Welcome Extraordinary America. Hello, my fellow Extraordinary Americans. I’m Cosmos Dar and it’s Extraordinary America today for our show, we have our guest today guest we have Lou Marinoff.

Lou Marinoff is a very successful international best-selling author. He’s earning books such as Plato, not Prozac. In a middle way. He’s been part of These global organizations, such as the World Economic Forum, and he’s also been a three-time table hockey champion; right now, he’s a professor at New York College. Lou, thank you for taking the time to do this interview.

With us. Oh, you’re very welcome, Cosmos. It’s a pleasure to be with you too.

Thank you for being here. I wanted to ask, you know, so you’ve been a three-timetable hockey champion. You have also been an international bestselling author and right now you’re a very successful professor.

The City College of New York, please CCCNY Gary Morton. Historic institution. We got to call it by its name.

So totally yeah. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, your background, and how you got there?

Well, it’s a very short interview, so I don’t want to take up the whole time with my life story of how I got started is where would you like to go?

Well, just give, just give Us like the brush strokes, you know.

The brush strokes. OK, well, before I became a philosopher and an author, I was probably a table hockey player. I started playing at the age of five because, in Canada, where I come from, everybody plays table hockey; and a lot in the US through and now in Europe. 

But basically, I started writing it around the same age too, and I have to give credit to my mother. My father because they encouraged me a lot. My father read me beautiful stories. By great authors, age-appropriate and my mother encouraged me in creative writing and poetry. She was a published poet in her life, so I guess I have some literary genes from my family.

And I’ve had a really interesting, very interesting, and fortunate life on the whole, Cosmos. When I turned to formal studies, I did a first degree. In theoretical physics, I’ve also studied and taught classical music, specifically guitar for many years. So, I love the arts and all of that. 

I was able to win a Commonwealth scholarship to do ph. D research in England at the University of London and I earned my ph. D eventually at University College and after.

Have talented and super successful. And everything that you’re doing.

Well, well, thank you. I mean I don’t know if earning a Ph.D. is super successful. It was certainly arduous. And time-consuming and recording a lot of devotion. But eventually, I was successful and was able to land some jobs and get some important publications into the pipeline. You know the old saying publish or perish in the academic world. 

So, I was able to get some really good publications. And one thing led to another in 1994. I was offered a position at the City College of New York that was 28 years ago and I’m still there. It’s been a wonderful place for me. 

For your viewers who don’t know. Know this, the City College of New York was founded in 1847 by Townsend Harris to educate the whole people, meaning often immigrants without a lot of money, some of whose children were the first in their families to earn university degrees, and the payback is that CCNY has more Nobel laureates among its alumni than any other public institution in this country, so we were offering a Harvard quality education at no cost. And the contributors to a culture that came out of CNY include not only Nobel laureates, but also architects and philanthropists, and people like Colin Powell. All kinds of amazing people have come out of City College, so it’s a place right now that has students from 150 countries. It’s a microcosm of the global village.

That’s awesome. Oh. Wait, so how many years have you been a professor at the college?

And well, I’ve been a professor for 30 years. I started as a lecturer at University College and then I Got a temporary position at the University of British Columbia that led to. To a tenure track position at City College, which I took up, as I say 28 years ago. So, I’ve spent the bulk of my adult philosophical life as a professor. But as you know, I have one foot in the Academy and another foot in the rest of the world as an author and traditional.

Speaking of authorship, I wanted to. Know what was. The overall arching vision and goal regarding like. The books that. You authored what was like your idea. Like what? What is your ideology when you write these books?

Well, you know, writing is something I do every day. It’s a craft and it’s something one always needs to work on to, perfect and good editing always helps writers. So, I depend on that too, but I’ve published 13 books so far and you know dozens and dozens of articles and book chapters, but the New York publishing industry saw something that I hadn’t seen in 1999. We are published… That is, Harper Collins published… my book called Plato, not Prozac. This was a popular book meant to convey to ordinary people and non-academics and non-philosophers how useful philosophy can be in everyday life because it is one of my research subjects and sidelines, if you like, within the Academy is philosophical. Counseling and Plato, not Prozac, took this worldwide.

So, in America, this may be new to many of your listeners. So let me explain that in America, people are very psychologized from cradle to grave. Psychology is a very powerful discipline. It’s licensed by states. Many states allow psychologists to prescribe medication. And I think it is very important for people to know themselves psychologically. But psychology is the child of philosophy, and our contemporary American culture has neglected its philosophical abilities and capabilities, to its great detriment. 

So, I am a pioneer of this movement, returning philosophy to people and giving them great ideas from all the wisdom traditions of the world that they can use in everyday life. And my colleagues and I have contributed to the growth and development of the philosophical practice movement, which is gaining traction worldwide in India, China, Europe and Latin America, North America, everywhere you go, there are now philosophers and practices. So, I’m regarded as a pioneer of that field, Cosmos.

That’s amazing. That’s uh, wow.

But I didn’t. I didn’t decide that this would happen. You understand, when an author writes a book, it’s a little bit like some, you know, like a mother having a baby. You take care of it, and you want it to do well, but once the book is published then it has a life of its own and one is no longer in control of what happens to it.

So, in this case, there was such a great need for this, and not only in the USA but also in many, many countries that Plato, not Prozac very, very swiftly, went into something like 27 languages, became a bestseller pretty much worldwide. Now that’s not because of me, but it’s because of what I am representing to people. Something that’s obviously very useful to them, so you might say I was in the right place at the right time, but I never would have dreamed that this could have happened if you’d asked me 10 years earlier, I could not have said, well, this was my plan. 

So sometimes the best things in life happen to us when we don’t anticipate or try to manipulate them, we just are who we are and do our best at what we do. And then sometimes serendipity opens the door.

No, totally so what motivated you and drove you to, like basically become an author? This book, in addition to the middle way, and like what was it that pushed? You do.

All of this? Well, that’s just an internal thing. I had a wonderful education both in Canada and in the UK and the US. I mean, teaching is also an education. We learn by teaching. Many of my students don’t realize this. That but they ask brilliant questions at times and make us think more clearly. But what we think we know, so there’s no end to learning and I’m devoted to lifelong learning.

But also devoted to literature and the written tradition. I was steeped in it as a child, and as a young adult, and every step of my educational path has been involved with reading and writing, and nowadays editing as well.

So, I guess it’s just an internal thing. I always wanted to be a writer and I had formed in my mind from an early age the vision of actually launching books in bookstores, not necessarily doing international book tours, but at least being an author and that has come to pass. And I think if you’re asking me to pin it down often. It comes really down to perseverance and willpower. I think that willpower is very neglected, I want to say commodity, it’s not for sale, but it’s a very neglected ability that all humans can muster to a greater or lesser extent and can also train themselves to persevere in willingness and Will themselves to do things and therefore to go further than they think they can do or to accomplish more than they think they can do. 

You if you sit back passively. I’m not saying you, but if people tend to sit back. Passively, and let’s say they’re not where they want to be very convenient, and sometimes blame this on other people or to blame it on circumstances or to blame it. All the boogie men that the politicians conjure up to keep us in fear. And animosity about at the end of the day. If you look into yourself, you will discover resources that can overcome all of these things and part of the great wisdom traditions in the West and in Asia alike teaches us to mobilize those inner resources, and I think that that’s something I’ve been able to do as well. Thanks to my teachers, but also thanks to the feedback I get from actually practicing these virtues and these disciplines.

OK, so Lou, what is the biggest lesson you learned over your life all throughout your career over the years?

That nobody can do anything alone, as the English poet John Dawn finally said, no man is an island where you could write the greatest book in the world. But if you do it in a vacuum somewhere and nobody ever gets to read it, it will be a kind of wasted gift.

So, we need editors. We need publishers, we need distributors. We need readers above all. And an author can only become an author by virtue of all those other components, all those social and economic components that have to be in place and whatever you want to do in life. I’m sure you know this well. Whatever it is that you want to achieve in any seal whatsoever, you’re going to be working with people. Sometimes you’ll meet with opposition, sometimes with cooperation, but life is really a concerted effort. It’s a sum of what each individual is capable of within a social, economic, and political matrix that hopefully on a good day encourages them to be the best they can be. So, if we work together cooperatively, each of us individually will say it will attain a better result than if we just forge ahead and ignore everybody else on the scene.

No, totally. Yeah, I agree with you on that one, yeah. So, Lou, what do you think is the biggest challenge you have faced over all of these years? Like while you’re doing your authorship, or like doing, the team will have a hockey championship, or like you is like a professor, what is the biggest challenge you faced in your life?

Well, every day is kind of a challenge. Not that I seek challenges, but I enjoy the challenge. I enjoy competition. You know there’s competition and cooperativeness in every team function, both by competing against other teams and by cooperativeness within the team. And even teams that are competing are also cooperating within a bigger structure called the league. You know. So as competitive as you want to get at the Olympic Games or professional sports, there’s always this competition under an age of cooperation without which athletes couldn’t realize their best excellence.

So, I think that what one encounters in the publishing world, in my case, is enormous success internationally, but also censorship at home. So, my biggest challenge has been political censorship, and I will speak very plainly to the left. I am actually a classical liberal. I believe in equal opportunity, but I don’t like identity politics and I don’t like to visit conflicts. They’re not necessary and they’re not productive. So as a philosopher, I have a duty to speak my mind and to and to reflect on these issues. So, it happens in the publishing industry is not totally …Very largely they have a.

A lot of them have a lot of censorship in publishing this.

Are you kidding? Are you kidding? I self-published a novel in 1994 which has been compared to works by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Kurt Vonnegut, and it has never seen the light of day in mainstream publishing. I sold 2000 copies underground from a post office box in Vancouver. That was my first book. OK, because no literary agent would touch it. I got letters from literary agents saying if we represent this book, it’ll be the end of our career. What is the book so, so dangerous for? 

It’s a satire on political correctness. I’ll give you the irony that now Fast forward 30 years later, I’m still writing books that are popular, but the publishing industry is very, let us say…. And they will promote books that agree with their ideology, and they will tend these days, especially to cancel contracts or simply to suppress books that don’t agree with their ideology.

Whatever happened to the freedom of thought and speech and the 1st amendment and all that you know how much time do we have to This if it’s still alive?

Well, in theory, and the Constitution, as you know, is under threat not from conservatives. The Constitution is under threat from cultural Marxism. They want to change America into a socialist Republic and destroy it all, which they’ll do, and they’re well embarked. 

So, we have the 1st amendment, but the First Amendment only applies in public spaces. I teach at a public university, so in theory, I’m free to think of unauthorized thoughts and to teach my students things that may be contrary to some of the workaday ideologies they’ve been indoctrinated with since day one in the K/12 system. That’s how bad it is. There are no countervailing positions presented. All of the greatest defenders of liberty from time immemorial go back to Cicero in the Roman Empire, John Stuart Mill, who served in the British Parliament and wrote the greatest essay in defense of individual liberty in the English language, and many others, they’ve all said, look, there are always two sides to a story and at least in fact there are many sides to a story.

If we only allowed one side to be told, then people are going to be brainwashed. We have to allow debate and rebuttal in order for people to be informed. And to make their own decisions, if we respect citizens, then we want them to be well informed and we want them to have the liberty to decide fairly on the issues. But if they’re brainwashed by mainstream media, and if they’re canceled by canceled culture, they are not well informed and therefore it is their liberty that’s been taken from them.

No, totally. Yeah, I agree. So, Lou, what is the one thing You wish that no before? You started your career in the auto-ship and the publishing in this in publishing and like, what would you advise somebody that’s just starting off at like they don’t know where to?

I was asked this in a different way. Somebody asked me recently what you would tell yourself now if you could speak to yourself as a. As a young man just starting out, what would you tell yourself? And Cosmos, my answer was it wouldn’t make a difference because as a young man, I wouldn’t have listened, you know. 

So even though I may have had great advice to give myself, you know I wouldn’t listen. And that’s part of what makes Mavericks and Black Swans. And you know what America’s famous for outliers, people. Who does their own thing? They go the wrong way, not harming others, but because they have some vision, and they remain authentic and true to it. We have to have that.

And sometimes the best test of what you’re doing is that everybody rejects it, or nobody pays attention to it. But if you stick with it, then eventually. You know every flower will bloom soon. Well, I believe. 

So that’s one thing, but again, the greatest lesson so far in my life has honestly been that the best things that have ever happened to me in many, many, many wonderful things have happened thanks to great people on this earth and people from whom I’ve learned so much and never imagined being able to meet. But all of those things were not things that I cooked up. And said OK, you know, tomorrow I’m going to meet this person or accomplish this, that, or the other thing, because again, it’s a social matrix, socioeconomic and political matrix, so the best things in my life are the things that happened without me actually trying to manipulate them. 

Although one can manipulate certain things, I manipulate my household and try and keep it tidy and organized. You know, we can manipulate our desktops and our e-mail, but the best things in life will often happen serendipitously. If you have a good heart and an open mind and belief that there are greater forces in the world than the people who rule us politically, I think wonderful things can and do happen.

No, totally. So, Lou, you have been part of the World Economic Forum, right? And you also predicted the financial collapse of 2008. Can you tell me a little bit more about how you became a part of the world’s current form and how you managed to predict the collapse that happened in 2008?

I’ve been Fortunate maybe to have been working in workshops on ethics and values and so forthwith. World leaders in business culture and religion many feel. For more than 20 years I’ve been doing this. 

So, what happened originally was, again, Plato, not Prozac. One summer, I think it was the summer of the 2000s. It got into The Economist magazine. There’s a column where there used to be a column in The Economist magazine called what the world is reading; and one year played on our Prozac, being a best seller in so many countries, got into the Economist and was mentioned there. And immediately when that happens, then the World Economic Forum calls you and emails you inviting you to Davos. Although there was a series of auditions, it’s a high-energy forum, a very serious form of global leaders. 

So, you have to go through a process to demonstrate that you’re capable of actually accomplishing something with them. So they put me through the audition which I passed, and eventually I ended up being faculty not only to them, but to harass this, which is a very important group that meets regularly with Indian and Chinese, and other Business leaders, because India and China are growing economic giants and there are all kinds of things going on, I work with many global organizations, but I guess the best known is the WWEF in dabbles.

So, I was there for many years and that’s how I got there. But then being there, I also learned a tremendous amount about how the world works. Really who’s pulling the strings and what’s going on in the background? And that gave me and that combined with world travels traveling 100,000 miles a year, too many, many countries meeting with leaders in many places and doing events with them, gave me a tremendous window onto the world. 

So, I was able to write the middle way, It was published in 2006 and seven rather and I saw very clearly the real estate bubble and this whole scam about derivatives… This was all sucking people in the bubble. The greed was getting bigger. People were buying homes they couldn’t afford, flipping them, and then getting more, and all these bubbles will burst. My model for this history is the South Sea. The trouble which people were talking about for a century. Thomas Jefferson wrote about it as a British bubble, but he wrote about it. 

Thomas Jefferson said wealth is not created and I’m quoting him by ledgers and man tricks on paper. Wealth is created by honest labor and the products of honest labor. Starting with agriculture. And manufacturing and things that people really need, you know, the Internet is smoke and mirrors as much as it’s running now essential operations. It’s still people who have to be in charge and not the Internet of Things won’t help us. You know, we’re losing our own control over the world because of this.

But basically, it was clear to me that the bubble was going to burst. So, in 2007, as the book was being published, I divested myself completely from the market. And I’m sorry to say that again for political reasons, the book did well but was not really promoted much in the USA. It’s been translated and it’s in all kinds of languages. And if anybody had been able to see that book and read the chapter that predicted the collapse, they could have divested themselves too, and saved… how many Consumers could we have saved? How many billions of dollars? I’m sorry that it happened, and I’m also sorry that people didn’t know about it. I’m not a prophet and I don’t have a crystal ball. 

Sometimes because you just connect the dots and you know you know, you can see pretty clearly the direction that the world is heading, but it doesn’t mean that it’s faded to go to this place. But if there’s an unrelenting will for people to experience, this kind of bubble, then it is going to burst one day, and a lot of people are going to get hurt.

So, I predicted Brexit and Donald Trump’s election in 2016, I did it publicly at a European conference of political and business leaders, and I was booed. I mean the EU didn’t want Brexit to happen and nobody apparently in Europe liked Donald Trump very much. But I saw the writing on the wall again. It was very clear. 

There was a lot of mistrust in established politics. I mean, Hillary was not trusted, even though she’s a very powerful and influential American who didn’t trust her. That’s simple. And she’s demonstrated scandal after scandal in all of her political life. You know, I met Bill Clinton a couple of times in Davos, and he had no interest in philosophy. Anybody with no interest in philosophy might just have some blind spots about whether they appear virtuous or not. 

Well, she certainly didn’t appear virtuous enough to be president, so she wasn’t elected, but I Saw it and I mean again, not a prophet, I just connected the dots. I also predicted some of the unfortunate calamities we’re experiencing now, but that might get too political for you. I just want to say this, if you try to be as well informed as possible, and if you have access to good intelligence, and if you’re able to meet with people who are actually running important sectors of the economy, industry, or culture, and you know, social entrepreneurs, Nobel laureates, people, I’ve been fortunate enough to consult with regularly, they will tell you a lot of useful things. 

And if you kind of put the pieces together. You’re going to see a plausible direction in the near future, and that’s really what it comes down to. All of this is reversible. I’m not a pessimist, by the way. We can reverse the damage that is being done, but it’s going to take a lot of effort. 

That is what it’s trying to America is about. It’s trying to. Restored to a certain extent, you know. But we have to give hope to people.

Yes, and that’s the theme of the middle way that what people really want in life, among whatever other things, they need air, food, water, you know, but people better thrive in an atmosphere of liberty, opportunity, and hope. Those are the three keys. 

And America in my and listen, Cosmos, I’ve lived in four countries, and I’ve visited dozens, but I’ve lived in four. I lived in Canada where I grew up. I lived in the UK where I studied for several years. I’ve lived in Israel a couple of times, and I have lived in the US now for 28 years. I can say unequivocally, America is the freest country I have ever inhabited by far, they offer liberty of all kinds. Sometimes, maybe too much on a given day. With liberty, there is also responsibility, and these things have to be put into balance. Sometimes Americans are so focused on the liberty side that they forget about the responsibility side. So, liberty without responsibility can be a train wreck and we see that unfortunately happening in many sectors.

So, Liberty, Opportunity in America has been by definition, the land of opportunity, why have so many millions and 10s of 1,000,000 voted with their feet and with their lives to come here when they could have gone to many places they didn’t come to America because it was the only place they could come to people. Generations are coming here because they sought opportunity. People from every walk of life have made good here because with liberty comes opportunity.

And hope is the third thing. My grandparents, God bless them, were refugees. From Russia and Ukraine back at the turn of the century, when there were terrible pogroms against the Jewish people and millions of Jews got on boats. This was well before the Holocaust. They came to the USA because they had hope. They were already mature people and they had perhaps lived half their lives, but they had great hope for their children and their grandchildren. What an unselfish view. Not what can I get now? But where can I go so that my descendants will have the greatest hope in life?

So, you ask me, you know how I did have so much success, as a professor, as an author, and as a table hockey champion because my grandparents had gone on a boat more than a 100 years ago and gave me the. That hope they gave us all hope by coming here, and that’s the greatest thing. When people are hopeless, they become dangerous and desperate and any political structure that makes people hopeless is going to make them dangerous and desperate too. 

So, if our leaders are wise, and if our leadership is enlightened, they will always foster this atmosphere, this ethos of liberty, opportunity, and hope will keep America great.

So, Lou, what do you think is the biggest hurdle that Americans face when it comes to living the American dream and realizing it? And how would they overcome it?

Well, if the American dream consists of somewhat, you know, financial security, owning your own home, sending your children to have a good education, and hoping they’ll do better and live longer. We’re seeing a reversal of that.

So, I mean, these are the facts. Again, I’m not a pessimist, but for many, many decades, life expectancy has been increasing in this country measurably by decades. You could see it growing and now it’s going South of there. We’ve reached, unfortunately, a turning point and that’s due to a whole constellation of factors, not just one factor. 

There are huge drug problems in the culture. Both illicit and illicit drugs are impacting people. There’s too much, way too much junk food and not enough exercise. These are habits of living. A lot of the illnesses that are shortening life expectancy in this country are actually culturally induced. And I’ve written a lot about this. They’re not biological illnesses. They’re reduced by bad lifestyles and bad choices. 

This is also driven by predator capitalism. Unfortunately, that’s driven by a lot of capitalist interests that are strictly about money, but not about any kind of social responsibility. So that’s part of the problem. OK, part of it. 

But what is really preventing people now, this moment today from the American dream is the state of the economy. Obviously, we live in a century in which energy independence is the number one criterion for the success of a nation’s energy, and water and air are clean water, clean air, and energy independence are the big drivers of success in this whole century. And we’re going exactly in the wrong direction there, so that’s going to be a problem. 

Education again is another problem. America turned this huge corner from a manufacturing economy post World War Two. The globe. You know, the Golden age of capitalism, which I was fortunate enough to grow up in, see the USA in your Chevrolet. You know, a gallon of milk was more expensive than a gallon of gas in those days. Believe it or not. And so that was an economy based on manufacturing and we did really well with that. You know, Americans are hard-working innovators. And we gave the world so much. But gradually, in the developing world, what we, we, you know what happened is that China took over as the factory of the world and India has taken over as the IT of the world and this has left a lot of Americans basically. Hanging out to dry so people need it.

So, speaking of that, like, what are your thoughts on inflation and debt you’re talking about actually, you know, the stagnant wages that have come as a result and inflation, debt that comes as a result of it. What are your thoughts and view on this?

Viewpoints on that good look, I’m not an economist, but you don’t need to. You don’t need to be a biologist to know what sex you are. And you don’t need to be an economist to know. If you’re balancing your budget every month, you know how well your neighbor is doing. How you are not doing. And basically, we have seen this since the 70s. Real wages have fallen in this country for 50 years. This is. Not new, right? We’ve had booms and busts and like it or not, Lacey, fair economics always will produce cycles there. There’s no direct route to Utopia. There never has been, and utopian political ideologies are the most dangerous because they promise everybody paradise and they end up giving them. Now they make everybody equal, but only equally poor and that’s really a problem. 

So basically, if you want to have a Lacey, fair. An economic system where people can basically take a chance, it can take risks, can invest, can be entrepreneurial, can succeed, can help others succeed. That kind of economy is going to go through cycles where certain kinds of people will boom, depending on the industry they’re in. It’s a little bit like evolution. There are these mass extinctions that take place. The pandemic accelerated a lot of what was happening anyway, driving people out of reality and into virtual spaces. We’re inhabiting right now, which was accelerated by COVID, and it’s here to stay.

So, if people want to realize the American dream, they might want to ask themselves; how can I mobilize my talents in virtual spaces? Because real spaces are more difficult. You need supply chains. You know you need it. You need physical infrastructure, you need a lot of things that aren’t necessarily working out well in the USA, whereas virtuality seems to work fine. 

So, people have to understand the times as well as what they want to do and try to make a match between their own abilities and their own dreams. And what time, what kind of a niche is it this particular time in history opening for people you know every time there’s a mass extinction in biological history, there’s a mass proliferation of new species?

So, you know, that’s what you have to see in the economic world; COVID is causing the mass extinction of small businesses. In the restaurants in New York City, all kinds of things have changed drastically in a short time, analogous to mass extinction.

So, what we need to do then, those of us who were fortunate to survive the pandemic and economically to be at least able to pay our bills every month, what we have to do is see, well, what new opportunities are in the offing, given the new technological climate that’s driving so much business in the developed world, and ask yourself, where can you find a niche in that space?

So, you wrote a book. You wrote this book called The Middle Way, can you tell us a little bit briefly about the premise of this book and what. Yes, objective to write it.

The middle way again came from me. First, six or eight years in Davos and in other forms of global leadership, learning so much from people in politics, business, religious leadership, cultural leadership, the military, and all the other stuff that I was doing for these organizations, it was a great learning experience. I kind of had my finger on the pulse of the world for a while, so I rode the middle way right in that. Period of time and I would really urge your audience to get the latest edition revised to come out in 2020. Maybe you can plug it for me, and you know when you air this.

But the premise is very simple cosmos. The premise is that. If you want a stable life for yourself, your children, and your grandchildren, then Aristotle wrote way back in his book on politics, that a strong middle class is what makes a state most pleasant and easiest to govern. 

So, if you are rich and smart, you will contribute to growing the middle class. If you’re rich and short-sighted, you’ll contribute to bankrupting it. Eventually, they’ll come for you too, because instability makes extremism powerful economic and political stability pushes the extremists where they belong; On the fringes, because what they have to offer is not positive. But if we lack leadership in business and in the political world primarily and also from the grassroots, we need people always to be speaking for the people we are the people, you know, we, we should be governed by the consent of the governed and not, you know, dictated to.

So, if you have a strong middle class. Then you have all those things in play and then people can come here with nothing, and it’s far within a generation or two to have a life more wonderful than they could have imagined for themselves, for their children and the grandchildren, and so forth. But if you bankrupt the middle class, then you’re going to end up… I don’t want to name names, but there are Lots of failed states in the world. Unfortunately, we don’t have to name names. There are failed and failing States and one of the main reasons for their failure is a political dictatorship and bankrupt economy, and if you, if you know if you, if you reverse that equation and let the middle class become strong, then you’re going to reduce poverty on the one hand, you’re going to increase opportunity, liberty, and hope. On the other hand, it’s an unfailing recipe for success.

No, I totally agree. So, Lou. We only have a few more minutes left in this thing. Where can the audience go to connect with you and like to get to know more about your work and where and if they let Say want to reach out to you? 

I have a website loumarinoff.com. And that would be a place to go. And you can see all my books there. You can see them on Amazon too. They’re all you know, they’re all up there and there are many different books, but the middle way is really focused on the dangers of extremism; Political, religious, economic, totemic, every, and every facet of extremism. Is, is, is really reframed in the context of the great virtue ethicists of antiquity, Aristotle, Buddha, and Confucius, the ABCs, as it happens, are virtue ethics, and they all taught a version of moderation and the middle way, which enables people to flourish and prosper. So that’s what that book is about. 

But people can go to my website and find all the others. Books. There’s a contact e-mail there if they want to reach out. My nonprofit is PTA.edu. We have for 20 and some years trained philosophers as practitioners to give people philosophical counseling, individuals, groups, and organizations can benefit from it, and if they go to PTA.edu they can find a list of practitioners in about 35 States and 25 foreign countries who can offer this service. They can also chat with the philosopher online fee for service. Click on that and there are philosophers around. You could talk to them.

All right. Thank you. So, we conclude our show, for now, like thank you so much for being part of this show. We want you to. Come back and definitely give more insights. This was amazing.

I’m more than grateful to you for your interest. And I hope since this is your audience, now that we can introduce new ideas to them, uh, things that will help them and to improve in whichever way they see. I would love to return another time and next time let’s talk table hockey.

So, well, well, my fellow extraordinary Americans, remember there is an extraordinary American within you. And it’s our job to unleash and empower them. Bye for now until next time.