Support Liberalism and Secularism for the 21st Century

Blair: 00:00:08

Here we are again, ladies and gentlemen.

Blair: 00:00:10

Today it's just Martin and I in the secular Foxhole podcast number 85.

Blair: 00:00:15

How about that? 85.

Martin: 00:00:17

Yeah, that's a good number.

Blair: 00:00:19

Four years.

Blair: 00:00:20

I think we're in four years.

Martin: 00:00:22

Good.

Blair: 00:00:23

Congratulations to us.

Martin: 00:00:25

Yes, it is.

Martin: 00:00:26

Clap. Clap. Yeah.

Martin: 00:00:27

And we'll talk about that also, how they could, the listeners and co hosts, as you are

Martin: 00:00:33

and I am, and the guests and returning guests and others could support our work and we could

Martin: 00:00:39

support them in a trade.

Blair: 00:00:41

That's right.

Martin: 00:00:41

And value for value.

Martin: 00:00:43

So we'll come, come to that.

Martin: 00:00:44

But you have some news sandwich segment that, again, inspired by Amy Picoff.

Blair: 00:00:51

Yeah. Well, I do have some few things to talk about.

Blair: 00:00:55

Let's see.

Blair: 00:00:55

The first thing I want to mention is I

Blair: 00:00:58

subscribe to an email called notes from the middle ground by a gentleman named Damon

Blair: 00:01:06

Linker.

Blair: 00:01:07

Linker and his latest.

Martin: 00:01:12

And what's the meaning of middle ground?

Blair: 00:01:14

It's not the extreme left or the extreme right, I think, but it's not.

Martin: 00:01:18

The middle of the road that we know about that.

Blair: 00:01:21

Hopefully not.

Blair: 00:01:22

Yeah, hopefully.

Blair: 00:01:22

I think he's more, he's certainly in the liberal tradition, meaning the original

Blair: 00:01:30

classical sense.

Blair: 00:01:31

Yeah.

Blair: 00:01:31

Yes.

Blair: 00:01:32

Right.

Blair: 00:01:32

I believe that's true.

Blair: 00:01:34

But his latest, he, he talks about his, his

Blair: 00:01:38

teacher, this gentleman, name is Mark.

Blair: 00:01:40

I'm gonna call Lila l ill a mark.

Blair: 00:01:44

Lila.

Blair: 00:01:45

And he also has a, he has an article in the

Blair: 00:01:49

New York Review of Books, but it's available in PDF form on Mister Lila's website.

Blair: 00:01:57

But anyway, it's called the Tower and the sewer.

Blair: 00:02:01

And this is about.

Blair: 00:02:04

Let's read what Damon says about it.

Blair: 00:02:06

It's a wide ranging review covering several recent books by Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Amari

Blair: 00:02:14

and Adrian Vermeule.

Blair: 00:02:17

I think that's how you pronounce a gentleman's

Blair: 00:02:19

name.

Blair: 00:02:20

The essay is a tour de force that places these

Blair: 00:02:23

writers in broad historical context, situates them in contemporary, in the contemporary

Blair: 00:02:29

american right, and combines generosity toward the psychological and spiritual struggles that

Blair: 00:02:36

animate their thinking with nuanced is that word, and occasionally severe criticism of it.

Blair: 00:02:43

Now, these gentlemen are all anti liberal, anti enlightenment people.

Blair: 00:02:49

So they're no friends to America.

Blair: 00:02:55

So that I do want to, I will provide the

Blair: 00:02:58

Martin with the link to the PDF in the notes after the show.

Blair: 00:03:05

But that's something I want to alert our listeners to because I think it's well worth

Blair: 00:03:09

reading.

Blair: 00:03:11

And then here we are.

Blair: 00:03:13

And then I do subscribe to something else called the unpopulous, which Robert Tracinski.

Martin: 00:03:19

Yeah.

Blair: 00:03:20

Yeah. He often plugs on his in his writing and also his YouTube videos.

Blair: 00:03:29

But they have the people that behind the unpopulous have a institute for the Study of

Blair: 00:03:38

modern authoritarianism, and they are having their first conference in, of all places,

Blair: 00:03:44

Washington, DC, next month, next month, July 11 and 12th.

Blair: 00:03:52

So that's something we should plug, I think, and they want to, their topic for that

Blair: 00:04:00

conference is liberalism in the 21st century.

Blair: 00:04:04

And again, I will provide the links to both

Blair: 00:04:08

the website and I guess to the conference for that in our notes.

Blair: 00:04:15

And let's see what else.

Blair: 00:04:16

There was something else.

Martin: 00:04:17

Oh, you had to joke also because these two things sounds like a good.

Blair: 00:04:23

Yes, that's right.

Blair: 00:04:24

So here's, here's the, here's the good and

Blair: 00:04:27

this is the bad and it's the joke.

Martin: 00:04:30

Yeah.

Blair: 00:04:30

And people around the world should pity the american people because their choice for

Blair: 00:04:37

president is someone who's facing a sentence and someone who can't complete a sentence.

Blair: 00:04:46

So that is indeed a very sad situation.

Martin: 00:04:50

Yeah. Where did you see that one? That joke, actually, who read that?

Martin: 00:04:56

I want to give credits to that.

Blair: 00:04:58

We should, it was, it was a Greg Gutfeld on Fox.

Martin: 00:05:02

Yeah. Okay. That's also, that's also a good one.

Martin: 00:05:06

It's coming from Fox News.

Martin: 00:05:07

That's, that's interesting.

Blair: 00:05:09

Yeah, that's true.

Blair: 00:05:10

Yes, it is.

Blair: 00:05:12

So that's, that's the bad.

Blair: 00:05:14

And now the, the ringer for the sandwich, the

Blair: 00:05:17

top of the sandwich.

Blair: 00:05:18

This is another kind of a funny little thing.

Blair: 00:05:21

And I can't find the link.

Blair: 00:05:23

I have, I have to search for it.

Blair: 00:05:26

But here in America, we have what's called the Bible Belt, which is mostly southern part of

Blair: 00:05:32

the United States.

Martin: 00:05:33

Did it also reach where I was?

Blair: 00:05:37

I mean, there's, you know how you also is that there's certainly, it's not nearly

Blair: 00:05:43

severe in the midwest as it.

Martin: 00:05:45

Is more deep down south.

Blair: 00:05:46

Yeah, I think that's true.

Blair: 00:05:48

Honestly.

Blair: 00:05:49

And there is what I've called the buckle of the Bible Belt, which is little Rock,

Blair: 00:05:56

Arkansas.

Martin: 00:05:57

From Bill Clinton country.

Blair: 00:05:59

Yes, that's, yes, sadly, from Bill Clinton country.

Blair: 00:06:04

However, the secular student alliance is having their annual conference in Little Rock,

Blair: 00:06:11

Arkansas.

Blair: 00:06:11

So go figure.

Martin: 00:06:14

Yeah. That's a good battleground, right?

Blair: 00:06:17

I guess it must be.

Blair: 00:06:19

It might be.

Blair: 00:06:20

But I have to find that where I saw that.

Blair: 00:06:22

So, and then I'll put that in the show notes

Blair: 00:06:24

as well.

Blair: 00:06:25

But that's my new sandwich for this episode.

Martin: 00:06:29

Yeah. And I'm talking about news that I haven't listened to yet, but it's about the

Martin: 00:06:36

podcast in Swedish called the Security Council, and they were talking about

Martin: 00:06:41

deepfakes, distrust and democracy and about the artificial intelligence election year and

Martin: 00:06:50

so on.

Martin: 00:06:51

So that's something we could talk about

Martin: 00:06:54

tomorrow.

Martin: 00:06:54

It's European Union elections.

Martin: 00:06:59

I voted so called against European Union, okay, but I'm for free trade and so on.

Martin: 00:07:06

But now we are stuck in European Union.

Martin: 00:07:09

We haven't exited yet as Britain.

Martin: 00:07:12

But then you could then vote for somebody that could, a representative, a party that could

Martin: 00:07:17

stop the worst and maybe do something good there.

Martin: 00:07:22

And that's a new party that's not represented in the government or in the Riksta, as you say

Martin: 00:07:29

in Swedish.

Martin: 00:07:30

And that's called Mied Borg samling.

Martin: 00:07:33

And that's like Citizens alliance, you could say, or something like that.

Martin: 00:07:38

And it's a non socialist party because many of the non socialist parties, like the moderates,

Martin: 00:07:45

so called the conservatives, and even the liberal that are more social liberal, have

Martin: 00:07:51

problem issue whatever on their guidelines and the spectrum where they are.

Martin: 00:07:56

And we know that there's no left or right scale.

Martin: 00:08:01

In a way.

Martin: 00:08:02

Tracinski have talked about that also and

Martin: 00:08:04

others.

Martin: 00:08:05

But anyway, so it's interesting if I'm

Martin: 00:08:08

thinking of voting that and when I want to vote on a certain individual, if I could find.

Martin: 00:08:14

So that's for tomorrow.

Martin: 00:08:16

And then you said about the joke where in the

Martin: 00:08:19

autumn it's following that.

Martin: 00:08:22

And so we'll come back to that more and then

Martin: 00:08:25

definitely have Robert Traczynski and others returning and talking.

Martin: 00:08:32

So that's something about.

Martin: 00:08:34

And then.

Martin: 00:08:35

Yeah.

Martin: 00:08:36

What is a deepfake, for example, we could talk

Martin: 00:08:38

about and distrust for democracy could in a way be a good thing if it's not populist and a

Martin: 00:08:44

solution for the future is like a constitutional republic and really

Martin: 00:08:48

understands.

Martin: 00:08:49

I remember, wasn't it Tracinski that had that

Martin: 00:08:53

called something with the republic it's worth to save or something like that?

Blair: 00:08:58

Oh, yes.

Martin: 00:09:00

In paper form.

Martin: 00:09:02

Yeah.

Blair: 00:09:04

That I don't remember, but I know that Benjamin Franklin.

Martin: 00:09:08

Yeah.

Blair: 00:09:08

At the time of the signing, he answered someone's query, a republic if you can keep

Blair: 00:09:18

it.

Blair: 00:09:18

Of course, it hasn't been that for more than a

Blair: 00:09:22

century.

Blair: 00:09:23

Because of, you know, democracy.

Martin: 00:09:25

Yep.

Blair: 00:09:26

Which is the last in the last breath before tyranny unless you turn it around,

Blair: 00:09:32

which anyhow.

Martin: 00:09:34

Yeah. So that's something to come back to also.

Martin: 00:09:38

And then we could, if you're open to listen to some stats.

Blair: 00:09:43

Yes, please.

Martin: 00:09:44

So that's from our podcast host provider.

Martin: 00:09:49

I call it like a sound hotel.

Martin: 00:09:52

And that's an audio and that's captivate and

Martin: 00:09:58

there it's the listener behavior and the last 28 days is unique listeners, 129 and 148

Martin: 00:10:08

downloads.

Martin: 00:10:09

So some individuals have listened more than

Martin: 00:10:11

once, and then you could see its statistics and you could see trends a bit because we

Martin: 00:10:17

haven't done some latest episode is like two weeks ago, and that will have now download for

Martin: 00:10:24

70 downloads with Brian Stevenson.

Martin: 00:10:26

So that's great.

Martin: 00:10:27

So I don't look so much in it, and you shouldn't be, how to say, paralyzed by it.

Martin: 00:10:33

But it's interesting to see the trend so around.

Martin: 00:10:36

In general, in the long trend, we have like 198 downloads average every 28 days, like a

Martin: 00:10:43

month.

Martin: 00:10:43

So seven per day.

Martin: 00:10:45

Of course, in the long run, we want to have 77 hundred, 7000, et cetera, et cetera.

Martin: 00:10:50

And we see the potential of that.

Martin: 00:10:52

But we will not rush it as the band.

Blair: 00:10:56

No, I love Rush.

Martin: 00:10:59

But the new podcast app, in the latest 28 days, the fountain had 10% of that

Martin: 00:11:05

listening and downloads, you could say.

Martin: 00:11:08

So somebody out there is using a new podcast,

Martin: 00:11:12

modern podcast app.

Martin: 00:11:13

And a newly favorite of mine is Truefans Dot

Martin: 00:11:18

FM.

Martin: 00:11:19

And we will continue with this work.

Martin: 00:11:22

And then also the founder and originator of that, Sam Sati, will ask if you could come to

Martin: 00:11:29

the show and talk about the specific thing in the podcasting industry and how to arrange

Martin: 00:11:35

conference and political correctness and other things that could happen out there and the

Martin: 00:11:40

positive news, what he's doing, really doing great work with this.

Martin: 00:11:44

Truefans FM, the onboarding for guests, for co hosts, for listeners will be so smooth.

Martin: 00:11:52

And also you could have this value for value that you get something and you decide yourself

Martin: 00:11:57

how much you want to send as a transaction.

Martin: 00:12:01

So this is really interesting.

Martin: 00:12:03

So we'll cover that in the future.

Blair: 00:12:05

Yeah.

Martin: 00:12:06

And great.

Martin: 00:12:06

Again, great.

Martin: 00:12:07

That fountain is a popular app and there are more out there, and we will include that in

Martin: 00:12:12

the show notes.

Martin: 00:12:14

So the stats here, the latest period is United

Martin: 00:12:18

States, of course, is in the top.

Martin: 00:12:20

And then Canada.

Martin: 00:12:21

And these total are like around 50% of the listeners so far.

Martin: 00:12:29

And then Germany, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Finland, Australia, Sweden, for some reason,

Martin: 00:12:35

Malaysia and Spain.

Martin: 00:12:37

That's the top ten.

Martin: 00:12:38

I didn't check how many countries we are in total, but we are getting closer and closer

Martin: 00:12:43

to, you know, how many countries there are out there.

Martin: 00:12:46

We are getting better.

Blair: 00:12:47

Well, that's great.

Blair: 00:12:48

That is great.

Blair: 00:12:49

I want to mention, I know you got to run.

Blair: 00:12:55

Is it true, fans?

Martin: 00:12:57

Truefans FM? Yes.

Blair: 00:12:59

Go ahead and talk about that if you like.

Martin: 00:13:01

Yeah, as I did, it's a great application, and it's a so called progress web

Martin: 00:13:07

app, so it could work.

Martin: 00:13:08

You don't have to download an app.

Martin: 00:13:09

It will work when you create an account, a free account, it will work on your smartphone

Martin: 00:13:14

also.

Martin: 00:13:15

And I see this positive gamification of it

Martin: 00:13:18

when you use it.

Martin: 00:13:19

You will get Satoshis.

Martin: 00:13:21

You could do all kind of things.

Martin: 00:13:22

And in the future we have like one guest that

Martin: 00:13:25

I'm thinking about, Warren Fahey and others and of course James Valiant.

Martin: 00:13:30

And in the future will be able to have like audiobooks there.

Martin: 00:13:34

You will be able to have courses, you could have conferences, all kind of things, and

Martin: 00:13:40

music artists.

Martin: 00:13:41

You could apply this value for value model on

Martin: 00:13:46

this also.

Martin: 00:13:47

So this would be really interesting in the

Martin: 00:13:50

future to follow this.

Martin: 00:13:51

Stay tuned and keep in touch regarding that.

Blair: 00:13:54

Well, that's all I had today, Martin.

Blair: 00:13:57

So I know, again, I know you got to run.

Martin: 00:13:59

Yeah, that's okay.

Martin: 00:14:00

And as the last thing then, and I thank you,

Martin: 00:14:04

Robert Beagley, as a guest, whatever, several times.

Martin: 00:14:07

Thanks for your email.

Martin: 00:14:09

And this is one thing with having a podcast,

Martin: 00:14:12

the relation you build and grow and so on.

Blair: 00:14:15

Yeah, true.

Martin: 00:14:16

And thanks to Robert, we had a guest that talked about this new educational, you

Martin: 00:14:24

could say site and college and school.

Blair: 00:14:28

Right, Marcia.

Martin: 00:14:29

And also we got support thanks to that podcast interview and conversation.

Martin: 00:14:35

And we appreciate that very much to get the support.

Martin: 00:14:38

And then you could go to the link that we have on Captivate, that's in the podcast player.

Martin: 00:14:45

And we include that in the show notes also.

Martin: 00:14:47

And I asked here on Twitter, because I saw on

Martin: 00:14:49

the podcastindex.org that they say like this, I will do a quote here, help us out.

Martin: 00:14:57

None of these is free.

Martin: 00:14:58

If you get any value from this project or if

Martin: 00:15:02

you just believe in it and want to help us with hosting fees and paying the bills, a

Martin: 00:15:08

donation of any amount would be great.

Martin: 00:15:13

And I would say the same for us.

Martin: 00:15:16

So, and then I tweeted here or posted, as you say now, on x to something called Conshax.

Martin: 00:15:23

And that's also a service that you could look at when you after some time get like from

Martin: 00:15:29

different streams and different podcast apps and whatnot, the donation, then of course, you

Martin: 00:15:34

want to thank the donors, but then you have to keep it in, you know, some kind of

Martin: 00:15:41

instrumental panel or dashboard or something like that.

Martin: 00:15:45

And contracts is that, and you could create a similar page like this capture page support

Martin: 00:15:50

page on contracts.

Martin: 00:15:52

And there they could, you could set a certain

Martin: 00:15:54

amount in satoshis, like, do you want to give us a cup of tea or a coffee or whatever your

Martin: 00:16:00

favorite beverage or a beer or your deciding amount.

Martin: 00:16:05

So you could have pre, how to say pre populated.

Blair: 00:16:11

Predetermined choices.

Martin: 00:16:13

Predetermined. Yeah. So it's very simple to do it, but I will wait for their

Martin: 00:16:19

response there.

Martin: 00:16:20

Okay.

Martin: 00:16:21

Thanks, Blair.

Martin: 00:16:22

It was nice to talk to you soon again.

Martin: 00:16:24

And we have guests in the pipeline and new things coming up and.

Martin: 00:16:29

Yeah, we will talk soon again.

Blair: 00:16:31

That sounds great, Martin.

Blair: 00:16:32

Thank you.

Martin: 00:16:33

Yeah, thanks for now and talk to you soon again.

Martin: 00:16:38

Bye for now.