The Smead Book List - Summer 2026

25:56And therefore, they had that as kind of their core building blocks of learning. Well, a liberal minded person today doesn't touch any of those subjects. Now, I think the question we could ask is, is that okay? Is that good? I don't know. I am of the camp that believes that the more we've tried to explore the individual for the individual's sake, what we've done is we've kind of eroded what was the original concept. It's the individual in light of timelessness, not the individual on its own. So if someone could say, where's the individual gone amok? Well, we have all these things that we now think we're asking in culture like the individual does, and we're like, hmm, is that the best thing for us corporately as, say, a country?

26:47Yeah. And so as I'm going through his book, I have that question really just running amok. Because I think the knock-on order of that is because we don't agree on what truth is and how individuals should take truth and continue to build great things off of truth, are we debating points that shouldn't be debatable in the individual discussions? Therefore, yes, we might be liberally minded, but are we going to get anything done? Yeah. Yeah. And it feels like there's like the there's the institutions. There's also sort of this like community. And like, would you as an individual, you know, be willing to not get the greatest impact here, but you do something because it's part of the community and the community is stronger for it.

27:31And then the institutions, you know, hopefully represent some of that community, reinforce that. But, yeah, it feels like there's that divide where nobody, everybody can really agree on anything. Well, I agree. And so again, it's like, okay, what are some knock-on questions that I totally want to ask Adrian if I get the chance is, okay, is this because the church as a core to liberalism, without that present, that causes everything to fail away? Potential question. Another question, should we be taking the liberal-minded thinker and saying we got to take that plus to your point, what is good corporately or what I'll call corporate pragmatism?

28:11Okay? So it's like, okay, here's the deal. You can be liberally minded, but we all need to get married and have kids. Right. Because it'd be better for the broader. Because it's so important for us all that we are going to be liberally minded, but pragmatic to the suffrage of the furtherment of humanity. I mean, those kind of concepts. Again, I don't know, but so far, I think we can see statistically that at least the individual in light of, say, things like church are actually furthering humanity better. But again, is that because there's a lack of pragmatism where it's like, if you die, you're dead.

28:51Yeah. And you're done. Yeah. And we call that humanity. Yeah, versus something that lives on longer. What's the purpose of liberalism if it's only going to be centered on the individual that makes the decision that day? Is that timeless? I don't know. Same at a corporate level. Is a company making decisions today that just sort of benefit the here and now? Or are they setting it up so that in the future when they're long gone, whoever that next set of folks is, it lives on and thrives? Yeah, totally agree. So let's do this. Let's pivot. it. What books have you had recommended to you? What have you bought?

29:28You just haven't cracked yet? Yeah. Well, so I recently connected with a guy here in Denver. He's like the first Berkshire person I've ever met here in Denver. Yeah, we just, we connected and then found out we both were huge Berkshire fans and got together and he was like, hey, you got to take these three books. So I was going to throw out these three books. So the first one, I cracked this one open, but it's called Buying Disney's World by Aaron Goldberg. It's a really fun story so far. It just tells the story about the creation of Disney World. And it starts with all the lessons they learned from when they built Walt Disney.

30:07They built Disneyland, and they only had enough money to buy a certain amount of land. And so what happened is all the land around Disneyland sort of got developed by other folks. So they said, if we're not making that mistake again, We want to make sure we have full control. So when they're when they're out there in Orlando, they it tells the story of how they they created. They had this guy who was like ex CIA, who was like running this operation with shell companies to acquire all this land so that nobody would figure out that this was going on and everything. And so, yeah, pretty, pretty interesting book.

30:41Haven't gotten too far into it, but I think it'll be it's not that big. It's kind of a fun, it's almost like a spy or like a heist type movie so far. So second one he gave me, and I think I heard Jamie Dimon reference this one recently. It's Freedom's Forge. And I think it tells the story about in World War II, how we were able to basically turn the industrial base of the U.S. into creating everything we needed for World War II. And so it tells that story more on the home front of like, you know, basically how we use all of our existing assets to pivot and support those efforts. Yeah. And then the third one, this one's kind of a big one, so I don't know how far I'll get into this one, but it's called The Rise and Fall of American Growth.

31:28I don't know a ton about it, but I think it was written in like 2016. And basically, you know, in the kind of the cliff notes of it, it sounds like it, they really highlight the economic progress from post-Civil War into like the, you know, like 100 years after that. So into the into the 1900s and how they try to make the case that that really was the most significant step up in just human human life quality and everything. And so kind of like you hear like Charlie Munger used to talk some about that, where it's like like just the advancements in medicine, the advancements. And, you know, you're you know, you're you're cool in Arizona.

32:03You're you're warm in the winter. You're here. You know, you're you're you're able to we have all these things that just made our life better. Now we kind of have these like, you know, is this this new app incrementally making my life that much better? You know, who really knows? So be curious to see, you know, that I think the author's take is that basically to expect slower growth going forward and that we kind of had this just really dynamic level up. But it's always kind of fun sometimes to read those that have been published and out for a little while. You can kind of with hindsight, you get to kind of see what's what's held up and what hasn't.

32:33And then the last one with everything going on with oil markets and the straighter Hormuz, I always enjoy when Dan Yergin gets on TV. Yeah, he's great. He's awesome. And so I've read a number of his books. And he mentioned this one. It's called Commanding Heights. And I'd never heard of it before. So I was like, I've got to order that. And it was written in like the late 90s. So it was after he wrote the prize. and I think it really sort of goes into sort of what the world order really turned into after World War II. So kind of, again, sort of hindsight, you'd be kind of curious to see what they were thinking back then and how it's played out, what's stayed the same, what's different.

33:11So those are the ones that I've got on my book list. Yeah, so let's see. I got, let's see, I want to say I got like four or five titles here and these are, this will be pretty eclectic. So I know Bill read this and I haven't got to it yet, but I just want to mention it. So the book is called Campus Speech and Academic Freedom. It's by Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gilman. I think I might have mentioned this before, but Erwin's son, Adam, was my fraternity brother in college. Erwin is like one of the foremost constitutional law professors in the country. And I'm really interested to think about, again, it's kind of that liberal question, right?

33:49It's like, okay, when people go to these universities, like what should we allow? What shouldn't we allow? And how do we set the framework for individualism? Okay, it's a massive question. It's obviously a federal question. It's a local question. So I'm terribly interested to get through that book. And my second one is like my antiquity. I usually every once in a while, like every six or 12 months, I have to go back to antiquity and kind of ask a question and have a book to go with it. So there's a new book called Carthage, A New History by Eve McDonald. Obviously, you get to go back and visit Carthage and think about what was going on then.

34:28Kind of under my 250th anniversary, I know this book kind of touches on that. This Land is Your Land, A Road Trip Through U.S. History by Beverly Gage is another book that I have on my list of books that I want to address. And again, like you were saying, you think about these histories and it's kind of like, okay, most US history tends to over-talk about World War II, like I said earlier. So I don't know if you've noticed on the podcast, but I've done a lot of 19th century history or kind of pre-Great Depression history. I think those are less talked about and therefore it's kind of where I focus more on my energy and thinking about those histories.

35:05And so it'd be kind of fun to do something that walks through the historical period, doesn't just focus on one. And then the other book that I have on my list is called In Search of Trade, John Cabot, Christopher Columbus, and the Opening of the Atlantic by Lydia Towns. A book that kind of touches a similar period of this was I did the book on John Jacob Astor and kind of talking about how he had created this trade network and then he created, obviously, the town of Fort Astoria, which is at the mouth of the Columbia River, what we now know as Astoria, Oregon. So I think I was going to kind of get a different touch of that, but really just thinking about how that happened with the Eastern Seaboard comparatively.

35:46We normally finish off with questions. You had some really good questions. And so I'm just going to let you ask away because rather than me trying to figure out what our listeners want to understand, I'll let you lead. Yeah, great. Okay, well, this is fun. So first question, you know, I feel like, you know, have to have to lead off with oil markets, straight or Hormuz, you know, you're thinking on that. I have two. I'll share my two fun analogies that I enjoy making up for myself. One, when this first started happening, is you kind of say, gosh, the straight or Hormuz, it's kind of like a like a core artery, you know.

36:24And so if you think of like from a human's perspective, it's like, gosh, you know, if this thing just remains clogged, is that kind of like the equivalent of having like like a heart attack or a stroke? Or you can think of it like if you get a stint, you know, and you catch it early, you can get it reopened and it's not really a, you know, a huge event. So sort of curious on that. And then now when I see, you know, oil inventories, just we continue to draw on those. I'm starting to think, is this actually the straight of Ozimbic? You know, we're working off our calories and excess reserves here.

36:56And so the question to you is, what are your thoughts on long-term oils, the inventory levels, and sort of how that might play out downstream into various effects? Yeah, it's a totally – just to give everyone a historical perspective on this, why this is so odd is if you go back – and I'm not going to consider myself a longstanding expert in the oil market. as you know Steve like we didn't even own businesses in this arena until you know six years ago broadly speaking okay and we would never have considered ourselves like people that have a lot of knowledge because we didn't spend a lot of time in the space okay if you go back and say 10 or 20 years ago did anyone ever even like kind of war game this and like put it in the paths of a possibility the answer is they did they talked about this as kind of like a theoretical war game where Hormuz could be closed off.

37:52That was potentially talked about, but not in a realistic light. It's like, okay, we know that path is a possibility, a 0.001 % possibility, but it was just never really put in the lexicon of likely paths. So I think that's like from the starting point, you know, what is the market telling us about the future? Well, first off, my friends, it's an unknown future. And this proves how unknown it is. I mean, go back to one year ago where it's like, oh, what was the market telling us about the future? Well, oil was below$60 a barrel. Supposedly it was telling us the future is going to be really dark for these kind of businesses that might make money on the price of oil.

38:31And then you wake up one year later, and the war game scenario is playing out. I have to laugh because to your point, it's like there's a lot of fog, like you talked about earlier in the book you mentioned, tons of fog, and coming out of the fog, you're like, oh my gosh, it's a vastly different world than I thought I'd see before the fog kind of went away. So I think that's very important to think about just as an analogy of investing in general. Like you cannot predict the future. So in terms of thinking about the supply issue at hand, you'll see these charts and graphs of like current inventories out there.

39:05Now, there's been about a billion barrels of draw in these oil inventories. You know, when people say, yeah, but there's still like 7 billion barrels still out there. Well, you have to understand that. we talk about inventory, we're talking about what's in pipes and is moving from one place to another. I think of it like a business, like we're running a business and let's just say we need seven widgets or six and a half widgets of inventory at any given time to run our business feasibly. If we're eight and we go to seven, that's not that big a deal. But if we go from seven down to five, then someone calls and says, Hey, like, you know, I need to buy a widget and be like, I'm sorry.

39:49I have to raise the price a lot on you. Cause we need five just to like keep the business moving around in inventory. And so it's like, cause that five of inventory might be because we've already shipped it off and we haven't recognized the revenue yet, things like that. And so that's the inherent issue is like, this is just like a massive singular line business where you can't go, go below those levels or the only way you can rectify the situation is just through price. It's the only way to fix anything in this life. And so I think that's at play. But have there been other times in markets where, to your point, where we've seen the physical market has something vastly different going on than the financial markets?

40:29Yes. And I'll give you the book. Go read The Big Short, okay? In that book, I can't remember if it was Burry or Eisenman or both, but they're going to Goldman Sachs and they're saying like, hey, I can see the homes in this tranche of the pool are foreclosing left and right. I'm coming to you asking for a bid on this credit default swap, a CDS, and your price is not showing at all that these homes are all in foreclosure. what gives. This really gets into Munger's perverse incentive ideas. Well, at that time, if the banks were going to give you the right mark in that CDS, if they're giving that quote, they then have to turn on their own books and say, hey, if we're giving you this quote, we got to start recognizing that we have a capital problem on our own balance sheet, Because if those are bad, there's other asset testing we'd have to do to prove that our assets are bad in some cases as well.

41:39So their incentive to call the CDS contract the right price was that it hurt them to do that. Okay? So here we are in this physical market world where my best hunch of what the perverse incentives are, this is a small part of the S &P 500 today. It is a small part of investor portfolios. If you go outside the United States, some investors don't believe in this investment allocation at all because ultimately they decided it's not part of their allocation that's allowable per their institution. Some people are more religious about it. They believe it's bad for humanity. Those are the perverse incentives possibly.

42:23And then you have to add on to that. There's many people that in these assets, they got cooked in the 2010s. I mean, like use the value managers. They got cooked. There's people that thought this was an end all and there was scarcity tied to this and they found out that there wasn't as much scarcity. So I think that's actually the perverse incentive, kind of like the CDS contracts that's really driving this is that there's a lot of people that would have to change their mind about this industry. And, yes, some of that marginally went on after 22. You think of like security is now one of the questions that came into the lexicon around these assets.

42:58Do we have secure assets that help our, I'll call it our sovereignty? That's something that's entered this. But for the average investor, I just don't think that's going on. So everyone would have to go out and buy or bid assets. And ultimately, with what's going on elsewhere in the financial markets, it's just not that exciting. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I like I like that analogy to to the mortgage backed securities, because it was sort of a slow building crisis that for the people who saw it, you could see. But then most people will just remember when Lehman failed, because that's when, you know, the wheels came off.

43:37And I think similarly, you have anybody I run into and I don't ask for people to give me their thoughts usually, but they'll they all kind of tell me the same thing. You know, they always say, well, you know, Trump will never let that happen, you know, or, you know, we got an election coming. He won't let this happen. And it's like there's just sort of this this thought that like I'm sure probably in 2008, like, well, there's no way they would just let those fail. There's just no way they would let something happen. We hope you're enjoying the podcast. You know, we work hard putting together this show, but we work even harder for our investors at Smead Capital Management.

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44:48We know that Trump's very unpopular based on the polls right now. His approval rating is low compared to where it's been. But in markets, it seems like everyone's a Republican. Yeah. I don't get it. And by the way, I'm saying that as like a card-carrying capitalist, but a card-carrying Republican might add too, where it's like, wait a second, I see some really weird spreads and misallocations of what investors are thinking on this. And yet in markets, it's like, oh, no, Trump's got this. It's going to get solved. Everyone's a Republican in markets. I cannot rectify that issue. issue. And, you know, let's just say you go back to history and say, okay, how often does regime change happen?

45:34What happened in Syria? And that's it. That's like, and by the way, didn't take a lot. I'm not saying the CIA wasn't involved in that for you conspiracy theorists out there, but I'm just saying, you know, Vietnam never happened and Korea never happened. And there's a lot of examples where it just never happened. But I do think people were lulled into watching what happened in Venezuela, where there were quote unquote oil assets, right? And it's like, oh, well, look what we did in Venezuela. Like we have, you just wouldn't believe what Palantir is doing these days. And it's like, we're the greatest nation in the world with incredible technology.

46:16And this is a quagmire right now. Yeah. Yeah. It also seems like people want to skip the panic that leads to a policy response. It's almost just like, well, you know, if you bought during COVID, it just like went up later, right? You know, and it's like, yeah, but the crisis led to this massive policy response that then fueled that. But if you don't have the panic, or same with 2008, if you don't have the panic, you don't necessarily get the policy response as well either. So it's just kind of fascinating, you know, but fun to watch. Yeah, and to your point, like in 22, 22 was a panic on those assets.

46:51Yeah. Right? So was that the best price to buy them? No, no, but there was money made as that panic began. So to your point, so it's like you look back, it's like was last spring a good time to buy, say, energy assets tied to just dismal, dismal psychology? Yes, no question. Very analogous, I would argue, to 2020, right? Where there's just the psychology is so bad. I think you probably heard me say this, but the spring of 2025 was the second best buying opportunity the last 25 years, the best being the spring of 2020. But analogously, 22 was the panic moment. We just haven't got the panic yet.

47:34And again, I think the part that makes this really confusing is, well, what does panic cause? Like, yes, there's physics. There's Newton's third law, right? For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. Yes, we know that energy prices would have to go up, and they'll have to bid the energy assets in general. But what does that cause in other assets comparatively? Like we're watching, I think of like kind of panics. What is going on in some of the AI conversations is there's been a panic in GPUs. Yeah. Like a choke point. So you look at GPU prices, what are they? They were just ripping.

48:09Yeah. Well, now what's going on in GPU prices? They're falling off. Maybe panic has subsided. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Other questions you had? Yeah. So this will be a fun one because we're already starting to hit on it here. But, you know, I always just love your guys' takes on investor psychology. And, you know, like we were talking about some of the panic, but also maybe some of the euphoria in the market that you all are seeing. And you and I are about the same age. So just a little from my perspective, I remember I got into I graduated in 2006, got into investing probably in like 2007, just started learning all sorts of stuff.

48:46And I remember being at the bookstore, reading about stocks or reading about something regarding investing in like even 2009, 2010, maybe even 2011. And people would like actually be upset that you were like looking at stocks. It was just nobody wanted to be a part of kind of like you mentioned about oil in 2020, oil in 2020, 2020, last year, 2025. and just kind of curious to get your thoughts on the euphoric parts of the market that are going on here. Well, let me just, let me talk to kind of like what, like just people, the people side of this. So a great book I always recommend to people in thinking about, you know, people in the interaction markets is David Dreamin's old book, Psychology in the Stock Market, which is a fantastic read.

49:33He talks about the red room and the green room and it's analogous to like, you know, casino. There's two different rooms. the red room is exciting the drinks are great the party's awesome you know it's like it's like being on the craps table and just someone's rolling for two hours right um and then you go to the green room and it's like it's boring it's slow but the chip stacks are incredible the players are the odds are in the player's favor and so he's like you go back up to your room you get your chips and even though you know it's against your interest you walk into the red room yeah and that is the human proclivity.

50:08Now, let's just talk about the people makeup out there today. I graduated like you in 2006. I'll never forget. I was - Happy 20 years. Yeah. So it's like 2008, 2007, somewhere in there. I am doing a CFA crash course out in Burlingame, California near the San Francisco airport. I'm there for the weekend. It's like a three-day crash course. And I'm eating at a sushi restaurant. And I'll never forget, Like we obviously had not got to the bottom in 08 yet because this lady that I'm sitting next to at the sushi bar, I'm just, you know, there at the bar top and we're chatting. And, yeah, I remember she's like, oh, I'm such a big Jim Cramer fan.

50:49And I listen to everything he says. And, you know, at that time, contextually, that's where a lot of people would go listen to talk stocks. You know, at that time, there wasn't these other things like, you know, TBPN and whatnot out there. and so she's telling me like and she's just like as someone that's a professional in the business she's just like giving me her advice which I always find that like mystifying because you know I think it's hard enough as a professional and you read like Peter Lynch's like cocktail theory right where it's like you know at the bottom they want to know what the dentist does somewhere in the middle you know they ask you what you're buying and then at the end of the bull market it's like they tell you what they're buying, right?

51:30Yep. And so I always think about that. So if I had to kind of go out there and look today, boomers in general, I would say, if you look at the AAII polls, for example, they're pretty bearish, okay? Now, why do I think they're bearish? That group is dominated by old folks, particularly old men. Newsflash for everyone watching this, old men don't get more optimistic about the future. They just don't. It's a pretty normal thing. They become more curmudgeon. And therefore, that's very normal. So I'd say if you're an old guy, be more optimistic about the future because humans flourish. But they're pretty bearish as they look at those polls.

52:08But then if you look at their equity allocations, they're not. They're not. They are schizophrenic. They have a negative view of the future and they're bullish on stocks when it comes to what they own. Now, why is that? Because the stocks have grown at a greater rate than all their other investments. And therefore, they're not reallocating like they would historically. So 60-40 is like 80-20. 70-30 is like 90-10 or no bonds at all. If I go out and look at Gen X, obviously they have assets, but they're just a smaller group. So I tend to not think of them as much. I apologize to the Gen X generation.

52:41You will not be mocked, but you will probably be skipped more often than you'd like. And so then I move on to millennials. And broadly speaking, I just think there's a lot of risk-taking going on in younger generations. Risk-taking being that anything novel or conceptual, it's not like well-studied. You just got to go out and take risks. And again, that is not unique to our generation. That's not unique to younger generations. But I just say it because, you know, have we really had our brains pounded out in the recent past? I mean, I think about, you know, someone that got in the business in 2006.

53:18So to your point, it's like I'm coming up on 20 years in the investment business this next August, which is like, wow, as my teenage daughter would say, like, dude, you're old. But it's like, okay, great. 08-09 sucked. You know, two-year bear market just sucked. And even, oh, yeah, but you recovered. Yeah. But it didn't feel good till you're like four years, you know, into that process. You know, yeah, COVID hit, but COVID was quick. There really hasn't been an elongated bear market. And that's pretty, as he says in the Young Frankenstein, it's pretty Abbey normal. And so as you kind of lay this out, I just think the risk sentiment is we're long risk, we don't care, the future's bright, but if you go back to the bottom of 08.09, no one was bullish long term.

54:05And I think that's the paradox, is at the top, everyone is a long term investor. But you just know that you're going to run into the bottom at some point, and everyone is going to be not long term. And I give a lot of credence to, I haven't read his book, 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin, but he just said something historically apropos for a time like now. He said, listen, we're going to have a crash. I can't tell you when, but we're just going to have one. Now, what's a crash? If everyone's setting up for a credit crisis, guess what, guys? We can't have a credit crisis because it's all well thought about.

54:38But what a crash could be is it could be like 72 to 74 where you just kind of drench everybody in misery in asset prices. the economy chugs along after that and everyone just kind of hates stocks would i prefer that no but here's the catch for everyone like you and me is like we don't decide this god does yeah yeah it feels like it's the the duration of that you know i think these these short crashes that rebound people almost get you know they get they get like a you know oh this is great like you just got to keep going in. And, but yeah, like when I, my story about reading books in 2010, it was like, those are the folks that they experienced 2000, they got to 2010, they've been putting money in every week, they don't really follow this stuff at a deep level.

55:24And it didn't go anywhere, you know, and I even I sit on our 401k committee at work. And even the advisors kind of look at that, here's the three year, here's the five year, here's the 10 year, and they kind of anything that's not where Oh, let's get out of that. And it's like, well, you would have gotten out of the S &P in 2010 if you use that. Well, I agree. I mean, if you use the outperformance of tech, much of this did not come about until the mid-2010s. That was not like the hot dot early in the bull market. And to your point, the people would just not touch it. So again, I agree. It's like, Buffett said, I think my dad wrote about this, It's like there's a gambling mood out there.

56:06Yeah. And by the way, do I think the betting platforms are helping that or the access? No. But then again, you know, I'm more human. We love hurting. We love recency. We love anchoring. Yep. We're just no different. I don't get what's changing. You know, Munger said it. The old ways work fine. You're losing money. Why do we got to create new ones? Yeah, absolutely. Ready for question number three? Yeah, let's jam. So I always loved you and your dad's thoughts on demographics and just how that can – as it changes over time, how it can have impacts on the economy. Just curious your thoughts on what you're seeing in that space, maybe what's staying the same you think will happen over time or if anything has changed in your thinking related to key demographic groups.

56:55Yeah. I think the main thing that I would be asking in demographics today is – we've talked about this like, oh, marriage is down. We talked about that just a second ago earlier. Yes, but what we're seeing is that as millennials age, they still do normal things. I'm proof of the late-blooming millennials. Well, I agree. I agree. So we know marriages are down compared to 30 years ago, but let's just say, okay, so in eight years, you and I will be 50. Yeah. Okay? By the time we're 50, how many of our unmarried friends will have been married? Yeah. I am going to argue it's going to happen because they're just human.

57:43Yeah. In other words, even if they didn't have children, they're still going to marry. And when you marry, what do you do? You do things like buying houses. Yeah. So the delay might not change that. Now, that doesn't change a lack of children being born maybe, okay? That's a whole other separate subject. But when you look at the average home buying age of like, you know, I think the most recent quarter was 40. What does that mean? They're still doing it. They're just doing it way later. Now, what does that also mean? With way higher incomes and way better balance sheets, things like that. So I do think about that.

58:12But I do ask this question. I do think the marriage age is the central figure. I saw this killer chart. I'll have to probably put this out on social media at some point. But someone showed that during the baby boom, and I think this is why it's integrally tied. I think I've corrected my thinking on this. When the facts change, I change my mind, as Keynes once said. When you look at the baby boom that happened after World War II, the marriage age declined for women. Interesting. Yeah. So if someone says, how do you change birth rates in the Western world, marriage ages have to go down. I will take a bet on anyone on that, that that has to happen.

58:59And what I think it does is it takes this idea that like, you know, and I think this is ill gotten. When people are like, oh, you know, it's these younger generations. They're just not having as many kids. and in any way kind of pushing that off on the female cohort. No, no, no. It's not like the childbearing aspect. It's marriage age. So like back to our like what do we join together in? It's like we go out and say, you know what? We should all just agree as a society that getting married earlier is better. So we're going to teach that in health class and in public and private schools. And we're going to kind of espouse that as an ethos.

59:34What would happen? Birth rates go up. And so who's the blame for that? all of us. All of us. And I think a lot about that because again, that same trend, you can see that in the rest of the Western world. If the Western world decides, hey, we need to get marriage done earlier. Because someone asked me this earlier on Bloomberg today, what about student debt? Well, okay, let's just take student debt. The payment to income ratio really hasn't changed. Looking back over the last 30 years, even though amount of debts have changed, the interest rates change, things like that. But do I think that's as important as you and your wife got married?

1:00:12So when you got married, you're now sharing a home together. And what does that do? Double income. You're creating so much better economics because you're not individually trying to go out and succeed in housing. You're doing it together, which also creates a way to build up, say savings to create a fallback. What hasn't been said is that early marriage actually causes better economics for two people striving together. And they might fail, but striving together still creates greater good than the risk of not. And I think a lot more about that in the demographic discussion because it's better for economic growth.

1:00:54It's better for things like children, all that and I don't think we're talking about enough about the benefits for the demographics we're talking about the risks oh you might get a divorce or you might marry the wrong person yeah yeah but those were always true right is that really as important as these other things yeah I've always said it fascinating to just the some of the social pressure if you'll if you'll call it that where if you look at like friend groups right and like you know people in their 20s they want to do different things in their 20s and then all of a sudden they start getting to a certain age, but then a couple of their friends get married.

1:01:26And then all of a sudden it's like, well, maybe I'm looking for something else in the relationship. Oh, okay. Now you just sort of see that people start to pull through that pipeline. Well, I agree. And to your point, can we have the rubber band snap back? That's kind of the question because the bottom ticking of marriage age really happened with the baby boom. And so you see these articles right now in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times talking about like Catholic church in New York is like super in vogue and it's cool and everyone gets dressed up and like food before or after church is like super, that's cool.

1:02:03Right to your point, social pressure. Well, will that cause a downtick in marriage age across men and women? Because ultimately, or maybe, maybe there'll be differences in the age groups. Maybe young women will say, you know what? The guy, he ain't going to figure it out. So therefore, I'm going to date and marry higher ages because I want that to be what drives the marriage pressure. I don't want to have to expect that a young male will mature because as you're and my wife have probably learned, we don't potentially. And so again, I think about all those things going on socially, to your point, across the demographics and whatnot.

1:02:48I mean, it's terribly interesting, but my hope is that we solve the problems we want to solve. Yeah. And therefore, if we think that children are a need for the Western culture and society in America and really our prosperity and our security, how do we want to solve that has got to be figured out. Because so far, you know, Russia has done things like, oh, we'll give you incentives or whatnot. Or, I mean, here's something someone else threw out, and I don't know if you've heard this, and I'd love to hear anything that you kind of have on this. But what if you get married earlier? Maybe you have reduced tax rates until you're older.

1:03:22Yeah. I mean it seems like there's creative incentives you could put in place to just add more policy around it, just a little more incentive. So I think it makes sense. Well, this has been – I don't know if it would have helped my case. I think I was just late. I still had to find the other half. So it worked up. Yeah, but you're proving something really true. It's like it's late, yeah, but it was not never. Yeah, exactly. That's what I think is super fascinating, yeah, because it – yeah, it was just a little different. But there were definitely periods of time I think if newspaper articles were written about me and they said this is what all millennials are like, they would have been like, yeah, there's no chance.

1:04:06But it was just a little bit delayed and then it ultimately kind of happened. And, yeah, and then the same sort of thing. We bought a house last year, so I would have been 41 having a kid this year, 42. You know, my wife's five years younger. So there's that aspect. So, yeah, super fascinating. I always – there were some – that's why I appreciate you guys talking about those types of things because I always – you always say things. And then I'm like, I want to look into that a little bit more. And I always thought it was interesting because there was like a kind of like average income over your age.

1:04:39And they showed where from 25 to 35, you get the largest percentage increase in your career as well. So there's part of this as well. It's like some of the, you know, if I were talking to my 28-year-old self, it's like, hey, be patient, keep working hard. Things will take care of themselves on the job front and on the earning side, as opposed to, I think there's kind of a panic out there that, like, it's just always going to be the same. And I think more people are going to kind of graduate to that higher earnings level. They're going to couple up. You get that double income. Um, um, at least I like to think that I'm proving it's possible.

1:05:12So, well, yeah. And I, I, I mean, we, you know, my wife, we, when we first got married, we had two incomes and then, you know, we started having kids and therefore we went down to one. Oh man. Someone says like, it's, it's, you know, back to the fog. Like, I love that. I'm so glad you, I got to read that book because like, I just, I think back to the fog I had at that time where it's like, man, I am choking on like, we had a mortgage. It was a, you know, it was a big mortgage for us and I was the only income. And I even, I got rid of my car at the time. Cause like I, you know, like even down to that where you're like, you think back to these things you did when you were younger, it's like I was taking the bus.

1:05:45We only had one car and it worked out fine. It worked out. Yeah. It worked out. Exactly. It worked out. And again, like you solve the things you want to solve as a couple. And so, you know, you're going to get through it. You're going to be fine. and until you recognize that, it's all chaotic and crisis until then to your point. That's what I love with the fog. They kind of said, you can't see far into the distance, but make the next best step that you can. And it might even be in the wrong direction, but then from that point, make the next best step you can in the fog. So you're just taking one step at a time in those foggy situations.

1:06:24Yeah, I think I'll end it with this. Book by A.L. Williams, and I'm trying to remember, the title of it, but A.L. Williams, he was like a big insurance sales guy. He sold not whole life insurance, but term insurance. And he created like what we now know as Primerica. But he said, all you can do is all you can do. And all you can do is enough, which I think is a great way of thinking about what we're touching at. Steve, this has been totally fun. I want to thank you a lot. and I think our audience would thank you too because this has been a fun dialogue. Your books have been awesome and having Superfan Steve live on the podcast is quite a thing.

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1:07:57Thank you.