Interview with Scott Powell
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the Secular Foxhole Podcast. Today, Martin and I are thrilled to have a gentleman who actually reached out to me to come on the show. That's like the first time I think that's happened in all our episodes. Scott Powell is an objectivist and historian living a, quote, nomad capitalist lifestyle in Mediterranean Europe. He is the author of The History of Now and its sequel, The History of Tomorrow, which together present his integrated view of history and

which he refers to as, quote, present centrism, excuse me, unquote. Along with his partner, Heather Schwartz, which I hope I pronounced correct, he is the co-founder of Knowable World, the world's only fully integrated history curriculum for students from kindergarten through 12th grade.

He is currently working on a science fiction novel about time travel and the true power of history entitled The 14 Points. Welcome, Scott. Nice to be here. Thank you. All right. Nice. Now,

What do you mean by, this was a new concept to me, present centrism? Right. Well, it's certainly a neologism. So in other words, I had to invent the term because I simply could not find an adequate way to represent my thought concerning history. And so the basic idea is that

that typically the serious study of history is considered to be the study of the past. The unserious study of history that has been spawned by a variety of ideological movements in modern times is really focused on the present very much at the expense of the past.

And very much dependent on prejudices and presuppositions in the present. And then there's the process of cherry picking and all of the typical things that corrupt what serious historians, quote unquote serious historians, consider to be the proper study of the past.

And you can see in both of these options, which are the two, basically the false dichotomy that currently dominates the study of history, you can see that on the one side you have the past,

which historians are dedicated to serious historians are dedicated to, but the problem is at the expense of the present. And then you have people that are activists, uh, have a variety of reasons why, but they emphasize the present of course, at the expense of the past. Well, what's missing of course, is a proper integration of the two, right? We could simply refer to that as past present integration. Uh,

And so that's what present centrism is about. Present centrism, if you want me to give you a formal definition, it is a mode of historical inquiry that seeks to achieve an integrated historical awareness of the world we live in. There's a lot to unpack there, but basically that's what it is. You can see the object of study is not the past.

The object of study is the world we live in. The past doesn't exist anymore, right? Okay, it once existed. That's an important thing to recognize. But why does it matter? Why it matters is because of how the web of cosmic fact has brought us to where we are now and where it's taking us. And so we live today. There's only one reason for us to study.

That's in order to empower us with the knowledge that it can provide us, the insight and instruction that is available by studying this amazing spectrum of experiences that all of humanity has gone through.

and deriving what we need from it, right? Finding some positive mental intellectual outcomes from it and allowing us to navigate through the world and hopefully to shape it for the better. So that's where we are. We're in the present. We need to live

well. And so the idea of present centerism is we need to be able to use the past, not merely study it as an end in itself, but to use it as a means to enact, to better shape the world we live in. Very good. Now, I hope I'm not jumping around too much, but you use the terms Americanism and Americanistic. They may be in one in each book. Do you want to jump into that for me?

Well, I mean, so this is an example of periodization. So in other words, one of the critical things that has to be done with the past, which of course is a plethora, it's a vast ocean of facts, which typically overwhelms the student. And of course, you and I and just about anybody listening can remember that

studying history and being forced to wrote, memorize a whole bunch of useless stuff and then regurgitate that, uh, for in order to pass the test and then promptly forget it, uh, and then develop, you know, this, this perspective, of course, that history is useless. Uh, and, the problem of course is though that because history is fast, essentially about 5,000 years worth of decent recorded information, uh,

because it's so vast and because it involves so many cultures, that we have to have a method of organizing, condensing, and essentializing the vastness of it so that we can render it into something useful. Because there you go, right? Present-centrism. The goal is for us to embody the idea that knowledge is power. Well, how can we generate powerful knowledge?

So in the problem of studying history, we encounter something that I know some of your listeners are interested in Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand, as a philosopher, gave us fascinating insight into the importance of concepts in terms of how they allow us to condense our perceptual experience and arrive at this really powerful conceptual level of awareness.

As it turns out, with regard to history, which is a massive stream of one-of-a-kind events, which are linked in this web of cause and effect,

There's a different problem. It's a problem that is not quite akin to the need that we face on a general basis of processing the concretes that we find in our experience and integrating them into concepts. There's a different problem. There is a problem of this absolutely unique stream of events, of procession and succession of events that are constantly unfolding. And how do we

How do we render that into some sort of useful mental outcome? And I discuss this on a theoretical level as part of the history of tomorrow. Broadly speaking, I refer to the need to employ what I refer to as constructs.

Now, we could probably spend an entire podcast on what are the difference between concepts and constructs. I don't think it's probably the best place for us to go right now. But periods, historical periods, are examples of constructs because they are composed of absolutely unique events which combine in some way. We have to mentally integrate them in order for them to add up to something useful.

And to now circle back around a little bit to your original question, in order to take now American history relatively short compared to, let's say, Chinese history or something else, right? So we're talking 1776.

word if we're going to be strict about it. There's the colonial period before that, but okay, let's talk 1776 on it. Well, that's still, you know, we're coming up on 250 years worth of stuff, right? And so that's a lot. And most people try to memorize a few things and forget and can't integrate. All right, so how do we integrate those things? Well, first of all,

We have to definitely be selective about how we approach it. And the foundation of the method of periodization that I employ in present centrism is to identify what I refer to as anchor facts. And so that's the beginning of the answer. There are certain facts. Let's talk about the biggest one of all, 1776, the 4th of July, 1776. To my mind, the single most important anchor fact, what I call a cardinal anchor fact,

with regard to world history at this time. The reason why I say that is because it's an America-centric world. And so the United States is overwhelmingly the most important country in the world. It's not a matter of good or bad. We all know it's also good. But it's a matter of what is the significance of American culture in terms of shaping the world. And it's overwhelmingly the most important. And

And so where does that come from? How did that come about? Well, the 4th of July, 1776, clearly is an anchor point. We want to talk about, eventually we want to recognize, of course, the fullness of something called the American Revolution and so many other things. But basically, how did there even come to be an America? Well, of course, there's a birthday. And so the country got started at a certain point, right? And then there are other anchor facts that have brought about

the transformation of American culture into what it is today. And there have been, to my mind, two overarching successions. There was an original American culture that, of course, was dedicated to individual rights. We have the classic statement in the Declaration of Independence concerning life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

And we have other statements by the founders as well that are really wonderful. And we see that. We see also, unfortunately, the inability of that generation and later generations of politicians to abolish slavery, right? So we have a strange problem. We have a contradiction embedded in what I refer to as American culture, the original incarnations.

And there are other elements to that as well. There's political economy. There are a number of other dimensions that can be thought of. There's the level of industrial development. There are a variety of factors that go into the construct that I refer to

as the American period. And in my view, that period basically ended in simple terms with World War I, at which point America began to exhibit a number of new cultural traits. Up to that point, its foreign policy was one of political separation as embodied by the Monroe Doctrine.

And then America began to embark on this quest to, quote, unquote, quote, unquote, make the world safe for democracy. Actually, that's not an exact quote. It's always hard to quote that one because Woodrow Wilson said, the world must be made safe for democracy. So we have to carefully quote. But and then, of course, you know, there was a backbite.

And then America got dragged into World War II, and then there's the Cold War, and now there's been the war on terror and all of that. That's foreign policy. As well, the United States became focused on civil rights rather than natural rights. The political economy shifted from one of encouraging industry through mercantilism to now one of regulation and a mixed economy and growing elements of socialism. So you can see that there are a variety of choices

And when you try to encompass those and say, okay, we've got one way that America was at the beginning and we still have America, but it's clearly not the same thing. Well, how do we then, you know, how do we then capture that fact? And so I refer to the more modern incarnation of the United States as Americanistic.

If I can, I'll just elaborate on that just a little bit because I think there's something powerful here. Please. Some of your listeners will enjoy. The reason why I adopted that terminology is because in my studies of history,

I came upon a really interesting periodization by another thinker, and actually it was a delimited one. It was meant to be one that was applicable only in the area of art history, but it really struck me as being

more widely applicable. And so it was the work of a German historian named Dreusen, Gustav Dreusen, something like that. And what he identified was that back in ancient Greece,

there was a succession of two different fundamental artistic styles. And he referred to the first as being Hellenic. In other words, you know, the essential one, the one of Praxiteles and the other, you know, great sculptors of that era. And then he said, after Alexander the Great,

he referred to the merger and hybridization of Greek art with Asiatic elements as Hellenistic. So you can see this interesting

What he's trying to say there is that there was something essentially Greek, and then there was something else which was derivative and involves some sort of mixture and hybridization, and unfortunately also a downgrade, and he called that Hellenistic. So that's a terminology that I really found empowering, and I said to myself, well, that's exactly what happened to America. America had this original culture,

Which in terms of fundamentals, and especially on an aspirational level as expressed by the founders, is really as good as it ever got.

And now we have this lesser version, and it's got all of these elements in it, especially from Europe, the hybridization of American culture, the invasion of European ideas, especially the social theory of rights as advocated during the French Revolution by Rousseau and then the thinkers of the French Revolution. And then you get this hybridization and this takeover because Europe's always been more intellectual than America.

And so there's a lot of powerful ideas circulating in European culture all the time. And America's had this way of being the younger kind of prodigal culture, but it's always kind of been getting closer and closer and losing its distinctiveness and becoming more European. So that's my thinking is similar. Let me just throw something in there that I mean,

For me, I've noticed the default, if you will, is always whenever there's a big crisis here, we fall back to religion or we fall back to ancient religious ideas instead of, you know, it's still a

uh exploring oh why did this happen you know and using our intellect and using our does that make sense to you as far as the periodization well i would say that well i don't think you see that's a difficult one because if you look at the trajectory of american political culture

you can't find a dominant religious strain in it. What you see is the founding fathers, and there is, of course, the idea of individual rights being God-given natural rights. But in the founders, in thinking of the founders, there's an element of deism there, which kind of, the idea of being,

that God is somehow necessary as an Aristotelian prime mover, but then basically is retired, right? And he's just taking in the metaphysical dividends and just sitting on the couch. Hands off. So it's not really dominant. And now we have, of course, influence of religion. Absolutely. It's undeniable, and we see it in many kingdoms.

But it's not a dominant element. It's one that's difficult to factor in. And it's one that really, for me, is an area of continuing study because I'm always interested in the most fundamental and most powerful trends. And then, if possible, I like to see if I can investigate, well, what's feeding into that?

and what are some of the conditioning aspects. And that's the way that I would characterize religion so far in American politics as being a conditioning element, not a dominant element, but always present, always conditioning things. So we could talk about that in relation to progressivism. We could talk about it in relation to conservatism. You can see it, right? You can see it, but it's not always present.

obvious how does it play into the development so it's not a basis of periodization uh for the time being in my thinking but it's just a recognized conditioning element i see and i see in in your first book uh the history of now um you do break it down into into great things um let me just let me i want to throw this word at you supranationalist europe

Can you delve into that? Yeah. Because that's a word I don't think I've heard. Oh, okay, good. Well, you know, so basically, in the European history, of course, it's very complex. Europe is, in my treatment of Europe,

which I got to tell you, Europe is, for me as a historian, Europe is my Everest. In other words, it's the most complex and significant cultural block in world history by far. You've got, of course, these overwhelmingly important cultures of Germany and France. These are the really core nations of Europe. Then you've got this very strange element of Britain and how does it relate to

Then you've got these adjunct cultures which play a role and every once in a while rise to prominence like Italy and Spain and so on. But typically it's a Franco-German condition that dominates the history of Europe. In my presentation in the history of now, I tried to ask myself, well, how do we properly characterize the history of Europe? Because it's very easy to get.

totally dragged into the past at the expense of the present when you're studying Europe, because you're talking 1500 years now. So it's already a problem when you're dealing with the United States, which is 250 years. But if you want to start the history of Europe, let's say with the fall of the Roman Empire in 476, well, you're dealing with 1500 years. Okay. So now you got a big problem. And so, you know, I would say that the, the, um,

the kind of standard or classical way of dealing with this is to refer to the first thousand years, let's say as medieval and then modern. Right. Okay. But this is kind of empty. What do you mean modern exactly? Uh, and what, what matters about being modern? Right. And, and so in my view, I came to the, I came to this view that European history is best understood currently, uh,

Because present centrism demands that it be characterized according to what we need to know now in order to navigate through the world we live in. Basically, the question of European history is, where did the European Union come from? This is what Europe fundamentally is today. This is the dominant construct in politics and in culture. What does the European Union represent?

Well, it represents something very technical. Europe, always very ideological and very complex. It represents an ideological point of view, which is known as supranationalism. So supra means over and above, and clearly the root word nationalism, right, is the point of view that the nation, fundamental unit of reality and standard of value in human affairs, right?

And so the issue is that the history of Europe, all

all the way up until the world wars was the history of separate and increasingly mutually alienated nations, right? The tribes coalescing into countries, early kingdoms and so on, always wars, wars, wars. We've got the extra element. Here we go. A good example of religion as a conditioning factor. We have the element of, um,

the Reformation and religious wars, introducing sectarianism. And so we've got all of these various factors producing alienation. And then, well, in modern times, you have the advent of the French Revolution, so now you get politics as alienating, everybody ganging up on France. You've got, of course, Britain with its own traditions staying relatively separate.

And so you've got all these various factors leading to the Europeans always being at war. I mean, that's why the founders, that's why George Washington said, let's not get entangled in that mess, right? Let's stay out of it. That was his farewell address. He said, we stay out of those wars. And James Monroe, of course, followed that up with the Monroe Doctrine and basically said the political system of Europe is fundamentally devoid

different from that of America. There's no benefit to us getting entangled in that. And so that's why America's original policy of political separation was so valuable to the United States. In terms of Europe, though, right, they just

kept going. It got worse. This is paired with imperialism, and then it culminated in the crescendo and the climax of the World Wars. World War I, and then that doesn't resolve anything, largely because of America. And then you've got World War II, which of course is the catastrophe, at which point, leading up to that, there was already some thinking along these lines.

internationalism, meaning fundamentally diplomacy, just hadn't cut it, wasn't working, the League of Nations, none of that managed to really put a dent in the alienation of the various national peoples and their collective identifications. And so they said, how do we

how do we solve this problem? And so they said, we've got to. Now, the Europeans have never been able to shed collectivism. And so it's always been a very collectivist culture. And so basically what they came up with was we've got to have some greater good that we're going to, some identity that is overarching that permits us to suppress

The alienating factor of nationalism, what's that going to be? It's going to be Europe as a whole, something over and above the nation as a fundamental value. So that's what's ideologically referred to as supranationalism.

And if you look at the history of now, you can see, okay, they did a prototype of it. It's called the European Coal and Steel Community. The whole idea there was put the government of this new union in charge of these industries so that we can ideologically transform our thinking about how we use resources and make war materially impossible, supposedly, right? And

And then they kept on working on it. They created the European community, and then it gradually evolved. And in 1993, they just went all in with the European Union. And, you know, that's what we have today. Of course, what we have today is largely a crisis. And in its present form and the ways in which it functions, it's not...

viable in the long term. And there's a lot of reasons why. Fundamentally, it's collectivist, so it's always going to be a problem. But also, the European Union, you'd wish that it would be in some way truly dedicated to freedom. And it has some elements which are positive

such as freedom of travel within the European Union and things of that nature and free trade within the European Union. But these are very much collectivist. So it's a tariff barrier that insulates Europe from the rest of the world. And then there's the Schengen zone, which insulates Europe from the rest of the world.

And so it's really now it's organized. The idea is to organize Europe into a peaceful whole, but create a cultural block that can stand on its own and largely also survive.

supposedly, stand up to the United States. But as it turns out, it's not working in any, it's not working in so many regards that it's going to be a long, long road here. A lot of problems. I'm not predicting that it's going to collapse entirely, but it's in trouble. It's in trouble. If you want to talk details, maybe that's another podcast. Let me start. I'll throw a small curveball then.

How did you yourself discover objectivism? And then over the years, how did you learn or discover your present love of history and so on and so forth? Yeah, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, well, that's a fun story to tell. So, yeah, I mean, I first read Ayn Rand in, let me get this right,

1996, 1990s. And if I'm getting that right, I might be off by a couple of years. And I was in college at the time. I was studying engineering.

I don't mind. I laugh when I tell this story, so it'll be all right. It's a little bit traumatic. I failed my first class in engineering because I was a relatively smart guy, but I didn't study. I never studied. I

I just could get away with it in high school. I didn't care. And so I got to college and the difficulty level went way up and I failed my first class. And that was my wake up call.

And so I said to myself, okay, how am I going to grow up? How am I going to pull this back together here? And I have this premise. One of the things that I can be thankful for, and my father was somewhat of an eclectic intellectual,

And, but he had strangely made mention of Ayn Rand at one point and purchased a book for me called The Early Ayn Rand. And it was on the shelf. I wasn't touching that. He was very critical of my own reading, which was entirely science fiction.

And so it was like, for me, it was all about Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein and that kind of stuff. And so I was like, okay, it's a grand character floating around. Okay, I don't know what that's about. But at that point in my college career where I flunked out of a class and I was like, okay, I got to get my act together. And so how do I mature intellectually? How do I get my act together? I thought...

Okay, maybe there's something here that I have to investigate in the form of philosophy.

And it took me a while. I won't tell the whole story. I'll tell the short version. And I saw the back of the early Ayn Rand, and I said, it's rude playing up Ayn Rand. It's talking about these amazing novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. And I'm like, hmm, okay, let's see what that's about. So I just headed over to the public library, and I see the cover of

of the fountainhead and it's this dramatic you know weird art deco like thing with the architect looking up the skyscraper and i'm like hey that's kind of cool uh and so i start reading it right and all of us first reading experience of online it blew me away i couldn't believe it i'm like

I can't believe it. This is exactly what I need. It was unbelievable. As I like to joke, it was Howard Roark that prevented me from becoming an architect because I was studying civil engineering and I didn't think it was that interesting. I was kind of leaning towards architecture. And a funny thing happened.

about Howard Rourke. And I said, that's not for me. I'm going to go into philosophy. I'm going to go. And then, and I became interested at that point. And what's going on? Where did this Iron Man character come from?

And I said to myself, well, let me study the history of philosophy. Let's see what's going on. And now immediately after reading The Fountain of Night, like immediately, I just went right back to the bookshelf and I picked up Atlas Shrugged and started in on that. So I was like, I couldn't wait.

And I tore through that. It was absolutely hectic reading. I couldn't believe it. And that right there, of course, is the magnum opus. It's just incomparable in so many regards. And that's it. I knew. This is it. These are the right answers. And then there's mention of Aristotle in there. There's some really interesting things. So I'm like, okay.

What happened? Where did the sign-rank character come from? And what's the background story to this? And why are her ideas so good? And why have I never heard them from pretty much anybody else up until now?

And that was a tough slog. The history of philosophy is not fun. I mean, I enjoyed studying the Principratics and then the rise of Plato and Aristotle. I found that totally fascinating. But then, you know, a lot of bad stuff. And then the modern period and the...

human Descartes and then finally into Kant and Hegel and Marx as absolutely dismal. And so it was very difficult to study that topic. And then I asked myself the question, well, what is this story?

in relation to the history of the world. I don't see it. I don't see what is the interface between these stories. And so I was very much aware that I don't really know history. At that point, I really had memorized and forgot. And so therefore, that became my new interest.

And I started studying that when I finished my engineering degree. I now got a job. I was working and stuff like that. But I started studying history part-time in college. And that was a disaster in the sense that everything that I was being told to learn was just unbelievably tedious and useless. And I was really upset by that. And I didn't know what I could do.

uh, with this subject. It felt overwhelmingly complex and there didn't seem to be any application of philosophy at all. So how to, how could I solve that? Uh, and, um, and, and I think I'm giving you a bad timeline because I know that it's earlier than 96. The reason why I know that is because I thinking more along the lines of 94.

Because I went to my first Objectivist Conference in 1997, which was a Lyceum Conference in Orange County, California. And at that conference,

Yeah, were you? I was. So at that conference, the highlight for me, there were a lot of highlights. Back then, we had some heavyweights really doing some great stuff. But the highlight of that conference for me was John Riddell.

And John Rigpath gave a lecture on Locke and the American Revolution versus Rousseau and the French Revolution. Oh, boy. Yes. Boy, did that get all my boxes. That right there was...

super exciting. And so I also happened to have met my wife at that conference. I'm sure a lot of people have similar experiences. Anyway, we had a long-distance relationship there for a while, and she was pushing me to ask me to figure things out about my life and where I was going. And I said, well, I think I'm in transition to becoming a historian. I wasn't absolutely convinced. And

And I said, okay. And she pushed me. And ultimately I said, you know what? I think what I need to do is go study with Redpath. And lucky for me, he still was teaching. And I think he retired in 2002. So I headed to Toronto and I went to study with him for two years, 2000 to 2002.

And that was big in a number of regards. It took economics from him. We studied intellectual history. Wow, there was some wonderful stuff there. But as good as that was, the pivotal moment for me, which looking back on it was just a really huge moment for me, historiographically speaking. The big moment was 9-11.

I remember being on campus that morning, walking through, it happened to be the economics, walking through and there was a student lounge there with a big screen TV, walking from the parking lot to the social science building, whatever. And there you go. You're seeing the first of the tower smoking and pretty soon the other one's getting struck. And that, of course, was extremely traumatic and devastating.

That's for me. For my parents' generation, it's like, where were you when JFK was assassinated? Everybody remembers, right? And for me, it's two things. It's the Challenger disaster in 1987 and 9-11. Those are the moments in my life where I remember exactly where I was when those things happened. I'll never forget. But more than that, I was on my way to a history class. And

And so, and of course, all the students were on their phones. There was a big buzz. Everybody was very upset. And I remember thinking, well, so here we are in academia. Here we are in the place where we have these wise men, these people that are learned and that are going to give us insight into what's happening.

And so there were some questions about what's going on, and the historian in that class basically said that what we need to do now is we need to study the history.

the terror because we were studying the French Revolution. Not the war, not the terrorism of 9-11, but the terror of 1793. In other words, he was saying...

History is the study of the past, and I have nothing to teach you. I cannot tell you anything about the world we live in. I can only tell you about the France of the late 18th century that I've been studying my whole life, and that's all I know. So this was a really tragic confession on his part.

But it stuck with me for the rest of my life. And so then, you know, graduating from that, I went on to teach at a school you've probably heard of in Southern California called Van Damme Academy. And I started teaching history there to young kids. And that was the most wonderful experience of all in so many regards, including the fact that it didn't work. There was a problem.

which was hard for me to accept and to identify, which, as it turns out, fundamentally stemmed from the same problem that I was experiencing in college, which is I hadn't yet figured out that the past divorced from the present doesn't mean anything. It has no objective value.

And so I was a good storyteller. I got a good sense of humor. I had the kids laughing and rolling around and I had them loving, you know, everything from Martin Luther to Martin Luther King Jr. And so they were fine with all that. They enjoyed it, but it didn't stick and it didn't produce results for them that I could

really point to and say, yeah, this is a better person because they're studying history and they actually know it and it has significant intellectual outcomes for them in the long run. And so I just began to challenge this question of what is it and why isn't history working?

And after being there for a few years, I started teaching homeschoolers as a private business. And that's now what I do with my company. It's called Knowable World with my partner, Heather Schwartz. And on that journey,

It just at some point became an epiphany and that the problem is the lack of past-present integration. And how do we achieve that? And just, you know, there's just so much to say about that. But fundamentally, that's how I came to my view of present centrism.

So there you go. That's kind of the story it wound up. Wow, that's great, though. Thank you for that. Great story, Scott. And thanks for being here. You are here and you're making history now. Well, I hope so in more than one sense. I mean, I hope that not only am I helping people to learn history in many regards for the first time,

And hopefully as many students as possible. Our goal at Knowable World is to become literally the best place in the world for parents anywhere to help their children learn history and discover the true power of history. And I think we're working on it. It's a tough project, but we're working on scaling it and really reaching a really huge audience. And I think at some point, because it's overwhelmingly the best curriculum there is,

that it will take over the homeschooling market. And from there, we'll try to get into the private schools. And by then, hopefully public school will have been abolished. So we won't have to worry about that.

So anyway, we'll see. Do you have a web address for Knowable World? Well, there you go. It's two words, of course, Knowable World, but you mash them together and that's it. KnowableWorld.com. That's it. And we have live classes and we have recorded classes. And so, I mean...

If you can't pull your kid out of public school, then you better be putting your kid in the knowable world recordings in order to give them the antidote to all the irrationality of history and social studies today. That's the absolute best place you can do it. Our curriculum is literally from K to 12.

So in other words, we have a program called History Detectives, which is the first year of a three-year program that's still under development, but History Detectives Level 1 is complete. It's basically a lesson a week for the youngest possible kids. Not every child at a kindergarten level is going to be ready, but some are.

And I've had the pleasure of teaching five-year-olds that are totally ready. So it's sometimes the case that they're not ready until six, seven, eight. But basically, you just start when they're ready. But we start at the kindergarten level. And then the live classes and recordings are...

for basically for about second or third graders on up. And we have an elementary program and a junior senior high program.

And for the first time ever this year, I'm teaching something called the Advanced History Program, which is for my absolute students, because we're graduating students up through the ranks and they're just getting so good at history. It's unbelievable. And so they're pushing me to the highest levels of requirements for me and my own learning. It's basically far beyond anything you can get in college, but they're doing it in high school. So, yeah, that's our project, Knowable World.

I'm so I mean, I'm just I think COVID exposed the public education scam so completely that and I know homeschooling is just exploded to like from like three percent of parents to 20 percent. And that's continuing to grow from the COVID debacle.

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to measure. It's certainly constantly growing. That's great for a variety of reasons. The challenge for homeschoolers is, of course, that, well, they've got to now be parents and they have two incomes. How are they going to manage that? It's always difficult. My wife and I homeschooled our son. He's now a senior and he's just finishing up. And so we know how hard that is.

And it's very difficult. A lot of the times, and of course, history. Who actually knows history? And so a lot of what homeschoolers do is they try to find experts, resources out there where they can find somebody to do subjects that they themselves are not equipped to do. And so that's exactly what Knowable World is about.

I know that there's no way that you as a homeschooling mom or dad are going to have time to not only figure out the entire curriculum and manage the day and what? And study history and teach it to your kid properly? Thank you. I've been studying history for 20 years, more than 20 years, and I know how hard it is. And that's been full time. Thank you very much. So no, it's not going to happen, right? So that's why it's nice that there are...

experts like myself. I'll just give a shout out here to Luke Travers who runs a program called Literature at our house. There's another example of, okay, you want to have some literature, you want to have some poetry, you want to have a resource like that, great. You just hire an expert. Knowable World is your place where basically history, check, you're done. You get your kid in there as soon as you can.

And you're done. That's taken care of. The whole thing is taken care of. And in most cases, what I like the best is when parents are really invested in their child's education.

it's quite frequently the case that they will just sit in and they'll listen. And they're like, wow, this is what I was supposed to learn when I was a kid. So it's a wonderful time being in my elementary class because that's about the level of adults when it comes to history. So you may as well just get in on it, right? And just live and learn. Not surprised in the slightest. Yeah, I'm sure it's fantastic.

Go ahead. Speaking of asking that, do you still have courses for adults and older people? I still have courses for adults. I have recorded classes for adults now. I recently finished the course that accompanies the history of tomorrow. So I have a number of courses. I'll record it. I don't have plans for any live classes.

classes at the moment. But basically, I've got a present-centric history of Russia, of China, of Europe, and of the United States.

Those are available. And so those are recorded classes. And then I've got a recorded class. I've got two of them on the history of tomorrow. And I've also got one on the history of now. I shouldn't fail to mention. So that's really for most adult readers, the history of now and the history of tomorrow, that's a very deliberate sequence of

two books. You can't read The History of Tomorrow without having read The History of Now for reasons which are explained in the second of the two books. And so basically, there's The History of Now as a book. And yeah, for anybody that's really interested in understanding what's going on in that book,

The History of Now course is a recorded session with 10 lectures, which is absolutely critical to gain insight into how it works and how you can help yourself reprogram your own thinking about history and make your own thinking present-centric. And then the History of Tomorrow is the next level.

And those are all available through knowableworld.com? Those are available through knowableworld.com. And if anybody wants to reach out to me, I don't know if you have notes or how exactly the listening podcast goes, but you can just reach out to me at Mr. Powell, M-R-P-O-W-E-L-L, Mr. Powell at knowableworld.com. Anybody listening can just shoot me an email if they want to follow up on that.

That's great. Thank you. Go over more quick things, if I may, and then Martin, you can have it. But...

Are you still reading science fiction today at all? Are you too busy? Yeah, I mean, I do, but I'm writing science fiction, so I'm busy. Thank you for the segue into that, right? I was thinking of asking that, so that's good. How many points are there? Yeah, I mean, like I said, when I was younger, I loved Isaac Asimov, the robot novels, the Foundation series. Those were my top favorites.

And so that's always kind of been in the back, in my deep, in my subconscious. I reread them as adults multiple times, as an adult multiple times. And, you know, it just over the past, I'm going to say five to 10 years, I've just been taking notes and prepping to write my own novels. I've got two novels planned, but now actually everything's changed.

The 14 Points is probably actually going to have to be a trilogy because I've got so much to write. But that's the title of the novel that I'm writing. It's called The 14 Points. And the obvious source of the title of the book is that Woodrow Wilson announced in 1918, made a proclamation that is known as The 14 Points.

And it has to do with America becoming the world police power effectively. And so without spoiling too much in my time travel novel, that ain't going to happen. And so there's going to be a set of... One of the things I particularly enjoyed about the Foundation series was that effectively historians are the heroes.

They're psycho historians, okay? But they're historians, if you ask me. And so Harry Seldon is a historian, right? So historians are the heroes. Well, in my novel, historians are the heroes. So it's going to take a combination of a brilliant physicist and a brilliant historian to figure out how to save the world effectively. So anyway. All right.

Anybody that's interested can just go to the 14 Points Reading Group on Facebook. And there's a trickle there. I'm just going to pick up again. And I've got the 14 Points channel on YouTube where I'm talking about

the way things are going there. And the first chapter is available in the first draft. I have to say it's being massively edited at this point. So because I'm not a natural fiction writer, so I've got a lot of skills to develop. And so I'm really...

massively editing. I've written 250 pages and I know that there's a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done to fix it up as a fiction story. So, so, uh, but it's, yeah, it's still fun. I still love science fiction, of course. Uh, uh, and I'm hoping to make a science fiction masterpiece, which is of course a tall order for a first novel, but I'm going to try to do it right off the bat. Well,

Wait for the fences. Swing for the fence. Yeah, that's good. Have you talked to Warren Fay? We haven't had this guest. He's a writer. No, I have not. So thank you for the mention. I'll have to think about that. Yeah. Let me throw in that this is my gentleman named Jack Vance is my favorite science fiction author.

And he wrote the first book I ever read by him is still my favorite. It was called in paperback. It's called To Live Forever. And the Kindle version is called Clarges, which is the city this all takes place in. C-L-A-R-G-E-S. So I highly recommend that to you and Martin. And let me nitpick a little bit more about one of the things that's always bothered me is

Well, when I think about it, the division of North Korea and South Korea, I don't think that's ever going to be united because the border of North Korea is China.

And if it's going to be one way, it'll probably be swallowed up. But I hope that doesn't happen. Any thought on that? Because I have not gotten to yourself. I have a chapter on Korea in the history of tomorrow. And basically, if you want the short answer, the Korean, quote unquote, unification process is the same thing as the Middle East unification

peace process. These are total BS neologisms, which are never going to happen unless one side basically destroys the other. And so, yeah, basically it's just a joke. And so it's not going to happen. The Juche ideology of North Korea is literally the... It's not really communist. It's in fact monotheistic.

much more akin to Nazism than just about anything else in the world today. It's a virulently ultra-nationalist ideology. There's another problem for Korea, and that is that Korea, like Japan, and now China, is facing a demographic cliff. This is a country which is going to begin to shrink rapidly.

And so if they don't get their act together and start procreating, they're in big trouble. And so that's another factor over the next couple generations that these countries are in big trouble. And yeah, so Korea, no. Unification, no. That's not, that's not. The only possible thing is

It's something completely unpredictable, like a coup within the highest ranking families in the strangely ideological aristocracy of North Korea. But there's no reason to expect that that would produce any really positive results. So no, I don't see it.

I don't see it. But basically, you know, North Korea is checkmated, right? There's nothing they can do. They know that if they make the wrong move, they cease to exist. So that's the story. It's there's really there's almost nothing to it. It's tragic for the people there. But if they want better, they got to get their act together. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we've been talking to historian Scott Powell.

And he has three great books out, and he's working on a fourth. Scott, thanks for manning the foxhole with us. It's been great. Thank you, Scott. All right. Martin, do you want to add anything? Are you good? I'm all set. So we will do a follow-up, and we'll talk more about how to support your work, Scott, and support our show. Thank you.

Thank you.