Five Idle Thoughts of a Summer’s Day, Vol. 3

0:00Summer days have a way of making us slow down, reflect, and muse over the little things in life. I'm in the mood this week for heading out where my whimsy takes me, as the novelist Dorothy Sayers might have put it. It's a sampler, not of five stocks this time, but of five thoughts. So grab your lemonade, find a comfy spot in the shade, and join me as we explore five idle thoughts of A Summer's Day, Volume 3, only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing. It's the Rule Breaker Investing Podcast with Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner.

0:46And welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. Happy summer! to my fellow North Americans, many others around the world. Of course, it is the depth of winter in various other places for our southern hemisphere, foolish friends. But I'm not there. I'm here, in this case, in my house in Washington, D.C., where, as I speak, the high today is 89 degrees Fahrenheit. And I think the humidity is about 89 % as well. And so these things all say to me, summer. So indulge me, if you will, wherever you are with some idle thoughts of a summer's day. This is volume three, which means this is now a go-to at the height of summer rule breaker investing podcast tradition.

1:28I did this same podcast volume two, I think the same week of last year, generally a shorter podcast for us because I mean, it's hot. Thanks for joining me this week. Before we get started, I want to mention we have our first two authors in August and I want to mention them to you. I've already lightly sprinkled their names and books in, but now I'm making an official. Author in August number one is Ti Nguyen, author of the wonderful book, The Score, How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game. I'll be delighted to be joined by what I consider to be the world's foremost philosopher on the subject of games.

2:06Operating out of the University of Utah, Ti Nguyen, who is a past multiple-time guest on this podcast has written a spectacular book. I completely recommend the score to all humans, and I hope you get a chance to read it, maybe even advance of my interview with him in a couple of weeks. Our second author in August is Vasant Dar, an AI pioneer, professor at New York University, somebody who has worked in the field on AI, programming AI, for example, to try to make money inside of seconds for Wall Street hedge funds. but he's done a lot of academic work as well. He's been there all the way through.

2:43Vasad Dar wrote a wonderful recent book called Thinking with Machines. So yes, our topic will be AI and he is author in August number two. There will be a third week where I have an author in August. I have yet to name that person. I'm excited about multiple possibilities but for anyone new to this podcast, August every year has been dedicated to authors of books that I admire, that I think you'll really enjoy. wide range of different topics, sometimes fiction, this time pretty much all nonfiction for this August. So I want to make sure I cue you up, T. Nguyen, The Score, on August 5th, and then Vasant Dar, Thinking with Machines, August 12th.

3:25Speaking of the near future, even nearer is next week's mailbag. That's right. It'll be your July 2026 Rule Breaker Investing mailbag. And this time I think, let's go back to something we did 10 years ago. Let's go back into the future with the possibility for those interested. If you're hearing me right now, I would love possibly to take some mailbag items this month or next as voicemails. That's right. You know, like your human voice. Anybody who's listened to this podcast for any amount of time knows that typically I've just been reading these as letters coming in, but I went back and listened to one of my early mailbags 10 years ago where I was taking audio files.

4:09And I think that'd be really fun to do next week or if you like, next month. So a reminder, our email address at Rule Breaker Investing is rbi at fool.com. You can certainly still submit your questions, thoughts, poems, challenges, whimsical thoughts of your own to this podcast by typing out a text, just like people have always done, rbi at fool.com. But starting right now, you could also drop us a sound file. Just record off your phone and attach it to an email and send it to rbi at fool.com. Definitely include your name and, of course, where you live, where you're calling in from. And maybe we'll do some voicemails on our July 2026 mailbag next week.

4:53All right. Idle thought of a summer's day number one. Let's talk about AI. Have you heard about it? Do you know what it stands for? Artificial intelligence? Are you invested in some companies that might be using AI? Is your own company using AI? If your own organization isn't, are you all of a sudden feeling FOMO or behind the curve because you're not using AI? Of course, this topic ever since a few years ago, ChatGPT, surprised us all by giving us legit instant answers to almost any question we could ask. And even when it hallucinated, it was kind of cute doing so, although sometimes you could get in trouble.

5:34And if you're an academic, you definitely didn't want to cite your AI as a source because you can't fully trust it. I would even say today that's the case. But ever since that Halcyon Day a few years ago, AI has been an ongoing topic of discussion. And I thought for my idle thought of a summer's day, I would just share some of the ways that I've used AI in just the last 48 hours. I realize some of you listening to me don't really, quote, use AI, end quote. You either might not have access or you might not have interest. but I'm somebody who very regularly for multiple years now has been using AI.

6:12And I just want to share, this might be a TMI moment for me on this podcast, but I'm just going to share with you some of the ways that I've used AI just very recently. And it's just to show the range of how you can use AI. And maybe I spark a thought for you, maybe via mailbag next week, you can spark a thought for me. I'd love that. So hyperlocally, wherever you are, especially while traveling, asking your favorite AI tool what might be interesting to you nearby all of a sudden gives you a tour guide, a direction you never had before. I literally did this. I realize this may sound sad or embarrassing.

6:48I took a picture of my shirt and trousers and asked what jacket and tie I should wear. Of course, how to pronounce almost any name is another great use of AI, especially for this podcast. I love trying to honor our listeners from around the world by saying your name correctly when you write me from India or Indonesia. And I'm not sure how to pronounce your name. Now I am. I can't say sure, but I can say more confident. And often AI shares with us where the names come from and what our names mean. Now, anytime you're about to meet someone professionally, especially in any kind of important capacity, a quick backgrounder on someone via AI is a great use of it.

7:29I make regular use of that. Of course, you could have gone to LinkedIn, looked them up, connected with them as a friend, and tried to piece together who they are, but I found a much quicker study. I use ChatGPT in this case, but I'm sure Claude does just as well, and a lot of the other options out there, but quick backgrounders on people before we meet them. Really honors them to know something about them. I needed to brainstorm a name for a new project, and ChatGPT came up with a really cute, useful name for a new project I just started. Am I making a list here? If so, this would be number six.

8:03But one of my favorite chat GPT channels is simply, well, I call it tech. It's my tech help tech resources channel. It's become my personal help desk for absolutely everything technology related. In the last few weeks alone, I've diagnosed a Sonos bug that even a reinstall didn't fix. I've solved a mysterious Amtrak Wi-Fi failure by tracing it to custom DNS settings. I figured out why my ring doorbell insisted on playing jingle bells in July. I've tracked down Control 4 lighting quirks. I've rescued Safari from reader view. I've converted files, untangled Apple calendar, debated USB cable widths, and even talked through fire tables, saunas, ovens, and Wikipedia editing.

8:51It's less like asking a search engine a question these days, more like having an endlessly patient engineer sitting beside me. You know, we are living in a world of increasing technology complexity. The Internet of Things has put a chip in everything from our cars to our refrigerators. And whenever anything goes on the blink or you find an interface has changed, and especially as we age and you're now trying to keep up with dozens of things and you have a family, you're trying to keep up with their things, too. And then there's this new thing that just came in the mail from Amazon, and you're trying to run any kind of tech support or tech understanding.

9:27Just taking a picture of it in some circumstances can get you started. But wow, what an incredible help for me AI has been for all of the technology in my life. A few more uses come to mind. Corporate strategy. Yeah, we do that here at The Motley Fool. We don't just generate ideas. is I love to have my own assumptions about what we might do as a corporate team or an overall company. I love to have them challenged, stress tested by AI. One of the best uses of AI is not to tell you you're great at what you're already doing, which by the way, in my experience, it too often almost painfully does. AI is often just too willing to praise almost anything I'm thinking or any mistake I'm making.

10:10And I'm constantly trying to coach it not to do that, but simply by asking AI to challenge or disagree with your latest, greatest idea or intention can be extremely valuable. And just two more quick examples, both in the last 48 hours. As a lifelong video gamer, I have a really bad habit of going halfway through great games. Like I'll go halfway through the Indiana Jones video game that came out last year, or any one of the last eight or ten Assassin's Creed video games and then a new one will come out and I'll lose interest halfway through in that old one and all of a sudden shiny sparkly squirrel I'll jump to the new one and what that leaves me with is a long train behind me of half-finished video games that I start feeling guilty about and wonder why did I buy the new Assassin's Creed it's Black Flag it's re-synced.

11:04I think I already bought the previous version 10 years ago, and yet I've now bought this new one when I could go back and finish unfinished excellent games of the past. And AI is like having a friend who's already finished the game, helping you through, but specifically, if you ask it, avoiding spoilers. So it's been incredibly helpful for me to start finishing video games of the past by helping remind me where I was and guiding me without spoilers through forward so I can actually become somebody who finishes games as opposed to just starting new ones constantly. And one final use as a sports fan, I do want to say where AI really leaves the old internet behind because back in the day, Google, it's funny to think of the old days as being the Google days.

11:55And obviously Google is a major player in AI. But back in the day when we were Googling 15 years ago, we could only really ask things like who won the 1979 World Series of baseball. And having just checked it, in fact, I'm embarrassed to say that was the year the Pittsburgh Pirates, we are family team defeated the Baltimore Orioles four to three. But anyway, that's kind of how things work before AI. But now AI can answer not just questions, but curiosities. So here are some examples you can now ask and get legit, useful, creative and fun answers. Which World Series champion since 1980 was the least dominant during the regular season, yet played the best baseball in October?

12:38That's a really fun question. You got a pretty good answer these days. Or hey, in NBA ball, the New York Knicks just finally won another championship. What championship team most resembled the 2026 Knicks emotionally? functionally? That's a fun AI question. Or hypotheticals. If baseball had adopted the pitch clock in 1975 instead of 2026 at the major league level, whose Hall of Fame career would have changed the most? I haven't actually plugged that one in, but that's just being hypothetical. So for me, I hope that was helpful. I hope it opened some eyes or gave you some new thoughts how one particular fool is regularly using AI across all dimensions of his life.

13:19And again, and I'd love to hear how I could make better use of it myself. Our mailbag address is rbi at fool.com. Let's go on to idle thought number two. Now, the World Cup just finished. It was a delightful experience for Americans, and by all accounts, I think a lot of people who visited America, some for the first time, it was a delightful experience for them. And I realize this will be an unpopular statement with some as I make it, But for me, I was able to enjoy the World Cup despite it being soccer. And I apologize again for the many people I likely just offended. But there's something relating to my own degree of intellectual curiosity or attention that doesn't love watching one game after another.

14:07You watch roughly 88 minutes. It's still tied 0-0. And then someone scores in stoppage time. and one team wins one to nothing after two hours of observing people largely pass the ball back and forth. And I don't want to criticize soccer per se. It is the world's sport. And part of what makes the World Cup great is it brings all the world together to watch the world's sport. But as a rule breaker and a fool, I feel as if, and I don't think I'm the only one out there, I feel as if we can make some suggestions that would improve the World Cup for all of us or would improve the game of soccer. And the two ideas I'm about to share were simply voiced by others on Twitter, whom I follow.

14:54And I appreciate how they put these out. I batted these ideas around even on this podcast in the past and certainly with friends. But Scott Phillips, who oversees Motley Fool Australia, not just a friend of mine, but also somebody I follow on Twitter at TMF Scott P, put it quite well just a couple of days ago when he wrote this on Twitter. And I quote, I'm not a soccer fan, Scott writes, but if the sport wanted to attract more fans, penalizing both diving and dissent would go a long way. End quote. And in answer to Scott's tweet, there was one response from Ad Gordon's Gecko, which I'll read as well.

15:38Very brief. Ad Gordon's Gecko simply wrote back, penalizing all the cheap shots would be a start as well. So in the past on this podcast, occasionally we talk sports and occasionally I put out that I don't think penalty kicks are an adequate way to decide a championship. after you've watched a sport for a couple of hours and it's tied and you're going to do this artificial minigame that's totally disconnected from the rest of the game. I don't think it's a great answer. In fact, I think one day it will be fixed and people of the future will look back at our era and go, wow, that's how they finish soccer games?

16:13I truly believe the future of soccer will be better than the present. But I do want to speak to what, for me, almost offends my sensibilities. And again, maybe I'm by myself on this. or maybe you're with me, but watching people that we lionize as heroes, calling them out as great citizens of their nations and great athletes, constantly fall over, fake being injured, complain profusely to the ref, structuring games so that the refs have so much say over what goes on that you're constantly having people whining and hoping they don't get a yellow card for doing so. And these are the people that we're calling out to our kids and their behavior as admirable and heroic.

16:58I realize they're going through the motions for what the sport has always rewarded and what it has expected. And by no means am I sitting in judgment of people who are incredible athletes playing the world sport. I'm not calling their own personal character out when I say this, but Scott Phillips, you're darn right. I agree that if the sport wants to attract more fans, penalizing both taking dives and constantly complaining about what's going on, or with Gordon's Gecko, penalizing the obvious cheap shots that people are taking. In American football, lots of use of slow motion instant replay is made where you can clearly see who is cheap shotting who.

17:40These things would really improve soccer. I would love to see referees much more often identify clear violations, often by defenders tearing down guys with the ball. I will say there was some good refereeing going on. I saw some excellent calls where someone's being kicked clearly in the foot, not the ball in front of them. It's not like the sport is not being well refereed generally, but it's the sport itself that I think could be improved. And the use of penalizing around these forms of behavior I'm calling out is what I'd love to see. And, you know, maybe it's not just for all soccer. I don't, from my humble perch here in Washington, D.C., not regularly watching the sport, I realize I don't speak with a lot of authority.

18:23So I'm not maybe trying to change all of soccer with these rules suggestions, but maybe just for the World Cup. Maybe when the world comes together every four years and we want to make it a big deal, Maybe people are on better behavior because the World Cup has a higher standard of expected comportment of on the field behavior in front of the world in the World Cup than you would merely get in the Premier League or the many other leagues that are well lower than that. Maybe we can leave all of the dissent and diving and complaining and cheap shots. Maybe that can be regular soccer, but maybe future World Cups could be a cut above.

19:08All right, on to idle thought of a summer's day number three. This one actually first hit me in spring. In fact, I was checking. It was April 10th, 2026, when I popped open two different stories, both of which come to me every morning. So I use the news daily service, the clipping service, 1440 daily. And if you've never come across 1440 1440 daily, and you're looking for a neutral fact-based news source that shows up in your inbox for free every single day, except Sundays generally, and keeps you connected to the world. I don't spend a lot of time. I watch no cable news. I try to spend as little time with the news as possible.

19:51and I really appreciate 1440 for what it does for me every day. So on April 10th of this year, this story popped into my 1440 daily. It's entitled America's Baby Bust, and I will quote, The U.S. fertility rate hit another record low in 2025, falling from 53.8 to 53.1 births per 1 ,000 women ages 15 to 44, according to the CDC. The decline extends a nearly two-decade slide and reflects a broader shift toward later childbearing and smaller families. Provisional data shows 3 ,606 ,400 total births last year, 3.6 million, down 1 % from 2024. Teen fertility dropped 7 % to 11.7 births per 1 ,000 females.

20:45And to many of us, I can imagine that doesn't sound that bad. while the rate for women ages 30 to 34 actually rose 3%. But since 2007, the overall birth rate has fallen 23%. The news follows a global trend of declining fertility, with most nations now falling short of the roughly 2.1 children per woman needed for stable populations. Final CDC data is due later in 2026. So that was the first story I read that morning. It's not news to me. It's probably not news to you in what is often called the developed world. We've discovered starting with longstanding cultures like the Japanese culture. Japan has not been replacing its own population for years now.

21:36And it's also been true. And this is something that I think is a good thing overall. Of course, not a bad thing. the more educated the more women get on average the fewer children they have and again i think that's for very logical reasons but all of these are playing into a global trend that has humanity likely peaking in terms of our overall worldwide population peaking in the next couple of decades and according to futurists that i respect like kevin kelly for example past guests in this podcast we may never get back there again. It may slowly decline over the course of time. So that's what I read on April 10th.

22:16But then one other thing came into my inbox and that is my morning Readwise newsletter. Now I wanna briefly promote Readwise. This is an unpaid promotion. This comes from a fan. I think I mentioned them once or twice a year. I absolutely love this app. If you're an ebook reader, which is what I am, the minority of the world is, by the way, Most of us, as it turns out, really do prefer physical hardback paperback books. But I'm an e-book reader. And if you are, one of the benefits is you can have all of your highlights. If you highlight your books, you can have them all sent up into the cloud and gathered for you by Readwise, which will fire you back a newsletter every morning, sending you five past highlighted quotes pulled from your reading.

23:01And there you are going, oh, I totally forgot. I read that seven years ago. That's such a good quote. As a writer and thinker myself, I love having ideas come back to me that I'd previously admired and completely forgotten about. Also, with my really poor memory, which isn't just because I'm an older guy these days, I didn't have a good memory in my 20s. With my really poor memory, it's awfully helpful to have tools like ReadWise bring me back many of the things that I've admired and can reuse from one day to the next. So in my ReadWise, on April 10th, I came across this quote from the book SQ21 by Cindy Wigglesworth, and this is the quote I read that morning.

23:43My husband Bill and I often discuss how far the United States has come in our lifetime as far as diversity issues are concerned. We both joined Exxon in 1979 when affirmative action was relatively young and women's liberation conversations were in full swing. Prior to that time, a minority like my husband Bill or a woman like me would most likely not have been seen as management potential. Women who worked outside the home after having children were still a bit of a scandal in some circles. Sexist and racist jokes were prevalent. In just our lifetime, we have seen so much change for the better.

24:37End quote. And as I put those two things together, the declining birth rate and what I think is a very accurate, fair, and encouraging quote from Cindy Wigglesworth about her own experience as a woman in the workplace now dating back several decades ago, I started to realize and appreciate one particular group of people on this earth that historically have not received much appreciation, whether we're talking about approval, Hall of Fame awards, whether we're talking about their compensation, the list goes on and yet as a rule breaker you know that i don't try to live in the past i try to live in the future i try to live backwards from the future and think about where we are today and so i think i'm going to make a prediction here because putting together my 1440 daily and cindy Wigglesworth's quote, I started to sense that the group of people that are maybe the most valuable people on earth today, and I think will be more greatly valued in the next five decades, are very specifically women running families with three or more kids.

26:02And by the way, adding a lot back to society. Think about these women 50 years ago or 500 years ago, in so many ways, previously demeaned or discriminated against in my own life. It was considered by adults when I was a kid unusual that a woman would be in the professional workplace in many different workplaces. Of course, that's not true of other whole industries, but often at the white collar level, at the corporate level, many of the stocks that we pick today, these kinds of companies a generation or two ago, it was highly unusual to see a woman in a senior position. Economically, of course, therefore, they were not being rewarded.

26:49But I think what I realized for me on the morning of April 10th, 2026, this spring, is that working women with three or more kids may well be the most valuable people on the planet Earth today. And I do predict there will be more and more economic support for them. There will be more privilege accorded to them. There will be more honorifics and appreciation rightly given to these special people. I happen to be married to one. I know many others. Some of you are this type of person I'm talking to right now. We're all connected to them. But when you think about where we are right now in history and where we are going forward and what we really need, and you think about the incredible complexity of running families, growing families in a increasingly complex technological world with lots of different challenges and possibilities, My admiration goes out to working women running families with three or more kids.

27:57By the way, I love a lot of other women and men too for many other reasons. But this idle thought of a summer's day number three wants to make sure I double underline and celebrate that person. And if you're nodding your head along with me, I hope you will too. Did you know three out of four U.S. homes have toxic chemicals in their tap water? Even though contaminated water looks clear, it could put you at risk for devastating health concerns including fatigue, hormone disruption, cognitive decline, even cancer. Surprisingly, standard fridge and pitcher filters do little to remove most contaminants, and bottled water contains microplastics.

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29:30Aqua True even comes with a 30-day Best Tasting Water Guarantee. That's Aquatrue.com Aquatrue spelled without the E on the end So that's A-Q-U-A-T-R-U Dot com And remember to use the promo code R-B-I Aquatrue.com All right Idle thought for a summer's day Number four I already talked about authors in August And how much I've gained from reading So many brilliant books By so many smart thinkers In investing In business and in life. And one of them is Dave Ulrich, who with his wife, Wendy, wrote one of my favorite books about business. It's called The Why of Work. Why as in W-H-Y. It really speaks to purpose in the workplace and how the best companies know their purpose, align their employees around that purpose, and clearly demonstrate their purpose.