The Age of Discontentment (EP. 441)

25:26So I thought about this recently in terms of my own family dynamic over the years and how the expectations rise. So my dad and his, he had four brothers and sisters. They lived in a tiny, tiny house. One of my uncles still lives there. And I can't believe that with seven people, they lived in this house. And when we were growing up, he would always tell us that they didn't have anything at all. He would say like, and he would every year at Christmas, he would say, listen, we didn't get Christmas presents every year. We rented them. And he was trying to tell us like, we didn't come up. So what you guys have is way more than I ever had.

25:53Okay. But I think about something like childcare, which I think is a, is a big thing. I asked my, my parents recently, like, what did you guys do for us for childcare? My mom, my mom worked night shifts. She worked 7 PM to 7 AM, three days a week. And she said, and the other days, me and one of the moms down the street, we traded off doing daycare. So half the time I took her kids, half the time she took us. Right. And so she said, you sending your kids to daycare, like they're actually learning stuff. They're doing stuff. We just like made do with people in the neighborhood. And I don't think people do that as much anymore.

26:20And so when we went to Florida last week and our kids flew, I said, listen, when we went to Florida as a kid, we drove, I laid in the back of a minivan. We drove for 24 hours to get there or something. Um, we stayed off premises. We didn't stay on Disney like we were doing. And I think that stuff, over time, that's a sign of progress, but also the expectations are rising and rising and rising. And I think that is a form of progress in itself. But unfortunately, when the expectations get higher and the luxuries become necessities, that can make it easier to be discontented. I told this story a couple months ago.

26:51Over the summer, my dad took me to the apartment that he grew up in, the complex. And my dad grew up in poverty. he was uh he shared a bedroom with his grandfather like a bunk bed with his grandpa which is wild to think about and he i asked him if he felt poor and he said he said no because they didn't know right he didn't know he didn't know that people lived in houses and that there was now there wasn't the extravagance in the 1950s that there is today obviously but that's the point it wasn't visible it was much more local everyone was kind of in it together more or less right Yeah. Again, so I think this is a sign of progress, and this is one of the reasons that these feelings aren't going away.

27:31Yeah. Probably ever. All right. Good chart. Claire Lehman tweeted, The trends in mathematics, reading, and science performing. This is for the OECD. So it's global. It's not just the United States. People who don't take phone social media are having a deleterious effect on developing brains. What's the alternative explanation for this? did every country put lead in the water at the same time. So the test scores for mathematics, reading, and science are collapsing. Now, there was a noticeable break, especially in mathematics, around COVID. Yeah, COVID's a big thing for this, for sure. Had a horrendous impact on society.

28:10But this was trending lower. And there's been a lot written about this over the past couple of weeks. This trend is alarming. I don't want to poo-poo this at all. I feel like for decades we've heard how bad our education system is. why do things keep improving then? Why do we keep, why do like, if our education system is so bad, how do we keep creating such great stuff? How do we keep creating so much wealth? I just, I'm not trying to poo-poo this. And I also think that like, the solution is coming. Every kid is going to have an AI tutor. Like, I don't think, I'm not as worried about this because I think the solution is already here.

28:46I like that take. Like, it's going, this, it's, I agree, this is not good. This is not a good thing. the solution is here. All of our kids are going to have an AI tutor that's going to like understand and know their specific strong points and weak points and help them on the weak points. Yeah, I agree. All right. Carlisle has two charts that I wanted to highlight. One of them is the household consumption index. I don't know exactly what this measures, but it breaks down into highest income, middle income, lowest income. And the takeaway is the highest income, the middle income and the lowest are up into the right, but nowhere near as steep as the highest income line.

29:29And then they have another chart next to it showing the household financial stress index. And of course, at the highest income, there's no stress, less than 2 % delinquency rate. The middle income is steady, under 4%. But the lowest income, although declining is still way, way, way higher. I think the chart always looks like this, but all right, good news. Good news on the other side of this. The fantastic news, in fact, Michael and Susan Dell announced on Tuesday that they would deposit$250 in individual investment accounts for 25 million children, an amount totaling$6.25 billion. It is one of the largest philanthropic gifts ever to go directly to Americans.

30:20These are called Trump accounts. This is a cool story. That's great. The federal government will give$1 ,000 to babies born between January 2025 and December 2028. The Dell's gift extends to children up to 10 years old, though it limits eligibility to those who live in a zip code where the median household income is below$150 ,000. More of this. And I think more of this is coming. I think people will follow this lead. If you're a really, really super-duper rich person, I think I looked. It's like he's worth like$150 billion. What better way to give it than doing something cool like this? I've seen other billionaires that have paid off everyone's student loan debt or something.

30:56This is a very cool story. I do think that one of the ways that we could help a lot with young people, we talk a lot about the housing market. I do think that there should be a way bigger tax credit you get for daycare. If you have a dual income family, it's so stupid that we subsidize education K-12, but not pre-K when it helps people go to work and be members of the economy and help things grow. That should be a way higher number. In this same time frame, people hate this. Why should my taxes go up to subsidize you having babies? We didn't have that. This is a very, this is an electric It's a net positive for society because it helps the economy with more people working and producing.

31:39Yes. I unapologetically agree with this take. Like, whatever, child costs pre-daycare are just completely unhinged. All right, this is another interesting one from Carlisle. So last week, we shared the stat from Matthew Bowes. I can't remember what the stat was, but it was something like what we're seeing has never happened outside of a recession. All right, this is not a good chart. The local experiences versus travel spending index. Both of them are going down big league. There was another chart showing the experiences spending index, which is travel, tourism, and live events. This turned negative for only the second time over the last three years.

32:25Not great. I don't know what the story is here. Maybe it's just, I don't need to overthink it. The economy is slowing. I think eventually people got exhausted and did too much stuff. At a certain point, we've been waiting for this forever. We thought, people are going to take one or two trips after COVID, and then it'll be back to normal. It didn't. This seems like it maybe is back to normal. I tell you what, not at Disney. Holy smokes. People love spending. So I'd never been to this. I'm not a Disney person. I've mentioned this before. Stop saying that. You're a Disney person. I am. We've gone three times.

32:58So I'd never been to Disney Springs before. Have you ever been there before? No. Oh, is that like the shopping spot? It's shops and restaurants. So for Thanksgiving dinner, we went there. Which, side note, the last two years we've been traveling Thanksgiving week. We thought it was the kids have time off of school anyway. So I've missed Thanksgiving, the traditional Thanksgiving day. I didn't miss it at all. Two years in a row. Not at all. Yeah. I don't, you know, anyway. But we go to Disney Springs and there's just millions of people everywhere. We're trying to go in stores and it's too much.

33:26It's too chaotic. and I, the kids went and did some like boat, there's a car that you could drive that like a car turns into a boat and you can drive around so the kids did it with Courtney and shoot, there's only four spots so I'll just stay back and have a margarita. So I'm talking to the bartender and I said, this place, is this place more insane than usual because it's a holiday? And she was like, it's a little bit more but she's like, honestly, it's always like this. It's always busy. And like, that just blows, boggles my mind that there's just always people spending money and an insane amount of money at a place like that.

33:57And it really never slows down. Yeah. Happiest place on earth. Can't wait to go. I have some more Disney thoughts for you later. Let's talk about AI. So Derek Thompson had a cool post with Tim Lee, who he does a substat called Understanding AI. So he's, and he does a lot. He does some of the best charts on AI, I think. And they did this thing kind of like the pros and cons, right? They did a grand or but's hedge post, okay? Little of this, little of that, little good, little bad. and I thought this one was interesting. He said on the positive side, AI revenue is climbing fast. So they said generative AI revenue has increased ninefold in the last two years from$7 billion to more than$60 billion.

34:37And this isn't counting like circular spending on chips and data centers. Like I'll give to you, you give to me. And they look out what it could be, the estimates. So say if AI revenues continue to grow at 100 % per year, AI will hit$650 billion annualized in 2029, which is right on schedule. And it's basically saying all the money they're spending if that happens, now that's a big if, like all the money, like the ROI would actually be worth it. I hope so. That's a big leap, obviously, right? Yeah. Okay, we talked a few weeks ago about the construction boom. I said, like, there's got to be construction companies that are going crazy and people doing, the Wall Street Journal had this one nailed.

35:14A few people sent this to us. So they're saying that because of high demand from data centers, people from electricians, the project managers are earning 25 to 30 % more than they did before this happened. So they said they talked to this guy in Columbus, Ohio, who said he's been doing odd jobs, hanging drywall, trying to find clients. He said he pinches himself every day going to work. He's 51. He now makes more than$100 ,000 a year. It's a huge increase in pay. And it's all because of data centers. And they said they had all these stories about these people who are in construction workers making more money than they ever thought possible.

35:44But this is one of those things, though. Like if you're a realtor in 2020, late 2020, early 2021, it's the best market environment you're ever going to have. Yes. Ever. Right? Low interest rates, bidding wars, housing selling. Like, this is going to be probably the best labor market for these people in these specific industries ever. Like, this boom is going to be the biggest one they ever see. Correct. They're going to be talking about this forever. Yeah. But anyway, that's a good unintended benefit, I suppose. Absolutely. All right, let's do some crypto stuff. Crypto has been acting horrifically.

36:21What do you think Bitcoin could go to? Especially notable considering the strength of the stock market. You asked me for a Bitcoin price target. You gave S &P 10 ,000. Obviously, a lot of this has to do with the stock market because crypto is a risk asset. This could age terribly. I think the bottom's in. Okay. But could it go to 70 ,000? I mean, yeah, why not? Obviously, if the stock market falls 20%, Bitcoin is going way lower. Sure. But here's my grand record's hedge. Did I buy more? No. So do I really believe it that much that I'm putting my money where my mouth is? No. Oh, okay. See, I'm a money where the mouth is guy.

37:03I said I started buying. I've been a little bit sure. Once a week, I'm buying a little more crypto because it crashed. Yeah. Because every time it crashes, it comes back. If it rolls over again, I'll buy. Okay. So investors pulled$6 billion from global crypto funds. November's exodus is so far the worst on record for ETFs. So investors are scared. They're, you know, for whatever reason, I mean, maybe prices are going lower. It's that simple. I don't know, but they're pulling money out of it. So that's interesting because in April money went in, right? Everyone flooded in to buy the dip. Now the money's flooding out.

37:38Yeah. I think that's interesting. The April crash felt worse, maybe because it was in the context of falling stock prices as well. Like for me personally, I said this in April, I almost sold. Right. I remember I was on the baseball field, and I saw a tweet from a guy that I really respect, who I think is really bright on this stuff, level-headed, said that Bitcoin could go to$10 ,000. I said, can? Holy shit. And that was the literal bottom. But I was genuinely tempted to sell a decent amount. Do you think it still could go to$10 ,000 at this point with the ETF powerhouse behind it? No. I almost think it's impossible.

38:16No. I just think that there's too many people with too much money that would— Unless there's a quantum computing hack or something. But you know, it's funny. Someone did some, I saw some conspiracy theory out there saying like Bitcoin is crashing because they're worried about quantum computing, figuring it out someday. But if you could figure out the code to Bitcoin, what would be the point of it? Because it would all crash. If you, unless you just wanted to see, see anarchy, like if you could hack Bitcoin and it wasn't secure network anymore, so what? It's all going to zero. Well, right. If you're the, why, and why wouldn't you hack the Federal Reserve or the Treasury?

38:49or steal the U.S. Constitution. Right. Declaration of Independence, I mean, yeah. All right, so in LOL news, here's a press release from Strategy. Establishment of USD Reserve. Strategy today announced that it has established a USD Reserve of$1.44 billion to support the payment of dividends on its preferred stock and interest on its outstanding indebtedness. The USD Reserve was funded using proceeds from the sale of shares of Class A common stock under strategies at the market offering program. Strategy's current intention is to maintain a USD reserve in an amount sufficient to fund at least 12 months of its dividends, and strategy intends to strengthen the USD reserve over time.

39:38All right, so... Oh, so back into fiat, I see. Interesting. So they sold shares and they raised cash, aka a usd reserve is this a massive red flag to you or is this just like oh no they're they're just they're being prudent um because i feel like you've been more of a strategy you you followed this story pretty intently both yeah i uh if this is not the local bottom we're a local bottom for strategy which i do believe it is like i think the next 20 is higher that holy cow this stock is in some this company is in so much trouble now there are people that know about where like the the puking point is for his Bitcoin holdings.

40:16I don't know all the mechanics of how it works. I saw this morning someone said the average price is like 75 for them. All right. I don't know when that means they have to sell. It's much, much, much, much lower. So anyway, to me, it'd have to Bitcoin can't like, obviously the premium has compressed so much. It would just have to be Bitcoin. It'd have to keep crashing. Because if you look at the chart of this thing, holy smokes, did it get rocked? It got rocked. Well, so relative to Bitcoin too. So that's why I think there is a floor under strategy because smart people would just be like, all right, well, now it's trading at a 20 % discount to its Bitcoin holdings.

40:50Like, I'm buying. Because if there's a Bitcoin balance, the leverage is here. Yeah, it would just be – but if Bitcoin falls 20 % more from here, look out below, right? I think you're right. If Bitcoin stabilizes, this thing, I don't know how much will crash. It depends on the MNAV. It's called the MNAV of where strategy is relative to its underlying holdings. and there is a floor at where the discount could go to. Like, I don't think it could collapse to like, you know, a 20 % discount, for example, because people come in and buy. But the real, where this snowballs is people start worrying like, okay, he's not gonna be able to fund any more purchases anymore because people aren't gonna buy the convertible notes.

41:26Like that is when - But counterpoint, he just did yesterday. They sold the$1.4 billion worth of stock. I just think this is one of the stories where when Bitcoin is going up, he looks and sounds like a genius. Like, oh God, this guy has it figured out. When it's going down, he sounds like a lunatic. And obviously, it's not either of those things. Those are the extremes. But that's how this, and it's kind of like crypto in general, but this company especially is like that. All right. So there's some new studies that came out. Let's talk housing. In a study from the University of Chicago Northwestern, they found that Americans demonstrate reduced work effort, increased leisure spending, and investment in risky financial assets among young adults who face little to no realistic prospect of being able to afford a home.

42:11So they found out, and I don't know how they did this, but they found that people who are owning a home, or it's more realistic, they take fewer risks and they strive harder at work, which is kind of surprising. The work thing, I don't know how you can actually figure that out. But the whole risk thing obviously makes sense, and we've talked about this. And I do think, and some people look at this and go, this is a bad thing. And I continue to think this is probably a net positive for most people who are doing this, not for their psychology, not for their psychic income. I think from their bottom line, they're going to be wealthier because of this, because they're willing to take more risks, invest in the stock market.

42:51I think that is going to be the outcome of this, even if they're not happier because they would rather own a home than have a stock portfolio. yeah because somebody's like all right i have 20 i would have had 17 000 in my brokerage account and now i have 34 whatever it is like they want to be in the house yes for those that want to be in the house yes but obviously this so they put some numbers behind the stuff that we've been talking about this obviously makes intuitive sense this is kind of crazy though they look at because the ft is i guess a lot of people are based in the uk or overseas um they show housing price affordability across the UK and US.

43:27They show London, the UK and US. And look at how much more unaffordable it is in London and the UK. Obviously, if you put like New York on here, it'd be probably pretty similar to London, maybe not as bad. But this just shows the house price to income ratio. And I just keep thinking in places like England, in Australia, and a lot of places in Europe, things are way, way worse. And I just wonder if people think it's bad now. imagine i can't believe that people aren't like riding in the streets or like the house prices in australia and london and such um i just think that it could get worse and it doesn't seem like anyone is willing to do the thing that we need to do which is build more housing well as far as the the comments about foreign markets i i assume you don't track foreign politics like maybe it is bad fair it's possible but like the the price to income ratios in places like australia and the uk are five times worse than they are in the u.s they're they're so much the off the charts worse yeah and i just think that like are we on track to become those type of countries are we actually going to do something to fix it i don't i don't see anyone willing to fix the problem yet there's like a few handful of cities that are doing it that's it yeah all right uh did you read this piece from greg zuckerman about charlie munger so it's kind of the the story of charlie munger's final years.

44:48And it's a really good read, but I wanted to pull out this one piece. And I think this kind of, kind of blends in with what we've been talking about with like higher expectations and how different generations. So he says, um, he owned a home with spectacular ocean views in Montecito, California. Uh, I guess he designed the entire community. They call it Mungerville. Um, and at one point he told a friend he expected to spend his last years there. I looked the house up. It looks fantastic. Beautiful. Right. He said, instead, Munger chose to remain in his longtime home in Los Angeles. The place didn't even have air conditioning during a heat wave three years ago, friends bought electric fans and bags of ice to cool his library.

45:20Munger didn't care. The home was close to people he liked and the project he found simulating. So this guy is obviously a billionaire. Could have easily afforded air conditioning. Didn't want it. The first person I thought of when I read this is my father. My dad would do this exact same thing. And I feel like this is this attitude, this like, I don't want it. I don't need it. It's I'll be fine. Which we grew up in a house without air conditioning, by the way, my parents just got it finally a few years ago this is something my father would do and i feel like this this attitude of like i don't need it i feel like that is that that is dying with the older generation that's depression babies yes exactly so we don't have that anymore and so starting with gen x and lower that whole attitude is completely gone yeah yes that attitude this is gone like i just thought it was really funny because I just thought for like, oh my gosh, that's my father.

46:15I think that depression mentality is sad. And I understand where it comes from, obviously, right? Like your childhood memories form who you are forever. You can't change who you are. And I'm glad that that is dying out. I'm not glad that these people are dying. Don't mishear me, but that is a horrible way to go through life. I actually, yes. When you see the stories about billionaires who drives a 20-year-old Honda Accord or whatever, I don't think that's a success story. No. I think that's someone who can't get out of a – or the, hey, this person was a janitor who secretly had$8 million and never spent a dime on themselves and lived above a garage.

46:50I don't think that's a success story. I think that they should have spent the money on themselves and made their life better. Me too. Some people would disagree with us. All right. So no one else is going to care about this, but you're going to Disney next month, right? You're taking the kids on Christmas? I am. How long are you going for? we're going to we're going to Universal and Disney I think I'm going for five days six days you're hitting all the Disney parks I don't think we're doing Animal Kingdom because we did it the last time that's one we didn't do this time alright so I'm going to give you the rides that you should buy the Lightning Lane Premier Pass for okay this is Ben's ride we did this at the end on Thanksgiving dinner we were all doing all the parks we all went through and named our favorite rides so Guardians of the Galaxy at Epcot is a must that's one of the best roller coasters I've ever been on I couldn't believe how great it was it was fantastic, so much fun I think we did that last time, that was good there's an Aerosmith roller coaster in Hollywood Studios that I didn't know about, it's called Rockin' Roller Coaster it's the only roller coaster that goes upside down it's fantastic Tron of course is very cool do you see the picture I put in here of me doing Tron?

47:55that's amazing, so Tron was closed last time we went okay, it's very fun it's as advertised my kids did it a little too short but it's like that thing. Like it looks like it's fake what I'm doing. That's the actual roller coaster riding on like a motorcycle. Tower of Terror was great. My daughter, Kate, my youngest was holding on my arm for dear life. And a few other ones that you know, but the Star Wars rides are overrated. Stop, just stop. Next topic. Really? You don't think this? I think the Star Wars rides - The rise of the Resistance is overrated. What is wrong with you? They could have made a very cool Star Wars roller coaster and they chose to make some like to make you feel like you're in the movie.

48:34Yeah. Imagine being a kid. Yeah, but it's the new Star Wars movies that no one likes. It's not the old ones. Get out of here. Get right out of town. And finally, it's a small... You like horror movies. It's a Small World, after all, could be a horror movie. They could make a movie about... It's a Small World. That is the creepiest ride. I was telling my kids, just be aware. This is the creepiest ride you're going to go on. Anyway. Okay. That's all I got. I have some Disney stuff later, actually, as it turns out. Okay. All right. So let's talk streaming stuff. Oh, hang on. One more thing. We did, you know, they had the live Indiana Jones thing, right?

49:11The Indiana Jones show. Yeah, it's one of my favorites because that's my favorite action movie of all time. And my son, George, has watched all the Indiana Jones movies multiple times. He loves them. He goes, I don't think that's really Indiana Jones, you know? And I said, the original movie came out in 1981. Harrison Ford is like 85 years old now. It's kind of hard to believe that that I mean, I know they're still making the bad movies and recreating them, but it's been off for a long, long time. And I also said that's the greatest action movie jingle ever. Right. Yeah, it's just absolute goosebumps.

49:49Yeah. All right. So Michael Semblis did a post that we spoke about last week with his favorite movies on the state of streaming. there's uh so Warner Brothers is for sale talks are heating up that Netflix might buy them and in a mostly cash offer Paramount is obviously in the picture did you listen to the James Cameron one with Matt Bellany I did okay and he said he absolutely does not want Netflix buying Warner Brothers which I thought was right because he's worried that they won't show all their movies in the theater right so they'll show the you know the the Batmans of the world but like um Sinners for example.

50:26No way. That'll go straight to HBO or wherever. Yeah. Or Netflix now. So anyway, interesting to see where that lands. And Netflix hasn't really, haven't ever really done a big acquisition like this. Certainly not a giant studio. I mean, I don't want Netflix to buy them. I think we have to just relent and just, it's going to be Apple and Amazon and Netflix in the future. They're going to want it. No, Paramount. Yeah, I guess Paramount. Yeah. By the way, Paramount, Michael Eisner did Indiana Jones. More on that in a second. So YouTube Premium has 125 million subscribers paying$14 a month. What do you get for that?

51:12Just no ads? I wanted to watch. I wanted to watch. So my favorite Patrick O'Shaughnessy interviews are with Rue. I don't know what she's doing down there. I hear noises. My favorite Patrick interviews are with the Hollywood guys. So I love listening to Mike Ovitz from CIA. Yeah, he's good. I love listening. I love listening to R.E. Manuel and Barry Diller, like all these guys that made Hollywood. So I wanted to watch the R.E. Manuel one, and I popped it up on YouTube. And there's commercials in there. So for YouTube Premium, which is not YouTube TV, YouTube Premium gives you, I guess, ad-free viewing.

52:03I think. I'm sure there's more to it. I haven't really done a deep dive. But they've got 125 million subscribers paying$14 a month. That's$21 billion a year. To say nothing of YouTube TV, which I'm sure I could just Google. It is kind of funny that people tried to say Google's done. How stupid was that? That people were actually throwing dirt on the grave of Google. So Barry Diller said to Patrick, now Barry basically invented the movies. Not exactly, but he was a hugely, hugely influential media guy. He said, quote, Hollywood is irrelevant. Okay, meaning? Meaning. Oh, because of YouTube? It's YouTube, it's Netflix, it's Amazon, it's Apple.

52:47Like Paramount and Warner Brothers and like, who gives a shit? I mean, obviously they're a fraction of what they used to be. The old school Hollywood being so important is not anymore. So check out this chart. Streaming earnings. Netflix net income since 2019 versus the major studio direct-to-consumer losses. Disney, NBCUniversal, Warner Brothers, Discovery, and Paramount. Obviously, Netflix disrupted them. They were so late. And then they overspent. Remember Disney Plus, how much money they spent out of the gate trying to catch up? And it didn't work. obviously so this is wild the share of us tv viewing time like the the pie is not growing nobody's watching tv more than they used to and increasingly uh legacy broadcast cable it's just it's it's an ice cube it was 58 in january 2023 58 i'm sorry 57 and a half percent down to 42 that is a rapid it is melting fast where do you think youtube falls in this it is in all of the streaming because youtube tv is youtube youtube is bigger than netflix wild stuff makes sense um all right oh so and then the next chart the next chart shows streaming us video revenue streaming versus traditional tv box office home entertainment and yeah streaming is just going to continue to eat into the pie which is why so many people are worried about netflix buying one brothers like the the theaters are already under such uh pressure that if netflix like does what they do and just move moves a lot of these would be theatrical releases to to the couch not great all right disney basically has to hold on to espn forever like if they get rid of espn and one of these other big streamers he picks them up like then it's over lastly to put a bow in this he has this great chart that i've never seen it shows recovery rates since 2019.

54:48And it shows all different categories. US restaurant revenues exceeded 2019. So they're all the way back. Do you remember when people thought people were saying that like restaurants are dead forever? That was actually a thing. Hotel average daily rates all the way back. North American airline passengers all the way back. Okay. What's not back? New York City mass transit recovery, film industry box office receipts, only 75 % recovered. film industry tickets sold. Only 60 % of 2019 levels. I'll get to my recommendations. We went to the movie last weekend. Zootopia? Wicked. Wicked, okay. All right, somebody told us that air fryers are what, Ben?

55:31Okay, a bunch of people said this. Air fryers are small convection ovens, and yes, you can have a large oven that has convection mode. Convection ovens have a heater, which is feeding a fan that blows the hot air into the oven space. The fast moving of the air speeds up the speed of the preheating, and shortens cooking time. I think people were saying one of the reasons it speeds up so fast is because it's smaller. But a few people sent us pictures and said, hey, I have an oven and an air fryer oven right below it. Like those double ones, you know? So some people had it. Anyway. So I keep getting emails about my car.

56:02People have very strong opinions about what kind of car you should get. So get this. I was dropping Kobe off to school last week and he's never said anything about a car. He pointed out a car and says, daddy i really like that car you should get that a big white range rover i swear to god okay um we were driving on the highway the other day we were going to ikea which by the way when did ikea become expensive oh really the snooping florgens are expensive now so i got kobe a desk the desk we didn't spend a lot of money on it was maybe 90 bucks but the desk chairs are all like two three hundred dollars i'm like what so where kobe's become a value shopper i took him to the mall the other day and he said his budget is$35, which is very cute.

56:45So the chairs are 200 bucks, 300 bucks. And he said, why is this place so expensive? So we ordered a chair on Amazon. But anyway, on the highway, a GX passed us and I said, that's the car that I'm going to get. And Robin, Kobe, and Logan looked out the window and they all at the same time said, either ew or I don't like that. It's ugly. I'm standing my ground. Okay. I guess I haven't seen the new ones. Oh, so it's kind of boxier now. It's very boxy. I don't know that I love the look either, honestly, but I don't want to be... I just want a car that works. It does look kind of like futuristic. Eh, it's not...

57:25I kind of like the boxy look too. It's not terrible. So my struggles with TVs continues. Okay. Two things I'm bad at buying cars and buying TVs. So the people who we bought the house from, they left their TVs, which was very nice. but the TV in the basement is an older TV, and so it only has like one HDMI cord. Wait, does that mean you got rid of your TV with a line on it? I left it, yeah, finally. Okay. I left it. Oh, the people in your old house might have thought, oh, great, thanks to the TV with a line on it. No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. No, I threw it out. Okay. So I put, I was trying to hang my TV from my office there, but the TV was too thin, it didn't fit on the wall, and I'm trying to put it on the rack and I crush the TV.

58:13Ooh. Just, I'm like, all right, it's annoying, whatever. So I go to Best Buy, get a TV and I'm swapping out their TVs with my TVs from my house. I have some guys come and hang the TVs. There's three TVs. I'm not hanging three TVs. Plug in the TV downstairs, blinking red light six times. I chat GBT at what's going on. It's a manufactured defect. I'm like, oh, come on. Go back to Best Buy. Swapped it out. Just annoying. Just annoying. That is annoying. Okay, speaking of breaking stuff. So Mark Andreessen did this thing on a podcast recently. And they wrote about it. Alex Danko wrote about this. And he says, if you live in the United States today and you accidentally knock a hole in your wall, it's probably cheaper to buy a flat screen TV and stick it in front of the hole compared to hiring a handyman to fix your drywall.

59:01And I think we're realizing, like getting stuff fixed is, it's hard to do. It's expensive. Like you have to pay a certain amount just for someone to come into your house. Right? So I have the Wi-Fi enabled heater on our phone. Like it attaches to our phone. What do you use? The Nest or the Honeywell? It's like a Sensei Honeywell, yeah. A Sensei? I don't know. I hate the Honeywell. I swapped the Nest for the Honeywell and I regret it. I want to go back. Okay. So you can turn it up and down, obviously. I get a note that our last night in Disney, hey, your heat fell below because there's a big cold front that came in.

59:30It's tons of snow. Heat fell below 60 degrees and it's like, I look and it's like 54 degrees in the house. It's like, oh, shoot. So my father-in-law the next morning goes to check it out. Yeah, your heater's off. It's broken. So as we're flying home, luckily he went early and did this. He called the heating place, came to look at it. Heater's broken. Should we come home to a broken heater? When you say your heater, like the water boiler or whatever? The boiler? The actual, yes, heating machine. Yes, not the, no heat in our house. Okay? Whatever you want to call it. The fire. Well, what is it? He's like, it was unsafe.

1:00:04He's like, there's like a, he's like some water dripped and there's rust. and there was like a, the flame of the heat was like, it was like a backdraft. He's like, it was a very unsafe situation. So I have to fix this. He says, here's the problem. So he's there for a couple hours trying to figure it out. You need this new mainframe, whatever he's saying, it's going to be expensive. Okay, whatever. We need heat. It's freezing. Here's the problem. It's Friday after Thanksgiving. We're open today, but the part carrier for the carrier air conditioning are not open. We can't get it till Monday. He says, what we could do is you could spend 200 bucks.

1:00:32I could have someone from carrier drive there for that$200 fee. and then they can get the peace. And I said, yeah, of course. We need heat. It's freezing. And then he says, I can't get a hold of him. Sorry. We're going to have to go to a hotel or something. And I'm going to go clean up and get everything ready so Monday I can come in and just put the thing in and it'll be ready. Okay? All right, fine. He called and he says, all right, the carrier guy just called me. Wait, so did he stay at the hotel? No. So as he's walking out the door, he comes back in and he says, the carrier guy just called.

1:01:01This is like five at night, by the way. He's been there all day almost. He says, the carrier guy just called me. He can come in and meet me. I can go get it. And I'm like, man, listen, I feel bad. It's a holiday weekend. You're working. He said, listen, I don't get paid until this gets fixed. So I'd rather do it now than Monday. So I said, go for it. The guy did it, came and fixed it. But that kind of thing, those people are never going out of business. No. So wait, you didn't need a new thing. You just needed a piece fixed? It was a big, big piece. Some mainframe. I don't know. He's telling me the names.

1:01:30Like, I know what it means. You know, like. It's the rotary gooder. Yeah. Do it, man. And anyway, but you know what everyone always says when this kind of thing happens? Ah, the joys of home ownership. People love saying that. Of course. All right, anyway. All right, let me start with recommendations. I'm due for some good luck on my house because I've had bad luck the last few weeks. What happened with your door? They're going to come and re-fix it. But they're going to have to give us all new trades. I don't know, it's going to be a mess, but they're coming next week to fix it. All right, I'm going to start with some book stuff.

1:01:57So a couple of weeks ago, when Josh and I were going to Austin, I saw I was watching CNBC in the morning and I saw this guy who I'd never heard of Tom Freston do an interview with Andrew Osorkin and talking about his new autobiography so Tom Freston ran MTV from the beginning like he was he was the guy and he had a fascinating life oh yeah I saw that interview too you're right that was good so good audiobook and in the audiobook so he worked directly for Sumner Redstone, who owned Viacom. And Sumner Redstone is a world-class psychopath, absolute tyrant, maniac. And Tom Fresno's telling stories of taking him to Southeast Asia to go to sex shows and all this sort of stuff.

1:02:52So after I finished listening to the book, which was good. I, uh, I saw like a, a recommend another recommendation, right? Like maybe you should listen to this. So a book called the unscripted by this author, James Stewart, James Stewart wrote den of thieves. Oh yeah. Hey, it's good. Yeah. Um, so I listened to this really good investing column. He, he kind of helped me through the 2008 crisis. He was saying like every 10 % lower I'm buying again. He had like this, this rules in place anyway. So, um, so i listened to unscripted and it's the battle for viacom and it's sumner redstone and these two girlfriends that he lived with that were that that he gave 50 million dollars each to that were bleeding him dry and keeping him away from the family and the story about him and and shari redstone of course and uh and looped into it was les moonves and tom freston so they like Pulled from that for succession, right?

1:03:50Is that the book they used for succession? It was un-fucking-believable, this guy's life, and the aftermath of all of that. So then that led me to another James Stewart book, Disney War. How are you listening to these books so fast? I'm going to tell you. I'm going to get to that because I had a feeling that was coming. So Disney War is about how Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg uh bag dealers involved because eyes are working at paramount so the story of how they built out disney the movie studio because they were in the shitter like in the 80s disney was nowhere i remember when the disney store came to the malls like it was a huge deal at the time oh yeah so disney was absolutely nowhere and then they they basically reinvented the studio little mermaid beauty and the beast lion king aladdin we were there right you remember that uh excellent book excellent book so anyhow the the question is how do i have time to read these books so i was thinking about this because i knew i was gonna have to answer because people are gonna ask what are you doing you weirdo over the weekend i took the kids to see zootopia 2 not over on friday so black friday robin was with her friends i had to kill the day i don't know anything about zootopia like i know my kids aren't fans of the movie they uh i've never seen it oh my kids really like the first one i've watched it many times so it turns out it's a massive massive global sensation like did 500 million dollars over the weekend yeah so i took them to lincoln square to the imax because i needed to kill the day right so my kids are car sleepers so boom two hours in the car the next day ikea i'm putting together at Kobe's desk another hour and a half.

1:05:37I'm running errands all weekend. And I'm listening to that. So the book was probably the, the unscripted book was probably like seven or eight hours. And then a couple of morning walks to Starbucks. That's the nice thing about Audible, right? So I'm cutting vegetables. I'm putting the groceries away. Like, is it a bit antisocial? Yeah, but my kids are playing. They're out. So anyway, you're ignoring them. No, no, no. But dad, help. Table Pounder for Unscripted. You would love this. It's succession. It's unbelievable. And there's a lot of things to take away from the book, but envying these billionaires, poof.

1:06:17Right. It's not what you think. Right. Just tragic life, Shari Redstone living under the thumb of her maniacal, truly sociopathical, sociopathological, whatever it is. That guy's a total psycho. Okay. All right. anyway enough with the audiobooks um oh last thing uh zootopia so excellent movie had no expectations truly a very quality movie jason in the the trailer project hail mary i'm in i can't that's one of my favorite books i've read in a long time remember we were like how are they gonna like put that onto the big screen it looks good i don't know how they're gonna do the alien i i still i'm worried about how they're gonna make the alien look it looked pretty good another coming attraction was a Neil Diamond biopic I'm not a biopic guy I didn't see the Bruce Springsteen one I'm sick of these Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen I didn't see Rocketman I watched Queen maybe we need to have one for all of these guys no I'm sorry however so I certainly in a vacuum I don't need to see a Neil Diamond movie but it's Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson I don't know You know, the best Neil Diamond pop culture moment is Saving Silverman.

1:07:31They have a Neil Diamond tribute band. All right. Did you binge watch The Beast and Me? We're two episodes away from finishing. This is the first show that we've binged. I feel like we were like 25 again. Kobe was at a play date over the weekend. Logan was somewhere else. We watched three episodes on Sunday. Highly bingeable. It's been a minute. I can't remember the last time I binge watched a show. So anyway, I thought Claire Danes was so much stronger than her male counterpart. See, I thought the scene where they're getting drunk together and the scene where they're at lunch, I thought that they just played off of each other so well.

1:08:09I think he is amazing. I love that guy. I thought there were parts where he was strong and parts where it literally sounded like he was reading. Okay. I think he's fantastic. So we will have to agree to disagree there. I enjoyed it. Good show. Anything else from you? No, I am contented out the ass the past couple of weeks. Okay, I got a little bit too. So I finished Slow Horses, the new season. It was season five. And I would say the first three seasons were like a nine for me. Like I thought just knocked it out of the park. This is the best show no one talks about. I say this every year I watch it.

1:08:41Gary Oldman is so good in this show. And I think the last two seasons are more like eights out of 10, right? Still good, not as good as the first three. But somehow the last episode, they always tie it in so, so good. And it's always a twist you never saw coming. And the ending is always great. And they always make you, leave you wanting more. It's just, it's such a high quality show. And it's only six episode seasons. It's so, it's so good. I watched The Roses on my way down on my iPad. Totally. So do you ever hear of The War of the Roses from the 80s? It's Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.

1:09:14It's a couple who's getting divorced who love each other and fall passionately in love. And then they grow to hate each other. And they sabotage each other's lives. and this is an updated version of that. And it's Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman. And Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon play their friend couple, who's kind of funny in humor. And it's just, it felt like a 80s or 90s movie. It's like not good, but a total great airplane movie. Benedict Cumberbatch is actually really funny in a comedy. I thought he was very good. That's like, it's on Hulu. So it's like a, it's a good background movie.

1:09:43Like not something you have to pay attention to that much. Wicked. So I took my kid, my kids love Wicked. They loved the first one. They listened to all the music. My wife and my mother-in-law love it. So they went and took the kids to see the actual live show of it. So they love Wicked. So they were so excited for it, went to see it. And afterwards, they're talking about how much they loved it and how great it was. And I had to be the turd on the punchbowl. And I just put my hand up and I said, I just have a little slight comment to make. And they're like, my wife knows probably what I'm going to say.

1:10:12And she's getting mad at me already. And I said, it's creative. I get it. But they're trying to change the story of one of the most magical movies ever made. And I don't like that. they tried to change Wizard of Oz to make it a story that it wasn't. Okay? And I thought that they took a lot of liberties there. So I didn't like the fact that they tried to change Wizard of Oz. That's my problem. And obviously the show has been out forever. So I should have known this, but I didn't know what the story was. And I don't like that they tried to change Wizard of Oz. I think that's sacred material. Yeah, I agree.

1:10:39Anyway. But my kids loved the movie. And it was way too long for me. Wait, when's the last time you've been to the theaters? I think that's the first time in a while, I suppose. But yeah, they're psyched for Zootopia too. It was great. Not bad. $10 matinee tickets. Not terrible. Last thing. So this goes to the earlier point of Netflix depriving me, the moviegoer, of a great cinematic experience. You know there's a new Knives Out coming next week? Can't wait. I rewatched the first one this weekend because I'm excited for it. First one was a 10. Second one, eh. Yeah, the second one was okay, but I actually can't wait for this.

1:11:19That should be a big screen release. I thought they're going to release it for like a week, maybe. So you might get it in New York if you want. I think they're going to release it for a week. I texted Robin yesterday. Hey, Friday, December 12th, 7 p.m. I'm going to see The Shawnee at the Ibex. It's a re-release. That I did not see in the theater. 100%. Okay. I'm writing it wrong, Ben. All right. That'll be my Friday night. Solo. All right. Are we going to get your predictions before the end of the year? Are you doing Michael's 10 predictions again? Is that coming? I don't even remember what my predictions were.

1:11:55Someone on Twitter said to me, hey, you predicted that strategy was going to crash like this. And I said, there's no way I predicted that. It was probably a Michael prediction. Did I? I don't remember. It's possible you did. So I think we're going to need your 10 predictions coming up soon. You do that. You know what I have to do? I have to start working on it now because I don't want to cram at the end of it. It's too much work. All right. Thank you to the production team, as always, Duncan and crew. Appreciate it. Thanks to all the wonderful emails we always get from people. What's our email address?

1:12:21AnimalSpirits at the compoundnews.com. And we'll see you next time.

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