December 2025 Q&A: Future of MAGA, Advice To My Younger Self, Favorite Book, and more

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1:09Seriously, with these savings, why shop anywhere else? Hey everybody, welcome back to Open Book. I've been reading all your comments on YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and for the first time, TikTok. and I've been loving the feedback and the questions and I've got everything right here. I'm going to get started right away. And so the first question, these are the question and answer session from November, backed by popular demand or semi-popular demand. I don't really know exactly what it is, but if you guys keep asking me questions, I'll keep joining in with my answers. So let's go to LinkedIn at Christopher R.

1:47It's becoming painfully obvious that branding and tribal acceptance mean everything and value competence merit and capability mean very little in much of corporate america how would you combat that and are there ways to hold your value and integrity and still get inside the tribe okay so that that is an insider outsider question christopher r let me give you a couple of pieces of advice advice number one wear no chip on your shoulder. Advice number two, if you're an outsider like me, you have two choices. You can be a comfortable outsider or an uncomfortable outsider. And if you're an uncomfortable outsider, you're going to be totally miserable.

2:31So work on being a comfortable outsider. I do not accept that competence and merit and value are no longer part of it. It may be true in certain cases that you could be better and brighter, but somebody else is getting ahead due to nepotism or somebody else is getting ahead because of their politics or whatever it might be. But that's life. You know, life is unfair. But your best thing is to do the following three things. Become a comfortable outsider. Never play the victim. And continue to work on your merit and continue to work on your value and also your charm. If you do those things, Christopher, you'll be well served.

3:13And while some of the things that you're saying are true, you will find a place in your career and in your life where it isn't, and you'll succeed and do very well. So that's my message there. Let's go to YouTube. This is The Last Temp, 5437. I love these names, by the way. What did you like most about Trump when you were friends? Good question. It's going to be a quick answer, a sense of humor. Trump has a sense of humor. He doesn't like jokes about himself, by the way. I mean, that's something that we actually used to really tease him about because he had such a hard on for if you said something about him.

3:52I mean, very sensitive that way. But he does have a good sense of humor. He can be very charming. And he was easy to travel with for those reasons. So those are some of the things that I liked about him. I'm sure people still feel that way about him. is just the things that he's doing from a policy perspective and some of the stretch that he's making on the executive branch are the things that stress me out more than anything else. But that's a good question. Instagram. This is Marnix Timmer. Marnix Timmermans. My God. My name is Marnix from Amsterdam. And I work at Booking.com and I find it quite challenging to balance coding and analytics with creative pursuits.

4:34what advice do you have for someone who needs help balancing those two worlds well let me tell you something you're talking to somebody that has an extremely unbalanced life but i'm going to put it to you the best way that i can and i think steve covey wrote a book about this about time management you got to look at the most important things you got a jar the most important things are the rocks you put those in first the less important things are the sand sand you pour the sand in over the rocks so one of the big things you got to do in your life is prioritization because if you don't do that you're screwed because if you put the sand in the jar first guess what there's no room for the rocks okay so the sand should like wave through the rocks is the metaphor so i don't know your life or your career but my recommendation to you is figure out what you like doing try to focus on that try to get a job related to that make that your rocks.

5:34And yes, I'm sure you have things that you don't like doing, which we all do. Try to find time in and around the things that are of your highest priority. That's my big message there. Okay. This is X and this is at Media Watch NW. What would you tell a 22-year-old Anthony today, knowing what you know now? Wow. Such a good question. So I would say three things. Take more risk. I would say take yourself less serious. I just got done telling Christopher about having a chip on his shoulder. I think I started at age 22 with a little bit of a chip on my shoulder. I think it cost me a little bit. I think you had to relax more, be willing to laugh at yourself, and be willing to embrace your individuality.

6:23And whether or not you're in a tribe or not, it really doesn't matter. Just get your mindset right. I think there were periods of self-doubt in my early 20s that I probably could have done without. And I think you got to just try to maintain a high level of confidence no matter what. So that's a big, big message I would have given my 22-year-old self. It's hard to believe 39 short years ago. Okay, LinkedIn, Jonathan Pune. What's your all-time favorite book and the one that changed your life the most? And what's the last book you read? Okay, so let me tell you something. I can't give you one book because there's just too many books that I've read that have very big impact on me.

7:04But I'm going to give you the top three. Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman. Again, I'm not going to talk about the Bible or the Odyssey or the classics. Okay, you'll find those on your own time. Those are requisites. I would say Think and Grow Rich was a very big book for me. That was by Napoleon Hill. And then the last one, which I think is one of the big cornerstones of the reason why I'm financially independent, would be The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clayson. If you read those three books, maybe you could add How to Win Friends and Influence People as the fourth. You read those books, you're going to be well ahead of everybody else.

7:40But not only read them, put them into practice. Okay, Instagram, MNLinzen. What keeps you up at night? Nothing. You know, I want to keep other people up at night. Let me tell you something, okay? Live a clean life, live with integrity, and you'll sleep very, very well. I'm not up at night. I can't worry about anything because everything ends in death. The great Stoics understand that you can't change anything. And so you have to go with the flow and the ups and downs and the tribulations of life. But I'll leave you with this thought philosophically. It's from Lao Tzu. If you think too much about your past, you'll be depressed because in your past, back there somewhere was a mistake that you made.

8:28You wish you went in a different direction. If you think too much about your future, well, you don't know the future. And so what happens after happening, you get anxious. So if you're thinking too much about the past, depression, too much about the future, anxiety, forget those things. Think about the present and practice thinking about the present. I can't control what's going to happen to me. So I just got to hope and pray for the best. Okay, let's keep going. That was a good one, by the way. Okay, YouTube, Lila Nandam, 1210. This is just an ordinary person asking your advice. I'm not famous.

9:03Nobody knows me except work and some family members. I have a question. Do ordinary people write a memoir of themselves? uh yes i think yes they do you can write a memoir of yourself i mean before i had any level of notoriety i wrote goodbye gordon gecko uh i wanted i wrote that for my children it was just a perspective and uh i'll share with you uh uh the book the greatest gift and this book the greatest gift was the the reason why we have the movie it's a wonderful life and this book was written in 1943. And the gentleman that wrote the book, actually, he got to this book through a dream. This is one of the more amazing stories.

9:52And so the author is Philip Van Doren Stern. He had a dream about this. And this was the dream of an ordinary man living in a small town who was contemplating ending his life. And yet he was met with a guardian angel and the guardian angel said, well, suppose you never lived. Let me show you what your town, let me show you what your family, let me show you all the things that could have happened if you didn't live. And it was a more dystopian outlook for so many different people. And the message in the book is that every person, no matter if they're living a larger and then normal life or a popular life or one that's publicized, they're really no less or more important than anybody else on earth.

10:42Each life is valuable. So if you wanna write that memoir, you should write it. And I bet you have really cool insights about the world that you can share with your loved ones and the people that know you. Let's go to Instagram, Sarah Kinahan. This is a fashion query, sneakers with a suit and tie for men, yes or no? I say yes. My wife says no. She hates that. Okay. X, C.V. Veltman. Are you still in touch with a waiter who wanted to invest with you at the Harvard Club? Which sacrifices in your life do you regret the most? And what was the first country you traveled to and why? Wow. These are great questions.

11:23Okay. So I am not still in touch with the waiter that wanted to invest with me at the Harvard Club. I know I've shared that story with people. I'm not because unfortunately he passed away of a heart attack about five years ago. But he was a lovely guy and I will never forget him and the love that he had for his family. But I am not in touch with him, unfortunately. Which sacrifices in your life do you regret the most? It's a good question. I don't really, I have regrets and I've obviously made mistakes in my life, but I think I don't really regret the sacrifices. I think you have to put the sacrifices into the category of necessary.

12:09You're sacrificing, stay home studying, necessary. If you're sacrificing and not consuming something and you're living by saving without a lot of consumption basis to your disposable income, but it's giving you a nest egg to live, It's a sacrifice, but necessary. You know, I'm a big believer in delayed gratification. I think if you can delay your gratification, you can build a big nest egg and you can become financially independent. And so I'm going to say, I don't have a lot of regrets about sacrifices. And then what was the first country I traveled to? I was actually 14. And the first country I traveled to was Spain.

12:48And I was in Spanish class and I had a paper route. my parents gave me permission to use some of the money from my savings my paper route to go on a field trip and so we spent a week in spain and i got to tour spain as a young man uh with my spanish class way back in the eighth grade that was a lot of fun um okay linkedin sandy quarter is there an ai bubble and if so what happens after it pops yes there is an ai bubble and what happens after it pops, it's going to scare the daylights out of everybody and the valuations of these stocks are going to implode. And you would be best served to ignore that.

13:28You'd be best served to buy every month a little bit of the stocks that you think have got great fundamentals. And if and when they do implode, buy more of them because you'll be buying more volume of stock at lower prices. And if you just stick to dollar cost averaging, let's say you put$500 a month or$500 every six months into the market, prices are high, you'll buy less of it. Prices are low, you'll buy more of it. And over time, you'll be very well served. So ignore the bubble activity. You're never going to be able to guess it. Your best bet is to stay invested in good, long-term fundamental situations.

14:10Let's keep going here. I just finished volume two of Robert Caro's LBJ biography, The Archival Work. This is astounding. Can you imagine anyone being able to write such a biography given how today's politics is digitally mediated to a massive extent? So the short answer to this is no. I've read those biographies, and if you like the biographies of LBJ, I would recommend The Power Broker, which is written by Robert Caro, was precursor to those. And it was written about Robert Moses, who was an unelected official, but had huge power in the city of New York and sort of transformed the area that I live in, which would include the five boroughs in Long Island.

14:52And so, no, you're never going to see biographies like that. This man was a Picasso of biography. And so, yes, there'll be other good biographies, but nothing like Robert Caro's. Instagram, Jerome Grazioli. Jerome, how are you doing? If you were president, what would you do differently to boost the economy and education? See, I could never really be president because I would tell people the truth. And when people hear the truth, they don't really like the truth and then they don't vote for the people. But it'd be very simple. I would lay out 15-year plans for deficit reduction. I'd lay out a 15-year plan for right-sizing K-12 public education.

15:33I lay out a 15-year plan for infrastructure rebuild of the United States. And what we would need to do as a nation to sort of renovate or rebuild our infrastructure, which is sorely needed. And I would explain what it would cost. And I would explain what the guardrails would have to be on the Congress to sort of slow down and stop the spending so that we can get the GDP growth to eclipse the overall percentage of spending that we have on the deficit. So those are things that I would do. Temporarily, it probably wouldn't have a big impact on the economy, but long-term, if the rest of the world thought that we had our deficit under control, it would lead to huge investment here in the United States.

16:14So those are the three things. Nobody in Washington has a 15-year plan, but that's what I would want. Let's go to Instagram officially, Shiva. How has being an avid reader impacted you mentally, mental health, cognition, wit, et cetera. Wow. I mean, in every way possible, in every way imaginable, I've got books all over the place in here. I think it makes you more interesting. I don't know who said it, but I'm going to paraphrase it because it's not really my idea, but somebody said that you just don't have enough life experience not to read. You've got to read so that you can pick up the life experience or the insights from others.

16:51You've got to read whether it's fiction, so you can live vicariously in the moment through those protagonist and antagonist. You got to read biography so you can understand what other people went through in their lives to achieve. And you talk about wit. I read a lot of humorous things because I think it's important to have a little bit of a wit and have some level of self-deprecation. But yes, without reading, I think I would be less interesting to people. Pick up a book, start reading, and guess what will happen? People will start listening to you. And by the way, you become a better writer on top of everything else.

17:29So great question by officially Shiva. This is from LinkedIn. It's at Kalyan Mutkerji. I hope I pronounced that right. If I didn't, I apologize. As a college student, I've noticed that people my age seem to care less and less about reading actual books. So my question is whether or not you make an effort to read a physical book as opposed to something electronically. Ironically, if you notice a difference between the two mediums, I do notice a difference. And I have a lot of hard copy books here for that reason. I'm a hard copy traditionalist, but if I'm on a plane and I can't carry the books, I use my iPad or I use my phone.

18:09I'm also a big user of Audible. I'll put an earpiece in. Sort of embarrassing, but I'll share this with you. I was having my teeth cleaned yesterday and I got through 45 minutes of a book with an earpiece in one ear while I was listening to the dental hygienist bear down on my teeth. So you can find the time in your schedule. Get an earpiece, get an audible.com, download the book on your phone, buy the book. And guess what happens with three of those three different scenarios? you can get three hours a day in of reading and you'll pick up almost 100 books a year. Let's keep going. This is YouTube, Lee73Lee.

18:53Did trickle town, you could obviously actually trickle down to the bottom 90 % over the past 40 years? And is it the main source of all the pain in the middle class we see today? So I get it. I think the point is we cut taxes on the rich. It was supposed to trickle down on the poor. If you look at the numbers, it doesn't really look that way. So I would say the trickle down economics probably didn't work the way it was intended, but something else actually happened. And I'm writing a book about this. The economic rent that comes from a business or comes from the society, if it's split 50-50 between labor and capital, the society is generally happening.

19:30We have a lot of aspirational people that live in labor. But if it moves, and right now it's about 53 to capital, 47 to labor, people feel very disenfranchised and they feel left out. And you've seen this rise of populism. I think it has more to do with the way we're distributing things now in the society. And I think a general unfairness, if you're asking me, more than trickle down. But that's my opinion. Okay, this is Instagram. Meet Travel Mike. like, how can I start investing with 50 bucks? It's a really good question. So I would go to Robinhood. I don't know what the minimums are on Robinhood, but I would go to a low cost brokerage.

20:16If you can't invest with 50, why don't you put 50 away for this month, 50 away for the next three months and invest with 200? Or if it's a 500, put 50 away for 10 months until you get it to 500, whatever it might be. and then just buy the S &P 500. And then once you get started, keep adding from there. I think you are bringing up the most important thing for young people. Start small, that's fine, but get started and keep going. It doesn't matter where you start. It's how you finish that makes all the difference. This is Instagram, Michelle Etienne. What's the best way to go about asking your boss for a raise?

20:58Well, I would always go to the boss with some backup. You know, hopefully you're working with a boss that realizes your worth and raises you before you ask them. But if you've got a boss, go with backup. Explain the contributions that you're making. If you're with a good boss, they probably gave you some expectations for the year. Did you meet or exceed those expectations? If you exceeded those expectations, which I suspect you have, make the case for yourself. But also remember this, though. Look at the overall business. because if your business is having a hard time, even though you're doing well, it may be hard to get that raise, but said differently though, you want to be a team player for that boss and let that boss know you want to participate when good times come, but you're also patient if the business is going through some level of difficulty.

21:48But always show up with backup for a raise, Michelle. TikTok at JPIsLit. What a great name. Who, in your view, will win the war for MAGA's succession? Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, JD, Mance, or Vivek? So I don't know. I'm a little bit removed from MAGA, but I'm going to make a bet that none of those guys win it. I think they're too polarizing. None of them are charming. None of them have an ability to pull people together and build the coalition. And I think it's going to be somebody outside of that mix that will end up surprising people. tiktok at steve bernard do you think the dems can take back the senate no i do not if you look at the demography and you look at the smaller populated red states uh i think it's going to be very hard to do uh the the blue states have more population the coastal states have more population but because of the way the republic is set up they only get two senators and so no i do not think that they'll be able to take over the Senate.

22:52I do think it's likely that they will win the House. But let's see. What was the biography of Roosevelt you discussed a while ago on The Rest is Politics? Okay, there's a couple of big biographies of Roosevelt. And so one of them is by Robert Dalek. One of them is a traitor to his class by H.W. Brands. I think probably the quintessential one, which all of the others are actually based on, and this is the one that I always, and I'm sure I brought it up, I had to have mentioned it. It's the James McGregor Burns biography, which I think is the definitive biography on Roosevelt. And so, okay, so there were two books there.

23:39One was called The Lion and the Fox. That's about his early life. And the other was called Soldier of Freedom. And that takes you through the wartime years. Again, last book, it's actually a trilogy. It's written by Nigel Hamilton. And what Hamilton did was he said, okay, Roosevelt died untimely. He wasn't able to write his memoir. I'm going to write his memoir for him. I'm going to go to the FDR library. I'm going to channel him. What would Roosevelt say about his life, volumes one, two, and three? And I love that work as well. So there's a lot of different Roosevelt books, but those are the ones that I love the most.

24:19And it's a pretty good question to wrap on. So what are you getting from me and Open Book? Read. Authors are fascinating. They do a ton of work. They save you time. They spend hundreds of hours writing and they condense it for you into about 10 or 15 hours of reading. But you got to stay lit. You got to stay intellectually curious. And if you hear screaming in the background, I'm home with my kids who are not reading right now. Okay. But they're bombarding each other in a dodgeball game just outside my office. So I do apologize for that. But that's a wrap for today's Q &A episode on Open Book.

24:55I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Can you please do me a favor? Send more and more questions in here. Remember, I'm reading all your comments. I'm trying to respond to them. I love hearing what's on your mind. So keep sending the questions in. And by the way, if I missed any of your questions, we'll be back next month with another round of answers. And in the meantime, don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review if you've enjoyed the episode. Until then, keep the conversation going. And I'll see you next time. If you're on YouTube, there's got to be a button somewhere that you can press to subscribe to this thing.

25:29and that'll help me out. It'll help us with the algorithm and it'll keep me relevant. Okay, so press that subscribe button and thank you very much.

25:52This next one's for all you CarMax shoppers who just want to buy a car your way. wanna check some cars out in person uh-huh wanna look some more from your house okay wanna pretend you know about engines nah, I'll just chat with CarMax online instead wanna get pre-qualified from your couch wanna get that car hey, that's it you wanna do it your way wanna drive? CarMax