All right, ladies and gentlemen, here we are again. Martin and I am back in the Fox hole. And today's guest is Kevin Osborne. Kevin comes to us with a degree in humanistic studies, a graduate degree in philosophy, I believe, from City University of New York. He's worked as a quality engineer in the private sector and worked for the Department of Defense. But for the last 15 years or so, he's been selfemployed as a writer and artist.
And today we're going to talk mainly about two of his most recent books, The Prometheus Connection, published in 2014, United States history in terms of famous myth, and The Prometheus Frontier, published last year, which concerns visionaries for freedom start the world over. And Kevin, how are you? I'm fine. Tickle to be here. Well, great to have you. It's great to have you. Now, I thought it was really kind of unique to unite Promethean myth with America.
How did you come about thinking about that or creating that? I wanted to write a nonfiction book as to what happened to America. I wanted to do a condensed history of America, and I struggled with it for some time. And by that I mean probably a year or two. And I needed something to make it not run on the bill, something different.
And I had the idea that knowing the Prometheus myth, I had the idea that there are parallels between us history and the metaphors that are filled with Prometheus myth. And when I made that connection, all of a sudden this book project came alive for me, and that started it. And it led to the Prometheus Connection book published back in 2014. Right now, that's strictly nonfiction, as you said, but who are some of the characters that you use in the nonfiction work?
Well, the metaphor of Zeus, the metaphor of Prometheus. There's the metaphor of Prometheus torch. There's a metaphor of chains and the metaphor of Heracles. Those five figures or objects are metaphors that have a very real part in American history. For example, Zeus is a great metaphor of authority. And in America, Zeus was reincarnated as in the form of God, especially the Christian God, and in the form of government, a repressive government.
Prometheus is a great metaphor for defiance, the great icon of defiance throughout history. And the founding fathers took on one of the greatest powers, the greatest power at that time, by far England, and defied it. Prometheus torch is a metaphor for reason and thought. And our country, being a country of the Enlightenment, was clearly a representative of clearly set on fire by Prometheus torch. You could put it that way.
The change that a figure is so big in Prometheus, the myth Prometheus being chained to a mountain when he stole a fire of the gods to give it to mankind, he was changed. And that metaphor of change, that change is a metaphor for what happened in America. We're changed by coercion and subjugation in this country today, government subjugation. And, of course, Heracles, this we all love, the figure of Heracles, who in the myth freed.
Finally, after thousands of years of being in change, Prometheus was freed by Heracles, another God. And I think Heracles was the son of Zeus. Heracles freed Prometheus from the chains. And of course, we know who the Heracles is in American history was Heracles figure. It's Ayn Rand who freed who released Reason Again on the world. So it was rich in metaphor.
Blending them in into this nonfiction book was what made it exciting for me and different from a different treatment of American history than any that I'm aware of before. So that's the story of that book. Okay. Well, I would say the fire that Prometheus stole is the quote Light of Reason. Yes, I should have made that should have made that clear.
But absolutely, yes, that you mentioned, Kevin, because we have played around to find a symbol and artwork for our show with secular foxhole with binoculars. And if it's what kind of symbol is for science and reason? Should it be light bulb? Should it be certain symbol? So that's interesting to hear you're saying that. And the first book is available in Kindle, but you have also done it for free in audio format. So I listen to it there.
And could you tell a little bit, as you mentioned, about the God position and the separation of Church and state in the introduction of a book? What's the question about the separation of Church and state and the introduction of the book Prometheus connection? I don't remember what I wrote. Refresh me. Yeah. So there you have the myths about the role of a religion and that you really separate Church and state.
You said that people are angry and maybe the gods also, and Founding Fathers didn't do enough cut, so to speak. And that's why nowadays could sneak in into the system again, that people are trying to infiltrate this wall with religious other non rational ideas. Yes, the religious right is under the guys under a term that they probably don't agree with.
But which scholars mentioned all the time, Christian nationalism is the attempt by the religious right to keep the myth alive that America was founded as a Christian nation and remains a Christian nation to this day, in essence. So the defiance of America's history was that they stood up to God and King and refused to allow them authority in the new country that was being founded.
Now the Christian right will disagree with that and argue that that separation never succeeded and never really existed because the founders were God fearing people and believing God and all that. But that whole train of thought is I address it in the Promise connection. I think it was in chapter probably chapter two. No, chapter three.
I forget that the idea that America is a Christian nation, that whole concept has been thoroughly dismissed by scholars, and I discussed that summarized the results of that conflict in The Prometheus Connection. Okay. They've gained more power under Trump, sadly. But let's jump over to the newest book, though, if you would, The Prometheus Frontier. Now you fictionalized the story, so can you give us some background on that and some of the main characters and what they're all about?
If you could? Sure. Let me give you an indication of where the milestones were in my thinking. Sure. In The Prometheus Connection, the book we were just talking about. At the final chapter, I cut the imagination loose and imagine a society in which everything is free. Coercion has been eliminated, and we now have a free society. What would that be like? It was fun writing that chapter. And after finishing the book, now I'm faced with a certain amount of depression that this project is over.
So I start to think, oh, maybe I'll do a novel and picking up where The Prometheus Connection left off. And so that started my thinking. And it started me thinking about things like, well, is it really feasible? Aren't we progressing towards that as time goes on? Or is the current state of the country irreversible? And I came to the conclusion that it's basically irreversible. We need to start over. Okay. So that was one of the first milestones in my thinking. Well, okay.
The second was that the gradual approach to a free society is still absolutely essential. We have to work towards free society bit by bit, keeps the fire alive, and it keeps people motivated. And the third realization in my thinking, the third milestone was that how inspiring vision of an actually existing new country free society would be to the world, both for those who are working for incremental change over time and for foreign countries. And it would be the Empire State Building.
And that iconic, not the Statue of Liberty, that iconic symbol that draws people from all over the world. That is the value of having a fictionalized presentation of a free society, potentially, if it's done, if it's unreasonably. Well, so that was what led me to get into a fictional presentation of a free society. And so basically the writing of the novel, to summarize real quickly, and then you could take it from there.
The main force behind it was a vast enterprise of industrial enterprise led by a man by the name of Maurek Rankel. And his enterprise within it, he made a vast fortune over time. And then within his company, he formed a foundation with the charter. Within his company, Michael Marie Enterprises, he formed a foundation to drive and manage the development of a free society.
Rankel himself had studied philosophy Besides science, and he wrote a Declaration of Freedom as his statement to the world of how a society should be formed. Okay. The next step, he acquired an island in the Caribbean which had the name Orte, which means excellence or virtue in Greek. He acquired that island. So I tell the story of how that happened. Okay. After that, they form rankle within his company.
He forms a Pain society where the members of which are Chartered to work through what it would take to take the island of an impoverished Caribbean Island and develop it into a free society, a flourishing free society like Thomas Paine. Kevin, that's it. Yeah. When we are recording this, this is around Thomas Paine birthday. Isn't that right? Yeah. Tomorrow, I believe. Great. Perfect timing. So the last bullet on this is after the paint decided it was a ten year.
That charter was to have all the difficulties worked out in the next ten years so that in ten years time, they would be the inauguration of the island of Arte as the first island nation of the Prometheus Frontier, which was the vision was that the frontier would eventually be a number of Islands in the world that form free societies. Adopt free societies. What are they represents and former an actual frontier.
So that's the milestones to the Prometheus Frontier and the story, the novel chapter, it's 21 chapters that deal with each of these parts, each of these elements. All right, well, listen, you've got some great points here, and I want to know what do you think or what do you hope that the readers will take away from the Prometheus Foundation take away from the Prometheus Frontier is. Thank you. Is the power of the importance of having a free society in the world.
At some point, if you really want to get a free society model the value to happen, you need a model for the rest of the world to see. And for that, I kind of think of, again, the Statue of Liberty, that iconic symbol of freedom that the statue represented. That would be the main takeaway from the novel is that here is a fictionalized presentation of what it could look like and what the steps were to get to it.
So to take away not only the fact that here is a picture of it, but that there's a certain feasibility to it that the book presents. There's human capital in the world, an abundance of it, looking for a free an island of freedom. There's venture capital in the world. We know that from all the wealth that is in the world being invested. And a lot of venture capitalists are Liberty minded. They don't have to be Objectivist for this, but there's a lot of Liberty minded venture capitalists.
There's real estate, there's impoverished Islands all over the world who could be lifted. And many of them are paradises, yet they're impoverished. Amazing, isn't it? But that's the case. There is the need to defend against a very hostile world to freedom. If you're going to do this, you need to have defense capability. The Prometheus Frontier gets into that and offers how that was solved by Rankle and his pain society. All right. And then above all, there is the philosophy of freedom
that we all know and love for many years, right? Yes. That now exists in the world, the philosophy of Objectivism. It is the most powerful philosophy for change, and that is what drives this whole venture in the knowledge and as it has to if such an activity is to be adopted. And I pursued. All right, Kevin, may I threw a coral ball or be like a Devil's advocate? Absolutely. I like the idea. I like what you have done, created work, and it will be like fuel for my spirit.
And I like the idea of the symbol of the Statue of Liberty because you really know about the flame and what it's representing, the freedom seeking individuals. But where you have during the years, you have had all kinds of projects, and we could name names, but we could also let it be and people could search for it. But it had been like oil platforms in the sea with special passports. It has been nation between nations, like no man's land.
And recently, some project in, like, an ocean thing that's like a floating country. And also in America, you have had, like, a state project in a certain area of America during the years, and some have been really scams. Some haven't had the real foundation. Some are developing and pivoting. So my question is, is it too late, too early or the right time? If I read your book, it depends on how you look at it. I think I struggle with this. It's such a great question.
I think there are three crucial preconditions if you want to get a free society started. First of all, you got to have a Southern Island and not a sea steady thing, not what they did over in Dubai or anything like that. So you need to have a sovereign island, and it has to be more than a small Caribbean Island. Arate in the novel is 1000 sq. Mi. It's 100 miles long, and it averages 10 miles north of south, so it's a thousand square miles. And that's a good size. You have to have one.
I believe it needs to be something on that order in size. So right away, that's a difficult challenge. Two other things. You need to have an impregnable defense. You have to be ready to defend it against the hostile world. And no one has an impregnable defense in this world. So far. I offer the possibility some ideas that solve that problem. It's a lot of science fiction.
So right now, the other thing that's essentially preconditioned is that whoever starts this such adventure, if they were going to do it, you need to have a declaration of freedom. My declaration of freedom, the one that we defined for Prometheus Frontier, is chapter nine of the book is dedicated to that. It's basically a declaration that initiated physical coercion in this society is to be banished, completely banished from all human affairs.
So it's basically a declaration of appliance for the whole world. This is what we're doing. It's completely free, and you better respect it. So you need the three things. Suburban island, the President of defense, Declaration of freedom. And your question, Martin, was how feasible is this, right? Yeah. Basically, Southern Island is hard to get a Southern Island of 500 sq. Mi to 1000 sq. Miles. They're out there, there's plenty of Islands.
But when they're under the sovereignty of another country, another sovereign country or so, many of them have a long history of oppression, a lot of baggage. How do you get around that? I got an idea. Now, I will prove that out for the universe because you have the small island or big island, and nowadays you could have every region or country or location. We have joked about that and talked about that with listeners to our show. How many did we have now?
Was it 50 or how many places in the world, Blair? Right. 50 down the world. And we joked some of we said, are they a real country or not? And some are maybe not in the list, but should be in the list, like Taiwan and so on. But there you could see what kind of location it is. So every location on map when you listen to podcast has a place. And many of these have also domains like in domain like T. O. Is tobacco, I think, for example.
So out there is probably an island that could be interested in trade, for example, with domain names and draw attraction for that. So my addition would be that you should have also a physical and a virtual town hall where you could go and talk about this, discuss things, vote and get the process there and that you can do virtually and plan ahead. Like here in America. This is what we have talked about, Blair, and I myself about the capitalist party, right? Yeah.
There you have the foundation where you have manifesto, but it's not what I know about not active. You can't vote for them. You could plan and you have a seat where you have a manifesto and people could read and understand and apply, and then you could find somewhere elsewhere. But, of course, as I said, you have to have these pillars and the foundation and that I would be very interested in continue to discuss in a civil and in a serious and in a rational way, because that has to happen.
I imagine how the founding father did that. And they have debates, they have discourse, they have discussions. They were not always agreeing with each other. Right. It was firing, firing. Later on, they United and they had the United States of America. And right now it would be very important to have that because it could inspire others. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that could be something, and we have a place for that. Blair, right? That's right. I believe we do. All right, Kevin, let me ask you I'm
going to combine a couple of questions here. Sure. And if you'll take in order that I ask you the way I ask you, that'd be good. What is the hardest thing and the most enjoyable thing that you found about writing these two books? The hardest thing was anytime I write is to actually say what I'm trying to say. I have to edit so extensively any time I write. And I find that I need to back off and usually just simply state what it is.
And that almost always involves deleting most of what I'm trying to say. I have made it too complicated. So the hardest thing is to be to make it simple and to state it simply and not get too bogged down in detail. So there's an awful lot of detail I could have added to the Prometheus frontier. And the Prometheus connection that would have to me would have destroyed the book, especially the second one, the novel. People don't want to read too much detail.
I don't think you got to get all the essentials out and keep it lively and interesting. So that was the hardest thing, the most enjoyable to take the second question, the most enjoyable part for each book was clearly being involved in a project that advances the philosophy that's so dear to all of us. Right. The philosophy of I read and also I'll add to have the ability in today's world to actually get a book published on your own.
It's wonderful that we have the technology that we have today for doing this, for self publishing. Basically, that's what both these books are self published. And I'll add one other thing to that is how important it was for me to have a dear friend, Alex Blyer, who is technologically savvy in how to do this in a way that I didn't want to get involved in, the technology of using Amazon and what it takes to get a book published.
Alex Blyer is the man who made these books possible, actually bring them into the world and get them published. And Besides which, he was also a great inspiration to me with his spirit, positive spirit for each book, he got excited about it, and that meant all the world to me. That's great. That's what was involved. Well, hat tip to Alex Tip. Hats off to Alex. You read my Acknowledgements on both books and you'll see every word I say about him is justified. All right.
This will be my final question. And then, Martin, if you have anything, you can certainly chime in. But, Kevin, your ideal island nation, areite is that correct? Arate? Yes. Obviously, the accelerated pace toward a worldwide authoritarianism. How would that nation survive in this world and that kind of world? You would think that there's no chance and it seems like we're doomed. You could take a very pessimistic view like that.
But if we look at history, the big picture throughout history, reason has been victorious. I think of some of the famous contrast in history between Egypt and Greece, between the Dark Age and the Enlightenment, between East Berlin and West Berlin, between North Korea, South Korea, all of these. You have an example of reason triumphant over a non reason. So that's the big picture to me. But as far as ourater goes now, think of this.
Think of the famous brain drains in history, modern history in particular, where you build it and they will come type of thing happens. Sure. There's a brain drain to free countries. There's a brain drain to the icons of freedom, even the Statue of Liberty and the Prometheus way.
So the greatest minds in the world, many of them would flock to a country like ariday I mean, really free country, with the Declaration of Freedom, banishing entirely, banishing initiated physical coercion or the threat thereof, there would be an absolute brain drain just from that fact alone, the fact that it exists. And here's the last thing I would offer in response to that. And that is that a country like areate, an island like areate will never want for friends in the world.
And that includes the United States of America above all. Well said. Martin. Are you all set? Yeah. And I think we could continue this conversation in cyberspace and on our digital town hall. And that will be included in the show notes because then we can have what your great work and inspiration, Kevin? So the light will keep burning, so to speak. I'd love it.
And we could invite others that have been reading your book and listen to this episode and having a conversation about that, what to do and how to apply it to life. As we said in the green room, if you fight for a second Renaissance for the future, you're living in it today, as Wren said. Yes, absolutely. And also to describe it as you did and also how you talk as an artist and creator and a writer, the process and doing it for selfish reason.
And then to see that feedback, positive feedback in the exchange and people buying your books and reading it and spreading the good word and so on. And that could inspire others to do that, writing their own book and publish their own thing. Isn't that a great thought? It's a wonderful thought. And yeah, we need vision. We need more vision and inspiration and focus on the positive and what's possible out there in the great world that we live in. That is true. That is true, Kevin.
Working people find you on the Web per Prometheusconnection.com. All right. Mutechicon.com for that story, that fable, the fablecon. But Prometheusconnection.com is a good starting place. All right. Just go ahead. And we talked about in the green room, and it slipped my mind. I'm sorry. Just give a brief outline of mutekan again, because I really like that. Mutechan is a fable.
Mutekon means invincible spirit, and the invincible spirit is the creature featured in the story, which is based on a Golden Eagle, the largest of the Eagle, I believe. And it's a short story that I illustrated. So it's a picture book, actually, I think it's not much more than 1000 words or 1500 words total illustrations of this very short story that make the whole book. And if you go to mutekycon.com, you can run the trailer of the DVD. It's published in a DVD, by the way.
It's available in a DVD. The trailer gives you a good representation of the artwork and the story. And my sound guy did just a fantastic job on that. That's a good picture of what it's all about. Also, it's a children's fable. And did you picture an age range or does it matter? Did I picture it on what an age range for children? I think it reads in the description on the website, ages seven and up or six and up. Okay. But it's for all ages above a certain age. I don't know.
That it's for really young children anyway. All right. Okay. Great. And it's good to have it in, as I said, DVD something physical. But I have an idea where also we could continue and talking in the future how you could maybe transform it in other ways and you could then distribute if you still have that possibility with the content and you could distribute it in different ways.
We could talk about how we could do that, thanks to inventors, capitalist, investors, tech entrepreneurs, you could now stream it in different ways so we can talk about that because the younger generation, they know how to consume content in different ways. My sound guy told me at one point you should really make it free on the Internet. And I went along with that.
I basically just about give away the book, the DVD, to anyone who writes, emails me and asks for and just send me the postage for that, not in advance. Afterwards, I put it in my about the author in my novel. I put it in there that if you want. Buteky Khan DVD just email me and I'll send it and it's $5, no payment required in advance. So I'm giving it away. And you could pay me $5 after the fact for postage if you want. I really don't care.
I like the idea in a way, and we could do that with the twist. So I have some marketing ideas how you can make that connection, because then somebody a young mind, but it could be somebody young in mind and heart and older person also get that fuel again for the soul.
And you have this contact that people contact you with the station so on and keep that conversation and if you could give some other alternatives, maybe they want to stream it but still give a donation or being on mailing list or whatever, then you have that great connection there. So I think that's a great idea of you and I think we could maybe adding some alternatives to that terrific word that'd be marvelous.
All right, well, today we've been talking to Kevin Osborne, author of The Prometheus Connection and The Prometheus frontier. Kevin, thanks for Manning the foxhole with us today. It was my great pleasure. Thank you, guys. Thank you. You're welcome, Kevin. Thank you, Larry Martin. Yeah. Thank you so much, Mark. Thanks. Bye.