On today's podcast episode/audio file I'm going to do something that I can't ever remember doing before. I'm going to release one of my deleted episodes. I'm going to record an introduction here and then I'm going to append to this introduction a full podcast episode which was and is one of my deleted podcast episodes.

Does it all make sense in just a moment? Frequently, very frequently I would estimate that probably I create, I record probably 20 to 40% more podcast episodes than you ever hear. I will frequently sit down, I'll record a podcast episode, I'll record something on a topic and I will much of the time get 30 or 45 minutes into it and then I'll just stop.

Frequently I'll record a whole episode and then just sit on it for a day or two thinking about it and then decide, "You know what, that's not something that I'm going to release to the show." Sometimes I'll be able to go back and I'll rework it a few times and I'll release the third or fourth version of it where I was able to communicate more clearly.

Sometimes I just simply never release an episode. I think that's normal for most artists. I've met novelists, most of whom have some story sketched outlines of books they may never write but they sketched out some basic plot ideas or they have an unfinished manuscript or artists who have ideas that they've maybe sketched out on paper but they haven't actually followed through with the full work.

I don't expect it to be anything different. I consider it a great privilege for you to be listening to me and I want to deliver my very best content. If I had to be live on the radio every single day, then I would simply go live on the radio and do the very best I can in that format.

But with a podcast, I have the opportunity for some introspection, some more careful conversations. I have the opportunity to try again if I don't quite get it right. And so I will frequently create an episode and then just simply pause or try a few times. Usually the reasons for this is that number one, I am often not as focused as I want to be.

I'm very sensitive to try to stay very focused on the topic and sometimes I go down a few too many rabbit trails, tell a few too many stories, make a few too many illusions, introduce a few too many clauses like I'm doing right now and I think, "No, I should have been more direct, clearer, more succinct with what I want to say." And so I'll go back and I'll cut out some of the filler fluff and I will then release it that way.

And I find it easier. I don't edit post-recording, but I do edit pre-recording. I try to create a clear outline of what I want to say and then simply say it. Another reason though is I'll touch on topics that are difficult, topics that are controversial, topics that are charged with emotional energy.

And sometimes when I'm talking about those topics, I'll be working my way through them and then I'll just simply get to the end of the show and I'll say, "I don't want to deal with the controversy that's going to be created by this. I don't want to deal with the feedback." And when I deal with those subjects, I try to deal with them in a fairly thorough manner, doing my best to anticipate the rebuttals or objections that I'm likely to receive because I want to answer those things up front so that my audience can understand the likely objections and rebuttals.

But sometimes I don't feel like I do a good enough job with that. And so the audio file that I deleted that I'm going to append to what you're listening to now is one of those. And it's a podcast that I created in response to a little bit of recent controversy that I unintentionally wandered into.

Specifically, I said in passing on a previous episode, I said that some people are taking a drug usually known as an anti-parasite drug called ivermectin prophylactically as a potential preventive medicine or as a treatment for symptoms related to a COVID-19 infection. That was the comment that I made in passing.

And it slipped out because it is true. It is an accurate truth. And then after the podcast went live, I started to receive feedback from people. And this is, by the way, quite the controversial subject. It's not a small unknown subject. And I didn't really intend to wander into it because I consider conversations like that to be outside of the scope of radical personal finance.

I'm trying to stay focused on finance. And the episode itself was somewhat ancillary. I'm talking about the pandemic related to the economy. I'm talking about freedom, etc. The question is, does this really relate to personal finance? And that was one where I think it relates, but I believe I owe it to my audience because this is the big thing that's affecting all of our lives.

It's affecting where I live, where you go on vacation, our money, stock market, all this stuff. It's affecting it. And so I thought, I'll go ahead and release it. And I didn't want to get mired down into a controversy on medical stuff that I'm simply not qualified to address.

I don't have the interest in talking through publicly. So after the feedback came in from audience, some of it public, I received responses on Twitter, I received responses privately, several responses. And I thought, you know what, usually my experience is when someone takes the time to sit down and comment on something, there's usually at least 10 times as many people who are thinking about it.

And I'll often address, if I get enough comments, I'll often address a controversy or correct something that I've misstated in a show, something like that. And so this was one of those. But after the fact, I just said, you know what, I don't want to get involved in this controversy and so I deleted it.

Well over the past few days, the controversy continued. People talking about it, people commenting on it, etc. And so I released this audio file in a conversation in the Radical Personal Finance Community Facebook group, which of course, if you're on Facebook, you should join. Go to Facebook.com, search Radical Personal Finance Community Facebook group and you'll find us.

Just search Radical Personal Finance and you'll find it there. And several listeners said, "Hey Joshua, this is actually really great. I really enjoyed this. This was an excellent episode and I think you should have released it." So after considering it for a couple of days, I've decided to do that.

But I want to give you this preamble and I want to comment on a couple of issues in addition to what I said in that particular podcast episode. So in essence, I am addressing the Ivermectin controversy in that I mentioned, but I'm trying to tie it in this podcast episode.

I'm trying to tie it to finance. And much of the show is talking about the nature of expertise and the nature of managing information as a non-expert. And I present to you some mental models that I use to manage information as a non-expert and how I'm trying to play both sides to acknowledge my lack of expertise, but also play both sides.

You'll hear me talk about that in the audio file to come. And I believe that this is very useful, right? Because we're living in the information age and our skills of managing that information are important, especially in a world where the information is coming faster than ever before. But I had to talk extensively about the Ivermectin controversy so you understood the backstory of that particular topic.

Why is this important to me? Why am I talking about it? Well, right now we are suffering through, or I guess I should simply say we are living through a time in which expertise is being tested. We see this all over the place. And I'm personally very sensitive to this question because of my own expertise in a very narrow field.

We could divide on this topic many people into two camps. There are those who simply have as a personal philosophy, trust the experts. Be confident in what the experts have to say, trust the experts. And if you ask them for their opinion on a subject, their opinions will largely reflect the consensus of the expert class to which they have been exposed.

On the other hand, there are those who see themselves as contrarians. There are those who see themselves as those who don't trust the experts, who believe that the experts are unreliable, untrustworthy, perhaps malintentioned, part of a greater conspiracy. And so their automatic gut reaction is to not trust the experts and rather to trust anybody who says anything against the experts.

And both sides of these, as I see it, both of these positions are very flawed because you're easily manipulated by others who wish to manipulate you. On the one hand, you're easily manipulated by somebody who comes with the veneer of expertise, somebody who puts on a white lab coat or somebody who looks intelligent or has all the right credentials.

That person can manipulate you using an appeal to authority and demonstrate by virtue of their expertise that you should believe them and then you do what they say without actually having seen the fact that that expertise is actually true. But then the other side is also quite dangerous, that you can be manipulated by those who prey upon your distrust of experts, who prey upon your distrust of the consensus opinion.

And it's quite scary to see how easily people can be manipulated when they adopt a contrarian viewpoint. And so what happens is they don't necessarily walk away from all leadership. Rather they walk away from the official leaders and they become easily swayed prey for those who designate themselves the contrarian unofficial leaders.

And both of these I see are dangerous. And I'm personally very sensitive to this because of my expertise in the financial space, but I've been on all sides of that. Let me share my story. When I was younger, I was conditioned by the mainstream information on finance. I got my start in personal finance going to Barnes and Noble and the library getting books.

And by the time somebody has gotten through the filters of a book publisher and or gotten onto the shelves of Barnes and Noble and the library, most of the time that person is an expert reflecting consensus opinion. So I got my start in mainstream finance and this awakened an interest in me in finance specifically.

But then by nature, I'm the kind of person who's often attracted to the contrarian viewpoint. And so I found the contrarians and I was really persuaded of those contrarians, the people who had that personality of it's us against the man and I've got the better solution. And I started to consume their work and this started to create in me perspectives and opinions that were by nature contrarian.

And so very quickly, my personal finance trust went very low and I distrusted the expert class in the world of personal finance. You've heard me say, I thought brokers are out to make you broker. I can do better on my own. I can invest better on my own. I'm a contrarian.

I saw myself in that light. Then through a series of circumstances, I joined the expert class. I went through the traditional model. I went through the traditional career pathway. I went through the traditional training and I learned the intelligence behind the expert class. And then when I was a part of the expert class, I kind of laughed at some of the ignorance that I would see revealed in the contrarians perspectives and the contrarians opinions.

And I thought of myself as smarter than other people because I knew something. But what I also then was exposed to is the fact that the expert class is not morally pure. A lot of times, many of the contrarians, even if they weren't exactly right in the specific thing they were putting their finger on, they were often directionally right.

But we as the expert class would lock our shields together, join ranks and create a cartel trying to shun the non-expert class while knowing that we had a little bit of rot in our midst. And I always wanted kind of a morally pure perspective. I wanted to have this sense of certainty that, "Hey, I'm on the right team and my opinions are the right ones." I've always craved that in many regards.

And so when I left the expert class and became part of the independent media space here on radical personal finance, it was a great relief. But then what was so remarkable to me was watching how it took me years to systematically identify and then undo the conditioning that I had experienced by being part of the expert class.

Still, to this day, if someone says, "I'm going to fire my..." If someone says a negative comment about financial advisors, generally, I have this thing rise up in my heart where I'm like, "Wait a second. Hold on. Hold on. I've been a financial advisor. Don't criticize us. We're not worthy of the criticism." And yet, in many cases, we are worthy of the criticism.

And so over the years as I've dealt with these things, I have noticed the parallels between my expert class and the expert classes of others, including the expert classes of people like medical professionals or other skilled industries where there is a knowledge component to the work. And I've realized that the truth is different in different contexts.

It's not necessarily in the middle. Sometimes the middle seems appealing because you're trying to balance both sides, but the middle is not in and of itself true. You got to find the truth, but it's different in different expressions and often takes time for that truth to emerge. And so what can happen is the consensus can change over time.

And in the fullness of time, I believe that we're coming more and more towards things that are true, but that in-between ground is often difficult to see and it's difficult to navigate. And so in this audio file, I was trying to articulate some of the models that I've developed to try to deal with that, especially in areas where I am not an expert, such as the medical field.

I'm an interested layman, but I'm acutely aware of the fact that I'm not competent enough to discuss these things in the way that a trained medical professional does. But I'm also acutely aware and sensitive to how the contrarian perspective has a lot of strength to it. And it annoys me when medical professionals don't do a better job listening, just like financial advisors don't do a better job listening when they should.

And so that was what I was trying to target. Now, ultimately I deleted it because I felt this is too ancillary to the topic of personal finance, but you be the judge of that. You're still listening. Obviously you're interested and you always have the right of veto by simply hitting pause or moving on with your time.

That's your right as a human being. So I'm releasing this. But I want to make one other point before I include the podcast episode. Actually two other points. On the topic of coercion, I don't think that I have been particularly radical in my opinions on the coronavirus pandemic. I was among those who were warning quite early because I have always been sensitive to the global disastrous possibilities created by a viral pandemic.

And being a long-time prepper, I have focused on this as being a major risk. And so I was more sensitive than most to the risks. And I believe that caution was warranted and is warranted along the way. It's hard for me to see how caution is not warranted when you're dealing with people's lives.

And I've had one, two, three friends personally die from COVID. And so it sobers you when you deal with that and you recognize, hey, this is an important factor. I've not been a radical kind of anti-protester, but I am finding myself increasingly radicalized over the past weeks and months.

And the reason for that has to do with coercion, which is what I was talking about in the original podcast where I mentioned passing ivermectin. I was talking about coercion. And I am very concerned any time coercion comes into play because I believe that coercing people into doing something is very rarely the right solution.

I'm not 100% opposed to coercion. I believe there is a time and a place for coercion. But it's very rarely the right solution. And even if it is the right solution, coercion is usually an indication that something else is very wrong. Something else is very much out of line.

I always think of my children because they're the ones over whom I have coercive power. When I coerce my child into doing something, let's say that I see my child out in the middle of a street and I look down the road and there's a car. I am going to coerce my child off that street.

I will run over, I will pick up my child, and I will physically force him out of the street because the consequences of my not doing so are so extreme. But that in and of itself, the fact that I have to do that is a sign of my lack of proper forethought, lack of proper planning and preparation as a parent.

The fact that I have to resort to coercion is a very large negative mark against my parenting. What I should have done is I should have known that these streets are dangerous for children. I should have in the first place been thoughtful about where my child is physically located.

I should have been thoughtful about making sure that my child is properly supervised. I should have been thoughtful and I should have worked ahead to make sure that my child is trained to look both ways before crossing the street. I should have been thoughtful and made sure that my child is trained from a very early age to stay back from the street, that he's not allowed to run after his ball in the street.

If his ball goes in the street, he must come and get me because he doesn't know the danger. I should have been thoughtful in making sure that my child, if incapable of doing this safely, was locked inside the house and that the locks were of such a type and height that my child can't manipulate.

I should have been thoughtful and made sure there was a physical barrier preventing him from going into the street. At every stage, the fact that my child is in the street is an indictment of my previous forethought and my skills as a parent. And so while coercion is necessary and proper in that circumstance, it is an indictment of my improper prior planning and preparation for that moment.

It should never have reached that point. Now obviously that's an obvious example, but there are many things in life that are not so clear. And so you say, "Is coercion warranted in other things?" And again, I'm not 100% opposed to coercion, but I take coercion as a major warning sign that I am failing somewhere.

If I have to force my child to do his or her schoolwork, if I have to force him to do something, then that's an indication that I am failing somewhere because coercion is not a reliable tool. Now that's when dealing with a child. What about with an adult? What if I'm dealing with another sentient human being, a rational, sane person, a person who is not clinically insane, and I am forcing coercion?

When should coercion be employed? The times when coercion, force, violence should be employed are very rare, and they involve the threats to life of another person, threats to health and to life, which is, I think, the best argument that people have to coerce things like vaccination. The problem is that when you look throughout history and you study the history of coercion, it is far easier to find abundant examples of when people have used coercion, believing themselves to be on, as we would say in today's world, the right side of history, and yet when history looks back and judges with an unemotional frame, you see that that coercion was either not warranted at all, led to very poor results, or created a very slippery slope that then went into something else that was far more destructive.

And so anytime coercion against another human being is used, it should be the kind of thing that sends up major red flags. The clacks and bells in your heart should be ringing, saying, "Warning, warning, something is seriously wrong here. Is this the kind of thing that I need to use this very, very, very valuable tool for because this tool is very destructive?

Is this the right time, the right place, and the right tool for this thing?" Now we can debate that, but when I see coercion massively increasing on this particular topic of forced vaccinations, then it makes me very suspicious that something is deeply wrong. And while I'm not going to be the one who wades in ignorantly and says, "Well, this is this, this," I'm going to be very, very cautious, which was why I was originally talking about it, is freedom.

And I said, "I don't think it's the end of the world. I think we're okay. I think this is going to pass through. To me, a lot of the stuff makes sense." And that was, we should be very careful of coercion. And the more I see coercion used without very strong justification, the more that I get very, very nervous because we can see historically that that is a very difficult thing.

But this relationship, right, acknowledging expertise, being thoughtful and careful, it's a big deal. We need to be very, very careful with how we utilize this. Now, the final reason why I deleted this episode is just simply that we're dealing in an area that's very serious. And I make abundantly clear in the audio file that you're about to hear that I don't know whether ivermectin or any drug or any vitamin or anything is effective and helpful.

I really think I'm pretty fair on this, that I don't know, but I give you my mental models for being aware of it. But there is genuine, and in this show, you'll hear me, I read the FDA's comments on the subject. But I balance the FDA's comments against other versions of other countries' FDA's, FSDA's, federal administrations of their drugs.

And it's not, in my opinion, quite as clear cut. And so I try to figure out how to deal with it. But please, we're dealing with quite literal life and death and sickness here in many regards. And so it's a very important topic. And I'm trying to give you some mental models that I use that I believe are useful and helpful while specifically abstaining from commenting on the medical issues.

And while I believe you are fully entitled to have an opinion on medical issues for yourself and for those that you care about, and you should have an opinion, when you go and you teach someone else, or you take it upon yourself to go and to share with someone else what they should or shouldn't do, that's a very, very heavy load.

Anyone who teaches is always held to a heavier standard, and rightly so. Because it's one thing for you to have control and autonomy over your own body and your own affairs and that of your family. It's another thing for you to influence other people. And so all who teach are held to a higher standard.

They're judged by a higher standard. So I'm trying to present these models in an appropriate way without walking, you know, without getting out of my lane, without going into places where I can't comment on. So with that preamble and with that warning, here is the now undeleted episode of the show from early last week, covering this controversy and presenting my mental models of how I deal with information that is constantly new, how I deal with information that is in controversy, and how I think about specifically the management and the actions associated with that information.

Enjoy. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua Sheets, and today I want to share with you a few mental models that I use to do my very best.

I'll seek to use humble, thoughtful language, to do my very best to be successful in the information age. You and I are living in the information age. I'm not sure what the current, the next age is going to be, but I think we're still in the information age. And what it means is that information runs the world.

Access to information is a key secret to success. Those who control information flows are very much those who are in control of what's happening in the world. And so in order for us to be successful in the information age, we need to have some models that we can use reliably again and again to help us to move closer towards our goals.

If you apply this overall lens that we're living in the information age to so many modern debates, modern arguments, modern controversies, then you will understand more and more about why the world works the way that it does today. It has not always been that way. The information age is not, has not been the same throughout every time in human history.

But at the moment, many of the debates that we are involved in relate to this transition, this fact that we are in the information age. Think about everything from censorship or fighting about who's right and who's data, you know, fake news, alternative facts, all of this arguments, all of these arguments relate to information.

And what has happened is that we find ourselves living, most of us, no, we find ourselves living, all of us, in a society that is exceedingly poorly equipped to properly assimilate information, search for information, acquire information, analyze that information, study it, and draw meaningful actions from that information. What you need to remember is that most of our fellow citizens were conditioned to function ineffectively in the industrial age.

This is the whole basis of how school was developed and why it looks the way that we, the way that it has for the last few centuries. Our fellow citizens have been conditioned from the very first few years of their life to sit quietly in a seat, to listen to what is said from the front of the classroom, to read and regurgitate verbatim the approved sources selected by the teachers and administrators under whom they studied, and to make sure that their opinions fall within an acceptable range of opinions.

Write what we tell you to write, regurgitate it back to us. That is the world, the milieu in which the majority of our fellow citizens have been raised. Well, now we don't find ourselves in an industrial age anymore, we find ourselves in the information age, and thus we are exposed on a daily basis to the perils of our population having been prepared for a world that no longer exists.

And we find ourselves in an uncomfortable transition period that's very difficult and filled with strife as our population around transitions itself to the world that does exist. Now, I believe that this will happen, but we are in that very painful in-between period in which it is very slowly happening and very painfully happening all around us.

Now, this is a lens in which I view the world, and to me it makes a lot of sense. And I see daily confirmation of the usefulness of this lens when I scroll through my Facebook feed or I read the essays or look at the controversies of the day, and you see that the majority of people are locked in a – they are living in a world in which they are unequipped to handle the massive increase in information, and it needs a significantly higher set of skills, again, to acquire the information that's needed, etc.

And so I've been working on this, I want you to be working on this, and I'm not an expert at it, but I do my very best to continue the process of growth and learning and become an expert at it. And in that process, I have developed a few mental models that I steadily rely on to try to help me process and effectively analyze information.

I have the unique benefit of being on the record with my analysis. I try to speak my thoughts to you. I try to use a flow of reasoning, a flow of argument, so that you can follow them. That way, if you like something I have to say, you know how I got there, and you can decide whether you agree with it or not.

And on the other hand, if I'm wrong about something that I have to say, then you can identify the error in my logical argument. This is one reason why I'm well-suited to the longer-form content that you find here on Radical Personal Finance. I try to tell you, this is what I think is true, and here is why I think it is true, so that you can follow me and either say, "I agree with Joshua," or "I disagree with Joshua, and here's where I think he goes wrong." And then we all win.

And doing this for yourself is something that I want you to do. And again, I want to share some mental models. Now I'm inspired to do this show as a result of a few pieces of feedback from the previous episode. And in that previous episode, I shared with you what I think is going to happen with the coronavirus pandemic.

I talked about freedom in the United States related to forced vaccination, and I wanted to share with you what I think will happen. The summary statement is that I think we are six to 18 months away from the end of the pandemic, unless a very powerful new variant of this particular disease emerges.

I think that we're very close to the end of all of this hoopla about the pandemic. I don't use that word to minimize the impact of the pandemic, just meaning that I think that we're close to the end. And I've given my arguments as to why. Put simply, they are, number one, we understand very clearly at this point in time who is most affected by this virus and how the virus is most likely to affect them.

We understand that, speaking generally, coronavirus as a serious condition affects the older and sicker people, not younger and healthier people. Those people are infected and pass the infection along, but they don't generally receive serious symptoms in the vast majority of cases. And this is quite freeing because a significant portion of the population is able to go about their daily lives without worrying about being a severe case of coronavirus.

The second argument that I made is that we have developed and are continuing to develop better and better therapeutics, better ways of treating sick people so that we can minimize the worst end case scenarios that result in somebody dying in the intensive care unit. Rather, we can treat them as outpatients and/or we can provide just simply, I forget the medical word for it, but just the basic care that they need to deal with the sickness in their home and then move on.

There does still continue to be significant numbers of concerns with so-called long COVID, but people are studying and making progress on that as well. And then the third off-ramp that I described is the development of preventative treatments and/or vaccinations. So here we understand that number one, the impact of natural immunity is very, very high.

People who have been previously infected with a natural expression of COVID retain very high levels of antibodies for a significant amount of time and thus are well protected from a second bout with the disease. And in addition, many of the vaccinations around the world are proving themselves to be quite effective, at the very least, at minimizing the most extreme medical events.

And while they may or may not be minimizing the number of people who are infected and/or the transmission of the disease, at least they are minimizing the hardest medical, the worst medical cases for those who are fully vaccinated. And in addition, that we are finding that the short-term data that we have on vaccination so far appears to be quite good in terms of the safety of those vaccines.

And so this is influencing more and more of an uptake of the vaccines on a global basis. So in addition, I think that people see this and recognize, and regardless of where the government authorities are in their codes, once people see and recognize this data, they are generally simply deciding to move on with their lives.

And this is putting tremendous political pressure on those governments that are still deciding to put significant restrictions on society. That was my argument in about three minutes that I presented in the previous episode. However, during that episode, I said a vulgar, unpermitted word. That word begins with I and ends with vermectin, ivermectin.

And I mentioned in passing when I was discussing the development of therapeutics and/or preventative treatments, I mentioned that some people are taking ivermectin as a prophylactic with an attempt to minimize the severity of a COVID infection. And one of my listeners wrote to me, well, several of my listeners wrote to me in various formats, Twitter, Facebook, email, etc.

Which by the way, the best way to do all this stuff is just with Twitter. Follow me on Twitter @JoshuaSheets. Interact with me there publicly. I only occasionally go into the DMs, but interact with me there publicly and I'll answer your stuff there as long as you're not annoying.

I block people who are obnoxious and annoying, but if you, I don't mind disagreements as long as you are respectful in your tone. So Sarah writes to me and she writes this, quote, "Whatever media rabbit hole you've gone down, please stop. Ivermectin isn't people medicine. Your research of the science is clearly flawed.

Your analysis drips of self-reinforcing politics. I listen to your podcast weekly. I've been a patron. I'm disappointed." End quote. Now I thought this was an interesting topic and while I really hate these debates on medical treatments, I hate the debates because they're so dumb. They have this level of tribal identity regarding, "Do you believe in Ivermectin?" or "Do you believe in hydroxychloroquine?" or "Do you believe in vaccines?" It's so dumb, the whole stupid tribalism that has emerged about this.

So I despise these debates, but I consider this to be a useful case study for us to talk about some of these mental models of how do we deal with information, how do we analyze it, and how do we decide our personal approach to it and what we're actually going to do.

I'm going to use briefly the backstory of Ivermectin just to inform you on it, how I understand the facts to be, and then I'm going to primarily use financial examples because I believe that if you have these mental models in your head and if you use them, you will get better financial results.

So I need a few minutes to explain my understanding of the Ivermectin debate to which Sarah is alluding here and the current status of this particular drug with regard to COVID-19 treatment. I need to begin with a disclaimer, which is not inserted for any kind of just random regard.

It's real. I do not know. I genuinely do not know if Ivermectin is useful in the treatment of a disease of specifically COVID-19. Of course, it's useful in other treatment of other diseases, but I do not know if Ivermectin is useful in the treatment of COVID-19. I will tell you why I am okay with not knowing and what I have done or what I will do or would do, even though I do not know what is actually true about that particular question.

Basically, I'm going to tell you, I don't know, but I'm going to try to share with you why I don't think it matters in this situation, whether I do or don't know. Let's begin with a little bit of backstory. When COVID-19 first came on the scene, it was shrouded in lack of information.

We understood that supposedly the virus came from a wet seafood market in China in the province of Wuhan, just a block or two away from this level four infectious disease facility, and it emerged and seemingly came from, again, one of these wet markets. And then it infected people and it spread across China.

Then of course it was perhaps spreading across the world, but the information on it was quite shrouded in mystery. We didn't know what the markers of it were. We didn't know how it worked. We didn't know anything about it. And so very quickly we started to gather information. Again, in the early days, all the information came from China, which was by definition suspect because of their long history of lying to the world on anything related to these topics or anything else.

And so we had to wait until we could get information from outside of China. And the information that was gathered was trying to figure out what is this disease, how does it work, how transmissible is it, right? So we had the fog of lack of information. We didn't know is this disease transmissible as an aerosol or is it droplets?

How is it actually being transmitted? We didn't know how infectious people were. We didn't understand the incubation period very much. We didn't know all of the symptoms and we didn't understand exactly how to treat those symptoms along the way. And so thus the whole medical establishment all around the world went to work to try to find answers to these questions and try to identify how can we treat this.

And along the way, different treatments were tried, different things were done along the way to try to figure out what treatments were effective. Now in the United States, this particular topic became very highly politicized and it became extremely tribal. I think most notably, now it was this way from the very beginning, right?

In the very beginning, it was Republicans who were saying, "Hey, we need to be careful of this." And then all of the Democrats were saying, "No, that's ridiculous. You're just fear-mongering. It's just the flu and you should go out and march in the streets of New York and you should go out and do all the stuff." And so it became super, super political from the very beginning.

Then it became racism, right? Because shutting down the borders and it's racist and you're trying to close us off to Asia and it's called the China virus and we're increasing harassment on Asians by calling it the China virus. And so that led to more of it. Then President Trump said, "We're going to develop a vaccine super fast." And all of the lefties said, "Well, I would never trust that vaccine that President Trump developed.

Who's going to actually take that?" Then President Trump talked about hydroxychloroquine, right? There were some indications that this cheap and widely available drug might have some effect on treatment of coronavirus. This became this great big debate and argument because some doctors said that, "Hey, we think that this drug is helpful." Other doctors said, "No, we don't think it is helpful." President Trump said, "I think it's really good and really helpful." But then that poisoned the well and everyone was upset about it.

Well, hydroxychloroquine faded into the background and we moved on to various more controversies and there were all the controversies about the masks, etc. So it became this massive arguments about what do we do, what do we not do all along the way. Well, perhaps a year or so ago, maybe a little less, I don't remember, we started to hear indications of a drug called ivermectin being used by people for the treatment of coronavirus.

But once again, I think perhaps even tainted by the hydroxychloroquine saga, this particular drug, especially in the United States, became quickly controversial. And what my international listeners need to understand is that the United States has this really weird, very, very restrictive system related to drugs where all kinds of, basically virtually all drugs except coffee and alcohol and some mild pain relievers have to be dispensed with a prescription.

This is very different than many other countries where even very powerful antibiotics are available without a prescription. You can just simply go and buy them. In the United States, it's not that way. And so you have to involve your doctor in purchasing these different things. And so the news started to come out that, hey, there's this drug called ivermectin that may be helpful and it's being studied.

Well, where we are today is that this has been a subject of considerable debate, lots and lots of debate. If you survey much of the news media in the West, you will see that ivermectin is called a hoax, right? The use of ivermectin is considered to be a hoax.

BBC just did an article in England. You can find dramatic articles all across the US American media of saying, hey, the use of ivermectin is a hoax. It's not the same everywhere and you have to look at those things for yourself. I think this really came to a head, what was it, a month or two ago when Joe Rogan was diagnosed with coronavirus and he came out a few days after his diagnosis and he talked about how he'd had one really rough day, but he basically beat all the rough symptoms of COVID.

And he talked about his treatment protocol, which included, among a few other treatments, included ivermectin. And man, the US American media went crazy and there were story after story saying, no exaggeration, that Joe Rogan took horse dewormer for his disease, horse dewormer. Now was that accurate? Well, of course it was not accurate.

It was stupid. It was a flat out hoax. It was a lie. It was fake news that Joe Rogan took horse dewormer. But this was alleged because ivermectin not only has been used for many years in humans, but has also been used very effectively as an anti-parasite treatment in horses and other animals.

And so it's commonly found in, it is the active substance in this horse dewormer, this horse paste that you can get to dose your horses with and many other animals as well. And so why was this the case? Well, because of the weird system in the United States of restricted access via prescription, people couldn't find ivermectin tablets on the shelf with the human variety.

And so many people found that they could quickly go and they could buy horse dewormer, so-called horse paste, of which the active ingredient is ivermectin, and they could take that and have the usefulness of this particular drug for them and their families. So that was the basic argument. So this is not that controversial of a thing, right?

So one of the things that for years, I teach preparedness, I've been involved in the preparedness movement for my entire life, and one of the things that people who are preparing for an uncertain future often want to stockpile is medical supplies. When you recognize that if you are in danger, medically speaking, you might need to have your own supply of medical supplies, you go out and you stock up on the things that you might need.

And so this may be as simple as having a first aid kit in your car. It may be as simple as putting in a deep supply of bandages or rubber gloves or face masks or hydrogen peroxide or alcohol, et cetera. Some people take it much farther, right? Some people go and buy a suturing kit.

The idea is, hey, I might not know how to sew somebody up, but if I've got some of these medical instruments, perhaps there's a friend of mine who's a nurse or a doctor who may know how to do that. And so I'll stockpile some of the equipment and the ability to keep it sanitized, sterile I mean, when I need it.

And so one of the major challenges in the United States, though, is how do I get my hands on basic antibiotics? Because there very well could come a time when perhaps supply chains are disrupted, when perhaps the medical system is overrun, and I might need some basic antibiotics, even for a relatively mundane injury.

And antibiotics could potentially save my life or a family member's life, but they're not available. I can't get my doctor on the phone. The pharmacy is sold out. The pharmacy is shut down because the city has been looted. The pharmacy isn't allowed to sell it to me without a license because blah, blah, blah, whatever reason.

So how can I stock up on antibiotics? So in this case, there are three basic pathways to be able to stock up on your own personal home supply of antibiotics. Pathway number one is ask your doctor for a prescription. And so you explain to your doctor, "Hey, I'd like to stock up on this.

Would you be willing to do it?" And some people are able to do that. Much of the time, though, that fails. Pathway number two is to either go to a country where you can get these available and just bring them in with you or go to a place where the culture is different.

So here, very commonly, for example, in Latin America, all throughout Central America, antibiotics are not a controlled substance. You can just walk into a pharmacy. The pharmacist in most of these countries is a doctor or functions like a doctor and is involved in actually helping to -- it's not just somebody who fills a prescription for you, but rather is somebody who is helping you to diagnose your needs and give you kind of frontline care.

And then you can just simply buy antibiotics. And so I've done this routinely throughout Latin America. You just go and you buy antibiotics when you need it. And then number three -- sorry, in the United States, right, you may go to the Hispanic part of town and go to the Hispanic pharmacy and you'll find that the Mexican guy -- or the local drugstore, local corner store, and you'll find that the Mexican guy there behind the counter is just happy to sell you the antibiotics and you can stock up that way.

So that's a good solution as well. The third solution that people rely upon is antibiotics created for and marketed to owners of animals. In the United States, their veterinarians and veterinary supply houses are able to create the antibiotics for the treatment of animals. And especially in the area of fish antibiotics and bird antibiotics, you have good formulations of the antibiotics in their pure form that people can buy.

And you can buy them without a prescription. And so this is the best way for you to purchase basic antibiotics for yourself to stock up on. So you need to buy them and then you need to make sure that you have information and literature on appropriate dosing so that you can figure out how to convert your bottle of fish antibiotics into human -- proper human doses based upon whatever it is that you're trying to treat.

Now I don't -- I personally don't like antibiotics. I don't want to take them. I take them -- I think that what seems to be obvious is that there are many parts and many times in the U.S. population that we have consumed too many antibiotics. We have killed our gut bacteria unnecessarily and this has led to poorer health.

And that many times these antibiotics have been abused and thus even many diseases themselves are becoming stronger and more able to resist antibiotics. I don't think that's particularly controversial. That's my opinion. And so I don't like antibiotics. And if I'm prescribed them, I ask questions and then if the doctor convinces me, "No, you really need this," then I'm going to take it.

And of course you should always do the full course of antibiotics, take it properly as it's prescribed and do the whole thing. But the point is I don't like to take pills. I don't like to take any medicine. I don't like to take any pills. I don't like antibiotics.

But for years I have stocked up on antibiotics. And the reason why is very simple. There could be a situation in which I might need some antibiotics to save my life or someone else's life and I might not be able to get them at that time. And so I would rather put in place the insurance policy of having some very basic antibiotics in my home stored medical supplies so that if my child had an infected wound or something like that, I would have something to treat it with if I can't get to the hospital and actually get a proper treatment.

So to me it makes all the sense in the world to use antibiotics as they are intended in that kind of scenario and to be prepared for it because that might happen. So this is the same basic principle that people have applied to horse paste. They found out, "Hey, ivermectin could potentially be a useful drug for me and horse paste has it, so let me go and get some in case I can't get it because I know that the horse paste is available.

I may or may not be able to get a prescription for ivermectin. I may or may not be able to get my hands on ivermectin, but I know that the horse paste is there, so let me go and get it." So this became quite the controversy in the United States.

Joe Rogan was accused many times of having taken horse dewormer and you can see here in Sarah's argument to me here that when she says this statement, again let me reread you what she said, "Joshua, whatever media rabbit hole you've gone down, please stop. Ivermectin isn't people medicine." Again I repeat, ivermectin isn't people medicine.

Now is that true? Is it true that ivermectin isn't people medicine? As far as I'm concerned, it's obviously entirely false. It's an ignorant statement. It's my understanding that ivermectin has been at least, the number I heard was 3.7 billion doses of ivermectin prescribed and taken around the world throughout its history.

It's my understanding that the guy who invented it received a major prize for having invented it and that it's considered to be a miracle drug. And so that in and of itself is a completely flawed thing. You cannot say ivermectin isn't people medicine. It's an FDA approved drug for its particular application.

The makers of the drug both originally claimed, well they've changed recently, originally claimed that it had very, very few side effects, it was very, very safe, etc. until it started being used for COVID-19 and then they came out and said, "Well we're not so sure." But what is remarkable about this drug is that this drug is off patent.

So thus it is very cheap and it is widely available around the world, which is why people were buying horse paste as a way of getting their hands upon it. Now what does all this matter? This is just backstory. And what I've thus far done is I believe I've made factual statements.

I don't think that there's anything that I have said in the last 20 minutes or so talking about this that is not a simple matter of factual record. So here is the next question. Is ivermectin an effective treatment of COVID-19? Or is ivermectin something that people should take as a prophylactic against COVID-19?

And here is where we move away from fact into speculation. But we need to do a good job of absorbing information related to this particular topic. Now I'll briefly discuss what I understand the information to be. First of all, in the United States, the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, warns against taking ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19.

They specifically say, "You should not take it, and we do not think that it is effective." I will read you from the FDA fact sheet at FDA.gov, quoting, "Here's what you need to know about ivermectin. 1. The FDA has not authorized or approved ivermectin for use in preventing or treating COVID-19 in humans or animals.

Ivermectin is approved for human use to treat infections caused by some parasitic worms and head lice and skin conditions like rosacea. 2. The currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19. Clinical trials assessing ivermectin tablets for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in people are ongoing.

3. Taking large doses of ivermectin is dangerous. 4. If your healthcare provider writes you an ivermectin prescription, fill it through a legitimate source such as a pharmacy and take it exactly as prescribed. 5. Never use medications intended for animals on yourself or other people. Animal ivermectin products are very different from those approved for humans.

Use of animal ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in humans is dangerous." And you can go on and understand more of what they have said. So the question is, has the FDA here said that ivermectin is not an effective treatment of COVID-19? Answer is no. The FDA has said we have not authorized or approved ivermectin for this use and currently available data do not show that ivermectin is effective against COVID-19.

Clinical trials assessing ivermectin tablets for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 are ongoing. And so we move out of a realm of facts and we move into speculation. Now we could contrast the FDA results. Probably the best story to contrast it would be what happened in India. India, if you'll remember, some months ago had a massive surge of COVID-19.

And in a nation with a billion people, that massive surge was indeed massive. We saw news article after news article and video of just heartbreaking scenes from across the Indian subcontinent with hospitals full and people dying outside on the streets waiting to get in and complete lack of oxygen, etc.

But then the Indian rates, the rates of infection with COVID-19 had a massive decline, an absolute massive decline. And the emergency went from acute crisis to just the kind of the normal ongoing of some people infected, some people dying, some people treated. And this just massive decline in the rate of infection.

And so you ask, oh, wait a second, what happened? What happened? Was it vaccination? Well, although vaccination rates increased in India, it didn't seem to be vaccination because the vaccination rates didn't increase as quickly as some other options. Was it some other factor, right? Was it seasonal? There are many factors that could have it, right?

Maybe there were more people infected than you knew. And so people were reaching natural immunity. All of these are good hypotheses. And I'm sure dozens more that should be tested properly with good data analysis. But many people noticed that India had started to send out what they called home medical kits.

And these home medical kits had a number of different things. First, they had fairly normal things like face masks, hand sanitizer, alcohol wipes and gloves. That's not particularly controversial. They also include some tools for self-medical monitoring, such as a pulse oximeter and a thermometer so that people could figure out how much oxygen was in their blood and measure their own personal temperature.

But what else did they include? Well, they included vitamin C tablets, vitamin D tablets, multivitamin tablets with zinc, ivermectin, doxycycline, and paracetamol. And they gave instructions for people for this use. And then they followed up with a regimen of reporting of people calling in and basically physicians and government workers from afar monitoring their temperature.

So they would be active in monitoring their temperature, monitoring their oxygen levels, et cetera. But they also gave these drugs and these vitamins. So the question here is what happened, right? There is no proof at the moment that specifically ivermectin caused this massive decrease in sickness. That's unproven. It's not known.

But what is interesting is that all of these substances, this was what the Indian government chose to send in a home medical kit. And there has been compelling evidence for these things improving results throughout the pandemic. The vitamin D, the consumption of vitamin D has been since the very early days.

I've been taking supplementary vitamin D and doing my best to get extra sunshine since I don't know how long, but in excess of a year. And then making sure that my family take excess vitamin D. Now, will that make sure that I don't get COVID? I don't know of anyone that would say it, but there has seemed to be a good correlation between people with proper vitamin D levels and better, easier cases of COVID.

And similar things with vitamin C, et cetera. And ivermectin is one of those things that might fall into that space. And so you have a war of data, right? Who is to say, right? The FDA says this certain thing, but here we have this other thing from the Indian government.

Now there's more controversy around the world. These are not the only two governments that are involved in this, but you see other governments following suit. There are a number of Latin American countries that are following suit, sending out these home kits and encouraging people to take these drugs and these vitamins to potentially treat their symptoms.

But then you have other governments saying, no, you shouldn't do this. And so that's where we are. We don't know is the point. What do we have? Well, we have a lot of anecdotal information, anecdotes that show that, hey, you know what? This might be the case. Now, is ivermectin dangerous?

And if you're wondering when I'm going to get to the money, I promise you in just a moment, but this is important because I'm using this non-financial thing and then I'm going to take it to financial topics. Is ivermectin dangerous? The FDA says without question that ivermectin can be dangerous if taking in large doses, right?

So they say here, taking large doses of ivermectin is dangerous. Now as I've followed this particular argument, I've come across a number of people who talk about it. And so let me read you an interesting Twitter thread. This particular Twitter thread comes from Mark Urema, who according to his unverified Twitter profile with 1,220 followers, is the medical director of AHS Poison and Drug Information Services from Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

He's the section chief of clinical pharmacology and toxicology. So Mark says this. He's talking about the calls that they are receiving to their poison hotline on ivermectin. I will read you verbatim, quoting from his tweet thread from 10 days ago, October 5. He says a thread on some ivermectin poison center calls.

One, took ivermectin horse paste, not vaccinated. Patient is sure they have COVID, but not tested. Feels weird in head, tightness in ears. Two, went to use hand sanitizer, but instead used ivermectin lotion in an alcohol base. Three, children received COVID, parent giving ivermectin afterwards to "prevent negative reaction to the vaccine." Four, friend overdosed on ivermectin, now has blurred vision.

Five, patient taking ivermectin prophylaxis, now has nausea and vomiting. Wife is COVID positive. Six, patient with COVID pneumonia, O2 sats dropping, has been taking ivermectin for the past two days, 17,000 UGKG total dose. Seven, took ivermectin as COVID prophylaxis, unknown amount ivermectin ingested. Currently has GI, upset, vomiting, also drowsy.

Eight, family member told patient to take horse ivermectin over a few days for COVID prophylaxis, took all at once in error. Has nausea, dizzy, floaters in eyes. Nine, patient COVID positive, family doc prescribed ivermectin, now low blood pressure and saturations, dehydrated, DX equals COVID, pneumonia. The bottom line from the available, reliable, well-done scientific data is that ivermectin does not work for COVID-19.

Reputable scientific groups from around the world have concluded this. End of tweet thread. So here are nine responses. Now here's my question for you, think carefully. What do these nine stories tell you about the safety and efficacy of ivermectin? The answer is exactly nothing. Exactly nothing. Why? Well, these are anecdotal reports of calls from a poison center and we don't know anything about any other ongoing factors.

For example, when I drink too much coffee, I get dizzy and feel weird. So it could be that taking ivermectin horse paste causes someone to feel weird in the head and have tightness in the ears. It could also be that someone took ivermectin horse paste and a lot of coffee like I have done, not meaning not the coffee, not the horse paste.

And so you look at it and you say, okay, well, what do I do? The answer is it doesn't tell you anything. Now contrast that with another anecdote. This is from a personal friend of mine. I will read you this anecdote the way that this particular guy wrote it because I think it is interesting.

So this guy was, he and his wife both had COVID. His wife was in an extremely serious case of COVID, was in the hospital for weeks and was at death's door. And somebody asked him, what made the answer? What saved your wife's life? Now from this guy's answer, I'll just read it to you.

He says, the answer, a host of anti-inflammatory supplements, the three amino acids which prompt intracellular growth of glutathione, which COVID strips from your cells, hyperbaric chamber, quercetin, NAC, and ivermectin, all of which have a high degree of healing at very low cost and if recognized by the CDC and the FDA would then gut the legal foundation for the EUA that allows these vaccines, blah, blah, blah.

Last October, my wife was in a full-blown cytokine storm. Our doctor later told us that every one of his patients that went into such a storm died, except for my wife. The difference, humanly speaking, our son-in-law had put together a regimen of anti-inflammatory supplements that were smuggled into the hospital and topically applied to her by our daughters.

I was on another floor of the hospital with COVID myself. I continued these applications after I recovered. One side effect of these supplements for my wife, after losing most of her hair due to COVID, it has grown back fuller than before and with a natural curl that her mother hasn't seen since she was two years old.

A friend recently complimented her on her beautiful perm and was stunned to learn it wasn't. We are taking many of these supplements prophylactically now. And he continues. He says, "I lost my father-in-law and nearly lost my wife due to COVID. What enrages me is that when our doctor prescribed NAC and healed a woman from COVID-19 and she was discharged from the hospital two days later, the medical corporation fired him.

Worse, no one prescribed ivermectin to my father-in-law nor my wife. There are far more effective and low-cost therapies that have very high efficacy rates that the medical system and the government are refusing to acknowledge nor promote." Now what should you take from that? This is an absolute anecdote. It's an anecdote.

Now here's my question. Are anecdotes wrong? Well, if we assume the truthfulness of the anecdote, an anecdote is not wrong. An anecdote can be very, very useful. And in your life, you have made many, many decisions based upon anecdotes. You've had a friend of yours who was successful and said to you, "You should go to college." So you went to college.

Or you had someone that said, "You would like this country," and you went to the country. I mean, I don't want to give... The examples are so mundane. And you've had lots of anecdotes and you've taken action off of those anecdotes and have benefited from them. But those anecdotes are not proof.

Those anecdotes are potentially evidence, but they need to be carefully understood. And you need to analyze and say, "What's actually happening here?" But you will deal with those anecdotes differently at different times of your life. Now again, I do not know whether or not ivermectin is a useful treatment for COVID.

I don't know. I have read some of the analyses. I have read many of the articles. And it is my current opinion that there seems like there could be compelling evidence for its use in some way, possibly prophylactically, possibly later after the fact. There's some people studying, is ivermectin useful in treating some of the effects of long COVID, for those who've had bad results with coronavirus and significant ongoing thing, is there some way?

And I've read some of the analysis as to why it might work. But what I have learned from the financial industry is to be very thoughtful about how I approach this information. So I do not know whether or not ivermectin works. But I will tell you this, I have access to ivermectin.

And if I am diagnosed with COVID, I will immediately deeply research and think again about the data to try to figure out whether or not I should use it. And I am inclined to say that I probably would. Why? Well here's my first mental model, and this is the meat of what I want to talk to you about, the first mental model.

My first mental model for virtually all decisions is play both sides if possible. Don't commit until necessary, play both sides until possible. So when I come up to a piece of data, an argument, a set of facts, a scenario, I always ask myself, not do I think this is true or not, but I ask myself first, what would I do if this were true?

What would I do if this were true? And I think about what I would do if this were true. Then I ask myself, what would I do if this were not true? What would I do if this were not true? And like those lists. Then I consider the costs of both of those and ask myself if I can just simply act as if it were true and act as if it were not true and put the relevant things in place.

So for example, you can go today to an online pharmacy, there are many of these available such as alldaychemist.com, and you can purchase for yourself 12 milligram tablets of Ivermectin for a current cost of, for 30 tablets is $57.50, right, they're $1.67 per tablet. You can also look and find out that the Indian government sent for their home kits, that they sent out a package, again, the actual numbers, they sent out paracetamol tablets, vitamin C tablets, multivitamin tablets with zinc, vitamin D tablets, and they sent out 12 milligram tablets of Ivermectin for a total of 10 tablets and they gave the appropriate use protocol.

And so you could purchase 10 milligram tablets, sorry, 10, 12 milligram tablets of Ivermectin and you could put those in a box and you could create for yourself your own kit with regards to like the Indian government in one of the states sent out to about 200 million people living in that state that seemed to possibly have had a good timing result with the decline of the case.

And you could buy those and you could put them in your cabinet in case somebody was associated with, in case somebody was diagnosed with coronavirus. Now does that mean that those things are effective or not effective? The answer is you don't need to know. And so what I look at as I say, is Ivermectin effective?

I say, what would I do if it were true? The answer is I would buy some and I would have some and I would put together my own kit if it were true. And I asked myself, what's the cost of doing that? $50. What would I do if this were not true?

Well, what I would do if this were not true is I would not take this drug that's a parasite, an anti-parasite drug. I would not take it for an unapproved use of the FDA and I would put it aside. What would I do if it were true? I would take the drug.

What would I do if it were not true? I would not take the drug. And then you can go down and you can say, well, what are the side effects? Are there side effects of taking the 12 milligram tablets of Ivermectin? You should research that. And there's good data to understand about that.

So what I would first do is I would say, I'm going to play both sides. I'm going to accumulate the things that I would need because after all, if this is true, this drug might go into shortfall, et cetera. And you can do this systematically with all of the things that you hear about.

For example, you might hear anecdotally that, hey, so-and-so prescribed NAC. And all of a sudden people are buying NAC and then magically NAC is banned from Amazon. Huh. That's strange. And you might decide that people are completely wrong and completely crazy. But what will happen is that you will be completely out of luck if it turns out that those people are right.

And so if you play both sides of the argument and you prepare yourself and you buy something and you have something, you have the ability to benefit. Now let's go to financial world. Ask you a question. Is Bitcoin a good investment? Think about that. Is Bitcoin a good investment?

Answer should be, I'm not so sure. Right. I'm not so sure. But there is absolutely nothing that has outperformed Bitcoin in the last decade. And while I don't know what the long-term future holds, I don't know what will be the verdict of history, it's pretty remarkable these anecdotal results that we've received of Bitcoin and how it's growing and growing and how there's lots of smart, intelligent, good business people that are changing their tune and getting into it.

And so how could you have played Bitcoin from the very beginning? Well you could have said, I'm going to wait for the data to be in, all of the data to be in. You could have said, like I did for many years, yeah, you know what, a lot of questions with it, it would harm my self-image if I were associated with that because I'm a financial advisor and after all financial advisors, you know, we don't want to get involved with those speculative things and after all I can't make any money selling Bitcoin so why would I spend any time reading about it?

You might warn people against it and you might turn around and recognize later, you know what, it would have been easier if I just bought a Bitcoin. There is not a single one of us who, if we had just gone and dumped a little bit of money into Bitcoin when we first heard about it, would not be very, very wealthy today and thankfully many of my listeners did that and are.

Now meanwhile the entire financial industry, sorry, I almost said medical industry, the entire financial industry has ignored it and has dismissed it. The US Federal Trade Commission, who is that, Consumer Protection Agency, the CPB, right, the Consumer Protection Board hasn't come out and said, yes, you definitely should protect yourself against Bitcoin.

You had to be an early adopter to go out and get it. So what would have been the risk of playing Bitcoin? How could you have played both sides? Well you could have said, what would I do if this is true? What's the cost of doing that? So if you thought fundamentally that Bitcoin or whatever the next thing is, gold coins or whatever, you could have said, what's the cost of doing that and what would I do if this were not true?

What's the cost of not doing it? And I think if you do that, you realize that you can do things for low costs and the potential impact of those things, the loss of those things is not that big of a deal as long as you're thoughtful about doing it.

So by definition, I think it's crazy not to have at this point in time, given the anecdotal evidence that is being studied in a more rigorous way, I think it's crazy not to spend 50 bucks on a drug that might do something and then not have it available and then you make your decision when you need to.

That's going to be the next thing, right? So you play both sides in your game and you say, what would I do if this were true? What would I do if this were not true? And if the price of actually acting as if it were true is relatively low, then just simply do it, right?

Do it. Go out and try it. If you can handle the downside of the price, go and do it. I can spend 50 bucks on an unproven drug and at least I would know that I've got 12 milligram tablets rather than horse paste. I can easily spend 50 bucks and never notice it and you can too.

And then if a couple months from now it turns out that it's true, then hey, at least I've got my own supply of this stuff. If it turns out in a couple of months from now that it's not true and the data indicates that it's not true, oh, no big deal.

I wasted 50 bucks. I'll put it aside and maybe at some point my dog will get worms and I'll ask my veterinarian if I can just give him my human pills instead of whatever paste, you know, I'll give it someone with a horse and say, stick this in your horse's gullet and then make use of the drug.

It's not that big of a deal is the point. And so what happens is people get so emotionally invested into issues and like, I've got to prove myself to be right and I'm telling you, this is simply pride and there's no need for it. This is what I did with Bitcoin and I talked about in that episode where I'd explained, right?

I was so proud about being right that I didn't simply take simple action that would have resulted in my being rich. And at the end of the day, you come back and you say, well, would I rather have been right or rich? And then what happens is you go on again and again down this path and you're like, I'm going to be right.

I'm going to prove them all right. I'm convinced that hydroxychloroquine is the answer to all of our ills or I'm convinced that hydroxychloroquine is a scam. And in the end, it doesn't matter. If I had gotten COVID back then and I was dying, I would be happy for them to try all kinds of experimental drugs.

I'm fine, right? It's like if you're given a, if I'm given a diagnosis and the doctor says it's terminal, then I'm going to go and I'm going to collect every possible option that I can. I'm going to think about whether or not I should do the proposed treatment. I'm going to think about every alternative treatment.

I'm probably going to do all of the above. And who knows what works, but all I care about is the results. But you spend so much time trying to be right, trying to say, I got this figured out. And the only people that need to worry about it are the actual researchers.

Let the researchers do their job. Let those people work their way through it. Letting you focus on just simply doing what's useful. Don't worry about being right. Worry about being rich. Don't worry about being right about ivermectin. Worry about beating COVID and have a closet full of all the stuff.

And that's where, like when the COVID treatments, is there any downside to doing vitamin, to taking excess vitamin D? As long as you're following a reasonable suggestion, the answer is no. It's my understanding that many people are highly deficient in vitamin D and that could potentially be a problem in many cases.

So going to Costco and grabbing a bottle of vitamin D and popping a couple of capsules in your mouth is just cheap insurance with virtually no downside. Most vitamins, there's just no downside, even to megadoses. Not medical advice, check with your doctor. Some people have differentiating equations. But there's just no, right, taking some extra vitamin C and vitamin D, et cetera, and going outside and getting sunshine and running and all that stuff.

There's no downside. And yet that has a big potential upside. So the mental model is play both sides when possible. And you can do this on the small level and you can do this on the macro level. One example I use a lot of times is with a question of global warming.

Sorry, human-caused climate change. And I always ask people the question, are you absolutely sure that your opinion on global warming is absolutely correct? I cannot understand how anybody would answer that question in an absolute yes. When you understand the variables and the underlying data, when you understand all of the underlying arguments and you understand how new these models are and all of the garbage that could potentially be going in, that could potentially be creating garbage out, it's so difficult for me to believe that anybody could be with absolute certainty on the question on either side of it.

My answer is simpler. I look at it and I say, what would I do if I were absolutely convinced that the earth was rising at potentially a catastrophic rate? What would I do? Then I ask myself, what would I do if I weren't convinced of it? And I make a list of those things.

And then all the things that I can do that I think would protect me in that scenario, I do. All the things that I don't do, that I'm not willing to do, too high of a price, I put it aside and I come back to it later when the evidence is clearer.

So you know, give me an example, just a practical example. I'm trying again to use non-medical. Because to me, I think that if you see this, it makes your decision simpler. What would I do if I were convinced that sea levels were rising dramatically and there was a potential for massive floods?

Well, the first thing I would do is I would want to have access to be able to live in a place where that's not a problem. Now, being a US citizen, I have easy access to many places that would benefit from a few degree increase in the global climate temperatures.

So I can say, well, maybe I should buy a little house in Maine, or at least have the ability to go buy a house in Maine later. So the first thing is done there. What would I do? Well, I'd be happy to recycle, be happy to drive less if that makes a difference.

I might not be willing to fly less, like I'm not, but I might be willing to make greener decisions to the point where they are happy. We all have a list that we might be able to and willing to do. Well, what am I not willing to do? I'm not willing to not live in Florida at the moment because of the potential for rising sea temperatures.

So I make that decision, and let me come back in a few years. Let me give a couple of years, see what happens in the meantime. I don't have to make the big decisions that the leader of a country has to make, you know, or the president of some international council.

They got a much more difficult job than I do. I don't have to be convinced one way or the other. I don't have to make this my cause that I'm going to save the world from climate change. I just say, what would I do if this were true? What's the cost of doing that?

Am I willing to do it? What would I do if this were not true? What's the cost of doing that? Am I willing to do that? And then make the adjustment. Then come back in the future. So prepare in advance is the step. Prepare in advance, take the actions if possible, and then research and analyze when action is needed.

So back to my little ivermectin thing. I told you you can get ivermectin. You can get vitamin D, you can get vitamin C, you can get paracetamol, you can get doxycycline. So maybe you put together a little kit like the Indian government sent out that anecdotally seemed like it may have been one of the factors that aligned with this decrease in COVID severity and decrease in hospitalizations, a massive decrease in it.

But we don't know. What would I not do? Well, I wouldn't take it unless I needed to and more evidence emerged. And I would research that and analyze it afresh when action is needed. Let's use hydroxychloroquine because that's less current. Maybe you went out and you bought yourself hydroxychloroquine and you stuck it in your cabinet.

Then I would come up to it and you would say, "Hey, I'm sick. I've got a COVID diagnosis. Should I take this stuff?" Well that's when you research it. And then you say, "What's the latest data? What's the analysis? Let me look at the papers, try to get an idea of it.

Talk to some knowledgeable professionals." That's when you make your decision is when you actually have to make a decision. Now taking it prophylactically is different. But when you're researching it, that's when you do a self-assessment, right? What are the risk factors? What are the risk factors of my taking this?

What are the risk factors of my not taking it? There are people right now dying every day who have been fully doubly vaccinated, but they're dying. Far fewer than if they weren't doubly vaccinated, but they are happening. So the risk is not zero. And so then you look and you say, "Am I willing to take this drug?" It's kind of how I am with even simple things, right?

I don't like to take painkillers. I don't want to do it. I don't want extra drugs in my body. But the risk of my taking a painkiller is pretty low if I really need it. And so I'm just going to take it. It's not that big a deal. So I hope I'm not oversimplifying it.

The point is that prepare in advance, play both sides, and then only research and analyze and commit using the best available data when it's actually necessary for you to do so. That's my play both sides mental model. I hope you find it useful. What I have found is that every time I've done it, I've just gone out and bought something.

Gone out and bought a whole life insurance policy, bought a stock, bought a mutual fund, opened an IRA, bought Bitcoin, bought an NFT. Every time I do this, I wind up putting myself in a situation where I'm more knowledgeable from the process. And so instead of sitting back and crossing my arms and trying to be right, I get involved and I actually learn what's happening based upon actually doing it.

Based upon actually doing it. Next. What's the next one? Consider the sources of your information very, very carefully. Let's assume that nobody has ulterior motives. Let's assume that everyone has the best of intentions, the best of motives. Your doctor has the best of intentions, your financial advisor has the best of intentions, the best of motives all across the board.

Nobody is trying to swindle you. Nobody is trying to do anything wrong. Assume the best. The average professional practitioner has exactly zero involvement with any actual cutting edge research. When I was a financial advisor, a highly credentialed, fully licensed financial advisor, making my living, giving financial advice, I had no involvement whatsoever with any cutting edge research and I was no more qualified to comment on it than any other layperson.

Why? Well because we all have a certain business model. When I was a financial advisor, my business model was simple. Sell insurance, sell investments, manage money, do financial plans. That's what I did. Sell life insurance, sell disability insurance, sell long term care insurance. Prior to ACA I sold health insurance.

Sell 529s, Roth IRAs, sell annuities, bring assets over, roll over 401ks, manage money, do financial plans, prospect for new customers. That was the business model. That was it. I had an interest in a lot of things, but I had no more qualifications than anybody else to actually say what the future was.

I had a little bit more exposure and familiarity with the language, but I didn't have any more qualifications to actually sit down and read a study, to read a white paper on Bitcoin. And so for years I gave the same basic advice. What was it? It was a repeating of advice that sounded good to me.

It was a repeating of, "Hey, this makes sense to me and so let me share this with other people." Now I was well-intentioned. I was honest. And at least with regard to the example I'm using here with Bitcoin, I was profoundly wrong. Profoundly wrong. Now compare that to any other area of your life.

Your average health professional probably, with the exception of personal interests, probably is just simply not qualified to answer any of these questions. Here's my example of what I would ask a medical professional. And I think this is a reasonable question. What can I do? In addition to getting vaccinated, in addition to washing my hands, in addition to wearing a mask, okay, let's just grant all those.

What can I do to improve my experience with COVID so that if and when I get COVID I have an easier time of it? I think a question like that should reveal a lot about someone. By the way, there's lots of financial versions of this that you can ask a financial advisor.

To your financial advisor, let's assume that I wanted to get 15% per year every year. How could I do that? If a financial advisor doesn't have an answer to that, they're not in the game. They're not in the game. And you accept it. So this is one of my major issues with watching the health stuff is that what advice have you received from the US CDC, the people that are paid to deliver this stuff, what advice have you received from the US CDC to help, possibly help, improve your experience with coronavirus?

Well, you're told wear a mask, but first you were told don't wear a mask, then you were told do wear a mask, then don't wear a mask, then do wear a mask. And then when you dig into that, well, they lied to you again and again and again and again.

Okay, so let's set aside the mask thing. Wash your hands. Okay, I'll wash my hands. Get a vaccine. Okay. What else can I do? The US medical system is utterly incompetent at helping people build good health. Now, there are exceptions, sure, but on the whole, the system is absolutely failing people.

I don't understand. Maybe I'm ignorant. I wholeheartedly concede that that might be the case, but I'm not aware of the US medical establishment coming out and saying, "Hey, you probably should make sure that you check your vitamin D levels." That seems like the very most basic thing that is not that controversial, and yet they don't do it.

Why not? Well, there could be various reasons, right? You can go hardcore conspiracy. You could say, "Well, then maybe there's not enough data." But what's the harm of your taking vitamin D? Having some zinc supplementation. What's the harm of trying ivermectin? Now, they can't do it, and that's the point, right?

They can't be involved in cutting-edge stuff. The US financial system and the financial advice system, on the whole, is utterly incompetent at helping people build wealth. They don't know how to do it. They don't have a clue. Your average financial advisor does not have an answer of how to build wealth other than save some money, lower your taxes, and buy mutual funds.

That's it. Why? Well, because that's what they have been trained by, and that's what they see. That's the world of opportunity, and everything is put through that lens. You have to go to a different world if you want different advice. Understand how the game is rigged. Understand who controls the game, and consider your sources very, very carefully.

Understand where you can go for the best information, or at least the best examples. One of the reasons I started Radical Personal Finance was I came to realize that, as a financial advisor, I wasn't very good at helping people get wealthy. I was good at helping wealthy people stay wealthy.

I was good at helping people save some money, but I wasn't good at helping people get wealthy. Where can you go for information on actually how to get wealthy? You often find it, paradoxically, in the anecdotes. You go to a billionaire, and you say, "How did this billionaire become a billionaire?" You go to somebody who's deeply in debt, and who gets out of debt, and you say, "How did this guy get from deeply out of debt to becoming debt-free?" Over the years, I've found that those things are far more helpful than the mainstream advice.

The mainstream, by way of analogy, what's the mainstream advice? Well, the mainstream advice in financial planning is pay your bills on time, put money in your 401(k) and your IRA, and buy life insurance. Is there anything wrong with that? No, it's not. But does that get people unstuck? Does that get people out of debt?

No. So where do you see results? Well, you could go to Dave Ramsey, right? "Hardcore! Go hardcore and get out of debt." Well, we're getting results here. But Dave says things that are clearly wrong, right? Dave says, "Ignore the interest rates on your debt and pay them off from smallest to largest." Clearly wrong.

Except Dave has helped more people pay off debt than any other human alive. I can't back the state up. I can't prove that, but it's a lot, right? So you say, "Well, it's clearly wrong, but it clearly works." And so many times I've heard this advice, right? You sit and you talk with anybody who understands math and you say, "Yeah, you got to pay off your highest interest rate debt first." And yet Dave, with paying off lowest amount first, has helped more people pay off debt than I think anybody else alive.

Or you say, "Well, what else can you do?" And you find some guy who gets out of debt by—this is a guy I had on the show years ago—by flipping washing machines on Craigslist. That's amazing! And you start to see, look, you too can flip washing machines on Craigslist.

And so these stories are often very good. So go into the health space, right? Who are the people who are really useful? Well, the 500-pound guy who turns into the 170-pound guy. He often can teach more than the doctor who's 30 pounds overweight. Or the guy who had all kinds of debilitating issues and Crohn's disease and this autoimmune thing and that problem and says, "Look, I did all this stuff and now it's all in the background." Now, can the medical guys prove it?

Often not. Or they're still arguing about what goes with it. But then somebody will hear it and they'll say, "I tried it and look, it fixed my problems too." So I wouldn't say, "Here, the filters are important." Does that prove that this is the case? No, it doesn't, right?

There's no substitute for good double-blind study, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's no substitute for that. But a lot of times that stuff takes too long. It takes too long for that to develop and you need answers. So if I'm sick in the hospital with COVID and I'm in a cytokine storm, I hope that people will come in and rub whatever those things were on my body in addition to everything, all the other treatments that I'm getting because I'll try anything if it'll help me.

And here's what I've noticed about radical personal finance listeners. There's a big difference between those who listen to the show and those who listen to the show who take action. I routinely speak with consulting clients who say, "Yeah, you know, you did this show with so-and-so and I went and I bought his course and I did his thing and now I got rich." Or "You did the show about the thing and I went and researched it and I put all my money in it and look, I got rich and thank you." And I'm thinking, "Man, I didn't even do that, right?

I didn't even go and take the course and do the thing and you did it and it worked." So if you understand the risks of certain things and you move yourself into a bias for action, I think that's the proper mindset to have. Study what you're doing. Don't be a fool, right?

Don't pump a bottle of horse dewormer down your face. Understand the risks of what you're doing, but be the kind of person who doesn't just sit back and say, "I'm going to wait for everyone to agree." Because by the time everyone agrees, you're old and fat and dead, right?

There are people who still think that eating a low-fat diet is the key to good health. Those people are also 75 years old and in terrible health because they've been eating a low-fat diet their entire life as that was the key to it. And when you look at like the medical stuff and you see how excruciatingly slow and how fundamentally wrong the opinion is, there's still people that think that eggs are unhealthy.

There's people that believe that meat is bad for you, a lot of them. There's people that believe that chiropractic care is a scam. And what happens is these people live on the thrill of being right. They live on the thrill of it and they never admit they're wrong. They just love to be right.

I have been one of them. That's how I recognize it. It doesn't serve you. Be the kind of person who takes action and who tries everything as long as the results are or as long as the risks are reasonable. All right, give me an example. Acupuncture. I personally think acupuncture is probably a scam.

I've read all the debunking of the natural health stuff. I've read all the anti-chiropractic stuff. I've read all the stuff. I think it's probably a scam. Meaning acupuncture, not chiropractic care. I think chiropractic care is vital. Then my wife and I were expecting one of our children. The estimated due date was about three or four or five days in the rear.

And as with all things, we said we're going to do anything possible that might possibly work. So what did we do? We ate spicy food. Do I think spicy food induces childbirth? Probably not. I think that's probably an old wives tale. Probably not. But there's no downside to eating lots of spicy food.

We had lots of sex. Do I think sex induces childbirth? That makes sense that maybe so. But regardless, there's no downside, only upside. So let's do that. Go to chiropractic care. Do I think chiropractic care and a good adjustment by someone who's trained in those techniques for pregnant mothers and children, do I think that that is going to induce childbirth?

Maybe. But we sort of tried it because there's no downside. And then with this particular child, we went and did acupuncture. Do I think acupuncture actually helps? I'm pretty skeptical. But we went ahead and did acupuncture. And a couple days later, maybe a day or two later, we had a baby.

Now which of those things was the cause for the child coming when the baby came? Could potentially have been none of them. Just that her body had decided this is the appropriate gestational period for this particular child and it's time to have the baby. Or it could have been influenced by all those other things.

And so you see the, hopefully you see the point. Any one of those could have been important. Maybe it was the whole thing. But if you're the kind of person who says, "Hey, downside risk of this is pretty low. Can we do it?" What happens is you get results and you can't prove why you got results.

But a lot of time that anecdotal evidence, there's some real power in it. Make your own risk reward decisions with the best information you have at the time that you have to make those decisions. Stay current. Get the best current information when you actually need to make the decisions.

That's when you go looking for the information. Just in time learning. Learning and saying, "Hey, you know what? I need to make this decision now. That's when I'm going to go and learn about it." Finally, understand that the past is not the present. Past is not the present. And the past does not determine the present or the future.

What do I mean? A lot of times people make this fundamental error where they say, "Hey, this has happened in the past. This is the way things were in the past." And they extrapolate that automatically to the future and think that that's somehow an argument. And it's simply not.

Think for example about what was the last war that the United States of America won? World War II. That was the last time that the United States of America won a war. You could argue, "Well, maybe Desert Storm. I don't count it as a war." For a variety of reasons, the United States no longer seems to declare a war.

But you could say, "Okay, maybe they won the Desert Storm battle." But think the last time the United States won a war. World War II. Now since World War II, the United States of America has lived under this halo that we're the most mighty military empire on earth. Whatever we do, we win.

We spend more money on a military than the next eight countries combined, or whatever the actual number is. Did that mean that the United States won the war in Afghanistan? No. Just like the Korean War and the Vietnam War and Desert Storm, sort of, kind of, and the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan was soundly lost.

So did the past determine the future? You can't make an argument, "Well, look, the United States won World War II, so therefore we win the next one." Why not? Because everything is its own situation. Now you can study the past and you can try to understand, what was it?

Why did these things work? But you can't automatically predict the future based upon those. So what can you do? Well, recognize that the future is open. So for example, back in the financial space, the techniques and the tools that worked to build wealth during the 19th century didn't necessarily work in the 20th century.

Some of them did, some of them didn't. The things that worked in the 20th century might or might not work in the 21st century. Some might work and some might not work. So you need to understand the past and be informed by it, but always keep your mind open to the fact that the future might be different.

Up until coronavirus, the coronavirus vaccines, we'd had a famously difficult time creating vaccines for viruses, right? And so there are many people that said, "We'll never create a successful vaccine for the coronavirus, get over it." Were those people right? No, they were wrong. What made the difference? I don't know, but there was a difference.

Now by extension, flip side of it, maybe taking a measles vaccine is a great idea. That doesn't automatically mean that taking a coronavirus vaccine is a great idea. You have to look at each thing by itself. And so what can you do as a person? I think the best mental model here is to say, "I'm going to be open.

I'm going to be open to follow the data. I'm going to be open to listening to the anecdotes. I'm going to be open to thinking. I'm going to be informed by the past. I'm going to try to play both sides when I can, do what I'm capable of, and then just try to make the best decisions for me right now at the moment with the evidence that I have available." Things change.

Data changes. The science changes. Things change. Stay current. I said final thing, and then I realized I forgot this last thing. Pay careful attention to who is talking to you and what their vested interests are. It's probably good to assume that a lot of people are lying to you when they prove themselves to have lied to you again and again and again.

But stay current and think about it. When you see, think about what the interests are. For example, who is reporting the news to you and what interest do they have? Well, the people that are reporting the news to you have a product that they sell, and that product is eyeballs.

So the way that they get eyeballs is controversy. Anything that can happen to bring eyeballs allows more ad revenue. Controversy sells. So that's where, when you think about the Ivermectin horse dewormer stuff, it's so stupid, right? I saw this comment on Twitter, not originally with me, but I love the saying.

Calling Ivermectin horse dewormer is like calling water engine coolant. Sorry. Calling Ivermectin horse dewormer is like calling water engine coolant. Is water used for engine coolant? Absolutely. Is Ivermectin used for horse dewormer? Absolutely. But to say that somehow you're being honest in saying that Ivermectin is horse dewormer, and that's what Joe Rogan took, is absurd.

Absolutely absurd. But yet, what happened? What happened yesterday, the last day or two, right? Dr. Sanjay Gupta went on Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan pressed him on this, and even just recently now Don Lemon is interviewing Sanjay Gupta and saying it's not a lie to say that Ivermectin is a horse dewormer.

Right? It's not a lie. It's not a lie. It's not a lie about it. See through this stuff. Okay? Who is reporting the news to you? What interest do they have? Who's reporting the stuff to you? What interest do they have? And you have to learn to feed through it.

In conclusion, we live in an information age. Okay? All of us are going to have to enhance our skills. When you fall for a hoax, study why you fell for it. We're all going to do it. Okay? It won't surprise me at all if six months from now we discover that, you know what, Ivermectin was totally useless and all of the indications that we had for its usefulness, potentially usefulness, yeah, it was wrong.

It was totally useless. Maybe a year from now we'll say vitamin D was totally useless. Maybe so. Okay? I'm going to be okay with that. So ask yourself, why did I get it wrong? Now on the flip side, if you fell for a hoax like Ivermectin is not people medicine, or if you fell for a hoax like Ivermectin is horse dewormer, then ask yourself, why did I fall for a hoax?

Why did I not understand that? Now what else? If you fell for a hoax like all you need to do is put money in your Roth IRA and you're going to be good, yeah, not going to work. Why did I fall for that? If you fell for a hoax like Bitcoin, you know, Bitcoin has no value, why did I fall for that?

Gold coins are a waste of money, nobody should invest in gold, they should only buy stocks. Why? And I think if you'll develop this curious personality and test things, refrain from trying to be right all the time and just try things. Being right all the time is a very draining position to have to hold because you're arguing with everybody all the time.

Be curious, be curious, be interested and be the kind of person willing to take action, not the kind of person just going around trying to be right. As a former Mr. Right, those are my thoughts. Thank you for listening. If you think I'm wrong about something, I would love to hear from you.

Go to twitter.com/joshuasheets, follow me on Twitter and feel free to interact with me there, twitter.com/joshuasheets. If you would like to speak to me personally and get my perception or my insight or my input on a specific personal question that is not medically related, then I would love to have you do that.

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