Is $1 Million a Lot of Money? (EP.399)
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Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. We're going to start off with a tweet from Ben. This is not a sky. This is not that like trying out bullshit, right? This is like primetime Ben on Twitter. For the Super Bowl, I still say that watching the Super Bowl with Twitter is a great experience. Okay. That sounds...

Don't you think the feedback you get from watching this stuff happen and then seeing what people are saying on Twitter, that's still a great community experience. I generally agree that sporting events with Twitter open can be a positive, fun experience. But for the Super Bowl, I feel like the Super Bowl is a little bit too big for Twitter. Oh, really? I told you. I think Twitter or Super Bowl is one of the great Twitter experiences that there is. All right. No offense. Get a life.

Okay. Fair. So Ben tweeted, SNL was better when I was young. Super Bowl ads were better when I was young. Music was better when I was young. So this is what middle age was like, huh? Nailed it. Right? Absolutely nailed it. Every middle-aged person who's ever lived, that's how they feel. Yeah. Always been true. Always will be. Yes. This one kind of blew up for me a little bit. I still got it. But you're telling me Gladiator 2 was better than Gladiator? I mean, come on. We're right about this. Movies were better when we were younger.

The one difference is TV is way better today. Oh, yeah. That's – there was some good TV shows, some classic TV shows back in the day. Listen, there's a lot of things that are better today. Who's kidding him? Oh, for sure. Yes. But this is a pop culture thing. All right. What are we talking about today? Let's – This is the first week in a while where there's not like the building's on fire. We're running around. Have to talk about this kind of thing. We'll take it. This is a normal week. We'll take it.

Uh, last week we were not a fan of the president's proposed policies on tariffs, but who says no, that, that bringing back plastic straws is a good, is a bad idea. Universal approval there. Has to be paper straws are one of the worst inventions of all time.

Last night I was at... They never work. They never last a whole drink. I was at the movie theater last night, brought along a friend. We went on a date to see Heart Eyes. Can I just give a movie theater joke? Sure. Because you sent out a picture this weekend of an empty movie theater.

And you said, I'm trying to keep movie theaters going or something on Slack. No, no, no. The text was, we are not the same. Oh, okay. But then John asked, what are you going to see? And you wrote Companion, which I didn't know there was a movie called Companion. And my joke should have been to you, I think you need one. Right? Okay. So I had a companion last night, brought my friend Brad to see Heart Eyes. Heart Eyes is a rom-com slasher.

It's also, it's a goof, right? It's a gag. Okay, so it's, I gotcha, all right. But they make a joke about, so the rom-com, as rom-coms do, they meet at a coffee shop. That's when they bump into each other. 75% of the movies you see, I've literally never heard of. Okay. Anyway, they make a joke about how you could still, you could drink coffee out of a plastic cup, but you need a paper straw. Oh, okay. Yeah.

That's not bad. Anyway, rest in peace, paper straws, you pieces of garbage. Worst, I don't know whose idea that was. All right, so here's, so anyway, let's talk. There was some news last week that raised some eyebrows out of the economic community, the economist community. Inflation expectations by party. So who is this from? Is this, this is from the Umich. One year inflation expectations and inflations for a year ahead for Republicans plummeted

And for Democrats, it shot up. Independents are still relatively... It went up a little bit, but that's right down the middle. What are we doing here, people? Yeah, come on. Right? I just... This sentiment stuff gets more useless by the day, correct? It really does. I'm not talking because I don't know what to say. It's just so dumb. Yes.

Moving on. All right, Heather Long. The U.S. is no longer a nation of small business. 53% of Americans work for big business now with 500-plus workers. That's a big shift from the 80s, 90s, early 2000s. You can see it's a total—they've completely traded places between small businesses of less than 500 employees, big businesses. I went through this whole series by The Washington Post, and it was really, really good. And they show, like, how these things have changed over time. And so they say in the 80s and 90s, politicians from both political parties began to abandon small business.

There was a sense that the key to progress was ever larger corporations, that if we let companies get bigger, they would be more efficient. They would generate all these benefits. And I'm sure, obviously,

Bigger companies can write bigger checks than politicians, right? But they show the share of grocery store employment, firms with 10,000 plus employees or less than 10,000. And of course, it's flip-flopped from 70-30 in the past for small people back in the 1980s, 1970s, to the other way, 70-30 with bigger. Now, this kind of thing makes total sense to me. The mom-and-pop grocery shop, how could they ever compete with Walmart, Target, whatever your grocery store, it's Meijer for me in West Michigan, which you probably don't have.

I don't know what your form of that is. That sounded condescending. I'm not sure why. Well, no, I'm just saying it's a Midwest grocery store chain. They don't have them elsewhere. Okay. So I'm saying you have it. Everyone has their own. In Florida, it's Publix or whatever, right? Every state or region has their own grocery store chain. What's yours in New York? Ours shut down. The local one. I don't know how local. It was probably regional. It used to be called Wal-M's. But now we have Stop and Shop. That's what I mean. You guys have those regional ones.

They did the same, but this is interesting. They show places where small businesses are still doing well. Microbreweries, of course, are... Look at this. This is... It's a ton of small businesses. And the same thing with restaurants. Small restaurants keep growing, which is kind of interesting to see that. All right, dumb question. What makes a microbrewery micro? It's the type of beer they make, right? It's not like a Miller Lite or... Right? It's the kind of... So any... So...

If they make craft beer, it's a microbrewery? Yes. Okay. Right? So this to me is more interesting than anything, but I think it's probably a positive development for most people. So I started my...

working life out, working for a small business. It was a tiny consulting firm that was run by one person and there was five of us that were employed there. And I had no 401k benefits. I had no dental benefits. And I had like minimal, minimal healthcare. Like my healthcare was dog crap. I didn't have anything. And I feel like that's getting a little better now for smaller businesses, but that's the kind of thing you get at large businesses. They take care of you with benefits and that stuff, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So people, this is like a big, big change. And so I think people are like, oh, this is good or this is bad or this is terrible. This is great. Jason from a quote tweeted this and said,

aligned with you, Ben, this is a favorable development. Because I think most people would say, God, this country's gone to hell, right? You should be able to own your own business. So Jason Furman, an economist, said, this is a favorable development. Big businesses generally pay better, do more training, engage less in wage theft and other abuses, and have more upward mobility. Now, again, of course, you could point out some negatives, but I think on balance, this is absolutely a good thing.

I think so. Duncan says a microbrewery is a small-scale brewery that produces less than 15,000 barrels of beer per year. Okay. That makes sense. That makes sense. Macro, micro.

We get a lot of questions from young people looking to get into wealth management. And I think the best advice there, since it's so hard to get into a small business when you're young and have no experience, is go to the big financial firm and learn a lot. Go to different, you can work in different departments, learn different things. I think that's a great way to learn as a young person in finance, if you can. Yeah. I went the opposite route, but I think that's a great way to learn when you're starting out.

Okay, chart of the decade. What do you got here? Okay. So BlackRock made a chart showing corporate investments versus U.S. government research and development. And they overlay that with corporate investment from the MAG-7. It's just incredible. So the chart, the U.S. government chart goes all the way back to 1960. The MAG-7 starts in 2010. And it was...

The yellow line, the government was rising. And then out of nowhere, sort of like Bitcoin assets and ETFs versus GLD. The MAG-7 is like the hockey stick. Similar type of chart. So the MAG-7 is going to spend more on R&D than the US government.

That's a pretty good chart. So the Wall Street Journal had a piece about the tech giants too, and they show capital spending by quarter just for Meta, Alphabet. Dang it, I should have – I did it. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Wait, you're Meta yourself for what? Meta or Alphabet? Both of them. I'm not going to say the new names. All right, listen. You don't need to die in that hell. I give you permission. I was with you. I said I'm never going to call it Alphabet, but –

It's been, how many years has it been Alphabet for? Seven years? We can move on. Do you know anyone who calls it that though? Alphabet. People on CNBC and Bloomberg, maybe. All right. So like you can see their spending is just ramping up. It's not slowing down at all. It's funny that people for three days thought the deep seek thing was going to cause these places to slow down all of a sudden. On Google's earnest call.

They said that they're going to spend $75 billion in CapEx. And for next year, the estimate was 57. So the stock did not like that or investors did not like that. Amazon said they're going to spend $100 billion. Yeah, the deep seek stuff is kind of wild. Apparently, Alibaba is buying a 10% stake for a billion dollars. Good for them. It is kind of funny, though, that the whole thinking behind these tech companies was they're just so much more efficient than they were in the past. And you don't have to have all this capital spend. And now, of course, they do. Look at all this.

And obviously the hope is that this capital spend makes things even more efficient. But this is certainly there at the end of the diving board here. It's jump or they have to see some ROI on this. Yeah. Which I guess, would you really bet against them seeing it? I don't know. But I do feel like this chart from...

Wall Street Journal, at some point, people are going to look back on it and go, of course, this was going to be a huge, this was going to be the thing that moved the market. And this caused some sort of disruption or correction or something like this. It has to eventually. There's no way that you can get this level of capital spend translated into returns right away. And the market is just going to take it.

I just don't see how that happens. Wait, what are you saying? I missed it. There has to be some sort of disruption from this much capital spend. We've never had this much capital spend before from a concentrated segment of the economy that hasn't led to excesses somewhere in some sort of bust. It's never happened. This would be the first time. You think this has to lead to a bust? I think if you've studied any history of technological innovation—

Anytime this happens leads to a bust. If this didn't happen, it would be the first time. Yeah. All right. That's all I'm saying. Put a timestamp on that. Like it's 2025. Yeah. The timing is the hard part. No, no, no. I'm asking you like by what year? So let's say if there's no bust by 2028, are you going to say, all right, never mind?

How much time are you giving that call? Three. Yeah, I think that's pretty fair. But there's so many things that have never happened before with these tech stocks. It wouldn't surprise me if they can write out some sort of... Are you trying to wiggle out of your prediction that you just made 30 seconds ago? That was not a prediction. That was based on historical... That was a prediction. I'm a history buff here.

No, it's not a prediction. It's just if I'm using history as a guide, it's never happened before. But I've also said, this is my grand rapids hedge to you. I also say things that have never happened before happen all the time. So if a group of companies was going to pull this off, it would be these companies, would it not? So what you're saying is there might be- I know. I'm leaning towards bust. It's 70-30 bust. Eventually, there's going to be a bust from all this capital spending. It just- I don't see how it doesn't-

Human beings cannot help themselves. We extrapolate into the future. That's the problem. Set expectations too high, and then we can't jump over the higher hurdle. That's what happens. Hey, why do you think that grocery stores are still regional? Because everything pretty much, I'm sure there's other industries that are still regional, but for the most part, everything's like national now. Is it like logistics? Because you have Walmart on the lower end. You have Target on the, I'd say, higher end. And then every place has something in the middle.

Or most places, right? But also Walmart is now the biggest grocery store in the world. I mean, it probably has been for a while. Yeah. So I'm saying on the, not too far from our house, on the busiest street here, 28th street, we have a Walmart, a Target, and a Meijer, which is the local regional one. Why do we have all three? Right. It doesn't seem like they should be able to coexist yet. They do.

I got a tech take here. This is a blue sky, so this was me trying it out. All right, this is your bullshit take. Let's go. No, but I believe this. So I do think there was a ton of reasons for the 2008 crisis, one of which was Wall Street had no moral compass. They were willing to write these loans and do all this crazy stuff and repackage stuff, and the greed got the best of them. I'm convinced more than ever that the tech industry is now Wall Street.

and they occupy that same role with no moral compass, and I think they will be the cause of the next financial crisis whenever it happens. Just because of their insatiable thirst for greed and power, which makes sense. If you built the biggest, best companies in the world, you're going to have your turn at the head of the table, right? You get the biggest piece of steak to, you know, take the Chris Rock joke. You're sitting at the head of the table, you get the biggest piece of steak, or you get the second piece of steak. So the tech industry, it made sense that they would

go for the power grab, but the greed with which they have now, I think rivals Wall Street. And this is a blanket stereotype. So don't take this personally if you work in the tech industry. There's some of the smartest people in the world work there. I don't think there's a lot of self-awareness or common sense. So I think that- From the people that have the power specifically? Yes, yes.

Did you see the Sam Altman, Elon Musk back and forth? Sam Altman talking about how insecure Elon Musk is and he's taking personal shots at him. But I read the book that Social Network was based on. I read it before it was turned into a movie. Not to brag. I was one of those guys. It was called The Accidental Billionaires. And the whole book was about how insecure Mark Zuckerberg is. And that's what led him to start Facebook. That's why he made Facebook.

Yes. And I think the depiction in the movie was pretty accurate. And I think there's still a lot of insecurities with these people. And I think that's going to lead to some bad decisions down the road and the tech industry is going to cause an exponential crisis. How's that? Is that fair? I mean, it's a blue sky take, so. That's fair. I'm going to take your blue sky take with the grain of salt.

At least on Blue Sky, you don't have to post something and then say link in the next tweet. That is the biggest beta move you can make. Guess what? Maybe I'm built different. I still post the link in the original tweet. I don't get it. When you post a link in the original tweet, you could still click on it, no? What's the problem? Yes, but apparently the algorithm on Twitter does not like links that take you to an external site. So they like don't show it as much. Oh, I understand. Who gives a shit? Exactly. Thank you.

I'm not going to subject myself to this. Yeah. Okay. It's only two months, but there was an article in the journal, Europe's unloved stocks are suddenly on top of the world. So you've got the German DAX at all-time highs. You've got the FTSE 100 at all-time highs. I think the CAC is there too. That's the French index. So David Kelly also wrote an article on LinkedIn saying,

By the way, I've been spending time on LinkedIn. There's got to be a setting feature, but this is so boring. I'm not even going to bore the audience with this. Who gives a shit? No more social media talk? All right. Yeah, why am I... Sorry, I apologize. Okay, so David Kelly said, Europe has underperformed the US in 12 of 15 years. Did you know that? I mean, I know we've known it's been a long time, but that's kind of wild. 12 of 15 years? Doesn't surprise me. It'd be interesting to... That's got to be the best winning percentage over a 15-year period of any of these, right? Yeah, 12 of 15. So...

David makes some interesting observations about Europe. The pedestrian pace of the European economy and markets could be a virtue for investors in the year ahead.

Europe suffers from none of the overbuilding excesses that haunt the Chinese economy. Right. They didn't build the ghost towns and such, right? European equity markets have none of the bubbly valuations that pose a threat to US stocks. A starting point of a weak euro and monetary easing, combined with a high savings rate and fiscal capacity, has the potential to boost both economic growth and dollar-denominated returns on the European equities. He also goes on to state, a useful definition of diversification is investing in stuff that you hate.

By that measure, for most American investors, Europe represents the perfect diversifier. Well said. Well said, yeah. So he shared a data point that was a bit of a face blower, that Eurozone unemployment is at 6.3%, which is about as low as it's ever been, ever. So I had ChartKid look at the difference between Eurozone unemployment and our unemployment. I've never looked at this before. That's interesting. And going back to 1990, the Delta, oof, I hate that word.

The difference on average is 3.5%. Meaning they've had 3.5% more unemployment annually than we have. Is that just because they take more naps there? Is that why?

I never realized there was that much of a spread. You want to know about my LinkedIn settings? I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. All right. I did this the other day. I was updating my – remember last week we talked about the long-term returns and how often they change? So I was playing around, and this is just fun with numbers, but I figured I'd test your compounding brain. So from 1950 to 2024, it was 11.5% per year for the S&P. What does that turn $10,000 into over 75 years? $2.2 million.

36 million. Wow. Not bad, eh? Okay. Counterpoint. You know anybody that's compounded at 11.5% for 75 years? Buffett? He's got to be close. When did he buy his first shares? Yeah. There's one person. There was one of us. I started investing for my kids. Let's see, my twins. I must have opened an investment account for them when they were four. I should just not let them touch it ever. And they can be the first people that have a 75-year...

How's that? Because every time I do post those stats. What's the point of the money then? Every time I post those stats, someone will come back and go, oh, great. No one has that long uptime horizon. Of course they don't. But yeah. All right. Moving on. Bearish sentiment. 52-week highs. Yeah. Not sure what to make of this. Again. All right. So getting back to the surveys are bullshit theme that we've been pounding the table on since we started this podcast eight years ago.

So AAII, bearish sentiment, 52-week high. I would have thought it would have gone the other way and people would be bullish now. Especially since this is a lot of baby boomers. I think part of this is their allocation to MegaCap Tech, I would guess. Which outside of meta has had a tough couple of weeks. All right, on the flip side, from JP Morgan, retail sentiment score reached new record high. So... Everything is conflicting these days.

That just, that's it, I think, when it comes to sentiment. But isn't it, I mean, this is completely contradictory. Yes. People see what they want to see when it comes to service. All right, this is a great, so let's move on to inflation. I've been talking about eggs in recent weeks and a few people gave me the Ben, you're out of touch talking about eggs kind of thing. Because I said, egg prices double and you spend 16 more dollars a week or whatever. People love taking the moral high ground. Oh, yes, yes. Saying someone else is out of touch makes you feel so great about yourself. Yeah.

I'm not out of touch. You're out of touch. I'm very in touch, actually. Someone sent us a passage from this book called Sway. It's about persuasion. And I read this passage and I ordered the book. I haven't read it yet. Economists wouldn't expect people to be more sensitive to price increases than price decreases. But what this study found is that shoppers completely overreacted when prices rose.

It turns out that when it comes to price increases, egg buyers are a sensitive bunch. If you reduce the price of eggs, consumers buy a little bit more. But when the price of eggs rises, they cut back their consumption by two and a half times. So just this is like loss aversion. Like the losses sting twice as bad as the gains feel good. It's the same thing with inflation. Inflation is loss aversion. So it's saying that like you would expect a price decrease and a price increase to have a similar effect.

change in demand. And that is totally off base. When prices rise, the demand drops substantially more than it increases when prices drop. Have you, so Robin noticed the price of eggs. Robin buys jumbo organic eggs. Okay. She's out of touch. $9. For how many? A dozen? Yeah. I think you're still going to say it's a good, it's a good deal. No. Well, what's the difference between a regular egg and an organic egg? See, I, that's where I draw the line is organic stuff.

I think that's a racket. That's just as bad as the premium car wash. What is an organic chicken? Hello? It's a chicken that's organic. All right. Torsen Slot Chart of the Week for Retirement. The number of people turning 65 every day. This is the one that you didn't believe forever.

I've never seen this, but he does it by country. So in the U.S., it's now 11,500 people. Remember we said 10,000 was the number? It's now higher than that. Prove it. 11,500 people turning 65 every day. In China, it's over 32,000 people every day, which makes sense because they have more people than us. But just seeing these numbers, and it's high in Japan, Germany, Italy, France, UK, Canada. Tons of people turning 65 every day. Are we going to have enough capacity to take care of these people as they age?

I think there's going to be a lot of millennials in the years ahead. If we don't get a whole fleet of robots to take care of old people, I think there's going to be a lot of millennials in the years ahead that are going to have to take care of their parents that aren't prepared for it. We were watching some movie about this where someone was forced to take care of their parents. And I told my wife, I said, I'm sorry, but my generation is not cut out for this. There's no way we're going to be able to handle this. I'm sure many people can relate to this. Watching my dad take care of his dad

I was like, sorry, dad, I can't do this for you. Yes, I saw the same thing with my mom. She moved my grandmother into an old folks home and she'd go see her every day and take care of her. People love to hate on baby boomers, which always strikes me as weird. I love my parents. I feel like my parents were good people. They did the right thing. It is true. You never think, it's kind of like how people always say they hate politicians, but they always still vote for the local politician. It's the same thing. Like, yeah, no one thinks of their parents as like this hated baby boomer.

It's just this blob over here that you don't know. I think that for the most part, yeah, I don't know. I don't know how it's going to work out. I don't want to speculate because I would be making it up. Because I know in other countries, like Japan, for instance, it's well known that you take care of the older generation. But I feel like the millennials, no offense, we're kind of a selfish bunch. I don't see us doing this. Right.

I see millennials complaining about the cost of like putting their parents up in an old folks home, but not stepping up to the plate to help out themselves. I think millennials are going to be complaining that all of the money that they thought they were getting is being spent on long-term care. Yes, that could be a thing. How about this?

Remember a few months ago we talked about the story of the guy whose father or father-in-law was not helping him even though they were worth like $10 million. People online were just outraged. Like how come these rich baby boomers won't help their kids? The kids need the help. Well, the counterpoint we heard, that kid was trouble. True. But there was a lot of up in arms of, hey, baby boomers, give us the money now. There was a story in The New Yorker.

How many New Yorkers are secretly subsidized by their parents? Boomers are transferring trillions of dollars to their kids, one down payment at a time. And they go through this whole thing about how it's impossible to live in New York because it's so expensive. And a lot of people are saying like, how is this possible? It's like, oh, because they have rich parents that are helping with their rent or giving them an allowance still. And I'm sure this is something that a lot of people in New York see. Because if you're young, it's, I think they said the average person

apartment now is five grand or something and a studio costs half a million dollars to buy or whatever. So it totally makes sense to me. But I think, I don't know, I think this is a good thing in some ways. It's a bad thing that it's wealth inequality because the boomers are helping out. They're giving their wealth now

But it also says, so I've seen a million estimates of this, like how much money is going to pass down. So this story says $124 trillion over the next two decades. And it sounds enormous and game-changing, but 50% of that $124 trillion in the hands of the top 2%. You know the Robert De Niro meme? Like, something and you're bearish? Okay. Like, $124 trillion is going to change hands and you're bearish? Oh, right.

Yeah, this was funny to me, though, because they were talking about how out of touch the people who get the help are. Like, if you're in New York and you're a young person working and your parents are helping you out, like, you are out of touch. Well, hold on, hold on. That's a mischaracterization of the article. It actually said the opposite. It said that a lot of the people that are getting support from their parents feel shame. Well, okay, this is funny, though. As one 30-something teacher ponders an interview describing the luxury car and real estate she has acquired through her parents…

Am I a trust fund baby or are we middle class? I can't even tell what middle class means in Manhattan. Her parents still go for an allowance. That was the end. But no, if you have a luxury car and own real estate in Manhattan, you're not middle class. Correct.

I guess I get the point. The other thing is New York is one of the biggest, most expensive cities in the entire world. And most people should not think they can afford to live in Manhattan. How fair is that? Yeah. It doesn't seem fair, but that, that's reality. I also think most, a lot of people go to New York, they do it from the time they're 23 to their 26, 27, whatever. Right. You have four roommates. Yeah. And then they, and then they go somewhere else. It's probably more suited for that. Yeah. I just think the,

You can't have the outrage both ways. I think it's good that boomers are helping in some way, even if it feels like it's unfair.

If you don't have a parent who can help, then that totally seems unfair to you. Well, it's like, listen, imagine, so there was a quote in the article like, oh, a friend was like, I assume that when I said that I was broke and you were broke, like we were, you know, on the same level. And then all of a sudden I find out that like your parents pay for your apartment. And so it's complicated because I'm sure that person feels like shit because like, or a sense of shame or guilt maybe that they have luxuries that their friends don't have. But at the same time, are they supposed to turn it down?

Exactly. I do look at it the other way, though. Like, if you are one of these people that can pull yourself up by your bootstraps and don't get help from your parents and you still are successful, then it feels 10 times better. Of course. Right? Mm-hmm. Okay. Good news from the Wall Street Journal. It took nearly 50 years, but half of private sector workers are saving in 401ks for the first time.

70% of private sector employees in the U.S. now have access to a 401k style retirement plan. So this number was way lower in the past. It's increased a lot. I think it's only going to get higher. A decade earlier, 60% had access and 43% contributed according to U.S. labor market. So in the past 10 years or so, we've seen a pretty big increase. So this is good news. We're finally getting there with the 401ks. It's great news. Right? I like it. But this should be much higher. And it looks like it will be.

So, yeah, so the fact that 70% of people have access but 50% are making contributions, there's a huge gap between the people that are not still making contributions and that should be automatically put in or something. So look at this chart. It shows the share since 2014 rising. And my comment was kind of like Josh's relentless bid idea.

We spend all this time thinking about the macro and rates and inflation and valuations and all this stuff. And what if the thing that really matters is just more people are investing in the stock market now and they're constantly putting money in and they don't care what any of that stuff means. Like the Occam's razor thing here is that's the thing that matters. Yeah. We focus on all this other stuff. Yeah. We, we've been talking about this for a decade. Right. Right. Like this is a, and it's going to go higher.

This is a big theme in the market is the relentless bid. And it doesn't mean that you can't bear markets. I mean, we've had a few since the relentless bid theory came out. But I don't see how all of these tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars a year flowing in doesn't impact the market. I mean, of course it does. So here's the rebuttal that I get from people occasionally is,

Well, for every buyer, there's a seller. And for every seller, there's a buyer. So more demand from people in 401ks can't impact the market. Of course it can. To which I say, then how would prices ever rise in the first place? If more demand is not pushing prices up, then what does? And if anything, I don't want to, this is like so theoretical. This is dorm talk. It is. Yeah, this is like take a bonk hit and then throw out a crazy theory. I have a question for you. Were you a wrestling fan with your sweatshirt?

I never knew you to be a wrestling fan. I was a wrestling fan. I wasn't like a hardcore, hardcore wrestling fan. Okay. But I watched Monday Night Raw every Monday for a couple years. But yeah, I grew up a wrestling fan. Sure. Speaking of being in touch or out of touch, I probably made it through the Bret Michaels, Shawn... What was that guy? What was the brother's name? Owen and Shawn Hart? Bret Hart. Bret Hart, that's it. Shawn Michaels. Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart. That's kind of when I made it. But...

I was never a kid who got the pay-per-view stuff for that, so I would watch the pay-per-view channel as the squiggly lines were going and try to see what happened. Yeah. There was always somebody that used to buy it, but it was never my house. Yeah, I never got it either. Okay. A lot of baby boomer talk on this episode. So this is from NAR, and they show the median age of homebuyers from 1981 to 2024. And it has gone from the median, and they show first-time, repeat, and all-buyers.

For all buyers, the number has gone from 31 years old to 56. For first-time buyers, it's still pretty… It's gone from 29 to 38. That's bad. Repeat buyers. Because the first-time buyers was always between 28 and 32, 33. Right. So that one hasn't… That one's moved up, but not… No, wait. Yes, it has. It moved up massively. It's 38 now. But the repeat buyers, this is the one that 36 to 61. And now… Wait. 36 to 61? Yeah.

Yes. So here's where I'm kind of fence-sitting on this one. On the one hand, these numbers are kind of ridiculous when you think about it. This is part of the unfairness equation here, that the baby boomers are the ones controlling all the wealth and the real estate market, and they're making it hard for first-time homebuyers. On the other hand, I think the reason the numbers were so low in the 1980s is because the boomers didn't have an offset. The millennials have an offset in the boomers. There wasn't a huge...

demographic above the baby boomers. So that's why they controlled so much. They were such a big demographic that they just dwarfed all the other demographics back then. Yeah. So I think that the 1980s numbers were probably being pushed down by the fact that the baby boomers had no competition in terms of other generations.

But it also, the fact that these numbers are getting so much higher and this, and they've taken off even more in this decade shows how hard it is for young people to buy these days. And the fact that the repeat buyers are so much older, it's because all those baby boomers who have their houses paid off. Because what's the number? 40% of all houses are paid off now. I don't know what percentage of those is boomers, but it has to be 90 some percent of them or something. They have all this equity. What do they care what mortgage rates are? They can just buy. What are mortgage rates going to come down?

I can't believe there's still 7% in 2025. There's no way anyone would have believed that back three or four years ago, that mortgage rates would still be 7%. I don't know. I guess hopefully they'll help. This is from Carl Quintanilla, who is now a blue sky only, I think. I don't think he's on Twitter anymore. Really? I think he's only blue sky. 17% of U.S. homeowners with mortgages have an interest rate greater than or equal to 6%, the highest share since 2016.

And so this has obviously been increasing and the share of 3% and 4% has been decreasing. So I think you could make the case that we're starting to get to a point where lower mortgage rates are going to have an impact for a lot of borrowers, right? It's not just a tiny percentage of the mortgage holders anymore that have high rates. Yeah, this is a great, terrible chart. Yes.

I just think the baby boomer demographic is going to change so many of these long-term averages and relationships because they're so big and they're so wealthy and living so long. I continue to pound the table on this, that we've never seen anything like this before. And a lot of these charts and stats, the baby boomers are going to make look silly. So I think we have to get used to it. Like all the employment stats in the years ahead are going to be screwed up because of the baby boomers retiring.

Like, I think wage stats are going to be, because if you think about it, a baby boomer who is retiring, who makes a lot of money, they're going to leave their job. And then a younger person is going to step in and maybe take part of that role and make a much lower wage. No, well, private equity is going to take it over.

Sure. Or AI. But it's going to make, I think it's going to make wage stats look weird. Because if you're going to have someone who's making a ton of money and now someone younger makes less money, takes that job, it's going to make it, I think it's going to like depress average wages and the labor force participation ratio is going to be weird. I think I just expect a lot of things to look weird in the years ahead because of Bay Boomers retiring. All right. Let's talk about B-REIT. For those not in the know, B-REIT is, I think it's the largest real estate fund. It

So there was news, was it like two years ago, that there was more redemption requests than liquidity. So you can only redeem, is it 5% a quarter? Is that the number? Yeah. There was a lot of people who wanted to redeem and couldn't. Yeah. So Blackstone, excuse me, struck an opportunistic deal. This is from the Financial Times with the University of California's endowment. They took in $4 billion. Yeah.

And for six years, Blackstone guaranteed them a minimum annualized net return of 11.25%. Whoa. Not bad. Not bad. It's nice to have money to flex. So Robin Wigglesworth at the time- No, I don't like that at all, though. You're guaranteeing an 11.25% return? That doesn't sound a little shady to you? Well, let me read the story. So Robin said, should the required average annual 11.25% return not be met beginning in 2028?

UC will have the option to sell down the B REIT shares it will receive from BX's collateral over a rateable two-year period each quarter. Our understanding is that such activity would show up as negative investment income for Blackstone in the distributable earnings P&L over those quarters. So it's coming from Blackstone. So they're just having to eat it somehow. Yeah. We understand that $1.2 billion is the maximum number that Blackstone could be on the hook for based on the price of that B REIT.

of the BWIC collateral. Okay. So I'm skipping ahead. Based on the value of the BWIC shares when the agreement was struck, we estimate Blackstone is on pace to forfeit $900 million of the $1.25 billion of collateral backstop in the UCAL contract. That said, we do point out that since the crystallization period for the use of the agreement is six years, so four years from now, Blackstone still has substantial time to dig out of the lower than run rate returns at 23 and 24.

So they're estimating, this is the Times, estimating that Buick will now need to generate an average of 17% annual returns for the remaining four years to avoid forfeiting its collateral. Okay, so here's why I don't like this. I'm going to harken back to a story by Barry Ritholtz that has always stuck with me. And Barry talked about the story of a prospect came to Ritholtz and said, stop me from, well, you don't have to stop me from remembering this, but

- Yeah, so this is for the audience. - Yes, I'm gonna have, 'cause he's told it a million times. He said, "I'm gonna pick four advisors, "and I'm gonna give all four advisors a quarter of my money. "So let's call it a million dollars. "I'm giving each of them 250 grand. "After a year, whoever has the highest performance, "that's who I'm gonna give my money to." And Barry said, "Good luck with that. "We're not gonna take part in this, "because what you're doing is you're asking someone "to take a lot of risk."

And if they take a lot of risk and they shoot the moon and they get it great, they earn your money. If they don't get it, no skin off their back. It's a year. They weren't going to have you as a client anyway. And why would you want something like that? Because you're inviting, you're incentivizing risk-taking. So my point here is them having a higher hurdle rate like this, doesn't this incentivize them to take on more leverage and invest in riskier real estate deals to hit this bogey? Maybe it's a, it's a, that'd be my worry. It's a 4 billion. It's a ton of money. I don't know how big the fund is. Is it 70 billion?

Yeah, obviously this is a great deal for them and something to get that cash because they have it there. But I just, I think this incentivizes risky behavior, which this, if I was a shareholder in this fund, I would not like this deal. All right. Here's, but here's the statement for Blackstone in a full payout to UC scenario.

We would expect a cumulative net financial impact to Blackstone shareholders to be less than half the value of the B-Weet collateral because Blackstone is earning full base and incentive fees on the UC capital. And our investment professionals are sharing in the cost of any shortfall. So they're saying that Blackstone, the company, is going to be eating this, not the investors in the fund.

That's what it sounds like. But also, they're still charging full fees and carry on that. So anyway, I'm a Blackstone shareholder, so I hope this doesn't blow up. Right, so Blackstone is calculating what the fees are that they're bringing in for management fees and what the fees could be on the profit sharing. How about this? Even if this goes as bad as it possibly can, worst case scenario, it's not like this is going to like, who knows? I'm guessing that it's not going to tank the stock.

True. Okay. See, I'm worried more about the investors in the fund rather than the stock of Blackstone. Blackstone, you're right, is going to be finding the way. So actually, we spoke to a manager of REIT ETF yesterday. And we were talking about the differences between private real estate, which has obviously gotten very popular with funds from Blackstone and such, versus just liquid,

Right? Stocks. And he said, well, first of all, in March 2020, for example, when we knew the world was going to shut down and office real estate, office REITs were going to take a hit, we could dump immediately, right? These are publicly traded stocks. Yeah. Of course, if you own an office building, can't do that. Yeah. Pros and cons to HB. Yeah, that'll come out in a couple weeks on Talk Your Book.

All right, we got a bunch of good feedback on remodeling processes. It's funny, I felt like kind of a noob saying last week, like, I don't know how to find someone to help remodel our house. But I also thought, wait, in the home ownership process, there's not a lot of things that you do on a regular basis. Unless you're someone who, like, buys and flips houses or buys and sells houses all the time. Like, the whole process of buying and selling or remodeling, it's not something you do on a regular basis that you'd, like, have experience with unless you were someone in this field.

So we'll get to some of those things in a minute, but I'll tell you what I did, which I should have thought of immediately. I called my builder and said, can you guys do this? And he said, oh yeah, sure. We remodel. And if I'm on a phone call with my builder, I have to get a channel check in. So I said, hey, how are things going? Like what's going on? I said, I work in finance. I don't remember, but I'm curious how things are going. And he gave some great advice that we've given on this very show. He said, you know what I tell people?

Do not try to time the housing market. If you're going to build a house with us, do it now. Don't wait. He said, I can't tell you how many people in the last two to three years have tried to time the interest rate market. And because they waited to try to time interest rates, the building material costs went up by 100 grand.

or 200 grand or some ridiculous number. And he's like, so many people have waited for two or three years for rates to fall and they were going to build anyway. And then finally they throw up their hands and say, we can't wait any longer. And then their costs are way higher. And he said, even if rates would have fallen, the amount of money that they would have saved would have not

been enough to account for the higher costs. Well, how about this? What about just lost time? You could have been in your house. Yes, exactly. So his whole thing is like, I keep telling people, don't try to time this. If you want to build and you can afford it, just build. And I said, that's a great advice. I, I totally agree. So anyway, they're going to do some work for us. Okay. Here's one. Referrals are the best. So this is someone who works in the construction industry.

If you have friends that have done remodels, get their honest feedback. I'm always wary of contractors that have digital marketing down to a science. I want the guy that has a dated website and an Instagram account they haven't posted in in two years. Yes. That's pretty good. Lastly, don't sign the dotted line until you see their work in person. At a bare minimum, demand at least three referrals from past clients. If they are unwilling to do this, that's a red flag. I feel like all these places should have pictures up at least on their website that you can look at. He said you're 100% right about not sharing your budget. Tell them exactly what you want and get an estimate.

So that is one. Now this other person says, as a residential painting estimator, I want to get my two cents on your negotiating conversation. We ask what your budget is to address the inevitable price objection. We don't want to do this. We don't want this to hold you to a certain number. We do it so we know what we need to do to win the job. So he's saying he can come in with his estimate and move it around. So I guess... I appreciate this point of view. I see. So I see. I do see both sides of it. Well, because what if the job costs $25,000 and somebody's like, yeah, my budget is $9,000.

And then they can be like, oh, well, that's not how much this costs. But if, yeah, you say my budget is $20,000 and they say, we were going to charge you $25,000, what if we did this and we cut back on this? So they can work with you. So I guess I do, I see it both ways. All right, survey of the week. Some good stuff in here. Where'd this come from? Tata sent this to us from YouGov, talking about people's eating habits, breakfast, lunch, dinner, what they do during each, et cetera. So some of the things that stood out. So-

50% of Americans say that dinner is their favorite meal. I would agree with that, right? Dinner's my favorite meal, yeah? Definitely. Okay. That's easy. 11% say it's their least favorite. That's a weird thing. How could dinner be your least favorite meal? Cereal people, maybe? Are there cereal people? Okay. Seinfeld. Americans over 65 are more likely than younger adults to say they always eat breakfast. That checks out. I can see that. You a breakfast guy? Yes, I eat breakfast. I mean, because some people skip breakfast altogether. Okay.

This is a straightforward question. Are you a breakfast guy? Yeah, I eat breakfast. Okay. What do you eat? Yogurt, granola. Every day? Pretty much. You're a creature of habit. Yes. Repetition. That's the thing when you get older. Not me. Okay. My breakfast is very volatile. Bagels with salmon on it. No, no, no. I don't eat salmon. But I could, I could, I, uh, I would say I eat breakfast here and there. I don't have a routine. I'm not a routine oriented eater. Okay. Um, all right. Wait, what was the, what was the TV part of this though? I'll get to it.

Okay. 68% of adults. All right, when do you eat dinner? Time of the day? Am I speaking English? These are very straightforward questions. I feel like I'm being interrogated here. What time in the day do you eat dinner? Dinner time. I don't know, five to six. Okay, well that's- When you have kids, you eat early. So yeah, closer to five because kids expect to eat.

early right after school okay well this is this is good stuff ben because you are in the minority uh oh my god sorry you just missed the cutoff wait it breaks it down into like all adults 18 to 29 30 to 44 how old are you 43 okay so you're still in this bracket so you're an outlier because around 10 of people eat between 5 and 5 30 yeah that's because my habits are driven by my kids though not by myself if it was up to me i'd eat later okay

And they did say that, I think, what was the number? A lot of people eat dinner and watch TV at the same time. Most Americans watch TV during dinner. What is your take with your kids? Do a lot of kids have screens during dinner? Because this has been a back and forth in my household. I do. I decided recently, there's no more screens for dinner. Good for you. If we're eating dinner together, there's no screens. And my kids were going to riot potentially, but they've adjusted. Yeah. Yeah.

This isn't always, but I say if we're going to have dinner and everyone's here, we're doing it as a family, we're eating at the dining room table, and there's no screens. Yeah, I respect that. I don't know if this makes me a bad father, but I can't entertain my kids while I'm eating. I don't want to. That's true. You know what our thing is? I don't know where my wife got this. We ask our kids every day when we're at dinner, what's your rose and what's your thorn today? What's a good thing that happened to you? What's a bad thing that happened to you? Oh, that's very sweet. And then, of course, they fight over who gets to go first, but...

that is at least a way to get them to talk about their day. I had an interesting viewing experience last night. So at TV, at, at, at dinner, I was showing the kids angels in the outfield. Oh, that's a good one. I've been thinking about nineties movies to show my kids. So it's on, it's on Disney plus and listen, I think one of the ways that I've succeeded most as a parent is that my daughter, my oldest daughter's favorite movie of all time is a league of their own. Wow. She watches it. She's watched it multiple times. So she'll love angels in the outfield. So,

And I thought to myself, I'm watching Angels on the Outfield with my kids. And then when they go to sleep, I'm going to see Hard Eyes. Listen to this cast. I had no memory of this. Tony Danza, Danny Glover. Yep. Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Yep. Daniel Stern or Steve Brookie of the Year. No, he's Brookie of the Year. That's where I lost it. Okay. So Danny Glover, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tony Danza, Matthew McConaughey. Oh, did not know that. Christopher Lloyd. Oh yeah, that's right. Adrian Brody.

Was on the baseball team. Really? And then there's like three that guys. Dermot Mulroney, you know that guy. Neil McDonough. I don't know if you know these names, but you know these faces. Star-studded cast. Good movie. Okay, I'm going to put that one out. What happened to Danny Glover? That guy was awesome. He was great. He looked like he was 60 years old and Lethal Weapon was the only like 35. He was one of those guys. So he is that guy. So Angels in the Outfields in 1994. So he was, oh, he was holding that movie. Okay, he was almost 50.

All right, a few people sent us this. This is from CNBC. Robert F. Kennedy, who recently revealed in financial disclosures that he was carrying up to $1.2 million in credit card debt.

because he had to put this for all the stuff he's going through to be sworn in. Credit card balances range between $610,000 and $1.2 million in accounts that carry interest of 23% to 24% filing show. And they were talking about how he makes like $9 million a year doing God knows what. So what's the story here? There's got to be a story, right? Well, it's funny because in the personal finance things, they're talking about like how he can pay it down and stuff. But I didn't know that you could – how high of a credit limit can you get?

Well, if you're a Kennedy, I guess there's no, you know. There's no limit, I suppose. But wait, but why does he have $1.2 million in credit card debt? That's a great question. It didn't really explain, like, why is he holding so much debt if he makes so much money every year? That's f***ing money. I guess, right? I'm willing to just... Who cares? Yeah, I'll pay 25% interest on 1.2 mil, whatever. Yeah, that's a...

Obviously, really rich people have really high credit limits, but I never would have thought that you'd see a million dollars in credit card debt because why would they ever use it? Why would they ever roll it over? Who cares? He's like the Mag 7 of credit card debt holders. He's like skewing the averages higher. Yeah. All right. I agree with Nick here. Nick Majuli tweeted, the easiest way to tell if someone is out of touch financially, speaking of out of touch, ask them whether they think a million dollars is a lot of money. I got to be honest. This grinds my gears a lot. The people who say it's not enough money anymore? Yeah. Yeah.

It really grinds my gears. In what universe is a million dollars not a lot of money? Now, I get it. A million dollars when we were growing up, like you were a millionaire, right? A millionaire meant that you had a million dollars. And it's true. Obviously, a million dollars in 1996 is worth more than a million dollars today. Like, no f***ing shit. But for the people, and I know Scott Galloway says this a lot, and he actually said on my show, and I wish I had the chutzpah to push back on him with Josh and I, that you need to make a million dollars a year to survive or something like that. I was like, how...

What are you, insane? That's so condescending. It's so disrespectful. So isn't it like maybe 20% of households are millionaires now or something in the US? Yeah. I mean, it's a much higher number than it was in the past, but that's still relatively low. It's a lot. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, so Nick Maggiore broke it down with data as he does. And he said, okay, so $1 million in 1996 adjusted for inflation is $2 million today.

All right, that checks out. Yeah, a million dollars. So the book today would be called The Two Millionaire Next Door. Exactly. Who wants, yeah. So a million dollars in 1996 put you in the 95th percentile of wealth. So view through that lens, what does it equate to today? $3.8 million. $3.8 million.

So $3.8 million today is – because we've also gotten richer over time. So it's not just an inflation story. But anyway – Look at how quickly the 95th percentile has risen in this past few years. But it is so insulting and stupid. If you don't think a million dollars is a lot of money, just maybe keep that to yourself. Yes, I agree. That's an out-of-touch finance thing to say. Yeah. And yeah, obviously, a million dollars in the 90s was a shit ton of money.

A million dollars in the 90s was rich if you had a million dollars. And if you have a million dollars today, you have a good amount of money. You're still rich. Well, people could disagree about that, but it's still a lot of money. If you're in the top 20% of households. That's not rich. That's not rich. I'm sorry. What's your cutoff for rich? What percentile of net worth do you have to be in to be considered rich? Not 20, because not 20. That means if you're wealthier than one out of four people, that's not rich. That seems rich to me. Or one out of five.

My math there is that if there's five people- So what are you saying, top 10% of rich? Hold on, just for people that are questioning my math, I'm saying if there's five people in a group and you're richer than four of them, that would be top 20%. That's what I meant. What do I think rich is? Top 10%, I guess. I don't know what that number is, net worth, but top 10%. Okay. So you'd say your $2 million is rich. But then it's like, well, we're talking about liquid. You know what I mean? Like investable. Anyhow, good work, Nick. All right. Billy Madison turned 30 years old. And I think I've said this on the show before, but I'll-

Not afraid to say it again. No grand rap is ahead of you. Billy Madison sucks. Sucks. Okay. It's very sophomoric, and it's one of those things that's way funnier when you're younger. Like, when it came out, and I saw it when I was, whatever I was, a teenager, I thought it was hilarious. But now you watch it in, like, the Penguin stuff, it's... Miss... What was her name? Miss... Not Miss Blippi. What was her name? It's still... I don't know. The one when she's eating glue? But, I mean, it still has a lot of, like, iconic moments in it. Of course. Listen.

I'm being a bit hyperbolic. But it's not, listen, we were, I was 10 years old when this came out. Of course, I think the movie is not as funny as it used to be. But I wonder if we show this to our kids, would they love it? Probably. I'm sure my son would love it. But I mean, it's got Farley as the bus driver too. But how about this? Happy Gilmore, still awesome.

True. It doesn't age as well. All right. Wall Street Journal has the cost of a Disney vacation. And I'm going through this right now. My wife wants to plan another Disney trip for us, which I'm 99% of the way out on, and I have no choice. I'm going back. When are you going back? We're looking at going back next year, maybe Thanksgiving week-ish. I don't know. So one day adult passes to Disneyland broke $200 mark for the first time in October, 206th on most popular days.

Five years ago, the Skip the Line feature Fast Pass was free. I think it was like that when we went there the last time. Now visitors choose from three different tiers of Lightning Lane passes for a privilege, the most expensive being $449 a day. Doing without the Lightning Lane can mean spending an hour or more waiting for the most popular rides, eating up vacation time. Some inside Disney worry that the company has become addicted to price hikes and has reached the limits of what middle-class Americans can afford.

So they say a two-parent family with two young kids, a typical four-day trip to Walt Disney with hotel costs like $4,300. And that's without plane tickets if you're flying there.

Before food and transportation, that's up from 3,200 five years earlier. Adjusted for inflation. So adjusted for inflation, it's $1,000 more for a four-day trip. There are people that go to Disney every year. Okay, now this is like- Duncan, show yourself. Duncan is a Disney guy. Chris, we work with. Chris is also a Disney guy, goes every year. Duncan, you can chime in if you want. Don't be shy. What do you want to- But you go every year, right? I don't know. Do you have any thoughts? Have you noticed a substantial change?

Yeah, no, I mean, it's busier every time. Every time we go. My wife's family has always gone every year, pretty much. So the fact that it keeps getting busier is one of the reasons that they probably feel good about these price hikes. Right. Regardless of how much they hike the prices, people complain, but they just keep coming. Yeah, they're still pushing it. All right, get out of here, Duncan. Yep.

It's kind of wild. Is there no limit? I guess not, right? So look at this next chart. This chart is the most striking wealth inequality chart I've seen in a long time. It shows annual vacation budget for families by income.

And they break them into quintiles, okay? So this is where you said that the top 20% is not rich. Look at the annual vacation budget for the top 20% versus the next 20, the next 20, the next 20, the next 20. Do you see this? Well, yeah, relatively it's rich. So the vacation budget for the 60 to 80th percentile is $2,200. For the top 20%, it's almost $8,000. For the bottom 20%, it's $600. And I bet you for the top 10%, it's like...

It's like you're doing this. This chart is holding a finger up. I don't know. I guess you should theoretically understand this, but this to me is wealth inequality in a nutshell. Yeah. Right? Yes. Don't tell my wife I don't want to go back to Disney. She's going to make me go. I have no choice. I want to go back. You know what else is on Disney Plus? I think it's check it off your list and good forever. I only caught the first five minutes. My kids weren't into it, but they do the Lion King show.

With all of the original, with all the singers from the movie in Los Angeles and like in one of the stadiums. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. We did the Lion King show when we were down there. I don't know, man. Just the, the lines and that's not a vacation. That's a fan. I love it. That's a family trip, not a family vacation. Lighten up then.

- We've already been to Disney twice. It's more than enough for me. We went once with my daughter before we had the twins, and then we went once with all three of them. Now she wants to go back again. - That's fair, that's fair. Twice is enough, you're right. - All right, hiccups. FYI, chronic intractable hiccups are a real thing. I'm a family medicine doctor, and I've had one patient in his 60s with this.

It varies a bit on the timing, but I don't think I've ever seen him go more than two minutes without a hiccup. He tolerates it much better than I could. But no, I know from reading up on this condition that the suicidal rate for these patients is much higher than the general population. That's awful. I can see that. What an awful affliction. All right, I have some random Super Bowl thoughts. Okay. From the Super Bowl a couple days ago, because it was the most boring game ever. And I know that you lost money.

Cause you always lose money in these things, but you, but you lost money betting on the U S stock market. I said, betting on the chiefs is like betting on the U S stock market. I had money in the chiefs too. I lose money betting on the U S stock market. Cause every once in a while, this U S stock market goes down. The chiefs are the U S stock market. You bet on them every year. Most of the time you're going to win. Sometimes you're going to lose. You know, it's funny. I've bet against the chiefs every year. Although I didn't win money with the bucks.

All right, some Super Bowl thoughts. Does Matthew McConaughey owe someone money? What happened? He did a commercial? He did like a million. Even my kids are like, this guy's on every commercial. He's on so many commercials. He must owe someone money. Why don't Hollywood people use the same plastic surgeons? Because some people in Hollywood have really good plastic surgeons. You're like, oh, that person definitely had plastic surgery. It looks pretty good. Meg Ryan? Does not look great, right? Yeah, like she had a bad plastic surgeon, obviously. Yeah.

And I think she's like the goat of romantic comedies. I would have loved to see her age gracefully. You know why else I feel old? Because Tom Cruise did the intro thing. I don't know if you saw the Tom Cruise intro for the Super Bowl.

TC is starting to look a little old and he had some work done, but it's funny because the- He's 60 now. Like, yeah, but I mean, he had some work done. He looked like AI Tom Cruise a little bit, but here's my take. We're never going to have a bald actor again in history in Hollywood. It's never going to happen again. So like in the 70s and 80s, you had- Whoa, whoa, whoa. No, listen, listen, because they're all going to get Hollywood hair. You can't be an actor now anymore without getting plastic surgery when you're young. If you start losing your hair-

Um, so in the past, you know, Nicholson was going bald. Robert Duvall went bald early. Hackman went bald. Dreyfus, Michael Keaton went bald. Bill Murray, all these guys were like regular everyday men and you're not going to have that anymore because of the proliferation of plastic surgery. How's that? Okay. Um, Jason Statham will be the last one. No, Hank. Well, that's it. That's a condition. Uh, so that's my take. We're never gonna have a bald actor again. I don't like it. Right. I can't find everyday man is going away. I think it's a good take, but, uh,

That's all I got for Super Bowl thoughts. Okay. Recommendations? You don't want to complain about losing money? Come on. Do I want to complain about losing money? I'm not even mad. I had that in my parlay. I'm not even mad. I'm not even mad. You know? It happens. You win some, you lose some. You win some, you lose a lot more. But that's the way it goes. All right. So I got recommended the pit by a few people. Tata Fiscante, that we work with, Abnormal Returns.

I said, "Watch The Pit on HBO." And I thought, you know what? I've seen so many medical dramas in my life. I watched ER back in the day. I watched Scrubs. I watched Nurse Jackie. What else? I watched a few seasons of Grey's Anatomy before it got old. So I just thought, like, I don't need another medical drama. And I started watching this show, and it's by one of the creators or producers of ER. And they actually brought back Noah Wiley, who was on the original ER. And I thought, like, I don't— And I watched it, and I got sucked in immediately. Like, medical dramas just always work. And you know what's the best feature?

The first day is, oh, the new interns are here. You know? Right? It's the intern's first day. That always works. You know what's funny? I feel like you and I live in alternate universes sometimes because, like, I don't know why it just occurred to me that I've never seen any of these shows. Really? Okay. Not a single one. ER was one of the biggest shows back in the day. That's got Clooney got his start pretty much. You know why? I was too busy watching wrestling. I guess so. So the pit is an ER in Pittsburgh.

And each episode of the show, we've only watched three so far, I'm guessing they're like this, is one hour in this ER, but it takes place on one day. The whole season, each, it's not quite like 24 where they're doing a countdown clock, but each show is an hour. So you're dealing with like the same patients and the same doctors on the same day. And it's really good. Don't you think that if they made a season of 24, that it would do serious ratings? Today? Oh yeah, if it came out, for sure.

But here's the thing. So, like I said, Noah Wiley was the doctor on ER back in the day, and he's now playing a doctor on this show. Why don't we do this more? Because he seems – he's so good in this show, and he seems so comfortable. Like, duh, he's played a doctor before. If you've played this type of role in the past, bring him out and do – like, all the people from Lost, like, do another beach show, you know? This should be a thing where they bring people back. None of those people from Lost ever panned out, really. Very surprising, right? I mean, Sawyer was in Yellowstone for one season, but, like, none of them really –

It surprised me. Matthew Fox gave it a go. Matthew Fox didn't do anything? All right, so I watched Goodrich on your recommendation, and I liked it. You're right, that was a good Ben movie. I might have got a little teared up at the end when he told his daughter that she was his soulmate. That was great. So I was thinking, Michael Keaton and Tom Hanks was kind of a thing in the 80s, and they both did a lot of slapstick comedy roles, and they were kind of similar. Hanks has more iconic ones, but Keaton had some pretty good ones. And then in the 90s,

Michael Keaton took on Batman in Batman Returns, and it was like, oh, he's going to win this. And of course, Hanks blew him out of the water, and Keaton had nothing. But in their later roles in life, Michael Keaton now has a better older guy, IMDb. He's had some pretty good movies in the past few years, and Tom Hanks has not had one good one in a long, long time. That's such a good point. Michael Keaton has a better Twilight career than Tom Hanks, which is shocking to me. I never would have thought that. He was so good in that Goodrich movie you recommended to me. Great movie, right? Yeah.

Very good. That's all I got. Okay. So I watched the OJ doc and I was thinking like, why is there another OJ thing? It was, it's on, so it's, it's four episodes on Netflix and I haven't seen any of the, there's been like three shows, maybe the right. There was one on FX. I watched a little bit of the FX show. It's not bad. All right. So anyway, I didn't watch any of that. So all this was new to me. Like I was, I remember the chase cause I was watching at my friend Josh's house when we were nine, but I don't like know the story that well, you know?

Like what happened during the trial, like who fucked up, how did, you know, all that sort of stuff. I feel like I watched all the Inside E stuff back in the day on this. So anyway, this went pretty deep, but there is a great reveal in episode four from one of OJ's confidants and he spills the beans on something that OJ said to him revealing that in fact he did kill his wife. And I was like, he did? Yeah. Was that reveal really necessary? Of course he killed his wife.

It was necessary. I enjoyed it. Okay. Yeah. He wrote a book saying, if I did it. We know. We know that he did it. But to hear somebody that was, again, through the course of the documentary, like a major OJ supporter spill the goods, I thought was, eh, how about that? All right. So Robin and I had no plans this weekend, which was just perfect. I'm over it. I don't want to go out every Saturday. It's like too much. Right? I agree. Welcome to the Lage, my friend.

So on Friday we watched, uh, kind of pregnant, kind of pregnant is an Amy Schumer movie on Netflix and it's not good. Um, nor was there expectations of it being good, but we did get like two or three and like once legit LOL, like belly laughter tears. And for me, that's good enough, right? Like if you get one belly laughter out of economy, that's good enough. Okay. And then the next night we watched, we watched a cordially invited, uh,

Holy shit. So Cordially Invited is a... It's funny. It's Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon, and I have no intention of watching it. Really bad. Like, how? It was such a steaming pile of dog shit. I mean, we turned it off with probably like 25 minutes left. Really? That bad? Like, we were almost at the finish line. I was like, God, this sucks. It was just... It was a little depressing that...

That was like the recipe for like good comedies back in the day. And it was just, it was horrendous. That is true. How do you make a bad wedding comedy? It had all of the ingredients really bad, really, really, really bad. Have there been any comedians modern day who have aged and continue to make funny movies as their career progresses? They almost all flame out and stop making funny movies. Think about it. Jim Carrey's making Sonic movies these days.

Will Ferrell hasn't made a funny movie since the other guys. Is that true? Look it up. It's true. The other guy is 2009. Also Michael Keaton. All right. I got a DM the other day from someone who said, hey, huge fan of Animal Spirits. I did not realize that you and Michael had other podcasts. You guys have to do a better job at self-promotion. And I said, fair enough. I'm not a big self-promoter guy.

But this guy had no idea that you do the compound of friends with Josh. No idea that I did ask the compound or you do. What are your thoughts? Or do you talk your book of the unlock or the ownership, all this stuff. So we have a bunch of other podcasts. Check out the compound. That's probably the easiest way to find it. Right. Check out the compound of YouTube. Had no idea. Said we need to do better self-promoting job. Listen, I don't sell out like McConaughey. I don't say yes to every commercial there is. Sorry. Who does more commercials today? McConaughey or Kevin Hart?

I don't watch commercials. I mean, outside of the Super Bowl, I guess. During sports? All right. Okay. Anything else? What else? One month away from Future Proof Citywide in Miami. Turning 40 there. When do people have to sign up by? Yesterday. Is it over? Not quite, but we're getting to the finish line. We know people if you want to still sign up. Anything else, Ben? Nope. Email us, animalspiritsathecompoundnews.com. See you next time. Boom, boom.