Recession Not Required (EP.317)

23:55I misheard you. We spoke about prices growing faster than inflation all the time. But I'm saying, when wages were growing faster than inflation for this two-year period here, no one ever talks about that. We only talk about stuff when it turns, and maybe that's the point where people just don't realize stuff until it turns bad. But I'm just saying, we talk about the prices growing faster than inflation all the time. No one ever brought up when wages were going faster than inflation. So - Sir, you're not wrong. Here's another one from the Wall Street Journal. Adjusted for inflation and purchasing power, since 2019, so this is inclusive of the start of the pandemic, real wages have declined by 3 % in Germany, 3.5 % in Italy, in Spain, and 6 % in Greece.

24:33Real wages in the US have increased by about 6 % over that same period. So since the start of the pandemic, real wages are up. I guarantee if you asked, you surveyed 100 people on the street like they do for Family Feud, which they make those up. Are we, if we're being honest, right? They don't really do a survey for those. God, that show is a national treasure. I mean, it is just so ridiculous. I would be. You know when they do this? Oh yeah. The final challenge one where they answer five questions, I would, I nailed those every time. I was, I'd be a good person on Family Feud. I'm just throwing that out there.

25:04And you know what? I'd support you. Good answer. Even if it was a bad answer. I'd say good answer, Ben. Good answer. All right. How many people on the street would say, yes, wages have grown over the rate of inflation since the start of the pandemic? 10 out of 100, maybe? How many people would understand the premise of the question? Fair. But I'm just saying this would surprise a lot. So they had a bunch of other good charts in here. This shows in 2008, the size of the Eurozone economy versus the size of the US economy was essentially the same. We were a little bit bigger. Since then, the European economy has basically gone nowhere and the US economy has essentially doubled.

25:42Well, it's the spending, it's spending, it's spending. The next chart is all the spending. But it seems like the Doomer mentality has taken over way more in, maybe I'm wrong about this because I don't have like a sentiment gauge in Europe, but like people in Europe have a right to be angry about like the direction of things over there because the economies are growing, the wages are falling. And on a relative basis, we're doing so much better than they are. And it doesn't seem like anyone seems to care here. Everyone still seems to think things are horrible. This is all being driven by the iPhone, right?

26:16I guess. I just, these charts are, I think these charts are just wild to me. How, you know, we've talked about the fact that the US has been the only game in town in terms of the stock market since 2008. Sometimes the stock market is the economy. If you look at this, the fact that the US economy has doubled and the Euro economy has gone nowhere, then the fact that international stocks have underperformed makes a lot more sense, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. So we're recording this Tuesday morning. It's 1030 Eastern. And here's what's happening. Small cap stocks are breaking out. The equal weight S &P 500, which is obviously lagged.

26:52The cap weighted is breaking out. In XLI, industrial stocks, which have the highest correlation to economic growth is close to 52 week high. The Dow Jones transport index is at a 52-week high. Materials are on fire. What else is on fire? Can I offer a correction for what you just said there or something? I had to set up a call with a friend of the show, Sam Rowe, today. I want to talk about something. He said from March to November, it's EDT, Eastern Daylight Time, and from November to March, it's EST, Eastern Standard Time. What? He said either you're going to love or hate this, but I just have to tell you.

27:31because I set up a time and I said, can we talk at 1230 Eastern? Well, I love Sam, but I hate that.

27:40Anyway, the market, I am particularly interested to see how stocks respond to their earnings, especially, well, either way, beats, misses, I'm curious to see, because obviously there's been a great run. Stock market's on fire. It's gone up a lot, but it's just going, it's like dribs and drabs, right? This is the whole, we take the stairs up and the elevator down. The stock market is just slowly but surely going up. There's really no volatility to speak of. Although, it is kind of crazy, all the stuff we've dealt with this year that has just been brushed off. Jason Furman tweeted about, since the banking crisis in early March, the stock market's up 12%.

28:14Interest rates are down and the dollar is weaker. He said, this is not what I've expected. Think about, remember that 10-day period of the banking crisis, how big of a worry that was? And now it's just kind of like, wait, when was that? That happened again? All the stuff the stock market has brushed off. Goldman Sachs chief economist said, we are cutting our probability that a U.S. recession will start in the next 12 months to 20 % from 25%. Jan Hatzia's quote, the recent data have reinforced our confidence that bringing inflation down to an acceptable level will not require a recession. The funny thing to me, so they showed Goldman Sachs, their probability of recession versus consensus.

28:47The consensus got to 60 some percent, which is kind of funny because it happened in September 2022, which is right near the bottom of the stock market. The economists never go over 40 % on anything. So this is essentially 100 % as far as I'm concerned. And I do kind of get it. But right now, besides an inverted yield curve, are there any signs of recession? Yes, leading economic indicators. Okay. Hasn't that kind of been debunked, though? That doesn't really show? It feels to me like there's not many things that you can hang your hat on. The only thing you could really say is, listen, rates have not been that high for very long.

29:24This is, I think, where a lot of people are pivoting. The people who aren't pivoting to a soft landing are pivoting to, no, this stuff acts on a lag. And I could kind of see that, even though I think the economy and the markets move way faster in price and stuff these days. The lag thing to me, I guess it's possible. I mean, almost any time, just looking at – when you get leading economic indicators crashing like this, now it looks like they may have found the bottom. It's just one month. But that typically has coincided with the recession. How about this? Spreads on high-yield bonds have fallen to the lowest level since April 2022.

29:58If credit is a forward-leading indicator, it's suggesting we're not going to see any kind of default cycle of note. So spreads blew out a little bit in March from the banking crisis, and now they came right back down. I don't think that you could say, if you didn't know what was going on with the Fed and inflation and all this stuff, if you just looked at what was going on, I don't think you would say a recession is on the horizon. I think it's only the Fed stuff and you'd be hanging your hat on, well, rates are going to filter through eventually. And at some point, people are going to run out of money from excess savings and rates are being higher.

30:28And that's going to be the thing that slows things. That'd be the only thing you could say, I think, at this point. Fair? Yeah, Carl Kutty tweeted, Amazon Prime, first day of Prime Day, single largest sales day ever. Amazon Prime members bought over 375 million items worldwide. wide. And I think that this says more about the economy than it does about Amazon because I poked around and I saw a lot of people tweeting the deals. There weren't deals. There was fluff deals, nonsense deals. I think I was on a call with you and I got a new pair of AirPods that I'm wearing and they were$10 off. It wasn't bad.

31:02Yeah. 10 bucks. I was in the ocean the other day and I got wrecked by a wave. I wasn't paying attention. Brought me to my knees and like an idiot, I had my sunglasses on and they flew off my face. Did you buy my gooders yet or not? I did. I'm sorry. Not for you? Well, I like Maui gyms and I had my pair for like four years. I don't know what Maui gyms are, but it sounds like boomer sunglasses. Not at all, sir. How about middle age? Middle age. So let's say they're 200 bucks or so. So 50 bucks a year, if I can hold on to them for four years, that's fair. Oh, come on. $200 is way too much to spend on sunglasses.

31:43Michael, what are you doing? The chances of you, of all people, breaking them, that's like higher than the chances of recession right now. I like Mario Gyms. All right. I'm just saying, get four pair of$25 ones. And if you break one, you don't care because you have three other ones. That's called giving yourself a margin of safety. Did you not read Ben Graham?

32:04All right, where are we going next? Oh, this is interesting. Bob Elliott tweeted this. So we're saying like, why haven't rate hikes filtered through the economy yet? And of course, it doesn't happen overnight. But like, you would expect to see some of it. It's been a while, no? So Bob Elliott tweeted, the significant rise in short rates had no impact on aggregate household disposable income. Interest income from rising rates has equally matched the rise in debt service costs, both Both up$170 billion annualized since the post-COVID bottom. Equally offsetting each other? Identical. Well, think about it.

32:38What do you think about that? Well, think about the fact that two-thirds of all people own a home, right? That's a homeowner's business country. Speaking of that, by the way, that was a nod to the Rewatchables this week, My Cousin Vinny. Oh, gosh. I can't wait to listen to that. That's easily one of the most rewatchable movies of all time. It's probably in my top 10 of movies that I've watched the most in my life. Every time it's on, I have to. And it's on all the time. Yeah. So the two Utes, that gets me every time, and the circus suit just slays me. But two-thirds of the country owned a home, and they essentially locked in mortgage rates under 4%.

33:12Now those people who tend to have more money in savings or cash, now they have the ability to earn 5 % of their cash. So you got a double whammy of low borrowing rates plus now high yields on your cash. So that makes sense. This whole thing makes sense to me. It was like the immaculate tradeoff, right? Yeah. Yes. Are we doing demographics? Are you doing this just to troll a little bit? A little bit. It was a big piece in the New York Times about demographics, and they showed how things are changing over time. The projections are reliable and stark. By 2050, people age 65 and older will make up nearly 40 % of the populations in some parts of East Asia and Europe.

33:47It's almost twice the share of older adults in Florida right now, America's retirement capital. Extraordinary number of retirees will be dependent on a shrinking number of working age people to support them. As a result, experts predict things many wealthier countries take for Granted, like pensions, retirement ages, and strict integration policies will need overhauls to be sustainable. And today's wealthier countries will almost inevitably make up a smaller share of global GDP, economists say. Yes, I just can't get worked up over this. I still think that trying to figure out the implications of this 10, 20, 30, 40 years into the future is nearly impossible.

34:20I don't think anyone predicts. I think Morgan Halsey wrote a piece about this a long time ago about how no one really predicted the baby boom following World War II. like no one, you know, demographics is easy to predict, but no one really predicted that. I just think, I don't know, I don't see how having wealthy people live longer and continue to spend is going to make things that much worse off. I know there's going to be a certain proportion of them that we're going to have to take care of more, but I don't think you can automatically make the claim that this makes everyone worse off because people are living longer.

34:47Yeah. Think about how many cruise, that new cruise ship that that's the biggest one ever. I'm going on a cruise next year. I'm telling you, It's a lot of people. Some people agreed to me. Some people disagreed. Cruises are fun. I'm sorry. It's fun. Don't be sorry. I think last week or two weeks ago, I talked about how I'm predicting if and when mortgage rates fall, there's going to be a huge binge of home equity lines of credit, cash out refis. Bloomberg has a story on this. Actually, the HELOC binge is already kind of coming. In 2022, annual HELOC originations rose 34 % from the year prior to 1.4 million individual loans.

35:25That was the highest since 2008, according to TransUnion. And while 2023 figures aren't in yet, the number of HELOC accounts has risen each of the last three quarters, which data is available. They're basically saying people have stopped doing the cash out refi because that doesn't make a lot of sense because rates are so much higher. But if you have the HELOC and the ability to be a little more flexible with it, that makes sense. Even though rates are approaching 7 % or 8 % for borrowing on HELOC now, you can be a little more flexible with them in terms of when you pay it off and how you pay it off and these things.

35:51I said tappable equity, which is keeping a 20 % equity cushion, is$9.3 trillion, up 56 % over a three-year period. I think this has the possibility, even though it's going to put some people into more debt, I think home equity has the chance to be like the… The next Fed put? Well, the buffer for the economy. I think if people get into trouble, I look at my home equity line of credit as kind of my… And I know people have said in the past to me, well, during 2008, Wells Fargo or someone pulled my home equity line of credit. That's a risk. But I look at it to me as like a buffer. So I have this home equity line of credit that I can tap in a real emergency.

36:31And I think some people, their definition of emergency is different than others. And the trip to Hawaii is an emergency for them. So I think people are going to use this to keep their spending up if it falls for whatever reason. I hope we don't have to find out. You did the cash out refi, right? I think we did this at the same time. You cashed out refi and I did the HELOC. And yours was probably a better move at the time because you got to borrow at 3 % for yours. Mine went from 3 % to 8%. But I just, I have dry powder. I'm like Buffett over here.

37:04I've now used up all of my Benjamin Graham and Buffett comments for the day. You want to talk about threats for a second? So this is from CNBC. Tuesday and Wednesday, the platform's number of daily active users was down 20 % from Saturday and the time spent for users was down 50%. It was kind of cool at the beginning, but I think it's a mess. For someone like you and I who use it for information and news and opinions and real-time analysis on the economy and sports. I don't use threads. I tried it out for a couple days. I got my shit from Twitter. It looks okay, but if they don't have a chronological order and just follow your – and maybe they don't want that.

37:41Maybe they want to be fortune cookie advice and, hey, what's your favorite movie, people? Those are the kind of things that the algorithm feeds me. It's useless to me. You know what you don't get on Thrive? You don't get jokes like this from our friend Eddie Elfenbein. Did you see this, Ben? You do. I think you send me more Eddie Elfenbeins than anyone. Eddie tickles my funny bun. Eddie's a funny guy. Let's say this made me laugh if I could find it. If a stock goes down 20%, then goes up 20%, it's still down 4%. So where did the 4 % go? Answer, Vanguard and BlackRock. the funny the best part of twitter is you know some people are going to take that as as serious and believe oh my god oh my god you can you could you can imagine it's pretty phenomenal that's what one of the things twitter has made me realize i think i've said this before like there's more smart people in the world and more dumb people but they're they're a way higher percentage of people who don't understand sarcasm than i ever would have imagined who are on twitter well somebody responded wait you're an and you're an etf manager good god dude that's terrible All right.

38:47All right. Great quarter, guys. I am utilizing the quarter app. If you're a listener of conference calls, this is the way to do it. The transcript search is my one I've been using the most lately. I use transcript search to see if they mentioned crypto on BlackRock's conference call, and they did not. That kind of surprised me a little bit. Interesting. Okay. All right. JP Morgan, this is from the CFO. Both US consumers and small businesses remain resilient, and we haven't observed any meaningful changes to the trends in our data we discussed at Investor Day. And then today, Tuesday morning, we saw US retail sales rose for the third straight month.

39:25Auto sales are a bit light, but I think that was to be expected. What was the quote that Diamond used about a hurricane coming? Or what did he say? He kind of backtracked on it, right? Well, he set it for two consecutive quarters. I don't think, I don't remember him mentioning it this time. They still mention headwinds, but... Here we go. This is from CNBC, June 2022. Jamie Dimon says, brace yourself for an economic hurricane caused by the Fed and Ukraine war. I think he kind of had to walk it back a little bit, which is, but I don't know. I guess at his stage, the position... Nobody predicted a soft landing.

39:59No, but the position that he was in, I think he kind of, he's like a politician. He kind of had to say that, whether he believed it or not, or whether it was showing up in the data. The funny thing is, he was saying that, but then he was also saying, our business is fine. and so I think he was more caught up in the macro than he was in the micro and the micro probably was the one that he should have been following because that was saying everything's fine. Did you see this ring? Oh, I forgot. You're not an Office fan. You didn't like Michael Scott on The Office but did you like Dwight Schrute at least?

40:24Wait, you're putting thoughts into my brain. I just, saying that I'm not an Office fan implies that I don't like it. I just, I never got into it. I have seen an episode here and there but. Okay, so I think even if you don't like Michael Scott, though. It's the other Jim and Pam and Dwight and Kevin and Oscar. I've heard people say season one, you got to get through season one. It doesn't really ramp up until season two. All right. I still think season one holds up. Can I say something? I don't like the caveats like that. You got to get through this to get to that. So I watched four or five episodes of The Bear and I understand why people like it.

41:04I think it's quality TV. It just does nothing for me. So I don't know. I mean, whatever. Different strokes for different folks. It doesn't do anything for me. It's such a chaotic show. I can see why some people don't like. There was a few episodes where my wife said, are all the episodes going to be like this? She loved the show too, but she's like, I need like a break from it being so chaotic. I tend to like those, but yeah, I can see why it didn't hit with certain people, even though I loved it. Okay, so Rainn Wilson. I'm in the minority. I feel like everyone likes that show except for me. Yeah, I've seen a few people say like, eh, it just didn't do it for me.

41:40And I get it. All right, what do you got? What were you about to say? So Rainn Wilson was on Bill Maher recently. He played Dwight on The Office. And there was all these - Was he talking about JP Morgan's conference call? Yeah, well, I'm just talking about the human condition of personal finance. And I think I'm gonna bring this back to personal finance some way. So he talked about how at like the height of the success of The Office, he was still unhappy that he wasn't a bigger star and how he should have been making more money and he should have been a movie star like Will Ferrell. And he was on one of the biggest, best shows of all time.

42:12That's my subjective opinion, obviously not yours. And he's saying, like, listen, yes, it's true. I think some of the headlines were kind of angered him a little bit. He said this is the human - Wait, what's this guy's name? What's this actor's name? Rainn Wilson. Rainn Wilson. Rainn with two N's. So he says, I discussed at the height of success on The Office and how I still was unhappy I wasn't a bigger star. This is the human condition after all. and he's talking about it. And I think that human condition part of it makes a lot of sense to me because I think this is the reason that we continue to, I'm continuing to be optimistic about the future because you can have people who get to this point, and this is actually one of the reasons I like the bear.

42:48So the bear, the guy becomes one of the most successful young chefs in the world and he's still not happy. I think that happens to so many people and that's why people continue to strive to get better and make more money and do more stuff. I think this is one of the reasons that I'm actually bullish on the long term. almost all the time because the human condition never allows most people to be content with where they are in life. They always want to strive to do more and get better. And it seems sad in some ways, but in other ways, it's like, this is why things we continue to see progress and innovation because people are never content with what they have.

43:19Yeah, it is a double-edged sword. It's unfortunate for the individual, but it's great for society because people keep striving as if the incremental dollar will make them happier. I will die on that hill that for people that just think more money, if they're already making decent money, will make them happier. Like they're just fooling themselves. I don't under, I mean, it seems pretty clear. I think to most people that money, you know, once you have money more is not going to make you happy, but it doesn't go away. But actually Bill Simmons was just talking about this. Uh, he was like, I forget who he's talking with.

43:50Maybe, maybe Steve and I, which is a great interview about how you get to that point. And yeah, it's just, you're still yourself. Like, right cool you can you can get it you can get another car anyway um back to what this is from apollo and i want to get your take on this wait wait i was still doing quarter stuff oh i thought that was it no i'm not done okay all right black rock q2 net flows four billion out of equity 44 billion into fixed income. How about that? Wow. I think a lot of this is rich people who are at or approaching retirement age and they went further on the risk curve than they had to.

44:32This is the money market and the bond thing, I think. Yeah. They were 80-20 when they should have been 60-40 or wanted to be 60-40 and they had to be 80-20 because rates were so low. So I know I've spoken a lot about the stock market shoving it to people that went seeking for fixed income. I think, I don't care about the short-term divergence. Oh, you left, you know, maybe you left some money on the table by shifting asset allocation. I think it's rational to downshift if you were 70-30 to 60-40. I do. I think it makes sense. And I think it still continues to make good sense. So I'm not, I'm not like dunking.

45:04I think it makes sense. It's just the market is cruel that way. All right, Delta, as I said, record revenue and earnings, and they raised their guidance. So Dell, I mean, what a run this stock has been on. Good Lord. Just on fire. All right, Ben, I'm sorry. Back to you. All right. So Apollo had this for 48-month and 60-month auto loans. Went from 4.5 % in the start of 2022 to 8 % now. It was right around 4 % from 2013 to 2017. Surprisingly, still a little higher, like 5 % in the 2020s and 2021. So it got never really got that low. But do you think that higher auto rates matter way less than higher mortgage rates?

45:51Because I feel like with because the time period being so much lower, I feel like it doesn't impact your payment nearly as much or the total interest cost isn't nearly as much. So you say, well, interest rates are eight instead of four. I have to pay 50 or 60 bucks extra a month. I'm going to eat that because it's a car. I don't think people care as much about higher auto rates as they do. Here's why. Here's why. You would say like, I can't sell my house because my rates. You would never say I can't get a new car because my rates, because of interest rates. Right. Yeah. I don't think it matters as much.

46:22Yeah. I don't think so either. Okay. People, Duncan did a poll, where the sorting hat placed Michael. We spoke last week about Harry Potter and 38%, which is pretty high, said Hufflepuff. And I don't know what that means. Well, I don't know what that says about me. I guess I don't know the book well enough. I don't remember. It's been over a decade. So. So you don't know what that means? That was Cedric Diggory. Handsome fella. Maybe that's it. I told you my daughter, I showed this to my daughter and I said, I think people said that I would be a Ravenclaw and my daughter laughed and I don't know what that means.

46:54Although the second place was Slytherin, which I don't, I don't take kindly to. That was Malfoy, who was a dirtbag. Ben, I've got, I've got to ask you a question. Okay. I was in somebody, somebody, uh, Kobe went to a kid's party, which was in their backyard. And I went into the house to go to the bathroom and it's obviously a one person bathroom, right? You're in somebody's house. So I hear some, so I locked the door and I hear somebody jiggling the knob and then they knocked. Yeah. What in the, who does? So, so now I have to like like awkwardly say like, Someone's in here. One minute. Yeah, you do the jiggle and then you back away, especially in a house.

47:42You go down the hall. I would love to know. I mean, I was about to say, could it have been a child? No way a child would have knocked. Yeah, a child would have just tried to burst in. Yeah, it had to have been a grownup. What a psychopath. Who does that? Yeah, that's pretty bad. So last week we talked about how John Candy was 39 when he did Uncle Buck and then people look older. I think you put this in here, Danny Glover was 41 when he decided he was going to retire in Lethal Weapon. He looks like he's 60. I think he's - By the way, that right there, what you just said was very Midwestern. What?

48:14Because the quote says on the picture, Danny Glover was just 41 when he decided he was getting too old for the shit. Let that say good. And Ben said, Danny Glover was 41 when he decided he wanted to retire. Okay. Maybe it's because I have kids and I try to keep it clean for them. So someone actually sent us this video about why we look younger. And it was this whole 20-minute YouTube video. And it talked about the reason people used to look older. Smoking, lack of sunscreen, better health care, nutrition. But he also, this guy also said that it could have been an illusion that styles in the past simply made people look older, which I don't really buy.

48:47I think people used to look older. I don't think it's just that, like, our mind playing tricks on us. I really think this is a thing. He was saying a lot about this perception. Nope, nope, sorry, not buying it. I'm with you, Ben. I didn't buy that one. Okay, real quick. Lucas Shaw, linear TV's share of TV viewing has dropped by 12 % in the last two years alone and will soon slip below 50%. Netflix and YouTube will soon account for as much TV viewing as all broadcasts and networks combined. I mean, the biggest surprise here to me - Secular decline. The biggest surprise here to me, so it gives all the streaming watching and like Disney Plus, Prime, and Hulu are all bigger than Max.

49:25Like Max has by far the most high quality shows. of anyone, and it's still this tiny. And it's the same size as Tubi. Have you ever watched Tubi before? I think I've done this when I can't find a movie. It's a commercial one, like a free commercial platform. That is the same size as HBO is kind of mind-boggling to me. Well, I think, I wonder if, well, HBO doesn't put out as much content, number one. But it's got to be, it's got to just be, they bungled the shit out of it. How many iterations has HBO gone through? HBO Go, HBO Max, HBO Now. I don't know why they didn't just keep doing HBO. Now it's Max.

50:02Totally dropped the ball on that. All right. I went to see Mission Impossible. Have you seen it yet? No, but I will be seeing it in the theater. Okay. I got to support my man, Tom. It was probably 20 minutes too long. It was 245, but it was a phenomenal action movie. Just tip of the cap. I recently rewatched the last one. Tip of the cap. What was the last one called? Fallout? I recently rewatched that one. And I, that one, the last two, that and Ghost Protocol are phenomenal. So movies, I had an observation, a realization, movies are just as top heavy as the market. Like between Mission Impossible, Barbie and Oppenheimer, that's like 40 % of all revenue.

50:43And that's definitely not true, but you know what I'm saying? Movies like the NASDAQ 100. Yeah, a lot is hinging on this. So I'm kind of annoyed that I'm not seeing Oppenheimer until next Thursday. Josh got us tickets, which I'm annoyed because I'm going to be waiting a week. But I saw the coming attraction in the theater. Oh, here's another thing. I saw this on TCAF, but I want to just expand on this. So I go to my local theater, right? It's not like a Regal or an AMC. It's just my local theater. The movie screens are probably, I don't know, 20 feet? 30 feet is probably a smaller one. Yeah. Okay.

51:19Whatever the size it is. And it doesn't have, you know, it's loud, but it doesn't have like a Dolby. And I went to a Regal cinema to see Mission Impossible and the theater was shaking and it dawned on me. I know this is so dumb. I'm sorry, local theater. I can't support you anymore. The gap between the experiences was night and day. How much further away is the other one? It's 15 minutes. Oh no, it's probably an extra 10, 15 minute drive. For as many movies as you see, you got to do the better experience. Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking. But again, I felt like a real idiot. Duncan said just sit a little closer to the screen.

51:55So for Oppenheimer, the theater, it was shaking. And the whole movie was, I mean, it was phenomenal. Listen to this cast. Do you know about the cast of Oppenheimer yet? Yeah, they don't really plug it that much until recently. Yeah, so all right, here we go. Killian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Jack Quaid, Rami Malek, Gary Oldman plays Harry Truman. Josh Hartnett, I guess he's back in the game. There's a that guy who's obviously been in a lot of things. Benny Safdie, Jason Clark. I mean, you recognize a lot of these faces. Just an incredible cast. Matthew Modine.

52:31Oh, wow. Cannot, cannot wait for that. And I had a thought getting back to Mission Impossible. I had a thought. And I'm not necessarily looking for an answer, but how the hell do they breathe in a submarine? How do they have enough oxygen? Yeah, where does that come from? Someone better send us a YouTube video on that. How do they not run out of action? That's a good question. Thank you. Are you watching Hijack? I gave you Hijack. Sorry, sorry. Credit to you. So I watched it all in, like, I don't know, four hours. It's a show that should be binged because you want to just keep... I was like, I had low expectations for that show.

53:12I'm like, oh, it's a show about a plane hijacking. That show gets better every episode. It's really good. But no, it's so weird. because you're right, it is very bingeable. I would never watch a seven-hour movie about a hijack. No. Idris Elba's in it. It's on Apple. Apple is producing some good shows lately. It's not like a prestige show, but it's like one level below that. It's good. It's good. It's good. And Robin walked in. She's like, what are you watching? And so she started from the beginning to catch up because now she's into it. I asked you, because I'm pretty dry on shows these days, I asked you if I should watch Silo, and you said no, which thank you for saving me.

53:45The middle was just too slow. So the beginning and the end were both, and the way that they ended the first season, it's like, oh, there's some promise here. But I would say the middle was just too, I wouldn't highly recommend. Here's another one. I'm doubling down on platonic on Apple with Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne. We finished it. I think it's just a one season show. It was like 10 episodes. It felt like just an extended movie. Like this certainly would have been a movie in the past. It was just a fun, light hearted. And every episode had at least two or three moments that made me laugh out loud.

54:16I'm going to watch this. This looks good. It's not like a great show, but if you like Seth Rogen kind of stuff, like you'll like this show. That's what I, Apple's producing some good stuff lately. Also Oppenheimer, I think it looks great. I'm probably gonna wait to see it at my house. What? Yeah. Sorry. You are not supporting the arts, sir. Hey, let me ask you a question before we get out of here. What would you do in my situation? Chris and I were on the water yesterday and we went to the place that has, it's a bar. I was about to try to use other language, but that's what it is. It's also a restaurant.

54:52So I give them my credit card to hold the tab. And when I got back there, they couldn't find my credit card. And they said, Michael Batnick. I said, oh yeah, you found it? They're like, no, but we have you on file. I'm like, all right, cool. Well, you know, did it drop? They don't have my card. Credit to me. I'm a very laid back sort of guy. I did not. I even went to tip$20 and she said, no, no, no, you're not tipping. So it's annoying because now I don't know where my credit card is and I've got everything linked to that. And it's certainly, I don't want to have to order a new card and re-up everything.

55:26What should I ask for? I mean, so I said, so if you can't find my card, free drinks for us in the summer?

55:36I think it just, I think that happens. What's a reasonable ask? I mean. What if someone else just snagged it on accident or they gave to someone? Maybe they gave to someone. I think you just wait 24 hours, check again, and then you cancel that card. I don't think you get anything. No, I'm going to get something. Come on. You got to get something. Okay. I think that it happened. I think that's just part of the game. What game? Of going out? Yeah, it happens. They'll send you a new credit card in two days. You'll be fine. No, it's not about that. But then I've got to get the new password. Your credit card note is declined.

56:11Because I've got everything linked to it. $25 gift certificate. $25. I'm sorry. The punishment does not fit the crime or the opposite. It's a big pain in the butt. Yeah. It happens. Happens. All right. Maybe you're more laid back than I am. Because I was pretty calm. But now I'm starting to get agitated. It's funny. It never happens with you at restaurants. All right. animalspiritspod at gmail.com and we'll see you next time.