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June 9, 2024 17 mins

Blair is sharing information about conferences on liberalism and secularism, books by catholic conservatives, and spot-on joke regarding the upcoming presidential election in the United States America. Martin is talking about the European elections, and is mentioning a podcast discussing deepfakes, distrust, and democracy. You will get informed about our download statistics and listener behavior. The call-to-action is a guide on how to support our work with the podcast.

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Episode Transcript

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Blair (00:08):
Here we are again, ladies and gentlemen.
Today it's just Martin and I in the secularFoxhole podcast number 85.
How about that?85.

Martin (00:17):
Yeah, that's a good number.

Blair (00:19):
Four years.
I think we're in four years.

Martin (00:22):
Good.

Blair (00:23):
Congratulations to us.

Martin (00:25):
Yes, it is.
Clap. Clap. Yeah.
And we'll talk about that also, how theycould, the listeners and co hosts, as you are
and I am, and the guests and returning guestsand others could support our work and we could
support them in a trade.

Blair (00:41):
That's right.

Martin (00:41):
And value for value.
So we'll come, come to that.
But you have some news sandwich segment that,again, inspired by Amy Picoff.

Blair (00:51):
Yeah. Well, I do have some few things to talk about.
Let's see.
The first thing I want to mention is I
subscribe to an email called notes from themiddle ground by a gentleman named Damon
Linker.
Linker and his latest.

Martin (01:12):
And what's the meaning of middle ground?

Blair (01:14):
It's not the extreme left or the extreme right, I think, but it's not.

Martin (01:18):
The middle of the road that we know about that.

Blair (01:21):
Hopefully not.
Yeah, hopefully.
I think he's more, he's certainly in theliberal tradition, meaning the original
classical sense.
Yeah.
Yes.
Right.
I believe that's true.
But his latest, he, he talks about his, his
teacher, this gentleman, name is Mark.
I'm gonna call Lila l ill a mark.

(01:44):
Lila.
And he also has a, he has an article in the
New York Review of Books, but it's availablein PDF form on Mister Lila's website.
But anyway, it's called the Tower and thesewer.
And this is about.
Let's read what Damon says about it.

(02:06):
It's a wide ranging review covering severalrecent books by Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Amari
and Adrian Vermeule.
I think that's how you pronounce a gentleman's
name.
The essay is a tour de force that places these
writers in broad historical context, situatesthem in contemporary, in the contemporary

(02:29):
american right, and combines generosity towardthe psychological and spiritual struggles that
animate their thinking with nuanced is thatword, and occasionally severe criticism of it.
Now, these gentlemen are all anti liberal,anti enlightenment people.
So they're no friends to America.

(02:55):
So that I do want to, I will provide the
Martin with the link to the PDF in the notesafter the show.
But that's something I want to alert ourlisteners to because I think it's well worth
reading.
And then here we are.
And then I do subscribe to something elsecalled the unpopulous, which Robert Tracinski.

Martin (03:19):
Yeah.

Blair (03:20):
Yeah. He often plugs on his in his writing and also his YouTube videos.
But they have the people that behind theunpopulous have a institute for the Study of
modern authoritarianism, and they are havingtheir first conference in, of all places,

(03:44):
Washington, DC, next month, next month, July11 and 12th.
So that's something we should plug, I think,and they want to, their topic for that
conference is liberalism in the 21st century.

(04:04):
And again, I will provide the links to both
the website and I guess to the conference forthat in our notes.
And let's see what else.
There was something else.

Martin (04:17):
Oh, you had to joke also because these two things sounds like a good.

Blair (04:23):
Yes, that's right.
So here's, here's the, here's the good and
this is the bad and it's the joke.

Martin (04:30):
Yeah.

Blair (04:30):
And people around the world should pity the american people because their choice for
president is someone who's facing a sentenceand someone who can't complete a sentence.
So that is indeed a very sad situation.

Martin (04:50):
Yeah. Where did you see that one? That joke, actually, who read that?
I want to give credits to that.

Blair (04:58):
We should, it was, it was a Greg Gutfeld on Fox.

Martin (05:02):
Yeah. Okay. That's also, that's also a good one.
It's coming from Fox News.
That's, that's interesting.

Blair (05:09):
Yeah, that's true.
Yes, it is.
So that's, that's the bad.
And now the, the ringer for the sandwich, the
top of the sandwich.
This is another kind of a funny little thing.
And I can't find the link.
I have, I have to search for it.
But here in America, we have what's called theBible Belt, which is mostly southern part of

(05:32):
the United States.

Martin (05:33):
Did it also reach where I was?

Blair (05:37):
I mean, there's, you know how you also is that there's certainly, it's not nearly
severe in the midwest as it.

Martin (05:45):
Is more deep down south.

Blair (05:46):
Yeah, I think that's true.
Honestly.
And there is what I've called the buckle ofthe Bible Belt, which is little Rock,
Arkansas.

Martin (05:57):
From Bill Clinton country.

Blair (05:59):
Yes, that's, yes, sadly, from Bill Clinton country.
However, the secular student alliance ishaving their annual conference in Little Rock,
Arkansas.
So go figure.

Martin (06:14):
Yeah. That's a good battleground, right?

Blair (06:17):
I guess it must be.
It might be.
But I have to find that where I saw that.
So, and then I'll put that in the show notes
as well.
But that's my new sandwich for this episode.

Martin (06:29):
Yeah. And I'm talking about news that I haven't listened to yet, but it's about the
podcast in Swedish called the SecurityCouncil, and they were talking about
deepfakes, distrust and democracy and aboutthe artificial intelligence election year and

(06:50):
so on.
So that's something we could talk about
tomorrow.
It's European Union elections.
I voted so called against European Union,okay, but I'm for free trade and so on.
But now we are stuck in European Union.
We haven't exited yet as Britain.

(07:12):
But then you could then vote for somebody thatcould, a representative, a party that could
stop the worst and maybe do something goodthere.
And that's a new party that's not representedin the government or in the Riksta, as you say
in Swedish.
And that's called Mied Borg samling.

(07:33):
And that's like Citizens alliance, you couldsay, or something like that.
And it's a non socialist party because many ofthe non socialist parties, like the moderates,
so called the conservatives, and even theliberal that are more social liberal, have
problem issue whatever on their guidelines andthe spectrum where they are.

(07:56):
And we know that there's no left or rightscale.
In a way.
Tracinski have talked about that also and
others.
But anyway, so it's interesting if I'm
thinking of voting that and when I want tovote on a certain individual, if I could find.
So that's for tomorrow.
And then you said about the joke where in the

(08:19):
autumn it's following that.
And so we'll come back to that more and then
definitely have Robert Traczynski and othersreturning and talking.
So that's something about.
And then.
Yeah.
What is a deepfake, for example, we could talk
about and distrust for democracy could in away be a good thing if it's not populist and a

(08:44):
solution for the future is like aconstitutional republic and really
understands.
I remember, wasn't it Tracinski that had that
called something with the republic it's worthto save or something like that?

Blair (08:58):
Oh, yes.

Martin (09:00):
In paper form.
Yeah.

Blair (09:04):
That I don't remember, but I know that Benjamin Franklin.

Martin (09:08):
Yeah.

Blair (09:08):
At the time of the signing, he answered someone's query, a republic if you can keep
it.
Of course, it hasn't been that for more than a
century.
Because of, you know, democracy.

Martin (09:25):
Yep.

Blair (09:26):
Which is the last in the last breath before tyranny unless you turn it around,
which anyhow.

Martin (09:34):
Yeah. So that's something to come back to also.
And then we could, if you're open to listen tosome stats.

Blair (09:43):
Yes, please.

Martin (09:44):
So that's from our podcast host provider.
I call it like a sound hotel.
And that's an audio and that's captivate and
there it's the listener behavior and the last28 days is unique listeners, 129 and 148

(10:08):
downloads.
So some individuals have listened more than
once, and then you could see its statisticsand you could see trends a bit because we
haven't done some latest episode is like twoweeks ago, and that will have now download for
70 downloads with Brian Stevenson.
So that's great.
So I don't look so much in it, and youshouldn't be, how to say, paralyzed by it.

(10:33):
But it's interesting to see the trend soaround.
In general, in the long trend, we have like198 downloads average every 28 days, like a
month.
So seven per day.
Of course, in the long run, we want to have 77hundred, 7000, et cetera, et cetera.
And we see the potential of that.
But we will not rush it as the band.

Blair (10:56):
No, I love Rush.

Martin (10:59):
But the new podcast app, in the latest 28 days, the fountain had 10% of that
listening and downloads, you could say.
So somebody out there is using a new podcast,
modern podcast app.
And a newly favorite of mine is Truefans Dot
FM.

(11:19):
And we will continue with this work.
And then also the founder and originator ofthat, Sam Sati, will ask if you could come to
the show and talk about the specific thing inthe podcasting industry and how to arrange
conference and political correctness and otherthings that could happen out there and the

(11:40):
positive news, what he's doing, really doinggreat work with this.
Truefans FM, the onboarding for guests, for cohosts, for listeners will be so smooth.
And also you could have this value for valuethat you get something and you decide yourself
how much you want to send as a transaction.

(12:01):
So this is really interesting.
So we'll cover that in the future.

Blair (12:05):
Yeah.

Martin (12:06):
And great.
Again, great.
That fountain is a popular app and there aremore out there, and we will include that in
the show notes.
So the stats here, the latest period is United
States, of course, is in the top.
And then Canada.
And these total are like around 50% of thelisteners so far.

(12:29):
And then Germany, Switzerland, United Kingdom,Finland, Australia, Sweden, for some reason,
Malaysia and Spain.
That's the top ten.
I didn't check how many countries we are intotal, but we are getting closer and closer
to, you know, how many countries there are outthere.
We are getting better.

Blair (12:47):
Well, that's great.
That is great.
I want to mention, I know you got to run.
Is it true, fans?

Martin (12:57):
Truefans FM? Yes.

Blair (12:59):
Go ahead and talk about that if you like.

Martin (13:01):
Yeah, as I did, it's a great application, and it's a so called progress web
app, so it could work.
You don't have to download an app.
It will work when you create an account, afree account, it will work on your smartphone
also.
And I see this positive gamification of it
when you use it.
You will get Satoshis.
You could do all kind of things.

(13:22):
And in the future we have like one guest that
I'm thinking about, Warren Fahey and othersand of course James Valiant.
And in the future will be able to have likeaudiobooks there.
You will be able to have courses, you couldhave conferences, all kind of things, and
music artists.
You could apply this value for value model on

(13:46):
this also.
So this would be really interesting in the
future to follow this.
Stay tuned and keep in touch regarding that.

Blair (13:54):
Well, that's all I had today, Martin.
So I know, again, I know you got to run.

Martin (13:59):
Yeah, that's okay.
And as the last thing then, and I thank you,
Robert Beagley, as a guest, whatever, severaltimes.
Thanks for your email.
And this is one thing with having a podcast,
the relation you build and grow and so on.

Blair (14:15):
Yeah, true.

Martin (14:16):
And thanks to Robert, we had a guest that talked about this new educational, you
could say site and college and school.

Blair (14:28):
Right, Marcia.

Martin (14:29):
And also we got support thanks to that podcast interview and conversation.
And we appreciate that very much to get thesupport.
And then you could go to the link that we haveon Captivate, that's in the podcast player.
And we include that in the show notes also.
And I asked here on Twitter, because I saw on

(14:49):
the podcastindex.org that they say like this,I will do a quote here, help us out.
None of these is free.
If you get any value from this project or if
you just believe in it and want to help uswith hosting fees and paying the bills, a
donation of any amount would be great.

(15:13):
And I would say the same for us.
So, and then I tweeted here or posted, as yousay now, on x to something called Conshax.
And that's also a service that you could lookat when you after some time get like from
different streams and different podcast appsand whatnot, the donation, then of course, you

(15:34):
want to thank the donors, but then you have tokeep it in, you know, some kind of
instrumental panel or dashboard or somethinglike that.
And contracts is that, and you could create asimilar page like this capture page support
page on contracts.
And there they could, you could set a certain
amount in satoshis, like, do you want to giveus a cup of tea or a coffee or whatever your

(16:00):
favorite beverage or a beer or your decidingamount.
So you could have pre, how to say prepopulated.

Blair (16:11):
Predetermined choices.

Martin (16:13):
Predetermined. Yeah. So it's very simple to do it, but I will wait for their
response there.
Okay.
Thanks, Blair.
It was nice to talk to you soon again.
And we have guests in the pipeline and newthings coming up and.
Yeah, we will talk soon again.

Blair (16:31):
That sounds great, Martin.
Thank you.

Martin (16:33):
Yeah, thanks for now and talk to you soon again.
Bye for now.
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