Founder Mode (EP.376)

25:02I don't know how much of it is in the data, but it's. Yes. And we got some feedback on that. We'll get to later. But I totally agree that the, and especially the down payment help and all this stuff is coming a lot from. Speaking of gaslighting, you just tried to gaslight me to apologizing for not listening. I won't apologize. I was multitasking. Okay. I still think you owe me an apology, but we'll agree to disagree.

25:26Listen, I told you my brain is not what it used to be. It happens. We're middle-aged guys now. You're finally accepting it. So, no, I'm not. Americans, from the Wall Street Journal, Americans' economic mood brightens a bit. This is on August 31st. Did we do this last week as well? Did not do this yet. Okay, just checking. The American consumer is starting to shake out of a lingering bad mood. When the Wall Street Journal asked 1 ,500 voters in late August for their feelings about the economy, 34 said it was improving, up from 26 % in early July. The share who thought the economy was worsening fell to 48 % from 54%.

26:02I spoke about this on TCAF last week. For the first time in a while, I noticed the price of gas in a good way. It does. I was thinking that too. It seems like it's lower. Because it is. Look at this average price of regular gasoline. Down from a peak of$5, it's now down to below$3.50 nationally. And I noticed it. And I got to say, it felt pretty good. I don't know if that's psychic income or what, but it was a shot in the arm. So the I've seen a few people post in the last couple weeks of the personal savings rate being back down to a Lowest level it's been in a long time like sub three percent And a lot of people say well This just proves the consumer is tapped out and I think it proves almost the opposite that Consumer finances are so good.

26:46People think I don't need to save as much anymore, right? My house is way up My 401k is way up I'm earning five. Don't you think that's part of it that this is not the way people should think and react? It's somewhere in the middle, right? But I would more lean towards your interpretation of this, that people are feeling pretty damn good. They don't need to save. Right. And that's not how they should act. You should keep saving. Keep it constant. Don't get up and down and just because things are good now that you slow down the saving. But I think that's how a lot of people do think and act. Well, we're a nation of spenders.

27:19We spoke about it last week. We speak about it a lot. Shiel Minot tweeted, I kept getting Instagram ads for a classic Ford Bronco. Looked interesting. I clicked and used their cool configurator. I was completely astounded by what this thing costs. Are people paying this much? Must be for the company to exist and invest in creating the configurator? Question mark. All right. So an old Bronco, but new, I guess. $820 ,000? No way. People are paying almost a million dollars. No way. For a Ford Bronco? I don't believe this. So car dealership guy, he quote tweeted car dealership guy who said, monetizing nostalgia is an incredible business.

27:58I've recorded with someone today who's doing it in the car industry. He's running a multi-million dollar business selling modern classic vehicles. Okay. So I just looked up classic Ford Broncos for sale. There's like 1970 Ford Broncos for sale for like$240 ,000. Wow. How much do you think it costs at the time? Five grand? No, less. Less than that? Probably.

28:23okay wild right yes uh remember last week i said that i bought a chicken shredder i don't know i guess i'll use it like three more times by the way somebody i don't know somebody tweet this to us this uh the why won't this damn drawer open starter pack yes you got a ladle you got a uh what is that what is that thing called on the right a grater yeah cheese grater Cheese grater. The masher. Yes. The ladle is the worst one. The ladle is the worst. Yeah, get rid of ladles. So Robin sent me on Instagram. Now she's being targeted. There's a grape slicer. You pop a grape in, you click it, boom. Four cut up grapes.

29:09Grapes are so small anyway. Why do you need to slice a grape? So the kids don't choke. Oh, my kids just eat them whole. Anyway,$5.99. We got to get that in our drawer. Okay. We buy everything. Okay. Switching gears. Somebody tweeted, Peter Berzin tweeted, quote, learn to code. Remember that? That was like the thing? Learn to code? And then he tweeted, he showed a picture from Fred. Software development job postings on Indeed in the United States. This is one hell of a wild chart. When all the, it looks like ARK, all the way up, all the way down. Do we think that this was just a bubble in tech stuff or like tech over hiring or AI?

29:55I think it's the AI thing. Okay. You don't think this was a lot of this was so many jobs posted in the United States were never going to be filled anyway? I don't know. Yeah, I'm sure it's both. Did you listen to Gavin Baker with Patrick? I did not yet. Okay. What's a TLDR? I can't TLDR that. It was a lot in there. But some of the stuff that they were saying about like humanoid robots coming, like, I think it's, things are going to look a lot different in the next, I don't know, in the future. We're going to need it. We need people to take care of aging baby boomers, right? Because let's be honest, millennials are way too selfish to do it.

30:33We need home care nurses that are robots. We're all going to need, people are going to want robot nannies. Like this kind of stuff is, I can see people totally using this stuff and trusting it immediately. I think there was a scene in iRobot that was like an old lady with a robot. Yeah. We're going to need it. 70 million baby boomers in their 70s, 80s, and 90s. We're going to need it. Jason Furman wrote an article, an op-ed in the journal, about taxing the rich, like the unrealized gains things. Did you read this? I did not. I saw his tweet thread about it. I just think it's funny how up in arms people get about taxes for the ultra, ultra, ultra wealthy.

31:16And I don't, it's just, this, this one seems to have taken on a life of its own. It's just funny to me that people care so much about taxing. We're talking about like 3 ,000 people. I think that, yeah, I think that the people that care, it's not about the 3 ,000 people. It's about like the slippery slope of overreaching. And yeah, it starts with the ultra wealthy, but then it trickles down to everybody. And I think it's a, it's a fair, it's a fair concern. The funny thing is, if you look at tax rates over time, they go one way, down. Down. So he said, he laid out three reasons why we should do it.

31:48Oh, he's pro. Yeah. Okay, I didn't know that. He said, and him and Tyler Cowen were going at it respectfully. I thought it was a good back and forth. Waiting to tax until gains are realized through the sale of an asset has three major disadvantages. First, linking taxation to realization encourages people to hold on to assets. That's true. These gains escape taxation at death, which turbocharges the incentive not to sell and prevents capital from flowing freely to those who can make the best use of it. Reasonable. Second, taxing gains when they are realized is unfair because it allows two people with similar income or wealth to be taxed at different rates for arbitrary reasons.

32:25For example, if you hold stocks that appreciate, they will be taxed less than similar stocks that do not appreciate but do pay a dividend. I don't know. How about this? I don't know if this is a big issue. How about this? When, the way that they should, the easy way to do this is if you borrow against your stock, that's a taxable event. That's like taking a gain. That would make, that would make, that'd be the easiest solution. Yes, I agree with that. That should be, that should be a taxable event. If you're borrowing against it, you're effectively taking money off the table from the, that's a taxable event.

32:58Yeah, that drives. Finally, taxing only realized gains now is the tax base and requires higher federal tax rates and more kinds of taxes meet revenue goals. It just seems so – the plan just seems so convoluted and impossible to enforce. I agree. And would create all sorts of – It's never going to happen. All sorts of complexities and headaches, and people will find ways to escape out of this as well. It just seems like – I don't know. It just seems like sort of dead on arrival. Here's who we should be going after. Endowments and foundations. Harvard and Yale, they're hedge funds with a college attached to it.

33:33Tax those things. I mean, they already did add some little tax, but keep taxing them until they spend it more. And religious organizations? I'm fine with that. Why are they tax free? Tax them. I agree. Tax everything. Tax it all. All right. But listen, if I make a billion dollars someday, I'm not going to be happy with this. Okay? Yeah, it just seems sort of silly. I might need a billion dollars to go to the arcade. So we have a new place in town here that is like a kind of a Dave and Buster's, but as more, it's like a huge video arcade. And they also have a bowling alley and they have laser tag and it's all this stuff.

34:07You know, you walk in and you feel like you're gonna have a seizure. It's just loud and everything. Arcades were great back in the day. It's like a casino for children. Yes, it is. So my kids loved it. They loved Dave and Buster's. This new place opened. So we went yesterday. Weather wasn't that great to be outside. So we went in and did some stuff and we did the laser tag and we did bowling and we did arcade. and the arcade thing, you pay some money and they give you a card and then you swipe the card, right? And it's effectively a form of crypto because you get it and it's like$30 equals 160 credits and each game costs five to 10, whatever it is.

34:38Arcade inflation is real, man, because you do this and I put, I don't know, 30 bucks on each kid's card. So we have three kids. So that's 90 bucks. I don't know, man. One credit equals one credit. That's what it should be, right? And it was easier when it was just quarters. So now you don't even know and the kids are swiping left and right and they're doing these stupid games where they try to win more tickets and it never works. But I mean, that$30 for each kid was gone in like 15 minutes. Just swipe, swipe, gone, gone. And it's just gone. And it's like, wait, what? How is this possible? It went really fast.

35:06Dave and Buster is the one near me closed. Didn't make it, huh? So this is like that, but on steroids. And it was a really nice place in the nice bowling alley. And a brand new bowling, because a lot of bowling, there's very few new bowling alleys. A lot of them are just the old ones that made it. This was a bowling alley and the pins were on strings. It wasn't a duck pin bowling, but it was like that. So it would be easier to set up, you know? And I didn't like it because I need pin action. Yeah, that's kind of the whole point. Like the hearing the sound, right? You still get the sound now. Well, you don't get the sound as much.

35:37Okay, I don't like that. Anyway, arcade inflation is real. We haven't deleted a category in a while, I think. Maybe, what was the last category that we deleted? Supply chain? Supply chain, yeah. All right, layoffs, gone. Delete it. Oh, this is the top. That's it. Your unemployment rate's rising. Really? That's it. Okay, well, I feel like we lumped that stuff into the economy anyway, right? I think a lot of those layoffs were the tech stuff that was happening. Yeah. All right. We are entering the wait-and-see economy. I feel like for a lot of things. The stock market is waiting for some exogenous event or a recession to hit before something really happens, you know?

36:14I think the same thing with real estate. Wait, who are you quoting here? Who called it the wait-and-see economy? I guess I'm calling it that. Just looking at it, this is from Redfin. I think you stole it from somebody. I think Callie Cox on our team was saying that. Okay. Yes, Callie did. So pending home sales fell 6.9 % during the four weeks ending August 25th, the biggest annual decline in nearly a year. That's despite median monthly housing payments falling to its lowest level since February as mortgage rates dropped to the lowest level in 15 months. And they give a bunch of reasons why they think buyers are waiting.

36:45And they say clarity in the NAR settlement, which I don't think anyone really cares about that. Lower home prices, lower mortgage rates. the outcome of the presidential election. Listen, only one thing matters here, lower mortgage rates. So I think people are thinking, well, I'm going to wait until they get in the fives before I come off the sideline and buy. And that will make things more affordable. And you and I have talked in the past about trying to time the home market is just a fool's errand. But I think we're in the wait and see phase. And I think it's the same thing with refinancing. People have asked us in the last couple of weeks, when should I refinance?

37:18Because if I got in at seven and now at six, Should I wait more until it gets to five and a half or five? And I think that there's some of that going on here. And I don't know what the level is. I think once we get into five, five and a half range, that's probably going to unlock a lot of things. I just, I wouldn't get too cute with it because you don't know how much of the demand is going to come back to once we hit a certain level. Yeah, if you find the house that you want, that you can afford, do it. If 50 basis points are going to matter in the grand scheme of things to you, if it does, then you probably shouldn't be buying in the first place.

37:48Yes. But I think we are in kind of this wait and see, place. All right. Someone asked, we said, why is real estate always the highest performing asset for consumers? Why do they think it is? Good comment on this on YouTube. I think I have a good answer. Much less volatile than stocks. And the volatility is never fully apparent. You only see the price bought and the price sold. You don't see all the maintenance taxes, HOA insurance. Good point. Several very well-educated friends are terrified of the stock market. A friend of mine has over$500K in cash. She works for a FANG stock, a FANG company, and her only stock exposure outside of a$400K is her company stock.

38:24She does not like the ups and downs of the stock market. That makes a lot of sense to me. You don't get the volatility. Yeah, I buy that. Even though way more people are involved in the stock market now, I'm sure most people would say, I'd rather have a house where it's out of sight, out of mind in terms of the price. You can check on Zillow, but is there really volatility there? I don't think so. I buy that. We spoke earlier about all cash offers and where's all the cash coming from. Somebody emailed us and said, I have had at least 15 clients buy homes in the last few years, every single one used their brokerage account as collateral using a line of credit.

38:52They appear as cash buyers to the seller. Nobody's using traditional lending products in my experience. See, if those people had$100 million, it should be a taxable event. Yeah. Okay. Speaking of this, I got a letter in the mail the other day for our place on the lake. We have three clients looking to pay all cash on the lake up to$1.4 million or$2 million. They are serious and are prepared to make prepared to make all cash offers. They're just saying like, can you imagine getting to that point where it's like, I'm going to do an all cash seven figure offer and I want you to just spray and pray all around this area and tell people like, just make it happen.

39:30Even if it's not for sale. Is that a baller move or is that like a desperate move?

39:37Desperate? I don't know. It doesn't sound like a great strategy to me. I wouldn't think so either. Do we really think that, because I know we said it sort of tug-of-cheek, but do we really think that people barring against their portfolio, that should be a taxable event. How would that work? No, no, no. I was saying like, if you have a, it'd have to be above a certain amount, right? So if we're doing the$100 million thing. But this is the hard thing. It's like, where's the line? I mean, talk about arbitrary. Yes, I agree. But when you draw a line, people just say, okay, I'll just go with a little line.

40:09Yes. There are probably way better ways to tax the ultra wealthy. How's that? But the thing is, the ultra wealthy are really good at hiring professionals to find loopholes. That's the thing. These kids, how do you eliminate on that? If you look at the old tax rates, there was a time period in like the 40s or 50s where the tax rate for people making a million dollars a year above was like 90%. People go, see, look, we used to tax the rich. Yeah, what did they actually pay? No one actually paid those rates because it was so easy to hide it from the IRS. Right. Yeah, but there's got to be simpler ways to tax the wealthy if that's really going to be your platform.

40:42Yeah. I agree. Ben, did you see Twitter was lighting up yesterday? with founder mode? I saw the piece from Paul Graham. I guess it took on a life of its own. So Paul Graham shared a blog post. He said, at a YC event last week, Brian Chesky gave a talk that everyone who was there will remember. The theme of Brian's talk was that the conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken. As Airbnb grew, well-meaning people advised him that he had to run the company in a certain way for it to scale. Their advice could be optimistically summarized hire good people and give them room to do their jobs.

41:17He followed this advice and the results were disastrous. So he had to figure out a better way on his own, which he did partly by studying how Steve Jobs ran Apple. So far, it seems to be working. Airbnb's free catch on March is now among the best in Silicon Valley. The audience at this event included a lot of the most successful founders we funded. And one after another said that the same thing had happened to them. They'd been giving the same advice about how to run their companies as they grew, but instead of helping their companies, it had damaged them. So Twitter lit up yesterday and Albert Wenger tweeted, founder mode is a great concept, dot, dot, dot, that will also be used to justify horrendous leadership.

41:53So founder mode, the thing is like basically like, this is my company. I know the DNA of this. You don't know. Let me make the decisions. And again, it's not black or white. I'm sure there's like a middle ground where people, executives coming in, managers coming in have completely ruined companies. And it's also true that for every Jeff Bezos, there's a million other bozos who ran a company into the ground. And saying I'm going to emulate Steve Jobs is like saying I'm going to emulate Michael Jordan. I'll just do what the best person ever to do this did. And I also think one of the things about founders is they take themselves way too seriously.

42:26Like, calm down. Yes, great. You founded an awesome company. Great. But there is a difference between running a startup and running an actual publicly traded company. They're not the same thing. Like, think about Mark Zuckerberg runs Facebook way differently now than he did when it was a startup. He adapted to the changing times. Yes. That's the thing. All right. Do you want to do one thing on Great Quarter? So Dollar General. Also, this makes me kind of want to sell Airbnb. I feel like admitting this, like, I feel like this guy's probably kind of lost. I really, I like the company. It kind of makes me want to sell.

43:04So, all right. I mean, the stock looks like trash. where is this? Yeah, it has not been a great investment for me. I was really bullish on Airbnb and it has not worked out. Chris and I are staring at an Airbnb the Saturday before Future Proof. It's$250 for the house. Okay. There's a$225 cleaning fee. I don't know if that goes to the homeowner. Maybe it does. I don't like seeing that. And then the Airbnb service fee of$67. dollars. So one night goes from 251 to 543. Jeez. How much of that cleaning fee do you think is actually just going to the host as part of the nightly rate? They're just using it as a way to get people in the door.

43:47I'm sure there's, I'm sure you could find that. I don't know. I would assume a lot of it. All right. So dollar general. You know, the weird thing about dollar general that I always notice is that it's, they're always in rural areas, right? They're like in the middle of nowhere. You're like, why is there a Dollar General here? Obviously, that's the plan. So Dollar General is a stock that I have bought and sold twice, credit to me. Did not take large losses here. The stock is in a, let's see, I think the deepest drawdown ever. Let's just see. Wide charts, clickety-clack, click. Yep. Oh, yeah. By far, 67%.

44:21Almost not nice territory. Really bad. So is this a buying opportunity or are they just getting destroyed? So this was a kitchen sink type of quarter. You know, sometimes you listen to conference calls and you see the stock markets react. You're like, why is it down 12 %? I don't get it. So Dollar General is down 27 % or whatever after the conference call. And guess what? Completely deserved. If you listen to the conference call, you would say, I don't know, 15%, 40%. You couldn't make up a number that would surprise me. That's how bad it was. So they say, from a monthly cadence perspective, same-store sales growth was strongest in June before turning negative in July.

45:02Notably, the three softest comp sales weeks of the quarter were the last weeks of each of the calendar months. This pattern suggests that our customers are less able to stretch their budgets through the end of the month. With that in mind, as well as our continued softness and discretionary sales in our own customer data and survey work, we believe the softer than anticipated sales performance in Q2 is at least partially attributable to a core customer that is less confident of their financial position. I want to provide some additional context around what we're seeing and hearing from our customers.

45:33The majority of them state that they feel worse off financially than they were six months ago as higher prices, softer employment levels, and increased borrowing costs have negatively impacted low-income consumer sentiment. As a result, and here's a coup de grace, as a result, our core customer who contributes approximately 60 % of our overall sales comes predominantly from households earning less than$35 ,000 annually. Ben, let me ask you a question. At what point in history were people earning$35 ,000 doing well? There's not a point in history because by definition, they're always doing poorly.

46:13Sometimes these companies, you look at them as a bellwether of the economy. Not this time. But here's the thing. So Dollar Tree is also off 50%. My question is, what's the trade down from a dollar store? Where are these people going that's not the lowest priced place that there is? I could be out of my depth here, but I think Walmart is killing them. Okay. I think Walmart has made it really, really easy. And I just think that it's like a, I think it's more of a dollar general. I think it's more of a dollar store story than a low-end consumer story. Right. Walmart is probably a better deal than both of these places.

46:50Just because they have dollar on the name doesn't mean that it's the best deal. Then you're getting everything for a dollar, right? Right. So that makes sense. So people were pointing to this as evidence that it's over, and I just don't know that I see it that way. Right. Because Walmart is at an all-time high again. Yeah. So there you go. Okay. Survey of the week from the Wall Street Journal. 12 years ago, when researchers at a public religion research institute asked 2 ,501 people if American Dream still holds true, more than half of them said it did, when the Wall Street Journal asked the same question in July, that dropped about one-third of recipients.

47:20And they say, still holds true, has fallen. Once held true, but not anymore, has risen. And also, never held true, has risen from 5 % to 20 % or so. I mean, that's poppycock. Come on. Never held true? Yes. Do you think the American dream, if you work hard, that you'll get ahead, still holds true, never held true, or once held true, but doesn't anymore? And so this is from the article. It feels like my parents' generation has ruined it for us. It's such a stark case of the haves and the have-nots. I just, I wonder if, how many people actually understand, like, what came before them. And what, and I think this kind of gets really hard to articulate, because there's another one from Schwab, from their wealth survey.

48:02I think we were talking about this. Americans feel they're in better shape to reach our financial goals than generations that came before them. 64%, so they're more likely than previous generations than before. I just, I don't think people are very good at the results on these surveys, understanding them. I think like I'll, I'll, I'll fall back on Josh's optimism as a default setting. It's, it's, it's never been easy to get ahead. I don't know if it's harder or easier than it used to be. There's always winners and losers, but come on, like this is, uh, this is the land of opportunity and it doesn't mean that people don't get a raw deal and people don't get screwed and everybody has equal access to the opportunities.

48:43But come on, where else are you going? How about this? It's never been easier to feel sorry for yourself either and put it on a public platform. Here's the American dream. From our comments, going from a 1.4 GPA to becoming CFA is insanely impressive. Gives me hope. Michael Batnick, the American dream. I'll take it. I will take it. I got a personal finance question for you. Based on your dishwasher alone, I'm going to guess that your car is generally kind of messy. Is that a fair assessment? You think? No, and the fact that you have two young kids. Because I feel like there is a huge difference between a parent's car with little kids and a non-parent car.

49:23If you have kids, you have no shot at keeping your car clean. Is that fair? I'm not making a mess. Yes, yes, exactly. Although I could see you being like in college being like a fast food bags and bottles in the back of your car kind of guy. Fair? Yes. One time I went to pick up Josh. He opened the door. I said, nope, I got in his own car. So I was in one of my friend's cars. I have a friend with five children. And he had like a Suburban. I got in this summer. And I was just like, oh my gosh, this makes me feel good about it. But I mean, it's just Cheerios and goldfish and stuff smashed and fingerprints everywhere and the windows are anyway.

50:01So I cleaned my car, my wife's car yesterday. I took the floor mats out and I power washed them. I wiped down all the windows. I did the dashboards. Hold on. You power washed the floor mats? Oh, do you know how much junk kids? So you know those squish balls that are kind of like stress balls kids have these days? And they have like little shiny things in them. My son has broken like six of these. He had one in my car the other day. We were driving up north. And I told him like, dude, quit squeezing that so hard. You're going to break it. And he's like, I got it. It's fine. And next thing we know, it sounded like someone got their head shot, head blown off.

50:33It was boom. This thing exploded. And it was a glitter bomb. in my car. My daughter had glitter all over her sides of my car, just glitter. We had glitter everywhere forever. So I had to clean my car out and it took me probably an hour to clean both cars. Vacuum. I vacuumed. I, I used the car detailing stuff and wiped everything down. And I, I did the windows and I did the floor mats and it took forever. And you ever hear of a car wash? Is it just easier to get a car detailer to pay a couple hundred bucks and do it every six months? Do you do that my uh like get your car detailed yeah robin does it for us like once i don't know here and very infrequently we've done it before twice maybe um speaking of cars my ev my my hybrid rank uh wrangler i like how it looks i think it's a cool looking car but what a piece of garbage it just you turn it goes i feel like you've kind of not and then all of a sudden like that thing from the beginning all of a sudden like it goes silent like it was dead quiet when i got it and And also when I got it, the charge, you were able to go 30 miles on a charge.

51:38Now, for people on the South Shore who understand, I get to the Loop Parkway. It's probably, I don't know, seven miles away. I looked yesterday, I was down to 15%. So I'm going to say the charge now takes me 10 miles. So the battery basically doesn't work. Would not recommend. Okay. All right, I have a movie theater thing for you. So I still am a physical magazine guy. I get GQ and Esquire. Wow, what is that? Yeah, Danny McBride. and I was going through it this weekend, and he talks about, they did this whole profile on Dan McBride, how he moved from LA to Charleston and moved this whole production company.

52:10It was a pretty cool story. Didn't we see his house? Oh, that's right. Maybe someone pointed it out. So he talked about movie theaters. He says, I can't stand the modern movies theater that served dinner trend. I hate it. I can't stand it. I also don't think it makes sense to combine booze with movies. You're going to have to piss. Doesn't alcohol make you want to get up and get loose? You don't want to sit there, drink beer, and just be quiet. I would have no interest in going to see a movie and just pounding IPAs. Yeah. I'm on board with this. I never saw the need for having like a meal of food while you're watching a movie or drinking beer.

52:42Yeah, I think it's cool, but the novelty probably wears off. I had to use the restroom during long legs and I hated it. That's the thing. You don't want to leave the movie in the middle. You can't pause it. Not great. All right. Oh, somebody sent us. Last week I was talking about being an outdoorsman, which, you know, I love camping, even though it's been over a decade. Yeah, which is the biggest line of horseshit I've ever heard on the show, that you love the outdoors. I do love the outdoors. Camping, though, there's a difference between liking the outdoors and being a camper. I love camping.

53:13If you haven't gone camping in a decade, you don't love camping. I do. Like, Bill Sweet goes camping, like, once a year, I feel like. Listen, there's plenty of things that I love that I don't have time for. Okay. Somebody sent us, there's a company called Under Canvas where they set up in national parks. And look at these tents. It's like glamping, I guess they call it. Oh, so this is glamping, yes. It's like professional. You can't stand one of these and then say you love the outdoors, though. This is like a non-outdoors way of going camping. Oh, stop it. You are literally outdoors. Look at this.

53:43This is like a condo. It's a professional tent. It's like wooden floors. Yeah. That's like I pretend to like the outdoors, but I'm really going to live in luxury. All right. Listen, I love the outdoors, but I don't like Daddy Long Legs. I don't like waking up with Daddy Long Legs on top of the tents. I hate Daddy Long Legs. Yeah, exactly. Camping, because you always, what percentage of the time do you wake up in a tent and it's wet the next day? 100%. 70 %? It's all the time. Even if it's just dew. Not a big dew guy. That's the worst part. And setting up the tent is never easy. The poles and the, all right, parenting from the Wall Street Journal.

54:20Parenting is hazardous to your health, as Surgeon General warns. Report sites that the American Psychological Association saying half of parents report overwhelming stress most days compared to 26 % of other adults. They're lonely or two, according to cited data from health insurer Cigna. In a 2021 survey, 65 % of parents say they were lonely compared to 55 % of those without kids. I just wonder how much of today's stresses are self-imposed because at what point in the thousands and thousands of years of history where people have had kids, were they not worried about their children? Parents have always been stressed about their kids.

54:52And maybe I think a lot of what we do to ourselves today is self-imposed stresses and depression. And I'm not saying everyone, but most people. Like, I get this feeling all the time, like, oh, God, did my parents have these feelings about having kids the way that I do? Like, the worries and the, you know, you're always, you're only as happy as your unhappiest child, all this stuff. In school and sports and all this stuff that we all worry about. Parents have always had to deal with this stuff. I think now we just we make it harder on ourselves and we have than it has to be i think the challenge is now like parents are more connected with one another yes there's way more of that keeping up and staying involved and not getting left behind that's the thing it's competition among parents like they're they're competing with each other it's it's bizarre yeah so i don't know how do you avoid this like it's pretty tough that's true the lonely thing gets me because i think having I don't know.

55:50My kids are my friends in a lot of ways, which is weird. I think part of it is the friends that you get when you're a parent are typically parents of your children, whatever. It's sports parents or it's kids in your age. Parents of your children. Parents of your children's friends. I think the reason that people might say they're loneliers parents is because you don't get to really pick your friends anymore. Your friends are chosen for you by your spouse or by your kids. Like your new friends. And the survey puts a gun to your head and says, you're lonely, aren't you? Yeah. Yeah, I don't get the, I would love to be, I have three kids.

56:26I would love to be lonelier more. Admit you're lonely. All right, we could skip this boomer's not remarrying. We'll talk about it next time. Story time. All right, here's a fun part about having kids. We went to a costume party this weekend. So our pool beach boat club that we belong to up north. so this place has been around since 1903 so it's technically called a yacht club but it's not it's it's really really old it's been there forever and they have a pool and a little deck where you can get drinks and like food you went to a yacht club and you dare to call my outdoorsman uh you call the outdoorsman realist i'm putting yacht in quotes here there's no actual yachts at this yacht club it's just called it so it's been around since 1903 but apparently in the 1920s this place ran into like financial ruin and they had to have a fundraiser.

57:13And what they did for this fundraiser for some reason is they threw a Pirates ball. Naturally. And so this was the 100th anniversary of a Pirates ball. So every year they have a big party at Labor Day. It's kind of the end of the season bash. And 200 to 300 people show up. And we've never done it before because our kids were never really of age and didn't make sense. And this is the first we've done it. And literally 250 people show up to this place dressed full gear as Pirates. Yeah. And so my wife went out and got all our costumes on Amazon, you know, like Halloween pirate costumes. And we were looking a few weeks ago, like, what does the costume need to look like?

57:47And my kids want to be like Jack Sparrow-ish. And how cute you look at this picture. You got the dimples. I said, I said, I need to get a fake mustache. And my youngest daughter, Kate, who's the princess of the family said, no, no, no, daddy, you have to grow it out yourself. You can't have a fake mustache. And no one else wanted me to do it. But hey, she says she wants me to do it. I do it. And so I - How long did it take you to grow it? That is impressive. I grew a beard for like two weeks, and then I shaved the mustache and left the little soul patch. Did Courtney like it? Hated it. My wife hated it.

58:19My other two kids hated it. My daughter, who wanted to grow it, she thought it was the greatest thing ever. I think you look great. What's with the headband, though? It's a pirate. I don't know. It came with a costume. I had a hat, too. Did you get a lot of compliments? I mean, everyone else there was a lot of compliments on the mustache, but I'm not going to lie. I kind of liked the mustache. I love it. Like, I'm going to be honest. I look a little bit like a porn guy, like a C-rated porn star. Yeah, yep. I wasn't going to say it, but. But I think the mustache plays. And I told him, like, I kept it for a couple.

58:50I took it for a test run for like two or three days. And I liked it. Were we talking about mustaches on the show? Was I talking about that with somebody else? That all of our dads had mustaches? Oh, yeah. My dad definitely had a mustache. Yeah. Non-ironically. So now I couldn't tell, like, okay, I'm going to wear it ironically. But then I can see how people go from ironic mustache to, I kind of like it, actually. Yeah. I like it. We were just talking before we got started. I don't know how we got into the subject, but how weird were boxer shorts? What do you mean? Like, so I wear boxer briefs.

59:19I assume that most people wear boxer briefs. Oh, you mean the boxers that are loose? Yeah, I used to wear those. Yeah, of course. There was a thing, for those of you who don't know, right now you wear boxer briefs, right? They're long-ish, tight underwear. Yes. Back in the day, we had something called boxer shorts, which were just shorts under your shorts. Yeah, they'd bunch up all the time. That was a weird thing, right? I mean, are they weirder than, I think here's why we got them. Because whitey tighties were so restrictive. People said, I need to let stuff breathe down there. So we went from whitey tighties, we over, it's kind of like going from a bubble to a bust.

59:56We went from whitey tighties, totally restrictive, to boxers, like let it breathe. And then I feel like boxer briefs didn't come into existence until years later. Yeah, we scaled back to boxer briefs then. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, you're right. I remember wearing boxers. They were weird. Like middle school, high school, and they were just all sort of bunched up all the time. All right, recommendations, Ben. Friend of mine, I have one friend in Hollywood, and he texted me, have you seen Strange Darling? And I said, not only have I not seen Strange Darling, I've never heard of it. So I went to the theater knowing nothing, and it's, oh, I have to think about this.

1:00:35easily of my top five favorite movies of the year. I've never even heard of it. No, you haven't. I never heard of it. So, and nobody's seen it. It's done$2 million at the box office. If you, all right, this is a full batting endorsement. Not like Trap. I understand I should have given more disclaimers even though I thought I'd disclaim the shit out of it. Strange Darling is a Michael movie through and through. I'll just read the description. Nothing is what it seems when a twisted one-night stand spirals into a serial killer's vicious murder spree. Okay. The movie was phenomenal. I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend you go see it in the theater.

1:01:12But even more so, I will say this, and I hope even me saying this doesn't spoil anything, but it's the type of movie that you need to go on blind, like I did. Don't Google it. Just, if you're a Michael movie guy or girl, go see this movie. Twist ending? I'm not saying anything. Just a great film. And in the film, there was a trailer that I laughed out loud at, which I don't – I'm not a laugh out loud in a trailer guy. You got to really – it's got to really be funny. Kevin Smith. Were you a Kevin Smith movie guy? I mean Mallrats. Clerks, Chasing Amy, Mallrats. Mallrats is one of my favorite 90s comedies.

1:01:49Okay. Me too. Mallrats was great. I think Chasing Amy – I don't think I was ready for that movie when it came out. I think it was a little bit too young. Clerks as well. But there's a – Kevin Smith has a new movie called The 430 Movie. When does it come out? Oh, shit, it comes out soon. Hey, my guy, Justin Long. I laughed out loud in the trailer multiple times. I might actually go see this. Okay. I feel like it's been a while for him. Ben, I asked you to watch a movie. Did you watch this movie? I did. I watched it last night. So I watched a movie called Love Lies Bleeding. I think it's an A24 movie, right?

1:02:22Praise A24. It is. And it definitely felt like an A24. Okay, so Kristen Stewart, Ed Harris. It's a noir movie, and it's on Max. I said to Ben, because Ben and I have very different tastes in movies, I said, I feel like this is a Michael movie that Ben would enjoy. I was curious to hear your take. So I loved it. I thought it was very clever, enjoyable. Your thoughts? Dave Franco was in. I'm a big Dave Franco guy. It was very well done. Like, it was a really, like, well shot movie. I think it was a little too dark for me. Okay. I liked it. But it was good, but it was a little too on the dark side.

1:02:57Okay. Other than that, though, it was really well done. Yeah. Obviously, you like the dark side. I thought it was really well done, though. All right. So you enjoyed it? Yes. I enjoyed it, but too dark for me. Okay. All right. Good to know. It did keep popping up on my HBO Max algorithm. She's great. Ed Harris is great. I really enjoyed the hell of it. Weird Ed Harris hair. Party in the back? Yeah. Big time. Ed Harris was completely bald. And not only did he have a party in the back, but it started like at the back of his head. Yeah. It was bizarre. All right. lastly, I took my kids to a Broadway show.

1:03:29Oh, Ben, here's another thing. Here's another thing that I love to do that I never do. I love Broadway. There, I said it. Really? I would have guessed that. When I was young, my parents took me to see Phantom of the Opera and I love it. I still love the soundtrack. I took my dad to see it maybe two years ago. Love Broadway, never go. So I took my family to see The Lion King, which I never did. It's been on Broadway forever. My wife and I saw a number of years ago. Wonderful. Great experience. Kids loved it. Kobe did fall asleep at the end, but too long. Too long. Well, too long. But if you're, if I do get emails from time to time, hey, I'm bringing my family to New York.

1:04:02What do you recommend? Lion King. I think so too. Yeah. My wife and I went to sleep. We didn't take the kids and she loved it. It was, yeah, it was pretty good. I don't have a lot for recommendations this week. I do have a list for you. Did you watch Incoming? Oh, shoot, I didn't watch it yet. No, I was going to watch it. My wife said, no, you got to watch it with me. so I have so I have to wait it's really it's really funny okay I have a list I did this list off the top of my head so I probably missed some stuff but I took a list of like what are some of the best high school movies ever dude if you make a list I want in I can't I can't I can't participate this is selfish of you okay I'm sorry here's my this is I came up with this on the fly so I might have missed some so here's like the list of preeminent best high school movies and I'm gonna give you my number one at the end okay Breakfast Club 16 Candles hold on go slow go slow sorry 16 Candles Fast Times at Ridgemont High 10 Things I Hate About You, Ferris Bueller, Days of Confused, Clueless, Varsity Blues, big 90s one there.

1:04:57America Pie, another 91. Juno, Booksmart, Risky Business, which kind of started them in the early 80s. Can't Buy Me Love. What's that? Can't Buy Me Love with Dr. McDreamy. Who? Don't know. Oh, okay. Great 80s movie. Mean Girls, Can't Hardly Wait, Project X, Weird Science, Easy A, 21 Jump Street, and Say Anything. Those are like the ones that I came off with top of my head. I'm sure I missed them. What's Say Anything? That's one where John Cusack is holding a stereo above his head. Good party movie. Yeah. That's a good list. 80s. What's your number one? Oh, wait. Did you say Ferris? I did. So the number one, I watched it again this week.

1:05:34I've been on a classic movie binge for the last few weeks. It's super bad. It's not even a close second. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. And here's the reason why. It has all the things you want from a high school movie. It's got the great party scenes. It's got the dorky kid who has a turn. It's got like the awkward sex scene. Like it hits, checks all the boxes. It's perfect. It's the cops. It's Seth Rogen and Bill Hader. Take it to another level. The, those two as the cops as like the other, it's almost like another whole other plot within a high school movie. Um, just for some reason, that was the part that I, I've watched that movie probably once a year.

1:06:06We watch. And I, it's one of my, I think it's probably my favorite comedy of this century, even if I probably said something. What year was that? Like 2007, probably seven. Yeah. Uh, And that's the best high school movie. My favorite one ever. And I've seen them all. Yep, that's the right answer. Okay, that's what I got. That's a good list. Oh, Duncan said, Ned actually is Ed, Edmund, Edwin, Edgar. It's a form of Ed. And it actually can be traced back to Ned Stark was the first one ever from the 1300s. He was the first Ned. Okay. We're going long these days. What's gotten into us? Next week, I'm going to be coming back with some recommendations for what to watch on your flight to future proof.

1:06:45Duncan threw it on a gauntlet. on that, you better be ready too. Oh. Three movies to watch in your flight on the way to future proof. Great call, Duncan. Yep, we'll be ready. Are we talking Delta? We're talking Delta, right? I'm going to give random movies. You can download them ahead of time. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Not everyone flies Delta. Okay. Well, I'm just saying the link that Duncan sent us was Delta movies. Yeah. It's a streaming agent. Anyone can download anything. Okay, fair enough. All right. Thanks, Duncan and the production team as usual. send us an email animalspirits at the compound news.com and we'll see you next time