Loading summary
Transcript134 lines
- [00:03]
A
You're listening to A Book with Legs, a podcast presented by Smead Capital Management. At Smead Capital Management, we advise investors who play the long game. You can learn more@smeedcap.com or by calling your financial advisor.
- [00:22]
B
Welcome to A Book with Legs podcast. I'm Cole Smead, CEO and Portfolio Manager here at Smead Capital Management. At our firm, we are readers and we believe in the power of books to help shape informed investors. In this podcast, we speak to great authors about their writings the late, great Charlie Munger prescribed. Using multiple mental models and analysis, we analyze their work through the lens of business markets and people. Today's date is June 29, 2026. This is our quarterly book list where we talk about books, books and yes, again, more books. Hosting this with me is a first time co host. Joining me for this discussion is who we referred to locally but globally, hopefully. Renowned super fan Steve is on the podcast today. Steve, thanks for joining me.
- [01:14]
C
Thanks for having me, Cole. It's an honor to be here. As a superfan, you never turned out an opportunity like this.
- [01:20]
B
Well, and I have to tell our audience, usually when I'm like out looking for books or whatnot, I'm usually dropping Steve an email and say, hey, you know, what do you read? And. Or whatnot. And he tends to have just like a plethora of books. And so I was like, you know what, this would be a really fun discussion that we haven't done yet. And so I'm really, I'm really glad to have you on today's show. And again, I also, you know, I came to you just so listeners know and said, hey, do you have any questions you have for us? And we'll also, you know, talk about those questions later in the podcast. So I think this will be really kind of engaging, you know, for someone like you or other audience members that are listeners or investors of ours that have been following us for years. And, and I think you'll kind of do a good job of representing the ethos, if you would. So I want to kick it over to you first, Steve, what have you recently read in books and tell us what you're interested in.
- [02:11]
C
Yeah, absolutely. And just to tag onto what you said, I found some obscure titles over the years that I'd find very few people, even in my family and friends that would be interested in reading. I go, I think Cole might be into this. So I think that's when we started to bond over some of those obscure titles. But they're great reads and really happy to be here. So thanks for having me. I love books. Books have had a huge impact on myself and learning. So this is just a fun podcast to be a tribe member of. I'm a huge Charlie Munger fan. I was technically a super fan of Buffett and Munger and Berkshire Briarsmead, but I think it's been great to be part of the group. So, as far as my recent reads, and some of these showed up on last quarter's book list that you had asked about, but the first one here I have is the Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod. And it actually came up. I was actually listening to some of Mark Leonard from Constellation Software's talks, and they have all these disparate companies that they own, and he was really trying to find out, how can these disparate units better cooperate? So he pulled up this book. So the book is sort of like a social science book. They did an experiment in the 80s and they had this game set up. So it's very much a prisoner of war type game that they set up. And so this contest allowed different submissions for different sort of algorithms of cooperation. And then they tried to find out what was the best combination of those. So it's sort of an interesting thing because the one that ended up being the win, they called it the tit for tat. So it wasn't that they were always cooperative, and it wasn't that they were always not cooperative. They had sort of struck that nice balance. So for me, it's been. It's been interesting. You know, I think of it as from like a corporate level of like, trying to get different. Different parts of a company to cooperate. But then I think you look at all these geopolitics with the globalized world, and how do you. How do you get everybody to kind of cooperate and not take advantage? And, you know, even. Even Iran war negotiations, you could kind of think of it from. From that framework. So that was, that was a fun one to go through. It's, it's. It's an old one. It was written like in the 80s when they did this experiment. So. But that's, as you know me, that's kind of up my alley.
- [04:30]
B
Yeah.
- [04:31]
C
Second book, as you mentioned last time, I am an expecting father.
- [04:36]
B
I was gonna say this is not random. You're not wanting to be a father.
- [04:39]
C
No, no, no. We're due in late August. And so a good friend of mine that I've known for about 20 years, we met up and he said, oh, there's this book. I think this one's from the 90s. And he said it's called On Becoming Baby Wise. And so it's been a helpful framework, but my brain processes it. I'm reading about how to. How to raise a baby, but the book really ties everything around sleep and getting consistent sleep. And if you can kind of get into those routines, you're just going to be. You're going to be happier as a parent, the kid's not going to be as grumpy. And so in my mind, that always kind of makes me think of kind of like an operational framework of like, what's that most important thing that if you can get that right, it kind of makes all the downstream things work better. So it kind of connected in my brain. And my reading's a little bit all over the place because of, because of that. And then the third one here, this has been kind of a fun one. I didn't know a whole lot about Domino's, but this is called the Domino Story. It's kind of like a case study that they did. But I'd also watched a few lectures that the CEO gave, and it's kind of a fun story. I always like business turnaround books, partly because they kind of give you two stories. There's usually the collapse of the business and what they did wrong to get to that point. But then when they are successful and turning around, there's some fun lessons in there and lots of good marketing stories. They really were kind of at the bottom around, like 2008 or so. And the CEO tells a funny story that, you know, based on the. They really kind of screwed up their recipe and they tried to optimize all these individual pieces, and ultimately it really kind of degraded the whole pizza experience. And he said that, you know, at one point they ranked, you know, tied for last place with Sir Charles E. Cheese, you know, Chuck E. Cheese, which is not the, the highest compliment there. So fun story for Domino's, kind of turn it around. So it wasn't really one I was too familiar with, but. But had an enjoyable time kind of learning about how they turned around the business. And pizza is kind of a fun topic. You know, kind of. You can ask your friends, you know, what their favorite pizza place is. You get all sorts of different answers.
- [06:39]
B
So I was going to say of that story, I mean, my, my dad. Let's see, delivery pizza was a new phenomenon in, like, the late 70s, early 80s. That was like, novel.
- [06:50]
C
Yeah. Yeah.
- [06:51]
B
It's like crazy to think that like, 40 years ago it was a novel concept.
- [06:54]
C
Yeah. And that Was like the Domino's was very, very heavy on the delivery. Pizza Hut, I don't know if you saw the news recently, but they were like trying to bring back some of the retro old Pizza Hut dine in.
- [07:05]
B
Yeah, old stores.
- [07:06]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's fascinating story. CEO is very interesting. So the CEO that's there now, he came in as the chief marketing officer when they did the turnaround.
- [07:15]
B
Yeah.
- [07:15]
C
And so they have all sorts of fun stories where they, they put, they put their Domino's pizza in a, like a, let's just say like a Pizza Hut box and gave it to people and said, hey, you know, how does this taste? And they'd say, oh, it tastes pretty good. You know, and then they take a Pizza Hut pizza, put in a Domino's box and they say, oh, it tastes terrible. So they kind of learned a lot about just the perception of the brand as well as the, the taste of the actual pizza as well. So.
- [07:38]
B
Yeah, because I remember them doing, they were running commercials back when they started their turnaround was like their CEO would come on and be like, you know, we recognize our pizza sucks.
- [07:46]
C
Yes.
- [07:46]
B
And that was a lot of the stories like admit your problem. And that way people know you're changing or you're seeking to change.
- [07:52]
C
Yeah.
- [07:52]
B
And I remember that was a lot of their messaging. Let's see. So for my books. So I think all of these but one we had on the podcast. So the Great Math War by Jason Barty. So full disclosure everyone, I am an algebraic math person. Like I can do most of my math in my head and as soon as you make me go to calculus or geometry and do stuff like that, I was never interested as a person. My mind just could care less because I was far less efficient at it. Maybe. Anyway. But one of the things I really loved about Jason's book that as a non math person you just never really get a gravitas for, is that we know why things. We know things to be true in math, but we can't prove them. Just a mind boggling concept or it takes so long to prove them we haven't done it yet. Okay. And so that idea where it's like, it's a system that's widely used, accepted, but unproven or tough to prove. I just think it's a very interesting lens to look at things through. He lays out where there, you know, this is in the 19th century, there's this Parisian convention and he lays out this, where he puts out these big questions. Some of those have been proven since that, you know, World's Fair event happened in the 19th century, many of those still have not been. And we. Even if you sat down and said what kind of time would take to calculate and, you know, answer these questions, it's just not very. It's just not very efficient. In other words, like, we don't have to necessarily prove that for us to be able to use it. So. So it's like the idea of using something as a tool in lieu of knowing it's a law or knowing it's a provable law. So I think that's, you know, we think of most fields as, like, we're gonna get the answer, but, like, we don't have all the answers in math, and we consider that to be an empirical language for the world. You know, I just totally love this term. So the next book is the Emergent Mind by Gaurav Suri. I think I talked about this in the podcast the Grav, but he called it. He called it. He used the term that. He's a human chauvinist. I mean, that is such a fun term to think about. You're a human chauvinist. You're saying that you're super prideful and arrogant and pushy at the idea of humanity. And to hear that out of someone who studies neural networks, I think that is such a good framework. Now, admittedly, his background is different than mine. His worldview is totally different than mine. But I found it really impressive that he walked away with this idea of the incredible, you know, nature of humans. And I. And I think I share that a lot in common with him. And so therefore, I. I'm. I was kind of, you know, floored by that. From a different worldview. Um, To Rule under all of Heaven by. By Andrew Seth Meyer. I. I would just say, you know, Chinese history, like, I knew very little. So it's kind of fun to go to this very, you know, this history that I've never touched. It's like, you grew up as a kid, you watch History Channel, and you're like, cool. I know everything about World War II. And then you kind of don't want to touch it for a long time. Cause you know everything about it. This is a history that, you know, I would never have gone into. And, you know, kind of you think about the liberal arts nature of learning and, you know, kind of causing your mind to go and wander. That was like a Chinese history walkabout. And there's a lot of information there to where you had to kind of read it. And Sit down and say, okay, what did I just take in in the chapter? It was good kind of methodical learning. A book that we haven't done on the podcast, but has some interesting touches to it. I had picked it up because we're coming up on the 250th anniversary, which when this podcast releases, it'll be the next week after it is on the Record by Anna Harwell Silenza. And she starts out with the Star Spangled Banner. And so she really tells the early chapters the history of the Star Spangled Banner, which we all just take for granted nowadays. It is, you know, played at baseball games and the start of sporting events. But that wasn't true 100 years ago, for example. That wasn't necessarily accepted. And she gives the history of what was present, you know, in the meantime, or, you know, where did all that come about? There were some very biting language against British. The British government. And therefore, we've changed the Star Spangled Banner to get it to what we think is kind of a good, you know, embodiment of the American spirit, I would argue, which is a fun reading. And then the last one, you talked about kids. I thought a lot about this with my own kids, which is. Howard Garland wrote a book in 1983 called Frames of Mind, and there was a new updated copy of it coming out. And I got in contact with Howard. We had him on the podcast. And I don't know if you've thought about this for yourself, Steve, but I know I've thought a lot about, how did God make me? Like, how am I uniquely and individually made? I think a lot more about that with my own kids. Because you're like, I can see how they're similar, and I can see how they're different. And he talks about the idea of multiple intelligences. I think he said, you know, he thinks there's eight intelligences. Now he puts out a natural intelligence. I mean, you know, I know there's people that have natural intelligence. I was like, how do you prove that there's an intelligence? There's. I was kind of interested in some of those parts. But, you know, I think, you know, you know, you might be math, you might have mathematical intelligence. And he even talked about, like, you know, is mathematical intelligence the same as logical intelligence? So kind of even trying to decipher are those, you know, forever stuck together? If you have, you know, a thing for linguistic intelligence, you know, is that the same as communicating? I think there's just a lot of questions he asks out of that and he says that pieces of these will be in various people, but yet you might have dominant intelligence in one area, and yet people might have trouble understanding you. And so just a way of thinking about kind of like the makeup, and you think of your little figurine made out of clay, like all these unique marks and indentations that you may or may not have in these intelligences. And I think Howard's book just makes you think a lot about that for you, a lot about that for the people around you, and particularly with your kids. Cause a lot of his original work was around kids.
- [14:12]
C
Yeah, that's interesting. That name sounds really familiar. I feel like I may have picked up one of his earlier books, but. Yeah, that's super interesting.
- [14:19]
B
Wait, here's the other thing too, is like, I found all this, like, mind blowing. And then he, like, spit out a lot of times when we visited that he has a very dour view of the world, which I was like, you know, for someone that thinks all these intelligences, you know, that. That just didn't. That didn't seem to rectify necessarily. I was like, well, humans are this capable and have all these intelligence that you continue to find. So I think that's, you know, that's a. I think people will hear that. Where we did agree, you know, interestingly, was I think, you know, there's gotta be a comeback to mean reversion. I think one theory, and I think this is a big theory. You know, this is my theory. I'm not gonna throw any of my colleagues or anyone else under the bus on this, but I actually think we do have to come back. And I think in one of the other books that I'm working on, we'll talk more about that. So let me pivot. What are you reading right now?
- [15:13]
C
Yeah, so one that I've gotten most of the way through. It's called Inside the Box by David Epstein. I read the David Epstein wrote range. I think it was. I probably read it in 2018 and really enjoyed it. It just sort of gave a case for how generalists sometimes can solve problems that specialists just aren't going to be able to see. Sort of that. That wide range of skills and even, you know, to. To what you were saying about developing. They, you know, I'm a big. I love tennis. And so they actually profiled. That's probably why I like the book. They profile Roger Federer in, like, the second chapter, they. They compared tennis with golf and how golf. You could kind of do it solo and do more of it sort of by Yourself, tennis, you're reacting to, to what's coming back and forth. But yeah, Roger Federer actually played a lot of soccer, played a lot of other sports before really picking tennis to, to, to go into. So, so Range was the first book and the author had sort of mentioned that, you know, after he wrote that, you know, people said, oh, you know, that's, that's great, but how do you kind of really narrow in on what you're actually supposed to then specialize in? You know, so it's good to have a range, but how do you know? And that's kind of like investing too. I mean, you know, where do you really choose to spend your time? In research and looking at companies or learning across history, all that sort of stuff. So he really just kind of forwards this idea that, you know, having constraints actually is, is a really beneficial thing to problem solving. And so he goes into. I think I wrote down the name, but there was a company that. What was it called? General Magic. I don't know if you're familiar with that. It was like from the 90s. It was the first like IPO of just like no revenue. They just wanted to have infinite money, kind of like the VC model you see today. They didn't want to have any constraints with money. And so they actually had a lot of similar ideas of what the iPhone became. But they tried to build every component themselves because they had so much money and they just wanted to give the engineers freedom to do it.
- [17:11]
B
Carte blanche.
- [17:12]
C
Yeah. And so they use that as sort of like this is an interesting example where that wasn't necessarily the most effective versus if you have constraints, you start to look around at what's available, what can you leverage, what can you tap into? And I know you've talked about it at length, but I just can't help but think about some of the big tech companies that used to really be asset light because they leveraged everybody else's investments in all these areas and now they're the ones making all the investments in the infrastructure because they have infinite dollars. So anyway, that was an interesting one. There's also. They made a fun reference, I don't know if you're familiar with the book called the Goal. It's by Eli Goldratt. It's sort of a funky business book. Yeah, very much on like operations and the theory of constraints. And so they bring that up as well, which is, which is kind of fun for me because I had a process improvement co worker of mine a decade ago who gave me this kind of funky book. And I'm like, what am I reading here? But it's very much kind of like a fictional book about. But it really just kind of goes to say, if you're. If you're trying to solve problems at a system level, you really need to understand what that. What that key bottleneck is, what that constraint is. And. And that's the place you really want to focus your energy on. So anyway, so he kind of gives a framework then after that of like, here's how if you're problem solving, you can kind of introduce some constraints to keep you moving and make progress and not blow your budget. So the second book, I don't know how you are, Cole, but this is David Brooks, how to Know a Person. I like some of David Brooks past books. So this is actually my three books I'm currently reading are partly because I went to the bookstore recently and I saw some authors that I liked prior to prior books, and so I picked up their current books, and I really liked David Brooks's. Oh, what is it? I'm drawing a blank on the name. But he wrote a prior book where they really talked about just kind of, oh, it was the road to Character. And he kind of talked about how you kind of have these, like, eulogy eulogy values, like, what would people say about you at your funeral? Versus, like, resume values, like, oh, you know, I conquered this and I did this, and I stepped up these ladders and everything. And so anyway, so this one's been pretty interesting. You know, really just kind of that. How do you create those depths of relationships and get to know yourself better, get to know other people better, really sort of build. Build those better relationships. So that's kind of my. Like, I always kind of have a few books on my bookshelf because I have different energy. And that's kind of like a maybe before bed I'll pick that one up and try and think about how to be a little bit better person. And then the last one, I haven't gotten into this one too much, but Jim Collins had a new book that come out, and it says it's what to make of a Life. And I actually wasn't too big of a Jim Collins fan early on, for whatever reason. And then it took me about 10 years. Then I started rereading them, and I was like, oh, there's actually a lot of good nuggets in here and just sort of good framework. So became a good Jim Collins fan over the years, but this one's less about at the corporate level. His prior Books like Good to Great and Great by Choice and Bill Talas, those are all kind of corporate strategy type books. And this one's a little bit more at the individual level. And it just talks about how, you know, as individuals, you know, we're always going to have these. There's just these sort of waves of life, you know, where sometimes you have complete certainty of what's important and what you want to do, and other times you. He kind of calls it like the fog of life, you know, that you might not really be quite certain what that next step is. And so he kind of talks a little bit about, like, how to. Methods for sort of trying to figure that out and figure out purpose and all of that. So I haven't gotten too far into that one, but looking forward to. To go into that one.
- [20:42]
B
Yeah, His. His book Built to Last, I actually reread late last year because we were coming up on our corporate retreat and. And I wanted to kind of use it. You know, he talks a lot about, like, what's the purpose? Like, what's a business purpose? Right. And the story in that I just totally love was he talked about. He talked about Philip Morris.
- [21:01]
C
Yeah.
- [21:02]
B
He talked about how, like, RJ Reynolds had this dominant, you know, male cigarette business, and they took Marlboro, which was like a female cigarette business, and turned it into, like, the Marlboro Man. So, like, we talk about, you know, Dick Hammer, the Grant. The grandfather of the quarterback of the Seahawks. I don't know why his name's not coming to me from USC anyway. You know, Dick Hammer was one of the Marlboro Men.
- [21:23]
C
Oh, darn. Darnold.
- [21:24]
B
Yeah. Sam Darnold.
- [21:25]
C
Yeah.
- [21:25]
B
Yeah. And so that all came out of them, you know, really creating this brand overnight and then building a culture around cigarettes. But it wasn't like, oh, I love smoking. It's like, I like freedom. I value the fact that I can be entrepreneurial here. There was all these kind of different amorphous touches to it, and I was like, that's it. Like, that's. That's totally it. That's. I mean, we're stock pickers in a land of passive. Like, we smoke. That's what we do.
- [21:56]
C
Yeah.
- [21:56]
B
We love smoking, by the way. And by the way, I consider myself a good smoker, might I add. Right. And so it's like this idea that, you know, even in an era where what you do is maybe not popular, it doesn't mean that there's not a customer that doesn't love that. Okay. And so I really, you know, to your point, it was kind of, it was. Now the interesting part was he revisited, you know, he's got a lot of conversation. He talks about stocks and businesses in the past. It was fun to kind of think about, okay, what held and what didn't. I think was the other exercise out of that.
- [22:27]
C
That was the hurdle I had to get over because I think after Good to Great came out, it was like half the companies basically encountered all sorts of issues. So I kind of intellectually had a hard time really, you know, jumping into that. But then later on I heard him describe it as sort of like studying an era. And that fit better in my mind of like, okay, let's look at this, this business in an era. Just like you might look at a sports team in an era.
- [22:48]
B
Yeah.
- [22:49]
C
And that, that then I kind of understood it a little bit better.
- [22:53]
B
Hi, I'm Cole Smead, CEO and portfolio manager here at Smead Capital Management and host of this podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, I'd like to invite you to check out smeedcap.com at our firm. We are stock market investors. We advise investors who play the long game with a discipline that has proven success over long periods of time. Learn more about our funds@smeecap.com Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principal. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smead Funds distributed by Smead Funds Distributors llc. Not affiliated. The book I'm in right now, and I think this is so I was kind of touching on this earlier, but this is why I found it interesting relative to like the conversation around Howard Garland's book. I keep on asking myself the question, what is going to cause us to meet? Like, I'll use the United States, let's not say the world, but like the United States to meet. Okay, so this is a pet theory of mine, but this is something that I'm trying to think about as I lens and read through this book, the Revolutionary center by Adrian Woolridge. Okay, so here's the Revolutionary center is effectively a book about the idea or the concept of what we now know as like liberalism. Right? So when we talk about liberal arts, that comes out of the idea of liberalism being that like you are empowered as the individual to go out and learn these various things in a liberal minded way. In other words, you're exploring that, you're thinking about that, you're taking that in and you're using that how you think is best for you versus it being like an institutionalized view. You know, you have to be vocational and here's what you do, things like that. And he gives a really good history to kind of how liberalism came about. Liberalism really started with the Protestant Reformation. Okay. Because the idea is the core of liberalism is you are at the center of your own decisions and therefore the government or institutions are not. Okay. And so this is kind of coming out of like the Catholic Church having like the institutional, you know, knowledge. And now you are sola scriptura, you know, by, by, by, by the word alone, the Bible in that case. And it kind of sprouted out of that. So I'm thinking about this like pendulum swinging where we go from like institutional to the individual. And then I'm starting to get a picture also of like, well, what is maybe the problem of the west is that we've swung so far to the individual to where if people that I consider myself a liberal minded person and the idea of a liberal has actually became a very different idea today in culture versus what a liberal was, say 100 years ago. Where can we kind of trace this? Like a liberal minded person in the 19th century learned Greek, Latin, they knew their classics very well and therefore they had that as kind of their core building blocks of learning. Well, a liberal minded person today doesn't touch any of those subjects. Now I think the question we could ask is, is that okay? Is that good? I don't know. I am of the camp that believes that the more we've tried to explore the individual for the individual's sake, what we've done is we've kind of eroded what was the original concept. It's the individual in light of timelessness, not the individual on its own. So if someone could say, where's the individual gone amok? Well, we have all these things that we now think we're asking in culture, like the individual does, and we're like, hmm, is that the best thing for us corporately as, say, a country? And so as I'm going through his book, I have that question really just running amok where. Because I think the knock on order of that is because we don't agree on what truth is and how individuals should take truth and continue to build great things off of truth. Are we debating points that shouldn't be debatable in the individual discussions? Therefore, yes, we might be liberally minded, but are we going to get anything done?
- [27:16]
C
Yeah. And it feels like there's the institutions, there's also sort of this like, community. Would you as an individual, be willing to not get the greatest impact here, but you do something because it's part of the community and the community is stronger for it. And then the institutions, you know, hopefully represent some of that community, reinforce that. But yeah, it feels like there's that divide where nobody, everybody can really agree on anything.
- [27:43]
B
Well, I agree. And so again, it's like, okay, you know, what are some knock on questions that I like, I totally want to ask Adrian if I get the chance is okay, is this because the church as a core to liberalism, without that present that causes everything to fail away? Potential question, another question. Should we be taking the liberal minded thinker and saying we gotta take that plus to your point, what is good corporately? Or what I'll call corporate pragmatism? Okay, so it's like, okay, here's the deal. You can be liberally minded, but we all need to get married and have kids.
- [28:20]
C
Right? Cause it'd be better for the broader.
- [28:22]
B
It's so important for us all that we are gonna be liberally minded but pragmatic to the suffrage of the further men of humanity. I mean, those kind of concepts, again, I don't know. But so far I think we can see statistically that at least the individual, in light of say, things like church, are actually furthering humanity better. But again, is that because there's a lack of pragmatism where it's like, if you die, you're dead.
- [28:52]
C
Yeah.
- [28:52]
B
And you're done.
- [28:53]
C
Yeah.
- [28:54]
B
And we call that humanity.
- [28:55]
C
Yeah. Versus something that lives on.
- [28:57]
B
Versus something that lives on. It's like, what's the purpose of liberalism if it's only going to be centered on the individual that makes the decision that day? Is that timeless? I don't know.
- [29:08]
C
It's the same at a corporate level. You know, is a company making decisions today that just sort of benefit the here and now, or are they setting it up so that in the future, when they're long gone, whoever that next set of folks is, it lives on and thrives.
- [29:22]
B
Yeah, totally agree. So let's do this. Let's pivot. What books have you had recommended to you? What have you bought you just haven't cracked yet?
- [29:29]
C
Yeah, well, so I recently connected with a guy here in Denver. He's like the first Berkshire person I've ever met here in Denver. Yeah, we connected and then found out we both were huge Berkshire fans and got together and he was like, hey, you gotta take these three books. So I was gonna throw out these three books. So the first one I cracked this One open, but it's called Buying Disney's World by Aaron Goldberg. It's a really fun, really fun story so far. It just tells the story about the creation of Disney World. And you know, it starts with all the lessons they learned from when they built in Walt Disney. They built Disneyland and they only had enough money to buy a certain amount of land. And, and so what happened is all the land around Disneyland sort of got developed by other, other folks. So they said if we're not making that mistake again, we want to make sure we have full control. So when they're, when they're out there in Orlando, they, it's. It tells the story of how they, they created. They had this guy who was like ex CIA, who was like running this operation with shell companies to acquire all this land so that nobody would figure out that this was going on and everything. And so, yeah, pretty, pretty interesting book. Haven't gotten too far into it, but I think be. It's not that big. It's kind of a fun. It's almost like a, like a spy or like a heist, heist type movie so far. So that's fun. Second, Second one he gave me, and I think, I think I heard Jamie Dimon reference this one recently. It's Freedom's Forge. And I think it tells the story about in World War II, how, how we were able to basically turn the industrial base of the US into creating everything we needed for World War II. And so it tells that story more on the home front of like, you know, basically how we use all of our existing assets to pivot and support those efforts.
- [31:20]
B
Yeah.
- [31:21]
C
And then the third one, this one's a, this one's kind of a big one. So I don't know how far I'll get into this one, but it's called the Rise and Fall of American Growth. Don't know a ton about it, but I think it was written in like 2016 and basically, you know, in the kind of the Cliff Notes of it, it sounds like it. They really highlight the, the economic progress from post Civil War into like the, like years after that, so into the, into the 1900s. And how they try to make the case that that really was the most significant step up in just human life quality and everything and say kind of like you hear like Charlie Munger used to talk some about that where it's like, like just the advancements in medicine, the advancements and you know, you're, you know, you're, you're cool in Arizona. You're. You're warm in the winter, you're here, you know, you're. You're. You're able to. We have all these things that just made our life better now. Now we kind of have these. Like, is this new app incrementally making my life that much better? Who really knows? So be curious to see that. I think the author's take is that basically to expect slower growth going forward and that we had this just really dynamic level up. But it's always kind of fun sometimes to read those that have been published and out for a little while. With hindsight, you get to see what's held up and what hasn't. And then the last one, with everything going on with oil markets and the straight arc moves, I always enjoy when Dan Jurgen gets on tv.
- [32:42]
B
He's great.
- [32:43]
C
He's awesome. And so read a number of his books. And he mentioned this one, it's called Commanding Heights. And I'd never heard of it before, so I was like, I've got to order that. And it was written in the late 90s, so it was after he wrote the prize. And I think it really sort of goes into sort of what the world order really turned into after World War II. So, again, sort of hindsight, you'd be kind of curious to see what were thinking back then and how it's. How it's played out, what's stayed the same, what's different. So those are the ones that I've got on my book list.
- [33:14]
B
Yeah. So let's see. I got. Let's see. I want to say I got like, four or five titles here, and these are. This will be pretty eclectic. So I know Bill read this, and I haven't got to it yet, but I just want to mention it. So the book is called Campus Speech and Academic Freedom. It's by Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gilman. I think I might have mentioned this before, but Erwin's son Adam was my fraternity brother in college. Irwin is, like, one of the foremost constitutional law professors in the country. And I'm really interested to think about again, it's kind of at that liberal question, right? It's like, okay, when people go to these universities, like, what should we allow, what shouldn't we allow? And how do we set the framework for individualism?
- [34:00]
C
Mm.
- [34:01]
B
Okay. It's a massive question. It's obviously a federal question. It's a local question. So I'm terribly interested to get through that book. My second one is, like, My Antiquity. Usually every once in a while, like every six or 12 months, I have to go Back to antiquity and kind of ask a question and have a book to go with it. So there's a new book called A New history by Eve MacDonald. Obviously you get to go back and visit Carthage and think about what was going on then. Kind of under my 250th anniversary. I know this book kind of touches on that. This land is your land. A road trip through U.S. history by Beverly Gage is another book that I have on my list of books that I want to address. And again, like you were saying, you think about these histories, it's kind of like, okay, most US history tends to over talk about World War II, like I said earlier. So I don't know if you've noticed on the podcast, but I've done a lot of 19th century history or kind of pre Great Depression history. I think those are less talked about and therefore it's kind of where I focused more of my energy and thinking about those histories. And so it'd be kind of fun to do something that walks through the historical period, doesn't just focus on one. And then the other book that I have on my list is called In Search of Trade, John Cabot, Christopher Columbus and the Opening of the Atlantic by Lydia Townes, a book that kind of touches a similar period of this was I did the book on John Jacob Astor and you know, kind of talking about how he had created this trade network. And then he created obviously the town of Fort Astoria, which is, you know, on the, you know, at the mouth of the Columbia river, what we now know as Astoria, Oregon. So I think I was going to kind of get a different touch of that. But really just thinking about how that happened with the Eastern Seaboard, comparatively, we normally finish off with questions. You had some really good questions. And so I'm just gonna let you ask away because rather than me trying to figure out what our listeners want to understand, I'll let you lead.
- [36:00]
C
Yeah. Great. Okay. Well, this is fun. So first question I feel like have to lead off with oil markets. Straight A Hormuz. You're thinking on that. I'll share my two fun analogies that I enjoy making up for myself. You know, one when this first started happening is you kind of say, gosh, this strata horn moves. It's kind of like a, like a core artery, you know. And so if you were to think of like from a human's perspective, it's like, gosh, you know, if this thing just remains clogged, is that kind of like the equivalent of having like a heart attack or a stroke? Or you could think of it like if the, if the, if you get a stent, you know, and you catch it early, you can get a reopened and it's not really a, you know, a huge event. So sort of curious on that. And then now when I see, you know, oil inventories, just, we continue to draw on those, I'm starting to think is, is this actually the Strait of Ozembic? You know, we're, we're, we're working off our calories and excess reserves here. And so the question to you is what, what are sort of your thoughts on long term oils, like the, the inventory levels and sort of how that might play out downstream into various effects?
- [37:08]
B
Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a totally. Just to get like, to give everyone like a historical perspective on this. Why this is so odd is if you go back and I'm not gonna consider myself like a long standing expert in the oil market, as you know, Steve, we didn't even own businesses in this arena till six years ago, broadly speaking. Okay. And we would never have considered ourselves like people that have a lot of knowledge because we didn't spend a lot of time in the space. Okay. If you go back and say 10 or 20 years ago, did anyone ever even like kind of war game this and like put it in the paths of a possibility? The answer is they did. They talked about this as kind of like a theoretical war game where Hormuz could be closed off. That was potentially talked about, but not in a realistic light. It's like, oh, we know that path is a possibility, a 0.001% possibility, but it was just never really put in the lexicon of likely paths. So I think that's like from the starting point, you know, what is the market telling us about the future? Well, first off, my friends, it's an unknown future. And this proves how unknown it is. I mean, go back to one year ago where, you know, it's like, oh, what was the market telling us about the future? Well, oil was below $60 a barrel. You know, supposedly it was telling us the future is gonna be really dark for these kind of businesses that might make money on the price of oil. And then you wake up one year later in the war game scenario is playing out. I have to laugh because to your point, it's like there's a lot of fog. Like you talked about earlier in the book. You mentioned tons of fog and what you've coming out of the fog, you're like, oh my gosh, it's a vastly different world than I thought I'd see before the fog kind of went away. So I think that's very important to think about. Just as an analogy of investing in general, you cannot predict the future. So in terms of thinking about the supply issue at hand, you'll see these charts and graphs of like current inventories out there. Now there's been about a billion barrels of draw in these oil inventories. You know when people say, yeah, but there's still like 7 billion barrels still out there. Well, you know, you have to understand that we talk about inventory, we're talking about what's in pipes and is moving from one place to another. I think of it like a business, like we're running a business. And let's just say we need seven widgets or six and a half widgets of inventory at any given time to run our business feasibly. You know, if we're eight and we go to seven, that's not that big a deal. But if we go from seven down to five, then someone calls and says, hey, like, you know, I need to buy a widget and be like, I'm sorry, I have to raise the price a lot on you. Cause we need five just to like keep the business moving around in inventory.
- [39:55]
C
Yeah.
- [39:55]
B
And so it's like. Cause that 5 of inventory might be because we've already shipped it off and we haven't recognized the revenue yet, Things like that. And so that's the inherent issue is like this is just like a massive singular line business where you can't go go below those levels or the only way you can rectify the situation is just through price. It's the only way to fix anything in this life. And so I think that's at play. But have there been other times in markets where, to your point, where we've seen the physical market has something vastly different going on than the financial markets? Yes. And I'll give you the book. Go read the big short. Okay.
- [40:36]
C
Yep.
- [40:36]
B
In that book, I can't remember if it was Burry or Eisenman or both, but they're going to Goldman Sachs and they're saying like, hey, I can see the homes in this tranche of the pool are foreclosing left and right. I'm coming to you asking for a bid on this credit default swap a CDS and your price is not showing at all that these homes are all in foreclosure. What gives? Okay, this really gets into Munger's like perverse incentive ideas. Okay, well, at that time, if the banks were gonna give you the right mark in that cds. If they're giving that quote, they then have to turn on their own books and say, hey, if we're giving you this quote, we gotta start recognizing that we have a capital problem on our own balance sheet. Because if those are bad, there's other asset testing we'd have to do to prove that our assets are bad in some cases as well. So their incentive to call the CDS contract the right price was that it hurt them to do that. Okay, so here we are in this physical market world where my best hunch of what the perverse incentives are, this is a small part of the S&P 500 today. It is a small part of investor portfolios. If you go outside the United States, some investors don't believe in this investment allocation at all because ultimately they decided it's not part of their, you know, allocation that's allowable per their institution. Some people are more religious about it. They believe it's bad for humanity. Those are the perverse incentives possibly. And then you have to add onto that. There's many people that in these assets they got cooked in the 2010s. I mean like use the value managers, they got cooked. There's people that thought this was an end all and there was scarcity tied to this and they found out that there wasn't as much scarcity. So I think that's actually the perverse incentive, kind of like the CDS contracts that's really driving this is that there's a lot of people that would have to change their mind about this industry. And yes, some of that marginally went on after 22. You think of like security is now one of the questions that came into the lexicon around these assets. Do we have secure assets that help our, I'll call it our sovereignty. That's something that's entered this. But for the average investor, I just don't think that's gone on. So everyone would have to go out and buy or bid assets. And ultimately with what's going on elsewhere in the financial markets, it's just not that exciting.
- [43:20]
C
Yeah, now I like that analogy to the mortgage backed securities because it was sort of a slow building crisis that for the people who saw it, you could see. But then most people will just remember when Lehman failed because that's when, you know, the wheels came off. And I think similarly you have anybody I run into and I don't ask for people to give me their thoughts usually, but they'll. Yeah, they all kind of tell me the same thing. You know, they always say, well, you know, Trump will never let that happen, you know, or, you know, we got an election coming, he won't let this happen. And it's like there's just sort of this, this thought that, like, I'm sure probably in 2008, like, well, there's no way they would just let those fail. There's just no way they would let something happen.
- [44:04]
B
We hope you're enjoying the podcast. You know, we work hard putting together this show, but we work even harder for our investors at SMEAD Capital Management. At smead, we believe in disciplined investing, which is why the SMEAD funds have a proven track record of long term outperformance. If you're an investor who plays the long game and want to invest in wonderful companies to build wealth, we invite you to visit smeedcap.com Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principal. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing. Smead funds distributed by Smead Funds Distributors llc. Not affiliated. We know that Trump's very unpopular based on the polls right now, his approval rating is low compared to where it's been. But in markets, it seems like everyone's a Republican. Yeah, I don't get it.
- [45:04]
C
Yeah.
- [45:04]
B
And by the way, I'm saying that as like a card carrying capitalist, but a card carrying Republican might add too, where it's like, wait a second, I see some really weird spreads and, you know, misallocations of what investors are thinking on this. And yet in markets it's like, oh, no, Trump's got this. It's gonna get solved. Everyone's a Republican. In markets, that is. I cannot rectify that issue. And, you know, let's just say you go back to history and you say, okay, how often does regime change happen? What happened in Syria?
- [45:37]
C
Mm.
- [45:38]
B
And that's it. That's like. And by the way, didn't take a lot. I'm not saying the CIA wasn't involved in that for you conspiracy theorists out there, but I'm just saying Vietnam never happened and Korea never happened. And there's a lot of examples where it just never happened. But I do think people were lulled into watching what happened in Venezuela where there were quote unquote, oil assets, Right? And it's like, oh, well, look what we did in Venezuela. You just wouldn't believe what Palantir is doing these days. And it's like, we're the greatest nation in the world. With incredible technology. And this is a quagmire right now.
- [46:19]
C
Yeah, yeah. It also seems like people want to skip the panic that leads to a policy response. It's almost just like, well, you know, if you bought during COVID it just like went up later. Right. You know, and it's like, yeah, but the crisis led to this massive policy response that then fueled that. But if you don't have the panic, or same with 2008, if you don't have the panic, you don't necessarily get the policy response as well either. So this is kind of fascinating, you know, but fun to watch.
- [46:47]
B
Yeah. Your point, like in 22, 22 was a panic on those assets.
- [46:52]
C
Yeah.
- [46:53]
B
Right. So was that the best price to buy them? No, no. But there was money made to, you know, as that panic began.
- [46:59]
C
Yeah.
- [47:00]
B
You know, so to your point. So it's like, you look back, it's like, was last spring a good time to buy, say, energy assets tied to just dismal. Dismal psychology. Yes. No question. Very analogous, I would argue, to 2020. Right. Where there's just. The psychology is so bad. I think you probably heard me say this, but the spring of 2025 was the second best buying opportunity the last 25 years, the best being the spring of 2020. But analogously, 22 was the panic moment. We just haven't got the panic yet. And again, I think the part that this makes this really confusing is, well, what does panic cause? Like. Yes, there's the, like physics. There's, you know, Newton's third law. Right. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. Yes. We know that energy price would have to go up and they'll have to bid the energy assets in general. But what does that cause in other assets, comparatively, like we're watching, you know, I think of like, kind of panics. You know, what is going on in some of the AI conversations is there's been a panic in GPUs.
- [48:05]
C
Yeah.
- [48:05]
B
Like a choke point. So you look at GPU prices, what are they? They were just ripping.
- [48:10]
C
Yeah.
- [48:10]
B
Well, now what's going on in GPU prices? They're falling off. Maybe panic has subsided.
- [48:18]
C
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- [48:20]
B
Other questions you had.
- [48:21]
C
Yeah. So this, this will be a fun one because we're already starting to hit on it here. But, you know, I always just love your guys. Takes on investor psychology. And, you know, like, we were talking about some of the. The panic, but also maybe some of the euphoria in the market that you all are seeing, and you and I are about the same age. So just, just a little from my perspective. I remember I got Into, I graduated 2006, got into investing probably in like 2007. Just started learning all sorts of stuff. And yeah, I remember being at the bookstore reading about stocks or reading about some, something, something regarding investing in like even 2009, 2010, maybe even 2011. And people would like actually be upset that you were like looking at stocks. It was just nobody wanted to be a part. Kind of like you mentioned about oil in 2020. Oil in 2020, 2020 last year, 2025. And just kind of curious to get your, your thoughts on the, the euphoric parts of the market that are going on here. So.
- [49:18]
B
Well, let me just, let me talk to kind of like what, like just people, the people side of this. So a great book I always recommend to people in thinking about people in the interaction markets is David Dreamin's old book Psychology in the Stock Market, which is a fantastic read. He talks about the red room and the green room. And it's analogous to casino. There's two different rooms. The red room is exciting, the drinks are great, the party's awesome. It's like being on the craps table and just someone's rolling for two hours and then you go to the green room and it's like, it's boring, it's slow. But the chip stacks are incredible. The players are, the odds are in the players favor. And so he's like, you go back up to your room, you get your chips and even though you know it's against your interest, you walk into the red room.
- [50:06]
C
Yeah.
- [50:07]
B
And that is the human proclivity. Now let's just talk about the people makeup out there today. I graduated like you in 2006. I'll never forget. I was happy 20 years. Yeah. So it's like 20 somewhere in there. I am doing a CFA crash course out in Burlingame, California near the San Francisco airport. I'm there for the weekend. It's like a three day crash course and I'm eating at a sushi restaurant. And I'll never forget, like we obviously had not got to the bottom in 08 yet because this, this lady that I'm sitting next to at the sushi bar, I'm just, you know, they're at the bar top and we're chatting and yeah, I remember she's like, oh, I'm such a big Jim Cramer fan and I listen to everything he says and you know, at that time, contextually that's where a lot of people would go Listen, talk stocks. You know, at that time, there wasn't these other things like, you know, TBPN and whatnot out there. And so she's telling me, like. And she's just like, as someone that's a professional in the business, she's just like, giving me her advice, which I always find that, like, mystifying because, you know, I think it's hard enough as a professional. And you read like, Peter lynch is like cocktail theory, right? Where it's like, you know, at the bottom, they want to know what the dentist does. Somewhere in the middle, you know, they ask you what you're buying. And then at the end of the bull market, it's like they. They tell you what they're buying, right?
- [51:30]
C
Yep.
- [51:31]
B
And so I always think about that. So if I had to kind of go out there and look today, boomers in general, I would say if you look at the AI polls, for example, they're pretty bearish. Okay, now why do I think they're bearish? That group is dominated by old folks, particularly old men. News flash for everyone watching this, old men don't get more optimistic about the future. They just don't. It's a pretty normal thing. They become more curmudgeon, and therefore that's very normal. So I'd say if you're an old guy, be more optimistic about the future because humans flourish. But they're pretty bearish as they look at those polls. But then if you look at their equity allocations, they're not. They're not. They are schizophrenic. They have a negative view of the future, and they're bullish on stocks when it comes to what they own. Now. Why is that? Because the stocks have grown at a greater rate than all their other investments, and therefore they're not reallocating like they would historically. So 60, 40 is like 80, 20, 70, 30 is like 9010 or no bonds at all. If I go out and look at Gen X, you know, obviously they have assets, but they're just a smaller group, so I tend to not think of them as much. I apologize to the Gen X generation. You will not be mocked, but you will probably be skipped more often than you'd like. And so then I move on to, you know, millennials. And broadly speaking, I just think there's a lot of risk taking going on in younger generations. Risk taking being that anything novel or conceptual, it's not like well studied. You just gotta go out and take risks. And again, that is not unique to our generation. That's not Unique to younger generations. But I just say it because, you know, have we really had our brains pounded out in the recent past? I mean, I think about, you know, someone that got in the business at 06. So to your point, it's like I'm coming up on 20 years in the investment business this next August, which is like, wow, as my teenage daughter would say, like, dude, you're old. But it's like, okay, great, 0809 sucked. You know, two year bear market just sucked. And even. Oh yeah. But you recovered. Yeah, but it didn't feel good till you're like four years into that process, you know. Yeah, Covid hit, but Covid was quick. There really hasn't been an elongated bear market. And that's pretty. As he says in the Young Frankenstein, it's pretty Abby normal. And so as you kind of lay this out, I just think the risk sentiment is we're long risk, we don't care. The future's bright. But if you go back to the bottom at 009, no one was bullish long term. And I think that's the paradox is at the top, everyone is a long term investor. But you just know that you're gonna run into the bottom at some point and everyone is gonna be not long term. And I give a lot of credence to. You haven't read his book 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin, but he just said something historically apropos for a time like now. He said, listen, we're going to have a crash. I can't tell you when, but the. But, but we're just going to have one now. What's a crash? You know, if everyone's setting up for a credit crisis, guess what, guys? We can't have a credit crisis because it's all well thought about. But what a crash could be is it could be like 72 to 74, where you just kind of drench everybody in misery and asset prices. The economy chugs along after that and everyone just kind of hates stocks. Would I prefer that? No. But here's the catch for everyone like you and me is like we don't decide this. God does.
- [54:58]
C
Yeah, yeah. It feels like it's the duration of that. You know, I think these, these short crashes that rebound people almost get, you know, they get, they get like a, you know, oh, this is great. Like you just gotta, gotta keep going in and. But yeah, like when I my story about reading books in 2010, it was like those are the folks that they experienced 2000. They got to 2010. They've been putting money in every week. They don't really follow this stuff at a deep level. And it didn't go anywhere, you know, and I even, I sit on our 401k committee at work, and even the advisors kind of look at that. Here's the three year, here's the five year, here's the ten year. And they kind of anything that's not where. Oh, let's get out of that. And it's like, well, you would have gotten out of the S and P in 2010 if you use that.
- [55:43]
B
Well, I agree. I mean, if you, if you just use the outperformance of tech, you know, much of this did not come about until the mid 2010s. Yeah, that was not like the hot dot early in the bull market. And to your point, the people would just, you know, not, not touch it. So, again, I agree. It's like, it's, it's, you know, Buffett. Buffett said, I think my dad wrote about this, like, there's a gambling mood out there.
- [56:07]
C
Yeah.
- [56:08]
B
And by the way, do I think the betting platforms are helping that or the access? No, but then again, you know, I'm more human. We love herding, we love recency, we love anchoring. We're just no different. I don't get what's changing. You know, Munger said it, the old ways work fine. If you're losing money, why do we gotta create new ones?
- [56:28]
C
Yeah, absolutely. Ready for question number three?
- [56:32]
B
Yeah, let's jam.
- [56:34]
C
So I always loved your, you, you and your dad's thoughts on demographics and just how that can change as it changes over time, how it can have impacts on the economy. Just curious your thoughts on, you know, what, what, what you're seeing in that space. You know, maybe what's staying the same. You think, think will, will. Will happen over time or if anything's changed in your thinking related to key demographic groups.
- [56:56]
B
Yeah, I think, I think the main thing that, that I would be asking in demographics today is, you know, we've talked about this, like, oh, you know, marriage is down. We talked about that just a second ago, earlier. Yes. But what we're seeing is that as millennials age, they still do normal things.
- [57:18]
C
I'm proof of the late blooming millennials.
- [57:21]
B
Well, I agree, I agree. So we know marriages are down compared to 30 years ago, but let's just say. Okay, so in eight years, you and I will be 50.
- [57:30]
C
Okay.
- [57:32]
B
By the time we're 50, how many of our unmarried friends will have been married? Yeah, I am going to argue it's going to happen because they're just human.
- [57:43]
C
Yeah.
- [57:44]
B
In other words, even if they didn't have children, they're still going to marry. And when you marry, what do you do? You do things like buying houses. So the delay might not change that. Now that doesn't change a lack of children being born maybe. Okay, that's a whole nother separate subject. But when you look at the average home buying age of like, you know, I think the most recent quarter was 40, what does that mean? They're still doing it. They're just doing it way later now. What does that also mean with way higher incomes and way better balance sheets, things like that. So I do think about that, but I do ask this question. I do think the marriage age is the central figure. I saw this killer chart. I'll have to probably put this out on social media at some point, but someone showed that during the baby boom and I think this is why it's integrally tied. I think I've corrected my thinking on this. When the facts change. I changed my mind. As Keynes once said, when you look at the baby boom that happened after World War II, the marriage age declined for women. Interesting, interesting. So if someone says, how do you change birth rates in the Western world? Marriage ages have to go down. I, I, I will take a bet on anyone on that. That that has to happen. And what I think it does is it takes this idea that like, you know, you'll, and I think this is ill, this is ill gotten when people are like, oh, you know, you know, it's these younger generations, they're just not having as many kids and, and in any way kind of pushing that off on their, on the female cohort. No, no, no. It's not like the childbearing aspect. It's marriage age. So like, you know, back to our, like, what do we join together in? It's like we go out and say, you know what, we should all just agree as a society that getting married earlier is better. So we're going to teach that in health class, in public and private schools, and we're going to kind of espouse that as an ethos. What would happen? Birth rates go up. And so who's to blame for that? All of us. Yeah, all of us.
- [59:43]
C
Yeah.
- [59:43]
B
And I think a lot about that because again, that same trend, you can see that in the rest of the Western world. If the Western world decides, hey, we need to get marriage done earlier. Because, you know, someone asked me this earlier on Bloomberg today, you know, what about Student debt. Well, okay, let's just take student debt. The payment income ratio really hasn't changed. Looking back over the last 30 years, even though debt, amount of debts change, the interest rates change, things like that. But do I think that's as important as, like, you and your wife got married, so when you got married, you're now sharing a home together and you're double income.
- [60:17]
C
What does that do?
- [60:18]
B
Double income? You're creating so much better economics. Cause you're not individually trying to go out and succeed in housing. You're doing it together, which also creates a way to build up, say, savings to create a fallback. What hasn't been said is that early marriage actually causes better economics for two people striving together. And they might fail, but striving together still creates greater good than the risk of not. And I think a lot more about that in the demographic discussion because it's better for economic growth, it's better for things like children, all that. And I don't think we're talking about enough about the benefits for the demographics. We're talking about the risks. Oh, you might get a divorce or you might marry the wrong person. Yeah, yeah, but those were always true.
- [61:07]
C
Right.
- [61:08]
B
Is that really as important as these other things?
- [61:11]
C
Yeah. I've always had it fascinating too, just the. Some of the social pressure, if you'll call it that, where if you look at like friend groups, right. And like, you know, people in their 20s, they want to do different things in their 20s, and then all of a sudden they start getting to a certain age, but then a couple of their friends get married.
- [61:27]
B
Yeah.
- [61:27]
C
And then all of a sudden it's like, wow, maybe I. Maybe I'm looking for something else in the relationship. Oh, okay, now, now you just sort of see that, like, people start to pull through that, through that pipeline, so.
- [61:38]
B
Well, I agree. And you know, to your point, like, can we have the rubber band snap back? Like, that's kind of the question because, like, the bottom ticking of marriage age, you know, like, really happened with the baby boom. Okay. And so, you know, you see these articles right now in the Wall Street Journal, in the New York Times, talking about, like, Catholic church in New York is like, super in vogue and it's cool. And everyone gets dressed up and like, food before, after church is like, super. That's cool. Right? To your point, social pressure.
- [62:05]
C
Yeah.
- [62:06]
B
Well, will that cause a downtick in marriage age across men and women? Because ultimately, or maybe, maybe there'll be differences in the age age groups. Maybe young women will say, you know, what, the guy, he ain't gonna figure it out. So therefore, I'm gonna date and marry higher ages, because I want that to be what drives the marriage pressure. I don't want to have to expect that a young male will mature, because as your and my wife have probably learned, we don't potentially.
- [62:41]
C
Yeah, right.
- [62:42]
B
And so, again, I think about all those things going on socially, to your point, across the demographics and whatnot. I mean, it's terribly interesting. But my hope is that we solve the problems we want to solve. And therefore, if we think that children are in need for the Western culture and society in America and really our prosperity and our security, how do we want to solve that has got to be figured out? Because so far, Russia has done things like, oh, we'll give you incentives or whatnot, or, I mean, here's something someone else threw out. And I don't know if you've heard this, and I'd love to hear anything that you kind of have on this, but what if you get married earlier? Maybe you have reduced tax rates until you're older.
- [63:22]
C
Yeah. I mean, it seems like there's creative incentives you could put in place to just add. Just add more policy around it. Just a little more incentive. So it makes sense.
- [63:32]
B
Correct. Well, this has been.
- [63:34]
C
I don't know if it would help my case. I think I was just late. I still had to find the other half, you know, so it worked.
- [63:42]
B
You're proving something really true. It's like, it's, it's. It's, you know, late. Yeah. But it was not. Never.
- [63:50]
C
Yeah, exactly. That's what I think is. Is super fascinating. Yeah. Because it, yeah, it was just a little different. There were definitely periods of time, I think if, If. If newspaper articles were written about me and they said, this is what all millennials are like. They would have been like, yeah, this. There's no chance, you know, but it was just. It was just a little bit delayed, and then it ultimately kind of happened. And. Yeah, and then. And the same sort of thing bought. We bought a house last year, so I would have been 41. Having a kid this year, 42. You know, my wife's five years younger, so there's that aspect. So, yeah, super fascinating. I always. There were some. You know, that's why I appreciate you guys talking about those types of things, because you always say things, and then I'm like, I want to look into that a little bit more. And I just thought it was interesting because there was like a kind of, like, average income over. Over your. Your Age and they showed where from 25 to 35, you get the largest percentage increase in your career as well. So there's part of this as well is like some of the, you know, if I were Talking to my 28 year old self, it's like, hey, be patient, keep working hard, things will take care of themselves on, on the job front and the earnings side as opposed to, I think there's kind of a panic out there that like, it's just always going to be the same and I think more people are going to kind of graduate to that higher earnings level. They're going to couple up. You get that double income at least. I like to think that I'm proving it's possible.
- [65:13]
B
Well, yeah, and I mean, we, you know, my wife, when we first got married, we had two incomes and then, you know, we started having kids and therefore we went down to one. Oh, man. Someone says like, you know, back to the fog, like, I love that. I'm so glad you, I got to read that book because like, I just, I think back to the fog I had at that time where it's like, man, I am choking on like we had a mortgage. It was a, you know, it was a big mortgage for us and I was the only income. And I even, I got rid of my car at the time because like I, you know, like even down to that, where you think back to these things you did when you were younger. It's like I was taking the bus. We only had one car.
- [65:47]
C
Yeah.
- [65:48]
B
And it worked out fine.
- [65:50]
C
It worked out.
- [65:50]
B
Yeah, it worked out.
- [65:51]
C
Exactly.
- [65:52]
B
It worked out. And again, like, you solve the things you want to solve as a couple. And so, you know, you're going to get through it, you're going to be fine. And until you recognize that it's all chaotic and crisis. Yeah, until then, to your point.
- [66:07]
C
Yeah. So that's what I love with the fog. They kind of said you can't see far into the distance, but make the next best step that you can. And it might even be in the wrong direction, but then from that point, make the next best step you can in the fog. You know, so you're just taking one step at a time in those foggy situations.
- [66:24]
B
So, yeah, I think I'll, I think I'll end it with this book by Al Williams. And I'm trying to remember the title of it, but Al Williams, who was a, he was like a big insurance sales guy. He sold, he sold not whole life insurance, but term insurance. And he, you know, created like what we now know as Primerica. But he said all you can do is all you can do and all you can do is enough. Which I think is a great way of thinking about what we're touching at Steve, this has been totally fun. I want to thank you a lot and I think our audience would thank you too, because this has been a fun dialogue. Your books have been awesome, and having Superfan Steve live on the podcast is quite a thing for our listeners. If you have a great book that you'd like to recommend, email podcastmeedcap.com that's podcastmeedcap.com you can also reach out to us on X. Our handle is meedcap. We'll give you a shout out in the next quarter. You can be the next Superfan Steve is what I'm saying. And thank you for joining us for A Book With Legs podcast. We look forward to the next episode.
- [67:32]
A
Thank you for listening to A Book With Legs, a podcast brought to you by Smead Capital Management. The material provided in this podcast is for informational use only and should not be construed as investment advice. You can learn more about Smead Capital Management and its products@smeedcap.com or by calling your financial advisor.
- [68:09]
B
It.