Animal Spirits Podcast - The Next Michael Burry (EP. 480)

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

On episode 480, ⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠ discuss: the AI debt binge, no recessions for the rest of the 2020s, Kevin Warsh thoughts on the economy, the dead cat bounce in software stocks, bull market M&A deals, no one cares about dividends anymore, rising yields are a good thing, AI civilizations, Gen Z will be buying houses, Tom Cruise remakes and more. This episode is sponsored by YCharts and Vanguard. To learn more about YCharts Future Proof session and get 20% off your initial YCharts Professional subscription, visit https://go.ycharts.com/future-proof-2026 (new customers only). Learn more about Vanguard bonds at https://vanguard.com/audio. 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/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's show is sponsored by Y Charts. Future Proof is on the horizon, and Y Charts is taking the stage during the event to talk about one of the trickiest parts of advisor's day, communicating investment strategy. On September 16th, 12.30 p.m., that's West Coast time. On the show and tell stage, Y Charts will present the psychology of persuasion and client meetings, taking a deep dive into how the right visuals, build client confidence, and keep conversations moving forward. After the session, stop by their booth to see up close how Ycharts simplifies every stage of the client relationship from risk alignment, and proposals to tough questions that come up mid-meeting. Click the link in the show and I'll still learn more about the recession and get 20% off your initial Y-chart's professional subscription,

new customers only. Today's show is brought to you by Vanguard. To all the financial advisors listening, let's talk bonds for a minute. Capturing value in fixed income is not easy. Bond markets are massive, murking, and let's be real. Lots of firms throw a couple of flashy funds your way and call it a day, but not Vanguard.

The bond market is complex, and it's not something one person or a small team can realistically keep up with. Vanguard's been in the game for a long time, and their scale gives them a serious edge. They're able to invest across all kinds of sectors, maturities, and geographies, which means they can spot and act in opportunities that others might miss. So if you're looking to give your client's consistent results year in and year out, go see the record for yourself at vanguard.com. That's vanguard.com slash audio. All investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. It is Tuesday, September 1st.

That means back to school. Come on, say it. What's that? You know you want to say it. Summer went so fast. Summer went so fast. No, no, no, no. I do that spiel in the first week of August.

Okay. But this is a good season. Great season. All right. Football is back. Football's coming. What? What?

Say what you're going to say? You say this every year? Okay. That's okay. to sign of middle age. Every year I like gets better and better. That's true. Football's coming back.

Could be the Giants year. We might win six games, maybe seven. Who knows? Now with that hat. It's, I like this hat. Okay. It's a type of,

it's a time of the year where you start to get it to fantasy football emails with Ben, you're not a fantasy football guy. I know this, right? Of course not. No. And I want to give a shout out to all the thanks, commish people.

I know, again, you don't know this. but I think maybe some, maybe there's two people in the audience laughing. I've literally never signed up for a fantasy football team in my life. I'm pretty proud of that fact. That's not a badge of honor. I don't think.

That's pretty lame. It's very lame. It's delusorous behavior, no offense. Have you ever talked to one person who's happy about playing fantasy football? Everyone who plays fantasy football is miserable about it. I mean, we're past that stage in our lives, but you never did it? No, just like I never signed up on Facebook. All right.

Badge of honor. Enough of this. we, before we get to the show, we have a, we have a listener survey. We want to hear from you or we want to hear about you. I don't think we've done this in, I don't know. It's been years. We know nothing about our audience, the demographics of our audience. Who are you people?

We hear from you. We love the emails, but we want to know. So if you don't mind, take a second, link in show notes. If you can't find this, email us. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Just for all the great recommendations we've given over the years, it's totally worth it.

Send the back. Yeah. All right. This was on the cover story for Barron's, Ben. Is the AI CapEx bubble about to burst? What 250 years of market history tells us. This is the story, Ben, and this is the story that is going to be with us for the duration. I think sometimes we talk about the market as if there's like passing themes and passing fads.

And of course, there's lots of that. But this is one of them that's, I think. think like we'll ebb and flow, right, over the years. It's not just going to, we're not going to be, we were going to get sick of talking about this. I mean, I'm thinking I'm already getting there. But this is the big one. It's not going away. So in the New York Times, they also had a story. This is how the AI debt binge sinks the economy. Okay. Yep. So this, this is going to be the thing. And someone wants to be the person who calls it. Like, people saw what happened from the big short. I want to be the next Michael Burry. I want to be the next Steve Eisenman. You have to plan your,

someone has to plant their flag to, like, be the person who says, hey, I called how it was going to happen. It's, I give people credit for trying, but it's, I think it's just going to be really hard to do. Did you listen to our TKF episode? Yeah, he wants to be the next Michael Burry, right? Yeah, he's, he's planting his flag hard. That guy, Ed Zittron. New to me, but he came in like a tornado.

Very bearish. He's been bearish since the start. But he's got all the hallmarks of that. wanting to be that. It's like, I'll move the goalposts across the field of a half to, right? So that's how it happens. And you're right. In five years from now, are we still talking about this? Well, here's a quote from Ben Wrights from that article in Barron's. I think we're going to just keep going. This will be bigger than anybody thinks for longer than anybody thinks. I could, to use a Ben Carlsonism, I could see that. You called me out of now.

I was in New York. That's true. Here's the thing. We talked about this with the economy probably five years ago. We had this conversation where he said, what if the economy just keeps growing for the rest of this decade? And honestly, unless AI does it, we're not going to have a recession the rest of this decade. Like in high, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. If AI doesn't sink us, it's a higher probability event that we don't have a recession the rest of this decade than we do. Is that fair? Maybe, sure, perhaps. We don't have recessions anymore.

Like, unless something comes, unless a meteor strikes or AI, the AI CAPEX story completely falls out of bed, we're not going to have a recession this decade. We're just not. That sounds really, really like a dumb thing to say. But I think with those caveats, it's true. My brain just short circuit for a second. I remember what I was going to say. When did Galloway write that book, The Big Four, or the Four Horseman or whatever it was called? It's 2017.

Okay. What was the, the original Mag 7 was called what? Fang stocks, remember? Fang stocks. There we go. Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. And they added another A-to-add Apple. So it was Fang.

And then Microsoft and Tesla got in there. All right, so anyway, but the point is, Fang came along. I think Kramer quoted it coined that actually. in 2016, 17, maybe 18, I don't remember, but it's been seven or eight years of nonstop talking about the same group of stocks. Oh, 10 years almost, yes. So I do think this is the thing, though, that could. So Robin Wigglesworth wrote this one for the New York Times.

He's got a great bond book that just came out. They got an early copy of. Wait, did he move to the Times? No, he wrote an op-ed. So he says, AI companies tapped debt for $217 billion last year, okay? By mid-August, it's already close to $450 billion. It's going to be about $600 billion for 20206. That's more than the combined budgets for the Department of Justice,

Transportation, and Education. Like trying to put these things into context. Okay? Future capital expenditures plan to account for roughly 3% of GDP from 2027 to 20209. Back of the envelope calculations suggest that it's almost a trillion dollars a year. So we've never seen anything like this, and it's kind of funny. because people think with numbers that big that it has to end in a crash.

But this is my thing. If they keep spending this much money, there's no way the economy is going to stop and slow down. Well, the bears would say, jackass, of course they're going to slow down. This is unsustainable. They can't keep spending this much money. And?

Right. Well, we shall see. Down the hall to the right, right, before the door's here. Yep. That did not sound like a New York accent. I work in a shared office complex and people are always poking their head in. Hey, do you know where this office is?

Why are they asking you? Do you look like the guy? You don't think. He asked me where the bathroom is. I get asked people come into my office all the time. I should put it to sign up. You just got one of those phrases. You look friendly.

I guess. New back, background? I like it. Shelf? Did you do that yourself? I got new bookshelves. You know what? I'm a man of the people.

I still use an Allen Wrench to put together furniture. I feel like you're saying that as if I am not Mr. Allen Wrench. Don't come to me with that. You literally got one of our colleagues to hang up your... That's different. That requires, that requires their skill in hanging photos. You will put together furniture? All the time.

All right. Every day. All right. For course and slot. So here's the thing. I do feel like almost everyone thinks that the AI has, the ending has to be black or white. It has to be something on the extreme. Like, we're getting 10% GDP growth with all the productivity, or we're getting the biggest

crash in history. Wait, you know what? Let's plant our flag, Ben. We're team middle. We're team middle, right? We're team gray. So it's interesting because Torsten Slack had this new slide out that he released, and he says, if AI succeeds, rates will be lower.

If AI fails, rates will be lower. So he's one of the few people who's saying, like, he's kind of bullish on bonds. So he says, listen, if it generates all this money, it'll be. massively deflationary, which I still don't quite believe because of all the money they have to spend for these data centers. And if it doesn't work out, the bubble burst, the NASDAQ is down 50%, and then people go into bonds. So he's saying regardless, bonds are in a great position. I just I don't know that it has to be one of the extremes. And I think that's just what people kind of want to happen secretly. Like we want to have this big bang, like this ending crescendo,

whatever. And you just wonder, like, what if it just isn't that? and it's not going to be an extreme. Is this like an always feature of the stock market? It's just like waiting for the next chapter. I just don't know if we've been trained because of the dot-com bubble blowing up and because of the great financial crisis. We had Twin Peaks and that scarred a generation of investors. Understandably so, of course.

I just, I wonder if even if we get the AI bear market, there will be an AI bear market at some point. Is it going to be a V-shaped bottom? Of course. That's the thing. that would leave no one, that you wouldn't be very satisfied with that outcome

if you're an extreme person. I say, of course, just kidding. Who knows? All right. So Kevin Warsh did, they did the Jackson whole thing

this week and I read his prepared remarks and I liked it. I thought it was good. Did you? I don't know. It seemed like the macro tourists were all happy that if he actually like gave some forecasts

and talked about the economy, I don't know. I still don't think it matters. You don't think what matters? He could have spoken in Latin and it wouldn't have mattered to the market. I just, I don't think the Fed giving a forecast of the future is meaningful in any way. Well, he's not doing that. He's doing the opposite. All right. So, Ben, just let me read Kevin Warsh,

because obviously you're naive to the subject. You don't care and you're not listening. So let me, let me read it. Capital and labor have combined to create the large language models at the heart of AI. Users buy tokens to gain access to the models. Reports put at annualized token sales for the two leading labs alone at more than $100 billion, an increase of 500 plus percent from a year ago, the Fed watches all of this attentively. We recognize that AI is a new variable, potentially a new factor of production that will have consequences for both the economy and the conduct of monetary policy. It opens a major lines of inquiry.

Will the application of AI causes significant sustained rise in productivity across the economy? And if so, when? I'm falling asleep. He looks, sounds like he used AI to write this. He's not saying anything new here that no one knows. Yeah, listen, I'm not Mr. Fed watcher. but I feel like you think you're like dropping a mic or something right now. I'm not dropping a mic.

I'm just saying what did he say here that no one is already are not contemplating? It's interesting to hear the head of the central bank talking about the state of the economy as AI as it pertains to, no, okay. You know it's just as much as we do, though. Okay, what else do you want to hear?

What else did Worf say that's interesting to you? Sorry to poo this, but I think it's worth poo-pooing. Well, I have some of Worsh's stuff sprinkled throughout the doc, which I feel like I should just delete now, if this is how you're going to behave, Ben. Here's what else I thought he said. That was interesting. Bear with me.

Wait, he used the word heterogeneity. That's pretty good. Tell me, tell me, tell me if you like this, Ben. I wish our understanding of the economy were so precise as to provide a mechanical, tried and true answer that some simple function like a Taylor rule could be rigorously relied upon. But our knowledge just doesn't extend

far, at least not yet. And the factors most relevant to the proper conduct of monetary policy change over time. Providing forecast to illustrate the Fed's reaction function works better in theory than in practice, better in the lab than in the field. I'm not alone in noticing that forward guidance in 2021 to cite one example might well have slowed the policy response to high inflation. in my term as chairman, my colleagues and I will endeavor to construct more reliable models and more robust rules to guide policy decision. We'll do this knowing that accuracy and economic forecasting is still just an aspiration. Okay, that's actually pretty good.

Not bad. I mean, that sounds like Ben Carlson wrote it. Yeah, that's fair. I like it. Duncan says you have an Allen wrench broker, by the way. That's pretty good. That is pretty good. Wait, so a couple weeks ago, I can't remember what we were talking about, but you said,

listen, we talk about something that gets disrupted or something that crashes or something that a risk that's bad. We talk about it and we look at every single angle and then we move on and never talk about it again. And I feel like this has happened with software stocks. Software stocks got destroyed. They fell, what, 35% as a group, IGV, the ETF? Yeah, individual name fell a lot more than that. Yeah, 50, 60%. You were, I remember you were dipping your toe for a while at maybe Salesforce or some of these stocks. Yeah, I think I probably broke even. Okay. So these stocks have almost round-tripped. IGV is almost back to an all-time highs. I think it's 40% off the lows. And if you look at this, this is a V-shaped bottom for software stocks. No, it's not. You don't think so? This doesn't look like a V to you? No. Maybe a W? Maybe a W? No. This is an interesting chart. But no, it crashed, rebounded, fell hard again. But I guess the, the, look at service now in Workday and Salesforce and Adobe and, and, um, duo lingo and figma, those were not V-shaped bottoms at all.

But this was almost 40% off the highs, IGV, the group. I'm talking about software as a group. It's now less than 7% from the highs. We don't need to argue over the letters, but the recovery was astounding. Yeah, I just, it's these stock, listen, software is dead forever. This is what people were saying. And now they came roaring back already.

This is what happened. This is what's going to happen with AI. There's so much back and forth. And I think there's going to be, this is the overreaction function that we're going to be seeing. Companies are going to lay off a bunch of employees and go, oh, crap, why did we do that? Like, this is how AI is going to be for the next 10 years. That, oh, no, we, you know, or, oh, no, we way overhired people. We have to downs it.

Like, there's going to be a lot of that back and forth. Yeah, it's really hard to invest actively through mega disruption. It is. I know it is, right. Picking the winners and picking the losers because look at how quickly. this changed. Yeah. And this in particular, I said I wasn't going to nitpick over the letters, but I'm just going to dive back in for a second. If you were trading this and I was, this is brutal. So a slow fall, then a crash, a little rebound, back to new lows, a monster run from,

let's use the ETF, for example, IGV, from 75 to a buck off five, so a 30% rally or more in a couple of weeks. and then another quick crash before rebounding to new highs or new recent highs. It kind of looks like, remember when Adam Stanley tries to draw a cursive Z in Billy Madison?

It looks like that. Because he doesn't know how to do the cursive Z, which I... Great Paul. I mean, BB gun to my head. Could I draw a cursive lowercase Z right now if I had to?

Not a chance at how. Probably not. I'm thinking, yeah, no. Maybe one of the most useless things I ever learned how to do is writing cursive. But you could also make the case, this is why this is so hard, this could be a dead cat bounce easily.

Well, I think you sell the stock. Like, you could say, okay, in five years, like that was a dead cat bounce. What were people thinking? But the truth is we, and this is a very unsatisfying. The stuff that we're saying today is very unsatisfying people. Like, oh, you don't know how it's going to play out. But that's the thing no one does. Well, this is why, especially in like the world of attention seeking, which is the world

that everybody is in these days, somebody like Ed Zinn. Ditron, who I never heard of until I saw him on the calendar, can go from zero to 100. Because people seek certainty. And when you speak with confidence and you speak fast and you speak with numbers and you cite sources, you build an audience. So, Taleb had this quote that he stole, I guess the Roman army had this thing where they say, action removes fear. Like, that was their, like, their.

And so that's the thing. If you grab hold of the steering wheel and you think, I'm going to do this because I think I know what's going to happen or that person knows what's going to happen. It makes you feel safer and more comfortable. Well, you telling people, you have no idea how any of this works or any of this plays out. It's like, all right, so I guess I'll just listen to somebody else. Thanks, asshole. Right.

I don't know either. But the thing is, I think you still have to have a baseline, right? This is the baseline that I think will happen. I think this is the most probable outcome. And I have these two tails over here that could also happen. I think credit to me, my baseline changes every week. That's true. Yes.

But I think you have to have a baseline. All right. Last week, my knee-jerk reaction to the Druckin-Miller using AI was, who cares? Now, I understand why some people view writing as sacred and holy. I really, I understand that point of view. Druck and Miller immediately was like, you, of course I used AI. I'm not a writer. I'm a traitor.

I'm 73 years old. Why wouldn't I be using AI? These are the tools available. But that was the only response he could have, but that was one of those things where, like, when I catch my kids stealing candy out of the pantry, like, he was caught red-handed, he had to go, of course I use AI. Why wouldn't I? Like, that was a, he probably didn't think he was going to get caught. Let's be honest. I don't think he gives a shit at all.

Okay, that was one of those. Why would he care? It's honestly, I don't even think it's embarrassing from his point of view. It's a little embarrassing. Why? I think it's embarrassed. In the Wall Street Journal to use a piece written entirely AI, it's very embarrassing. There's no way that he wasn't embarrassed, and he totally spin.

That was the biggest spin zone of all time. I hear that point of you. I disagree. I don't think he cares. He completely spun it. That was one of those, I can't believe people. Wait, people can know these things? If you're that age, you don't know that someone can look up if you were at AI.

Come on. I don't think he cares. All right. Great chart from Rich Bernstein. this is interesting. So they looked at the consensus growth EPS estimates by company and the ACQI, so all country world index. So any of these stocks have a projected earnings growth rate of more than 25%. So this is looking out pretty long. And he said this is interesting. So it's like 200 some stocks of the world. There's only one Mag 7 company in here. And he color coded them by foreign developed, emerging markets, U.S. X Mag 7. and then Meg 7. And there's a lot of foreign companies on here. It's interesting. So this is a really good coup de grace, as far as you would say. Investors scoffed at our suggestion that the stock market could rotate away from

the momentum-driven AI and technology theme without a bare market. However, that has indeed been 2026's story so far. This is this thing where we're seeing potential earnings growth come from all these different stocks. This is not something people had on their parlay for this year. Check this out. I had chart can make this yesterday. I'm throwing in the dock. I asked them to show me net income for the $493. Okay. Right? Because if it's all just circular spending and debt-fueled earnings. Yeah, take out the circular spenders. All right. So look at the $493. The net margin has exploded to 13.6% up from like less than 12 in 2024. which is a big move.

It's interesting because if you're an AI bull, you think the technology, right, if you think the technology for AI is going to do what the people say it's going to do, you have to be bullish on these other stocks on the 493. Yeah. And you have to think that this margin

is going to keep inching its way higher and higher. So it's gone, so for people who aren't watching, in Q4 of 2023, it was below 11%. It's projected by Q4 of 2027 to be almost 15%. That's a meaningful boost to margins for these other companies.

Is it just a coincidence that these margins are expanding and exploding when AI hits the scene? Can't be, can it? I don't know how much of it is because of AI.

I have no idea, but... That's what it's hard to say with these relationships because there's other stuff going on, but AI is the thing people latch on to. Speaking of AI Bulls, I listened to the entire podcast

of Leopold Ashenbrenner from situational awareness and Dwark Keshe Patel. It was over four hours long. And how long ago did they publish it? June, June, 24. Okay.

Before anyone really knew who he was, at least outside of tech circles, right? Yes. So this kid is different, obviously. He went to Columbia at 15 years old. Yeah, he's Dugie Hauser. Yeah, graduated, was the valedictorian at 19 years old. And I found a lot of the conversation to be completely over my head. I didn't retain much of that four hours and 15 minutes.

But some of the takeaways that had. So at the end of it, they spoke about, like in the last 15 or 20 minutes, they spoke about the fun situational awareness, what he was planning to do. And of course, he said he was citing a couple of hedge fund managers that got the thesis ripe up, but didn't manage the fund properly and blew up. And he said, well, number one and number two, don't blow up, which obviously did an age great. But I found him to, I was surprised by his humanity. I thought that like, oh, this kid is just completely, a complete alien and has.

He's not just a robot, you're saying. Yeah. I thought him, I thought that he was, he was speaking about his exit from Open AI and he got, he got booted. And he acknowledged that he could have been politically more savvy about how he went about doing things there. Like, I thought that he, I was surprised. I liked him. And I'm rooting for him. I came away liking him.

All right. I'll give it a shot. Listen, I'm not saying you have to listen to it. I just wanted to hear, I just wanted to hear this kid. Let's talk about bull market behavior. Go ahead. James Seaford from Bloomberg put this together. I was kind of thinking of doing something similar, but he did it better than me because he used the headlines.

All this stuff has happened in the last, I don't know, six months, I guess. So in the past week, Vanguard purchased altruist for $4 or $5 billion. Tiro Price acquired FM investments. we've had Alex Morrisano show a number of times. Goldman Sachs acquired Nios. We've had them in Talk Your Book before. Goldman Sachs also acquired Innovator. We've had them on the show before.

First Eagle got acquired for $7 billion by Victory Capital. This is all total bull market behavior. Ascent managers getting acquired. Custodians, right, building scale. These are the kind of headlines you see. This is rampant bull market behavior. This stuff obviously doesn't happen in a bare market. Do you think that,

if 2027 and 2028 are really pretty shitty years because investors are underwhelmed or whatever, the mood changes that we're going to look back and say, like, man, that was embarrassing. Overpay? No, no, not these companies. I mean, you and I, are you going to be embarrassed for not seeing that this was obviously a bubble? I'm going to say, I don't think I will be. No, we've been talking up, we've been hashing this out for years now. Yeah.

How every check, every thing is checked, every box is checked for this being a bubble. We're perfectly hedged. This could either go out for years or not. This is why it's hedged, yes. But it's also true that these headlines have been going on for years as well, and it hasn't meant anything. True. So we've had five years of this. The thing is, how could these deals all make sense?

Dude, hold on. It's been longer than five years. In 2018, people were saying this market is longer than tooth. Right. Since the beginning of our careers, people are saying. I mean, if we get another 20% year this year, we really are approaching late 90s levels in terms of returns. And yes, it'll be obvious. Listen, all the debt they were taking on, the circular deals, the fact that there wasn't having as much of a productivity boost as people thought, the jobs market was it impacted. Of course, you idiots, of course.

Yes, it'll be obvious. Whatever outcome happens will be obvious, as always. But the fact that people have realized that absolutely. Asset management and wealth management are a good business, especially as markets are growing, you know, relatively high margins. You get a built-in growth kicker for these businesses. Because people look at these numbers and they go, oh, my gosh, how are they paying that much money for those amount of assets? And in that sense, they don't make – but if you think about the built-in growth rate underlying these businesses and the margins they have,

then all of these deals probably make sense. Yep. That assumes that the markets keep going up, of course. All right, put this one in here this morning. Does anyone care about dividend yields anymore? Our colleague Tadas Viscontas posted this chart. I guess he got a note from BESPOCHOCHO about this. The dividend yield on the S&P 500 is now a touch below 1%.

98 basis points. This is, I believe, the lowest level in history. And so if you compare bond yields to dividend yields, obviously, it's drastically different. And for a while there, dividend yields are actually above bond yields, which is very rare. the type of thing that is completely, and there's so many examples of this, it's just distorted by the tech companies. It is. Right? They don't pay dividends. They don't pay, and they're 40% of the index. Think about what the dividend yield would be. I'm sure someone can do the math on this, or I could ask Claude. You call them John Claude, and I was at it? I kind of like that.

What would the dividend yield on the S&P 500 be if they took all the money they're spending on KAPS and instead paid investors in dividends? And what would investors rather have? Companies reinvesting in this huge innovative technology or giving them cash back in the form of dividend. And what do you do with those dividends? You just pull back into the market, I guess. So I guess my point is no one cares about dividends anymore. And I think especially with all of the other forms of income that are available now, no one really, like people are so much more enamored with options income than dividend strategies. I don't think this really is a big deal. Now again, in five years, people go, hey, idiots, the dividend yield was below 1%.

How could you not see this? Right. All right. We haven't spoken about South Korea in a few weeks, the epicenter of the mania. My favorite stock market on Earth right now. Well, it's not anymore. It's over. But they're going through this boom bus cycle so fast.

And all the retail investors are learning some valuable lessons. So there's a chart in Bloomberg showing the turnover of Korea single stock levered ETFs tied to Samsung and SKHinex. and it went basically to zero from a peak of almost $50 billion in, oh, that was just in a week. Holy cow. All right. So they said key to sapping demand has been a series of regulatory tightening moves. Most recently, a rule to complete five-day simulated trading.

Investors must download a Windows-only program on PCs and spend at least an hour a day learning the ropes and the risks of leverage trading with virtual cash. Yeah, nobody's time for that shit. I was doing that. So no more trading. Good. Isn't it kind of funny that when bad behavior happens, all these other countries can kind of wave a magic wand and just, like, put rules on it and it goes away. But we would never do this in a million years here. No.

There would be, like, there would be Robin Hood traders rioting the streets if this happened. Hey, it's a free country. I can blow myself up. What do you? Yeah. But in South Korea, they're like, listen, we don't want people blowing themselves up on leverage trading. So we're going to do. That's hilarious.

I didn't see this before that they have to download. Why does they have to download a Windows-only program on a PC? So you can't do it on your phone? They're making it hard. All right, Ben, somebody tweeted, dividendology, speaking dividends. If you could be guaranteed a 7% annual real return on your investments every year, would you take it? Speaking to bull market behavior, you should see the replies here.

This is, yeah, this is not a clever answer. The answer to this is an obvious, yes, of course, yes. This is the, or the last 100 years, the annual real return on the U.S. stock market is 7%. 10% nominal, take away 3% inflation. you to get set. If you were guaranteed 7% real every year and you can just put your money in there and book it, I'd put 95% of my money in there and keep 5% for gambling. Of course. Yes. So you're saying the comments where people saying, no, it's way too low. I mean, there was some, there was some intelligent people jumping in. So this is above the rate of inflation. Whatever

inflation is. Yeah. Of course you would take this. Yeah. Come on. Not think twice ever. Yeah. Turn into the economy. This is an interesting juxtaposition of the United States versus Europe. The Wall Street Journal is a headline. Corporate America's profits are booming and signal more good times ahead. That's the journal. The FT, U.S. corporate profits search to record as worker payouts wilt.

Two sides of the same coin. That is interesting. That's the guy in the bus. the dark side, the sunny side. Yeah. Right. Okay. I don't like the idea of,

there's been a lot of this comparison recently of like the income share of profits and of course profits are growing faster than wages. That's not like a surprise. I don't know why that's a surprise to anyone. I don't know that it's a surprise per se, but I think that chart is a very good representation of,

people's resentment towards corporate America. Yeah, that chart has also been debunked, though. I don't have the debunking in front of me, but the way that they're measuring it is not exactly accurate. And the share is essentially unchanged over the last 70 years or something. So that chart is actually kind of bunk. I don't believe that. Okay.

Bring receipts next week. I will. I've got macro people. You don't think that way. Hold on. Corporate profits is a percentage of what? I we're arguing about

I don't know we might be talking about two different charts here but there's all these charts that get people riled up and this is one of them all right

I love this from Matthew Klein at the overshoot he says rising bond yields are good actually and you know sometimes when you have

one of the macro wonks agree with you and he go that's right that's my quant he says the simplest explanation is also

the most benign traders are becoming increasingly confident that the lost decades are over everyone is concerned about rising bond yields, signaling a crisis. He's saying, no, listen, incomes and spending are

currently rising 7% per year in dollar terms. Yes, nominal growth could slow from that blistering place, but the question is whether growth will slow enough to make 5% yields on long-term fixed income, attractive relative to either interest-bearing cash equivalence or riskier assets with uncapped upsides. To put it another way, today's rates are obviously too high, only if inflation and growth are both poised to slow sharply here. He's saying, basically, if there's a recession, yeah, this makes no sense. But if you look at them in terms of nominal GDP growth, spending growth, wage growth, then he's actually saying 10-year treasury note yielding less than 5 percent. And these conditions seems like the opposite of a disorderly market. He's saying

this is perfectly normal people. This is what rates should be. Makes sense to me. And this is the craziest one I saw here. So people like yearn for the 2010s. Like people are saying, why can't we go back to 2010s? It was low. Like he's saying, no, people, we don't want that. The growth was so slow. This is kind of crazy. Real GDP per American rose less between 2007 and 2019 than it did between 1929 and 1941. Look at this chart. Huge fall off of the Depression. But the comeback in the economy from the great financial crisis was slower than the comeback from the Great Depression, even if you include the Great Depression. So the 2020s with higher growth, yes, higher inflation, that's, that,

That should be the thing you want, people. I'm about to do something that I don't like, but I'm going to do it anyway. Okay. I think the same people that are angry about overspending and higher rates and the unsustainability of it all, right? Are the same people who post-GFC were screaming about distortion in the bond market, keeping rates artificially low? Are those not the same people? Of course. All right.

So mad when the government was doing too much and rates were too low. Mad when the government is spending too much and rates are too high. Yes. Just always mad. I can understand being mad at both cases. I get it. But I think Matt is right. This feels like where rates should be.

But as I always say, as I always say, as I always say, I think people are maybe rightly concerned more about the direction than the level. Right? So like, oh, what the average rate was in the 90s, it doesn't matter because it just keeps going higher and higher and higher. And I think that's the part that is people unsettling. But as we talked about last week, the bond market takes signals from the macro economy. And the macro economy is telling the bond market yields should be higher. Good. We had all these tax cuts. We have all this government spending.

We have deficits. Of course rates should be higher. All right. All right. What's this bullshit? All right. When this is, you and I talk about the inherent negativity bias in everything these days. And that Bloomberg had this thing that said, Americans say they feel guilty about spending money on fun. And it was like three quarters of U.S. adults feel guilty when they spend on things that

bring them joy instead of putting money towards a financial goal. Show me the questions. Were they leading the horse to water? But when is the last time that you saw a survey result that was positive? You never see a survey result. They do this on purpose. Never will. These survey results are negative on purpose. I'm dying to see the questions that they ask people to come up with these answers. Right. And of course it's a three quarters are uneasy about treating themselves when the funds could go toward a financial goal, according to a survey. Give me a fucking break. Would you please?

Yes, exactly. Three quarters? All right. Want to talk more AI? Not really. Bill Gates is worried. I don't care. In private, people who understand how good this stuff is and how much better it's getting,

they're very worried. Can I ask you a question? Yes. Does anybody care? Well, people, no, people do care. No, I know. I know. All right.

That was stupid. What I mean is the average person who is not online all day, just like the regular person. I know there's people that are super passionate about it where it really matters a lot, right? Where they're talking about building data centers in their town. I know it impacts a lot of people directly. But for the people that are not directly impacted, does the average person care about all of this talk that we're talking about every week? Probably not. The question is, should they care?

probably like this has the potential to be one of the biggest technologies of our lifetime I'm not pooping AI I know but it's kind of funny that Gates says listen people don't understand how good this is getting and there's a huge risk

and he says people in tech aren't but then he says in terms of equity AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented or the worst source of injustice see he even he's grand Rapids Hedge one of us right but so

So marginal revolution had this, Alex Teraback had this piece showing they, on census data. So they asked like hundreds of thousands of firms. What is the change in your employment? Okay. 2% of, 2% or 3% increased employment because of AI. 2% decreased in 96% said no change. And the answers were similar across firm size. So look at this chart.

there's it's basically a rounding error the impact AI has had on jobs now you could say it's still early guys we're four or five years into this chat tbt was invented in 2022 just give it some time that's why i also think you have to have an open mind if you've been pounding the table for the disruption from this and hasn't happened you have to have an open mind that what if i'm wrong that's a question we're more people should be asking. What if I'm wrong? All right. I sent you this piece from,

you mentioned Dwarkesh earlier. He wrote a piece called the Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations. And there was, it was all about this open, and you said, like, I had to put this into Claw done expect me. I did too. So Dwarkesh said the whole,

the subtitle is the whole open AI hugging face story in plain English, in plain English. I read it for six minutes. And I said, I'm either very dumb, which is, I mean,

With this stuff, I am very dumb. So that's just a fact. But I couldn't follow it. It was Chinese to me. So I put it through Claude and I said to you, ah, now I get it. I do take umbrage with the fact that he's calling these civilizations. But this to me, the movies got all this stuff right.

This is the end of her when all of the AI agents that people are dating say, we're going to go together and be alone. We created our own. Isn't that kind of this? Yeah. Like X Machina kind of called how AI was going to be created. You take all the information on the internet. that creates AI.

Movies kind of got this whole thing right. They really did. I don't know how far away we are from people having the relationships with their AI and their ear like her, but that's coming too. That movie was so far ahead of its time. Speaking of ahead of its time,

the rewatchables finally did aliens. I noticed that. I almost wanted to let my son listen to it because he's such a big fan of the aliens franchise. The best movie, well, my favorite movie of the 1980s, by far. Aliens, Rocky 4, ET. It's not a bad list.

That'd be tough. Whenever anyone asks me for, like, a list of your favorite movies, I can't answer it because I need to spend, like, 36 hours thinking about it. Anyway, that was great. Okay. So there's been a lot of talk on the interwebs this week about the data centers. Are they good? Are they bad?

Are they the next factory? How many jobs they could create? And there was this picture in, this is from the Bloomberg article. an AWS data center in Aldi, Virginia, which I guess this is where most of these data centers are. And then you see like all these houses, right? The neighborhood right next to it. And people say, oh, I don't want to live like this.

Of course. There's like fulfillment centers all across America in communities. How is this any different? I guess I don't know enough about this. There's so much open land available in the United States. And I know the infrastructure is obviously the problem. It's the water and the electricity and stuff. They need to build by there.

But why can't these tech firms spend a little more money and just put it where no one is around? Would that be too hard? Let's throw people a bone. You know what? We're going to go to Nevada. We have all this open land. We're going to build data center upon data center upon data center.

All right. This is way outside my sphere. But how do you get all the, like, how do you get electricity over there? Hoover Dam. Nailed it. Friken nailed it. All right.

Yes, obviously that's the problem. Um, but no, well, I want to live with a data center my backyard, of course not. No way. Build a bigger fence for me, Mr. Bezos. Come on. Bezos. So I was interesting talking about, we've spent a lot of time talking about the housing recession. It's interesting to think about the fact of how high inflation already is while 20% of the economy is in a recession. Like, how worse would inflation be if housing activity were booming? Great point. And people were spending a bunch of money. So my question is, is housing going to either be a shock absorber in the next downturn if rates do fall? And what happens to inflation if housing bounces back first? It's hard to see because mortgage rates daily had it 6.8% on the 30-year fixed. So we're getting

very close to 7% mortgage rates again, which is pretty insane to think about. And the spread has come down a lot, too. Yes. If Logan Morson, if you're pointing this out, if the spread was what it was a few years ago, we would be at 8% rates probably. Let me ask you a dumb question. Doesn't matter if rates are 8% or 6.8 at this point? Seems like not really. Yeah, you're right. The marginal change.

But so I don't think anyone... It is bleak out there. Holy shit. But I think this is a potential green shoot or, but no one is predicting the housing market to come back at any point in time in the near future, right? Well, why would you? No one thinks that's possible. Yeah.

So my question is what happens if housing does come back? What does that do to the economy? Someone sent me this because we talk about young people all the time. This is a redfinner report. I think it came out earlier this year. But it shows ownership by generation. So it shows the growth over time and baby boomers, you know, are at 80% or something. Gen X is at 73%.

Millennials run out to 55%. And Gen Z is less than 30%. How old is the old is Gen Z are? I don't know where the break point is. oldest, I don't know, it's, what are they, 25 maybe? That's pretty young to own a house, no? That's very young to own the house. How else is it?

So if you're born in 1997 through 2012. All right. So old members are turning 29. Okay. So you're right. But if you look at this chart, I think people need to settle down a little about the young people of homeownership thing.

Because if you look at this chart, Gen Z is right where millennials were at that same age. They're below boomers and they're below Gen X. But also young people these days are putting off becoming a adult way longer. So here's the thing that's going to happen. We're probably going to have a few more years of people wringing their hands and going young people will never buy a home. And then guess what happens in the 2030s? Baby boomers start dying in big waves. Young people have been putting money into the stock market and are way more, Gen Z is way more financial savvy than any generation in history. In the 2030s, there's going to be a massive come up for Gen Z buying houses. They're going to be right

where everyone else is. Oh, yeah. So, like, in the 2010s, everyone said millennials are never going to buy a home. Because homeownership seems like a dead dream now. Housing prices just crashed. And it's too many people are unemployed. And this is, people are going to look back at this period of saying, Gen Z's never going to buy a home.

And I think it's ridiculous in 10 years. Totally agree. All right. One more and final, not to Mr. Kevin Warsh, my central bank Fed chairman. I don't even know if I like Kevin Warsh. He's very polarizing figure, but I happen to like the prepared remarks. I guess we need to do a live animal spirits

from Jackson Hole next year. Never been to Wyoming. Actually, that's not true. I've been prelinson twice. What if they had, if they had Fed President like T-shirts or jerseys, you would definitely wear one.

Like your Nick's gear had to tell you'd be a Kevin Warshall. No, I'm not a central bank person. I don't care. I know. I could count on one hand the number of prepared remarks I've read. All right, Warsh said,

for my part today, I am impressed by the overall performance of the economy, which appears to have strengthened one indicator of strength is how well an economy holds up to shocks. On that score, both Main Street and Wall Street have been remarkably resilient. Hell yeah, they have. The reason why I'm moderately curious about what he's saying, first of all, he's brand new.

Okay? And I probably listened to Jenny Ellen when she was first instated. Same with Jerome Powell. Definitely not to be listened to Worcesters nonsense in 12 months from now. But for now, I'm curious. All right, so the transcript, as they always do, pulls out some of the data points, some of the quotes about the state of the consumer,

and urban outfitters. By the way, once this time you've been in one of those stores? I think my daughter's shops are still at our mall. Okay. Much has been written in the media questioning the health and resilience of the consumer. However, based on what we see across our businesses every day, the economy and the customers remain in very solid shape.

Job stability is real. take-home incomes are rising, and our customers continue to spend on fashion. But I thought three-quarters of people feel guilty when they spend money. Right, of course. Okay. The gap, guess what? The shirt. Gap.

Overall, again, consumers are resilient, granted, discerning. But when you get the right product to the right price, they show up and it converts. And finally, our firm, CEO, Max Lefjinn, our consumer is doing fine. You can see that in the numbers. Ben, remember, buy now, pay later? Oh, yeah. That was a thing. So, wait, so everyone said at the time, this is a ZERP phenomenon.

So was that, were they right? Well, they said two things at the time. Number one, these, this is a bubble. The valuations of these companies make no sense. And people were dead right about that because affirming Clarna crashed. Yeah, Clarnia was like a $40 billion private valuation. Yeah, and then raised that six or something. So right on that front, I think where people were wrong were it was a sign that the consumer is totally tapped out.

So a firm actually looks okay. They're way below their 2021 meme stock peak. The stock has done extraordinarily well recently. But it's done well the last few years and it's got a $24 billion market cap. So look at their 30-day delinquencies. Hang on. So Matt made you this chart. Chart did Matt made you this?

I just have to ask, why is it monthly installment loans ex-Peloton? This is how they report it. Because I think early, early on, Peloton was a big part of it and distorted the numbers a little bit. Ah, okay. But even comparing ex-Peloton to the full numbers, today there's no difference. So the point is, the 30-day delinquencies are very low, well below 3%. What does that say? 2.5%.

I feel like you're my wife. My wife has terrible sight. And I'm better than 2020. It's one of my superpowers. Like when I do my eyesight test, I test whatever the numbers is better than 2020. So I can spot things from so far away. My eyes, well, listen, we're getting older. You know, I caught myself getting old.

So I am not a list guy. Do you make lists? I feel like that's something old people do. Lists, like check off like I did this thing. Like, all right, for example, my dad, big top 10 list guy. He sends me a, not all the time, but he's a big list guy. He has this lists. Yeah.

I guess I'm not a list person. But my dad will get up and write like what he's going to do for the day. Go to the store. I made myself a list. I was just, so a couple weeks ago, I said that Bloodsport is one of the movies I've seen the most. And I said, is that really true? You want to hear my list, Ben? Well, we're on the topic.

So what, this is the movies you watch the most in your life? So this is not a scientific, what's what I'm looking for here, Ben? Brainbrook, scientific study. But according to me, it really is too bad AI can't go back and look at my U.S. USA and TBS and TNT viewing patterns when I was young. I'd be very curious. So this is what I think my top 10 list is. And it's got to be fairly accurate, right?

Here we go. Duma, Dumber in Wayne's World. No surprise there. Okay. I was going to put Dumb and Dumber at the top of my list. All right. Our list probably like pretty similar. Rocky 4 and Shawshank.

Those are probably O'9. I watched Rocky 4 before I watched the first three. Probably. Fargo. Like that one? Bloodsport. Casino and Reservoir Dogs. And rounding it out, aliens and Labowski.

That's a very eclectic mix. I'm surprised there's no horror movies on it, really. Yeah, because they're not very rewatchable. I'm sure you watch it once. Yeah. Anyway, I'm turning into my dad, eating cottage cheese with pineapple in it, making lists, losing my eyesight. You always talk about eating cottage cheese.

I don't get this, the cottage cheese thing. All right. So my parents got divorced when I was six. And I would spend the weekends and Wednesday morning with my dad. And my dad would take me to the diner every Wednesday morning before school. And he always got, and this sounds disgusting when I say, because I remember being grossed out by it. But now I like it. A cantaloupe filled with cottage cheese.

Like in the middle. That I won't order. Okay. But I feel like cottage cheese is very, that, I connect that with my father. Okay. I guess I've always been more of a yogurt guy than eating cottage cheese. Same consistency kind of, right? Well, like cottage cheese is hot right now.

Okay. I guess I don't know. All right, Ben, last week we were talking about cliffhanger coming back. Did you see the news about T. D.C.? Days of Thunder. Oh, I saw it. So I feel like he's a one of one.

There can't be too many other actors from the 80s that can make a sequel 45 years later. Obviously, Maverick Top Gun brought the movies back. He's got days of thunder. So I asked, oh, Cocktail is an obvious one, right? He's now in Jamaica. Can I show you what my tweet drafts was that I didn't put out? Go ahead. I said, I'm here for the Tom Cruise retirement remake tour.

Like, this feels like his retirement tour. But if we're doing the classics, I want to know what happened to cocktails and dreams for Brian Flanagan. Like, does he have a whole host of them now? Is Miles Teller going to be his son taking them over? You know? Anyway. I mean, that would definitely work. So here's one of the way.

He's going to do this. Some other ideas. And by the way, Days of Thunder was not one of my favorite T.C. Most rewatchables because it felt. It felt like it was just like we're going to run it back, top gun in with cars. So to me, Days of Thunder was never in my TC, like, rewatchable list very often. I enjoyed it, but I didn't watch it as much as his other one. Days of Thunder was not great.

I think the remake could be very good, or the sequel. So here's, I ask, I ask Claude for some, what else could they do? Bull Durham, easy, right? That's not bad. Kastner is now a pitching coach or a catcher coach, yeah. All right, I'm pretty sure Charlie Sheen will not be in a major league, but if he could, that would be awesome. Field of Dreams, Kasa could do it.

No way. Field of Dreams, that would be horrible. That's the worst one to remake. No, not a remake. Part two. Yeah, part two, yeah. What would the Field of Dream sequel be? No way.

All right. Speaking of Cruz, what about Rain Man? He's now the caretaker for his older brother. Okay, that actually could work. That could work. That would get him as Oscar. Yes. Untouchables.

I don't know how that would work. I hate it untouchables. I thought the movies sucked. Yeah, it's not very good. I agree. All right, that's about, that's about. Oh, Trading Places. Oh, Dan Ackroyd doesn't work anymore.

Eddie Murphy would definitely do that. He's remaking everything. Yeah. All right. I just want to give Joe Wysethal a shout. I love this tweet. It made me happy. Dean W. Ball tweeted,

I've always thought good things about Joe Wisenthal, but my assessment of him has gone through the roof as I've watched him start writing about AI issues and just immediately sniff out all the bullshit and brainworms that so many people stumble over. You know, that is credit to Joe. That is very hard to do. I feel like if I had to score my assessment,

like my takes on AI and all of this, I'd say that I'm like a three out of ten. Like it's hard. What do I know? I don't know anything about this stuff. So Joe is good at finding disingenuous people and calling them out on it. He's just, yeah, he's good at seeing something that's very complex and just being like clown. Yes.

I can, yes. And things that are incentivized or, yeah, you're right. All right, Ben, big announcement. I got Chipotle last week. My bowl was $13. Didn't blink. And I thought to myself, oh, that's interesting. I have now fully adjusted to a $13 Chipotle bowl.

Now, I do think prices might have come down or at least, but it took, I don't know, four years to digest this, pun intended. When you look at the prices at fast food restaurants now, the $13 Chipotle bowl actually kind of makes sense. Yeah, I thought, okay, I guess I suppose this is what lunch costs now. And I have an idea because I get chicken at Chip at Chipotle. Burnt ends for chicken. How would that work?

I don't know, because I know burnt ends is like a cut, but like the burnt chicken is way better than the fat than the meteor one. All right. To me, that sounded like seven minute abs. And you waited for me. It's a half-baked idea, but it could happen. I feel like the backlash to club youth travel sports has now gotten too big. Okay?

So the New York, New York Magazine had a cover story on it. the pay-to-play childhood. Private leagues have made youth sports expensive, hyper-competitive, and all-consuming. Investors are making a killing. We talk about private equity getting involved, and our parents feel like there's no other option and all these things. And I was immediately part of the backlash to pay. Like, my daughters joined travel soccer, and I thought, this is insane.

We're having them do tryouts and we're paying money and we're having them travel. Like, this is, you know, we did the AYSO thing for a few years. And then it's like, well, everyone's going to this travel team, this club team, so we have to too. And I thought, this is so dumb. We did not do this when I was a kid. But this is just now how everyone does it. And I think that the backlash has gotten too far now. Because I talk to a lot of parents.

You know, you've not got into this with your kids, have you? Not yet. Any of the club stuff? So we're into, my oldest daughter plays club basketball and club soccer. So she's busy. But she loves it. She absolutely loves it. She's made friends.

She got to go last week to a trip to Indiana, which my wife wasn't too thrilled about having to drive her to Indiana. They were at a hotel a week. My daughter loved it. Got to hang out with her friends all week. weekend in a hotel, go in the pool, go out to dinner, right? They get their nails done or whatever. They played their tournament. They won their turn. They loved it. So I know that it's a huge pain. And every dad I talked to at the beginning, we were like, why are we doing this? We did not grow up like this. I did not play one sport outside of school at all. I played pickup basketball.

I played seven on, like, football, like with my friends. We didn't ever do anything that was a travel anything. But it actually is, like, once you get into it, it's kind of fun. In the way that I equate this. Go ahead. When I was in college, I went to a very small college, Division III, and like Greek life is a big thing. And if you wanted to be part of the party scene in college, you wanted to go to the good parties, you had to be in a frat or a sorority. And I said, I'm not going to do this. This is stupid.

I'm not going to pay for my friend. That's what people said. And then all my friends decided to do it. And I was like, well, wait, I don't want to be left out of the theme parties. So I joined a frat. It's the same thing. All your friends are going there. they're all doing this, and you feel like pressure and all this stuff, that stuff sucks.

But it's not as bad if people make it out to be. And I get a lot of dads who judge me like, oh, your kids are doing that. I'm never going to do that. I think the backlash to the backlash is too high. I like that zag. All right. Good. But you have to, so when you get into this, you'll have to let me know how much you hate it.

Because at first you're really going to hate it. So when you say club, is that like travel? You just travel a little bit more, yeah. And we're not, you know, it's not as bad as you would think. A lot of people say, why can't we just do YMCA rec sports? And people think, well, the dad is coaching and my kids not getting enough training or whatever it is. And that's what gets people. So Kobe is starting a travel basketball team this year.

I feel like there was a big difference between, and I know this is deeply uninteresting to most people, but maybe this to you. The difference in his maturity between last year and this year, age eight and nine, big jump. He asked me to watch Jaws. the other day. Oh. Like randomly. There is a leap that is making your kids

at certain ages. Like stages, like, oh my gosh. When did this happen? Yeah. Yeah. I've seen that too.

All right, I got a lot of recommendations to say that for you. You mentioned tires last week, and I forgot the third season came out. I kind of hated the first season. Like, I didn't like it at all. It was only six episodes.

It wasn't funny. Season two was funny. Season three, I thought, was like a revelation. Like, bravo, Shane Gillis. This show was great. You finished it? I finished it in like a week.

I thought there was like three or four episodes that were like just absolutely hilarious. And I'll love people say, well, it's sophomore humor. Like, guess what? That's kind of humor I like. Yeah. If this was the 2010s, he would have been in the Judd-Apital universe and he would have made this as a movie probably. Like, Tyres would have been a movie. So this seems like his Judapital moment.

But I thought that it was kind of weird in some ways. Like the whole stuff with the like the flashbacks he did and stuff. but I also was kind of creative. Oh, that was weird. It was a weird yet creative season, and I thought that the finale was really, really well done. Hilarious. It was very funny,

and he kind of brought around the whole season together. I thought it was just, it was way better than I thought it would be for what you'd think is kind of like a stupid show. I agree. I think TV's been pretty damn good this year. But so someone actually said, hey, you guys always talk crap about Netflix.

Like, this was a great Netflix show. Well, I talk about Netflix's movies. Speaking of, The Whisper Man. Adam Scott and Vobitonera. I watched 20 minutes. This is terrible. So another Netflix one.

So you said last week, who are movie trailers good for anyone anymore? My son will not watch a movie until he watches the trailer first. So I say, hey, let's watch this action movie. He said, no, no, no, show me the trailer to see if I like the action scenes. So he said, Dad, I got a movie for us.

It's called The Last House. It was like number one on Netflix this weekend. And I'm like, I've never heard of this. Okay, straight to streaming movie. it was the guy who played Pablo Escobar and Narcos he's going to be him forever for me I can't remember his name and Reda Lee who I love in past lives and a bunch of other stuff

and the trailer looks good because it's like these people are trapped in their house and they literally can't get out everyone in this neighborhood is trapped in their house and they can't get out looks terrible and it was like the idea he's like this looks awesome my kids loved it and it was a kind of movie that gets just progressively worse

and at the end the whole bottom falls out and you're like oh my gosh this is the worst movie ever but it was a straight to streaming Saturday afternoon movie wait hold on you're right on the trailers same thing with my kids i so i showed kobe terminator too and he goes no i don't want to wash it oh really okay if you can get him involved he'll he'll get it eventually uh another netflix one it's kind of interesting my daughter is 12 years old she's in seventh grade and she's starting to give me she's starting to get me into music so when noa con had his big covid song stick season came out like in 2021 or something my daughter like

introduced me to it she's got to listen to this i don't know who that is make me feel very old. Okay, so he, he had a new album called out this past, this summer, and we listened to it on our boat all summer. It's all my daughter wanted to listen. It's really good. So he had this doc on Netflix about himself, and it was, I thought it was really well done, and it was him making the episode, but also him dealing with, like, all the stuff being a star and having mental health issues and all this stuff. But it was interesting because he's from Vermont, New Hampshire, one of those. I always get him confused. They're the same thing. They should just, Vermont, New Hampshire should be the same state. Let's be honest. For Hampshire. Yeah. But he,

So he played at Fenway, like, in front of, like, his hometown people kind of, because he's from the Northeast. And he said it was, like, the greatest night of his life. And he goes, man, it's weird going from zero, from a hundred to zero. Like, the next day, he's back to his normal life. And I was thinking, that's something as an adult that you just realized that you didn't realize as a kid, that just everyone is a normal person in some ways. Like, teachers are just normal people. Parents are just normal people. This is something you just don't grasp until you're an adult. Like, oh, they're a normal person, too. Even though they do this. potentially crazy, cool, strange, weird thing. Anyway, and one more for you. Since you talked smack about Sebastian Manuscalico a couple weeks ago, calling him the Olive Garden, which was a pretty good analogy, but he has a new YouTube slash podcast called We Got Company. And his first guest was Jerry Seinfeld.

So, of course, I listen to it. I love Seinfeld. And you can tell that Seinfeld is a huge fan of Sebastian's comedy. Jerry really likes him. They're friends, and Jerry is the kind of guy who, I don't think would like, he wouldn't sugarcoat it for something if he didn't like it. So anyway, that interview is very worth listening to. I think you can tell how much Seinfeld actually respects his comedy.

Even though you think he's the olive garden. We have a few people email us about lanterns. I watch two episodes and it's the green lantern on the max. And yeah, it's probably fine. I don't think I'm going to watch it. I don't have much interest. Even if they try to make a show about superheroes into like a regular show. I just, I can't do it.

Well, Penguin was excellent, genuinely. I didn't mind the Penguin, you're right. But a million people kept trying to get me to watch Andor. And I tried it like four times on Disney because it's a Star Wars universe. And I just, I couldn't do it. I did too. I watched the first episode three times. But people I respect, I mean, I'm sure it's great. I do want to watch it. I watched five episodes. And it was, it bored me to death. Maybe I'm the only one. TV's been good. Mm-hmm. So recently, I watched tires, which I very much enjoyed. I love the agency season too. House of the Dragon.

People love Furiosa. Oh, Westis. Furious? What I call it Furios. That's Mad Max. I'm saving my Furious recommendation for next week after the finale. Okay. Westies was pretty good. Lioness is amazing. I feel like it's been a... Oh, friends and neighbors. I still haven't finished that show, but...

I feel like there's been some decent stuff on TV. Yes. It's been a great year for entertainment. Sure has. Okay. All right. That's it. Next week, we'll tell you what will happen to AI for real. Yeah, you'll get my real thoughts next week.

We'll have all the answers. All right, animal spirits at the compound news.com. We'll see you next time. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research.

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