 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. Everybody welcome. Welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Friday night, the night after Thanksgiving. I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. I hope you ate a lot. I ate a ton. God, did I eat so much. It was great. We got some friends together. We went out to a favorite restaurant that serves a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner. The food just kept on coming. And it was amazing, amazing. So I hope you guys had a good time. Had an amazing Thanksgiving day. And hopefully looking forward to a good weekend coming up starting tomorrow. All right. So today we're back to some negative topics. Yep, maybe one positive, a bunch of negative topics. So that should get people interested. So I think we'll get more people today because negativity always sells. And in the meantime, don't forget, Catherine's here, Catherine Mendez, who is in charge of kind of going through the super chat. Don't forget to use the super chat to ask questions. $20 questions get priority, priority both in speed, timing, and maybe even length of the answer. So please use the super chat question to the super chat feature to support Iran Brookshow. You can all support it, of course, on Patreon, subscribe, star, iranbrookshow.com, slash support and locals. And yeah, so feel free to use it. Our normal goal is $600 a night. We've had kind of a slow month. So I'm hoping we can beat that. I'm hoping we get the next four shows all this month just to reach my targets for the month for super chat. We need to have some good super chat fundraising shows over the next four shows. So hopefully we can do that. And with that, I'm going to leave you in Catherine's hand. She is going to encourage you and support you through the process. Remember, $20 questions are more. And of course, you can use a lot more in order to get us there faster, quicker. And maybe even go for 800 today. 800 would be good because 800 will get us a lot closer to where we need to be at the end of the month. OK, let's see. Oh, yeah. Well, let's start with the new COVID variant. We've got a new COVID variant coming out of Africa, South Africa, probably. It's they've already seen some patients seen some people who have COVID with this new variant in Belgium. I think in the UK, in Israel, they got three cases in Israel. All people who came from Africa, although the Belgium case might be somebody local, which means that it's already out of Africa and there's already community spread in Europe. Countries all over the world have put travel bans on Africa, no traveling to and from South Africa, and a wide band of countries around that. Most epidemiologists think that is nonsense. It's the virus is already out. That's just posturing. It's the same as the China ban, a travel ban, by Trump in March of 2020. It didn't do much. None of these travel bans help. We live in an interconnected world. You cannot stop these viruses. They're not going to stop because of airplanes. And this new variant is here. There's still some questions about how transmittable is it and of course, how deadly is it? How dangerous is it? How bad is it? So we will see that everybody in Israel, the three people in Israel who got it while already vaccinated. So that's not a good sign. There's also fear, real fear that this virus, the vaccines won't work on this variant. And the reason is, I mean, there's a scientific reason for this. They looked at the genome of the virus and what it looks like is that it is mutated in a lot of different, it's mutated a lot around the spike protein. And of course it is the spike protein, which the mRNA vaccines cause the human cells to actually produce and that create the immune response. But if the spike protein is not the same spike protein or the significant differences between the spike protein that the mRNA vaccines cause the body to produce and the spike protein of the actual virus, my understanding is that you don't get as good of an immune response. That is, the immune response is not to the right thing. And that's what's causing a lot of angst among scientists. They're worried that there have been so many variations here that we could see something that is immune to our vaccines, at least the vaccines we have right now. The good news on that front is, I mean, and this is not just good news, it's amazing news, is that BioNTech said that they would have, they will know exactly what the issue is within two weeks and they should have a workable vaccine to address this particular variant within six weeks and within, I think it was 90 days, they should be in full production of the vaccine that would deal with this variant if that's necessary, assuming that's necessary. And part of the issue here is that now that they have the vaccine approved, the variations for the vaccine don't have to go through the same approval process. They have to do a quick efficacy test to see if it actually works on the new variant and then they can distribute it so they don't have to get FDA approval every single time they go through these things. So I think that's fantastic news and testament to really the genius and the brilliance of these new style, new type of vaccines that they could be modified quickly, effectively go into production and within three months we have completed new vaccines to treat a particular variant of the virus, so you get a booster for the particular variant. I think it makes sense to wait now with the booster and to see maybe the best booster together would be another dose of the new vaccine when it comes out. That would be, that would be what I would, that's what I plan to do at least for now. I was not rushing to get the booster anyway, but now I'll wait and see what happens with this new variant. It's a little depressing, the whole thing I have to admit. You know, I've got a lot of travel plans. I'm scheduled to go to Europe in January. I'm traveling here in the United States. What this means is more travel bans, more restrictive entry into different countries, more variability, more uncertainty, more conflict, more difficulty. So, you know, just more challenges. This thing just needs to be over. I think the way to get this thing over is basically for the FDA to approve, to approve these new drugs that Mooc and Pfizer have. If these drugs are approved and if therefore anybody who goes to the hospital gets these drugs and recovers from them, then basically this becomes a non-event. It becomes a flu. It becomes inconvenient, but it does not become something that the world needs to be shut down for. But of course the FDA is taking its time. It's funny. I don't know if you've heard this one. So the FDA has said to Pfizer about the drug that they have. They said, we're not approving it yet, but this drug is so efficacious. It works so well that you have to stop all double-blind trials because it's immoral. It's unethical to give people a placebo because this drug works so well. But we're not approving it, so nobody gets it. I mean, that is the mentality of a bureaucrat, the mentality of an unthinker, the mentality of somebody who wants to check the boxes on his rulebook but doesn't really care about human life. If it's so efficacious that it's immoral to run trials with placebos, then it's immoral not to approve the drug for immediate use. But that's what's going on right now. We have two drugs, incredibly efficacious coming out of trials. It looks like they basically reduced death to close to zero and reduced death rates close to zero, and yet FDA is sitting on its hands with regards to both drugs. Anyway, I will have Amesh Adaljan in a few days. Hopefully, I need to coordinate with him and find out a good deal for him probably next week sometime. To talk about the new variant, hopefully we'll know more about it by then. And let's hope that it's less deadly, less contagious, and it's just an insignificant event. That would be very, very cool. Although everybody I'm reading, all the scientists I'm reading are suggesting that indeed is not the case. And those of you who approve these new variants and think this is all just, I mean, they are real scientists out there making real effort to try to understand this disease and try to save us from it and try to provide us with cures for it. And this is real. People above us or in AIDS certainly are dying from it. While I don't think this is an excuse to shut anything down, it is, you know, I think it is wrong to ignore. What if a variant actually developed that affected young people? What if a variant developed that was actually much more deadly than what we've seen so far? You've got to respect the scientists at the front line of this that are actually trying to figure this out and trying to deal with it, trying to look at every variant and see what it actually means and what it actually does. So, it's sad. All right. Liam, thank you. That's a great way to start the evening, although nobody has followed you up. Liam just gave $100, so there's Dean. Thank you, Dean. And we'll get to that. Let me see. Let me get to that question, Liam. When I get to criminal law in the courts, which is we're going to talk about written house. I don't want to talk about it now, but hopefully you're sticking around. But I will definitely get to the question. I just want to talk about it. You know, when I talk about the whole issue and not kind of completely out of context now with COVID. Let me get to the Ivermectin first. I might change the order of the stuff and do that after Ivermectin, after I deal with the various COVID things. Let's see. Oh, stuff. Okay, Ali. Okay, we're going to talk about Ivermectin now, so I'm going to save your question for a few minutes. I'm going to say what I have to say about Ivermectin, then I'll read your question and then address whatever content is there. All right, so let's talk about Ivermectin. And the reason I'm talking about this is not that I, in a first-handed way, know anything, you know, have discovered anything new or have been skeptical for a long time of Ivermectin. Primarily because I thought that a lot of very knowledgeable doctors dismissed it. But, you know, I've been open to the possibility and waiting for big trials, particularly big trials done scientifically to let us know what it appears, the efficacy of Ivermectin is. But, you know, one of my favorite substacks, as I think you guys know, is the substack of AstroCodex10. AstroCodex10, I encourage everybody to sign up for the substack. I think he's terrific. Don't always agree with him. He's definitely got certain leftist sentiments. He's definitely got what do you call it? He's an effective altruist. He's got all kinds of issues. But he's also very, very, very good, particularly when it comes to issues of statistics, particularly when it comes to analyzing in-depth particular topics. And in this case, AstroCodex10, who is Scott Alexander, and I'll just call him Scott Alexander, but the substack, if you want to subscribe and you should, is called AstroCodex10. And Scott Alexander has written a 10,000 word essay. I think it's 10,000. It's really, really long on Ivermectin, and I actually read it. And it's really well-written and it's really interesting. And I thought I would share with you kind of the highlights from this essay about Ivermectin. And because I think it's really, really, really cool. Anyway, one of the issues with Ivermectin is, I mean, you've probably heard about Brett Weinstein. You've heard about a lot of people who have become, you've heard of what's with Joe Rogan took Ivermectin and a few others who have, Tim Pool, I think, who have recently had COVID have taken Ivermectin. And there is a whole network of doctors that are prescribing this. The amount of prescribed Ivermectin from 2020 to 2019 has grown, I don't know, 10x, 20x, 30x, something like that. So a lot of doctors are prescribing Ivermectin. Ivermectin is a drug, antiparasite. So it's a drug that kills parasites, worms, different parasites you have in the gut. It's a well-studied medication. It has very, very few side effects. It does have some very, very rarely nasty side effects. We can get into those if you're really interested. They're pretty gross side effects. This is a pretty gross phenomena. But if you're interested in gross phenomena, I'm happy to tell you about it. But Ivermectin is being suspected of having certain antiviral qualities. And as a consequence of that, there were a lot of studies early on in the pandemic and have been since about the efficacy of Ivermectin. And you can go to a website. I'm not promoting this website, but it is a website, IVMmeta.com, which basically has a list of all the articles, all the studies that looked at Ivermectin. Apollo, thank you for the support. Really appreciate it. Anyway, this is what Scott Alexander did. And it turns out a number of scientists have not done this. So Scott Alexander is not the only one. There have been a number of physicians, doctors, scientists, statisticians who have done the same exercise. They've gone onto this website, and they've taken a look at the list of all the COVID-19 early treatment studies. And then, and this is what's amazing about Scott. So if you look at these studies, the overwhelming majority of these studies show a positive impact from taking Ivermectin. I think there are four that show no results or negative results. And every other study, 20-something studies that show a positive response to Ivermectin. So that's pretty impressive. And some of the results are very, as presented in the study, very, very strong. Granted, not all the results are statistically significant. But, right? But there are issues with statistical significance. So we're not going to say that something is illegitimate just because it's statistically insignificant, although I could have never published a paper in a finance journal if my results were not statistically significant. All right, now what Scott Alexander does is he takes every single study, reads it, looks at the data, we're talking about over 30 studies, and actually writes several paragraphs explaining every study and what he thinks of it. And what he does is he basically starts excluding studies that are either frauds, where it's known that it's a fraud, people have already looked at it and discovered that it's a fraud, or he can see, looking at the data, that it's nonsensical, or where they've used just lousy econometrics, lousy statistical methodologies, or where the sample size is just too tiny to be representative. So he basically puts every one of these studies, and you can read it, so if you don't believe him, you can read it, through an analysis, a scientific, God forbid, a scientific statistical analysis of every one of these studies trying to figure out which ones are legit and which ones are not. And he trims it back quite a lot, because the fact is that many of these studies are bogus, are just illegit. And illegit studies, some of them are now fraud, some of them are just bad stats, some of them do things with statistics that just don't make any sense. And he covers every one, and he explains it, and he gives graphs and charts, and he gives tables, and he does an amazing job. I mean, I read through not every single one of these, but through most of them, and it's impressive. And I've said this in the past about Scott Alexander, irrespective of the ivermectin, before this, that he knows his statistics, he knows how to evaluate statistics. So in the end, if you remove all the fraud, all the methodologically unsound studies, he puts together a table, right? And by the way, other scientists have done the same thing. Gideon Merkowitz-Katz, who is another physician. And by the way, Scott Alexander is a psychiatrist, so he's medically trained, and has taken many, many classes in statistics. So one of his every expertise is like statistical analysis of these kind of things. These other doctors have also looked at it. They've made calls on the studies. They're not always the same as what Scott Alexander's. They've accepted some disapproved others, but generally, there's kind of consensus around a certain number of studies that they think are good, that they think are good, right? So I think the final list of the studies, right, is about 11. 11 studies that they actually like, that they actually think are well done, right? They have lots of problems even there, probably, but, you know, 11 studies. They got rid of 18. So 18 were dropped because of statistical issues and because of fraud. I like this approach because it's rigorous scientific statistical based on knowledge. There are lots of bad studies. Some of them are just down-out fraud. There's a massive replicability problem in the sciences that has been documented over the last 10 years where scientists are producing studies that can be replicated. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that it's, you know, statistics is hard. Doctors might be good doctors. Scientists might be good scientists, but they don't know statistics. Or they use them inappropriately. They use them badly. A lot of the studies as well get to. Most of the studies of Ivermectin were done in the third world. And many of the scientists, you know, maybe not that good. Maybe in order to get published, need to embellish their results. But this is pretty typical if you look at any area. If you look at this is why, you know, every month you get a study. It says this diet is better. This food is better. Don't eat this. Oh, you must eat this. You know, all of these things, it's because this stuff is hard. Designing medical studies is really, really, really hard. And doing it right is really, really, really hard. And too many studies, particularly in medicine. But in the humanities, generally, are just not well done. They're not well done. None of these studies were done in Japan. What a freedom. So I don't know what you've heard about Japan, but none of these studies have been done in Japan. And I have not read anywhere that Japan is using Ivermectin. Anyway, but we will get to the possibility of why Japan is using Ivermectin. I think Adam noted this. I'll mention why if Japan is using Ivermectin, why I think it's likely they're using Ivermectin. Anyway, we've got 11 studies. 11 studies, right? By the way, two of the 19 were eliminated for fraud. One of the 19 was eliminated for severe pre-registration violations. 10 for methodological problems. And six because the other scientist was suspicious of them. So they try to take the cleanest studies. Of the 11 cleanest studies, eight show strong support for Ivermectin. Eight show strong support for Ivermectin in terms of negative outcomes like death, right? In particular, there was a study out of I think it's Bangladesh, or I think it's Bangladesh by Mahmoud, the scientist Mahmoud, which is a large study that was well done and that has statistical significance. And it's good. And these studies are showing significance. Now, a lot of these studies, other studies are small and so on, but creating a meta-study, which is what you do with you, is very difficult here. But look, the evidence, if we just stopped here, the evidence looking at all this, particularly this Mahmoud study, is that Ivermectin works. This is what Scott Alexander wrote. This is one of the toughest questions in medicine. It comes up again and again. You have some drug, you read some studies, again and again more people are surviving or avoiding complications when they get the drug. It's a pattern strong enough to common sensical notice. But there isn't an undeniable unbreachable fortress of evidence. The drug is really safe, doesn't have a lot of side effects. So do you give it to your patients? Do you take it yourself? He keeps going. This is where I think it gets interesting. This is interesting and this is a thought experiment for each one of you. Here this question is especially tough because if you say anything in favor of Ivermectin, you will be cast out of civilization and thrown into the circle of social hell, reserved for clan members and the January 6 insurrectionists. All the health officials in the world will shout, hos de worma at you and compare you to Joseph Mengele. But good doctors aren't supposed to care about such things. Your only goal is to save your patient. Nothing else matters. I'm telling you that Mahmoud et al is a good study and it got a P, P value, this is statistically significant, 0.003, very strong in favor of Ivermectin. You can take the blue pill and stay a decent respectable member of society or you can take the hos de worma pill and see where you end up. Now, this is why life's got an Xander because he lays that out. He lays it out. But then he goes on to explain why indeed you shouldn't be taking Ivermectin. Because one of the things that is unique, remember, what is Ivermectin for? Ivermectin is for parasites. Primarily, worms, all kinds of worms, threadworms, hookworms, blood flukes, liver flukes, all kinds of these disgusting things. If you look at where the studies are done, the studies are all done in countries like India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Colombia. India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Colombia, what is common to all of those countries? What is common to all of those countries is they have some of the highest rates in the world of parasites. In almost all these countries, in almost all these countries, something like anywhere between a third to a half of the population have some kind of parasite in their guts. And it's interesting that all the studies in countries where parasites are high, and by the way, this is where wonderful women, I would include Japan where they eat a lot of sushi, sushi has parasites. You don't want to look at a Microsoft before you eat that sushi where there's a high level of parasites in the food, and this is why Japan is taking ivermectin. All the studies where parasites in the gut are high are the studies that show efficacy for ivermectin. All the studies in which ivermectin only three granted does not show positive support. All studies in countries that are low in ivermectin. This is being now confirmed by a number of scientists, including a university in Minnesota, a doctor by the name of Dr. Bitterman, David Bolwar, who's also a professor of medicine. So there have been a number of now physicians that have looked at this. And this looks like there's overwhelming evidence that what is actually going on is that if you have a parasite, there are all kinds of ways in which that can inhibit your ability to cope with COVID. One of the main ways in which COVID is treated, particularly among those who get into hospital, and this is about severe outcomes, so these are people who go into hospital, is by giving people, by giving the patients, like a cortisol, a, what do you call it, a steroid, a kind of steroid. This is the most effective treatment against COVID in severe cases. And what does the steroid do to worms and parasites? It encourages their growth. So it is likely that if you give cortisol steroid to patients with parasites, the immune system will blow up. It won't do what it's supposed to do, which is suppress the immune system, because what it'll do is it causes all these worms to grow out of control. And you will actually die from this combination of worms and COVID. But if you give ivermectin, kill the worms, and then give them cortisol steroids, the cortisol steroids will work. By the way, today or yesterday, the Economist magazine published this as a main article. So this is, I can document after Scott Alexander actually wrote this, but Jonathan, thank you for the support, really appreciate it. So you can find the headline of the Economist magazine as ivermectin may help COVID-19 patients, but only those with worms. So if you have a parasite, if you have a worm in your body, then yes, absolutely take ivermectin. Then get the conventional treatment for COVID. But if you don't have worms, then it's still the case that there is no significant evidence, no statistically significant evidence. And I know a lot of people are made arguments against this argument. I've already read some of them. Scott Alexander has answered most of those. But there was no significant evidence to support the use of ivermectin. So I wouldn't take it. Now doctors are still prescribing it, and doctors have not done this analysis, and doctors have not read this article, and doctors have not looked at this stuff because this is new. I'd love to see those doctors actually read through this and then evaluate it. There are lots of doctors who give lots of things that are useless to lots of patients. I don't know that Joe Rogan has a good doctor, bad doctor, mediocre doctor, but I'm not saying Joe Rogan had worms. I'm saying Joe Rogan was treated as if he had worms. Now Scott Alexander says, look, I still think there's some probability that ivermectin does work. It's low. He thinks less than 10%. There's probably a less than 10% probability that a lot of things work. By the way, one of the things that is true, I think of Joe Rogan, is he didn't just take ivermectin. He took a whole cocktail of things, a whole assembly of things. And this is another article also by Scott Alexander that I thought was really cool. He calls this Pascalian medicine. So let's say, you know Pascal's wager? Pascal's wager is basically, Pascal said, I choose to live as a Christian because this is the deal, right? I don't know if God exists or not. But if he exists, then if I don't live as a Christian, I'm going to be in hell for an eternity. If he doesn't exist, eh, I live as a Christian, it's not that bad. So if the consequence are truly horrific, spending eternity in hell, then it's not a bad idea to take low probability events seriously. Become a Christian. The probability that there really is a God is low. But if there is one, the consequence is so horrific. So there's evidence to suggest that vitamin D might help COVID. Although, again, it's probably less than 25% probability that it does, again, according to Scott Alexander. Ivamectin, less than 10% probability. But there's also zinc. Zinc, at least Alexander thinks there's a significant higher probability that it is actually good for you. And there are a number of different things. So you could say as a doctor, you know, why not take a bunch of things that have a very low probability of being successful? Maybe one of them helps. What the hell, right? All of them are well studied. All of them have moderate side effects. All of them are not going to do anything bad to you. So what's the downside of taking them in order to prevent some really, really, really bad outcome? So you could take a bunch of these. I mean, make sure that they really are no side effects and they really are safe and you could do that. But that seems like a bizarre methodology. I mean, you could do that for everything. You could do that to prevent cancer, take 25 different supplements, 50 different supplements. Indeed, Scott talks about the fact that Ray Kurzweil, who's a futurist, he used to take 250 different supplements every day. I used to have a friend who, every meal, used to take a bunch of supplements. And this is his reasoning. He said, I don't know if they all work. My guess is a significant number of the supplements I'm taking here is shortening my life. And another significant is lengthening my life. And my hope is that more of them are lengthening my life than shortening my life. And that on net, my life is being extended. Kurzweil used to take 250 different supplements every day. Then he realized that was excessive. So he cut it down to only 100. I don't know. There was one medication that Scott Alexander, through his analysis, actually thinks shows promise in terms of COVID. And that was, let me see, yeah, one of the advantages of taking a bunch of them is one of them might actually be good. Might actually work. Let me see where's the one that he, I'm trying to look for the one that he actually thinks is better. But I mean, you can find this on his blog post. So you could take a cocktail and see, and I guess that's what Joe Rogan did. It's low risk, probably very low return, right? And probably a little silly, particularly when you consider that you can't live your life that way for every disease. There might be five things that would use the probability a little bit, but there's millions of diseases you could take of them all as a preventive. On the other hand, Pfizer and Mooc now have drugs that actually work, that I mean tested, that actually show results that we don't have to speculate about. And that science, that's what we actually want to move. It's interesting, Your Honor, is the liberty of ignoring the Israeli study done by Schwartz that showed increased virus clearing by taking ivermectin. Yes, but that was not done on patients. It was not done with a control group. It was shown theoretically that you could, that you would see i-virus clearance. And that's why I said ivermectin showed some antiviral qualities. That's why they did tests with real human beings with control studies. I've tried to look up Dr. Ellie Schwartz because I assume that he did some follow-up studies. The fact that he did not or has not published any follow-up studies because he did those studies a year ago, over a year ago, well over a year ago. The fact that he has not done any follow-up studies, that he's not done, that he's not published anything, that he's not promoted anything, suggests to me that he probably tried and didn't get the results he was anticipated. Remember that a lot of studies are not going to be published because they don't have results. That is, it's boring to publish a study that says, nah, we didn't find anything. And I think a lot of scientists give up if they see that they're not discovering anything, they give up on it. So I find it interesting that in the comments you always assume that there's some malicious or weird reason why I'm ignoring something or not doing something. I can't cover everything. And I'm trying to cover as much as I can. And believe me that I wouldn't be talking about this because I haven't talked about ivermectin much in the past. Unless I'd done some reading and looked at different places and I read all the comments criticizing Scott Alexander from doctors and from ivermectin fans and Brett Weinstein tweeted about it and so on. I'm convinced Scott Alexander's analysis is right. It is consistent with what I've seen. It was not done and it was not published as an actual study. But that's fine. I mean you guys can believe what you want. I'm not here to convince you. The main reason I did this, because I think it's cool, I think this idea of the worms is cool. I also think that this is really interesting that there are people out there who actually go systematically and look at studies and do the work. I wish journalists did this. And actually one of the things that Scott Alexander says is he was contacted by a journalist. And they talked and he told about all the stuff that he discovered and she said, yeah, we know that. And he said, why don't you publish it? He said, people don't want to read that stuff. My editor wouldn't let me publish it. But there are thoughtful people out there doing thoughtful research. There's a reason why somebody like Amish Adulja would not prescribe ivermectin. I trust Amish more than I trust many of these doctors out there who are prescribing it. And anyway, I encourage you guys to look at this, study it. There's a lot of different things that supposedly study. If you go to this website, the ivermectin website that I mentioned in the beginning, you'll find 40 different things. And the problem is that, again, unless you do the analysis and go through every one of those studies, you should be skeptical about these kind of things. And there's a reason why, quote, the so-called evil establishment of scientists, doctors, private scientists, private doctors, researchers don't go for this. It's because they actually do the work. They're not hacks. Ivermectin is not commonly used in Israel for treating COVID. And if this doctor in Israel did this research and it was so successful on thousands of people, why are other doctors in Israel not prescribing this? Why is this not common practice in Israel? Why is it not all over the place? Almost nobody in Israel gives out ivermectin. My father is a doctor in Israel, a physician in Israel. It's not used by people. Ivermectin is approved so doctors can prescribe it, but it's not a common practice in Israel in spite of the fact that Schwarz is doing this. Again, the evidence is just not there. If the evidence was there, it would be used. All right, Liam has another question. Let's see. Okay, let me see if I have any. Yes, Ali says, I think ivermectin was a way for some unpopular YouTube and scientists to gain popularity. The plan was to talk talking about it and victimize them themselves when they get banned like Brett Weinstein. It's so sad that they don't have original content. I don't know if I agree with you, Ali. I don't think that's the case. I think many of these people believe in this stuff. I think many of these people have been captured by their own passion and rhetoric. I don't think it's a ploy just to attract attention, not from somebody like Brett Weinstein who already had a lot of attention. I just don't see it. Maybe I'm just not so cynical about these people. I think, let me just say, statistics is hard. I'm reading Stephen Pinker's book called Rationality and a lot of the time he's spending on statistical fallacies and how to read statistics properly. And the statistics is hard. It's not intuitive. People use it super irresponsibly, super irresponsibly. And they manipulate it, they provoke it, they distort it. Mostly they do it out of ignorance. 90% of statistical lies are ignorant, out of ignorance. Why did Israel see another wave after all the shots? I mean, that's simple. It's not hard to figure out. It's because Israel was the first one to get the shots, the shots, the efficacy of the vaccine starts dissipating after five months. Israel hit the six months after the vaccines and they got a spike. They started giving the boosters and the spike went away. And you saw significant reduction in cases. I was there while it was happening. My parents got the booster shot while I was in Israel a few months ago. And the spike went down after that. At the same time, in spite of the fact that the vaccine's efficaciousness was reduced, deaths and emergency room hospitalizations declined significantly in spite of the increasing cases. So the vaccines are incredibly good, unbelievably good, unbelievably good at dealing with the mortality issue and dealing with the risk of going to intensive care. So you still are going to get, some people are still going to get, particularly if you had the vaccine six months or more ago. But the likelihood you're going to go to, you're going to die from it, the likelihood that you're going to go to the emergency room from it has declined significantly, even for people in their 80s. So it's not, it's not that hard, right? It's not that hard. It didn't go down in, you know, you guys are just misinformation about COVID. It's amazing to me how much misinformation there is about COVID. COVID turned out not to be as seasonal as people expected it. There was, if you remember, a big spike in COVID in the United States, in the southern states in the summer, even though it was hot, there was a big spike in Texas. I was in Texas in late August and there's a huge spike in COVID in Texas. And that was summer. So COVID doesn't behave in the seasonal manner like the flu does. I wish it did. I thought it would. But it's not misinformation for the leftist turning down debate. It's information from scientists that some of you don't want to accept and that's okay. That's your life. You can stay confused and you can stay misinformed. But if you actually read the science and you can find the science that's available out there, not on the kind of websites that you guys go to, but on some of the websites, it's great. Natural immunity is great. Natural immunity plus vaccines is off the charts great. My wife has unbelievable levels of antibodies in her blood right now because she both had COVID and she got the vaccines. And she doesn't need a booster for sure. It's amazing to me how many people who take themselves seriously think they know stuff about COVID and how much, how ill-informed they really are about it. And you can see it here and read it in our chat. Every time it comes up, it's just wrong. And as I said, I've admitted to being wrong on the lab leak hypothesis, probably wrong. We still don't have it finally. But somebody asked if Pinker's good at statistics. Yeah, Pinker's good at statistics at least. In theory, I don't think he always applies it consistently. I've caught him at a few things where he messes up a little bit. But yeah, very few people are good at statistics. We can do some stat puzzles, one of these shows. We'll take some stat puzzles from Pinker and we'll see how good you guys do. How good you guys do. All right, let's see. Let's see. Okay, let's take, yeah, let's take criminal law in the courts and then I'll answer Liam's first question and then after that I'll answer Liam's second question. I'll just mention that we're about $240 from the goal. So let's make sure that we achieve the goal this time. So we had two cases in the last couple of weeks in our criminal law court cases. This is my positive point for the day for the show. In both cases, I think the jury's came to the right conclusion. I think in both cases, the criminal law system worked and worked well. I, you know, it's hard thing to see that that works. One case that went, if you will, politically for supposedly the right, one case that went supposedly for the left. But in neither case was the issue political. In both cases, the issue was the facts and the law. Kyle, in spite of the fact that, as I said, I don't think he's a hero. I don't think he was, should have been there. I don't think he should have ever been there. I don't think his parents should have allowed him to go. He's still 17. I don't think his family members should have encouraged him to be there. I think they're incredibly irresponsible. But Kyle acted in self-defense. The guy was reaching for his gun. The jury looked at the evidence. They evaluated it. One of the guys he shot actually pointed a gun at him. There's plenty of reasons to think this is self-defense. And yeah, he got the self-defense verdict. So that's great. That is incredibly encouraging to see the legal system actually working. George Floyd did not die of drug overdose again. You guys need to stop reading the ridiculous news sources that are completely and utterly biased. So I think the George Floyd case was litigated correctly. I think the Wittenhouse case was litigated correctly. They reached the right conclusion. And I think the Amari case was... I mean these basic-e guys just lynched this kid. They stopped him for the reason out of their general suspicion. They stopped him clearly because he was black. There was no cause for what they did. And they are going to jail for the rest of their lives. And that's great. So overall, I think that we have a real win here. We have a real win here. Now the legal system is not always good. I mean the classical case is the OJ Simpson case where they completely blew it. They completely blew it. But it's hard thing to see that in spite of the politicization of the world in which we live, cases that appeal to the right or appeal to the left are generally in most cases juries do the best job that they can. In the case of Georgia, it was almost all white jury and they still convicted the white murderers. And it really is hard thing to see that. You guys don't follow, I mean somebody is accusing me of not following anything. No, the difference between you and me is I actually read multiple sources. I look at the evidence. I look at both sides, God forbid. You just look at one side. You look at the same talking heads telling you the same things over and over again. They have a political agenda. They don't care about the truth. They don't care about reality. They don't care about what actually happened. All they care about, all they care about is that he did not die of a drug overdose. That is not a fact that was not discovered in the autopsy. Again, read the autopsy. Look at the expert testimonies from both sides. Yes, there was expert testimony on behalf of the defense that said that, but there was also expert testimony that completely rejected that on the other side. But you're not going to listen to that. You're not going to read that. Pay any attention to that because it doesn't affirm your political convictions. You're not interested in the truth. You're not interested in facts. And I'm talking to a small minority of you out there. What you're interested in is supporting your beliefs and supporting the beliefs of those in the media who you happen to listen to. All right, Liam says, I think the prosecutor in the Wittenhouse case should be brought up on ethics charges. An attorney's job is to be a true seeker. This was a political prosecution by leftist DA. The judge should have dismissed this case. It should have never be brought before jury. I don't think that's right, Liam. First of all, you know, there are a lot of cases that where the prosecutor doesn't win. And where once you look at the case, you say, why was this ever brought up? Prosecutors have a particular perspective. They, you know, somebody was shot here. People were shot here. There was, I think, enough reasonable doubt about, at least about whether this was now. It could be the prosecutor was not very good. It certainly looked like that from his cross-examination. I mean, he was terrible. The questions he asked his own witnesses. I mean, he basically set this up. But we have in the United States, we do not have a system. And this is Leonard Peacock years ago said that he was against the jury system of the U.S. Because in the criminal system that we have in the U.S., it is an adversarial relationship. The role of the prosecutor is not to find the truth. And the role of the defend attorney is not to discover the truth. Each one has a role. The role one is to, is to prosecute and to spend everything in a way to make you feel look guilty. And the defense attorney's obligation is to spend everything and do anything his power to make you look innocent. The friend system, which does not have an adversarial perspective. In the friend system, the prosecutor works with the judge. And they are truth seekers. The job is not to prosecute. And the job is not to defend. The job is to discover the truth. And as, you know, again, as Dr. Peacock said, he was, he had come to the conclusion that the right, the right, that that was a better system. That our system, our adversarial system was not an ideal system for truth discovery. Who then seeks the truth of the jury? The jury's job is to determine what the truth is, factually the truth. The judge's job is to make sure that what is done is within the context of the law. So he is the expert on the law, both procedurally and in terms of what the charges are. The charges legitimate or they're not legitimate. And the judge clearly here, I mean, the judge was pretty political. I mean, he made quite a few political statements. So I think if he could have thrown it out legitimately, he would have thrown it out legitimately. I just don't think there was enough there to throw the case out. Let's see, do we have... Oh, I don't think I completed the thought on Japan. Because the Japanese eat a lot of sushi, maybe I did. They get worms and then Ivermectin kills the worms and then they're more... They respond better to the medication that treats their COVID. All right. Let's see where we are here. Oh, Troy! Thank you, Troy, for the Thanksgiving show. Thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I guess I should call the rules for life number 11. Troy just came in and got us way over the top in terms of our... Or maybe to the top because 500 Australian dollars is 300 something US. So it puts us very, very close to where we need to be in terms of the goal that we have. So thank you, Troy. Yeah, Troy likes the positive shows. Troy likes the life-affirming shows. And he always shows his support and appreciation for those shows very generously. So thank you, Troy. All right. Where were we? There was another Rittenhouse question. John says, keep up the good work. I admit I was somewhat surprised after all the press coverage to see that Rittenhouse could speak in complete sentences. This gives me hope that he might learn from his experience. Yeah, I mean, Rittenhouse has actually come out and said that he fired his original attorneys because he didn't believe in the conspiracy theory around the stolen election. It sounded like he was a supporter not of Donald Trump, but a supporter of... Oh, what's his name? We just started a third party and who was a Democrat. God, I can't remember the names. It's pretty pathetic. So it looked like Rittenhouse was a lot less flaky than I even thought he was. I still don't think he should have been there. I still don't think 17-year-olds should be patrolling in streets with AR-15s. But he definitely does not seem like the flake that I originally thought he was watching him and listening to him. I think it was more that he was just 17 rather than it was a flake. All right, let's see. Okay, Liam had another question. He says, there are a lot of high IQ, hard-working leftists in big cities. Yes, there are. But I believe this is out of duty as opposed to rational self-interest and striving for happiness. Many leftist parents are narcissistic and status-oriented materialists. Look, I think very, very few people in the world strive rationally self-interested and strive for happiness. Rationally, thoughtfully. I think it's a tiniest of minorities of the 8 billion people on planet Earth. I think the number of people who are rationally self-interested is, I don't know, 10,000, 100,000. It's not many. It's not many. I think that a lot of high IQ, hard-working leftists in big cities, because I think, and I think the leftists, you know, and I know you guys will hate me for saying this, but I think the leftists, because they think science is on their side. To a large extent, I blame Republicans who don't believe in evolution for that. They also take what they've studied seriously, because they're more intellectual, and what they've studied, what they've been taught is that altruism is the standard of morality, the standard of ethics. That we should all be altruistic, and they take that seriously. They take that seriously, at least to the extent that they want to virtue-signal their altruism, even if they don't quite understand what that would entail and what's involved and they don't really want to sacrifice themselves. But they act that way, because they think that's the right way to act. But look, there clearly is a big difference in productivity between blue states and red states. Blue states are more productive. The cities, those big cities with high IQ, hard-working leftists, they're high IQ, and they're hard-working, they're productive. And you're right, many of them are narcissistic, many of them are status-oriented. Many of them are collectivists, second-handed when it comes to their social values, when it comes to their philosophy, they might be high IQ in programming or in finance or something like that, but they're not high IQ, and this is why I don't like IQ, but they're not very intelligent when it comes to philosophy or when it comes to ethics or when it comes to morality or anything like that. But again, I don't think there are very many conservatives who are rationally self-interested. I don't think there are many, and I don't think they strive for happiness. I mean, I am debating in two weeks a conservative on conservatism versus individualism. Basically, he's acknowledging that conservatism is collectivist, and collectivism is anti-rational self-interest and anti-happiness. So it's not rational self-interest versus the world. There are all kinds of variations of what's happening in the world. The left has its irrational variations among those high IQ, hard-working people in the cities, and the right has its irrational variations. Unfortunately, they're all collectivists and they're all altruists. Even if they're not explicitly, they are implicitly, they take ideas seriously, and this is where their ideas take them. Alright, I think Katherine has raised the goal for tonight, given Troy has got you guys off the hook to $800. So we're still a little short of that. So there's about $150, $170, $160, let's say, $8, $160 left to get to the $800. That'd be great if we could get there. It'll put less pressure on the next few shows to reach our goal. But yeah, if you guys keep at the pace of super chat questions, particularly if you can make them $20 questions like Superkill just did, that would be great. The debate, by the way, two weeks is with Joam Chazzoni, who is a leader of the National Conservative Movement who ran the conference that just happened. And I'm looking forward to that debate. It should be a lot of fun. I know Joam Chazzoni, we've had coffee in the past. He's claimed to be an Iran fan, so it should be an interesting debate. Superkill says, I view Rittenhouse for what he overcame. He survived the lynch mob, was forced to shoot three people doing it, and beat a corrupt DA in an unfair trial where there was no way the jury couldn't be biased by media slander thoughts. Yeah, I mean, I really hope he learned from that and he's grown from that. It sounds like he has. He has said after trial, to all you people who think he's a hero, he said after the trial that if he had to do it again, he wouldn't have gone, which I think is the right choice. He shouldn't have gone. I think he did survive good for him. You know, I think the force to shoot three people, God, if he was older and more mature, he wouldn't have been in a position where he had to shoot three people. As I've said, he shouldn't have been there, being there, put him in a position where his immaturity got him in a position where he shot three people. It was completely unnecessary to be in that position. And I don't know. I'm not convinced that the DA is as corrupt as you guys think he is. But I think if you actually looked at many criminal cases, you would find a lot more corrupt DA's than this guy. But I don't know. I mean, Rittenhouse, yes, he overcame all this. Good for him. It sounds like he's thoughtful now. It sounds like he's thinking about his future. He wants to go to Arizona State. He's considering changing his name. While he went and got his photo taken with Trump, he clearly articulated the case against Trump, at least with regard to the election fraud and with regard to who he supported in the election. So, you know, I give the kid a lot of credit based on all of that. He's definitely impressed me more afterwards than from what I had seen before. Let's see. Do we have any other $20 questions? Dean has one. Hey, Ron, did you hear about Professor David Card getting an over-prize for his work in economics? Some of his studies found employment increasing after the minimum wage was raised. Any thoughts? It seems to contradict what I've heard you say and people like Thomas O. Yes, I mean, I didn't notice that David Card got an over-prize. It's too bad that he did. That study has been refuted over and over and over again in a sense that he didn't control for the right things. It's too small of a study, too small of an area. The rise in minimum wage was too small to really count that much. A lot of problems with that study that I'm sure were not discussed. So, you know, the overwhelming, let me be very clear, the overwhelming empirical evidence with regard to minimum wage is that when minimum wage is raised, unemployment increases or else health constant. And that is overwhelmingly true. And it's too bad that Card got an over-prize because if that's the basis on which he got it, he certainly does not deserve it, does not at all. All right, so we are now at, we've got $137 to get to $800. I'm out of $20 questions. I've got a few non-$20 questions. If you have a boney question you'd like to ask, if you'd like to put $20 on it, now's the time to do it. Let's get to the $800 bucks so we can have a little bit of a cushion going into the weekend. I'd appreciate that. So anybody who wants to do that, go for it. Let us answer these questions. Did I in the end ever speak any comments on Muhammad Ali? I don't know. I don't remember. So I don't want to say yes or no because I'm not sure. I'm not sure. If there's somebody who's more, yeah, I don't know. Ian says, thanks for the great coverage. Some of the people on the chat here make me also as sad as the new Army Kron variant does. Yeah, I know Ian. It's sometimes hard to stay positive given that these are the people who come and seek me out and listen to the show and some of this stuff is depressing. Let's see. Only got three questions to go. Come on, guys. Superkill says, how can you give that prosecutor any benefit of doubt? What they did was drone footage was absolutely deceitful and intentional. Yeah, I mean, sorry. I didn't think of that. You're absolutely right. I think there should have been some kind of professional, what do you call it, professional, I forgot about the drone coverage. There should have been some kind of professional backlash against that. I don't know what you do to prosecutors. I'm sure this, you know, you can find them, you can put them in detention, you could do stuff. Yes, that kind of deceit should have been punished and the judge should have fined them or done something to them. I don't know if he could have dismissed the trial, but he certainly should have done something to the prosecutor based on that deceit, that level of deceit. So yeah, sorry. I blanked out on that one aspect. Liam writes, Gage Gruss can pronounce the name. Put his hands up because he knew Kyle wasn't an active shooter. Once Kyle lowered the barrel of his weapon, Gage pulled out a handgun and pointed at him. He admitted it on the stand. He seemed like a sociopath. Yeah, I know. He admitted to pointing the gun. Once somebody points a gun at you, shooting them is clear self-defense. So on that one, it was an easy call on, you know, I think the more challenging one was the first one and whether that first shooting could have been and should have been avoided. Was there a way for Kyle to get out of that without having shot somebody? But given that the guy was reaching for his gun, given everything that happened, they ruled it self-defense and I think legitimately, but I think he could have got into a situation where that would have never happened. For example, one of the things you learn in the military is don't, in a situation like that, you know, stay in a group. If there's a number of people with guns, stay in a group together, less likely something like that would happen. There are lots of things that just prevent these kind of things and getting out of hand that young inexperienced people don't know. And you can't expect them to know. I don't expect Kyle to do a better job, right? I don't expect Kyle to have known what to do and that's why I said 17-year-old shouldn't be out there. I was a 17-year-old with a gun. I had more training than Kyle and I wasn't with an AR-15. I was with a one shot at a time rifle. And I had more training and I bet you I was five years more mature than Kyle was. Liam says, I just want to say thank you to your honor. I was a Bernie supporter until I discovered your show and read Iron Man. Thank you, Liam. Really appreciate that. It makes my day to know that you are. That we got you out of the Bernie camp. One less on that evil side. That's great. James asks, what are your thoughts on Colorado, Idaho and Utah? Each state has grown quickly and does not seem to be slowing down. Colorado is once right-leaning. Do you think Utah and Idaho will flip to blue? Unlikely, I think, for Utah, given how strong the Mormons are there and how Republican the Mormons tend to be for whatever reason. So I think Utah is pretty safe as a red state politically, I think primarily because of religion and because of the Mormons. I don't think the Mormons will go Democratic because the Democrats aren't even religion. I know the AR-15 is a semi-automatic. Believe me, I had massive training on the AR-15. I could dismantle the AR-15 in three minutes and put it back together in three minutes, blindfolded. I ran with an AR-15, shot with an AR-15, didn't shoot anybody with the AR-15, but jumped into a tank with an AR-15. AR-15 was attached to my thigh for nine months in my nine months in the tank corps in the Israeli army. Was basic training with the AR-15 or with the M-16? Basic training might have been M-16, and then we get the AR-15 when we got to the tanks. But when I used to go take groups out hiking in Israel when I was 16, 17, I would get a single-shot rifle with a bunch of bullets and go out with the kids with that. It's not one shot at a time. You guys don't know what a regular rifle is, where you literally load a bullet at a time. It's not a semi-automatic way. As you continue, you press one shot, you press again another shot. With a single bolt, you actually have to reload. They didn't give us a cartridge. There was no cartridge. So it was a World War II rifle they sent us out with when I would go hiking. Yeah, a bolt-action type thing, exactly. I meant a bolt-action type thing. That's what I did when I was 16, 17, when I would go hiking. We would get bolt-action rifles and semi-automatic, I know really well how a semi-automatic weapon shoots. My suspicion is that I shot more semi-automatic weapons than you guys have and in more scary circumstances than you guys have. But that's because I was in the military and you weren't, but that's most of you weren't, anyway. All right, my thoughts on Colorado. I love Colorado. Colorado is a great state. Colorado is gone democratic, but the Democrats in Colorado, oh, wow, Paul. That's fantastic. Thank you. I really appreciate that. That puts us well over our targets and helps for the month. That's great. Thank you. Oh, and we got a bunch of others. So Colorado, in spite of the Democratic, you know, like the governor of Colorado has said that he would like to abolish the income tax, the state income tax. He won't because the state legislature won't let him. But Democrats in Colorado are more friendly. They're very socially liberal on economic issues. They're less horrible, right? Colorado, if you remember, was the first state or one of the first states to legalize marijuana. So that's a good thing. That's a step in the right direction. Idaho is mixed. I mean, Idaho I think will stay red, although a lot of Californians are moving to Idaho. Idaho also has a very, very kind of spooky kind of neo-Nazi white supremacists in the back country. Large numbers. It's known as the place where that's where they go out and hang out in the mountains in Idaho. Not a place I would want to live, but beautiful country. And what's a city in Idaho? Being to the major city in Idaho, being up in the mountains as well. But I don't know the demographics in Idaho. I know a lot of Californians are moving there, but I don't know how much danger there is. And it's swinging towards Democrat, but there are a lot of, I don't know, unsavvy people in Idaho that would cause me to think twice before moving there. Okay, James, thank you. In terms of COVID, why do you think some jobs were classified as essential and other jobs not? Is it right for the federal government to dictate the type of jobs that are essential for each state? Why were states not able to decide? Well, I don't think states should be able to decide either. I don't think there is such a thing as essential job. Essential job for whom? I don't think the government has any business deciding essential job is not essential job for anybody. Not at the state level, not at the local level, not at the federal level. I don't believe in violating individual rights at any level of government. I'm not a federalist in the sense it's okay to violate rights on a state level, just not on the federal level. No, it's absolutely wrong to violate rights. Any level of government cannot, should not, anybody, nobody should violate rights. Boise is the big city in Idaho. That's where all the Californians are moving to. So it's not an issue of the size of government. It's an issue of the government should have no business making these kind of decisions. Central planning par excellence, it's there intervening in our lives in a way that is wrong, that is a way that is evil. They should have never had lockdowns. They should have never shut down businesses. They should have never told some businesses to stay open or something to close. It's none of their goddamn business. Government has no role even during a pandemic in getting into the business of business. And I was always against the lockdowns. Again, hypothetically, you can imagine, a very short-term lockdown. Terrorists, a virus killing a lot of people, hospitals completely overrun in a very short-term lockdown. But very short-term, very localized, very isolated, and over quickly. But not in this case. There was no justification for lockdown. I mean, maybe because of the competence of government, New York had a lockdown for a short period of time. But that's because government was so incompetent to begin with in dealing with this crisis. I've already talked at nausea about how pathetic, incompetent they were that caused this crisis to be much worse than it needed to be. Dave says, Iran is America's finest life coach. Thanks, Dave. I don't know any other podcast where questions could be asked on just about any topic where original and extremely helpful answers are provided so consistently. Thank you. I mean, people might not agree with everything I say. That would be bizarre if you agreed with everything I said right off the bat, right? Frank asks, are these events problematic for readers? Rourke blowing up Kotlin. Rourke's rape in quotes of Dominique. Dagny shooting the security guard. They're not a problem for me. They are a problem for readers. Readers find it difficult. But that's because we live in a weird, lame, soft, pathetic world. A, these are novels. These are not prescriptions for how you behave in real life. They are novels, stylized, stylized in particular context. Why wouldn't Dagny shoot the security guard? He's the enemy. He's part of the team holding her lover hostage. Of course, you shoot him. I mean, why is that even a question? Why would anybody question that? Either you're an egos or you're not an egos. Egos means you fight for your values. Somebody stands in the way of your values, violently stand in the way of your values. You shoot them. Rourke blowing up Kotlin. Yes, Kotlin was stolen property. Now, in real life, he'd sue and he'd go to court and it would go that way. This was supposed to dramatize. So he blows it up to dramatize the point. Stolen property. It's not yours. You can't do what you want with my stuff. And Rourke's rape of Dominique is rape, as I can remember, who said it by engraved invitation. Maybe it was, I'm not interested. It was to dramatize the sexual tension, dramatize. Not a recipe for having sex. Not a recipe for what you do in your next date. But a dramatization of masculinity, femininity, a dramatization of passion, a dramatization of the fact that Dominique is repressed, denies her values, denies her passions, denies. What she really wants. Rourke is the opposite. He knows exactly what he wants. He's completely connected with his emotions. He's completely integrated as a person. And it's dramatizing all those things. Again, not a recipe for... James, if I missed your $5 question, I apologize, but let me see if I can find it. I might not be able to find it. You might have to quickly ask it in the... You don't have to ask it in the Super Chat. You can just ask it in the regular chat and I'll answer it. So, yeah, I mean, I don't think any of those are problematic, but they are problematic because of the culture we live in. All right, guys. I hope you subscribe to Scott Alexander's Substack, Astral Codex 10. I think you'll learn a lot. I hope you learned something from the show today. Maybe not what you expect to learn. Be very wary of what you know and what you don't know. Be very wary of anybody who uses statistics. Make sure they know what they're talking about. Make sure you know what you're talking about. And don't think everything in the world is bad. Oh, I didn't talk about statues. I'll talk about statues next time. We'll skip the statues. I'll talk about that next time. You want me to talk about statues now? All right, I'll talk about statues. That'll give James an opportunity to ask his question and you guys an opportunity to add... Ooh, James D. has been saying you skipped my $5 questions over and over again. All right, he's getting there. So, statues. I mean, you all saw the horror of the statue of Jefferson being pulled down in New York. But one of the things that... This is the left out of control. This is the insanity. This is the inability of people to think. This is the inability of people to conceptualize, to understand what's important and what's unimportant. What is, you know, what is essential and what is not essential. But it was not surprising because we know this of the left. We know that the left at the end of the day hates Thomas Jefferson. But what shocked me was some of the comments to my horror at the fact that Thomas Jefferson's statue was torn down. People said, but you're on. You support the taking down of Confederate statues. What's the difference? This is people on our side, supposedly. And that just infuriates me. That people cannot tell the difference between people who are defending slavery, fighting for slavery, leading an army to defend slavery, leaving the Union for slavery, going to war for slavery, writing extensively about the virtues of slavery, advocating for expanding slavery to new cities, to new places, to new states. Those people should not be honored with statues. Those statues should be put in museums surrounded by history lessons. The idea behind the statue of General Lee is there's something noble about General Lee. No, there isn't anything noble about General Lee. Anymore that there's something noble about a general who fought for the Nazis but was a good general. I don't want to see a statue of him. He fought for the Nazis. It doesn't matter if he might have been a nice guy. Like, what's his name? Romel. Every indication is that Romel was a nice guy and ultimately towards the end of the war tried to kill Hitler. But he fought for the Nazis for years. Sorry. No statues for Romel. No statues for Lee. No statues for Confederate leaders. But Thomas Jefferson is the guy who made the Civil War an historical necessity. Thomas Jefferson who coined the idea that we're all created equal. Put it in the Declaration of Independence of this country. By doing that, set in motion, inevitably, a Civil War. A man flawed as he was. He should not have slaves. Flawed as he was. A man who intellectually, to logisthen, was responsible or contributed immensely to the creation of this country, to the building of it. With all its virtues, a man who was responsible for the Constitution or he wasn't at the convention but intellectually supported it. An important third president of the United States. And an intellectual leader of the spirit of the United States. And to reject the U.S. and everything the U.S. stood for and everything the U.S. mentioned, everything the founding documents meant because of slavery is historical ignorance, immorality, stupidity. Thomas Jefferson is a hero. Flawed as he is. He is a hero. And absolutely, there should be statues to Thomas Jefferson. James asked, my question was about the future of work. Basically, a lot of banks want workers to return and other big corporations. Do you think remote work will continue to grow and in-person shrink? I think this is really interesting because I think a lot of workers here are making a lot of errors regarding this. Yeah, I judge. Scott says, do you judge each person with a statue? Yeah, I judge. Somebody is basically somebody worthy of a statue or not? And if somebody is not worthy of a statue, put it in some garden or something, but don't put it in a public space where I have to celebrate a bad guy. So here's the thing, there's a lot of pressure right now for workers not to return to work, coming from the workers, primarily young workers. And I think this is a massive mistake. I think it's young workers who should want to go back to the office. I think it's young workers who benefit the most from going back to the office. Indeed, Jeff, thank you. Wow. That's terrific. Well, $1,000 today. Thank you, Jeff. Because young workers have the most to benefit from the mentorship of older workers, from socializing with their colleagues, from getting to know older workers who could give them recommendations, raises, promotions. Indeed, I think it's the most experienced workers that should have every incentive and should be allowed and encouraged to stay home. They don't need to come in the office. We know who they are. They know how to work. They get their job done. And if they better at home than in the office, then good for them. But I think the challenge is for young people. I think for young people, it's a mistake to stay away from the office. I think the huge benefits to the interaction that happens at work that I think a whole now group of young employees are not getting. And I think that is sad. Now, there's a lot of commuting going on, which is a waste of time. Yes, so maybe the situation is different in San Francisco and the situation is different than the situation in New York where you can walk to work. So commuting sucks, I agree with that. But again, get some experience, suck it up and commute. Get some experience and then work from home. But get a few years of experience before you start working from home is my advice. I think your work life will be a lot better. All right. Thank you guys. This has been amazing. Thanks for all the support. Thanks for the good positive interaction and some negative interaction. That's good too. And I will see you all tomorrow. We'll do a show tomorrow. We'll do a show Sunday. So we're going to have four shows in a row here. I'll try and do some more positive shows. We saw that at least Troy appreciates those. Hopefully some of you do too. If you do, then please share the shows. Those of you who were not here live and would like to support the show, you can do show by chewing, I think, in YouTube. You can also do so with a monthly contribution on your on book show dot com slash support. You can also do it on Patreon, subscribe star and locals. James, she has another question. What do you think about a state about states double taxing people because they are remote workers, especially in California, New York and Illinois? I think it's evil. It's horrific. It's ridiculous. Who knows what the consequence of that are going to ultimately be. I wonder if it's constitutional. So we'll see how this works through the court through the courts. But, you know, yeah, it's not not right. It's not right. All right. Jeff, thank you. Really appreciate that. Yes. Thank you. Question was answered. And cool. I'll see you all tomorrow. I'm not sure exactly what time tomorrow, either like three o'clock in the afternoon or eight o'clock in the evening. But I'm looking forward to seeing you.