April 19, 2025 • 40 mins
Once again, Martin and I are graced with the presence of Philosophy Professor, Andrew Bernstein, who is now venturing into detective fiction.
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Show notes with links to articles, blog posts, products and services:
- Tony Just dot net
- Red Meat Village - Voyage Media
- Behind The Scenes With Andrew Bernstein (Author of Red Meat Village)
- Cool Runnings - Wikipedia
- Pen name
- Night of January 16th
- Hardboiled
- Mr. A
- Dirty Harry (character)
- Mike Hammer (character)
- Sherlock Holmes - Britannica
- Columbo - Wikipedia
- Interview with Aaron Briley - episode 15 of The Secular Foxhole podcast
- Austrian Economic Scholar's Motivational Speech - Foundation for Economic Education
- Professor Moriarty - Wikipedia
- Chuck Schumer
- Ian Fleming
- Rex Stout
- Agatha Christie
- Stand and Deliver
- The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein
- The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire - Rowman &...
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Andrew (00:00):
Foreign.
Blair (00:08):
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 to guess as our guestand I really just have one question for him.
So Andy, why detective novels and why you?
Andrew (00:32):
Well, you know,
I've.
I've written.
I mean from time I was a little kid, I alwayswanted to be a writer.
I've written of books, serious novels, youknow, like Reckoning Race War to America,
a lot of serious non fiction on capitalism, onheroism, know nine rand's philosophy and so
(00:54):
on.
But you know, I always loved heroes.
I always loved tough guy heroes and, and Ithought, you know, at some point.
I know, I love Philip Marlon, RaymondChandler's here.
I love Mike Hammer,
Mike Ham, Robert Clark Spencer.
I love those guys.
So I could write a tough guy series too.
(01:16):
And so, you know, I started working on Tony
Johnson and he's seen Reggie H A R D and LisaFlowers and I started working on it.
Now I've written three Pony Judge novels.
First one just came out.
Second one will be up this summer, third one
be out Christmas.
I'm writing volume four and you know, I do
(01:38):
this in my spare time for love because it's somuch fun.
Blair (01:41):
That's great.
That's great.
Andrew (01:42):
Yeah. Hopefully they sell when I make a lot of money, you know, on it also.
Blair (01:47):
Well, I know.
Didn't you have the audio versions done with
professional people if I asked if I. Was thatsomething else?
Andrew (01:54):
Well, that was a dramatic audio podcast of a volume one of Red Meat Village,
Volume one of the Orange and Saga.
It was done by Woyage Media, which is a
professional Hollywood outfit.
Yeah, they got some big stars too.
It was.
It's an audio.
It's a dramatic audio podcast.
Kind of replicated what radio used to be likein the back four hour.
Blair (02:16):
That. That's cool.
That is.
Andrew (02:18):
Yeah, it's really cool.
And they got some big stars to voice the main.
I mean they got Captain Bell, you know, TVstar, the voice, Lisa Flowers, they got Malik
Yoba,
who, who's also a TV star and if you rememberthe movie Cool Runnings, which I, I love.
Blair (02:35):
Yeah.
Andrew (02:36):
He played Yul Brenner, you know, in programming.
They're very good.
And the dramatic audio podcast that Redeem
builds is very good.
I like it.
Martin (02:47):
That's great to hear.
And as a podcaster here, as Claire and I,
myself and yourself,
then we have to promote that with new modernpodcast applications.
You could get spreading the word and get valuefor that.
So I will look that up and you could providewith the RSS feed and we could promote it in
(03:07):
different ways because then you have plenty ofindividuals there that could get attention and
get something for their work.
So we will talk more about that.
And my question is.
Andrew (03:19):
Thank you, Martin.
Martin (03:20):
Why a pen name?
Andrew (03:22):
Oh, yeah, I'm writing the Point just under the nom de plume,
the pen name of Tris Power.
And it's very simple.
It's the,
the pen name distinguishes my serious writingfrom my purely fun.
Right.
Blair (03:42):
Okay. Okay.
Andrew (03:44):
I have an Andrew Bernstein book coming out soon.
I'm compiling a collection of my essays andthat's going to be real serious on philosophy,
history and literature, politics, real seriousmaterial.
So that's going to be Andrew Bernstein, butyou're coming out and June or July and Chris
(04:04):
Power book, Volume two of the Just Saga willalso be out this summer.
But you know, they're,
they're distinguishing each other by, by Mr.
Watkins names and, and very possibly have.
I'm sure there's some overlap in you.
Blair (04:19):
Now, do you, do you have a follow up audio version of the second book or do you, is
that in.
Andrew (04:24):
The works or not right now?
Blair (04:27):
Okay.
Andrew (04:27):
Yeah,
it wasn't, you know, the dramatic audiopodcast wasn't so much an audio version of the
book because it was just, it was just, it wasa standalone story that was, that was based
on, based on it.
And they changed the writers.
We changed a few things.
Martin (04:47):
Yeah, that's, that's cool.
So this could be like, it could be like a play
Also, like the January 16th and so on in thefuture.
Maybe some other versions of it.
Andrew (05:00):
Yeah. Could do it as it could.
It could certainly, it certainly work on the
stage.
It's not, it's not, it's not far flung.
It's not, you know, you're not, you're not allover the world.
It takes place mostly in Brooklyn, but also inNew York,
different areas of New York City.
It's, it's right in time and, and space.
(05:24):
So certainly cookies are big.
Martin (05:27):
Yeah, that's great.
Blair (05:29):
So how did you, I mean you, you say you've been wanting, you've been writing since
you were young.
And so how did the, how did these charactersgerminate?
How did Reggie Hard and, or H A R D and theothers, how do they,
how did they germinate to final paper?
Andrew (05:51):
Well, that's,
that's a really good question.
Yeah. Plus,
you know,
and a lot of people, Ayn Rand is one.
A lot of people have pointed out that your
most important aspect of fictionite and theMost difficult is over the plot, which I think
is true.
But I, if it's more difficult than creatingcharacters, it's not by very much because, you
(06:18):
know,
to me, as both a fiction and non fiction, I'mnot a literary genius, like I'm random
fiction.
But I do think I'm, you know, I'm a good
writer to be.
Fiction writing is more difficult than nonfiction because there's an analog in
nonfiction for plot structure.
That is, you have a logical outlook and then,
(06:38):
you know, all the, all the elements of thebook follow that outline and it's, it's
roughly similar to apply, you know, when youhave a lot of development of,
of events.
Okay, but, but there's nothing in non fiction
that's analogous to creating a whole universecharacter that is, you know, that, that is
(07:00):
unique to fiction.
So that, so, but fortunately for me, and you
know, I knew this from the time I was a kid,guys, you know,
I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn.
I knew I was going to be a writer.
And everything I did in part was, you know, toprepare me for that.
So, you know, I'm a teenager playingbasketball in the park in the local swoop.
(07:22):
Yeah, right.
You know, and I'm playing basketball in thepark and you know, there are a lot of good
kids there who were going to school orworking, you know, and then there were the
thugs, you know, I knew any, any large part,any part in any large city, you have your drug
dealers,
you know, and they're goons to protect themfrom hijackers and they're walking around
(07:44):
heavily armed.
Yeah. So anyway, so I, you know, didn't justlearn how to survive having to deal with these
thugs, but I knew at the same time, I'm gonnawrite about this guy.
These guys are gonna be characters and storiesat some point in the, in the future.
And so when I got to decades later, I got tothe idea, well, I'm going to write some hard
(08:07):
boiled detective story.
I had a hundred characters in my head.
So Tony just.
Somebody asked me, Tony Johnson, philosophy
professor, he's based on you.
I said, yeah, the philosophy professor part isthe tough guy.
He's not.
I was always with him.
But I knew, but I knew, you know, heroic typeguys who were, who were really good guys.
(08:32):
Good, you know, morally good, upright and notformidable.
Not guys you want to, not guys you want tostart fight.
I know guys like that.
And so I could base the characters on one ofmy experiences.
Now Reggie,
Reggie's an original character because he saidhe's the he's the toughest guy in the world.
(08:54):
He's going to be a heavyweight champion,
but he's also a genius.
He's been mocked from the time he was a little
kid growing up in the project.
That's where that gangster mentality.
Education is for the white man.
Education for the Asians, but education, stop.
Maybe it's for black women, but it's not forthe black.
Black hands.
(09:14):
Gangster, right?
That sick mentality we see too often in the.
In the projects. So Reggie, Reggie was mockedfor being a poor.
For him he was beaten and everything.
And as we all.
He fought back and everything.
He never gave up his lovely books.
But he had, you know, beaten into this senseof shame.
So he's got to overcome that.
So you got.
(09:34):
He's.
He's like a superhero.
He's.
He's the physically the most.
The toughest guy in the world.
He's.
He's the most brilliant guy in his universe.
He's almost like the superhero, but he's gotan inner problem and it's got.
That he's got himself.
Yeah,
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Blair (09:52):
I'm sorry, No, I. Can we pause just for a second?
Martin, do you hear his.
That little bit of feedback from him or.
Martin (09:58):
Yes.
Could you see your connection, Andy?It probably will work out in the post
production anyway, but a connection with yourmicrophone and your headphones, is it
directly.
Is it in your.
In your computer?
Because it is some background noise.
Blair (10:17):
It's like a. It's like a small reverb when you talk.
Andrew (10:22):
Yeah, I'm not.
Blair (10:23):
We can, we can hear it.
Martin (10:25):
Yeah.
Andrew (10:26):
You want me to, you want me to lower the sound on the mic?
Blair (10:30):
Martin, you think that's good or.
Martin (10:31):
Yeah, it could be.
Yeah, it could be close to the.
Andrew (10:33):
Microphone and I hear a little noise when I adjusted the mic gain.
Yeah.
Blair (10:39):
Good.
Andrew (10:40):
Now you feel better, but how's that? Is that good?
Is that any better?
Blair (10:44):
Yes, you're much louder, but yeah, the reverb is gone.
Martin (10:48):
Yeah, good.
Andrew (10:49):
Okay, good, good.
Blair (10:51):
Great.
Martin (10:51):
Thanks, Blair, for pointing that out.
Yeah, this is how we do it.
We do it wrong.
I will interrupt your four chain now.
Andrew (11:01):
You guys are pros, right?
Martin (11:03):
Yeah, yeah, we are.
Blair (11:05):
So if I. Next question.
If it's a spoiler that 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, Rperiod, D period stands for something, but I'm
not sure yet.
Is that, Is that a giveaway?
Andrew (11:23):
No, it isn't.
You know Reggie H A R D is just a. That's not
his real name.
It's a, you know, he's a professional fighter.
That's his stage name.
Blair (11:31):
I see.
Andrew (11:32):
His real name is Julius Collimore and he.
Which comes out at some point.
I don't even think it's in volume one.
I think it comes out later.
But Reggie H A R D is a stage.
They're kind of like Notorious B.I.G. the, therapper.
So you know, some people might just say ReggieHard because he's hard.
He's hard.
Blair (11:52):
He's a tough guy.
Andrew (11:53):
But he prefers Reggie H A R D to spell it out like Notorious.
Martin (11:58):
B I G Stage name.
Andrew (12:01):
But the interesting thing about the characters is as you know it, you're fans of
hard boiled detective fiction.
The female characters are often la FemmeFatale, you know.
And so with Lisa Flowers, who's a marriedwoman, she's a brilliant psychotherapist,
Tony's head over heels in love with her.
(12:23):
I won't give it away here, but the questionthat runs all through the plot is can Lisa be
trusted?Because there's certain things you know about
her that Tony doesn't trust.
And he, and he, you know, he says it to herface and she even says to, wow.
She says, you know, even love doesn't stopTony just from being a hard ass.
And so can, can, can Lisa be trusted?I, I don't want to give it away because that's
(12:46):
a big part of, big part of the plot.
But you know,
will this love develop into full fledgedrelationship or will she turn out to be la
femme fatale as happens so often in hardboiled detective stories?
Martin (13:03):
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 serieswith only blood and gut and whatever.
But I still like for example,
Mr. A, the Ditko character.
So could I read this book?
Then I started to read it and it looks veryfascinating.
(13:25):
And we have new thing going on, upcoming,forthcoming that I really want to be involved
in.
And I think that's good for the world to havethese 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 thisbook?
Andrew (13:48):
Well, it's fun.
The Tony Trust universe is often violent.
So the sensitive souls may not like theviolence, but if they're committed to justice,
yes.
And you know, and the bad guys get what they
deserve.
Yes, definitely.
The bad guys killed.
Martin (14:05):
So it is like TV Series.
What is Time Make My Day Punk.
Andrew (14:12):
Dirty Harry.
Martin (14:13):
Yeah.
Andrew (14:13):
It has a Dirty Harry element.
Or.
Yeah.
If we go way back to the 1950s or 1960s as a.
Mike Hammer.
Martin (14:21):
Yeah, Mike Hammer.
Andrew (14:22):
Mike Hammer, kind of.
Martin (14:23):
So then I will.
Yeah.
Andrew (14:25):
But, but, but here's the thing that I think there's several aspects that make the
Tony 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 has a. She's an expert with a handgun.
(14:48):
If she becomes part of the team, if she provestrustworthy, she's not just somebody who does
the brain work.
She'd be out in the street with them because
she's gangster girl.
But the genius level here,
Tony, that you don't see generally in the HardBoiled story, you see him in the softer Boyle
(15:12):
stories, like Sherlock Holmes as a paradigm.
Martin (15:15):
Yes, my favorite.
Andrew (15:16):
Yeah, me too.
Oh, I could discuss Sherlock Holmes.
We want to do a show just on Sherlock Holmes.
Yes, I love.
Blair (15:21):
All right.
Okay.
Andrew (15:22):
I am definitely a Sherlockian,
but also.
And all the brilliant detectives after him all
pay homage to him, whether it's Aul Poirot orNero Wolf, they all pay homage to Sherlock.
Martin (15:34):
Or the guy with a trench coat that I like.
Colombo.
Andrew (15:39):
Yeah. Peter F. Peter Falk was great.
Oh, I wonder.
I always wondered if they based that character
on.
On porphyry in Crime and Punishment.
You know, who.
Who torments Raskolnikov in that story, Plays
cat and mouse with him the way Colombo doeswith his.
With the murderers in that series.
(16:01):
I don't know.
I don't know the answer to that question.
But Tony's a philosophy professor.
He's a brilliant guy.
Lisa, Ph.D. in psychology and came out of aupper class family on the Upper west side.
She's superbly educated in the top prepschools before she went, you know, before she
(16:21):
dropped out to become a gangster in Hell'sKitchen.
But Reggie, Reggie, who's got no schooling atall,
is a genius.
He's the most brilliant of all.
She have these three very, very, very highlyintelligent, even brilliant characters.
And so it opens up certain possibilities thatyou don't normally get in tough guy fiction.
(16:46):
And one of them is, I'll give something awaythat's coming in future volumes, is Reggie's
got this inner problem.
He knows in his head that his commitment toreading and education is a very, very, very
good thing.
But in his emotional life, he's had it beaten
into him that it's shameful to be a bookworm.
He's got to resolve that.
(17:07):
Well, Lisa's a psychotherapist.
She gets him into psychotherapy and, you know,for a tough guy off the streets, tough kid out
of the projects, that takes more courage to gointo psychotherapy and face your inner demons
than it does for him to step into the ring,
you know, 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?
(17:30):
Resolve the torment.
But Reggie's got a dream.
He's. He's the.
By volume two and certainly by volume three,
he's the greatest heavyweight, not just theheavyweight champion.
He's the greatest heavyweight since MuhammadAli, and he is beloved.
And he wants to use his fame and popularity tobring reading into the projects to attack the.
(17:55):
Well, attack's not the right word.
To kind of resolve that physicalistic culture
of drugs, violence, crime.
He wants to open, use his money.
He's making a fortune of money.
Merchandise.
He's got his own brand, Raw gym brand, Roger
Merch.
Merch.
He's making a fortune.
Adult.
You're going to use that money to buildlibraries and private schools into projects
(18:15):
and bring love of learning, you know,
and love of.
Of books to the.
To these kids.
He wants to take on that gangster culture.
And to do that, he's got to resolve his ownsense of shame over this.
So by volume three, I'm bringing a veryphilosophic element into it because there's a
murder in the projects that they gotta.
(18:36):
That they have to solve and catch the murders.
But the same murderers who are responsible forthe killings, they're the ones, the gang
bangers, they're the ones who oppose theconstruction of the library.
They don't want a library,
you know, and drawing away recruits from thegang to become students and readers and
everything and.
And so bring in this intellectual element that
(19:00):
the real.
The real problem in the projects is not somuch white racism as it is this.
This culture that rejects education, thatrejects reading for a very physical, very
physicalistic culture, you know, of drugs,drugs, booze, violence, crime and so on.
(19:20):
The leftists are all going to hate me,
but I got two words for them and they ain'tMerry Christmas.
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 Reggie wants to short circuit that violence
(19:43):
and have these kids become strong readers andgo on to have real lives.
Martin (19:47):
And I get an Idea.
Now, Blair, we had Aaron talking about this in
a episode, right?
Blair (19:55):
Sure.
Martin (19:56):
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 somekind of martial arts guy who said after had
winning in the ring read Ludwig von Mises orsomething like that?
Andrew (20:19):
Yeah, I did.
So I didn't,
I didn't know.
Know that you mentioned, you mentioned Aaron.
I forget his last name.
Is that the black dude who's an objective
philosophy professor?What's his, what's his last name?
Aaron.
Martin (20:34):
With B, I think.
Yeah, but we include that in the show.
Blair (20:37):
Briley. Aaron Briley.
Andrew (20:38):
Briley. Yeah, that's right.
Aaron Briley.
He's a really good guy.
Yeah, guys, just what I hit 70.
My short term memory started to go.
It started senior moment there.
Aaron Briley.
Yeah, he's a really good guy.
And he, and he read I. If I remember
correctly, I think he read volume one of theTony Joe saga.
Martin (20:58):
Great.
So we have his connection then.
Blair (21:01):
Yeah, I think he moved to Austin, but I. Not 100% certain of that.
Martin (21:06):
So yeah, yeah, we have some contacts so we will connect again.
So thank you, Andy, for that.
Andrew (21:12):
And yeah, I have, I have Aaron's email.
I could always.
Martin (21:14):
Good.
Blair (21:15):
Yes.
Martin (21:16):
So. 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?
Andrew (21:24):
Well, the series is just called the Tony Z Saga.
Yeah,
I don't know as many.
You know,
I don't know how many.
Hopefully I live a long time, but 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, not like I don't enjoy it.
(21:45):
And there's no shortage of possible storylinesfor tough guy detective in New York City,
Brooklyn, other places.
There's all different kinds of murders.
And you know what else I want to do aside fromin the, in the fictional universe?
Resolve the dangers of the physical,physicalistic crime gangster mentality in the
(22:06):
projects.
And by the way, Reggie's not a racist.
He doesn't, 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, toencourage learning.
But another thing I want to do with thisseries, guys,
(22:28):
is I want to create villains.
I mean, you know, real memorable villains,
real bad guys who are like the dangerous.
Like you mentioned Sherlock Holmes, you know,
like Professor Mor.
Yeah. You know, in the Sherlock Holmes series.
So had a villain in volume, volume two and
volume three was a professor himself as apsychology professor who, Who's a pretty good
(22:53):
villain back.
And Vol. I'm working on volume four.
And yeah, I got, I think I have a idea for,
you know, what a good villain and you know,and some, and some memorable characters like
that.
You're real, real smart, dangerous bad guysreally spice up a story.
Martin (23:10):
And Andy, that's pretty easy to find.
Right.
You look out around you in the world and seewhat's going on.
Andrew (23:16):
Well, there's a lot, there's a lot of violent guys, but.
But real, you know, real brilliant,
real brilliant bad guys.
That's.
That cost extra.
But, you know, I could.
Martin (23:27):
But I mean like academia and certain bureaucrat organizations and.
Andrew (23:33):
Yeah. In the Democratic Party.
Martin (23:35):
Yeah. In all parties, I think.
Andrew (23:37):
But yeah, but yeah.
Yes. Yeah, I could find.
I could find, you know, smart, dangerous guyslike that, you know.
You know, it just takes a little creativity.
Martin (23:52):
Yes.
Andrew (23:52):
A little, little imaginativeness to.
Martin (23:55):
And then you have to always, you know, have this footnote or what do you call it,
disclaimer that it is fiction.
But.
Andrew (24:03):
Yeah, yeah, you know, I went to high school with Chuck Schumer, so I know I, I
don't, I don't often.
Blair (24:10):
Admit that, but that's the end of this podcast, ladies.
Andrew (24:20):
He was two years ahead of me, so I didn't know him.
I didn't know him all that well, you know,fortunately.
Martin (24:25):
Yeah. And. And here in Europe we have several of them to pick also in like in
academia and so on, especially inphilosophical and.
Andrew (24:34):
Yeah. So.
Blair (24:35):
Yeah. So, Andy, what we mentioned several great historical figures in the.
In detection and some authors.
So did those authors, did they.
You think they influenced you to become.
To really want to write detective fiction?
Andrew (24:53):
Yeah, well, I was always a hero worshiper, you know, and so I always, always
read hero stories, whether they're, whetherthey were about real life characters, you
know, like George Washington, you know, ErnestShackleton, all different kinds of, you know,
Maria Montessori.
All different kinds of heroes and heroines orfictional ones.
(25:13):
I was a kid in the 1960s.
Ian Fleming was still alive and he was, he waspublishing the James Bond novels.
And I loved James Bond.
I still do.
I love the.
Blair (25:26):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Andrew (25:28):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I was reading, I was reading MickeySpillane, my, My Mickey Spain was alive and he
was writing the Mike Hammer books in the 1960sand all kinds of heroes.
You know, John Wayne was still alive and, youknow, making Westerns way.
Blair (25:45):
Yeah.
Andrew (25:46):
Where he was always a good guy, almost always a good guy of great prowess who uses
prowess to protect the innocent against allkinds of bad guys.
You know, I love that stuff.
And so, yeah, and then.
And of course, the really brilliant, the tough
guy detectives are always very smart becausethey have to solve the case.
And sometimes that gets lost on readers.
(26:07):
The Mike Hammer 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 he always figures it out.
And I tell people, listen, if you're ever a
character in a Mike Hammer story, do not killone of Mike's buddies,
(26:31):
because he will try.
He will find out who done it, he will track
you down, and he will fill you with 45 dumdum, you know,
but, but anyhow,
the brilliant detectives, too, the one, theSherlock Holmes types that you're the most
with, the most salient characteristic is nothow tough they are.
(26:51):
Although Sherlock Holmes was tough, we seethat in a lot of instances, but how brilliant
he is.
And you know, I love, and I love the way RexStout integrates the two, you know, with the
two characters of Nero Wolf and ArchieGoodwin.
You know, you have this, the.
The soft boiled guy who sits in his armchairand figures out who done it, and then the
(27:13):
tough guy who goes out and does all the, allthe.
She couldn't do all the dirty work.
You know, it's great.
And, and, and Agatha Christie, because I'm not
a big fan of a Kill Poirot, because to me,he's.
He smacks.
He's like a Palad knockoff of Sherlock Holmes.
But nobody, and I mean nobody, is the plotwriter that Agatha Christie is.
(27:34):
I mean, well, she is extraordinary plotwriter.
So, you know, I read all of those books andyeah, they did.
I, I always, always loved them.
It didn't occur to me, you know, till many
years later that, that I was right.
Detective stories, because I was always moreinterested in writing serious, you know, about
serious issues,
fiction and nonfiction.
But then it occurred to me a few years ago,
(27:56):
why not do it?You know, do it for fun.
And then I, then I realized, like I wastalking before, there's no reason in the world
why I can't innovate here and introduceserious elements into the tough guy genre.
So while they're chasing down the killers inthe projects, they're also dealing with real
serious issues.
(28:16):
They want to, you know, change the culture
from a physicalistic one to a much moreintellectual.
Blair (28:23):
That's great.
Martin (28:23):
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.
Andrew (28:35):
Yeah, the gangster rap.
Martin (28:37):
Yeah. And the influence.
That is not healthy at all.
Andrew (28:40):
Yeah.
Martin (28:40):
So if you could introduce them to a good alternative and antidote.
Andrew (28:46):
Yeah, no, I'll never forget a really famous movie from the 1980s.
You guys might have seen Stand and Deliver,
Blue Diamond Phillips and Edward.
What's his name?
Edward almost.
Where based on the true story Jaime Escalante,the math teacher in El Barrio in LA who's
(29:07):
working with these Chicano kids and teachingthem calculus and everything.
And the Lou Diamond Phillips character, Iremember.
I'll never forget the scene because he asksthe teacher, I need two sets of textbooks.
Why do you need two?
I keep one at home and I want to school so Idon't have to be seen, you know, in the.
(29:30):
In the streets carrying textbooks.
Then the gang bangers are going to be all over
me, you know, and beat the hell out of me foracting 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.
And that mentality is around.
Blair (29:47):
Yeah, it is.
Andrew (29:48):
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, but they definitely on.
On the boys who want an education, you know,
definitely catch hell from.
From the.
From the gangster mentality.
Martin (30:04):
So. So your work of art will be really mind and body integration then, in the future?
Andrew (30:09):
Yeah, the.
Yes. Detective stories in a certain way always
are, because the detective has to be smartenough to figure out who done it.
He's got to be in the.
In the hard boiled genre.
He's got to be tough enough to fight off offthe bad guys.
But this is taking it to a whole nother level,
the intellectual level of not just figuringout who.
(30:32):
Who perpetrated the crime, but literallytrying to change the culture to a much more
intellectual culture in the.
In the projects.
And you can imagine, you know, the mothers arevery positive about this.
Oh, you have a library.
We could go.
There's a place where the kids can go to readbooks and get teaching, you know, and I could.
(30:55):
I could come in with my kids and read to Themin 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 toreach more of the boys.
(31:18):
It's great.
It's great to bring the.
Great to bring the girls in here and get aneducation for them.
But they're not the ones killing each other.
It's the teenage boys, you know, who are.
Who are killing each other.
We need to reach them.
Blair (31:31):
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 then change thesubject just a smidge.
You're.
You've got a.
A class starting on, on your.
The history of capitalism book, you wrote.
Andrew (31:51):
Yeah, the Capitalist Manifesto.
Blair (31:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you want to talk about that for a minute?
Andrew (31:57):
Oh, well, yeah.
Thank you.
Well, yeah, the, the Capitalist Manifesto, thehistoric economic and philosophic case for
laissez faire.
I published it 2005.
Don't see possible is 20 years ago already,but it is.
And I wanted a cat man, as I call it.
And if an objectivist friend of mine said catman, I love that name.
(32:19):
It's like an object objective as superheroescome down to earth to beat up on con man, you
know, on the commies and, and everything.
Martin (32:28):
But Thinking cap.
Andrew (32:29):
Yeah, yeah, that's right, the thinking cap.
That's right, Martin.
But I envisioned it and, and what the book is,
is one stop shopping for capitalism.
You got the historic case here for capitalism,the economic and above all the moral
philosophic case.
(32:49):
So regarding the history and, and the history
is also, I think is.
Is another novelty here because they don't
teach much on the.
On the actual history of capitalism.
Much of what is taught is propaganda.
Not really teaching this propaganda byMarxists, journalists and intellectuals about
all the horrors of capitalism.
(33:10):
So I had to do a lot of research.
I'm not a historian digging up hundreds ofbooks.
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 actualhistory of capitalism, which, not
surprisingly, is glorious.
It. It started raising living standards and
(33:31):
life expectancies immediately uponintroduction into Great Britain in the late
18th century.
So there's the actual history of capitalismand, and you know, and on the pre capitalist
period was a terrible poverty and starvationlevel poverty.
So that's, that's generally new in and ofitself.
But also then the, the economic section,nothing, you know, which I, you know, I
(33:56):
borrowed, I quoted from the great economistsfrom Adam Smith through von Mises and George
Reisman, Milton Friedman and of course Bastiatmay not be an economist, but it was Bastiat.
Henry Hazlett were both brilliant economicjournalists.
I love Bastiat's phrase, you know, Paris getsfed, you know, on a free market.
(34:19):
And so, you know, the economic case from the,that the great economists have made and I'm
borrowing from them and then the philosophicmoral case, you know, that the, that the mind
is mankind's means of survival,
the mind requires individual rights andfreedom and life is the standard of value and
(34:39):
capitalism promotes life much more than anyother system.
So I have, you know, in the moral philosophicsection it's Ayn Rand has, has established the
philosophic superiority, the economic section,the great economists have established
capitalism's economic superiority.
So I've, I've brought in these elements fromthose great thinkers, integrated it with the
(35:00):
history section, which is, which is new Ithink.
One whole section on, on devoted to theaccurate 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, Ithink it's going to be a really fun course and
(35:21):
it's going to be very, a very informativecourse on the actual nature of capitalism and
its life giving successes.
Blair (35:28):
Do you want to give like the website for that or the, so people can know about it?
Andrew (35:34):
Yeah, it's.
Yes, thank you, Blair.
It's, it's put on, promoted by the ObjectiveStandard Institute.
So is it objectivestandard.org orobjectivestandard.com I forget.
Off the top maybe.
Blair (35:49):
I don't, you know, I don't remember.
Andrew (35:51):
I have my, I have my phone here somewhere.
Let's look it up.
Martin (35:56):
Yeah, and we will include that in the show note also, so.
Andrew (35:59):
Oh great, great.
Thank you.
But the, the technology today is really,
it's objectivestandard.org everybody and yougo objectivestandard.org and they have a
section on their courses and there, there's,you know, and there's the headline, the
Capitalist Manifesto course.
You can just click on it and get all the
(36:19):
information and sign up for it.
We are almost at our limit because I wanted tocap enrollment at 12 to keep the interaction
manageable because if we have smart, yeah, 20people, it's gonna be a lot of people wanting
to talk and we'll never get through, we'llnever get through the material that I want to
cover.
I know that for many years of teaching.
(36:40):
So it capped it at 12.
Almost there.
So anybody wants to sign up, you need to, need
to do it quickly.
Blair (36:47):
Very good, very good.
I just have one minor complaint about that
book.
It's not, it's not available in Kindle.
Andrew (36:56):
Yeah. You know, it's an academic publisher.
If I can blame, I gotta, I gotta blamesomebody.
But it's an academic publisher's.
It was University Press of America.
They are not at all entrepreneurial.
I don't want to knock them too much becausethey love the book,
you know, and they, and they publish it.
But academic publishers is notorious non
(37:17):
entrepreneurial.
So you're doing ebooks or audio books.
It's, it's.
Martin (37:24):
But I think we have a solution for that in the free marketplace, Andrew.
But, and we could talk about that in thefuture.
But do you of course have a right to, to thecontent?
Right.
Andrew (37:35):
No, the, it belongs to the publisher when you, when you.
That.
But there, but there's where the free market
works, Martin.
And you're absolutely right.
Instead of going academic publishers from nowon, I'm going to self publish.
Then like, like I've self published the Tony.
Just books.
Then the content belongs to me and I, youknow, I can promote it all.
Martin (37:53):
I want good clarification and again, we are for friendly competition.
So they are doing a great way and they knowhow to do it and I have done it for a long
time.
But as you said, and I think I agree withBlair's question there, so.
And you have the answer.
So you're a smart guy, Andy.
Andrew (38:10):
Oh, thank you, thank you.
I appreciate that.
And I just want to put in a plug here.
You know, like I said, I don't want to, Idon't want to sound like I'm negative on
University Press of America.
Their chief editor,
the late Judy Rothman, who died of cancerunfortunately a few years ago,
she loved the book.
She told me it was of all the books they
(38:32):
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 there,Objectivism and One Lesson in Capitalism
Unbound.
Well also at Roman Littlefield, University
Press of America is one of their imprimatur.
So, so I'm grateful to them because they gotme started, you know, and made me a little bit
(38:57):
of a name for myself, but.
But it's well known that, you know, academic
publishers, if they sell a couple hundredcopies, they're.
They're happy, you know, they're not.
They're not entrepreneurial.
Martin (39:07):
Yeah.
Blair (39:08):
Wow. Okay. But nonetheless, that book is the.
The.
The gold standard.
Martin (39:14):
Yes.
Blair (39:15):
Of capitalism and are certainly the explanation for capitalism.
Andrew (39:20):
Oh, well, thank you, guys.
I. I know.
I appreciate it.
Martin (39:23):
And we will spread the manifesto.
It's important.
Andrew (39:26):
Thank you, guys.
Appreciate it.
Blair (39:29):
Listen, gentlemen, I hate to cut this short, but I should.
I should get back to him downstairs.
Martin (39:34):
Yeah.
Andrew (39:34):
And all the best.
All the best to you and your family, Blair.
Blair (39:37):
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Martin (39:39):
Take care.
Blair (39:40):
So once again, we've had Andrew Bernstein, our.
One of our very, very favorite guests on withus today.
Andy, thanks for manning the foxhole with us.
Andrew (39:50):
Always great to be in the foxhole with you and Martin, Blair.
And I know once you have the link, you'll sendit to me so I can paste it all across social
media.
Martin (39:59):
Yes.
Blair (39:59):
Very good.
Very good.
Andrew (40:01):
Thank you.
Thanks, guys.
Martin (40:02):
Thanks.
Bye.
Blair (40:03):
Bye.
Andrew (40:04):
Take care, everybody.
Martin (40:05):
You too.
Andrew (40:06):
Yep.
Blair (40:06):
Bye. Bye.
Foreign.
Blair (00:08):
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 to guess as our guestand I really just have one question for him.
So Andy, why detective novels and why you?
Andrew (00:32):
Well, you know,
I've.
I've written.
I mean from time I was a little kid, I alwayswanted to be a writer.
I've written of books, serious novels, youknow, like Reckoning Race War to America,
a lot of serious non fiction on capitalism, onheroism, know nine rand's philosophy and so
(00:54):
on.
But you know, I always loved heroes.
I always loved tough guy heroes and, and Ithought, you know, at some point.
I know, I love Philip Marlon, RaymondChandler's here.
I love Mike Hammer,
Mike Ham, Robert Clark Spencer.
I love those guys.
So I could write a tough guy series too.
(01:16):
And so, you know, I started working on Tony
Johnson and he's seen Reggie H A R D and LisaFlowers and I started working on it.
Now I've written three Pony Judge novels.
First one just came out.
Second one will be up this summer, third one
be out Christmas.
I'm writing volume four and you know, I do
(01:38):
this in my spare time for love because it's somuch fun.
Blair (01:41):
That's great.
That's great.
Andrew (01:42):
Yeah. Hopefully they sell when I make a lot of money, you know, on it also.
Blair (01:47):
Well, I know.
Didn't you have the audio versions done with
professional people if I asked if I. Was thatsomething else?
Andrew (01:54):
Well, that was a dramatic audio podcast of a volume one of Red Meat Village,
Volume one of the Orange and Saga.
It was done by Woyage Media, which is a
professional Hollywood outfit.
Yeah, they got some big stars too.
It was.
It's an audio.
It's a dramatic audio podcast.
Kind of replicated what radio used to be likein the back four hour.
Blair (02:16):
That. That's cool.
That is.
Andrew (02:18):
Yeah, it's really cool.
And they got some big stars to voice the main.
I mean they got Captain Bell, you know, TVstar, the voice, Lisa Flowers, they got Malik
Yoba,
who, who's also a TV star and if you rememberthe movie Cool Runnings, which I, I love.
Blair (02:35):
Yeah.
Andrew (02:36):
He played Yul Brenner, you know, in programming.
They're very good.
And the dramatic audio podcast that Redeem
builds is very good.
I like it.
Martin (02:47):
That's great to hear.
And as a podcaster here, as Claire and I,
myself and yourself,
then we have to promote that with new modernpodcast applications.
You could get spreading the word and get valuefor that.
So I will look that up and you could providewith the RSS feed and we could promote it in
(03:07):
different ways because then you have plenty ofindividuals there that could get attention and
get something for their work.
So we will talk more about that.
And my question is.
Andrew (03:19):
Thank you, Martin.
Martin (03:20):
Why a pen name?
Andrew (03:22):
Oh, yeah, I'm writing the Point just under the nom de plume,
the pen name of Tris Power.
And it's very simple.
It's the,
the pen name distinguishes my serious writingfrom my purely fun.
Right.
Blair (03:42):
Okay. Okay.
Andrew (03:44):
I have an Andrew Bernstein book coming out soon.
I'm compiling a collection of my essays andthat's going to be real serious on philosophy,
history and literature, politics, real seriousmaterial.
So that's going to be Andrew Bernstein, butyou're coming out and June or July and Chris
(04:04):
Power book, Volume two of the Just Saga willalso be out this summer.
But you know, they're,
they're distinguishing each other by, by Mr.
Watkins names and, and very possibly have.
I'm sure there's some overlap in you.
Blair (04:19):
Now, do you, do you have a follow up audio version of the second book or do you, is
that in.
Andrew (04:24):
The works or not right now?
Blair (04:27):
Okay.
Andrew (04:27):
Yeah,
it wasn't, you know, the dramatic audiopodcast wasn't so much an audio version of the
book because it was just, it was just, it wasa standalone story that was, that was based
on, based on it.
And they changed the writers.
We changed a few things.
Martin (04:47):
Yeah, that's, that's cool.
So this could be like, it could be like a play
Also, like the January 16th and so on in thefuture.
Maybe some other versions of it.
Andrew (05:00):
Yeah. Could do it as it could.
It could certainly, it certainly work on the
stage.
It's not, it's not, it's not far flung.
It's not, you know, you're not, you're not allover the world.
It takes place mostly in Brooklyn, but also inNew York,
different areas of New York City.
It's, it's right in time and, and space.
(05:24):
So certainly cookies are big.
Martin (05:27):
Yeah, that's great.
Blair (05:29):
So how did you, I mean you, you say you've been wanting, you've been writing since
you were young.
And so how did the, how did these charactersgerminate?
How did Reggie Hard and, or H A R D and theothers, how do they,
how did they germinate to final paper?
Andrew (05:51):
Well, that's,
that's a really good question.
Yeah. Plus,
you know,
and a lot of people, Ayn Rand is one.
A lot of people have pointed out that your
most important aspect of fictionite and theMost difficult is over the plot, which I think
is true.
But I, if it's more difficult than creatingcharacters, it's not by very much because, you
(06:18):
know,
to me, as both a fiction and non fiction, I'mnot a literary genius, like I'm random
fiction.
But I do think I'm, you know, I'm a good
writer to be.
Fiction writing is more difficult than nonfiction because there's an analog in
nonfiction for plot structure.
That is, you have a logical outlook and then,
(06:38):
you know, all the, all the elements of thebook follow that outline and it's, it's
roughly similar to apply, you know, when youhave a lot of development of,
of events.
Okay, but, but there's nothing in non fiction
that's analogous to creating a whole universecharacter that is, you know, that, that is
(07:00):
unique to fiction.
So that, so, but fortunately for me, and you
know, I knew this from the time I was a kid,guys, you know,
I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn.
I knew I was going to be a writer.
And everything I did in part was, you know, toprepare me for that.
So, you know, I'm a teenager playingbasketball in the park in the local swoop.
(07:22):
Yeah, right.
You know, and I'm playing basketball in thepark and you know, there are a lot of good
kids there who were going to school orworking, you know, and then there were the
thugs, you know, I knew any, any large part,any part in any large city, you have your drug
dealers,
you know, and they're goons to protect themfrom hijackers and they're walking around
(07:44):
heavily armed.
Yeah. So anyway, so I, you know, didn't justlearn how to survive having to deal with these
thugs, but I knew at the same time, I'm gonnawrite about this guy.
These guys are gonna be characters and storiesat some point in the, in the future.
And so when I got to decades later, I got tothe idea, well, I'm going to write some hard
(08:07):
boiled detective story.
I had a hundred characters in my head.
So Tony just.
Somebody asked me, Tony Johnson, philosophy
professor, he's based on you.
I said, yeah, the philosophy professor part isthe tough guy.
He's not.
I was always with him.
But I knew, but I knew, you know, heroic typeguys who were, who were really good guys.
(08:32):
Good, you know, morally good, upright and notformidable.
Not guys you want to, not guys you want tostart fight.
I know guys like that.
And so I could base the characters on one ofmy experiences.
Now Reggie,
Reggie's an original character because he saidhe's the he's the toughest guy in the world.
(08:54):
He's going to be a heavyweight champion,
but he's also a genius.
He's been mocked from the time he was a little
kid growing up in the project.
That's where that gangster mentality.
Education is for the white man.
Education for the Asians, but education, stop.
Maybe it's for black women, but it's not forthe black.
Black hands.
(09:14):
Gangster, right?
That sick mentality we see too often in the.
In the projects. So Reggie, Reggie was mockedfor being a poor.
For him he was beaten and everything.
And as we all.
He fought back and everything.
He never gave up his lovely books.
But he had, you know, beaten into this senseof shame.
So he's got to overcome that.
So you got.
(09:34):
He's.
He's like a superhero.
He's.
He's the physically the most.
The toughest guy in the world.
He's.
He's the most brilliant guy in his universe.
He's almost like the superhero, but he's gotan inner problem and it's got.
That he's got himself.
Yeah,
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Blair (09:52):
I'm sorry, No, I. Can we pause just for a second?
Martin, do you hear his.
That little bit of feedback from him or.
Martin (09:58):
Yes.
Could you see your connection, Andy?It probably will work out in the post
production anyway, but a connection with yourmicrophone and your headphones, is it
directly.
Is it in your.
In your computer?
Because it is some background noise.
Blair (10:17):
It's like a. It's like a small reverb when you talk.
Andrew (10:22):
Yeah, I'm not.
Blair (10:23):
We can, we can hear it.
Martin (10:25):
Yeah.
Andrew (10:26):
You want me to, you want me to lower the sound on the mic?
Blair (10:30):
Martin, you think that's good or.
Martin (10:31):
Yeah, it could be.
Yeah, it could be close to the.
Andrew (10:33):
Microphone and I hear a little noise when I adjusted the mic gain.
Yeah.
Blair (10:39):
Good.
Andrew (10:40):
Now you feel better, but how's that? Is that good?
Is that any better?
Blair (10:44):
Yes, you're much louder, but yeah, the reverb is gone.
Martin (10:48):
Yeah, good.
Andrew (10:49):
Okay, good, good.
Blair (10:51):
Great.
Martin (10:51):
Thanks, Blair, for pointing that out.
Yeah, this is how we do it.
We do it wrong.
I will interrupt your four chain now.
Andrew (11:01):
You guys are pros, right?
Martin (11:03):
Yeah, yeah, we are.
Blair (11:05):
So if I. Next question.
If it's a spoiler that 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, Rperiod, D period stands for something, but I'm
not sure yet.
Is that, Is that a giveaway?
Andrew (11:23):
No, it isn't.
You know Reggie H A R D is just a. That's not
his real name.
It's a, you know, he's a professional fighter.
That's his stage name.
Blair (11:31):
I see.
Andrew (11:32):
His real name is Julius Collimore and he.
Which comes out at some point.
I don't even think it's in volume one.
I think it comes out later.
But Reggie H A R D is a stage.
They're kind of like Notorious B.I.G. the, therapper.
So you know, some people might just say ReggieHard because he's hard.
He's hard.
Blair (11:52):
He's a tough guy.
Andrew (11:53):
But he prefers Reggie H A R D to spell it out like Notorious.
Martin (11:58):
B I G Stage name.
Andrew (12:01):
But the interesting thing about the characters is as you know it, you're fans of
hard boiled detective fiction.
The female characters are often la FemmeFatale, you know.
And so with Lisa Flowers, who's a marriedwoman, she's a brilliant psychotherapist,
Tony's head over heels in love with her.
(12:23):
I won't give it away here, but the questionthat runs all through the plot is can Lisa be
trusted?Because there's certain things you know about
her that Tony doesn't trust.
And he, and he, you know, he says it to herface and she even says to, wow.
She says, you know, even love doesn't stopTony just from being a hard ass.
And so can, can, can Lisa be trusted?I, I don't want to give it away because that's
(12:46):
a big part of, big part of the plot.
But you know,
will this love develop into full fledgedrelationship or will she turn out to be la
femme fatale as happens so often in hardboiled detective stories?
Martin (13:03):
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 serieswith only blood and gut and whatever.
But I still like for example,
Mr. A, the Ditko character.
So could I read this book?
Then I started to read it and it looks veryfascinating.
(13:25):
And we have new thing going on, upcoming,forthcoming that I really want to be involved
in.
And I think that's good for the world to havethese 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 thisbook?
Andrew (13:48):
Well, it's fun.
The Tony Trust universe is often violent.
So the sensitive souls may not like theviolence, but if they're committed to justice,
yes.
And you know, and the bad guys get what they
deserve.
Yes, definitely.
The bad guys killed.
Martin (14:05):
So it is like TV Series.
What is Time Make My Day Punk.
Andrew (14:12):
Dirty Harry.
Martin (14:13):
Yeah.
Andrew (14:13):
It has a Dirty Harry element.
Or.
Yeah.
If we go way back to the 1950s or 1960s as a.
Mike Hammer.
Martin (14:21):
Yeah, Mike Hammer.
Andrew (14:22):
Mike Hammer, kind of.
Martin (14:23):
So then I will.
Yeah.
Andrew (14:25):
But, but, but here's the thing that I think there's several aspects that make the
Tony 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 has a. She's an expert with a handgun.
(14:48):
If she becomes part of the team, if she provestrustworthy, she's not just somebody who does
the brain work.
She'd be out in the street with them because
she's gangster girl.
But the genius level here,
Tony, that you don't see generally in the HardBoiled story, you see him in the softer Boyle
(15:12):
stories, like Sherlock Holmes as a paradigm.
Martin (15:15):
Yes, my favorite.
Andrew (15:16):
Yeah, me too.
Oh, I could discuss Sherlock Holmes.
We want to do a show just on Sherlock Holmes.
Yes, I love.
Blair (15:21):
All right.
Okay.
Andrew (15:22):
I am definitely a Sherlockian,
but also.
And all the brilliant detectives after him all
pay homage to him, whether it's Aul Poirot orNero Wolf, they all pay homage to Sherlock.
Martin (15:34):
Or the guy with a trench coat that I like.
Colombo.
Andrew (15:39):
Yeah. Peter F. Peter Falk was great.
Oh, I wonder.
I always wondered if they based that character
on.
On porphyry in Crime and Punishment.
You know, who.
Who torments Raskolnikov in that story, Plays
cat and mouse with him the way Colombo doeswith his.
With the murderers in that series.
(16:01):
I don't know.
I don't know the answer to that question.
But Tony's a philosophy professor.
He's a brilliant guy.
Lisa, Ph.D. in psychology and came out of aupper class family on the Upper west side.
She's superbly educated in the top prepschools before she went, you know, before she
(16:21):
dropped out to become a gangster in Hell'sKitchen.
But Reggie, Reggie, who's got no schooling atall,
is a genius.
He's the most brilliant of all.
She have these three very, very, very highlyintelligent, even brilliant characters.
And so it opens up certain possibilities thatyou don't normally get in tough guy fiction.
(16:46):
And one of them is, I'll give something awaythat's coming in future volumes, is Reggie's
got this inner problem.
He knows in his head that his commitment toreading and education is a very, very, very
good thing.
But in his emotional life, he's had it beaten
into him that it's shameful to be a bookworm.
He's got to resolve that.
(17:07):
Well, Lisa's a psychotherapist.
She gets him into psychotherapy and, you know,for a tough guy off the streets, tough kid out
of the projects, that takes more courage to gointo psychotherapy and face your inner demons
than it does for him to step into the ring,
you know, 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?
(17:30):
Resolve the torment.
But Reggie's got a dream.
He's. He's the.
By volume two and certainly by volume three,
he's the greatest heavyweight, not just theheavyweight champion.
He's the greatest heavyweight since MuhammadAli, and he is beloved.
And he wants to use his fame and popularity tobring reading into the projects to attack the.
(17:55):
Well, attack's not the right word.
To kind of resolve that physicalistic culture
of drugs, violence, crime.
He wants to open, use his money.
He's making a fortune of money.
Merchandise.
He's got his own brand, Raw gym brand, Roger
Merch.
Merch.
He's making a fortune.
Adult.
You're going to use that money to buildlibraries and private schools into projects
(18:15):
and bring love of learning, you know,
and love of.
Of books to the.
To these kids.
He wants to take on that gangster culture.
And to do that, he's got to resolve his ownsense of shame over this.
So by volume three, I'm bringing a veryphilosophic element into it because there's a
murder in the projects that they gotta.
(18:36):
That they have to solve and catch the murders.
But the same murderers who are responsible forthe killings, they're the ones, the gang
bangers, they're the ones who oppose theconstruction of the library.
They don't want a library,
you know, and drawing away recruits from thegang to become students and readers and
everything and.
And so bring in this intellectual element that
(19:00):
the real.
The real problem in the projects is not somuch white racism as it is this.
This culture that rejects education, thatrejects reading for a very physical, very
physicalistic culture, you know, of drugs,drugs, booze, violence, crime and so on.
(19:20):
The leftists are all going to hate me,
but I got two words for them and they ain'tMerry Christmas.
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 Reggie wants to short circuit that violence
(19:43):
and have these kids become strong readers andgo on to have real lives.
Martin (19:47):
And I get an Idea.
Now, Blair, we had Aaron talking about this in
a episode, right?
Blair (19:55):
Sure.
Martin (19:56):
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 somekind of martial arts guy who said after had
winning in the ring read Ludwig von Mises orsomething like that?
Andrew (20:19):
Yeah, I did.
So I didn't,
I didn't know.
Know that you mentioned, you mentioned Aaron.
I forget his last name.
Is that the black dude who's an objective
philosophy professor?What's his, what's his last name?
Aaron.
Martin (20:34):
With B, I think.
Yeah, but we include that in the show.
Blair (20:37):
Briley. Aaron Briley.
Andrew (20:38):
Briley. Yeah, that's right.
Aaron Briley.
He's a really good guy.
Yeah, guys, just what I hit 70.
My short term memory started to go.
It started senior moment there.
Aaron Briley.
Yeah, he's a really good guy.
And he, and he read I. If I remember
correctly, I think he read volume one of theTony Joe saga.
Martin (20:58):
Great.
So we have his connection then.
Blair (21:01):
Yeah, I think he moved to Austin, but I. Not 100% certain of that.
Martin (21:06):
So yeah, yeah, we have some contacts so we will connect again.
So thank you, Andy, for that.
Andrew (21:12):
And yeah, I have, I have Aaron's email.
I could always.
Martin (21:14):
Good.
Blair (21:15):
Yes.
Martin (21:16):
So. 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?
Andrew (21:24):
Well, the series is just called the Tony Z Saga.
Yeah,
I don't know as many.
You know,
I don't know how many.
Hopefully I live a long time, but 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, not like I don't enjoy it.
(21:45):
And there's no shortage of possible storylinesfor tough guy detective in New York City,
Brooklyn, other places.
There's all different kinds of murders.
And you know what else I want to do aside fromin the, in the fictional universe?
Resolve the dangers of the physical,physicalistic crime gangster mentality in the
(22:06):
projects.
And by the way, Reggie's not a racist.
He doesn't, 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, toencourage learning.
But another thing I want to do with thisseries, guys,
(22:28):
is I want to create villains.
I mean, you know, real memorable villains,
real bad guys who are like the dangerous.
Like you mentioned Sherlock Holmes, you know,
like Professor Mor.
Yeah. You know, in the Sherlock Holmes series.
So had a villain in volume, volume two and
volume three was a professor himself as apsychology professor who, Who's a pretty good
(22:53):
villain back.
And Vol. I'm working on volume four.
And yeah, I got, I think I have a idea for,
you know, what a good villain and you know,and some, and some memorable characters like
that.
You're real, real smart, dangerous bad guysreally spice up a story.
Martin (23:10):
And Andy, that's pretty easy to find.
Right.
You look out around you in the world and seewhat's going on.
Andrew (23:16):
Well, there's a lot, there's a lot of violent guys, but.
But real, you know, real brilliant,
real brilliant bad guys.
That's.
That cost extra.
But, you know, I could.
Martin (23:27):
But I mean like academia and certain bureaucrat organizations and.
Andrew (23:33):
Yeah. In the Democratic Party.
Martin (23:35):
Yeah. In all parties, I think.
Andrew (23:37):
But yeah, but yeah.
Yes. Yeah, I could find.
I could find, you know, smart, dangerous guyslike that, you know.
You know, it just takes a little creativity.
Martin (23:52):
Yes.
Andrew (23:52):
A little, little imaginativeness to.
Martin (23:55):
And then you have to always, you know, have this footnote or what do you call it,
disclaimer that it is fiction.
But.
Andrew (24:03):
Yeah, yeah, you know, I went to high school with Chuck Schumer, so I know I, I
don't, I don't often.
Blair (24:10):
Admit that, but that's the end of this podcast, ladies.
Andrew (24:20):
He was two years ahead of me, so I didn't know him.
I didn't know him all that well, you know,fortunately.
Martin (24:25):
Yeah. And. And here in Europe we have several of them to pick also in like in
academia and so on, especially inphilosophical and.
Andrew (24:34):
Yeah. So.
Blair (24:35):
Yeah. So, Andy, what we mentioned several great historical figures in the.
In detection and some authors.
So did those authors, did they.
You think they influenced you to become.
To really want to write detective fiction?
Andrew (24:53):
Yeah, well, I was always a hero worshiper, you know, and so I always, always
read hero stories, whether they're, whetherthey were about real life characters, you
know, like George Washington, you know, ErnestShackleton, all different kinds of, you know,
Maria Montessori.
All different kinds of heroes and heroines orfictional ones.
(25:13):
I was a kid in the 1960s.
Ian Fleming was still alive and he was, he waspublishing the James Bond novels.
And I loved James Bond.
I still do.
I love the.
Blair (25:26):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Andrew (25:28):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I was reading, I was reading MickeySpillane, my, My Mickey Spain was alive and he
was writing the Mike Hammer books in the 1960sand all kinds of heroes.
You know, John Wayne was still alive and, youknow, making Westerns way.
Blair (25:45):
Yeah.
Andrew (25:46):
Where he was always a good guy, almost always a good guy of great prowess who uses
prowess to protect the innocent against allkinds of bad guys.
You know, I love that stuff.
And so, yeah, and then.
And of course, the really brilliant, the tough
guy detectives are always very smart becausethey have to solve the case.
And sometimes that gets lost on readers.
(26:07):
The Mike Hammer 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 he always figures it out.
And I tell people, listen, if you're ever a
character in a Mike Hammer story, do not killone of Mike's buddies,
(26:31):
because he will try.
He will find out who done it, he will track
you down, and he will fill you with 45 dumdum, you know,
but, but anyhow,
the brilliant detectives, too, the one, theSherlock Holmes types that you're the most
with, the most salient characteristic is nothow tough they are.
(26:51):
Although Sherlock Holmes was tough, we seethat in a lot of instances, but how brilliant
he is.
And you know, I love, and I love the way RexStout integrates the two, you know, with the
two characters of Nero Wolf and ArchieGoodwin.
You know, you have this, the.
The soft boiled guy who sits in his armchairand figures out who done it, and then the
(27:13):
tough guy who goes out and does all the, allthe.
She couldn't do all the dirty work.
You know, it's great.
And, and, and Agatha Christie, because I'm not
a big fan of a Kill Poirot, because to me,he's.
He smacks.
He's like a Palad knockoff of Sherlock Holmes.
But nobody, and I mean nobody, is the plotwriter that Agatha Christie is.
(27:34):
I mean, well, she is extraordinary plotwriter.
So, you know, I read all of those books andyeah, they did.
I, I always, always loved them.
It didn't occur to me, you know, till many
years later that, that I was right.
Detective stories, because I was always moreinterested in writing serious, you know, about
serious issues,
fiction and nonfiction.
But then it occurred to me a few years ago,
(27:56):
why not do it?You know, do it for fun.
And then I, then I realized, like I wastalking before, there's no reason in the world
why I can't innovate here and introduceserious elements into the tough guy genre.
So while they're chasing down the killers inthe projects, they're also dealing with real
serious issues.
(28:16):
They want to, you know, change the culture
from a physicalistic one to a much moreintellectual.
Blair (28:23):
That's great.
Martin (28:23):
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.
Andrew (28:35):
Yeah, the gangster rap.
Martin (28:37):
Yeah. And the influence.
That is not healthy at all.
Andrew (28:40):
Yeah.
Martin (28:40):
So if you could introduce them to a good alternative and antidote.
Andrew (28:46):
Yeah, no, I'll never forget a really famous movie from the 1980s.
You guys might have seen Stand and Deliver,
Blue Diamond Phillips and Edward.
What's his name?
Edward almost.
Where based on the true story Jaime Escalante,the math teacher in El Barrio in LA who's
(29:07):
working with these Chicano kids and teachingthem calculus and everything.
And the Lou Diamond Phillips character, Iremember.
I'll never forget the scene because he asksthe teacher, I need two sets of textbooks.
Why do you need two?
I keep one at home and I want to school so Idon't have to be seen, you know, in the.
(29:30):
In the streets carrying textbooks.
Then the gang bangers are going to be all over
me, you know, and beat the hell out of me foracting 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.
And that mentality is around.
Blair (29:47):
Yeah, it is.
Andrew (29:48):
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, but they definitely on.
On the boys who want an education, you know,
definitely catch hell from.
From the.
From the gangster mentality.
Martin (30:04):
So. So your work of art will be really mind and body integration then, in the future?
Andrew (30:09):
Yeah, the.
Yes. Detective stories in a certain way always
are, because the detective has to be smartenough to figure out who done it.
He's got to be in the.
In the hard boiled genre.
He's got to be tough enough to fight off offthe bad guys.
But this is taking it to a whole nother level,
the intellectual level of not just figuringout who.
(30:32):
Who perpetrated the crime, but literallytrying to change the culture to a much more
intellectual culture in the.
In the projects.
And you can imagine, you know, the mothers arevery positive about this.
Oh, you have a library.
We could go.
There's a place where the kids can go to readbooks and get teaching, you know, and I could.
(30:55):
I could come in with my kids and read to Themin 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 toreach more of the boys.
(31:18):
It's great.
It's great to bring the.
Great to bring the girls in here and get aneducation for them.
But they're not the ones killing each other.
It's the teenage boys, you know, who are.
Who are killing each other.
We need to reach them.
Blair (31:31):
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 then change thesubject just a smidge.
You're.
You've got a.
A class starting on, on your.
The history of capitalism book, you wrote.
Andrew (31:51):
Yeah, the Capitalist Manifesto.
Blair (31:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you want to talk about that for a minute?
Andrew (31:57):
Oh, well, yeah.
Thank you.
Well, yeah, the, the Capitalist Manifesto, thehistoric economic and philosophic case for
laissez faire.
I published it 2005.
Don't see possible is 20 years ago already,but it is.
And I wanted a cat man, as I call it.
And if an objectivist friend of mine said catman, I love that name.
(32:19):
It's like an object objective as superheroescome down to earth to beat up on con man, you
know, on the commies and, and everything.
Martin (32:28):
But Thinking cap.
Andrew (32:29):
Yeah, yeah, that's right, the thinking cap.
That's right, Martin.
But I envisioned it and, and what the book is,
is one stop shopping for capitalism.
You got the historic case here for capitalism,the economic and above all the moral
philosophic case.
(32:49):
So regarding the history and, and the history
is also, I think is.
Is another novelty here because they don't
teach much on the.
On the actual history of capitalism.
Much of what is taught is propaganda.
Not really teaching this propaganda byMarxists, journalists and intellectuals about
all the horrors of capitalism.
(33:10):
So I had to do a lot of research.
I'm not a historian digging up hundreds ofbooks.
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 actualhistory of capitalism, which, not
surprisingly, is glorious.
It. It started raising living standards and
(33:31):
life expectancies immediately uponintroduction into Great Britain in the late
18th century.
So there's the actual history of capitalismand, and you know, and on the pre capitalist
period was a terrible poverty and starvationlevel poverty.
So that's, that's generally new in and ofitself.
But also then the, the economic section,nothing, you know, which I, you know, I
(33:56):
borrowed, I quoted from the great economistsfrom Adam Smith through von Mises and George
Reisman, Milton Friedman and of course Bastiatmay not be an economist, but it was Bastiat.
Henry Hazlett were both brilliant economicjournalists.
I love Bastiat's phrase, you know, Paris getsfed, you know, on a free market.
(34:19):
And so, you know, the economic case from the,that the great economists have made and I'm
borrowing from them and then the philosophicmoral case, you know, that the, that the mind
is mankind's means of survival,
the mind requires individual rights andfreedom and life is the standard of value and
(34:39):
capitalism promotes life much more than anyother system.
So I have, you know, in the moral philosophicsection it's Ayn Rand has, has established the
philosophic superiority, the economic section,the great economists have established
capitalism's economic superiority.
So I've, I've brought in these elements fromthose great thinkers, integrated it with the
(35:00):
history section, which is, which is new Ithink.
One whole section on, on devoted to theaccurate 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, Ithink it's going to be a really fun course and
(35:21):
it's going to be very, a very informativecourse on the actual nature of capitalism and
its life giving successes.
Blair (35:28):
Do you want to give like the website for that or the, so people can know about it?
Andrew (35:34):
Yeah, it's.
Yes, thank you, Blair.
It's, it's put on, promoted by the ObjectiveStandard Institute.
So is it objectivestandard.org orobjectivestandard.com I forget.
Off the top maybe.
Blair (35:49):
I don't, you know, I don't remember.
Andrew (35:51):
I have my, I have my phone here somewhere.
Let's look it up.
Martin (35:56):
Yeah, and we will include that in the show note also, so.
Andrew (35:59):
Oh great, great.
Thank you.
But the, the technology today is really,
it's objectivestandard.org everybody and yougo objectivestandard.org and they have a
section on their courses and there, there's,you know, and there's the headline, the
Capitalist Manifesto course.
You can just click on it and get all the
(36:19):
information and sign up for it.
We are almost at our limit because I wanted tocap enrollment at 12 to keep the interaction
manageable because if we have smart, yeah, 20people, it's gonna be a lot of people wanting
to talk and we'll never get through, we'llnever get through the material that I want to
cover.
I know that for many years of teaching.
(36:40):
So it capped it at 12.
Almost there.
So anybody wants to sign up, you need to, need
to do it quickly.
Blair (36:47):
Very good, very good.
I just have one minor complaint about that
book.
It's not, it's not available in Kindle.
Andrew (36:56):
Yeah. You know, it's an academic publisher.
If I can blame, I gotta, I gotta blamesomebody.
But it's an academic publisher's.
It was University Press of America.
They are not at all entrepreneurial.
I don't want to knock them too much becausethey love the book,
you know, and they, and they publish it.
But academic publishers is notorious non
(37:17):
entrepreneurial.
So you're doing ebooks or audio books.
It's, it's.
Martin (37:24):
But I think we have a solution for that in the free marketplace, Andrew.
But, and we could talk about that in thefuture.
But do you of course have a right to, to thecontent?
Right.
Andrew (37:35):
No, the, it belongs to the publisher when you, when you.
That.
But there, but there's where the free market
works, Martin.
And you're absolutely right.
Instead of going academic publishers from nowon, I'm going to self publish.
Then like, like I've self published the Tony.
Just books.
Then the content belongs to me and I, youknow, I can promote it all.
Martin (37:53):
I want good clarification and again, we are for friendly competition.
So they are doing a great way and they knowhow to do it and I have done it for a long
time.
But as you said, and I think I agree withBlair's question there, so.
And you have the answer.
So you're a smart guy, Andy.
Andrew (38:10):
Oh, thank you, thank you.
I appreciate that.
And I just want to put in a plug here.
You know, like I said, I don't want to, Idon't want to sound like I'm negative on
University Press of America.
Their chief editor,
the late Judy Rothman, who died of cancerunfortunately a few years ago,
she loved the book.
She told me it was of all the books they
(38:32):
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 there,Objectivism and One Lesson in Capitalism
Unbound.
Well also at Roman Littlefield, University
Press of America is one of their imprimatur.
So, so I'm grateful to them because they gotme started, you know, and made me a little bit
(38:57):
of a name for myself, but.
But it's well known that, you know, academic
publishers, if they sell a couple hundredcopies, they're.
They're happy, you know, they're not.
They're not entrepreneurial.
Martin (39:07):
Yeah.
Blair (39:08):
Wow. Okay. But nonetheless, that book is the.
The.
The gold standard.
Martin (39:14):
Yes.
Blair (39:15):
Of capitalism and are certainly the explanation for capitalism.
Andrew (39:20):
Oh, well, thank you, guys.
I. I know.
I appreciate it.
Martin (39:23):
And we will spread the manifesto.
It's important.
Andrew (39:26):
Thank you, guys.
Appreciate it.
Blair (39:29):
Listen, gentlemen, I hate to cut this short, but I should.
I should get back to him downstairs.
Martin (39:34):
Yeah.
Andrew (39:34):
And all the best.
All the best to you and your family, Blair.
Blair (39:37):
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Martin (39:39):
Take care.
Blair (39:40):
So once again, we've had Andrew Bernstein, our.
One of our very, very favorite guests on withus today.
Andy, thanks for manning the foxhole with us.
Andrew (39:50):
Always great to be in the foxhole with you and Martin, Blair.
And I know once you have the link, you'll sendit to me so I can paste it all across social
media.
Martin (39:59):
Yes.
Blair (39:59):
Very good.
Very good.
Andrew (40:01):
Thank you.
Thanks, guys.
Martin (40:02):
Thanks.
Bye.
Blair (40:03):
Bye.
Andrew (40:04):
Take care, everybody.
Martin (40:05):
You too.
Andrew (40:06):
Yep.
Blair (40:06):
Bye. Bye.
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