Animal Spirits Podcast - Everywhere Millionaires (EP. 481)

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

On episode 481, ⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠ discuss: how bull market gains have changed the markets, AI is crowding everything else out, when the next financial crisis will hit, Ray Dalio keeps scaring investors, the earnings boom, a buying opportunity for bonds, the American Dream is still alive and well, is college worth the cost, why AI isn't impacting the labor market, the most important financial asset for retirees, theme parties and more. This episode is sponsored by CME Group. To learn more about E-nano futures, visit: https://www.cmegroup.com/enano  Please take our 2026 audience survey ⁠HERE⁠ Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thecompoundnews.com/subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Us On Social Media: Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠twitter.com/thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/company/the-compound-media/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tiktok.com/@thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠A Wealth of Common Sense⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Michael Batnick’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Irrelevant Investor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Feel free to shoot us an email at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CME Group Disclosure: Derivatives trading involves significant risk and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not indicative of subsequent results. Our full disclaimer is available at: https://www.cmegroup.com/disclaimer.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is sponsored by CME Group. If you're managing equity exposure, you know that size and flexibility manner. CME Group just launched E-Nano Equity Index Futures. At one-tenth the size of micro-E-minis, e-nanoc contracts give active traders precise nanoscaled exposure to four major benchmarks, NASDAQ 100, S&P 500, Russell 2000, and the Dow. Whether you're looking to scale, into positions with smaller upfront capital or fine-tune your portfolio around global macro

news 23 hours a day, e-nano's bring you the biggest markets built for your scale. To find that more, visit cmeagroup.com slash e-nano. Derivatives trading involves significant risk and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not indicative of subsequent results. Our full disclaimer is available at cmeagroup.com slash disclaimer. Today's show is sponsored by Exhibit A. when Chart Kid Matt came to us with the idea for Exhibit A, the big really takeaway was, hey, listen, people don't have time to do charts, they don't have ideas for charts.

We're going to create charts for people. We're also going to give talking points. But then let's take it a step further and have me, Ben Carlson, personally, ghostwrite, a monthly update that pulls all of Matt's best charts. And it's great. We have a collaborative thing. Matt gives me eight to ten charts every month. I write a little paragraph explaining them. Yes.

Context. Here's what's going on. Here's what's important. Here's why it's important for your clients. What did you, so we've got one going out this week for the month of August. Anything exciting happen? Yes. Well, I mean, it's so I usually take two or three on the economy, two or three in the stock market.

So it's, it's sector and regional performance. It's valuations. It's a little bit of everything. So it's context for your clients. And the great thing is you can put your company logo on there, change the color scheme, how you want it. And then it's ghostwritten that you can give to your clients as something that this is like an easy button for people. Right? We hear from advisors all the time.

I don't have time to produce content like you guys. I have other stuff going on. So this is something that makes it easier for you to have that touching point with your client of, okay, we're checking in, we're paying attention to stuff. Here's what's going on. Now you know what's going on. Amen, sister. Exhibit A4advice.com for when I do a seven-day free trial. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben.

I have some thoughts to open the show. It's been a sort of a quiet. period, at least the last week alone. I feel like the DAC is a little bit light this week. There's obviously a million, bajillion things happening, but it was a slow-ish newsweek. So I have some things that I want to talk about. But actually, you know what? Before we get there, you've got a mustache.

You look like a, you look like a Ron Jeremy, circa 1977 without the ponytail. What's going on? I did this for you. Let's just marinate it for a while. I'm going to save it for the end of the show and give you a... But I just say, you know, I could have shaved this off, but I wanted to keep it for you. For me. All right.

Well, consider me intrigued, Ben. All right. So I was talking about this on TCAF with Josh and Dan Skelly. And I know everybody knows this, but I feel like we don't talk about it enough. We're all trying to suss out what's happening. And it's been the same storylines for like a while now, right? Especially the past few months, I feel like this show and podcast. that's in general, I've gotten pretty repetitive.

So forgive me, but that's just whatever. It's just what's happening right now. The amount of money that has been created by the bull market over the last 15 years has completely, completely, completely reshaped global economies, the stock market itself, of course, and everything that we talk about. And even things that are tangentially related. I listen to Poblo Tori and Sam Coppulman talk, by the way, amazing show, talk about the Mark Walter stuff and the prices of everything from my $13 Chipotle Bowl, which has now been

normalized in my brain, to the $12.5 billion Lakers, to the hyperscaler buildout. And the myriad ways of funding this, whether it's debt, equity, SPVs, follow-on, secondaries, distress, whatever it is. The pool of capital is so deep and vast that it has changed everything. Now, the caveat to that is another side effect of this prolonged economic stock market expansion is it's really difficult as investors to picture yourself in a different regime. it's very easy and normal to be lulled into this is just the way it is because it's been this way for so long.

And last week, we were talking about the idea that there might not be another recession this decade, which, listen, I mean, we've got three more years. So that's not like, that's not an outrageous statement, right? Certainly, sort of impossible. But I think that not only will there be another recession, which is also not going out on a limb. There will probably be another financial crisis at some point because the psychology of markets, we are just going to push this too far. We always do. And maybe this is the culmination of what we've been saying for the last 10 years of it feels a little bit, a lot of things feel

different this time. But I feel like that is almost, I won't quite say, inevitable, but that's just where the human participants of stock markets go eventually. There was the old onion headline that like Americans go in search of another bubble to say them from the last bubble. That's just kind, you're right. It's kind of what we do as human. The other thing is we've talked a lot about the fact that there's just so many wealthy people now and that's helping power the economy and keep prices up and all this stuff.

but also these tech companies have become so big and so profitable and the margins are so high that it gave them agency to do this AI buildout. Right? It's like we're playing with so much money here. That's such a good point. We couldn't have done this if it wasn't a raging bull market. Did you know that every company in the top 10 of the S&P and go out to 11 and almost 12 are now trillion-dollar companies?

And we don't even blink. The entire top 10, J.P. Morgan is sniffing, so it's Eli Lilly as a trillion-dollar company now? Berkshire Hathaway is, Micron, J.P. Morgan is within spitting distance of being a trillion-dollar company. These companies are so big. They have so much money that they can do this now. And you're right, it's totally changed things. And people, you're right, everyone keeps waiting for the, it could be 20 years until we have an actual financial crisis. Totally, yeah, could be it could. But you're right. It's never going away because people always take things too far and too far. And if we don't get a financial crisis in the next five years,

10 years, 15 years. Then what's the point? No, but then we're going to go even further. And that's the thing. I'm saying, this doesn't end in an absolute panic. What was the point of all this? Yeah, you're right. It's, you're right. I think that's been the one thing everyone is underestimated, just the sheer amount of wealth that is in this system right now.

It's absolutely, and we have something on everywhere millionaires coming later for how many, like how many rich people that really are. It's nuts. But yes, your recession thing, this is, the timing of it is hard. Because people have been trying to predict this stuff every single year. 2022, we have to have a recession. in 2023. Well, okay, fine, stagflation. Ben, do you remember what the first, I think Apple was the first trillion dollar company?

And let's say that happened in, I don't know, 2015, 2016, somewhere around that time frame. And there were so many eyeballs and so many articles about if this were the top with a trillion dollar company, it would be so poetic. And the idea of a trillion dollar company seemed so fantastical. At the time when it happened, it said, how could a single company, possibly be worth $1 trillion. And now you have companies like Broadcom that are sniffing your trillion, or Brockcom was, and now it's not. And we don't even discuss it.

It's like, yeah, trillion-dollar companies, sure. Right. Eli Lilly is a trillion-dollar company. It's like, okay, that's cool. Oh, they solved obesity? All right. What's next? What else he got for me?

There is this thing, there is a line of thinking, though, that if it wasn't for AI, this would all be, it's the AI house of cards. If AI didn't come along and they didn't spend all this money, everything would be falling apart. And I think that that's actually probably wrong. I think there's a huge crowding out by AI that people are now coming around to. So there's two charts I want to show you. One from Michael Semblist that shows not only the amount of spending that's being done by these, but it's showing the hyperscalor and Nvidia debt issuance as a percentage of treasury bond issuance.

And it's 70% of treasury bond issuance. So people keep wondering, why do rates on government bonds keep going up? And it's funny, every time there's a government bond talk over the years, you and Josh and I always joke that, well, the real reason is just flows. And what if the real reason government bond, yes, it's growth and it's inflation and it's all the macro things. But what if it's just investors are not putting as much money into government bonds and they have to raise rates to get, because there's so much other debt issuance going on right now that AI is crowding out the government bond market? Well, there's never just. There's two main things.

You just discussed both of them. It's the macro, which is entirely legitimate, war, tariffs. a lot of issuance, and then it's the second column, which is competition from hyperscalers. And both of those things are combining to drive yield tire. I'm sure you saw this chart from the Wall Street Journal that shows private construction relative to December 2023, and it shows data centers going up, and then it shows all other private construction spending crashing and falling off a cliff. And it's basically saying the data centers has sucked up everything, and that that's

what we're building now. And maybe it's taking construction workers and permitting or whatever, and we're not doing it. And so if you take, just you can't say in a vacuum, if you take away the AI spending, the economy is in a recession. It's all the same story. And woven into the higher rates is I don't know what's in all other private construction spending, but obviously a lot of that is real estate, a combination of commercial, residential, industrial, and aren't higher rates negatively impacting that as well?

Of course. So other construction is getting in from both ends. So here's the thing. So getting back to your point about like having this blow off top, I think if this is going to be a full-blown panic, recession, financial crisis someday if AI was going to cause that. We have to get way stupider than this. This is not nearly stupid enough. And I actually think you could make the point. This is from the Wall Street Journal. They show, it's kind of a perfect thing. They show the U.S. attacks I ran at like the actual bottom in rates this year. And then they

take off. And now if you zoomed out a little on this, you could say, come on, rates were already rising as it is. But I think that we've actually kind of put a cap on ourselves for being stupid and it's the White House that's doing it. So if Trump would have come in and just done his ballroom and put through his tax cut and done nothing else, no tariffs, no war with Iran, if he would have just said let the AI stuff run crazy, I think we would be in a much different place now because think about it, rates would be much lower, mortgage rates would probably be lower, housing would probably be picking up more right now. People would be borrowing more money because rates weren't so high.

I think if he wouldn't have done what he's done to make inflation stays tickier higher, and obviously it's not all coming from the wayhouse. There's other stuff going on. I think you're 100% right. I think he may be inadvertently saved us from something really ugly. Which that means it's just being pushed down the line probably because it's going to come. Because listen, obviously that's what they want to, too. They don't want to like, they don't want to have higher.

The whole thing was he ran on lower inflation and low rates, and we've gone the opposite. Yeah, obviously. Well, the other thing is about the financial market, even though we can't help it as individual participants, as a group collectively, nobody wants a bubble because a bubble will burst. But individually, we can't help it. It's a scorpion and the frog because we all want to get rich quick. And so it doesn't matter what everybody thinks. It matters what each person thinks.

Right. And it's like, fine, if that group's going to go into it, I got to go too. And then it's the M&A, but getting more M&A. If my competitor is buying companies, we can't be left out. You can't override human nature. You could slow it down a little bit with tariffs and whatever. But all right. And I think technology is just an amplifier of human nature.

We've all seen this to sometimes in good ways, most of the time in bad ways. There has been a lot discussed in the headlines about individual investors' anxiety over higher interest rates. And I think that most financial advisors are, looking at these headlines and saying, or ripping their hair out, saying, the opposite should be true. Where is this fear coming from? I understand that maybe there's some PTSD when interest rates rose from 0.5% to 5% and bonds got massacred.

This, but now we're on the other side of that. Higher rates are awesome. We finally have high fixed income for the fixed income investors. It should be celebrated. There should be like amazing headlines. my God, this is amazing. You could loan money to the U.S. government for 4.7%. You can get a real aftertax return. This is wonderful. But instead, individual investors are seeing fearful headlines. So one of our advisors asked if I can come on a call with the client, which is rare these days.

Markets been very calm. I do my best work in a crisis. When the markets are free falling, that's when I shine. That's when I love to talk to the clients. But right now, things have been very easy. You're right. It's actually, it's easier to have those conversations. to provide context than just kind of flailing around looking for something to talk about. Correct. So anyway, it's been coming up more and more that people are asking about bond yields and should they be worried. And I gave our advisors to talking points. I said, you know, where is this? Send me the source of this consternation because he said it was an article of this client read. And I opened, I clicked the link and I see the bond market supply and demand

problem by Ray Dalio. And I said, dude, I want in. I want to talk to this client. Put me on the calendar. I want in the game. And so we're going to put a pin in this because we are talking with Colin Roche on stage at Future Proof a week from today, I think. Today's Tuesday, right? We're on Tuesday.

You know, I didn't even think about this. I looked. We should tell people this. This is a house cleaning moment. We're going on Wednesday afternoon. So our podcast is going to be late next week. So if you're a usual Wednesday morning listener, I don't know when our podcast is going to go up,

but I would say late Wednesday, is, uh, all right. Well, anyway, this is going to be advisor focused,

and the title of the, of the talk is going to be how to talk to your clients about Ray Dalio. Because it's been 15 years of this guy scaring our clients. Honestly, 15 years of us addressing his comments. He's the only one doing it. And he can't stop and he won't stop and neither will wait.

It is, yes. Yeah, and it's fun. And Colin is, Colin is very, Colin comes with data and he, So I think it's going to be very interesting.

So if you have, if you have a future proof, come check us out. Just 10 seconds. For people that don't know who Ray Dalio's, he's probably the most widely known hedge fund manager. He's not, he's not like active anymore. He's retired, but still. He's active at Burning Man. That's right.

And he's active on the interwebs. He loves telling people that it's 1937 and he's been on this beat for a while. So we're going to give everybody some talking points, how to debunk some of nonsense. All right, I got a great stat for you from duality research that I read this morning. Go ahead. The biggest takeaway is pretty straightforward, doing kind of like a market what's going on. Since June, the S&P 500 is up less than 2% while forward earnings estimates have jumped 10.7%. Put differently, the market has become roughly 8% cheaper over the summer while everyone was busy soaking up the sun. Kevin Gordon tweeted this out too. Wait, one thing on that point.

Factually right. To me, the valuation multiples are a reflection of investors. moods, not to me. I mean, that's not very profound. That is what they are, right? They're a reflection of how people feel about the future today. Yes. Earnings are numbers. Dividends are numbers. Cash flows are numbers. Yeah. Valuations are feelings. Yes. So feelings about the future today. And I love that the market has put a governor on forward multiples. I love that there is disbelief because this does set up the wall of worry, which we need. So what did Kevin Gordon say? So, but this is a is also, I mean, someone would say, well, this is also rates going up and whatever. But he says at the beginning of the year, the estimate for S&P 500 earnings growth in the second

quarter was 14.9%. So start of the year, six months in, like, that's not that far into the future. Now the blended growth rate is 53%. I don't think we're talking enough about how not only, it's like, oh, of course, earnings are higher because of the cash flows and the Kappex, and it's all the AI trade. I think there's a lot of people poo-pooing this. No one expected this. Can I poo-poo and unpupoo?

Yeah. This is not a poo-poo per se. But you know what's annoying? In these numbers are some of the markups from the private companies. So we have to look at operating earnings. But shouldn't that have been easy for people to determine? But hey, they're going to get marked up. Nobody saw operating earnings either.

So even if you say, okay, well, there's markups, fine. The operating income for NVIDIA over the last. 12 months is higher than Apple. Isn't it hard to believe? That's what I'm, that's why that's how hard this stuff is. So circular or not, it's still something to behold. That's, that's my point. Like, this is really impressive that this is happening.

Even if we know, okay, fine, it's not going to last forever. But there was not anyone coming into the year saying, we're going to see one of the biggest earnings growth years ever this year. It wasn't on, it wasn't on anyone's list. It wasn't there. No. All right, Ben, last week you spoke something about like dividend, the number of, was it, the overall dividend yield on

the S&P is like 1%. Yeah, barely under 1%. One of the lowest, I think someone corrected me that it was technically like three basis points lower in the dot-com bubble, but we're there for the lowest dividend yields in history. So another way to look at this, I thought this was very interesting. Rob Anderson from Ned Davis research, less than 5% of S&P 500 stocks yield more than the 10-year treasury. The few is since May 2007. All right, May 2007, not the greatest time to invest, but that sentence aside, the 2000, the post-GFC period was unusual because all of these

stocks got crushed and the dividend yields got pushed higher. But look at 1980 through 2000. It looks the same as it does today. This is not an aberration of history. The post-GFC period was abnormal, you could say. Well, also interest rates were much higher back then, obviously. Oh, you're right. Well, yeah, that is... That's part of it, but still, rates are much higher today, too. Yeah, and this, you're right.

This is not like some signal that, oh, my gosh, this is crazy. Unless government bond yields come way down, this is the new normal. Like, companies don't pay out dividends anymore because it doesn't make as much sense. So to me, I'm not necessarily looking at, well, maybe I'm a little bit. stocks are, I mean, this is just a fact. Stocks are all else equal, relatively less attractive compared to bonds than they have been for a long time, which is awesome news. Weren't people upset that 80, 20 was the new 6040, that people were being pushed further out on the risk curve. That's over.

It's good. Hey, guess what? I had a little thought that I wasn't sure if I was going to share with you or the audience, but inside my brain over the weekend. Ben, I thought to myself, should I own some bonds in my 401K? So obviously, I've been 100% stocks since forever because that's what you do is a long-term risk taker with a long, long-term horizon. You own stocks. But the thought did cross my brain. I don't know.

Should I be 80-20? And then if, because, A, you're getting paid, there's, there's reward in the bonds. And if there is a big stock market pullback over the future, well, now I could take advantage of it by shifting back. And if there's not, I don't care. It's still great. I asked the compound last week, there was a middle-aged guy. I think it was mid-40s.

He said, listen, I dutifully sat through the dot-com bubble blowing up and the 2008 financial crisis and I became a machine, I dollar cost averaged. He said, but now if I see a big swing in the market, I'm losing like more than my salary in that situation. I'm getting, because I have way more money. So he's like, help me try to come up with the psychology of investing in middle age. And I think what you're trying to figure out is like, is it like, is taking some money off the table, not market timing, but is it, is it, you know, I'm managing risk a little bit better here because I'm so far ahead of where I would have been if stocks hadn't done so well

that maybe, like, I shouldn't look the gift horse in the mouth here. I should take the 5% for bonds. Yeah, so it's not making a stock market call. It's just being prudent. There's an alternative, and it's paying you pretty damn well. Right. And most investors still don't care. Now, Bank of America had this chart.

This one was kind of flying around social media a little bit. Negative long run returns are great entry points. So they look at the last time you had long-term treasuries, so they say 15 plus years, and they did the rolling 10-year annualized returns when they were low or negative. And it was saying in December 1959 is the last time that these 10-year returns for bonds were negative on a nominal basis. And they got close in September of 1981. And those would have been way, way worse if you would have included inflation. Now it's saying, like, these are the lowest ones ever. Is this a good buying opportunity?

It's kind of funny because on this chart, I hate to be a stickler here. 1981 was obviously the greatest bond buying opportunity in history. There will never be a better time to buy bonds than there was in the early 1980s. I don't know what would have to happen for that to come back again. I don't know how AI would cause 20% short-term freight rates or whatever. It's never happening again. 1959 was kind of a terrible time to buy bonds because high inflation was coming. In the 1960s, you got negative 1% real returns in bonds because inflation was so much higher.

I get this. I don't love this chart. I understand what the show. People like charts like this though. Yeah, yeah. Right now is just like back then. And I think people love that format. They do.

But this is not, I wouldn't say, this is not a pound-the-table generational buying opportunity in bonds. This is a best buying opportunity for bonds at 20 years. Yeah. That you have to, I mean.

Yeah, and not the same thing. Right. Do you want to talk about rich to import out or not? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, fine. This guy is just. An all-time bad guy. Well, I got a million people sending me this because I wrote some blog posts about the rich dad, poor dad guy.

And I call him rich dad, poor readers. And there was a New York Times, New York Post story saying Robert Kiyosaki is $1.2 billion in debt. I actually read beyond the headline. I don't think most people did. It's not as bad as you think. Like, he was bragging about this. And I guess this is the way that you know that someone is really rich if they brag about being in debt that much. But then I guess his ex-wife said, you know what, this is like his real estate holdings or something.

He's not $1.2 billion personally in debt. It's way, way smaller. And he's like trying to inflate his. So is he flexing saying like, look, I'm so rich that I have the ability to take on this much? Yes. He's trying to flex. And I think a lot of people said, wait a minute, this guy is always reeled against dead in the system and people taking on dead. And he's a hypocrite, obviously.

And my finance joke here was, listen, the guy is finally putting his. money where his mouth is. He's preparing for hyperinflation. If hyperinflation is coming, you want all that debt. So I think he's, anyway, I was, listen, I read the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It was on all the top. When I said like 10 best investing personal finance books to read, it was always there. It never made sense to me. I never got it. I never, I was like, oh, yes. I know some people like the light bulb goes off. That one to me never did it for me. I liked it. I don't have any

I don't remember any of the points of me but. Yeah, I guess the whole like it felt like a made up story to me the whole time. So I'm like,

I don't know. That part doesn't do it for me. All right. I was looking for something. I think I wrote a blog post the day about you and I were talking about Gen Z, will they ever buy homes?

And I wrote a piece in like 2014 millennials saying, hey, I think millennials are going to be fine. They're going to buy homes event because people were saying at the same time, just like now,

millennials are never going to buy a house. They saw their parents get wrecked, unemployment is terrible. There was all these stories, say millennials never read by home. So I was looking for this thing. And I found a story I wrote in 2016. And you've talked a lot about the low return thing.

So this is an article from Bloomberg in 2016. Turning 30 just got a lot scarier. Coming collapse in investment returns means that people that age today will have to work seven years longer or save almost twice as much to end up with the same nest egg as those of a roughly generation ago. So says McKinsey and Company in a new report. And they said the golden age of the last 30 years is gone.

Exceptional inflation adjusted risk returns in the stock market won't be repeated. Okay, this is 2016. They had this chart. They show like this is, you can't, since then, the Vanguard total stock market index fund, VTI is up 15% per year, almost 325% in total. You know, all right, two points. As you're reading that, I'm thinking, it's so insane that, the media is so negative today. And then I quickly reminded myself, it's always been this way.

There's always been sensational headlines. And I want to say always, I mean, like in the 1910s, this is not a 20, 26 story. It has literally always been this way. And I thought like, it's so crazy that this is allowed to be printed by legitimate journalists. Credible. Bloomberg. A coming collapse in investment returns.

A coming collapse in investment returns. investment returns. And the average listener, what does anybody know? Oh my God, McKinsey says back in 2016, this seemed very real. It was kind of collective wisdom at the time to a lot of other people were saying this. Of course it was. All right, my main point is, and I was thinking about this weekend, unrelated to this. So over the weekend, there was a story in Silicon Valley about a company called Instinct, which I hadn't heard of until yesterday. You know about this story, Ben? Apparently oblivious. Okay. So over the weekend, Instinct is an AI agent company, and these things are all the rage. They're raising at multi-billion dollar valuations.

There's a couple of them. And people were using their machine, their instinct agent, to book reservations at four Charles and other hard to get impossible to get reservations. and they were pinging Rezi, owned by Amex, they were pinging Rezzi's API, like a gazillion times. And Rezzi probably looked like they were being attacked. Like, what the hell is happening? So they shut it off. They canceled some of these people's future reservations

and just booted them from the platform. Say, nope, you can't do this. And as I'm trying to make sense of like what's happening, and it seemed fairly straightforward. But I was thinking about a bigger picture. You have to find a trusted source. Here's where I'm going with all this. And I thought, you know what, I don't really want to spend that much time trying to get to

the source of truth here. I'm excited to see what Ben Thompson has to say about this, right? He will break it down. I will just wait for his take. And I'm proud of the work that we've done, Ben, since 2017 when we started this podcast and we're writing long before that about telling people to ignore this bullshit. And I'm very, very, very happy that we are a source of truth for a lot of people. people to push back against all of this bullshit that is constantly shoved down people's

throats. I agree. That was the biggest, that's one of the reasons I started writing in the first place because I was so sick of the negativity coming out of the crisis. I couldn't take it anymore. Speaking of what, this is interesting because good lead here. There's a great story in the Wall Street Journal this past week that is very positive. And it's not, you know, it's not falling back on the victim stuff.

The American dream is alive and it's minting millionaires. So they talk about Dick Portillo, which is kind of funny. My kids, I can't remember what movie were watching. My kids can't believe that people used to actually, your name is Richard and no, now you're Dick. My kid's like, how was that a thing? I think there was a comedian who did a bit on this. How did that, how was that ever a thing in the past of people that, like,

obviously that's never happening again? No. Right? No. Dickie Greenleaf and Townsend Miss Ripley, right? It's just, it's never happening again. Anyway. So talk about how you open a hot dog stand of the night.

1960s, didn't know how to cook a hot dog. A century later, he sold the company for a billion dollars. Which I still remember the very first time I tried Portillo's. My wife and I, I think we weren't even married yet. We go to visit my brother in Chicago and his condo. We go straight to the bar because we got there late. And we're like, oh, we didn't even have dinner. We got here so late.

My brother ran over to Portillo's and got us the spicy Italian beef and brought it back. And my wife and I still remember that to this day. Like, oh my gosh, that's one of the best sandwiches I've ever had in my life. And he talked about, I guess, in his memoir, he grew up poor. he thought he didn't have anything to offer the world he grew up his family was immigrants they lived in a housing project and the whole point of this story was there's all these people that came from really really bad backgrounds and most of the people who are these big time millionaires now most of them didn't come from like the you know iveneague schools or the east like they're just regular people

and they interview all these people who started an h-evac company or sort like actually not technology like the way you think everyone gets and you know rich these days so they talk about they they they call them these everywhere millionaires. He says it's three million of them, collectively worth more than $65 trillion. Most come from poor or middle class families simply because there are 99 times as many people in the bottom 99 is the top 1%. Among star founders, there are two and a half times as many from poor backgrounds as from the top 1%, only a quarter of business owners worth $5,000 or more inherited their companies. And they go through all these different examples of this. And the whole point of the article is, listen, you can complain about how bad

things are, or you can like bootstrap and try something. Now, obviously, how many people are actually going to win the lottery like these people? I get that pushback. But I love the tone of the article. I agree. I loved it too. Thank you, Walsh Journal for writing this. And also, this was a moment in time. The last, I don't know, 75 years of people being able to do this, that's in the past. because the next crop of 65 trillionaires, it's just inheritances. Not only, but it's... So in this piece, they talk about these guys who started Dave's Hot Chicken eight years ago and sold a business for a billion dollars.

They started it in a parking lot in Los Angeles with $900. You don't think AI is going to help people start businesses easier than in the past? Totally, without a doubt. You're right. It feels like a point in time, like in the 60s. you could start in the mailroom at Golden Sacks and work you're up to be a partner. I agree, that is, that is gone.

But I think AI is actually going to make it easier for people to start businesses that would have never started a business before. I agree, for sure. Fair pushback, though. All right. I think we've got to chill out with the college stuff. I feel like there's a lot of people on the corner now,

and it's usually like the intellectual elites who are saying the ROI for college just isn't there anymore. It doesn't make any sense. So there's a, story in the Wall Street Journal, Americans without college degrees are having one of the best job markets in years. And it's trying to, this, I don't know if you saw this chart. The chart is kind of doing a lot of work. So it's saying in 2026, workers age 22 to 34 with college degrees

face worse relative unemployment than peers with no college degrees. Now, that word relative is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Because that's relative to 2003. Okay? You're following me? Now look at this next, look at the next chart in the same article, share of population by employment status and age group, what group has by far the best employment prospects? No, no high school, high school diploma, or a college degree. Right. It's not even close. The college degree is still worth it. And look at this. This is from the BLS. Unemployment rates for people 25 years and older by educational attainment, and they have it by less than a high school diploma, high school graduates, some college and then bachelor's degree.

Now, this has certainly shrunk over the years, which I think is a great thing for people that have less education. But it's almost 5% for people who have less than high school diploma. And it's 2.7% for people about college degree. 2.7% unemployment is just the normal state of being. This narrative that we discussed at the top of the show of everything being taken too far, this is a great example of that. Because I think rightfully so, I don't know when people start.

started questioning college. I'm sure it's been, you know, it's been a while on that, but it really started to get loud. Hey, wait a minute. Are we sure that 19 year old should be making the most important financial decision of their life? Right. Are we sure that, uh, $200,000 is an appropriate price because the colleges took it too far. And they pushed and they pushed and they pushed until eventually became insane, totally unaffordable. Corruption, whatever, whatever, just, you know, insane. And over the years, we've gotten to the point where we are now, where it's like, we sure. that college even makes sense anymore as a construct? Yes.

Of course it does. Nguise, gray areas, you know, abound, but we're now at that point. The thing is, though, there's a lot of colleges that are totally screwed in the years ahead. And so my dad went to the small Aquinas College in Grand Prix, Michigan. What college? Aquinas, very tiny, I don't know, 1500. Say that word one more time. Aquinas, like Thomas Aquinas, like the, you know.

I don't know what that is. Is that a word or a name? Or a category. Have you ever heard of Thomas Aquinas before? Nope. Okay. Look it up. So it's a very tiny school, and he eventually was on the board of the school.

And it's funny because if I would have went there, I'd got like a 50% discount for being an alumni. And they see, they look at, this is pure demographics. People have talked about the fertility crisis coming. If you ask Claude or Chad GPT, number of 18-year-olds in the U.S. year and extend it out to like 30 years in the future. The number of 18 year olds falls off a cliff. So these colleges are looking at this going, we see this coming. The number of 18 year olds graduating in high school every single year goes down and down and down. And if you're not like a name brand college, you are screwed. So what this college did, I think my dad said like 50%

of the people who are there now play some sort of sport. So they just let everyone play. So they've had to try to do something to get more people to come. Hey, you can come be in the soccer team or the lacrosse team or the field hockey team, whatever it is. But a lot of these little smaller schools like that are absolutely screwed. And there's nothing they can do unless we just let in all types of foreign students, which seems to be the opposite way we're going. Right. There was a huge article about...

That's an actual crisis that you can see coming. There was a huge article in the journal that got a lot of attention about Syracuse, having like some sort of enrollment shortage, I think it was, is how they described it? Yes. Yes. I sent it to Chris. But I generally forget the narrative stuff. My opinion on this, and I'm extremely unqualified to have an opinion, although I did get kicked out of college twice, so I think I know what I'm talking about here. You also got enrolled twice, so it must have been on something right?

I was enrolled four times back. How did you get accepted? Okay. Here's my journey. Indiana, Kelly School of Business as an underground out to brag, pretty good. I did do well in my SATs, even though my GPA was... I still can't believe you ended up in the Midwest. That boggles my mind. It was the best school I got into. All right.

Indiana, NASA Community College, Indiana, Queens College. Enrolled four times. That's a good tour. Pretty good. Anyway. Can you say the American Dream is dead? The college stuff, the cost. Think about how much money you saved by going to community college, though, right?

That's the thing, though. A cheaper version, people who complain about the cost of college, a cheaper version does exist. You can go to community college for two years, pay basically nothing. get all of those stupid coursework out of the way, then go to bigger school. Okay. Yeah. But there's like,

as an 18-year-old. Of course. You don't want to do that. There's all sorts of social pressures and the parents stuff who don't. Listen, I don't want to send my kids to community college. What do you know?

I get it, but I'm saying if that's your one big thing is the cost, there are ways around it. People just don't want to do it. Yeah. All right. Here's one part about AI that I really don't like Ben. This is super annoying.

The questioning everything, aspect of it. You see a picture. You repost it. Somebody says, dude, that's fake. And you're like, oh, right? So you do that once or twice. And you're like, hey, wait a minute. I'm not getting fooled again. Ful me twice. Can't. Right? What's that line in Tennessee? Yes. So, uh, so I've been, I've been taking screenshots and asking Claude, which is really fucking annoying. I don't want to live in a world like that. But that's the world that we live in. So there was a trailer on Instagram for a movie called GatorFace. And I googled GatorFace trailer.

And sure enough, it's actually real. So that sounds like a movie you'll go, see. It's funny because, wait, wait, remember on this AI thing, when we were growing up when we'd play video games, you know when you beat a video game too much and all of a sudden the computer just goes on beast mode and kills you? Like, oh, a computer, you can't do that. It completed this pass or it killed this guy. or whatever. When we play video games now

on our Nintendo, my son wants to beat all the professional levels on the Nintendo sports. You know, you swing this stuff yourself. Wait, you can't, you can't, like, remember back the day in Madden and All-Pro,

you can't even gain two yards. Right. So by, so it's funny, they don't call it the computer anymore. They call it AI. Like, oh, the AI's beating us again. So for them, like AI is just everything now. Yeah.

So this movie, GatorFace, Ben, it seems to be that they've combined two of my favorite genres into one movie. It's a slasher or old school style, Ben, and there's also actually Alligators Eating People. What a mashup. I feel like this was made specifically for me. Okay. My son will watch this too. It's just Alligators Eating People.

There probably haven't been enough of those. Look at the thumbnail of the trailer. It's a woman with her head in between an alligator's draws. Say no more. I'm all the way in. Okay. I want to talk about, of course you are. I feel like every time I log on to social media and there's a new model that comes out,

people are like blown away. The people who know this stuff are blown away. Oh my gosh. It's solved this mathematically equation or whatever that AI can do these math problems. It's unbelievable. And I think of the Newman, the Newman model, the Newman thing from Jurassic Park. You got dots in here. Yeah, nobody cares.

And looking through the jobless claims, continuing claims, continue to go down, the Atlantic had this piece about, or the New York had a piece about, like, why has the job apocalypse not happen? Now, people keep it, well, just wait, just wait, just wait, fine. And Sam Alman said, the economy has so much inertia. I've been trying to think through, like, why has everyone been so wrong about this so far? Like, why has the labor market has not been impacted at all? at all.

So you mentioned Ben Thompson earlier. He talked about this book called Getting Things Done, which is Productivity Thing. He wrote a whole piece about this on Strecatory Today. And he talked about how, no matter how many, and he talked about all the systems he's building to help his, like, assistance out and make his life easier. And you hear all these tech people talking about this. I have this system, and it checks this and it does this. He said, no matter how many systems you build, you still have to act.

It's not enough to have systems to do things. You have to actually do the things. Writing things down is unbelievably powerful. And he's saying AI really is really good at writing things down. Its power will always pale in comparison to getting things done. So AI increases everyone's capabilities if they want to use the systems, but not necessarily motivation. So I think his point was like you can, AI can really help you get stuff done, but you also still have to determine what should get done and what needs to get done. And so AI is never going to help motivate you.

So, like, you could have all these tools. Think about how many people in the public sphere that we talk about that don't use AI at all. There's all these tools they could be using to make their life easier. And no one really does it. Ben, you're so right. AI is not going to do this on its own. Is it? Can't believe you still have it.

But is it as simple as that where, yes, we have these tools and the people that use them can make their life so much better. But most people are just going to go, eh, I don't know. Or to your point about the reservations earlier, if everyone has the ability to say, my AI agent, hey, make a reservation at the greatest best restaurant in the town, if everyone's AI agents are doing that, who's going to get it first?

How do you have? Yeah, I saw a take that made me want to puke. And this is the type of moment that I think all of us normal human beings are like, stop the train, I want to get off now. I don't like this. Somebody's like, this is a take. Why should reservations be free?

Shouldn't there be a marketplace for reservations? Why a reservation for Saturday at 7.30 is obviously worth more than a Monday reservation at 515. Could we just calm down with the capitalism? So this is like paying for the IMEX movie tickets higher. But this is what's going to happen, though. So if everyone has the ability to say, hey, AI agent, go book me that trip somewhere, go book me the restaurant reservation. If everyone can do that and have the AI agents do it for them and wait forever to do it,

This is to be careful what you wish for a moment. But this is what's going to happen. Guess what happens? The people with the most money are going to get it. Awesome. That's where we're heading, right? Horrible. Or you pay someone to wait and, or they're going to say, fine.

It's going to be a physical line. Oh, my God. And you're going to pay someone to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Gross. That's where we're heading. Fun times.

All right. So there was this op-ed in the New York Times few weeks ago. talking about how older Americans are hoarding America's potential. And it talked about how the, I know you hate these stories. I hate this. I hate them. But I thought that, so it talked about how they, baby boomers have so much wealth and they're holding things back by like not selling their houses and all this stuff. And then Boston College did a follow-up piece that I thought was a good context for this.

Mr. Moyne is the author, the guy that wrote this, of the forthcoming gerentocracy in America. I'm sorry. What? Is that a made-up word? Well, old age. Oh, is that what that gerontagic? I hate it. I hate all this.

I hate the negativity. So Boston College said, our older Americans actually spoiling the economy for everyone else. Like, let's look at this. So they say it's true that one third of owner-occupied homes

are owned by people age of 65 and over, even though they represent just one-sixth of the population. You're right? I have this. Just kill them. I have the solution. Get rid of them.

He shows this, this is really good, though. So they look at, they separate that group 65 and older into 20% what do you call them quintiles. And they look and they show median home equity versus median financial wealth. And for all but the top 20%, home equity basically is the entire wealth for that. For the bottom 80%, home equity is almost the entire net worth. It's only the top 20% that home equity makes up a smaller share and they don't, So the point is, for most Americans, 80% of people with 65 and older, the home is their financial asset. That's it.

That's the wealth. All right. Here's a problem, Ben. We're not letting them pat that wealth because they're staying in their houses too long. So new rule, there is a 25-year limit on how long you can stay in a house. And after that, sorry, old people, you got to go. What do you think? He was saying, like, what is the alternative besides like a reverse mortgage?

or like these people are going to need that wealth at some point. Or after 25 years, your mortgage goes back to zero. It just resets. It starts all over. You think you're at the end. You paid off your mortgage? Nope. So his point was there really is no good solution to this.

These people need the money somehow, but what is it a reverse mortgage? Like, what else could they do to tap this money? I'm sure those companies exist. Like reverse mortgages were a problem back in the day, but I'm sure they've gotten better. I want to say, I'm sure. I'm not sure. There are options, but it's just saying that you can't just say, oh, these people should just sell their homes and move on. Like, that's not a solution for a lot of people.

See, I actually stood up for the boomers for once. Well done. Maybe it's because everyone called me a boomer a few weeks ago. All right. Speaking of boomer, what's with that mustache? Come clean. You did it for me? I love you just the way you are.

No, I didn't do it. I kept it for you. I kept it longer. So I think, so I've always been a very big fan of theme parties. I think it runs in the family. Get out of it. here. I never would have guessed that. Oh, I'm an introverted person. So the, like, the permission to be extroverted is, I love it. So in college, we used to have theme parties all the time, you know,

the stupid toga parties and dress up. And so, I hate him. Oh, I love a good, I love a theme. But I think my mom, when they were growing up, they had, when she was in high school, they had a, they brought a, they moved to a different town and they bought a house with a pool. And every Sunday, my grandfather would have a huge party. And they would have, I see all these pictures. They would have these toga parties. And they'd always dress up and. And they'd always dress up and theme parties. All right, so you went to a porn star theme party? A vintage porn star theme party? So at our pool slash boat club that we belong to, it's been there since 1903. It's been there forever, over 100 years. So for the last 100 years, I don't know how this tradition started.

So it's open Memorial Day to Labor Day. Labor Day is the end, right? They have one big final. And so you go swimming there, you can dock your boat and they have a little place you can order food and drinks. And then on the weekends, they have social gatherings. And it's It's right on the water. And the Labor Day party, the last party of the year is always called the Pirates Ball. And everyone who comes, they have 200 tickets and every year it sells out. And everyone has to dress up as a pirate. And so I said, I could draw a mustache on, but instead I'm going to go on.

I'm going to grow it out. Okay? So I grew out my Pirates Ball Must, and I said, this year we have to have a theme. So we did Peter Pan. And so my little daughter, Kate, who is the princess, dressed up as Tinkerbell. Adorable. So, yeah. So, but my wife and daughter, so my two youngest love this theme.

Like, they're like, it's funny. You go around, everyone is drinking beer and, like, adults are wearing pirate costumes. Kids are wearing, you know, teenagers. Everyone is dressed up as a pirate. It looks, it's so ridiculous. But that's what makes it fun because it's so ridiculous. So my daughter and wife have a visceral reaction to this mustache. They absolutely hate it.

Like, why couldn't you just draw on? Why couldn't use a fake mustache like everyone else? And I said, no, I got to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. And I said, you know what? I got to, they said, fine, shave it off. The party's over.

And I said, I have to say this for Michael. I love it. This is good content. I got to show it. Then I'll shave it off tonight. And you know what? Your mustache grows in very thick. I'm extremely jealous.

So I don't really grow facial hair. It was kind of annoying. My brother has a big beard. I don't know what happened. At a bachelor party, one back in the day, we went to Austin, and I decided to grow up my mustache. Didn't work very well. Because I also have, like, light hair. So I dyed it jet black with Just for Men.

And it looked. I don't think I have pictures of it somehow, but looked ridiculous. I can't do it. You can, credit it to you. It's kind of uncomfortable. Yeah, I'm not going to half ass it for the theme parties. It was very fun, too. I liked it.

All right. Oh, you mentioned your favorite 80s movies last week, and a bunch of people sent us theirs in and said, hey, you forgot this, you made this, but I thought you had a pretty good list. Well, I didn't forget anything. It's my list. Yes. But just like, hey, you miss this. So someone sent in and said, this is the biggest travesty of, of Rotten. Tomatoes, Rocky has a 38% from the critics. And so I'm not a, I'm not a Rotten Tomatoes guy. I've

always said this before. I'm an IMDB guy. I look at the IMDB ranking out of 10. That's how I make my judgments. I don't look, I don't, I don't like the tomato meter or whatever. Like the movie, the critics and the audience, it's like East versus West. But then you, you click on the reviews to see who these people are. And it's like this dude with a podcast with five people who listen to him who retroactively went back and gave Rocky a rating because they didn't like it. All right. Is this not the greatest? I didn't even look at this until just now.

Description of a movie ever. Heavyweight champion Rocky Balboa trains in Siberia for a match against the Soviet fighter who killed Apollo Creed in front of a ferocious Russian crowd. He fights for one final showdown. It's amazing. The montage is in that movie? It's the best. It really is.

All right, this is a true story. I swear to God. You know, Ben, that I am not in shape, right? I do know that. Okay. Because you talk about it. Like, at all, at all, not even close. We did the J.P. Morgan run.

It's like a, it's a 5K. That's right. You and Josh had a big thing over who would finish first. Okay. I put on the Rocky Force soundtrack, and I ran for three straight miles. So the first, like, mile I was, like, jogging pretty slowly. I ran three straight miles and I averaged like nine minutes a mile for the three and a half miles. And I haven't even ran a mile in 20 years.

That's how... This is for the 5K or this is you just did this? No, the 5K. Okay. That's how jacked up that soundtrack gets me and every other little boy that watched that in their childhood. It is kind of amazing how it gave me like superpowers. That's a good idea. That's a, yeah, it's an amazing soundtrack, too.

Two worlds collide, rival nations. Let's go. All right. All right. So this happened over the weekend. At the Telleride Film Festival, the world saw a three-hour long documentary from A-24 by Nathan Felder and a documentarian called Lance Oppenheim. Did you see the trailer for this? Oh, yeah.

All right. 34 days before this from the New York Times, 34 days before Elizabeth Holmes, the founder, the founder, the founder of the medical testing company Theranos reported to prison to begin her 11-year sentence for defrauding investors. She invited a camera crew into her rented home in Southern California in an effort to clear her name. Yet the two people she chose to chronicle her life were Nathan Fielder and the other guy. I forget what it's called, but you can see everything. It's a three-hour documentary that I will go to the theaters for.

And I think a lot of other people will, too. I've never seen a documentary in theaters, have you? No way. You're going to go to the theater to see this? 100%. So here's my problem with Nathan Fielder. I've watched a lot of his HBO shows. I know people love this guy.

It's not for me. The problem with his stuff is he tries to make it feel like this could be real or this could be fake, but we're going to make you think that it's real. And at my point, I check out. I'm like, fine. Just tell me if it's real, tell me if it's real. If you're trying to make me think something is real,

but it's really fake, that's a part of his that I don't like. It's so absurd. It's like, oh, but it could be real. But so this is the very confusing part. This is real life. Yes. I don't, I, it looks obviously crazy. Aren't you intrigued?

I'm intrigued. I don't like the tour of these bad people who try to fix their reputation, though. I think to me, she's just a con artist in Charlotton like all the other ones. This is, I don't think this is, this is not that. She's not going to fix a reputation. Well, of course. It looks to me like she's going to come off even crazier. People are going to find me.

realize how nuts she is. All right, we got an email. I was hoping you guys could elaborate a little since you are both Allen Wrench guys who assemble your own stuff. I believe there are two types of people. The kind to you throw out the one that comes with furniture and the kind to have a drawer full stuffed with dozens of them in the garage. Which do you both fall into?

I mean, when I get a new one, I totally have the drawer because I go through and find the one I used that I liked before and use it again. I have a million al-a- You have a go-to Allen Wrench. Oh, yeah. Because sometimes the angles are so hard Because you have to like turn it a little And turn it a little and go back, you know So you want the one that has the thing

That you can just keep rotating So I am somewhere in between I've kept a lot of the things But I've never reused them so From now on they just they go in the trash Yeah If I find a good Alan wrench I remember that where that bad boy is

Okay I got one more lake story for you So I thought about the You know how people always say the social media Is like people just putting their fake lives out I didn't do a lot of social media posts, but I did this one. My son loves fishing. I talked about this last year, I think. We went on a fishing charter for salmon in Lake Michigan.

It's pretty cool. In August, that's when they come up and you can get these huge salmon. And we were going to go, and we kept getting rained out. And my brother-in-law was going to come. He's a big fisherman. My father-in-law was going to come. He loves fish. I don't like the fish.

I'm there for the kids. So we got up at 4.45 in the morning to go fishing. And there was a huge lightning storm, so we got pushed back. So we didn't go to the afternoon. So my kids have been up all day. And I'm like, let's go from four to nine. That's what the fishing captain told us. And it's just me and my two twins are nine years old.

And we go out and we throw the lines in and we immediately catch a fish. And we reel it in and it's really heavy. And it's like, this is going to be amazing. It's easy. And then two hours go by, not even a bite. Nothing. We're on these waves. They're rocking and rolling.

And my daughter is laying on my lap and she's like, I'm starting to get sick. I'm getting nauseous. We already went through all the snacks an hour ago. You know, I bought a cooler of snacks. It was awful. My son, of course, loved it. He's spraying off the deck with the guys. He's learning about fishing.

He's, you know, walking around the boat, checking all the... George is a man's man. He sounds like a great hang. He really... Actually, he is a great hang. I did hang with him. He's more of an outdoor. Like, he would work on this fishing boat if he could.

The guy said, like, hey, you should come work for us. And he's like, Dad, do you think they're serious? And then at the very end, the sun is setting, and all of a sudden, because they put 10 poles out. You just kind of idle along. And the boat's moving so that it hooks the fish and you reel them in for like 20 minutes. And at the very end, every single pole finally catches. And we reel them all in and we get this huge hall.

But I was thinking, I put this great picture of like all our fish in the sunset. But that has nothing to do with the two hours where I thought I was going to, I was ready to kill myself. I thought you were going to say that people thought this was AI. That's real. So these fish are gigantic. Did you eat them? We have, they filet them for you. We haven't eaten yet, but we're going to.

So we had way more meat than we needed to, like we gave them some away. But they filet it for you and put it in a bag. and you put in your cooler and take it off. So yeah, we shall see. But those are all like king salmon, huge in Lake Michigan. Kind of crazy. Giant fish. All right.

What did we get into this week? Recommendations. Okay, I don't know that anyone still watches Apple TV because I feel like they don't market it or something. But the show is Silo. I started watching. It's on the third season. I'm sure I've mentioned it before.

I think it was a series of books that people really love the books. And the first season is kind of interesting. It's like, why are there these people living in a silo underground? What happened? Was it a nuclear bomb, a chemical attack? What is the reason? They have all these weird rules. And so it was kind of intriguing.

And then the second season happened, and it was super duper boring. I'm like, what is the payoff here? They're not giving us anything. It sounds like lost. And then the third season happens, and the payoff was totally worth it. Like, the second half of third season was amazing. It was like two, they finally broke it up into two shows. Like, here's the silo, and here's how they got into the silo.

And the payoff of what happened was really, really, really good. And I don't know if anyone even watched this show still. It was a very slow burn. It's funny you mention that about the Apple TV thing because Chris said, uh, uh, text me, Dark Matter is back. I'm like, I don't, I don't think I, I don't know what that is. I don't think I saw that show. And I looked it up. I'm like, oh yeah, I really enjoyed that show. Yeah, it was good. I read the book. Was, what, Joel Edgerton, is that Jennifer Connolly? Am I thinking of somebody else? Yes. Okay. I enjoyed the show of the first, uh, first season. I remember what was two years ago

But these things on Apple It's just weird They sort of come and going They had a new Ryan Reynolds movie This weekend Came out of nowhere Also finished Furious They didn't really land the plane

But I thought it was a good show The finale wasn't I felt like they didn't They didn't land the plane very good But it was I really like that show On Hulu I got one for you Since you're a Hollywood

Stories guy The Rob Lowbook is fantastic Oh yeah It's so good He talks about how he grew up Down the street From Martin Sheen So he hung out with Charlie Sheen in Emilio Estevez when he was a teenager.

Robert Downey Jr. was in his high school. He knew Tom Cruise from the outsiders. It feels like name dropping in a lot of ways, but in the best possible way. Great, great Hollywood stories. It's totally worth a listen. I will listen. Finally, I watched Backrooms because I know it got kind of lumped into the obsession. Like, hey, these young filmmakers, and I know it started on, I know there was this thing on,

it started as a YouTube show, I guess. I'm sure you watch this movie. Of course. I'm on Twitter. Yeah. See, I love the obsession. I don't get the point of this movie. I don't understand it at all.

It didn't make any sense to me. Did you enjoy it at all or you just hated it? I thought it was very intriguing. The first like 45 minutes is like, okay, it kind of like was like weapons to me. It's like, wow, this is a very intriguing idea. I wonder where they're going with this. And to me, the payoff wasn't, I was like, oh, okay.

I don't see the point of that. Yeah. I didn't do it for me. I didn't necessarily love the payoff either, but I just loved that it happened. Like, I had a good time in the theater. I had no idea where it was going. I thought the opening scene,

the opening scene scared me. Do you remember the opening scene? They're just walking through. I could tell within the first five minutes, like, I'm not going to like this movie. It's, it's not for you. Well, but I tried it. All right, our friend Sam Rowe,

I saw him tweet about the Paul Giamati episode from Black Mirror. Are you a Black Mirror guy? I watched the first season. I haven't really watched it since. There's a lot of, there's a lot of gems in there. And I miss this one from last, you know what? You would love this episode.

Okay. It's 35 minutes long. It's Paul Giamati. Somebody knocks on his door. I can remember those setup. But it's like, whatever. It's, uh, somebody died and he has to get involved with the, the funeral somehow. And it's, uh, it's like a visceral, sad, flashbacky type of episode that only Paul

Giumadi could have done. He is unbelievable. You know my problem with my problem with Black Mirror though, like it's like reading a short story. I need, I feel like I need more. I know it's, and that it's very intelligent. Like some of the ideas that they have in it are really cool, but I can't just have a one episode. Watch this episode. It's 35 minutes. All right. I'm telling you you're going to love it. Okay. All right. This is interesting, Ben. You know I have that like fire, the Amazon, is it an echo? I don't know what it's called, but it's on my kitchen. It's on my, like my island in my kitchen. It's like a mini TV, right? Yeah. So it's probably, I don't know, 15 to 20 inches wide. We don't have a TV in my kitchen, but we have this thing instead.

And so it's where we listen to music, the kids watch whatever they're watching in the morning. And I love it because it cycles through my old photos. Oh yeah. And it'll show like my kids in 2018 versus my kids today. And I just love, love, love that aspect of it. That every single day, I see a photo that makes me happy. And there's also advertising in it because, of course, it's Amazon, right? So for whatever reason, Ben, this movie, Bad Lieutenant kept getting flashed on my screen, like for a long, long time. And I just thought it was very strange.

And it is very strange. Is that a Nicholas Cage movie? It's about to get weirder when I tell you what this movie is. Okay. So I knew nothing about this movie. I'm laying in bed one night last week. and I see it that I could watch it. It's with Harvey Keitel and it's rated NC17.

Okay. This movie was from 1992 and I'm guessing was incredibly controversial at the time. I've never been heard of it. Harvey Keitel plays a corrupt, psychotic, deranged policeman. And there is a full frontal to end all full frontals. unbelievable, Ben. When I read your description of this in the dock, I thought you were going to say that when your pictures cycle through,

there was a full frontal picture that came up. That was actually a scene in the movie. So this is genuinely one of the most inappropriate. I don't know what I was just sick. Sick is the word. One of the sickest movies I've ever seen, and I can't believe that Amazon was advertising that on my screen next to my dog slash baby photos.

It knows how deranged your movie taste is. I think you're 100% right. It says a lot about me and less maybe about Amazon. Not a recommendation at all, but I'm sure there's some listeners that have seen this movie back in the day and just, holy shit,

holy shit, Ben. Yeah, you could skip that one. Lastly, I finally finished Friends and Neighbor season two. It took me six months to get through it. I'm running out of time, Ben. Like, the gentleman came back on Netflix. I'm not going to have time to watch. It's not because my kids are going to sleep later and later these days.

So Kobe goes down at 920 and then I'm straight into bed. I can't stay up. So I'm in bed at 940. I put something out. I sleep in five minutes. So my TV viewing is going to take a hit, which is fine. That's the way it goes. But anyway, but I really enjoyed season two.

Pretty good, right? I really liked it. For as insane and over the top and nonsensical as it is, I think there's a lot of humanity there, which is incredible, considering how big a piece of shit most of these people are. Yes. The storylines get a little over the top, but still, like, somehow they bring it back to the- The funeral episode that you mentioned. It looked really good, right?

Fantastic. It was just real shit. So I really enjoyed that a lot more than I thought I was going to. All right. Next week, we will be in California talking to an audience about how to talk to our clients about Ray Dalio. Excited for that. Excited to see everybody.

Best event. Next week's show will be a little late. I'm guessing late Wednesday, early Thursday, probably. So we're probably a day behind for next week because of when we're recording. And if you're at Future Proof comes to high, there'll be 5,600 other people there, is. I can't wait.

My favorite part of Future Proof is that very first cocktail hour. And you and Josh and I walk down those stairs and you look out and you just see people as far as the eye can see shoulder to shoulder. And you have the sunset in the background of the beach. That to me is like my favorite. like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. I love it every year. That's my favorite theme party.

Right. There you go. Yeah. All right. All right. Animal Spirits at thecompannews. As always, you send personal emails, you get personal responses. Thank you for listening.

We'll see you next time.