Martin: Foreign.
Blair: Good afternoon.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
This is episode 94 of the Secular Foxhole podcast.
Today, Martin and I are going are celebrate ayn Rand's birth 120 years ago on February 2,
1905.
Alicia Rosenbaum, I believe was their real
name, was born into the, into the world and the world was never the same.
Let's hope for the future anyway.
But anyway, we.
There's so many platitudes that I personally can attest to as far as what Ms. Rand has done
for me in my life and people.
I know that.
And you have your own stories, I'm sure those of you listening and day.
Martin: To have a celebration.
And so it's a constructed day or created day
called Rand's Day, in one word.
Blair: That's right.
Martin: So it's Rand's Day.
It's not official day, but it's a day that we
celebrate.
And I was thinking when you said that for me,
when you say ladies and gentlemen, I think I like that because it's very nice introduction.
And we are talking to you, the individual.
That's correct listening, the one listener.
And that's her philosophy.
You know, with the pamphlet, you could say, or
how you say, not pamphlet, but.
Blair: Novella.
Martin: Novella. Thanks. Anthem.
And the word I.
Blair: Yes, the most sacred word in the human language.
Martin: Yeah. And that's my first blog and podcast, ego.
And that's I in Latin, so ego.
Netkast.
So that's my reflection.
When I heard, when you talked about this day,
it was most important for her, of course, herself.
Blair: Yes, that's right.
Martin: And then she found freedom and moved from Russia, Soviet Union to the United States
of America.
And I would say directly, if you haven't
watched it and if it's possible to rent it, buy it, is the Sense of life, right.
Blair: The documentary Sense of Life, it got even nominated.
Yes, it did.
Martin: That's right.
Blair: Yes, it did.
Got nominated for best documentary.
Yeah, it was nominated.
I don't think it won, but it was nominated.
And let's see, February 2nd also personally is my will be my 28th wedding anniversary.
Martin: Yeah. So you have congratulations for that.
And thank you.
Thank you to you and your partner.
Blair: Thank you.
Thank you.
She's.
She's a, an extraordinary woman.
Yeah.
And.
But I mean, again, when I first read the Fountain Head, it was just as I said before,
all the cobwebs just blew out of my, my mind.
And I was, I've said this before, too.
I was basically an aimless, aimless, drifting
young man who basically read the sports page in the Sunday Funnies But I was introduced to
the Fountainhead by a dear friend of mine, and that was in 1979.
And here we are, what, several decades later.
Martin: Yeah. And your friend, is he still celebrating Ran's Day?
Blair: I think he does.
Yes, I do.
I think he does.
I have to make sure he does.
Martin: Yeah.
Blair: That's good.
Martin: And for me, I can't say exactly the year, but I say often mid-80s, and I was in my
mid teens, around 15.
And I also read Fountainhead, the first.
So I like that introduction.
And it was some special.
And for you out there, the listener, if you
haven't read the book, of course, do that.
I read it in Swedish.
It's not the same thing.
It was called translation.
And then I read it in original.
But you could also watch the movie the Fountainhead.
And that's also.
Blair: That's a great point.
Great.
Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal.
Martin: Yeah.
Blair: Ms. Rand herself was, I guess, partial director.
Martin: Yeah.
Blair: Though she.
Anyway, that's worth watching.
Martin: Yeah, it is.
Blair: Especially for the courtroom scene.
Martin: Yeah, it is.
And another movie that we are looking forward
to talk about also is we the Living.
And of course, based on the book also.
So I think it's.
It's a day of.
Worth remembering and celebrating and then with birth.
And it's now 120th birthday.
Blair: Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to make this.
This particular podcast, all positive stuff.
Martin: Episode. Yeah. Good.
Blair: Yeah. Yeah. But because there's great.
There's.
Even though the culture, certainly American culture is dividing, or seems to be dividing
between two major tribes, there's always positive undercurrents.
There are great individuals swimming against the tide, like people.
Like I'll mention them specifically.
Hopefully they won't suffer ill from this.
But the people at the Institute for Progress or the Roots of Progress, they are paving the
way for what's a field called Progress Studies.
And we have boom, Supersonic, which is developing a supersonic airliner to go from,
like, New York to London in three hours or less.
Martin: That's good.
Blair: And then you have again, people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos going into outer
space, private space shots at the fraction of a cost of NASA.
So there are.
There are great, great things happening.
And that's.
There's a gentleman.
I have to.
Hopefully I won't butcher his last name.
James Pethicacus, P E T H O K O U K I S who's
an economist, but he is.
He has a substack called Upwing Downwing, where he talks about upwing, meaning things,
great celebrations of progress.
And Downwing means the Opposite.
So there's great things happening in the culture.
It's just they obviously get no or very little positive attention.
Martin: And that's also for us because I'm happy I send a mental thank you note every
day.
And like paraphrasing from Rand both to
skyscrapers, of course, but the.
How do you say stacks on factories?
Blair: Yeah, the smokestacks.
Martin: Yeah, smokestacks and that.
Because in a way I do that as a controversial
thing to say because people are.
Don't get it nowadays.
Blair: No, they don't.
Martin: So I do that.
And I, of course, coming from that background,
the manufacturing industry, things have to be made and created also in these times.
And for me it's important to think about that.
And if we take again, literature as a novelist
and a philosopher.
Novelist and a philosopher in the Fountainhead
is the art architect and we are talking about Frank Lloyd Wright and others.
And in the Atlas Shrugged is the train.
And that how it connected the United States of
America as a backdrop.
It could be some if it would be a new book, it
maybe be in.
In Space, for example.
So. But it's important because it was relevant
for her.
She studied architecture and, and the business
and the industry.
And also it's very symbolic to rise up to the.
To the sky and.
Blair: Yes.
Martin: And so on.
Blair: Yes.
Martin: And the train also the locomotion and how, how it connects and transport from one
from A to B and the goods and everything about that could have been something else.
But the story as such, you.
You get interested in, in trains and in buildings and so on.
Blair: That's true.
That's true.
Martin: So. And that's very.
Blair: Let me also, if I may step in.
Sorry, Martin, but I want to ask the great
things that are happening to combat government indoctrination in our public schools.
There's the growing homeschool movement and micro schools popping up everywhere.
Martin: I have to say that.
And now I interrupt you, but with Scott
Powell, his work.
Blair: Yes.
Martin: And others that we have had on our show about homeschooling and self studying and
so on.
Blair: So Brad Thompson at Clemson University, whose Lyceum program is actually one of the
few pro America courses, if you will, on any college campus.
Martin: And in order to have that, I have Lyceum Peripatus on my Twitter or X and that's
a story by itself to talk about that.
I had Lyceum first and then came gave it away
to a podcasting site and then now Lyceum Peripatus and I talked about that on other
podcasts that publish in Swedish.
And I really look forward to one day to visit Athens and Greece and Belyceum or you
pronounce it a different way in Greece.
I think it like Kion or something like that
and probably or the name Robert Partner.
Robert's partner. Robert Bigley Partner could probably give us Carrie Ann.
Carrie Ann how you pronounce it.
She's an expert in this so because that's the founding and foundation in Greece and also of
course the Renaissance in Italy and then leading up to the United States of America.
The foundation and as I do celebrated December 16, 1773 for me it's very important.
That's not either holiday but should be I think.
Blair: Well I, I, I certainly concur with that and I won't I know we're mess we're not
mentioning, you know, dozens of other great people who are doing great things.
Martin: So positive news sandwich or should we talk more specific about Rans Day?
What's happening on that day on February 2nd?
Blair: Well again we just want to celebrate her I mean the achievements that's not only
was she a novelist, she was a philosopher.
I mean she had to create her own philosophic
system to present her vision of what she called the ideal man.
And some of the achievements unfortunately the establishment is although weakening they still
stay in the United both conservative and liberal against her.
But her time will come especially and.
Martin: If we look liberals we are classical liberals so.
Well, I'm a leftist of a socialists.
Blair: Yeah. Leftist progressives.
Martin: Yeah. And we are for progress also this is complicated with I know there's plus.
Blair: I, I once some years in my some years ago I joked that a conservative intellectual
is a contradiction.
So I mean, I mean because I mean religion
please.
Martin: Yeah. You know you could as I like the expression manning self in the foxhole.
You're right and I think we should have that also in the future more talking about how you
could support our show and the work of our guests and so on and there I see other
podcasts they have a boostagram corner.
We could have our, you know, Foxhole segment and we could thank listeners and fellow
podcasters and guests and supporting us and how we could support others.
So I think that we could talk a little bit about also if you want certainly.
Blair: But again Ayn Rand herself, she has been described as an epoch creating
philosopher and I concur with that.
And for those of us who fight for the future, live in that future today.
So that's I encourage anyone who's confused or struggling or depressed to pick up a copy of
the Fountainhead to to just take A journey along with her to I guarantee that you'll see
a different.
Have a different outlook on yourself, on your life and on the world.
Martin: Yeah. And it could be also as I had, I was defining a system integrating thoughts,
fundamental ideas into one.
One system and one philosophy.
So I was searching for that.
I came from a political way, you could say.
And then I said it must be something more.
And we have the whole philosophical system
integrated.
So.
Blair: You want to end the show with some.
Martin: Yes.
Blair: And so on.
Go ahead.
Martin: Yeah, I want to do some shout outs to the celebration.
So if you go to randsday.com I think it's Harry Beanswing that's taking care of that
domain.
Blair: I believe that's true.
Martin: So on if you go click on that ransday.com then it's another URL
forward/2025htm and there is a celebration that will be in Florida so you could read
about that.
And it's end of January and beginning of
February so they will have like a mini conference you could say or event happening
there and then the organization here will have the 120th birthday and I will include that in
show notes also.
Blair: Great, great.
Martin: And about it's Raymond Newman, the radio program.
They will release program there talking about Rand and with Rand.
Blair: Okay, yeah, that's an oldie but a goodie.
Martin: Yes, very good.
And then I want to do it quickly here and we will talk more about that in the future.
So ISO Cor called created the numerology Boostogram and that's how to send a payment
with a comment or like a digital telegram with a donation.
So I created 221905.
And what's that Blair?
Blair: If you read it out.
Yeah.
Martin: Yes.
Blair: 2-2-1905.
Martin: Yeah. And in that list now and there's of course no official list but I put that on
the GitHub list so it's there.
So if somebody want to support us or some
other podcaster they could send a booster gram of two two 1905 satoshis.
And on that list now before it's number 47 it's the Fibonacci boost.
That's pretty interesting.
112358 and that's Fibonacci is in the nature
but it's also in trading in financial sector.
That's interesting as a concept.
And Then it's number 48.
When is Rand's day? 221905 Rand's day boost and number 49 is
312009 Bitcoin birthday boost.
So that was the day of birth of bitcoin.
Blair: Aha. Okay.
Martin: You could go to podnews.net
Article boostagram normg.
And when I searched on Ran's day we had like 15 hits on the secular foxhole live that you
got that domain.
So we have talked about this before and as a
reflection about the situation we want to be positive but to find back to true real money
like gold and silver.
A gold standard or silver standard.
And also bitcoin is real money.
And there if you do on stsh and that's the designation for satoshi.
If you go to like currency world.
Currency world and type in on the Satoshi converter 221905 in Swedish crowns or Swedish
krona it's then 2,537 in US dollar is now 232.
So if somebody would send that to us we will get $232.
When I created it some years ago it was around $50 or 500 Swedish crowns.
So that's something to reflect on.
How did this happen? And so this is really, you know, putting the
flag in the ground or how you say it, a stake in this.
Blair: Yeah, stake in the ground.
That's right.
Martin: Yeah. So something to reflect on.
And I again want to do a shout out to Sam
Setti of Truefence FM.
My goal is to onboard all our guests, 30 plus
guests who wants that?
So we could give a split in satoshis to them and also how they could support us in our work
and the listen out there if they want.
But they could also use this as Adam Curry
saying fun Fiat coupon and Send us via PayPal for example or Stripe and they go to the
Captivate support page and there they could donate and again thanks to you that have done
it in the past.
And we how do you say thanks in advance for you who do that in the future.
So at the end Blair, do you want to hear some short stats?
Blair: Yes, go for it.
Martin: Yeah. So we are around again around 7 downloads per day and we will talk more about
that.
The importance in the future is how long you
listen and how you'll interact because that you could look at TrueFans FM in a positive
gamification.
So we have a like latest episode is around 70 downloads for now with Scott Powell and that's
great latest cycle.
I saw it was some blip there or so it could be
something with the bots or something download in mid January.
But other than that it's about 7 downloads per day around that and in the cycle of 28 days,
and here are the countries where the listeners are coming from.
You, the listener.
United Kingdom is now on the top.
This cycle of 96.
And then United States 64, Canada 9, Hong Kong 6, Sweden 5.
For some reason, India 4, Spain 3.
Australia, Colombia 2, Japan 2 and Norway 2
and Belgium 1 and Ireland 1.
That's 10 list for this last 28 day cycle.
Blair: Great.
Hello to everyone and thank you.
Martin: Yeah.
Blair: And I was going to say something and it just completely slipped my mind, so.
Martin: It's okay.
It's all good.
Blair: It is, it's all good.
But unfortunately, Martin, I do have to run.
Martin: Yeah.
Blair: And I appreciate again you throwing this together.
Yeah.
And again, just everyone.
Iran is one of the greatest human beings, the second greatest human being that ever lived,
in my personal opinion.
The first one being Aristotle.
And our show will continue.
Martin: Yes.
Blair: And this is what I thought.
Here we go.
Two upcoming guests that I hope to entertain you with would be Professor James Lennox.
And we'll interview him on his latest book, Aristotle on Inquiry.
And hope to reach out to Brad Thompson of Clemson to talk about his work and his Lyceum
scholarship program.
So those are two upcoming shows that will happen soon.
And that's a wrap for me.
Martin: Yeah. Great, Blair, thanks.
And talk to you soon again.
Blair: Thank you, Martin.
I appreciate everything you do, you know that.
Martin: Yeah, same.
I say the same.
Bye for now.
Blair: All right. Bye. Bye.
Ra.