Is a Recession Coming? (EP.402)

25:31and Ripple. I don't know if he mentioned Solana in the first one. But then I guess somebody talked to him. Somebody gave him an elbow. It was like, hey, also mention ETH. Mention ETH and Sol. So then he quoted him and was like, of course, there's going to be ETH and Sol there too. So all the coins pumped. And this is just. They pumped for a day and then they fell right back down. It's a face palm. It's lots of face palms. Joe Lonsdale. Joe is the co-founder of Palantir, founder of Adapari. He's very much on the West Coast tech scene. Joe tweeted, taxation is theft. It should be kept to a minimum.

26:12It's wrong to steal my money for a grift on the left. It's also wrong to tax me for crypto bro schemes. Efficient defense, courts, national parks should fund themselves, prisons, etc. Fine. Cut it out with these schemes, guys. Credit to him because these are his people. So David Sachs, the crypto czar, quote tweeted him and said, nobody announced a tax or spending program. Maybe you should wait to find out what's actually being proposed. So, I mean, the grift, the corruption, it's all so bad. Why the f*** do we need a crypto reserve? Why not an Apple reserve? Why not, I don't know. Why not a, I just, it's nonsense.

26:47I think we need an egg reserve in this country. One thing that made me feel a little bit better, and maybe I'm naive in taking this at face value, is that the FT reported that David Sachs, prior to coming to the administration, sold all of his crypto. He, quote, tweeted and said, correct, I sold all my cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin, Ethan, sold prior to the start of the administration. I don't know if he was able to sell it for tax-free. I don't know if that was part of the deal. I don't know. That makes me feel kind of worse because if he was just trying to pump his own bags, I would actually understand it.

27:17If he's not trying to pump his bags, then I understand it even less. OK. Hunter Horsley at CEO of Bitwise said, I saw this Trump statement today, same as everyone else. I imagine a strategic reserve would just be Bitcoin. That makes the most sense to me. Now, I understand this. Bitcoin reserve doesn't make a lot of sense for a lot of people, myself included. I don't think that we need a Bitcoin reserve. But just back to Hunter's point, he said, many crypto assets have merits. But what we're talking about here isn't a US investment portfolio. We're talking about a reserve. And Bitcoin is the undisputed store value for the digital age.

27:50Of course, I'm grateful the new administration is so constructive on the space. Look forward to learning more about the thinking here. But what are we doing? What are we doing? Why are we doing this? Because, yeah, essentially we would be using borrowed funds to go into more debt to buy these assets. It doesn't make any sense to me. I think the reaction from the crypto crowd is mixed. As I just mentioned, there's obviously some people that are cheering it on and some people that are taking a little bit more of a sober view. Oh, really? Because I haven't seen one person who made a good case for why this should be – why this should happen.

28:25No, no, no. I didn't say good case. I just said cheering it on. Many people in crypto are rejecting this and many people are cheering it on. I don't know what this is. Well, the people who are cheering it on just want to see their number go up. Yeah, I get that. I think the worst thing for these crypto people is who are banking on all this stuff is the government does all this stuff. They say we're going to do a strategic reserve. They say we're going to deregulate. And crypto still doesn't go to the moon. Then what? Then you're forced to, hey, we have to actually do something. We have to create something.

28:56And then also what if another administration comes in and dumps everything and says, no, we're undoing this. Well, that's the thing. when you have a reserve, listen, the government is never in the same personal finance headspace as a household. People who make that, who conflate those two, that's dumb. But if a reserve - We're going broke. Wait, hold on. We're going broke. Let's buy Bitcoin. Yes, but a reserve is, so let's say the government had billions and billions of dollars of crypto and they decided, okay, yeah, we're going to use this to pay off the debt. If they owned all that crypto and then they went to sell it to pay off the debt, guess what happens to the price of crypto?

29:31It crashes. So it's like a catch-22 thing where you can't say we're going to own all this crypto to pay off the debt. Because once you try to pay it off, it's like the value of all these meme coins and shit coins. If the largest holders ever went to sell them all, the price would effectively go to zero. So you're kind of holding yourself up with these values where it doesn't make any sense. I don't understand the logic behind the Bitcoin reserve. I think he's doing it because he said he was going to do it. but I don't like it one bit. Even as somebody that would benefit from higher prices, I do not like it.

30:07I don't know. I think the US government holding Cardano because Cardano, again, it can, you know, you can do stuff with it and it's Cardano. I still don't know what that is. Someone tell me what it is. I have no idea. Yeah. Do you know what Cardano is? Come on. I don't know what Cardano is. It's a layer one. I don't know. It's a clown show. I really, I really, not Cardano. I don't know anything about it, but I don't like what's happening one bit. All right. How is this? This is why I bought Bitcoin in the first place, because I f***ing hate this shit so much. And because I'm a very petty person, if it was going up and I didn't own it, I'd be very spiteful.

30:40So does that make me a bad person or a bad investor or just an idiot or an asshole? I don't know, but I don't like it. All right, how's this? I think we've been a little negative today. I think if we have a recession, the offset to a recession is going to be the housing market. I'm pretty sure I believe it. So the housing market has been in a recession for the past, I don't know, 18, 24 months. Kevin Gordon tweeting, U.S. pending home sales have fallen to a new all-time low. I'm coming around to the idea that the best hedge in the next recession will be housing. If interest rates continue to come down and mortgage rates get 6%, then 5%.

31:18No. Hard-boiled eggs. I think housing is going to be the hedge. I think you're going to see more activity in housing that has been pent up. Listen, if there is a recession and people lose jobs, that's bad. But if the unemployment rate went from 4 % to 8%, that's still a large set of the population with a job. And that have been waiting for lower rates and waiting for activity and waiting for people to get off the sidelines. And some people will, because it's a recession, I feel like that pivot will make people want to sell. And then you have the home equity line of credit stuff come in where it's like, oh, my HELOC's at 5 % now.

31:49Now I'm going to tap this thing because I need the money. I think housing is going to be one of the automatic stabilizers during the next recession. Thoughts? as long as banks don't pull back. Yeah. I like it. Listen, you said we're being very negative. I don't feel too negative. I like this. I like the idea that people have an opportunity to buy stocks at lower prices. Me and Shemath, same thing. I feel the same way. But again, no, this is good. I don't like the tariffs. I don't like that. I don't like it. I think it's dumb. Let's see. How about this? What if the tariffs just offer people a really good buying opportunity, and when they're taken off, then I think the big worry is that we go too far down this road, and then things can't be completely prepared.

32:40Well, back to where they were. You can't just go back. You can't hit a reset button. I think that's the worry. But I agree. Sometimes markets need to be shaken up a little bit. I'm not a super bear. I'm also not an idiot who doesn't recognize that there's risk out there, right? Can we go into a recession? Can we have a bear market? Yeah, obviously. But I'll say that I don't think that this is going to be a bear market. Could be wrong. This might age very poorly. But I think I don't see this going. And why am I even giving an opinion here because I'm making this up? But I don't think that this is going to be more than a 12 percenter.

33:15Okay. So then that means that we're not having a recession. Because if you think we're going to have a recession, we're definitely going to have a bear market. Mark it down. Right? So I think that those two predictions have to go with one another. And I think it's way too early to say we are definitely having a recession. I think that people have to probably pump the brakes. Again, the probability has risen, but you can't say we're definitely going into a recession. I think that is a little too quick. Yeah. But again, I said this last week. I'll say it again. If you – because we've spoken to a lot of these people over the years who were seduced by the 5 % overnight rates and you had a lot of money in cash.

33:53Now's the time. I'm not saying now is the optimal time. I don't know. But if you were looking for an opportunity, at least start to plan your entrance, okay? At least start to plan getting some money out of cash and back into the market. When all these high-flying stocks that people go, oh, these stocks ran away from me. A lot of these growth stocks are already down 30, 40, 50%. Like we could see another 2021 type of growth scare where a lot of these big stocks that were up a lot are Palantir and NVIDIA and whatever, and Bitcoin is falling again. And like all these things that you wish you would have bought now that they're falling.

34:25Okay. Now's your time to buy them at lower prices. Yeah. All right. Where we go next. All right. From Bloomberg. Headline. Austin rent tumbles. Austin rents tumbled 22 % from peak on massive home buying spree. And they say basically they built a ton of apartments in Austin. Guess what? Rents fell. They talked about these people who are getting two months free rent and$600 credit for signing their lease. um so this says nowhere in the country have rents declined as much as they have in austin now 22 percent off the peak reached august 2023 according to redfin the median asking rent is$1 ,399 per month down$400 in less than three years wow we have a lot of problems in this country that have that don't have readily made solutions like how do we how do we actually fix this big thing that's a problem a lot of them don't have easy answers the housing market is the only one that has an easy answer.

35:18Now you could say, well, do we have enough labor and construction capacity to actually build more? Do we have enough financing available? But if government officials really wanted to fix the housing market, I think they could incentivize this to be done. They could incentivize builders with guaranteed mortgages or low rates or whatever it is. If this was really something people wanted to fix, we could fix it. And it seems like there's no political will to do so for whatever reason. I don't understand it. But that is the one thing that there is a solution. It's very easy. Fix it. All right. Don't look at this unless you did already.

35:55I did not. The Federal Reserve released household income for the census data through 2023. What is the mean, that's average for you non-stat folks out there, the mean personal family income for a household level? So anywhere that there's a household with more than one person bringing in an income, what is the average income for families in the United States? I'm always afraid to take a guess here at the risk of sounding out of touch or like an idiot. The average household income? Yes. $120 ,000. You're pretty close. $136 ,000 or so. Higher than I would have thought, actually. But why? I just, I don't know, two incomes.

36:42right? Is that what that's saying or not necessarily? Yeah. No, yeah, you're right. Yeah. I don't know. I, it just high, high to mid six figures is now the, I don't know. It sounds, it sounds high to me. I think it's a good thing. That's why I do think getting back to the recession talk, if we do have a recession, it would, it would probably be a mild one because people have higher incomes and they have assets and they have a margin of safety in their house and all this stuff. If there is a slowdown, I, it's not, I don't see it being a calamity. I don't think tariffs are going to tank the economy.

37:15No, I agree. Could they slow the economy? Yes. Could earnings fall and that hurts the stock market? Absolutely. Is it going to cause a financial crisis? No, I don't think so. I don't think it gets to that point either. So there's this guy that I follow on Twitter, and his handle is – and I'll just link to it. It's not a great handle. It's his name, and it's a bit, a lot of letters, but he posts great stuff. His name is Karush, and he has a chart. Where is this from? A company called eMarketer. It's showing that Amazon Prime's video ad tier launch in the first quarter of 2024 has suppressed U.S.

37:56streaming ad prices into 2025. So it's showing Netflix, Disney, Macs, Peacock, and Hulu, the average US ad-supported video-on-demand CPM by platform. Oh, so when Amazon came in, they set a lower bar and everyone else fell to it? Yeah. You know, like the Your March is My Opportunity? There's a pretty good illustration of that. That's surprising. I would have not assumed Prime Video would have that much pull. I would have thought everyone would be to whatever Netflix sets. That's interesting. But I guess all these other also-rans, they had to match Prime if they're not as big as Netflix. They didn't have as much power.

38:30So Ben, Chris Ryan from The Ringer, he tweeted about a movie. And so I clicked the link to the trailer. But you know what I did? Not watching the trailer. Reading the description. So here's the description. After a drug deal gone wrong, Tom Hardy's the star. After a drug deal gone wrong, a bruised detective must fight his way through a criminal underworld to rescue a politician's estranged son. while unraveling a deep web of corruption and conspiracy that ensnares his entire city. I'm in. Tom Hardy? All right. Why would I watch a trailer and spoil it? I'm in. Yeah, I don't know. I'd personally just rather watch the trailer.

39:11Really? You can get a sense of the tone of the movie through a trailer. Like, oh, this is going to be a really over-the-top action movie. I don't think the description always matches the trailer. What percent of trailers do you see and say this movie is going to suck? these days, a lot of them. I love watching movie trailers, though. It's one of my favorite pastimes. I watched a movie on the flight called Undercover. It's a foreign film. Ooh, look at you. No big deal. And it's a woman who goes undercover, spy, espionage, are we going to get caught, answer the phone, who is it? But love it. I love movies like that where it's really tense.

39:58Somebody's cover going to get blown. Did you watch Zero Day? Is it Zero Day? What was it, De Niro, a Netflix thing? I made it like 15 minutes in and I just thought, eh. Really? Yeah. How pretentious of you? 15 minutes and you thought you discarded Bobby D? You said, I get it. This is garbage? When he was like working out and jogging, I don't know. I'm sorry. He mailed this performance in. Is he not mailed? Is he mailed in everything these days? Does he really try anymore? He does so many things. I don't know. I like it. All right. You're the only one. All right. I have a dumb question. So I was watching the combine, the NFL combine, where college athletes compete.

40:42They do the 40-yard dash. They do the vertical jump. When these athletes do a vertical jump and it says, like, oh, he has a 39-inch vertical, tell me if this is what it means. does this mean that his toes are 39 inches off the ground? Because I Googled it and the way that they do it is they put like this bar on top of you with like horizontal tags and you jump and you smack them. Right. So, so what they do is they measure the distance between your standing arm up and however, whatever you hit. Does that also by definition mean that their toes are 39 inches off the ground? Because it doesn't look like it.

41:16Like in the replay, it doesn't look like they're jumping three and a half feet. Yes. That's what it means. That's what it means, right? Yes. I don't believe it. Okay. If you think about it, if you put your hand up and then your hand touches the top thing, it's just your body's moving up by the same amount. It's the same thing. Maybe you know what might be throwing me off is like when you jump, your feet go down. Yeah, true. The toes are pointed. The toes are pointed. So maybe that adds that. If these are big people. So if they've got 14-inch toes, that's why the 39 inches only looks like 26 inches or whatever.

41:52I'm looking at things like for frame of reference and like it just doesn't look like they're three and a half feet off the ground measuring from the heels instead of well I have one of those box jumps I don't do it as much anymore but I have one of those box jumping things have you seen these before? You do box jumps for an exercise of course you should do it it'll help your back and so you turn it on different sides and it says the height and the tallest one I have is 30 inches right? That's the tallest and I put it up and my kids always try to do it They like, they have fun with it, but I can do, I can do 30 inches pretty.

42:24And that's not a, I have to pull my legs up, you know, but. Do you think I can do 30 inches? You might be getting close. You possibly would blow out your Achilles. I just, I have to point out, you, you sent us a picture of your old man basketball league. My back hurts so bad all week. I couldn't, so on Tuesday, I couldn't get out of bed. I felt like getting out of bed. Like I thought I wasn't gonna be able to play, but. So you play how about once a week you play? Yeah, but I couldn't bail because it's like the teams are decided. And I can't be like, hey, guys, sorry, my back hurts. It's such a lame excuse.

42:54But see, I didn't realize how serious this was because I picture open gym. You show up, there's 15 guys, and you shoot free throws to see who's on which team, and then you just play. That is how it is. That is how it is for every week, except for one week we do an official thing. Okay, because the picture you sent me, you had like a team uniform on. Yeah. Like a full-out uniform that you guys like had printed up somewhere. So this is serious stuff. and of course you were number 69 which

43:24alright dude I was a statue out there I couldn't move it was awful let my team down by the way you know what if we're if this podcast is feeling a little extra dark this is the darkest hotel room I've ever been in there's no light there's a lamp I'm using a lamp I feel like hotels should all have the same light switches in the same places because that really always throws me off. Sometimes the switch is on the light. Sometimes it's on like a switch on the wall in a weird place. It's always really hard to find the switches for the lamps in a hotel. Legitimately, I'm looking at this. There's, there's honest to goodness, there's no lights in here.

43:59It does look very dark. All right. Let's go to the Ben's feelings section of the show now. So you said a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about my brother, that with your mother, you, the small stuff doesn't impact you anymore or like the. Nope, never. Yeah. So this Keanu Reeves meme that I've seen before, it's like I'm at that stage of my life where I keep myself out of arguments. Even if you tell me one plus one equals five, you're absolutely correct. Enjoy. And I see people post this all the time. I don't think anyone actually has this line of thinking in their life. I feel like Keanu must be a one of one.

44:32But I can certainly see after going through a situation like this, there's like immediately I feel like there was take all this stuff on the table that people think about and worry about on a daily basis. and shove 60 % of it off the table for me. Just a lot of stuff that people seem to care about, I just cannot make myself care about anymore. And I don't know if that's going to last. It might last. But I also can see the situation where someone who goes through a tragedy like this and a really bad situation, as someone who's tried to study the emotions of investors in psychology for the past, I don't know, 20 years or so and try to understand them better, I feel like I'm like internally dissecting myself to have the feelings that I'm having.

45:17And I can easily see how someone would tip over the scale and fall into like the land of nihilism or I don't care about anything and I'm just depressed. I can see how easily you could fall into that trap. I can't do that because I have a family. But I can see how easily that can go from like a superpower of, oh, I don't care about this other, this menial stuff that no one should care about. I don't care about that anymore too. I don't care about anything. And that's like the balance you have to walk of. You can't get to that other place of not caring about anything because then what's the point of anything?

45:47Right. Anyway. So my goal is that I'm going to be Keanu, and we'll see if that lasts or not. Okay. Love it. Yes. I'm trying. I made a phone call last week to a dog trainer. We have a boxer puppy, and she needs some training because boxer puppies are wild. So anyway, I left a voicemail, and I gave them my number. You could reach me at, da-da-da, da-da-da. And I repeated it because that's, I guess, that's what I do. I don't know if that's what you do. And I thought to myself, hey, wait a minute. This is 2025. They're going to get a missed call from me, and they see the voicemails they transcribed.

46:32They could just hit the play button and call me back. They don't need to leave them my phone number. I think you do as a courtesy still, just in case. Okay. Right? But, but, but wait, listen to this. So I had that thought, and then a day later, Robin forwarded me a voicemail. And I'm glad the person left their phone number, because if you get forwarded a voicemail, it's not a missed call, right? So you can't just like, you can't just like press play or press callback. So I needed the phone number in this case. That's true, especially with a business. Sometimes the call comes in from like a central number, and it's not the number you need to get the person.

47:10Ben, can I share a nitpick that is going to reveal a – maybe – I don't know if there's a bad flaw in my personality. I'm not even bothered by it. It's not even a nitpick. It's more like an observation, okay? I'm not mad. Okay. Just like when you get picked up by an Uber driver from your home and they say your name with a question mark. Oh. Michael? Yes, you're at my house. Of course it's Michael. I'm not – they should just say, good morning, Michael. Now, if you're at a city, obviously they say it's appropriate to ask with the question mark because there's thousands of people around. Creatures of habit.

47:48What if they just have gone to the wrong house before? You know, I got – speaking of convenience, I'd say once a week I will get DoorDash. If I'm busy in the office and I'm doing something and I don't want to go out to get lunch somewhere, I will just DoorDash it. And I did it the other day, and the DoorDash guy walks into my office, and he's got this huge two bags from a sub shop, Fire something subs or whatever. He's like, here you go, and it's all these chips, and it's probably like 16 sub sandwiches. And I was like, I was waiting for him to pull my bag out of these bags. So that's what he was doing.

48:21He's like, here you go. And I said, sorry, that's not my order. I didn't order it from that place, or I don't have 16 people in here. And the guy's like, are you sure? I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure. Are you sure? Guess what? He realized the computer messed him up. He went all the way back to the restaurant, got my order, brought it back, and then he realized that it was messed up and was a nice guy about the whole thing. He said, here, I'll leave these 60 sandwiches with you anyway. All right, let's do recommendations. I watched Anora this weekend, I think the night before the Oscars. I've heard good things about it, wanted to see it.

48:57And so here's my review. I watched it in two sittings. So I watched the first half Friday night, the second half Saturday night. And my review is this movie was the horse meme, the horse draw meme. I love this movie. I disagree. But go ahead. What's your review? You don't like the ending or the second half? I thought the first half of the movie was amazing. I was ready to proclaim like, okay, this should have won Best Oscar. It was very good. And I thought the second half of the movie was way too long. It was tedious. It was annoying. And I didn't, it just totally fell off of a cliff for me. and it, I just, it was like, eh, it was an okay movie.

49:31I thought that, I thought it just kind of really ended. It like limped to the finish line. Okay. I was on a major high from seeing this in the theater. So I think that I was able to more, I was better able to tolerate a maybe not so great second half, but I don't disagree with you. I mean, it was a two or a 20 minute movie and they could have easily cut 45 minutes off of anything from the second half of the movie. It was so. Excuse me. What do you mean they easily could? This is, sorry, this is the Oscar winner. How dare you? You saw it from your couch. You don't get to have those criticisms. I think the Oscar movies this year stunk.

50:00I think this is one of the worst, best picture lineups in 20 years. I think that's my takeaway. The performance was amazing. The performance, I thought, of the two, the Russian kid, I thought, was hilarious. And then— The goons were so funny. I thought they were just okay. I thought the main girl, I thought she was great, and she probably deserved the Oscar. But I just thought the movie was kind of, eh. I love the movie, but I agree this was a really, really last year. Here's my question for you. Was she doing a Staten Island or a Long Island accent in the movie? Staten Island. No, Brooklyn, I think.

50:34Or Staten Island. Not Long Island. Okay. I thought Staten Island. So that was my review of Venora. Here's my other thing. TV is so good right now. So my wife and I were talking the other day. Every week we get new episodes of The Pit, which is just a fantastic show. I've mentioned this before. You have to watch it. The Pit, White Lotus, and Severance. New episodes every week. These are three amazing shows. I've never watched a medical— I never watched DR, so I've never watched Grey's Anatomy. I know it's different. Okay, watch The Pit. It is a fantastic show. It is so good. Such high quality. Can I say one thing?

51:11So I'm late to Severance. I'm just— I don't know why. I missed the start to season two, and I've just been dragging my feet. The last episode was fantastic. Okay. But I'm having trouble breaking back into it. The first couple episodes of this season I thought were a little weird. But it's grown in the last couple of been. I think it's well on its way to being a prestige TV show. It's great. Okay. Yeah, I'll break through the battery. I just need to. Two weeks ago, I forgot to mention this. They did Wayne's World on the Rewatchables. Oh, I saw Rocky drop this morning, by the way. They did Rocky.

51:48I'm just like to listen to that. So Kyle Brandt was on Wayne's World with Bill Simmons, and those guys just, especially Kyle Brandt, just destroyed. Yeah, I rewatched it because I listened to that. It is funny how much of a, it's more of like a skit-based movie than it is, I forgot how skit-based it is, but yeah, Mike Myers is kind of a genius. I never saw it. So they also did Blues Brothers. I never saw that movie. I don't think I'm ever going to. I feel like it's one of those movies that was either in your time and you loved it, or it was past your time and you kind of go, wait a minute, what?

52:21Yeah. It's kind of a weird pop culture thing.

52:29Oh, we'll do the top ten shows. But before we do, I flagged one thing that I want to get a chuckle with you out of. I saw this on Instagram from Barstool. They made a bracket. What is the best old guy phrase? Did you see this by any chance? Okay, we're going to go through this. This is historical. Newsflash, buddy. Versus yellow. All right, next one is look who the cat dragged in versus hate to burst your bubble. And look, it's all just old guys. Max is, I don't know why this tickles my funny bone. Let me sneak past you. Versus don't mind if I do. I guess these are a lot of phrases that are probably going to die at some point, aren't they?

53:28Next is it's not the heat, it's the humidity. Of course, a classic. Versus working hard or hardly working. Is beer o 'clock on there? All right, so that's one side of the bracket. The other side is what's the damage, right, when you're going to pay the bill? Versus see you later, alligator. Next is You and One Army versus— We're talking about food. These are dangerous. Okay. Next is No More Mr. Nice Guy versus Nice Blinker. Oh, wait. People don't put on their blinker. All right. And lastly, Ready to Rock and Roll versus Cool Your Jets. See, I feel like these are more funny to you because you're a middle-aged guy now.

54:13I don't know why. These are all very, very funny to me. All right. shows we're going to do it i got a big list i got a huge list here um me too okay i'm gonna go first these are ones that are unimpeachable for me so this is hold on let me grab my list this is the best shows of this century basically since we have prestige and i'm going to include the soprano since that wait wait a minute kick this off no network shows well there's one network show one fun at night lights yes no it's not allowed because i don't make the rules the emailer made the rules and he said no network shows but fine go all right so my unimpeachable ones are breaking bad the wire sopranos mad wait hold on dude you gotta sorry i got a lot okay so breaking bad okay wire sopranos those are on everyone's list mad men which i was an early adopter of i i was in mad men from the start uh six feet under is my one that not a lot of people have i think that's one of the best shows ever and it has the greatest finale of all time uh succession is made out made down to the list, and then Friday Night Lights.

55:14Those are my unimpeachable ones. I think that's seven. Okay. So my ones that could have made it that are probably pretty close, I have Game of Thrones, Warlock Empire. Hold on. You still have three more spots. I know. I'm going to tell you, there's a lot of them that are jockeying for those positions. I think Severance could get there. Hey, cool your jets. I think Severance could get there. I think White Lotus will probably be there. I rewatched. I tried to watch your De Niro show, and I decided, you know what? I'm just going to watch the first season White Lotus again. And I forgot how good of a character Armand is.

55:45I think he's the best White Lotus character ever. Oh, so good. And that was only six episodes. Like, I could have gone another four episodes of that crew. I think Veep could potentially be on the list. The Leftovers, I think, is a really underrated one. And then The Bear and Fleabag. So those are ones that are, like, very close for me that could, the positioning could be Jostle. Then the ones that could have been there but trailed off, House of Cards, I think people forget how good those first few seasons were. The Americans, it kind of died down in the middle and the ending was great uh dexter started off great like the first four seasons and trailed off arrested development was one of the original comedies i think and then justified in the office so i got a whole list of stuff here i'm the guy with the strings on the wall and so what do you what do you what what's uh which three you're plucking so i'd probably say veep i think is the funniest comedy show maybe ever written uh or not funniest smartest so i'd say like veep white lotus and probably the bear oh wow you love the bear yes i love the bear okay flea guy you said flea bag flea bag really yeah i think all right so i have three separate lists one is my list and one is this is off my list because i didn't see these shows so i didn't see a lot of these shows i never saw the wire the americans deadwood Atlanta, Veep, and I only saw three seasons of Sopranos.

57:13Okay. That's good to know. Okay, so they're not on my list. I never saw them. I know they're on everyone else's. These are not on my list, but these are like my next 10. True Detective. I know two and three were terrible, but one was so epic. Game of Thrones, Girls, True Blood, Ray Donovan, The Boys, True Detective, Entourage, Yellowstone, Sons of Anarchy. All good shows. Not top 10. All right, my top 10. In no order. I think the only one that's really out there, I don't know if there's a great list, actually. I have two that probably don't belong. All right, the two that don't belong, Bloodline, was a show on Netflix where the first two seasons were two of my favorite seasons ever.

58:00It was very good. The first season especially was very good. The third season stunk, but hey, it's on my list, So what can I tell you? And then the other one that probably shouldn't be here, but is Boardwalk Empire. Is that a big stretch? That's a stretch. I know. I love that show. Okay. All right. So a succession. Very high quality show. What else do I have here that's different from yours? I have succession on bloodline. I put house of cards here because I love that show. I have white Lotus. Oh, curb. Did you not put curb on yours? No, probably could have. Homeland breaking bad. Two others. that you don't have.

58:36Silicon Valley and Ali G, Borat, Bruno. All right. I think we cover them all on our list. You picked up a few that I missed and I picked up a few that missed. I did love Ali G back in the day. I listened to him recently on Smartless. Yeah, he's very good. Genius. All right. What else is going on, Ben? I got nothing. All right. What's the market doing? Let's see. Down. Okay. Next week at this time, are we in a correction? 10 % down from the highs? Um. Or does he blink this weekend? See, this is the hard part. If you're trying to predict this stuff, and you're saying, this is definitely going to happen, he could wake up Sunday and say, tariffs are gone.

59:26And that changes the entire landscape of any prediction you can make. Yeah, I mean, the news flow, like I said, but it's a very fluid situation. The news flow is happening so quickly that who knows, a lot of things that we said today might look very foolish even tomorrow. But I feel like everything that the Wall Street people predicted is completely wrong. Anything Wall Street firms have been saying, this is a negotiating tactic, he's not going to actually do it, all that stuff, throw it out. Full steam ahead. Yeah, and those, the Wall Street firms have been completely offsides on this the whole time.

59:59They were wrong. So anything they say, I don't trust it. I don't think you can trust anyone that tries to handicap this right now because we don't know. Yeah. Who knows where we'll be next week. We'll be here. We'll be recording. We'll be reacting. Animal Spirits at the compound news.com. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.