.

And that almost always involves deleting most

of what I'm trying to say.

I have made it too complicated.

So the hardest thing is to be to make it simple and

to state it simply and not get too bogged down in detail.

So there's an awful lot of detail I

could have added to the Prometheus frontier.

And the Prometheus connection that would have

to me would have destroyed the book,

especially the second one, the novel.

People don't want to read too much detail.

I don't think you got to get all the

essentials out and keep it lively and interesting.

So that was the hardest thing, the most enjoyable to

take the second question, the most enjoyable part for each

book was clearly being involved in a project that advances

the philosophy that's so dear to all of us. Right.

The philosophy of I read and also I'll add

to have the ability in today's world to actually

get a book published on your own.

It's wonderful that we have the technology that we

have today for doing this, for self publishing.

Basically, that's what both these

books are self published.

And I'll add one other thing to that is how important it

was for me to have a dear friend, Alex Blyer, who is

technologically savvy in how to do this in a way that I

didn't want to get involved in, the technology of using Amazon and

what it takes to get a book published.

Alex Blyer is the man who made

these books possible, actually bring them into

the world and get them published.

And Besides which, he was also a great inspiration to me

with his spirit, positive spirit for each book, he got excited

about it, and that meant all the world to me.

That's great.

That's what was involved.

Well, hat tip to Alex Tip.

Hats off to Alex.

You read my Acknowledgements on both books and you'll

see every word I say about him is justified. All right.

This will be my final question.

And then, Martin, if you have

anything, you can certainly chime in.

But, Kevin, your ideal island

nation, areite is that correct? Arate? Yes.

Obviously, the accelerated pace

toward a worldwide authoritarianism.

How would that nation survive in this

world and that kind of world?

You would think that there's no chance

and it seems like we're doomed.

You could take a very pessimistic view like that.

But if we look at history, the big

picture throughout history, reason has been victorious.

I think of some of the famous contrast in

history between Egypt and Greece, between the Dark Age

and the Enlightenment, between East Berlin and West Berlin,

between North Korea, South Korea, all of these.

You have an example of reason

triumphant over a non reason.

So that's the big picture to me.

But as far as ourater goes now, think of this.

Think of the famous brain drains in history,

modern history in particular, where you build it

and they will come type of thing happens. Sure.

There's a brain drain to free countries.

There's a brain drain to the icons of freedom,

even the Statue of Liberty and the Prometheus way.

So the greatest minds in the world, many of

them would flock to a country like ariday I

mean, really free country, with the Declaration of Freedom,

banishing entirely, banishing initiated physical coercion or the threat

thereof, there would be an absolute brain drain just

from that fact alone, the fact that it exists.

And here's the last thing I

would offer in response to that.

And that is that a country like areate, an island

like areate will never want for friends in the world.

And that includes the United

States of America above all.

Well said. Martin.

Are you all set? Yeah.

And I think we could continue this conversation

in cyberspace and on our digital town hall.

And that will be included in the

show notes because then we can have

what your great work and inspiration, Kevin?

So the light will keep burning, so to speak.

I'd love it.

And we could invite others that have been reading your book

and listen to this episode and having a conversation about that,

what to do and how to apply it to life.

As we said in the green room, if you

fight for a second Renaissance for the future, you're

living in it today, as Wren said.

Yes, absolutely.

And also to describe it as you did and also

how you talk as an artist and creator and a

writer, the process and doing it for selfish reason.

And then to see that feedback, positive feedback in

the exchange and people buying your books and reading

it and spreading the good word and so on.

And that could inspire others to do that, writing

their own book and publish their own thing.

Isn't that a great thought?

It's a wonderful thought.

And yeah, we need vision.

We need more vision and inspiration and focus

on the positive and what's possible out there

in the great world that we live in. That is true.

That is true, Kevin.

Working people find you on

the Web per Prometheusconnection.com. All right.

Mutechicon.com for that story,

that fable, the fablecon.

But Prometheusconnection.com is a good starting place.

All right. Just go ahead.

And we talked about in the green

room, and it slipped my mind. I'm sorry.

Just give a brief outline of mutekan

again, because I really like that.

Mutechan is a fable.

Mutekon means invincible spirit, and the invincible spirit

is the creature featured in the story, which

is based on a Golden Eagle, the largest

of the Eagle, I believe.

And it's a short story that I illustrated.

So it's a picture book, actually, I think it's not

much more than 1000 words or 1500 words total illustrations

of this very short story that make the whole book.

And if you go to mutekycon.com, you

can run the trailer of the DVD.

It's published in a DVD, by the way.

It's available in a DVD.

The trailer gives you a good representation

of the artwork and the story.

And my sound guy did just a fantastic job on that.

That's a good picture of what it's all about.

Also, it's a children's fable.

And did you picture an age range or does it matter?

Did I picture it on what an age range for children?

I think it reads in the description on the

website, ages seven and up or six and up. Okay.

But it's for all ages above a certain age.

I don't know.

That it's for really young children anyway. All right.

Okay. Great.

And it's good to have it in,

as I said, DVD something physical.

But I have an idea where also we could continue

and talking in the future how you could maybe transform

it in other ways and you could then distribute if

you still have that possibility with the content and you

could distribute it in different ways.

We could talk about how we could do that,

thanks to inventors, capitalist, investors, tech entrepreneurs, you could

now stream it in different ways so we can

talk about that because the younger generation, they know

how to consume content in different ways.

My sound guy told me at one point you

should really make it free on the Internet.

And I went along with that.

I basically just about give away the book, the DVD,

to anyone who writes, emails me and asks for and

just send me the postage for that, not in advance.

Afterwards, I put it in my

about the author in my novel.

I put it in there that if you want.

Buteky Khan DVD just email me and I'll send

it and it's $5, no payment required in advance.

So I'm giving it away.

And you could pay me $5 after

the fact for postage if you want.

I really don't care.

I like the idea in a way, and

we could do that with the twist.

So I have some marketing ideas how you can make

that connection, because then somebody a young mind, but it

could be somebody young in mind and heart and older

person also get that fuel again for the soul.

And you have this contact that people contact you

with the station so on and keep that conversation

and if you could give some other alternatives, maybe

they want to stream it but still give a

donation or being on mailing list or whatever, then

you have that great connection there.

So I think that's a great idea of you

and I think we could maybe adding some alternatives

to that terrific word that'd be marvelous.

All right, well, today we've been talking

to Kevin Osborne, author of The Prometheus

Connection and The Prometheus frontier.

Kevin, thanks for Manning the foxhole with us today.

It was my great pleasure. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

You're welcome, Kevin.

Thank you, Larry Martin. Yeah.