H.A.R.D. Justice: An Interview with Andrew Bernstein
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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of the Secular Foxhole Podcast. Today, we just have another guy from Brooklyn. Andy Bernstein. Andy Bernstein is here as our guest. And I really just have one question for him. So, Andy, why detective novels and why you? Well, you know, I've written...

I mean, from the time I was a little kid, I always wanted to be a writer. I've written a book, serious novels. I feel like Reckoning is a communist race war to America. A lot of serious nonfiction on capitalism, on heroism, on Ayn Rand's philosophy and so on. But I always loved heroes. I always loved tough guy heroes. And I thought, you know, at some point, I love Philip Marlowe.

You know, Raymond Chandler's here. I love Mike Hammer. Let me explain to Mike Hammer. Robert Cox and Spencer. I love those guys. So I could write a tough guy series too. And so, you know, I started working on Tony Justin and he's seen Reggie H.A.R.D. and Lisa Flowers. And I started working on it. Now I've written three Tony Justin novels.

Oh, first one just came out. Second one will be out this summer. Third one will be out this Christmas. I'm writing volume four. You know, I do this in my spare time for love because it's so much fun. That's great. That's great. Hopefully they sell and I make a lot of money on it also.

Well, I know, didn't you have the audio version that's done with professional people, if I ask? Or is that something else? Well, that was a dramatic audio podcast of Volume 1 of Red Meat Village. Volume 1 of it, going to Saga. It was done by White Media, which is a professional Hollywood outfit. Yeah, they got some big stars. It's audio. It's a

Dramatic Audio Podcast, kind of replicated what radio used to be like in the back four hour time. That's cool. It's really cool. And they got some big stars to voice. I mean, they got Catherine Bell

you know, TV star, the voice of Lisa Flowers, the guy, Malik Yoba, who's also a TV star. And if you remember the movie Cool Runnings, which I love. Yeah. He played Yul Brynner, you know, in Cool Runnings. They're very good. And the Dramatic Audio podcast that Red Moon builds is very good. I like it.

That's great to hear. And as a podcaster here, as Claire and I, and myself, and yourself, when we have to promote that with new modern podcast applications, you could get spreading the word and get value for that. So I will look that up and you could provide the RSS feed and we could promote it in different ways because...

Then you have plenty of individuals there that could get attention and get something for their work. So we will talk more about that. And my question is, why a pen name? Yeah, I'm writing the point just under the nom de plume, the pen name of Trish Power. And it's very simple. It's the pen name

distinguishes you know my my serious writing from my purely fun right yeah okay okay you know i i have an andrew bernstein book coming out soon i'm compiling a collection of my essays and that's that's going to be real serious philosophy history literature politics real serious material so that's good you know andrew bernstein book you're coming out in july and uh

Trish Power book, volume two of the Tony Justice saga will also be out this summer. But, you know, they're distinguishing each other by what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in what's in

an audio version of the book because it was just, it was just, it was a standalone story that was, that was based on, based on the book. And they changed the writers, the writers, and we changed a few things. Yeah, that's cool. So this could be like, it could be like a play also, like a,

the January 16th and so on in the future, maybe some other versions of it? Yeah, could do it as it could. It could certainly, it certainly worked on stage. It's not, it's not far off long. It's not, you know, you're not, you're not all over the world. It takes place mostly in Brooklyn, but also in New York, in Manhattan and different areas of New York city. It's, it's, it's,

in time and space. So certainly Cookie Dog on stage. Yeah, that's great. So how did you, I mean, you say you've been writing since you were young. And so how did these characters germinate? How did Reggie Hard or H-A-R-D and the others, how did they germinate to final paper? Well, that's interesting.

That's a really good question. And a lot of people, Ayn Randall is one, a lot of people have pointed out that the most important aspect of Six of Nights and the most difficult is to solve it at once, which I think is true. But if it's more difficult than creating characters, it's not by very much. Because you're

To me, it's both a fiction and nonfiction writer. I'm not a literary genius. I'm Ryan Rand, unfortunately. But I do think I'm a good writer. To me, fiction writing is more difficult than nonfiction because there's an analog in nonfiction for plot structure. That is, you have a logical outline and then all the...

elements of the book follow that outline. It's roughly similar to a plot where you have a large development of events. But there's nothing in non-fiction that's analogous to creating a whole universe of terror. That is unique to fiction. But fortunately for me, and I knew this from the time I was a kid, guys. I was a kid growing up and I knew what I was going to do with my life.

And everything I did in the park was to prepare me for that. So, you know, I'm a teenager playing basketball in the park in the local... Swoop! Swoop! Yeah, that's right. Right. And I'm playing basketball in the park. And, you know, there are a lot of good kids there who are going to school or working. And then there were the thugs. You know, any large park in any large city, you have to be drunk with it. Yes.

You know, and they're goons to protect them from hijackers. And they're walking around heavily armed. Yeah. So anyway, so I didn't just learn how to survive having to deal with these thugs.

But I knew at the same time, I'm going to write about these guys one day. These guys are going to be characters in my stories at some point in the future. And so when I got to decades later, I got to the idea of, well, I'm going to write some hard-boiled detective stories. I had 100 characters in my head. So somebody asked me, Tony Johnson's a philosophy professor. He's based on you?

I said, yeah, the philosophy professor thought it. The tough guy is not. I was always with him. But I knew heroic type guys who were really good guys, morally good, upright, and formidable. Not guys you want to stop. I knew guys like that. And so I could base the characters on my experiences. Reggie is an original character because

he said he's the he's the toughest guy in the world he's going to be a heavyweight champ you know and so he's he's but he's he's also a genius he's been mocked in the time he was a little kid and growing up in the project that's where that gangster mentality is for the white man education for the asians but education is not maybe it's for black women but it's not for black black hands gags right that's sick mentality we see too often in the in the projects

So Reggie was mocked for being a bookworm. He was beaten and everything. He fought back and everything. He never gave up his love of books, but he had this sense of shame that he was a bookworm. So he's got to overcome that. He's like a superhero. He's physically the toughest guy in the world. He's the most brilliant guy in this universe. He's almost like the superhero, but he's got a problem that he's got to resolve.

I'm sorry. No, can we pause just for a second? Martin, do you hear that little bit of feedback from him? Yes. Could you see your connection, Andy? It probably will work out in the post-production anyway, but with your microphone and your headphones, is it in your computer? Yes.

Because it is some background noise. It's like a small reverb when you talk. We can hear it. Yeah. You want me to lower the...

The sound on the mic. Martin, do you think that's good? Yeah, it could be. Could it be close to the microphone? I hear a little noise when I adjusted the mic gain. Yeah. Good. Now you feel better. How's that? Is that any better? Yes. You're much louder, but yeah, the reverb is gone. Yeah, good. Okay, good. Great. Thank you, Blair, for pointing that out. This is how we do it. We do it wrong. Yeah.

I will interrupt your 14 now. You guys are pros, right? Yeah, we are. So next question, if it's a spoiler, you don't have to answer it. But I just cracked your book open at 15 pages. And so I'm thinking that H period, A period, R period, D period stands for something, but I'm not sure yet. Is that a giveaway?

No, it isn't. Reggie H-A-R-D, that's not his real name. He's a professional fighter. That's his stage name. His real name is Julius Colomar, which comes out at some point. I don't even think it's in Volume 1. I think it comes out later. But Reggie H-A-R-D is a stage name, kind of like Notorious B.I.G., the rapper. So some people might...

Say Reggie Hard, because he's hard. He's a tough guy. But he prefers Reggie, H-A-R-D, to spell it out like notorious B-I-G. But the interesting thing about the characters is, as you know, you're fans of hard-boiled detective fiction. The female characters are often la femme fatale.

And so with Lisa Flowers, who's a married woman, she's a brilliant psychotherapist. Tony's head over heels in love with her. I won't give it away here, but the question that runs all through the plot is, can Lisa be trusted? Because there's certain things about her that Tony doesn't trust. And he says it to her face. And she even says to him, wow. She says, you know, even love...

doesn't stop Tony just from being a hot ass. And so can Lisa be trusted? I don't want to give it away because that's a big part of the plot. Will this love develop into a full-fledged relationship or will she turn out to be La Femme Fatale as happens so often in hard-boiled detective stories?

So Andy, I will be a devil's advocate now. And you know that I'm a sensitive guy and don't like modern detective, like TV series with only blood and gut and whatever.

But I still like, for example, Mr. A, the Ditko's character. So could I read this book then? I started to read it and it looks very fascinating. And we have a new thing going on, upcoming, forthcoming, that I really want to be involved in. And I think that's good for the world.

to have these hard-boiled detectives that are fighting for justice and whatnot. And the bad guys will get what they deserve. So if you are sensitive, could you read this book?

Well, the Tony Shust universe is often violent. So the sensitive souls may not like the violence. But if they're committed to justice and the bad guys get what they deserve, yes, definitely the bad guys get it. So it is like the TV series, What is Time? Make My Day Punk. Dirty Harry? Yeah.

It has a Dirty Harry element. Or if we go way back to the 1950s or 1960s, it has a Mike Hammer. Yeah, Mike Hammer. Mike Hammer kind of element. So then I will, yeah. But here's the thing that I think there's several aspects that make the... Tony's just a tough guy. Reggie is a tough guy. Lisa has a gangster past. You know, she was called Gangster Girl. She's, even though she's brilliant...

She becomes a brilliant psychotherapist. She's an expert with a handgun. If she becomes part of the team, if she proves trustworthy, she's not just somebody who does the brain work. She'd be out in the street with them because she's a gangster girl, was her nickname. But the genius level here.

Tony that you don't see generally in the hard boil story. You see him in the, in the softer boil stories, you know, like Sherlock Holmes as a paradigm. Yes. My favorite. Yeah. Me too. Oh, I could discuss Sherlock Holmes. We want to do a show just on Sherlock Holmes. I love him. All right. Okay. I am definitely a Sherlockian, but also, and all the brilliant detectives after him all pay homage to him, whether it's Hercule Poirot or Nero Wolfe.

Are they all pyromance to show? Or the guy with the trench coat that I like, Colombo. Oh, Colombo. Yeah, Peter Falk was great. I always wondered if they based that character on porphyry in Crime and Punishment.

you know, who, who torments Raskolnikov in that story, plays cat and mouse with him the way Columbo does with his, with the murderers in that series. I don't know the answer. I don't know the answer to that question, but Tony's a philosophy professor. He's a brilliant guy.

Lisa, a PhD in psychology and came out of a upper class family on the Upper West Side. She's superbly educated in the top prep schools before she went, you know, before she dropped out to become a gangster in Hell's Kitchen. But Reggie, and Reggie, who's got no schooling at all, is

is a genius. He's the most brilliant of all. You have these three very, very, very highly intelligent, even brilliant characters. And so it opens up certain possibilities that you don't normally get in tough guy fiction. And one of them is, I'll give something away that's coming in future volumes, is Reggie's got this inner problem. He knows in his head that

that his commitment to reading and education is a very, very, very good thing. But in his emotional life, he said, it's shameful to be a bookworm.

He's got to resolve that. Well, Lisa's a psychotherapist. She gets him into psychotherapy. And for a tough guy off the streets, tough kid out of the projects, that takes more courage to go into psychotherapy and face your inner demons than it does for him to step into the ring and fight all these hard rocks. It's the most courageous thing Reggie ever does. But the reason is it's not just, I mean, mostly for his own inner fulfillment. Right. Resolve the torment. But Reggie's got a dream.

He's the, by volume two and certainly by volume three, he's the greatest heavyweight, not just the heavyweight champion. He's the greatest heavyweight since Muhammad Ali. And he is beloved. And he wants to use his fame and popularity to,

to bring reading into the projects, to attack the, well, attack's not the right word, to kind of resolve that physicalistic culture of drugs, violence, crime. He wants to use his money. He's making a fortune of money, merchant. He's got his own brand, Raw Gym, brand Raw Gym merch. He's making a fortune. You're going to use that money to build libraries and private schools and the projects and bring love of learning, you know, and love of books, right?

to these kids. He wants to take on that gangster culture. And to do that, he's got to resolve his own sense of shame over this. So by volume three, I'm bringing a very philosophic element into it because there's a murder in the projects that they have to solve and catch the murderers. But the same murderers who are responsible for the killings, they're the ones, the gangbangers, they're the ones who oppose the construction of the library. They don't want a library. You know, and

and drawing away recruits from the gang to become students and readers and everything. And so bringing in this intellectual element that the real problem in the projects is not so much white racism,

as it is this culture that rejects education, that rejects reading for a very physicalistic culture of drugs, booze, violence, crime, and so on. Leftists are all going to hate me.

But I got two words for them and they ain't Merry Christmas. And, but this could really help change the homicide rate in the projects is just off the charts. These gangsters killing each other as teenagers. So, you know, so, so, you know,

Reggie wants to short circuit that violence and have these kids become strong readers and go on to have real lives. And I get an idea now, Blair. We had Aaron talking about this.

in an episode. Right, sure. So maybe we could reach out and get out the books where it's needed also, in Hell's Kitchen and other places. And also when you did the reference to the fighter there, wasn't it recently that some kind of martial arts guy who said after he had winning in the ring, read Ludwig von Mises or something like that? Yeah, I did. I did.

I didn't know that. You mentioned Aaron. I forget his last name. Is that the black dude who's an object? Yes. What's his last name again?

Aaron, I can't remember. I think, yeah. But we'll include that in the show. Riley, Aaron Riley. Riley, yeah, that's right, Aaron Riley. He's a really good guy. When I hit 70, my short-term memory started to go. It starts early, I remember that. Senior moment. Aaron Riley, he's a really good guy. And he read, if I remember correctly, I think he read volume one of the Tony Jo saga. Oh, great. Yeah.

So we have this connection then. Yeah. I think he moved to Austin, but I'm not 100% certain of that. Yeah. We have some contact, so we will connect again. So thanks again, Andy, for that. Yeah, I have Aaron's email. I could always contact him. Yes, you do. So do you know already how many volumes it will be in this series? Because you have a name for the series also. What was it called? Well, the series is just called The Tony Just Said. Yeah.

I don't know as many, you know, I, I,

I don't know how many years, hopefully I live a long time. Hopefully I still got, you know, many years to go. I could, I could churn out a Tony just novel a year and they're fun. It's not like I, it's not like I don't enjoy it. And there's no shortage of possible storylines for tough guy detective in New York city, Brooklyn and other places. There's all different kinds of murders. And you know what else I want to do aside from,

in the fictional universe, resolve the dangers of the physicalistic crime, gangster mentality in the projects. And by the way, Reggie's not a racist. He doesn't want to just reach out to black kids in the hood. He wants to bring this to kids all across the country, white kids, Asian kids, black kids, you know. But he wants to start in the projects, in the toughest place that there is, you know, to...

encourage learning. But another thing I want to do with this series, guys, is I want to create villains. I mean, you know, real memorable villains, real bad guys who are really the dangerous. Like you mentioned Sherlock Holmes, you know, like Professor Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes series. So I had a villain in volume two and volume three. It was a professor himself, a psychology professor.

who's a pretty good villain. I'm working on volume four, and yeah, I think I have an idea for a good villain and some memorable characters like that. Real smart, dangerous bad guys really spice up a story. Yeah.

And Andy, that's pretty easy to find, right? You look around you in the world and see what's going on. There's a lot of violent guys, but real brilliant bad guys, that costs extra. But can't you find them in academia and certain bureaucrat organizations? Yeah, in the Democratic Party. In all parties, I think. Yeah.

Well, yes, I could find smart, dangerous guys like that. It just takes a little creativity, a little imaginativeness to come up with. And then you have to always have this footnote, or what do you call it? Disclaimer, but it is fiction. Yeah, yeah.

I went to high school with Chuck Schumer, so I know I don't often admit that. That's the end of this podcast, ladies and gentlemen. He was two years ahead of me, so I didn't know him all that well, fortunately. Here in Europe, we have several of them to pick also, like in academia and so on, especially in the philosophical department and

Yeah. So, Andy, we mentioned several great historical figures in detection and some authors. So did those authors, did you think they influenced you to become, to really want to write detective fiction?

Yeah, well, I was always a hero worshiper, you know, and so I always read hero stories, whether they were about real life characters, you know, like George Washington, Ernest Shackleton, all different kinds of, you know, Maria Montessori, all different kinds of heroes and heroines, or fictional ones. I was a kid in the 1960s. Ian Fleming was still alive.

And he was publishing the James Bond novels. And I loved James Bond. I still do. I love you. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I was reading, I was reading Mickey's plane. Mickey's plane was alive and he was writing the, my camera books in the 1960s and all kinds of heroes. You know, John Wayne was still alive. I mean, you know, I'm making Westerns.

where he was always a good guy, almost always a good guy of great prowess who used his prowess to protect the innocent against all kinds of bad guys. You know, I love that stuff. And so, yeah, and of course the really brilliant, the tough guy detectives are always very smart because they have to solve the case. And sometimes that gets lost on readers. My camera is so tough.

that sometimes you forget how smart he is, that nobody else, nobody else figures out who the murderer is. He always does. But, but he always figures it out.

And I tell people, listen, if you're ever a character in a Mike Hamas story, do not kill one of Mike's buddies because he will try. He will find out who done it. He will track you down and he will fill you with 45 dum-dum. You know? But anyhow, the brilliant...

detectives too. The Sherlock Holmes types, you know, the most, where the most salient characteristic is not how tough they are. Although Sherlock Holmes was tough. We see that in a lot of instances, but how brilliant he is. And I love, and I love the way Rex Stout

integrates the two, you know, with the two characters of Nero Wolf and Archie Goodwin. You know, you have the soft-boiled guy who sits in his armchair and figures out who done it, and then the tough guy who goes out and does all the Archie Goodwin, does all the dirty work, you know. It's great. And Agatha Christie, because I'm not a big fan of Hercule Poirot, because to me he smacks, he's like a pallid knockoff of Sherlock Holmes.

But nobody, and I mean nobody, is the plot writer that Agatha Christie is. She is an extraordinary plot writer. So, you know, I read all of those books. And yeah, they did. I always loved them.

It didn't occur to me, you know, too many years later that I was writing detective stories because I was always more interested in writing serious, you know, about serious issues, fiction and nonfiction. But then it occurred to me a few years ago, why not do it, you know, do it for fun. And then I realized, like I was talking before, there's no reason in the world why I can't innovate here and introduce serious elements into the tough guy genre.

So while they're chasing down the killers in the projects, they're also dealing with real serious issues. They want to change the culture from a physicalistic one to a much more intellectual. That's great. Yeah, that's great. Because that could really be a positive thing to what's all negativities going around. You mentioned, for example, rappers and others. I mean, there are good rappers out there, but it's lots of other things.

Yeah, the gangster rap. Yeah, and the influence that is not healthy at all. So if you could introduce them to a good alternative and antidote. Yeah, I'll never forget a really famous movie from the 1980s. You guys might have seen it. Stand and Deliver. Lou Diamond Phillips and Edward Olmos.

where, based on a true story, Jaime Escalante, the math teacher in El Barrio in L.A., who's working with these Chicano kids and teaching them calculus and everything. And the Lou Diamond Phillips character, I'll never forget the scene because he asks the teacher, I need two sets of textbooks. Why do you need two? He's like, keep one at home and one at school so I don't have to be seen in the streets.

carry your textbooks then the gangbangers are gonna be all over me you know and beat the hell out of me for acting white or trying to get an education you know you know acting like i was i was an asian or a white guy or something uh and that mentality is around yeah it's around and it's very very harmful for the kids especially for the boys i don't think they pick on the girls as much

but they definitely on the boys who want an education, definitely catch hell from the gangster mentality. So your work of art will be really mind and body integration then in the future? Yeah. Yes. Detective stories in a certain way always are because the detective has to be smart enough to figure out who done it. And he's got to be in the hard boiled genre. He's got to be tough enough to fight off the bad guys.

But this has taken it to a whole other level, the intellectual level of not just figuring out who perpetrated the crime, but literally trying to change the culture to a much more intellectual culture in the projects. And you can imagine, you know, the mother's

are very positive about this. Oh, you have a library. We could go. There's a place where the kids can go to read books and get teaching. And I could come in with my kids and read to them in the children's section and the security guards there. And Reggie's paying for this. The library is open 24-7, 365.

And so, you know, there's a haven, you know, and the mothers love it. A lot of the girls love it. Some of the boys love it. And Reggie's attitude is, well, we're going to reach more of the boys. It's great. It's great to bring the girls in here and get an education for them. But they're not the ones killing each other. It's the teenage boys, you know, who are killing each other. We need to reach them.

I get it. Yeah, I get it. Yeah. Listen, Andy, I do have to kind of cut this short, but I wanted to reach out and change the subject just a smidge. You've got a class starting on your website.

The history of capitalism book you wrote. Yeah, the Capitalist Manifesto. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so you want to talk about that for a minute? Oh, well, yeah, thank you. Well, yeah, the Capitalist Manifesto, the historic economic and philosophic case for laissez-faire, I published it in 2005. It doesn't seem possible. It was 20 years ago already, but it is. And I wanted a cat man, as I call it,

And an objectivist friend of mine said, Catman. I love that name. It's like an objectivist superhero has come down to earth to beat up a con man, you know, on the communism and everything. The Thinking Cap. Yeah, that's right. The Thinking Cap. That's right, man. But I envisioned it. And what the book is, is one stop shopping for capitalism. You've got the historic case here for capitalism, the economic crisis.

and above all, the moral philosophic case. So regarding the history, and the history is also, I think, is another novelty here because they don't teach much on the actual history of capitalism. Much of what is taught is probably not really teaching this,

propaganda by Marxist journalists and intellectuals about all the horrors of capitalism. So I had to do a lot of research. I'm not a historian. Digging up hundreds of books. I kept Amazon in business for sure. Thank God for Amazon. I got all these books, a lot of them obscure. And Doug and Doug and Doug found the actual history of capitalism, which not surprisingly is glorious.

It started raising living standards and life expectancies immediately upon introduction into Great Britain in the late 18th century. So there's the actual history of capitalism. And on the pre-capitalist period was terrible poverty and starvation level poverty. So that's generally new in and of itself.

But also then the economic section, nothing, you know, which I, you know, I borrowed, I quoted from the great economists, from Adam Smith through, uh,

Von Mises and George Reisman, Milton Friedman. And of course, Bastiat may not be an economist, but Bastiat and Henry Hazlitt were both brilliant economic journalists. I love Bastiat's phrase, you know, Paris gets fed, you know, on a free market. So, you know, the economic case that the great economists have made, and I'm borrowing from them, and then the philosophic

Moral case, you know, that the mind is mankind's means of survival. The mind requires individual rights and freedom. And life is the standard of value. Capitalism promotes life much more than any other system. So I have, you know, in the moral philosophic section, Ayn Rand has established the philosophic superiority. The economic section, the great economists have established capitalism's economic superiority.

So I've brought in these elements from those great thinkers, integrated it with the history

which is new, I think. One whole section devoted to the accurate history of capitalism. And here it all is in one book. We're going to spend 12 weeks studying. We're going to go in depth, you know, chapter by chapter. And it's going to be, I think it's going to be a really fun course and it's going to be a very informative course on the actual nature of capitalism and its life-giving successes.

Do you want to give like the website for that or the, uh, so people can know about it? Yeah, it's yes. Thank you, Blair. It's, it's put on a promoted by the objective standard Institute. So is it objective standard.org objective standard.com. I forget off the, it may be, I don't, you know, I don't remember. Yeah. I have my phone here somewhere. Yeah.

Let's look it up. Yeah, and we will include that in the show notes also. Oh, great. Great. Thank you. But the technology today is really, it's objectivestandard.org, everybody. And you go objectivestandard.org and they have a section on their courses and

And there's, you know, and there's the headline, the capitalist manifesto course. You can just click on it and get all the information and sign up for it. Um, we are almost at our limit because I wanted to cap enrollment at 12, you know, to keep the, to keep the interaction manageable. Uh,

Because if we have 20 people, it's going to be a lot of people wanting to talk and we'll never get through the material that I want to cover. I know that from many years of teaching. So it capped it at 12, almost there. So anybody who wants to sign up, you need to do it quickly. Very good. Very good. I just have one minor complaint about that book.

It's not available in Kindle. Yeah, you know, it's an academic publisher, if I can blame. I got to blame somebody. But it's an academic publisher. It was University Press of America. They are not at all entrepreneurial. I don't want to knock them too much because they love the book, you know, and they publish it. But academic publishers are notorious, non-entrepreneurial. So you're doing...

eBooks or audio books. It's, it's. But I think we have a solution for that in the free marketplace, Andrew, but, and we could talk about that in, in the future, but you of course have a right to, to the content, right? Now the, it belongs to the publisher when you, when you, that, but there, but there's where the free market works more. And you're absolutely right. Instead of going academic publishers from now on, I'm going to self publish. Then, then,

Like I self published the Tony Just books. Then the content belongs to me and I can promote it all I want. Good clarification. And again, we are for friendly competition. So they are doing a very great way and they know how to do it.

And I have done it for a long time. But as you said, and I think I agree with Blair's question there. And you have the answer. So you're a smart guy, Andy. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Mon. I appreciate that. And I just want to put in a plug here. You know, like I said, I don't want to sound like I'm negative on University Press of America. Their chief editor, the late Judy Rothman, who died of cancer, unfortunately, a few years ago, she loved the book.

she told me it was of all the books they published there, that it was her favorite. And yeah, she really, you know, she really pushed,

for them to publish it. And a couple of my follow-up books, they are Objectivism in One Lesson and Capitalism Unbound. We're also at Roman Littlefield, University Press of America is one of their imprimatures. So I'm grateful to them because they got me started, you know, and made me a little bit of a name for myself. But it's well known that, you know, academic publishers, if they sell a couple hundred copies, they're happy. You know, they're not entrepreneurial. Yeah.

Wow. Okay, but nonetheless, that book is the gold standard of capitalism and certainly a big explanation for capitalism. Oh, well, thank you, guys. We will spread the manifesto. It's important. Thank you, guys.

Listen, gentlemen, I hate to cut this short, but I should get back to downstairs. All the best to you and your family, Blair. Thank you so much. Thank you. Take care. So once again, we've had Andrew Bernstein, one of our very, very favorite guests on with us today. Andy, thanks for manning the foxhole with us. Always great to be in the foxhole with you and Martin, Blair.

And I know once you have the link, you'll send it to me so I can paste it all across social media. Yes. Very good. Very good. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Thanks. Bye-bye. Take care, everybody. You too. Yep. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.