Flash Crash or Recession? (EP.372)

25:15Make it make sense, Ben. But I do have good news. But they do it because people pay it. People say, ah, it's convenience. But it's not only the fees on the fees. It's the upcharge you for the food. The food is, I told her, I said, how much does this usually cost? And it was, I don't know, 30 % markup on the usual prices. I do have good news on the inflation front. Okay. My jet ski insurance went down$53. All right. I have more good news. My beach club is not raising prices next year. How do you like that? Do they usually raise them every year? I don't know. I think this is only my second year, so I don't know, but I assume so.

25:54That's good. Okay. Price hikes are over. Here's an interesting one. This is from Ernie Tedeschi, who we've been talking about a little bit lately. He has a good chart on real average weekly earnings for restaurant employees. And this thing's stagnated from the late 90s through pretty much 2015. On a real basis, restaurant wages went nowhere. And I don't know how exactly they calculate this because of tips. But shouldn't that be? That sounds reasonable to me. No offense. But a lot of these are younger workers. Should their beer, should real wages increase at restaurants? They should increase a little bit.

26:35They should not go nowhere for 15 years. Above inflation? Why? Gotcha. No, I mean, because you think that people at restaurants just don't deserve to have an increase in wages? You don't think that restaurant owners... Above inflation? Do you think restaurant owners deserve a return on their capital above the rate of inflation? Yes. So don't workers too? I don't know. Just the owners? I don't know. I mean... Geez. Guy up there in his glass tower. Hold on. The owners of the restaurants are taking risks with their capital and that's their whole shebang bang. For... And maybe I'm speaking completely out of turn here, so I'm sorry if this is offending anybody.

27:15But aren't the majority of... restaurant workers. You know what? I don't know why I'm thinking fast food. But even still, even still restaurant workers, like, isn't there a lot of turnover? Listen, I was a restaurant worker. So there's no - Maybe there wouldn't be so much, but look at this. Look what happened since 2015. It slowly started going up and then the pandemic. So we've seen essentially since 2015, I don't know, a 40 % increase in restaurant workers on a real basis. Probably the biggest wage hike they've ever gotten. Yeah. So again, I know - In modern times. Do, should, is it not, it's not surprising that real wages, again, after inflation went sideways for a long period of time.

27:57I guess I don't know enough about this. Now they've seen an enormous spike. So if you want to know why this stuff is more expensive, this is part of the reason. Because restaurant workers are finally being paid a more livable wage, even though you don't think they should be. I think this is good news. um it's not good news to the employers but sure it's good news to the employees geez not a man of the people i see absolutely a man of the people i am the people dude how about this how many how many years did you work in a restaurant for sir two years my very first job okay in high school was as a bus boy and bus boys get screwed more than anyone because we get paid out of the waiter and waitress's tips and they were supposed to give was a certain percentage.

28:41And of course they never did. They kind of like, eh, whatever here. Here's like, yeah, scram. Here's my career as a man of the people. I started in a bar mitzvah hall as lower than a bus boy. I was, what was the position called? Maybe it was a bus boy. I feel like it wasn't. I was running around cleaning people's hors d 'oeuvres. I had the tray and I was dumping dishes in and running back and forth. That's a bus boy. Okay. I suppose. I feel like it was called something else. And then I did caddy. I was a caddy. Lost every ball. Was not invited back. Yeah, where's the ball? I don't know. Where'd it go?

29:16You didn't see that? Did you see it? I wasn't paying attention. And then I was a valet parker for years and years and years. Got fired. We won't get into why. I think I was in the right. And then I was a waiter for many, many years. So don't tell me, Ben. Do you want to hear my man of the people? And I was a cabana boy for multiple, maybe five or six summers. Busboy, I delivered furniture for two summers and I was a bank teller. That's a man of the people. You know, I got rejected from a job as a bank teller. Is that a thing that happens? I feel like that's not the hardest job to get, although it was during the GFC, but still, I got rejected.

30:00They said, ah, this is not for you. One of the worst jobs I've ever had. It's not fun. More responsibility than I should have had at that age, the amount of money I was playing with. All right. After years of raising prices, food companies hit consumers' limits. This is the Wall Street Journal. Kraft Heinz CEO said, we had 3 % inflation this year. We're only pricing 1%. Don't get just put in the chat. Mike and Ben are having a standoff on who had the lowest position in the service industry in their career. I was the dishwasher. Lower than a busboy. Yeah. I never washed dishes. I would have. Obviously, I would have.

30:31I wasn't beneath me. Domino's CEO said restaurants ultimately didn't have the ability to increase prices as much as they thought they could this year. In retrospect, the pricing power wasn't there. He said Domino's raised prices less than competitors and slower than the overall rate of inflation. So this stuff is becoming entrant. This is why the Fed needs a tri-mandate, not a dual mandate. The dual mandate is price stability and the labor market. The tri-mandate would also include the vibes in there. The Fed doesn't see the vibes. I thought you were going to say delivery fees. Oh, delivery fees.

31:05That could be it, too. All right, this is an interesting one. Chart of the week from Torsen Slock. Wait, hold on. Rewind. What did you just say? That sounded like a mush. This is a what? Torsen Slock, chart of the week. Okay. Fair? This maybe should have gone in our AI section. 60 % of today's workers are employed in occupations that didn't exist in 1940. I don't know if that's higher or lower than I would have thought, but people are always worried that, well, AI is going to steal all the jobs. We're going to need a UBI just to pay people to not work. We're going to make up jobs. There may be a rough transition.

31:43Back in the day, 80 % of all people worked on farms, like in the late 1800s. So if AI does take a lot of these jobs, I was telling somebody the other day, the DoorDash stuff, people who work for DoorDash on the side, at some point that's going away and there's going to be driverless taxis that deliver your food. That's going to be – your private taxi is going to be a robot delivering you your burrito or sushi or whatever it is. And I don't know how many millions of people drive for DoorDash and Uber right now. But at some point in the coming decades, years, they're going to be displaced. And driverless cars are going to take over, right?

32:20I don't know how many truck drivers there are in the country. What happens when driverless – this stuff is coming someday. Not as fast as some people say, but it's coming. In the next 10 years? I wouldn't say that. It's already taken longer than I thought for driverless cars, but it sounds like the way most stuff in at least California and Arizona, it's picking up. I don't know how the driverless car stuff works in a place like Michigan or New York when it's snowing. That's the thing that worries me is the weather aspect of it. I don't know how it handles that stuff, but there's going to be AI and robotics.

32:50It's going to displace jobs, but we're going to make up other jobs to go with it. And getting there might be difficult, but that's going to happen. Speaking of weather, it's Tuesday morning. We have a lot of our colleagues are coming to New York and we're going to the beach. It'll be a day on the water. And the weather's not great. So we look to the radar, the forecast. I'm a big probability of rain guy. I don't know if you know this about me. Back to my years as a cabana boy. If I see 30 % chance of rain, complete disregard. I don't respect that. I have no respect for that. I'm the same. It's got to be like 60 for you to really respect it, right?

33:3360 to respect it. 80 to say, okay, we're done. We're done here. We're not doing anything. It's definitely raining. I agree. 30 could be, eh, it might sprinkle, it might not. So there was a six, what was the chance of rain over the weekend? We went to the beach anyway. Guess what? It rained eventually for a few minutes. Did you know, I saw, I actually saw somebody tweet about this from the weather service. What do you think that, if there's a 30 % chance of rain, what do you think that means? I've heard this before. I can't remember exactly how it works. Explain it to me. Well, the bottom line is the TLDR is it doesn't mean what you might think it is, which is there's a 30 % chance of rain.

34:07That's actually not what it means. What it means is they say the probability of precipitation forecast is one of the most least understood elements of the weather forecast. Here's what it means. Okay. The likelihood of occurrence of a precipitation is stated as a percentage and a measurable. Okay. That we know. A measurable amount is defined as 0.01, so one hundredth of an inch or more. The probability is for a specified period of time, which we know about. But here's the coup de grace. The probability forecast is for any given point in the forecast area. Okay, so if they look at, so when your weather person talks, they're talking to your whole county, essentially?

34:49Yeah. So what does that mean, that like up to 30 % of the county could see rain? Yeah, so if you Google where you are, like, yeah, there's a 30 % chance that it might rain one hundredth of an inch somewhere over there or in anywhere in the vicinity. What I'm trying to say is don't be a forecast coward. If you see a 40 % chance of rain, safe to disregard. Okay. All right. 40 % of the time works every time. All right. Let me ask you this, Ben. The data is funky. We live in unusual times. Bank of America shows it's been the second longest manufacturing recession in history. So we're looking at the number of months without two straight months of 50 plus, which is expansionary, on the ISM manufacturing PMI.

35:38You're telling me this is the second longest manufacturing recession in history? Or is the data weird? Seems to me like the data is weird. This is, that's why like the, the SOM rule thing about the, it feels like if it's ever going to be thrown out the window and not work, it's this time. Well, I hope so because Kevin Gordon tweeted, interestingly, going back to 1950, we've never seen four consecutive monthly increases in the unemployment rate without being in a recession. We just saw that this time. And are we in a recession now? I don't know how you could say we're in a recession. Now, if you say that you think that we're going into a recession, okay, you could argue that.

36:14Are we in a recession right now? How? Doesn't seem like it. And again, we're coming off of such a low base that it's hard to tell what is normalization and what is actual slowing in the economy. And I think, I do really think, if it is this big slowing, I do think the Fed stepping in could help things. I think that's a real thing. It's not like there's this financial crisis that's brewing that is just building up in the system. All right. This was interesting. This is from the Investment Company Institute fact book. There are now 68.7 million people, households, who own mutual funds in the United States.

36:59Was 58.7 million in 2020. So 10 million more people own mutual funds, which is surprising that mutual funds are still increasing, which I guess is mostly attributed to the 401k. All of it. Has to be, right? Because only 15.2 million households own ETFs. So more people are owning financial assets. This is a good thing, right? I continue to think that, yes. Okay, Nick Colas gave, he said he's been in the business for 40 years. So he gave like his 10 lessons that he learned. I thought these were pretty interesting. I wanted to go over with you real quick. Efficient market theory does not say that assets are always priced correctly.

37:40It says there's no reliable way to tell which are priced incorrectly. I heard this gentleman - Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. He said he heard it from Gene Fama back in B-School at the University of Chicago. It's just as true today as it was back then. This is why it's so hard to predict anything at a bear market bottom. You don't know. You know what sort of grinds my gears? When the market goes crazy, when a stock goes crazy, or a currency, and people go, poof, efficient markets. Well, okay, smarty pants. Then why didn't you make the move yesterday? The whole point is you don't know if the price is right or wrong.

38:16You may think you know, but you don't. Yes, exactly. Which is my favorite way of hearing this. So here you go. You don't want to live in a world where the Fed can't create whatever outcome it wants. I heard that from Lee Cooperman at a hedge fund idea dinner in early 2000s. There's a closet industry in second guessing or criticizing the Fed, but in my experience, it's pretty much useless in terms of making money in capital markets. if the Fed ever loses control of the economy, you have far bigger things to worry about than stock prices. Amen, brother. Yes, that's, yes. The Fed haters, they want this to happen, but I don't think they really understand what that means.

38:50These people are nihilists. All right. This is, I thought, the most important one. The most important question to ask in both life and investing is, what is your goal? A lot of clear answer to that question and a plan to achieve it is virtually impossible to achieve any sort of lasting success. We always say to clients, we can't give you a portfolio or an investment plan without knowing what your goals are first. right the whole goals based investing idea is the big whenever someone asks you said should i buy or sell there's so many other questions you have to ask before even understanding the answer to that questions what is your time arising what is your risk profile when do you plan to use this money all of this stuff is impossible to answer without knowing the goals first anyway really good stuff from nick colis at data track all right uh oh wait i didn't put this in but let me find this from crypto all right uh where was okay here we go so someone tweeted it out on Twitter, which I'm never calling it X because I hate tech name changes.

39:43I think it rules that we invented a decentralized currency uncontrollable by one central entity, and it just ended up perfectly correlating with the American stock market anyways, which is obviously a little tongue in cheek, but also kind of true that crypto is really a risk on risk off asset. It has it's not decoupled in any way from what's going on. It didn't provide you a macro hedge when inflation hit, when stock markets sell off and there's calamity going on, crypto is going to be the first thing that falls because it trades 24-7. Anyway, I thought that was pretty cute. Not bad. Kind of funny.

40:20And maybe the point is, there is no asset that exists like this that can shield you from everything else that's going on, right? It sounds amazing in theory to say, I'm going to create this asset that is totally decentralized, and it'll hedge the Fed, and it'll hedge inflation, it'll hedge everything macro, and it'll decouple from the stock market. That asset does not exist. I don't think it can exist. Can't, cannot exist. Does not, cannot, will not. All right. I know you hate demographics, but I think in the last couple of weeks, I've seen from two people that we know and respect have said, over the next decade, the US housing market or housing in general will be the worst performing asset class of all of them.

41:03Cullen Roche and Nick Majuli, our very own Nick Majuli, they both tweeted out and said, housing is, and knowing exactly where they're coming from, I get it. The price increase, we pulled forward to decades of returns. Mortgage rates are higher. It kind of makes sense. The counter argument would be just demographics, I guess. So Eric Finnegan tweeted this out. This is from John Burns. There were four plus million U.S. births per year in 1990 to 2010, which is the tailwind. You can see that's the high point. And actually, the high point in births in the past couple decades was in 2007. So I guess since the 2008 crisis, we've just crashed in terms of birth.

41:49And the demographic tailwind would be my one thing to hang your hat on, not to be bullish about housing, but to not be bearish. Yeah. And I don't think that Nick and Colin were necessarily bearish. I think they were realistic. They were saying expect the baseline should be low returns. And I agree with that. My counterpoint would be this. And also, what if we just turn into Canada? And the fact that we have low housing supply and favorable demographics means housing prices just continue to get wackier. Yeah. I'm not making a case for that. I'm saying that would be the counterargument. All right.

42:24This is from our old Tadas, Wisconsin sent me this. I always talk about the Midwest climate hedge. Like when climate change happens, people are coming to Midwest because it's going to be so hot in the South because you've had this huge migration of people in the South. How much do you actually believe that? Give me some odds. Listen to this. Okay. Answer the question. I want to read you the research first, then I'm going to answer your question. So this just came out this month. It's called the Snow Belt to Sun Belt Migration, End of an Era. So they talk about how for the past 50 years, Americans moved from the coldest places to the warmer places in the Sun Belt.

42:56And they say in the last full decade, those migration rates have essentially become uncorrelated. And they say, given climate change projections for the coming decades of increasing extreme heat in the hottest U.S. counties and decreasing extreme cold in the coldest counties, our findings suggest that the pivoting in the U.S. climate migration correlation over the past 50 years is likely to continue leading to a reversal of the 20th century snow belt to sun belt migration pattern. Meaning people are going to stop moving so much to the south or start moving to the north. I really do think this is the thing.

43:27In the next 10 to 20 years, I think this is going to be a thing. All right, what are the odds? The odds are greater than 50%. It's going to be unlivable in some of these southern places in certain months of the year. Minus 130? Sure. And plus, I think the water thing is going to be a huge issue at some point, too. The fresh water. You should see. I take my boat occasionally, only if it's not rough. If it's more than one foot waves, I'm not taking my tri-tune out on the big lake, okay? No way. But when you go out to Lake Michigan, it's like crystal clear Caribbean water. And it's fresh water, no salt.

44:06There's going to be wars over this lake at some point. Can you drink that water? Straight out of the lake? I mean, I wouldn't. It looks like you'd want to on a really hot day when it's 90 degrees. Can you? Probably would want a filter. I'm sure if you're really dying of thirst, you could, but I wouldn't recommend it. Here's the thing. Old people don't like the cold and they like the heat. What if it's going to become warmer in these places? I'm thinking more of like for four or five months out of the year, people are going to reverse migrate. Instead of, you know, now they migrate during the cold winters and they go to Florida.

44:47There's going to be the reverse migration too. Or people from the south are going to come live in the north in the summer months. That could be. Well, that is their thing, snowbirds. They go down for the winter and come back for the summer. There's going to be more of that, though. All right. Divorce rates. What's going on here? We got some emails? A bunch of people emailed us about this. Forbes had an article. They say it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that half of all marriages end in divorce. They say 43 % of first marriages are dissolved. Second and third marriages fail at a higher rate.

45:2160 % of second marriages and 73 % of third marriages end in divorce. So still, but 43%, that's still pretty damn high. That is surprising. You know anybody who's been divorced? Anybody around our age? I have two friends from high school who've gone through divorces, I guess. So not a huge percent. So that's the thing. If you think personally, it doesn't seem, anecdotally, it never seems as high as it does in the stats. Well, also, I wonder what's the, are we not quite yet at the age where people start getting divorced? True. That tends to happen more in your middle age. Is that true? Or did you make that up?

45:57Source? I made it up. I think it's true. I don't know. Somebody emailed this picture of this massive truck sticking out of a parking lot. I know it's not going to end, but it should end. I mean, it's getting egregious. You know the new Wagoneers? I guess they're the same size as the long Suburbans or whatever. They look like they're like 30 feet long. Really long. They just keep going. Someone sent this email and said, I saw this truck sticking out of a parking lot in a parking garage, and I immediately thought of Ben and his complaints about trucks. And this is my biggest complaint about trucks.

46:28I don't mind them, but his point in this email was, they need to park on the top floor or something. There should be a separate lot for truck drivers. You can't try to just push your way into a spot and leave your back end hanging out so other people can't get around. Ridiculous. Yes. Here we go. Ben, I concur that people talking on FaceTime in public is totally annoying, but I can't figure out why it bugs me more than just overhearing two people engaging in a live conversation, i.e. not on FaceTime. Either way, it's two voices having a chat, right? Why does it bug us more when one of them is on a phone, whereas it's less annoying when people are both physically present and can't figure it out?

47:02It is true. Do you have an answer? That's a good observation. No, I have an answer. I don't. There's a time and a place. And the time and a place for talking on your phone is not at a restaurant. You talk to the person next to you. You don't talk to a person on your phone. That's not what it's for.

47:19You get up and you walk away. Yes, definitely. And I feel like the way people talk on speaker is different than two people having a conversation right next to each other. That's fair. I saw something so egregious one time, getting annoyed thinking about it. I was parked in a car. I don't want to give too many details away and overshare. But let's just say this. Person got out of their car, speaker on, walked over to a group of friends, friends tried to talk to him and he goes, he gave him the one second. Well then, and he got out of the car with on speaker. Hey, Jackass, stay in your car. Yeah.

48:01What a D bag move to then walk over your, like acting all important. I can't talk right now. I'm on the phone. Do you want to do the living the dream here? Oh yeah, that's great. Okay. All right. You think about winners, who's going to make it in life attitudes. Attitudes. I'm a big attitude is everything guy. This guy has the right attitude. Listen to this email. This is how you win in life. Hey, guys, love the show. I worked at a large, okay. Is it accounting? During busy season, everyone is miserable and stressed with the workload. So living the dream was a sarcastic response to how's it going around the office.

48:38Batnick is right. It is a conversation stopper as more or less just a spicy fight, a more or less cordial acknowledgement of your existence in a copier break room elevator interaction. As I grew, I got more comfortable and had friends. So I started to screw around a bit. Knowing that how's it going and living the dream are so rude that any response would really work. I started repeating I have the tiger lyrics to our managing partner as an inside joke with my office mate. During our weekly standup meetings, I would reply with a lyric to see if he would catch on. so how's it going rising up back on the street did my time took some chances trading my passion for glory until I got to hanging tough staying hungry this got such a positive response I started using it as my go-to when asked the obligatory how's it going by higher ups and a passer interaction this is C-suite catnip I really do believe it helped me step out from the cock status and a few decision makers minds to quote go-getter still use it to this day and it's still as effective with no one making the connection Love the show.

49:38Hang tough and stay hungry. Listeners, you could incorporate. You try this one hack. Just pick a 1980s song. This will help you climb the corporate ladder. Hey, how's it going? Hanging tough, staying hungry. That's pretty good. Somebody try that report back. It's not going to not work. We had another good email where someone had said that they replied living the dream to someone, another to a service worker. How's it going? Living the dream. And the person said, nightmares are dreams too. which is a good way to end the live in a dream for someone. That's a very quick response. I feel like I have to, I don't know if I can remember that.

50:12Next time I hear somebody say live in the dream, I'm probably going to butcher that. Dreams are nightmares too. No, no, that's not how it goes. Ben, last week we were talking about cell phones, social media, keeping them away from the kids. And I'm listening to you. I'm like, yeah, it's making sense. I don't want my kids on social media. It's nightmares. Somebody emailed us, a father of five, and said, I told, I'm sorry, father of three. I told this story to three of my girls Friday night and daughter number three, who is 20 years old, said quote, strict parents raise sneaky children. That's deep shit.

50:47That's pretty good. That changed my whole perspective. It really did. Because you know what? I was raised by a strict parent. And was I a sneaky child? In ways. Did I abuse my freedom when I went to college? I did. Yeah. The person who's never drank in their life in high school and then goes to college, it's way easier to go off the deep end as that person. Yeah. So strict parents raise sneaky children. I like that. That's pretty good. All right. Story time. Looks like you have no stories this weekend, so I'm going to take one. Go ahead. So our kids went away to camp for the week. My daughter did a sleepaway one.

51:23Our little ones stayed with the grandparents because it was closer to them. They did this nice camp right in Lake Michigan. I don't know if they're drinking the water, but it was nice. They liked it. And it just got us thinking. about, I mean, my oldest daughter's 10. It's going to be, everyone always heads at the blink of an eye and she's going to be gone to college. And it was like a whole week of just quiet around the house. The biggest thing I noticed is that the house stays way cleaner. Far easier. No kids, right? Because I must have 100 ,000 miles on my Dyson vacuum. I use it all the time.

51:52If the kid's not there, I don't have to use it as much, obviously. Do you have a Roomba? No, I don't have a Roomba. Big Roomba guy. Love the Roomba. You think it works? All right. Oh, I know it works. but it got me thinking about when the kids go to college and I'm sure I'll be like a blubbering mess when it happens. But also I think I'll be okay. Like I don't mind the peace and quiet sometimes too. My wife was had a little harder time with it, but you, you'll have this when you send your kids way to camp for the summer. You go like a mini test preview. Cause that's how long is the New York camp scene?

52:22Six weeks, eight weeks, seven, seven weeks. Okay. So you get like a test run of this. Yeah. The kids being on the house for a long time. I think I'm going to be okay. Yeah. But you, we watched a lot more movies. It's easy to get a lot more done than obviously. Yeah. We've had the conversation of what do you do? It, life is way more boring without kids there and quiet, but, uh, yeah, I, I think I'll be okay. So as much as I love my kids, it's going to be great. How was your summer? You enjoyed it? It's not over yet. Speaking of recommendations. Kids were gone, so we went to see Twisters at the movie theater.

53:00Did you take George? No, but we're going to take him because he can go see it now. Good soundtrack, though. I'm on the lake. It's the only time I ever listened to country music. Good Twisters soundtrack. Highly recommended. I loved this movie because it reminded me of a 1990s action movie. It was great. It's just like, this is all it is. It's action. There were some throwbacks to the original one. You said there wasn't. There was a couple. They had the Dorothy machine at the beginning. there's a few, but Glenn Powell, again, can't miss. And I want to, the reason I love this movie, because it didn't have like any wink wink to it.

53:38Like we're in on the joke. So we also watched The Fall Guy last week with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. And I love both of them. They're great. They were amazing in this movie, but the movie fell flat to me because the whole movie was one giant wink. Like, hey, we're in on the joke. Action movies are cheesy. And so they went over the top with it. That's like some Ryan Reynolds garbage. I like Ryan Reynolds. I know. But this was also a two-hour long. So the whole movie was a giant wink, and it felt like there was no stakes involved. So I never cared what happened. And it was also way too – it was two hours long.

54:10So way too long. So Fall Guy, eh. Twisters, I love. Which I – the original still, probably just because it has Philip Seymour Hoffman in it, gets the slight nod. But it was close to being as good as the original. Bill Paxton, who I love, his role in Hudson is one of my favorite characters of all time you know I'm a big aliens guy was he terrible in the original Twister I'm pretty sure he was no what when he's yelling at Helen Hunt pretty sure he's bad I don't know I'm a big picture of him I'm a huge Bill Paxton Bill Paxton could do no could do no wrong in my mind I know but picture him yelling at her to get over it like it was that was not great it was a little over the top alright so I rewatched in the last month or so Godfather 1 and Godfather 2 I do this every couple of years in full in full It takes a while.

54:56Godfather 2 is like three hours and 20 minutes. Again, Godfather 2 is, the more I watch it, the more I realize Godfather 2 is way better than number one. But it's a movie that shouldn't work because the plot is actually kind of confusing. Like they don't hold your hand in the movie. It's kind of confusing. It's long, but here's the thing. It's one of the realest movies I've ever felt. Like when they go to Cuba and in Havana, it just, it feels like a real thing. So it got me thinking. Wait, did they really shoot that in Cuba? I think it was Dominican. I actually looked it up. I think it was Dominican Republic.

55:25That's why I love IMDb. So here's my question. What's a 21st century Godfather? Not in terms of like, what's our mobster movie, but what's like the highest quality movie we have this century? I have an answer. I want to see if you get the same answer. What's the best movie of this? And not in best in terms of it's entertaining, but it's also just super high quality. Okay. The one that comes to mind, I mean, there's one that comes to mind. I would wish I had more time to think about it, but the one that comes to mind is The Dark Knight. I put you on the spot. That's a good answer. My thought is Gladiator is our godfather.

55:57Oh, okay. Yeah, that works. Because I watched that recently too. But that's why I'm really nervous that they're going to ruin it with number two. Well, guess what? They can't ruin number one. True. They can't take that from us. Okay, so I saw a preview during Twisters for the new Beetlejuice movie, which I think actually looks kind of good. I'm a huge Michael Keaton fan. So I started re-watching the first one because it was on HBO. And it's an amazing cast. Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Winona Ryder. the mom from Home Alone. Who's that guy? The guy with like, does he have a mustache in the movie?

56:30The guy with the reddish hair? Yeah, he's the principal in Ferris Bueller, I think. So they have that huge house up on a hill and at the beginning of the movie, spoiler alert, before Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis die, they're trying to, people keep trying to buy their house from them. And they're saying, someone's going to give you $260 ,000 for this house. And it's a huge kind of, you know, funky house. That was in 1988. how much do you think that house would go for today? Because if you inflation adjust it, it's only like, I don't know,$7.50? Yeah, I was going to say$7.60. That's got to be like a million-dollar house now.

57:05I don't... I re-watched it recently on the airplane. Holds up. It really does. It's such a bizarre movie. Even though it's a time capsule, it's almost sort of timeless, too. It really is, yeah. That's all I got. I watched Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Oh, and? The least good of the... reboot, but still way better than it should have been. I'm not quite sure. That was my thought, right? I'm not quite sure how they're doing this. Just a good movie. Because it was mostly the apes, the whole movie. It wasn't like a lot of human stuff. Just a good movie. I watched this movie called Fresh Kills, which I'm not recommending, even though it was decent.

57:46That sounds like a straight-to-DVD movie. Fresh Kills. It was a mom movie, but it was about the two daughters. So it was about, it followed the two daughters. So their dad is a gangster and it followed their struggles with growing up with the dad as a gangster. But there was one part in the movie that made me think, huh, I remember this. Remember when the phone used to ring in your house, your landline phone, you picked it up and it was one of seven people calling for your mom? Mm-hmm. kids will never know what it's like to talk to Uncle Bert. Oh, that's true. A very awkward conversation. Or your friends, hey, how's it going?

58:34Yep, hold on just a second. Mom! Yeah, and that was, when you were younger, that was always the worst part about having to call someone. So like middle school Ben, when I'm calling like a girl, it was always weird because their parents would answer and it'd be really, really awkward. Hang up. No, no call. Yeah, hang up. until she answers. Yeah, you would have that really awkward interaction that you never wanted to have. Yeah, kids don't understand it, huh? Oh, I saw a tweet about Trap, which I was excited, and then I got disappointed, but now I'm really excited. Hold on, let's see. All right, so Trap is the new M.

59:14Night movie. Jarrett Weaselman tweeted, Trap movie is far and away the dumbest movie I've ever seen. At no point does any character behave with logic or reason. The theater openly laughed at it from start to finish. Couldn't have loved it more. Five out of five stars. That's my type of review. How does this guy keep making movies? I know people keep going to see them. The last one was good. The knock on the door or whatever. Whatever. That was good. Old was terrible. But... So we're continuing with the Josh Hartnett comeback then. with this movie? I am very much looking forward to, I don't know if my schedule will allow me to get to it this week, but I'll find a way.

59:57Alien Romulus. Very excited. Okay, I got one more here. So you know how people get mad when the Fed does, or anyone does, inflation, X energy, and food prices. Right? Like, how can you say X energy and food prices? But if we did House of Dragon, X Dragons this season, it was a terrible season of television. Did you finish it? It was really bad. The finale was not good. The only part of the show I liked this whole season was when they had dragon fights, but that happened maybe 3 % of the show. You know, credit to me. I was so lost that I didn't mind it. I didn't really know what was happening anyway.

1:00:33I did say to my wife, did they just introduce five new characters in the finale? I'm like, who's this guy? What's his story? Who's this person? What's their story? Yeah. Why do they do that? Couldn't tell you. I don't know what's happening. Will I still watch? Sure, but this show's been knocked down a peg or two. for me. It's in a severe bear market. Are you dry? And I'll still watch. Are you dry with shows now? I'm pretty dry. Yep. I don't know. We're watching Hacksgun on HBO. I liked that one. Season 3. Okay. Alright. Send us an email. AnimalSpirits at a compoundnews.com. Thanks to the production staff as always.

1:01:09Duncan, Daniel, John, Nicole, Rob, everyone. And we'll see you next time.