Is $1 Million a Lot of Money? (EP.399)

Summary

Animal Spirits Podcast Summary Episode: Is $1 Million a Lot of Money? (EP.399)
Release Date: February 12, 2025
Hosts: Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson
Source: Animal Spirits Podcast Transcript

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1. Introduction

The episode kicks off with the hosts, Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson, engaging in light-hearted banter about social media experiences during the Super Bowl and nostalgic reflections on entertainment from their youth.

2. Small vs. Big Business and Microbreweries

Key Discussion Points:

• Shift from Small to Big Businesses: The hosts delve into an insightful series by Heather Long from The Washington Post, highlighting that over 53% of Americans now work for large corporations (500+ employees), a significant shift from previous decades dominated by small businesses.

• Survival of Small Enterprises: Despite the rise of big business, certain sectors like microbreweries and small restaurants continue to thrive, showcasing resilience and niche market appeal.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Carlson [05:31]: "This sentiment stuff gets more useless by the day."
• Michael Batnik [08:09]: "I started my working life out working for a small business. It was a tiny consulting firm… it was getting a little better now for smaller businesses."

3. Corporate Investments vs. U.S. Government R&D: The Mag 7

Key Discussion Points:

• BlackRock’s Analysis: A chart from BlackRock illustrates that corporate investments by the Mag 7 (major tech companies) are surpassing U.S. government research and development spending. This trend underscores the growing dominance of tech giants in driving innovation.

• Implications of Increased Capital Spending: The hosts express concerns that such high levels of capital expenditure by concentrated tech firms may lead to market disruptions or a potential financial bust within the next few years.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Carlson [12:18]: "There has to be some sort of disruption from this much capital spend."
• Michael Batnik [13:07]: "You think this has to lead to a bust?"

4. 401(k) Participation Rates and Market Impact

Key Discussion Points:

• Growth in 401(k) Access: The podcast highlights a Wall Street Journal report stating that 70% of U.S. private sector employees now have access to 401(k) plans, a substantial increase from past decades.

• Relentless Bid Theory: Ben Carlson discusses the "relentless bid" theory, suggesting that continuous investment inflows through retirement accounts are a significant driver of market growth, overshadowing traditional macroeconomic factors.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Carlson [10:09]: "I've been talking about eggs in recent weeks… consumers buy a little bit more, but when the price of eggs rises, they cut back their consumption by two and a half times."
• Michael Batnik [31:08]: "The relentless bid theory… does impact the market."

5. Retirement Demographics and Baby Boomers

Key Discussion Points:

• Aging Population: The hosts discuss data showing a surge in the number of individuals turning 65 daily across various countries, emphasizing the looming challenges in caregiving and economic support systems.

• Impact on Workforce and Wages: The retirement of baby boomers is expected to disrupt employment statistics and potentially depress average wages as younger generations take over roles previously held by higher-earning retirees.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Carlson [24:17]: "We're never going to have a bald actor again in history, in Hollywood."
• Michael Batnik [35:05]: "I just think the baby boomer demographic is going to change so many of these long term averages and relationships."

6. Real Estate Investments and B REIT

Key Discussion Points:

• Blackstone’s Deal with UC Endowment: The Financial Times reports that Blackstone entered an agreement with the University of California’s endowment, guaranteeing a minimum annualized net return of 11.25% on a $4 billion investment over six years. This aggressive return target raises concerns about the sustainability and risk associated with such guarantees.

• Incentives for Risk-Taking: The hosts critique the deal, arguing that it incentivizes Blackstone to pursue riskier investments to meet the high return threshold, potentially endangering investor capital.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Carlson [38:00]: "I'm worried more about the investors in the fund rather than the stock of Blackstone."
• Michael Batnik [37:18]: "so this is a mature deal… but it does seem like they’re incentivizing risky behavior."

7. Home Remodeling Advice

Key Discussion Points:

• Navigating Remodeling Projects: Michael shares personal experiences and advice on remodeling homes, emphasizing the importance of not trying to time the housing market to avoid inflated costs and delays.

• Contractor Recommendations: The hosts provide practical tips for selecting reliable contractors, such as seeking referrals, verifying past work, and being transparent about budget expectations.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Carlson [43:06]: "Do not try to time the housing market. If you're going to build a house with us, do it now."
• Michael Batnik [44:39]: "Don't sign the dotted line until you see their work in person."

8. Eating Habits Survey

Key Discussion Points:

• American Meal Preferences: A YouGov survey reveals that 50% of Americans favor dinner as their favorite meal, while 11% surprisingly dislike it. Additionally, older adults are more consistent with breakfast consumption compared to younger demographics.

• Family Dining Practices: The hosts discuss family meal dynamics, including the presence of screens during dinner and strategies to encourage family interaction, such as discussing daily highs and lows.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Carlson [46:15]: "I decided recently there's no more screens for dinner."
• Michael Batnik [45:00]: "Dinner is my favorite meal."

9. Financial Sentiment: Is $1 Million a Lot of Money?

Key Discussion Points:

• Wealth Perception Over Time: The hosts debate whether a million dollars remains a substantial amount today. Utilizing inflation-adjusted data, they conclude that $1 million in 1996 equates to approximately $3.8 million today, positioning it within higher wealth percentiles.

• Out-of-Touch Financial Views: They critique the notion that a million dollars is not significant, labeling such views as financially out of touch, especially given the stark wealth disparities highlighted by recent data.

Notable Quotes:

• Nick Maguli [50:57]: "The easiest way to tell if someone is out of touch, financially, is to ask whether they think a million dollars is a lot of money."
• Ben Carlson [52:32]: "That's an out of touch finance thing to say."

10. Movie and Entertainment Discussions

Key Discussion Points:

• Nostalgia vs. Current Content: The hosts reminisce about classic movies like Billy Madison and discuss contemporary films such as Kind of Pregnant and Cordially Invited, expressing varying degrees of appreciation for their entertainment value.

• Evolution of Actors’ Careers: They observe how actors like Michael Keaton have adapted successfully over the years, unlike some contemporaries such as Tom Hanks, whose recent performances have fallen short of expectations.

Notable Quotes:

• Michael Batnik [54:05]: "I was 10 years old when this came out."
• Ben Carlson [60:27]: "Matthew Fox didn't do anything. The other guy's 2009."

11. Disney Vacation Cost Increases

Key Discussion Points:

• Rising Costs at Disney Parks: The Wall Street Journal reports a significant increase in the cost of Disney vacations, now exceeding $4,300 for a typical four-day trip for a two-parent family with two young children, excluding flights.

• Consumer Impact and Disney’s Strategy: Internal Disney discussions reflect concerns over whether price hikes are alienating middle-class families. However, the increasing number of visitors suggests that Disney remains resilient despite higher prices.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Carlson [56:38]: "It's like wealth inequality in a nutshell."
• Michael Batnik [57:15]: "I have no choice to go back; my wife is making me."

12. Closing Remarks

The episode concludes with the hosts sharing personal anecdotes about popular culture, including the annoyance over persistent actors in commercials and the emotional toll of certain medical conditions like chronic hiccups. They also discuss upcoming projects and encourage listeners to engage with their other podcasts.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Ben Carlson [05:31]: "This sentiment stuff gets more useless by the day."
• Michael Batnik [08:09]: "I started my working life out working for a small business… getting a little better now for smaller businesses."
• Ben Carlson [12:18]: "There has to be some sort of disruption from this much capital spend."
• Michael Batnik [31:08]: "The relentless bid theory… does impact the market."
• Ben Carlson [38:00]: "I'm worried more about the investors in the fund rather than the stock of Blackstone."
• Michael Batnik [44:39]: "Don't sign the dotted line until you see their work in person."
• Nick Maguli [50:57]: "The easiest way to tell if someone is out of touch, financially, is to ask whether they think a million dollars is a lot of money."
• Ben Carlson [52:32]: "That's an out of touch finance thing to say."

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Conclusion

In this episode, Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson navigate a multitude of topics ranging from economic shifts in business employment, investment trends among major tech companies, and the evolving landscape of retirement planning, to personal finance perceptions and everyday lifestyle choices like home remodeling and meal habits. Through a blend of data-driven discussions and personal anecdotes, the hosts provide listeners with a comprehensive view of contemporary market dynamics and societal trends, all while maintaining their signature engaging and conversational style.

Transcript

[Michael Batnik]

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[Ben Carlson]

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[Michael Batnik]

All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben.

[Ben Carlson]

Are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Rith Wealth Management Management.

[Michael Batnik]

This podcast is for informational purposes only.

[Ben Carlson]

And should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain.

[Michael Batnik]

Positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. We're gonna start off with a tweet from Ben. This is not. This is not a sky. This is not that like trying out bullshit, right? This is like primetime Ben on Twitter.

[Ben Carlson]

For the Super Bowl. I still say the watching the super bowl with Twitter is a great experience.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay, that sounds eh.

[Ben Carlson]

Don't you think the feedback you get from watching this stuff happen and then seeing what people are saying on Twitter, that's still a great community experience.

[Michael Batnik]

I generally agree that sporty events with Twitter open can be a positive, fun experience, but for the Super Bowl, I feel like the Super Bowl's a little bit too big for Twitter.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh really? See, I told you this. I think Twitter or Super bowl is one of the great Twitter experiences that.

[Michael Batnik]

There is all right, no offense. Got a life. Okay, fair. So Ben tweeted SNL was better when I was young. Super bowl ads were better when I was young. Music was better when I was young. So this is what middle age was like, huh? Nailed it, right? Absolutely nailed it.

[Ben Carlson]

Every middle aged person who's ever lived, that's. That's how they feel.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. Always been true, always will be.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. Yeah, this one kind of blew up for me a little bit. I still got it.

[Michael Batnik]

But you're telling me Gladiator 2 was better than Gladiator? I mean, come on. We're right about this. Movies were better than when we were younger.

[Ben Carlson]

The one difference is TV is way better today. Oh, yeah, that's.

[Michael Batnik]

There was some good.

[Ben Carlson]

There were some good TV shows, some classic TV shows back in the day.

[Michael Batnik]

There's a lot of things that are better today. Who's kidding, Hamm?

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, for sure. Yes. But this is a pop culture thing. All right, what are we talking about today?

[Michael Batnik]

Let's.

[Ben Carlson]

This is the first week in a while where there's not like a. The building's on fire. We're running around. Have to talk about this kind of thing. Well, this is a normal week.

[Michael Batnik]

We'll take it. Last week, we were not a fan of the president's proposed policies on tariffs. But who says. No. That. That bringing back plastic straws is a good. Is a bad idea. Universal approval.

[Ben Carlson]

There has to be. Paper straws are one of the worst inventions of all time.

[Michael Batnik]

Last night I was at.

[Ben Carlson]

They never. They never work. They never last a whole drink.

[Michael Batnik]

I was at the movie theater last night, brought along a friend. We went on a date to see Heart Eyes.

[Ben Carlson]

Wait, can I just give a movie theater joke?

[Michael Batnik]

Sure.

[Ben Carlson]

Because you sent out a picture this weekend of an empty movie theater, and you said, I'm trying to keep movie theaters going or something on slack.

[Michael Batnik]

No, no, no. The text was, we are not the same.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, okay. But then John asked, what are you going to see? And you wrote Companion, which I didn't know there was a movie called Companion. And my joke should have been to you. I think you need one, right?

[Michael Batnik]

Okay. So I had a companion last night. Brought my friend Brad to see Heart Eyes. Heart Eyes is a rom com slasher. It's also. It's a. It's a goof. Right? It's a.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

It's a gang.

[Ben Carlson]

I gotcha.

[Michael Batnik]

All right. But they make a joke about. About. So the rom com. As rom coms do, they meet at a coffee shop. That's when they bump into each other.

[Ben Carlson]

75% of the movies you see I've literally never heard of.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay. Anyway, they make a joke about how you could still, you could drink coffee out of a plastic cup, but you need a paper straw.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, okay. That's not bad.

[Michael Batnik]

Anyway, rest in peace. Pair straws, you pieces of garbage. Worst.

[Ben Carlson]

Who?

[Michael Batnik]

I don't know whose idea that was. All right, so here's. So anyway, let's talk. There was some news last week that raised some eyebrows out of the economic community, the economist community. Inflation expectations by party. So who is this from? Is this, this is from the UMich. One year inflation expectations and inflations for a year ahead for Republicans plummeted and for Democrats it shot up.

[Ben Carlson]

Independents are still relatively, they went, it went up a little bit, but that, that's right down the middle. What are we doing here, people?

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, come on.

[Ben Carlson]

Right. I just, this sentiment stuff gets more useless by the day. Correct.

[Michael Batnik]

It really does. I'm not talking because I just, I don't know what to say. It's just, it's so dumb.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. Moving on. All right, Heather Long. The US is no longer a nation of small business. 53% of Americans work for big business now with 500 plus workers. That's a big shift from the 80s, 90s, early 2000s. You can see it's a total. They've completely traded places between small businesses of less than 500 employees. Big businesses. I went through this whole series by the Washington Post and it was really, really good. And they show like how these things have changed over time and show. They say in the 80s and 90s, politicians from both political parties began to abandon small business. There was a sense that the key to progress was ever larger corporations, that if we let companies get bigger, they would be more efficient, they would generate all these benefits. And I'm sure obviously bigger companies can write bigger checks to politicians, right? But they show the share of grocery store employment firms with 10,000 plus employees or less than 10,000. And of course it's flip flopped from 70, 30 in the past for small people back in the 1980s, 1970s to the other way, 70, 30 with bigger now. This, this kind of thing makes total sense to me. The mom and pop grocery shop, how could they ever compete with Walmart, Target, whatever your grocery store. It's meijer for me in West Michigan, which you probably don't have. I don't know what your form of that is.

[Michael Batnik]

That sounded condescending. I'm not sure why.

[Ben Carlson]

Well, no, I'm just saying it's a Midwest grocery store. Chain. They don't have them elsewhere. Okay, so I'm saying you have it. Everyone has their own in Florida. It's Publix or whatever. Right. Every state or region has their own grocery store chain. What's yours in New York?

[Michael Batnik]

Ours Shut down. The local one. I don't know how local is. Probably regional. Used to be called Walbams, but now we have stop and shop.

[Ben Carlson]

And that's what I mean, you guys have. There's regional ones. They did the same. But this is interesting. They show places where small businesses are still doing well. Microbreweries, of course, are. Look at this. This is. It's a ton of small businesses. And the same thing with restaurants. Small restaurants keep growing, which is kind of interesting to see that.

[Michael Batnik]

All right, dumb question. What makes a microbrewery micro?

[Ben Carlson]

It's the type of beer they make. Right. It's not. It's not. Oh, like a Miller lighter. Right. It's the kind of.

[Michael Batnik]

So any. So if they make craft beer, it's a microbrewery.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

Right. So I. This, to me, is more interesting than anything, but I think it's probably a positive development for most people. So I started my working life out working for a small business. It was a tiny consulting firm. It was run by one person, and there was five of us that. That were employed there. And I had no 401k benefits. I had no dental benefits, and I had, like, minimal. Minimal healthcare. Like, my healthcare was dog crap. I didn't have anything. And I feel like that's getting a little better now for smaller businesses. But that's the kind of thing you get at large businesses. They take care of you with benefits and that stuff, right?

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. So people. This is like a big, big change. And so I think people are like, oh, this is good, or this is bad, or this is terrible. This is great. Jason Furman, quote, tweeted this and said, aligned with you, Ben. This is a favorable development. Big. Because I think, like, most people would say, like, ah, this country's gone to hell. Right. Like, you used to be able to, like, own your own business. So Jason Furman, an economist, said, this is a favorable development. Big businesses generally pay better, do more training, engage less in wage theft and other abuses, and have more upward mobility. Now, again, of course, there are. You could point out some negatives, but I think on balance, this is absolutely a good thing.

[Ben Carlson]

I think so. Duncan says a smoker brewery is a small scale brewery that produces less than 15,000 barrels of beer per year.

[Michael Batnik]

Oh, okay. That makes sense.

[Ben Carlson]

That makes sense. Macro Micro. We get a lot of questions from young people looking to get into wealth management. And I think the best advice there since it's so hard to get into a small business when you're young and have no experience, is go to the big financial firm and learn a lot. Go to different, you can work in different departments, learn different things. I think that's a great way to learn as a young person in finance, if you can. Yeah, I went the opposite route. But I think that's a great way to, to learn when you're starting out. Okay, chart of the decade. What do you got here?

[Michael Batnik]

Okay, so BlackRock made a chart showing corporate investments versus US government research and development. And they overlay that with corporate investment from the Mag 7. It's just incredible. So the chart, the, the U.S. the U.S. government charts goes all the way back to 1960. The Mag 7 starts in 2010. And it was the yellow line. The government was rising and then out of nowhere, sort of like bitcoin assets and ETFs versus versus GLD.

[Ben Carlson]

The MAG7 is like the hottest similar.

[Michael Batnik]

Similar type of chart. So the Mag 7 is going to spend more on R and D than the US government.

[Ben Carlson]

That's a pretty good chart. So the U. S. The Wall Street Journal had a, had a piece about the tech giants too. And they show capital spending by quarter just for Meta. Alphabet. Dang it. I should have. I did it. Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon.

[Michael Batnik]

Wait, what are you mad at yourself? For what? Meta or Alphabet?

[Ben Carlson]

Both of them. I, I'm not going to say the new names.

[Michael Batnik]

All right, listen, you don't need to die in that hell. I give you permission. I, I was with you. I said I'm never going to call it Alphabet. But it's been, it's. How many years has it been Alphabet for seven years. We can move on.

[Ben Carlson]

You know anyone who calls it that though?

[Michael Batnik]

Alphabet?

[Ben Carlson]

People on CNBC and Bloomberg maybe. All right, so like you can see their, their spending is just, is just ramping up. It's not slowing down at all. It's funny that people, people for three days thought the deep seek thing was going to cause these places to slow down.

[Michael Batnik]

All of a sudden Google, on Google's earnest call, they said that they're going to spend $75 billion in capex and for next year the estimate was 57. So the stock did not like that or investors did not like that. Amazon said they're going to spend $100 billion. Yeah, the deep se stuff is kind of wild. Apparently Alibaba is buying a 10% stake for a billion dollars. Good for them.

[Ben Carlson]

It is kind of funny, though, that the whole thinking behind these tech companies was they're just so much more efficient than they were in the past. And you don't have to have all this capital spend. And now, of course, they do. Look at all of this. And obviously the hope is that this capital spend makes things even more efficient. But this is. This is certainly. They're at the end of, like, the diving board here. Like it's, it's jump. Or like they have to see some ROI on this.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Which I guess. Would you really bet against them seeing it? I don't know. But I do feel like this chart from Wall Street Journal, at some point people are going to look back on and go, of course this was going to be a huge. This was going to be the thing that moved the market and this caused some sort of disruption or correction or something like this. It has to. Eventually. There's no way that you can get this level of capital spend translated into returns right away, and the market is just going to take it. I just don't see how that happens.

[Michael Batnik]

Wait, what are you saying? I missed it?

[Ben Carlson]

There has to be some sort of disruption from this much capital spend. We've never had this much capital spend before from a concentrated segment of the economy that hasn't led to excesses somewhere in some sort of bust. It's never happened. This would be the first time.

[Michael Batnik]

You think this has to lead to a bust?

[Ben Carlson]

I think if you've studied any history of technological innovation, anytime this happens leads to a bust. If this didn't happen, it'll be the first time.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. That's all I'm saying.

[Michael Batnik]

Put a timestamp on that. Like it's 20.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm saying if you're. Yeah, the timing is the hard part. No, no, no.

[Michael Batnik]

I'm asking you, like, by what year? So let's say if there's no bus by 2028, are you going to say. All right, that. Never mind. How much time are you giving that call?

[Ben Carlson]

Three. Yeah, I think that's pretty fair. But. But there's. There's so many things that have never happened before with these tech stocks. It wouldn't surprise me if it's like, if they can, like, write out some sort of.

[Michael Batnik]

Are you trying to wiggle out of your prediction that you just made 30 seconds ago?

[Ben Carlson]

I'm not. That was not a prediction. That was based on historical.

[Michael Batnik]

That was a prediction.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm a history buff here. No, it's not a prediction. It's just if I'm using history as a guide, it's never happened before. But I've also say this is my grandpa's hedge to you. I also say things that have never happened before happen all the time. So if a group of companies was going to pull this off, it would be these companies, would it not?

[Michael Batnik]

So what you're saying is there might be.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm leaning towards bust. It's 70, 30 bust. Eventually there's going to be a bust from all this capital spending. It just. I don't see how. It doesn't. How human beings cannot help themselves. We extrapolate into the future. That's the problem.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Set expectations too high and then we can't jump over the higher hurdle. That's what happens.

[Michael Batnik]

Hey, why do you think that grocery stores are still regional? Because everything, pretty much. I'm sure there's other industries that are still regional, but for the most part, everything's like national. No, it is like logistics, because you.

[Ben Carlson]

Have Walmart on the lower end, you have Target on the. I'd say higher end. And then there's every. Every place has something in the middle or most places. Right.

[Michael Batnik]

But also Walmart is now the biggest grocery store in the world. I mean, it probably has been for a while.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. So I'm saying not too far from our house, on the busiest street here, 28th street, we have a Walmart, a Target, and a Meijer, which is the local regional one. Why do we have all three?

[Michael Batnik]

Right.

[Ben Carlson]

Doesn't seem like they should be able to coexist. Yet. They do. I got a take here. This is a blue sky. So this was me trying it out. Not.

[Michael Batnik]

All right, this is your bullshit take. Let's go.

[Ben Carlson]

No, but I believe this. So I do think there was a ton of reasons for the 2008 crisis, one of which was Wall street had no moral compass. They were willing to write these loans and do all this crazy stuff and repackage stuff, and the greed got the best of them. I'm convinced more than ever that the tech industry is now Wall street and they occupy that same role with no moral compass. And I think they will be the cause of the next financial crisis whenever it happens, just because of their insatiable thirst for greed and power. Which makes sense. If you built the biggest, best companies in the world, you're going to have your turn at the head of the table. Right. You get the biggest piece of steak to take the Chris Rock joke. You're sitting at the head of the table. You get the biggest piece of steak or you get the second piece of steak. So the tech industry, it made sense that they would go for the power grab, but the greed with which they have now, I think rivals Wall street. And this is a blanket stereotype. So don't take this personally. If you work in the tech industry, there's some of the smartest people in the world work there. I don't think there's a lot of self awareness or common sense.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, from the people that have the power, specifically.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. Yes. Did you see the Sam Altman, Elon Musk. Back and forth, Sam Altman talking about how insecure Elon Musk is and he's taking personal shots at him. But I read the book that Social Network was based on. I read it before it was turned into a movie. Not to brag. I was one of those guys. It was called the Accidental Billionaires. And the whole book was about how insecure Mark Zuckerberg is. And that's what led him to.

[Michael Batnik]

That's why he made Facebook.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. And I think the depiction in the movie was pretty accurate. And I think there's still a lot of insecurities with these people and I think that's going to lead to some bad decisions down the road and the tech industry is going to cause the next financial crisis. How's that? Is that fair?

[Michael Batnik]

I mean, it's a blue sky take, so that's fair. I'm going to take your blue sky take with a grain of salt.

[Ben Carlson]

At least on blue sky, you don't have to post something and then say link in the next tweet. That is the biggest beta move you can make. Guess what? Maybe I'm built different. I still post the link in the original tweet.

[Michael Batnik]

I don't get it. When you post a link in the original tweet, you could still click on it. No. What's the problem?

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, but apparently the algorithm on Twitter does not like links that take you to an external site. So they like, don't show it as much. They.

[Michael Batnik]

Oh, I understand. Who gives a shit?

[Ben Carlson]

Exactly. Thank you. I'm not going to subject myself to this.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, okay. It's only. It's only two months, but there was an article in the journal. Europe's unloved stocks are suddenly on top of the world. So you've got the German Dax at all time highs. You've got the Footsie 100 at all time highs. I think the CAC is there too. That's the French index. So David Kelly also wrote an article on LinkedIn. By the way, I've been, I've been spending time on LinkedIn. There's gotta be a setting feature, but yeah, this is so boring. I'm not even going to bore the audience with this. Who gives a shit?

[Ben Carlson]

No more social media talk. All right?

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. Why am I sorry, I apologize. Okay. So David Kelly said Europe has underperformed the US in 12 of 15 years. Did you know that? I mean, I know we've known it's been a long time, but that's, that's kind of wild.

[Ben Carlson]

12 of 15 years doesn't surprise me. It'd be interesting. That's got to be the, the best winning percentage over 15 year period of.

[Michael Batnik]

Any of these 12 or 15. So David makes some interesting observations about, about Europe. The pedestrian pace of the European economy and markets could be a virtue for investors in the year ahead. Europe suffers from none of the overbuilding excesses that haunt the Chinese economy.

[Ben Carlson]

Right. They didn't build the ghost towns and such. Right.

[Michael Batnik]

European equity markets have none of the bubbly valuations that pose a threat to U.S. stocks, a starting point of a weak Euro and monetary easing combined with a high savings rate in fiscal capacity has the potential to boost both economic growth and dollar denominated returns on the European equities. He also goes on to state a useful. A useful definition of diversification is investing in stuff that you hate. By that measure, for most American investors, Europe represents the perfect diversifier.

[Ben Carlson]

Well said.

[Michael Batnik]

Well said. Yeah. So he shared a data point that was a bit of a face blower that Eurozone unemployment is at 6.3%, which is about as low as it's ever been, ever. So I had chart kid look at the difference between Eurozone unemployment and Euro. Our unemployment.

[Ben Carlson]

I've never looked at this before. That's interesting.

[Michael Batnik]

And going back to 1990, the Delta. Oof, I hate that word. The difference on average is 3.5%. Not Delta guy either, meaning they've had 3 1/2% more unemployment annually than we have.

[Ben Carlson]

Is that just because they take more naps there? Is that why?

[Michael Batnik]

All right.

[Ben Carlson]

I never realized there was that much of a spread.

[Michael Batnik]

You want to know about my LinkedIn settings? I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. I did this the other day. I was updating my. Remember last week we talked about the long term returns and how often they change? So I was playing around and this is just fun with numbers, but I figured I'd test your compounding brain. So from 1950 to 2024 was 11.5% per year for the S and P. What does that turn $10,000 into over 75 years?

[Michael Batnik]

2.2 million.

[Ben Carlson]

36 million.

[Michael Batnik]

Wow.

[Ben Carlson]

Not bad, eh?

[Michael Batnik]

Okay, counterpoint. You know anybody that's compounded at 11.5% for 60 for 75 years?

[Ben Carlson]

Buffett. He's gotta be close. When did he buy his first shares?

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, there's one person. There was one of us.

[Ben Carlson]

I started investing for my kids, let's see, my twins. I must have opened an investment account for them when they were four. I should just not let them touch it ever. And they can be the first people that have a 75 year horizon. How's that? Because every time I do post those.

[Michael Batnik]

Stats, what's the point of the money then?

[Ben Carlson]

Every time I. Well, every time I post those stats, someone will come back and go, oh great, no one has that long of time horizon. Of course they don't. But yeah. All right, moving on. Bearish sentiment, 52 week highs.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, not sure what to make of this again. All right, so getting back to the surveys are bullshit theme that we've been pounding the table on since we started this podcast eight years ago. So AAII bearish sentiment, 52 week high.

[Ben Carlson]

I would have thought it would have gone the other way. And think people be bullish now. Well, I think especially since it's part of baby boomers.

[Michael Batnik]

I think part of this is their allocation to mega cap tech. I would guess which outside of test, outside of meta, has had a tough couple of weeks. All right, on the flip side from JP Morgan, retail sentiment score reached new record high.

[Ben Carlson]

So everything is conflicting these days. This, that just it, I think when it comes to sentiment.

[Michael Batnik]

But isn't it. I mean this is completely contradictory. Yes, people see what they want to see when it comes to service.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, this is a great. So let's move on to inflation. I've been talking about eggs in recent weeks and a few people gave me the Ben, you're out of touch, talk about eggs kind of thing. Because I said egg prices double and you spend 16 more dollars a week or whatever.

[Michael Batnik]

People love taking the moral high ground.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh yes, yes. Saying someone else is out of touch makes you feel so great about yourself. I'm not out of touch. You're out of touch.

[Michael Batnik]

I'm very in touch.

[Ben Carlson]

Actually, someone sent us this. A passage from this book called Sway. It's about persuasion. And I read this passage and I ordered the book. I haven't read it yet. Economists wouldn't expect people to be more sensitive to price increases. Than price decreases. But what this study found is that shoppers completely overreacted when prices rose. It turns out that when it comes to price increases, egg buyers are a sensitive bunch. If you reduce the price of eggs, consumers buy a little bit more, but when the price of eggs rises, they cut back their consumption by two and a half times. So just this is like loss aversion. Like, the losses sting twice as bad as the gains feel good. It's the same thing with inflation. Inflation is loss aversion. So it's saying that, like, you would expect a price decrease and a price increase to have a similar change in demand, and that is totally off base. When prices rise, the demand drops substantially more than it increases when prices drop.

[Michael Batnik]

Have you, so Robin noticed the price of eggs? Robin buys jumbo organic eggs.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

She's out of touch. $9 for how many?

[Ben Carlson]

A dozen?

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, I, I think you're still gonna say it's a, it's a good deal.

[Ben Carlson]

No. Well, what's the difference between a regular egg and an organic egg? See, I, I, that's where I draw the line, is organic stuff. I think that's a racket that's just as bad as the premium car wash.

[Michael Batnik]

What is an organic chicken? Hello. It's a chicken that's organic.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, Torsten Slak, chart of the week for retirement. The number of people turning 65 every day. This is the one that you didn't believe forever. I'd never seen this, but he does it by country. So in the US it's now 11,500 people. Remember, we said 10,000 was the number. It's now higher than that.

[Michael Batnik]

Prove it.

[Ben Carlson]

11,500 people turning 65 every day. In China, it's over 32,000 people every day, which makes sense because they have more people than us. But just seeing these numbers, and it's high in Japan, Germany, Italy, France, UK, Canada, tons of people turning 65 every day. Are we going to have enough capacity to take care of these people as they age? I think there's going to be a lot of millennials in the years ahead if we don't get a whole fleet of robots to take care of old people. I think there's going to be a lot of millennials in the years ahead that are going to be have to take care of their parents that aren't prepared for it. We were watching some movie about this where someone was forced to take care of their parents. And I told my wife, I said, I'm sorry, but my generation is not cut out for this, there's no way we're gonna be able to handle this.

[Michael Batnik]

I'm sure many people can relate to this. Watching, watching my dad take care of his dad, I was like, sorry, dad, I can't do this for you.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, I saw the same thing with my mom. She moved my grandmother into an old folks home and she'd go see her.

[Michael Batnik]

People love to hate on baby boomers, which always strikes me as weird. I love my parents. Like, I feel like my, my parents were good people, they did the right thing.

[Ben Carlson]

Is true. You never think it's kind of like how people always say they hate politicians, but they always still vote for the local politician. It's the same thing. Like, yeah, no one, no one thinks of their parents as like this hated baby boomer. It's just this blob over here that you don't know.

[Michael Batnik]

I think, I think that for the most part, yeah, I don't know. I don't know how it's going to work out. I don't want to speculate because I would be making it up.

[Ben Carlson]

I just. Because I know in other countries, like Japan for instance, it's, it's, it's well known that like you take care of the older generation, but I feel like the millennials, no offense, we're kind of a selfish bunch.

[Michael Batnik]

Right?

[Ben Carlson]

I don't, I don't see us doing this.

[Michael Batnik]

Right.

[Ben Carlson]

I, I see millennials complaining about the cost of like putting their parents up in old folks home, but not stepping up to the plate to, to help out themselves.

[Michael Batnik]

I think millennials are going to be complaining that all of the money that they thought they were getting is being spent on long term, long term care.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. That could be a thing. How about this? Remember a few months ago we talked about the story of the guy whose father or father in law was not helping him even though they were worth like 10 million bucks. People online were just outraged. Like, how come these rich baby boomers won't help their kids? The kids need to help.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, the counterpoint we heard that kid was trouble.

[Ben Carlson]

True. But there was a lot of up in arms of, hey, baby boomers, give us the money now. There was a store in the New Yorker. How many New Yorkers are secretly subsidized by their parents? Boomers are transferring trillions of dollars to their kids one down payment at a time. And they go through this whole thing about how it's impossible to live in New York because it's so expensive. And a lot of people are saying, like, how is this possible? It's like, oh, because they have rich parents that are helping with their rent or giving them an allowance still. And I'm sure this is something that a lot of people in New York see, because if you're young, I think they said the average apartment now is five grand or something, and a studio costs half a million dollars to buy or whatever. So it totally makes sense to me. But I think, I don't know, I think this is a good thing. In some ways it's a bad thing that it's wealth inequality, but because the boomers are helping out, they're giving their wealth now. But it also says. So I've seen a million estimates of this, like, how much money is going to pass down? So this story says $124 trillion over the next two decades. And it sounds enormous and game changing, but 50% of that $124 trillion in the hands of the top 2%.

[Michael Batnik]

You know, the Robert De Niro meme, like something and you're bearish.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

Like $124 trillion is gonna change hands and you're bearish.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, right, yes. This, this was funny to me though, because they were talking about how out of touch the people who get the help are. Like, if you're in New York and you're, you're a young person working and your parents are helping you out, like you, you, you are out of touch.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, hold on, hold on. That's a mischaracterization of the article. It actually said the opposite. It said that a lot of the people that are getting support from their parents feel shameless.

[Ben Carlson]

Well, okay, this was funny though. As 1:30 something teacher ponders in an interview describing the luxury car and real estate she has acquired through her parents, am I a trust fund baby or are we middle class? I can't even tell what middle class means in Manhattan. Her parents still govern an allowance. That was the end. But no, if you have a luxury car and own real estate in Manhattan, you're not middle class.

[Michael Batnik]

Correct.

[Ben Carlson]

I guess I get the point. The other thing is New York is one of the biggest, most expensive cities in the entire world. And most people should not think they can't afford to live in Manhattan. How fair is that? Yeah, it doesn't seem fair, but that, that's reality.

[Michael Batnik]

I also think most, a lot of people go to New York. They do it from the time they're 23 to their 26, 27, whatever. Right.

[Ben Carlson]

You have four roommates. Yeah.

[Michael Batnik]

And then they, and then they go somewhere else. That's probably more suited for for that.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. I just think the out. You can't have the outrage both ways. I think it's good that boomers are helping in some way, even if it feels like it's unfair. If you have. If you don't have a parent who can help, then that totally seems unfair.

[Michael Batnik]

It's like, listen, imagine. So there was, There was a quote in the article, like, oh, the. A friend was like, I assume that when I said that I was broke and you were broke. Like we were, you know, on the same level.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnik]

And then all of a sudden I find out that like your parents paying for an apartment. And so it's complicated because I'm sure that person feels like. Because like. Or a sense of shame or guilt maybe that they have luxuries that their friends don't have. But at the same time, are they. Are they supposed to turn it down?

[Ben Carlson]

Exactly. I do look at it the other way though. Like if you are one of these people that can pull yourself up by your bootstraps and don't get help from your parents and you still are successful, then it feels 10 times better.

[Michael Batnik]

Of course.

[Ben Carlson]

Right. Okay. Good news from the Wall Street Journal. It took nearly 50 years, but half of private sector workers are saving in 401ks for the first time. 70% of private sector employees in the US now have access to a 401k style retirement plan. So this number was way lower in the past. It's increased a lot. I think it's only going to be higher a decade earlier. 60% had accessed and 43% contributed, according to US labor markets. So in the past 10 years or so, we've seen a pretty big increase. So this is good news. We're finally getting there with the 401s.

[Michael Batnik]

It's great news, right?

[Ben Carlson]

I like it.

[Michael Batnik]

But this should be much higher and it looks like it will be.

[Ben Carlson]

So. Yeah. So the fact that there's 70% of people have access, but 50% are making contributions, there's a huge gap between the people that are not still making contributions and that should be automatically put in or something. But so look at this chart. It shows the share since 2014 rising. And my comment was kind of like Josh's relentless bid idea. We spend all this time thinking about the macro and rates and inflation and valuations and all this stuff. And what if the thing that really matters is just more people are investing in the stock market now and they're constantly putting money in and they don't care what any of that stuff means? Like the Occam's razor thing here is that's the thing that matters. We focus on all this other stuff.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, we, we've been talking about this for a decade.

[Ben Carlson]

Right, right.

[Michael Batnik]

Like this is.

[Ben Carlson]

And it's going to go higher.

[Michael Batnik]

This is a big theme in the market is the relentless bid. And it doesn't, it doesn't mean that you can't bear markets. I mean, we've had, of course we've had, we've had a few since the relentless bid theory came out. But I don't see how all of these tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars a year flowing in doesn't impact the market. I mean, of course it does.

[Ben Carlson]

So here's the rebuttal that I get from people occasionally is, well, for every buyer there's a seller and for every seller there's a buyer. So more demand from people in 401ks can't impact the market.

[Michael Batnik]

Of course it can.

[Ben Carlson]

To which I say, then how would prices ever rise in the first place? If more demand is not pushing prices up, then what does?

[Michael Batnik]

And if anything, I don't want to. This is like so theoretical.

[Ben Carlson]

This is dorm room talk.

[Michael Batnik]

It is, yeah. This like take a bonk head and then throw out a crazy theory.

[Ben Carlson]

I have a question for you. Were you a wrestling fan with your sweatshirt? I never knew you to be a wrestling fan.

[Michael Batnik]

I was a wrestling fan. I wasn't like a hardcore, hardcore wrestling fan.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

But I watched, I watched Monday Night Raw every Monday for a couple years. But yeah, I grew up a wrestling fan. Sure.

[Ben Carlson]

Speaking of being in touch or out of touch, I probably made it through the Bret Michaels. Shawn. What was that guy? What was the brother's name? Owen and Sean Hart.

[Michael Batnik]

Bret Hart.

[Ben Carlson]

Bret Hart. That's it. Shawn Michaels. Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart. That's kind of when I made it. But I was never a kid who got the pay per view stuff for that. So I would like watch the pay per view channel as the squiggly lines were going and try to see what happened.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, there was always somebody that used to buy it, but it was never my house.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I never got it either. Okay. A lot of baby boomer talk on this episode. So this is from narrative. And they show the median age of home buyers from 1981 to 2024. And it has gone from the median. And they show first time, repeat and all buyers. For all buyers, the number has gone from 31 years old to 56. For first time buyers, it's still pretty. It's gone from 29 to 38 repeat buyers.

[Michael Batnik]

Because the first time buyers was always between 28 and 32. 33.

[Ben Carlson]

Right. So that one hasn't, that one's moved up. But not.

[Michael Batnik]

No, wait, yes, it has. It moved up massively. It's 38 now.

[Ben Carlson]

But the repeat buyers. This is the one that. 36 to 61. And now.

[Michael Batnik]

Wait, 36 to 61.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. From. So here's, here's where I'm kind of fence sitting on this one. On the one hand, this, these numbers are kind of ridiculous when you think about it. It's, this is part of the unfairness equation here, that the baby boomers are the ones controlling all the wealth and the real estate market and they're, they're making it harder for first time home buyers. On the other hand, the, I think the reason the numbers were so low in the 1980s is because the boomers didn't have an offset. The millennials have an offset in the boomers. There wasn't a huge demographic above the baby boomers. So that's why they controlled so much. They were such a big demographic that they just dwarfed all the other demographics back then.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

So I think that the 1980s numbers were probably being pushed down by the fact that the baby boomers had no competition in terms of other generations. But it also the fact that these numbers are getting so much higher and this, and they've taken off even more in this decade shows how hard it is for young people to buy these days. And the fact that the repeat buyers are so much older, it's because all those baby boomers who have their houses paid off because what's the number? 40% of all houses are paid off. Now, I don't know what percentage of those as boomers, but it has to be 90 some percent of them or something. They have all this equity. What do they care what mortgage rates are? They can just buy.

[Michael Batnik]

When are mortgage rates going to come down?

[Ben Carlson]

I can't believe there's still 7% in 2025. There's no way anyone would have believed that back three or four years ago that mortgage rates would still be 7%. I don't know. I guess hopefully they'll help. This is from Carl Quintanilla, who is now a blue sky only I think, I don't think he's on Twitter anymore.

[Michael Batnik]

Really.

[Ben Carlson]

I think, I think he's only blue sky. 17% of US homeowners with mortgages have an interest rate greater than or equal to 6%, the highest share since 2016. And so this has obviously been increasing and the share of 3 and 4% has been decreasing. So I think you could make the case that we're starting to get to a point where lower mortgage rates are going to have an impact for a lot of borrowers. Right. It's not just a tiny percentage of the whole of the mortgage holders anymore that have true high rates.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. This is a great, terrible chart.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. I just think the baby boomer demographic is going to change so many of these long term averages and relationships because they're so big and they're so wealthy and living so long. I continue to pound the table on this, that we've never seen anything like this before. And a lot of these charts and stats the baby boomers are going to make look silly. So I think we have to get used to it. Like all the employment stats in the years ahead are going to be screwed up because of the baby boomers retiring. Like, I think wage stats are going to be, because if you think about it, a baby boomer who is retiring, who makes a lot of money, they're going to leave their job and then a younger person is going to step in and maybe take part of that role and make a much lower wage.

[Michael Batnik]

No. Well, private equity is going to take it over, sure.

[Ben Carlson]

Or AI, but it's going to make, I think it's going to make wage stats look weird because if you're going to have someone who's making a ton of money and now someone younger makes less money, takes that job, it's going to make it. I think it's going to like depress average wages and the labor force participation ratio is going to be weird. I think I just expect a lot of things to look weird in the years ahead because of baby boomers retiring.

[Michael Batnik]

All right, let's talk about B reit. For those not in the know, B REIT is, I think it's the largest real estate fund. It must be from. From Blackstone. So there was news, was it like two years ago, that there was more redemption requests than liquidity? So you can only Redeem. Is it 5% a quarter? Is that the number?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. There was a lot of people who wanted to redeem and couldn't.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. So blackrock, Blackstone, excuse me, struck an opportunistic deal. This is from the Financial Times. With the University of California's endowment, they took in $4 billion and for six years, Blackstone guaranteed them a minimum annualized Net return of 11.25%.

[Ben Carlson]

Whoa.

[Michael Batnik]

Not bad. Not bad. It's nice to have money to flex. So Robin Wigglesworth at the time.

[Ben Carlson]

No, I don't like that at all though. You're guaranteeing an 11.25% return. That doesn't sound a little shady to you?

[Michael Batnik]

Well, let me read the story. So Robin said, should the average, should the required average annual 11.25% return not be met beginning in 2020, 28, UC will have the option to sell down the B re shares it will receive from BX as collateral over raable 2 year period each quarter. Our understanding is that such activity would show up ne as negative investment income for Blackstone in the distributable earnings P and L over those quarters. Okay, so it's come from black, so.

[Ben Carlson]

They'Re just having to eat it somehow.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. We understand that $1.2 billion is the maximum number that Blackstone could be on the hook for based on the price of that B of the B collateral. Okay, so I'm skipping ahead. Based on the value of the B shares when the agreement was struck, we estimate Blackstone is on pace to forfeit $900 million of the 1.25 billion of collateral backstop in the UK contract. That said, we do point out that since the crystallization, crystallization period for the UC agreement is 60 years, so four years from now, Blackstone still has substantial time to dig out of the lower than run rate returns in 23 and 24. So they're estimating, this is. The Times estimated that BU will now need to generate an average of 17% annual returns for the remaining four years to avoid four finiates collateral.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, so here's why I don't like this. I'm going to harken back to a story by Barry Ritholtz that has always stuck with me. And Barry talked about the story of a prospect came to Ritholtz and said, stop me from, well, you don't have to stop me from remembering this, but I'm going to have.

[Michael Batnik]

Yes, for the audience.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, I'm going to have. Because he's told it a million times. He said, I'm going to pick four advisors and I'm going to give all four advisors a quarter of my money. So let's call it a million dollars. I'm giving each of them 250 grand after a year. Whoever has the highest performance, that's who I'm going to give my money to. And Barry said, good luck with that. We're not going to take part in this because what you're doing is you're asking someone to take a lot of Risk. And if they take a lot of risk and they shoot the moon and they get it, great. They earn your money. If they don't get it, no skin off their back. It's a year. They weren't going to have you as a client anyway. And why would you want someone like that? Because you're inviting, you're incentivizing risk taking. So my point here is them having a higher hurdle rate like this. Doesn't this incentivize them to take on more leverage and invest in riskier real estate deals to hit this bogey?

[Michael Batnik]

Maybe it's a, it's a, that'd be my worry. It's a.4 billion is a ton of money. I don't know how big the fund this is. Is it 70 billion?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. Obviously this is a great deal for them and some to get that cash because they have it there. But I just, I think this incentivizes risky behavior which. This, this. If, if I was a shareholder in this fund, I would not like this deal.

[Michael Batnik]

All right, here's, but here's a statement from Blackstone. In a full payout to UC scenario, we would expect the cumulative net financial impact to Blackstone shareholders to be less than half the value of the BW collateral because Blackstone is earning full base and incentive fees on the UC capital and our investment professionals are sharing in the cost of any shortfall.

[Ben Carlson]

So they're saying that Blackstone, the company is going to be eating this, not the investors in the fund.

[Michael Batnik]

That's what it sounds like. But also they're still charging full fees and carry on that. So anyway, I'm a Blackstone shareholder, so I hope this doesn't.

[Ben Carlson]

Right, so, so Blackstone is calculating what the, the fees are that they're bringing in for management fees and what the fees could be on the profit sharing.

[Michael Batnik]

How about this? Even if this goes as bad as it possibly can, worst case scenario, it's not like this is going to, like, who knows? I'm, I'm guessing that it's not going to, you know, tank the stock.

[Ben Carlson]

True. Okay. See, I'm not, I'm, I'm worried more about the investors in the fund rather than the stock of Blackstone. Blackstone, you're right, is going to be fine either way.

[Michael Batnik]

So actually we, we spoke to, we spoke to a manager of a REIT ETF yesterday and we were talking about like the differences between private real estate, which is obviously gotten very popular with funds from Blackstone and the such versus just liquid right. Stocks. And he said, well, first of all in March 2020, for example, when we knew the world was going to shut down and office real estate, office REITs were going to take a hit, we could dump them immediately. Right. These are publicly traded stocks. Of course, if you own an office building, can't do that.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah. Pros and cons to each. Yeah, that'll come out in a couple weeks on Tucker Book. All right. We got a bunch of good feedback on remodeling processes. It's funny, I felt like kind of a noob saying last week, like, I don't know how to find someone to remodel, help remodel our house. But I also thought, wait. In the home ownership process, there's not a lot of things that you do on a regular basis, unless you're someone who, like, buys and flips houses or buys and sells houses all the time. Like, the whole process of buying and selling or remodeling, it's not something you do on a regular basis that you, like, have experience with, unless you were someone in this field. So we'll get to some of those things in a minute. But I'll tell you what I did, which I should have thought of immediately. I called my builder and said, can you guys do this? They said, oh, yeah, sure. We remodel, and if I'm on a phone call with my builder, I have to get a channel check in. So I said, hey, how are things going? Like, what's going on? I said, I work in finance. I don't remember, but I'm curious how things are going. And he gave some great advice that we've given on this very show. He said, you know what I tell people? Do not try to time the housing market. If you're going to build a house with us, do it now. Don't wait. He said, I can't tell you how many people in the last two to three years have tried to time the interest rate market. And because they waited to try to time interest rates, the building material costs went up by 100 grand or 200 grand or some ridiculous number. And he's like, so many people have waited for two or three years for rates to fall and they were going to build anyway, and then finally they throw up their hands and say, we can't wait any longer. And then their costs are way higher. And he said, even if rates would have fallen, the amount of money that they would have saved would have not been enough to account for the higher cost.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, how about this? What about just lost time? You could have been your house.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, exactly. So his whole thing is, like, I keep telling people, don't try to time this. If you want to build and you can afford it, just build. And I said, that's a great advice. I totally agree. So anyway, they're going to do some work for us. Okay, here's one. Referrals are the best. So this is someone who works in the construction industry. If you have friends that have done remodels, get their honest feedback. I'm always wary of contractors that have digital marketing down to a science. I want the guy that has a dated website and an Instagram account they haven't posted in two years. Yes, that's pretty good. Lastly, don't sign the dotted line until you see their work in person. At a bare minimum, demand at least three referrals from past clients. If they are unwilling to do this, that's red flag. I feel like all these places should have. They have pictures of at least their website that you can look at. He said, you're 100 right about not sharing your budget. Tell them exactly what you want and get an estimate. So that is one. Now, this other person says, as a residential painting estimator, I want to give my 2 cents on your negotiating conversation. We ask what your budget is to address the inevitable price. Objection. We don't want to do this. We don't want this to hold you to a certain number. We do it so we know what we need to do to win the job. So he's saying he can come in with his estimate and move it around.

[Michael Batnik]

So I guess I appreciate this point of view.

[Ben Carlson]

I see. So I see. I do see both sides of it.

[Michael Batnik]

Well, because what if the job costs 25,000? Somebody's like, yeah, my budget is nine. And then they could be like, oh, well, that's not how much this costs.

[Ben Carlson]

But if. Yeah, you say My budget is 20, and they say we were going to charge you 25. What if we did this and we cut back on this and. Yeah, so they can work with you. So I. I guess I do. I see it both ways.

[Michael Batnik]

All right. Survey of the week. Some good stuff in here. Where'd this come from? Tata sent this to us from YouGov, talking about people's eating habits. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, what they do during each, et cetera. So some of the things that stood out. So 50% of Americans say that dinner is their favorite meal. I would agree with that.

[Ben Carlson]

Right?

[Michael Batnik]

Dinner is my favorite meal.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, definitely. Okay, that's easy.

[Michael Batnik]

11% say it's their least favorite. That's a weird thing. How could dinner be your least favorite meal?

[Ben Carlson]

Cereal people, maybe?

[Michael Batnik]

Are there cereal people?

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, seinfeld.

[Michael Batnik]

Americans over 65 are more likely than younger adults to say they always eat breakfast. That checks out.

[Ben Carlson]

I can see that.

[Michael Batnik]

You a breakfast guy?

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, I eat breakfast. You mean because some people skip breakfast altogether.

[Michael Batnik]

This is a straightforward question. Are you a breakfast guy?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I eat breakfast.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay. What do you eat?

[Ben Carlson]

Yogurt? Granola.

[Michael Batnik]

Every day?

[Ben Carlson]

Pretty much.

[Michael Batnik]

You're a creature of habit.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes. Repetition. That's the thing when you get older.

[Michael Batnik]

Not me.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

My breakfast is very volatile.

[Ben Carlson]

Bagels with salmon on it.

[Michael Batnik]

No, no, no. I don't eat salmon, but I could. I could. I. I would say I eat breakfast here and there's. I don't have a routine. I'm not a routine oriented eater. Okay, all right.

[Ben Carlson]

Wait, what was the. What was the TV part of this, though?

[Michael Batnik]

I'll get to it.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

68% of adults. All right. When do you eat dinner?

[Ben Carlson]

What time of the day?

[Michael Batnik]

These are very straightforward questions.

[Ben Carlson]

I feel like I'm being interrogated here.

[Michael Batnik]

In the day, do you eat dinner?

[Ben Carlson]

Dinner time? I don't know, five to six. Okay, well, when you have kids, you eat. You eat early, so. Yeah, closer to five, because kids expect to eat early right after school.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay, well, this is good stuff, Ben, because you are in the minority. Oh, my God. Sorry, you just missed the cutoff. Wait, it breaks it down into, like, all adults. 18 to 29, 30 to 44. How old are you?

[Ben Carlson]

43.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay, so you're still in this bracket. So you're an outlier because around 10% of people eat between 5 and 5:30.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, that's because my habits are driven by my kids, though, not by myself. If it was up to me, I'd eat later.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay, and they did say that, I think. What was the number? A lot of people eat dinner and watch TV at the same time.

[Ben Carlson]

Most Americans watch TV during dinner. What is your take with your kids? Do a lot of kids have screens during dinner? Because this has been a. I do. This has been a back and forth in my household.

[Michael Batnik]

I do.

[Ben Carlson]

I decided recently there's no more screens for dinner.

[Michael Batnik]

Good for you.

[Ben Carlson]

If we're eating dinner together, there's no screens. And my kids were gonna riot potentially, but they've adjusted.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

And this doesn't always. But I say if we're gonna have dinner and everyone's here, we're doing it as a family. We're eating at the dining room table and there's no screens.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, I respect that. I Don't know if this makes me a bad father, but I can't entertain my kids while I'm eating. I don't want to.

[Ben Carlson]

That's true. You know what our thing is? I don't know where my wife got this. You ask your. We ask our kids every day. Or you're at dinner. What's your rose and what's your thorn today? What's a good thing that happened to you? What's a bad thing that happened to you?

[Michael Batnik]

Oh, that's right. That's very sweet.

[Ben Carlson]

And they, they. Then of course, they fight over who gets to go first and. But that is at least a way to get them to talk about their day.

[Michael Batnik]

I had an interesting viewing experience last night. So at tv, at. At dinner, I was showing the kids Angels in the Outfield.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, that's a good one. I've been thinking about 90s movies to show my kids.

[Michael Batnik]

I'm.

[Ben Carlson]

Put that on the list.

[Michael Batnik]

It's on Disney.

[Ben Carlson]

And listen, I think one of the ways that I've succeeded most as a parent is that my daughter, my oldest daughter's favorite movie of all time is A League of Their Own.

[Michael Batnik]

Wow.

[Ben Carlson]

She watches it. She's watched it multiple times, so she'll love Angels in the Outfield.

[Michael Batnik]

And I thought to myself, I'm watching Angels in the outfield with my kids, and then when they go to sleep, I'm going to see hard eyes. Listen to this cast. I. I had no memory of this.

[Ben Carlson]

Tony Danza, Danny Glover.

[Michael Batnik]

Yep.

[Ben Carlson]

Joseph Gordon Levitt.

[Michael Batnik]

Yep.

[Ben Carlson]

Daniel Stern, or seen Berkey of the Year?

[Michael Batnik]

No, he's okay.

[Ben Carlson]

That's right. That's where I lost it.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay, so Danny Glover, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Tony Danza, Matthew McConaughey.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, did not know that.

[Michael Batnik]

Christopher Lloyd.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, yeah, that's right.

[Michael Batnik]

Adrian Brody was on the baseball team.

[Ben Carlson]

Really?

[Michael Batnik]

And then there's like three that guys. Dermot Mulroney. You know that guy. Neil McDonough. I don't know if you know these names, but you know these faces. Star studded cast. Good movie.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, I'm gonna put that one.

[Michael Batnik]

What happened to Danny Glover? That guy was awesome.

[Ben Carlson]

He was great. He. He looked like he was 60 years old. And Lethal Weapon, was he only like 35. He was one of those guys.

[Michael Batnik]

But so he is that guy. So Angels in the outfields in 1994. So he was. Oh, he was older than that movie. Okay. He was almost 50.

[Ben Carlson]

All right. A few people asked us, sent us this. This is from cnbc. Robert F. Kennedy, who recently revealed in Financial Disclosures that he was carrying up to $1.2 million in credit card debt because he had to put this, for all the stuff he's going through, to be sworn in. Credit card balances range between $610,000 and $1.2 million in accounts that carry interest of 23 to 24% filing show. And they were talking about how he makes like, $9 million a year doing God knows what.

[Michael Batnik]

So what's the story here? Is there, there's got to be a story, right?

[Ben Carlson]

Well, it's funny because in the, in the personal finance, things are talking about, like, how he can pay it down and stuff, but I didn't know that you could. How high of a credit limit can you get?

[Michael Batnik]

Well, if you're a Kennedy, I guess.

[Ben Carlson]

There'S no, you know, there's no limit, I suppose.

[Michael Batnik]

But why does he have $1.2 million in credit card debt?

[Ben Carlson]

That's a great question. They, it didn't, it didn't really explain, like, why is he holding so much debt if he makes so much money every year?

[Michael Batnik]

That's you money, I guess, Right?

[Ben Carlson]

I'm willing to just.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, who cares? Yeah, I'll pay 25% interest on 1.2 mil. Whatever.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, I, I, that's obviously rich. Really rich people have really high credit limits. But I never would have thought that you'd see a million dollars in credit card debt because why would they ever use it? Why would they ever roll it over?

[Michael Batnik]

Who cares?

[Ben Carlson]

He's like the mag 7 of credit card debt holders. He's skewing the averages higher.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah. All right. I agree with Nick here. Nick Maguli tweeted. The easiest way to tell if someone is out of touch, financially, speaking of out of touch, ask them whether they think a million dollars is a lot of money. I gotta be honest, this grinds my gears a lot.

[Ben Carlson]

People who say it's not enough money anymore.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, it really grinds my gears. In what universe is a million dollars not a lot of money? Now I get it. A million dollars. When we were growing up, like, you were a millionaire, right? A millionaire meant that you had a million dollars. And it's true. Obviously, a million dollars in 1996 is worth more than a million dol. No shit. But, but for the people. And I know Scott Galloway says this a lot, and it just, he actually said on my show, and I wish I had the chutzpah to push back on him with Josh and I, that you need to make a million dollars a year to survive or something like that. I was like, how? What are you insane? That's so far. So kind of. It's so disrespectful to.

[Ben Carlson]

So isn't it like what, maybe 20% of households are millionaires now or something in the U.S. yeah. So, I mean, it's a much higher number than it was in the past, but it's still, that's still relatively low.

[Michael Batnik]

It's a lot. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, so, so Nick Maggi broke it down with data, as he does, and he said, okay, so a million dollars in 1996, adjusted for inflation is $2 million today. All right, that checks out. Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

The book today would be called the two Millionaire Next Door.

[Michael Batnik]

Exactly. Who wants. Yeah, so a million dollars in 1996 or put you in the 95th percentile of wealth. So view through that lens. What does it equate to today? $3.8 million. So $3.8 million today is because we've obvious we've also gotten richer over time. So it's not just an inflation story.

[Ben Carlson]

But anyway, how quickly the 95th percentile has risen in a lot this past few years.

[Michael Batnik]

But it is so insulting and stupid if, if you don't think a lot of million dollars is a lot of money, just maybe keep that to yourself.

[Ben Carlson]

Yes, I agree. That's an out of touch finance thing to say. Yeah.

[Michael Batnik]

And yeah, obviously a million dollars in the 90s was a ton of money. A million dollars in the 90s was rich. If you had a million dollars and if you have a million dollars today, you have a good amount of money, you're still rich. Well, people could disagree about that, but it's still a lot of money.

[Ben Carlson]

If you're in the top 20% households, that's not rich.

[Michael Batnik]

I'm sorry, rich.

[Ben Carlson]

What's your cutoff for rich? What percentile of net worth do you have to be in to be considered rich?

[Michael Batnik]

Not 20, because not 20. That means if you're wealthier than one out of four people, that's not rich.

[Ben Carlson]

That seems rich to me.

[Michael Batnik]

Or one out of five. My math there is that if there's five.

[Ben Carlson]

What are you saying? Top 10%.

[Michael Batnik]

Hold on. Just for people that are questioning my math, I'm saying if there's five people in a group and you're richer than four of them, that would be top 20%. That's what I meant. What do I think rich is top 10%? I guess I don't know what that number is. Net worth, but top 10%.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, so you'd say your $2 million is rich.

[Michael Batnik]

But then it's like, well, we talk about liquid. You know what I mean? Like investable. Anyhow, good work, Nick. All right. Billy Madison turned 30 years old. And I think I've, I've. I've said this on the show before, but I'll not afraid to say it again. No Grand Rapids Hedge. Billy Madison sucks.

[Ben Carlson]

Sucks. Okay. It's very sophomoric. And it's one of those things that's way funnier when you were younger. Like when it came out and I saw it as a. When I was, whatever, I was a teenager, I thought it was hilarious. But now you watch it in, like, the penguin stuff. It's Miss.

[Michael Batnik]

What was her name? Miss I. Miss Blippi.

[Ben Carlson]

What's her name still who.

[Michael Batnik]

When she's eating glue.

[Ben Carlson]

But I mean, it still has a lot of, like, iconic moments.

[Michael Batnik]

Listen, I'm. I'm being a bit hyperbolic, but it's not. Listen, we were. We were 10. I was 10 years old when this came out. Of course, I don't. I think the. The movie is not as funny as it used to be. But I wonder if we show this to our kids, would they love it? Probably.

[Ben Carlson]

I'm sure my son would love it. But I mean, it's got Farley as the bus driver too.

[Michael Batnik]

But how about this? Happy Gilmore? Still awesome.

[Ben Carlson]

True. It doesn't age as well. All right. Wall Street Journal has the cost of a Disney vacation. And I'm going through this right now. My wife wants to plan another Disney trip for us, which I'm 99% of the way out on, and I have no choice.

[Michael Batnik]

I'm going back. When are you going back?

[Ben Carlson]

We're looking at going back next year. Maybe Thanksgiving week. Ish. I don't know. So one day, adult passes to Disneyland broke 200 mark for the first time in October 206th on most popular days. Five years ago, the skip the line feature fast pass was free. I think it was like that when we went there the last time. Now visitors choose from three different tiers of lightning lane passes for a privilege, the Most expensive being $449 a day. Doing, Doing without the lightning lane can mean spending an hour or more waiting for the most popular rides, eating up vacation time. Some inside Disney worry that the company has become addicted to price hikes and has reached the limits of what middle class Americans can afford. Internal discussions over whether Disney parks may be losing the grip on the hearts and wallets of families with young kids have become more frequent. Some of those people said so. They say a two parent family with two young kids. A typical four day trip to Walt Disney with hotel costs like $4,300. And that's without plane tickets. If you're flying there before food and transportation, that's up from 3,200 five years earlier, adjusted for inflation. So adjusted for inflation, it's $1,000 more for a four day trip.

[Michael Batnik]

There are people that go to vacation that go to Disney every year.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay, now this is Duncan.

[Michael Batnik]

Show yourself.

[Ben Carlson]

Duncan is a Disney guy. Chris that we work with. Chris is also a Disney guy. Goes every year.

[Michael Batnik]

Duncan, you could chime in if you want. Don't be shy.

[Ben Carlson]

What do you want? But you go every year. I don't know.

[Michael Batnik]

You have any thoughts? Have you noticed a substantial change?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, no. I mean, it's busier every time. Every time we go. My wife's family has always gone every year pretty much. So the fact that it keeps getting busier is one of the reasons that they probably feel good about these price hikes. Right. Regardless of how much they hike the prices, people complain, but they just keep coming. Yeah, they're still pushing it. All right, get out of here, Duncan.

[Michael Batnik]

Yep, it's kind of wild. Like there's. But there's. Is there no limit? I guess not.

[Ben Carlson]

Right. Like. So look at this next chart. This, this chart is the most striking wealth inequality chart I've seen in a long time. It shows annual vacation budget for families by income. And it's. They break them into quintiles. Okay, so this is where you said that the top 20% is not rich. Look at the annual vacation budget for the top 20% versus the next 20. The next 20. The next 20. The next 20. Do you see this?

[Michael Batnik]

Well, yeah, relatively, it's.

[Ben Carlson]

So the, the vacation budget for the. For the 60 to 80 percentile is 2200. For the top 20%, it's almost $8,000. For the bottom 20%, it's 600.

[Michael Batnik]

And I bet you put the top 10%.

[Ben Carlson]

It's like, it's like a multiple. You're doing this. This is. This chart is holding a finger up this. I don't know. I guess you should theoretically understand this, but this to me is wealth inequality in a nutshell.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah, right?

[Ben Carlson]

Mm, yes, but. So, yeah, don't tell my wife. I don't want to go back to Disney. She's gonna make me go. I have no choice.

[Michael Batnik]

I want to go back. You know what else is on Disney Plus?

[Ben Carlson]

I think it's check. Check it off your list and good forever.

[Michael Batnik]

I only caught the first five minutes. My kids weren't into it, but there's. They. They do the Lion King show with all of the original. With all of the singers from the movie in Los Angeles and, like, in one of the stadiums.

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, we did the Lion King. Show me down there. I don't know, man. Just the. The lines and. That's not a vacation. That's a fan.

[Michael Batnik]

I love it.

[Ben Carlson]

That's a family trip, not a family vacation.

[Michael Batnik]

Lighten up, Ben.

[Ben Carlson]

We've already been to Disney twice. It's more than enough for me. We went once with my daughter before we had the twins, and then we went once with all three of them. Now she has to go back again.

[Michael Batnik]

That's fair. Twice is enough. You're right.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, hiccups. FYI, chronic intractable hiccups are a real thing. I'm a family medicine doctor, and I've had one patient in his 60s with. This varies a bit on the timing, but I don't think I've ever seen him go more than two minutes without a hiccup. He tolerates it much better than I could. But I know from reading up on this condition that the suicidal rate for these patients is much higher than the general population.

[Michael Batnik]

That's awful.

[Ben Carlson]

I can see that.

[Michael Batnik]

What an awful affliction.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, I have some random super bowl thoughts from the super bowl from a couple days ago because it was the most boring game ever. And I know that you lost money because you always lose money in these things, but you lost money betting on the US Stock market. I said, betting on the Chiefs is like betting on the US Stock market. I had money in the Chiefs, too.

[Michael Batnik]

How'd I lose money betting on the US Stock Market?

[Ben Carlson]

Because every once in a while, the US Stock market goes down. The Chiefs are the US Stock market. You bet on them every year. Most of the time you're gonna win. Sometimes you're gonna lose.

[Michael Batnik]

You know what's funny? I've bet against the Chiefs every year, although I didn't win money with the bucks.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, so super bowl thoughts. Does Matthew McConaughey owe someone money?

[Michael Batnik]

What happened? He did a commercial.

[Ben Carlson]

He did, like, a million. Even my kids are like, this guy's on every commercial. He was on so many commercials. He must owe someone money. Why don't Hollywood people use the same plastic surgeons? Because some people in Hollywood have really good plastic surgeons. You're like, oh, that person definitely had plastic surgery. It looks pretty good.

[Michael Batnik]

Meg Ryan does not look great, right?

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, like she had a bad plastic surgeon. Obviously.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

And I think she's like the goat of romantic comedies. I would have loved to see her age gracefully. You know why else I felt old? Because Tom Cruise did the intro thing. I don't know if you saw the Tom Cruise intro for the Super Bowl. TC Is starting to look a little old, and he had some work done. But it's funny because the.

[Michael Batnik]

He's 60. No.

[Ben Carlson]

Yeah, but I mean, he had some work done. He looked like AI. Tom Cruise a little bit. But here's my take. We're never going to have a bald actor again in history, in Hollywood. It's never going to happen again. So, like, in the 70s and 80s, you had. Whoa, whoa, no, listen, listen. Because they're all going to get Hollywood hair. You can't be an actor now anymore without getting plastic surgery when you're young, if you start losing your hair. So in the past, you know, Nicholson was going bald, Robert Duvall went bald early Hackman went bald, Dreyfuss, Michael Keaton went bald, Bill Murray. All these guys were like regular, everyday men. And you're not going to have that anymore because of the proliferation of plus.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

How's that?

[Michael Batnik]

Okay.

[Ben Carlson]

Jason Statham will be the last one.

[Michael Batnik]

No, Hank.

[Ben Carlson]

Well, that's. That's a condition. So that's my take. We're never gonna have a bald actor again.

[Michael Batnik]

I don't like it.

[Ben Carlson]

Right.

[Michael Batnik]

I can't find.

[Ben Carlson]

Everyday man is Going away.

[Michael Batnik]

I think it's a good take, but.

[Ben Carlson]

That'S all I got for super bowl thoughts. Okay, recommendations? You don't complain about losing money. Come on.

[Michael Batnik]

Do I want to complain about losing money?

[Ben Carlson]

I'm not even mad I had that in my parlay.

[Michael Batnik]

I'm not even mad. I. I'm not even mad. You know, it happens. You win some, you lose some. You win some, you lose a lot more. But that's, you know, that's the way it goes.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, So I got recommended the Pit by a few people. Tata Fascanta, that we work with, Abnormal Returns said, watch the Pit on hbo. And I thought, you know what? I've seen so many medical dramas in my life. I watched ER back in the day. I watched Scrubs. I watched Nurse Jackie. What else? I watched a few seasons of Grey's Anatomy before it got old. So I just thought, like, I don't need another medical drama. And I started watching this show, and it's by one of the creators or producers of er, and they actually brought back Noah Wiley, who was on the original er And I thought, like, I don't And I watched it, and I got sucked in immediately. Like, medical dramas just always work. And you know what's the best feature? The first day is up. The new interns are here. You know. Right. It's the intern's first day. You know what's funny is it always works.

[Michael Batnik]

You and I live in alternate universes sometimes because, like, I don't know why. It just occurred to me that I've never seen any of these shows.

[Ben Carlson]

Really. Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

Not a single one.

[Ben Carlson]

I mean, ER was one of the biggest shows back in the day. That's got Clooney got his stir pretty much.

[Michael Batnik]

You know why I was watching? Too busy watching wrestling, I guess.

[Ben Carlson]

So, so the Pit is a ER in Pittsburgh, and each episode of the show, we've only watched three so far. I'm guessing they're all like, this is one hour in this er, but it takes place on one day, the whole season each. It's not quite like 24, where they're doing a countdown clock, but each show is an hour. So you're dealing with the same patients and the same doctors on the same day, and it's really good.

[Michael Batnik]

Don't you think that if they made a season of 24, that it would. That it would do serious ratings today?

[Ben Carlson]

Oh, yeah, if it came out, for sure. But here's the thing. So, like I said, no. Wiley was the doctor on ER back in the day, and he's now playing a doctor on this show. Why don't we do this more? Because he seems. He's so good in this show and he seems so comfortable. Like, duh, he's played a doctor before. If you've played this. This type of role in the past, bring him out and do it. Like, all the people from Lost, like, do another beach show. You know, this should be a thing.

[Michael Batnik]

Where people from Lost never panned out.

[Ben Carlson]

Really Very surprising, right?

[Michael Batnik]

I mean, Sawyer was in Yellowstone for one season, but, like, none of them, really.

[Ben Carlson]

It surprised me. Matthew Fox.

[Michael Batnik]

Matthew Fox didn't do anything.

[Ben Carlson]

All right, so I watched Goodrich on your recommendation, and I like that. You're right. That was a good Ben movie. I might have got a little teared up at the end when he told his daughter that she was his soulmate. That was great. So I was thinking Michael Keaton and Tom Hanks was kind of a thing in the 80s, and, like, they both did a lot of, you know, kind of slapstick comedy roles, and they're kind of similar. Hanks has more iconic ones, but Keaton had some pretty good ones. And then in the 90s, Michael Keaton took on Batman and Batman Returns, and it was like, oh, he's going to win this. Then, of course, Hanks. Hanks blew him out of the water, and Keaton had nothing. But in their later roles in life, Michael Keaton now has a better older guy. IMDb. He's had some pretty good movies in the past few years, and Tom Hanks has not had one good one, like, in a long, long time.

[Michael Batnik]

That's a good point.

[Ben Carlson]

Michael Keaton has a better Twilight career than Tom Hanks, which is shocking to me. I never would have thought that he was so good in that Goodrich movie you recommended to me.

[Michael Batnik]

Great movie, right?

[Ben Carlson]

Very good. That's all I got.

[Michael Batnik]

Okay. So I watched the OJ doc and I was thinking, like, why is there another OJ thing? It was. It's so. It's four episodes on Netflix, and I haven't seen any of the. There's been, like, three shows maybe, Right. There was one on fx.

[Ben Carlson]

Watched a little bit of the FX show. It's not bad.

[Michael Batnik]

All right. So anyway, I didn't watch any of that. So all this was new to me. Like, I was. I remember the chase because I was watching at my friend Josh's house when we were nine. But I don't, like, know the story that well. You know, like, what happened during the trial. Like, who up? How did you know all that sort of stuff.

[Ben Carlson]

I feel like I watched all the inside E stuff back in the day on this.

[Michael Batnik]

So, anyway, this went pretty deep, but there is a great reveal in episode four from one of OJ's confidants, and he spills the beans on something that OJ said to him, revealing that, in fact, he did kill his wife. And I was like, he did? Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

Was that reveal really necessary? Of course he killed his wife.

[Michael Batnik]

It was necessary. I. I enjoyed it.

[Ben Carlson]

Okay.

[Michael Batnik]

Yeah.

[Ben Carlson]

He wrote a book saying if I did it.

[Michael Batnik]

No, we. We know. We know that he did it. But to hear somebody that was, again, through the course of the documentary, like a major OJ supporter, Spill the. Spill the goods, I thought was. Yeah, how about that? All right, so Robin and I had no plans this weekend, which was just perfect. I'm over it. I don't want to go out every Saturday. It's, like, too much. Right?

[Ben Carlson]

I agree. Welcome to the lage, my friend.

[Michael Batnik]

So on Friday, we watched Kind of Pregnant. Kind of Pregnant is an Amy Schumer movie on Netflix, and it's not good, nor was their expectations of it being good, but we did get like 2 or 3 and like once legit. Lol. Like belly laughter tears. And for me, that's good enough, right? Like if you get one belly laughter out of economy, that's good enough. Okay. And then the next night we watched. We watched cordially invited. Holy shit. So cordially invited is a. Is a.

[Ben Carlson]

It's funny. It's Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon. And I have no intention of watching. Oh, really bad.

[Michael Batnik]

Like how? It was such a crazy. It was such a steaming pile of dog shit. We, I mean, we turned it off with probably like 25 minutes left.

[Ben Carlson]

Really? That bad?

[Michael Batnik]

Like, we were almost at the finish line. I was like, God, this sucks. It was just, it's. It was a little depressing that. That was like the recipe for like good comedies back in the day. And it was just. It was horrendous.

[Ben Carlson]

That is true. How do you make a bad wedding comedy?

[Michael Batnik]

It had all the ingredients.

[Ben Carlson]

That should be easy.

[Michael Batnik]

It had all the ingredients. Really bad. Really, really, really bad.

[Ben Carlson]

Have there been any comedians modern day who have aged and continue to make funny movies as their career progresses? They almost all flame out and stop making funny movies. Think about it. Jim Carrey's making sonic movies these days. Will Ferrell hasn't made a funny movie in since the other guys.

[Michael Batnik]

Is that true?

[Ben Carlson]

Look it up. It's true.

[Michael Batnik]

The other guy's 2009.

[Ben Carlson]

Also Michael Keaton. All right, I got a DM the other day from someone who said, hey, huge fan of Animal Spirits. I did not realize that you and Michael had other podcasts. You guys have to do a better job at self promotion. And I said, fair enough. I'm not a big self promoter guy. But this guy had no idea that you do the compound of friends with Josh. No idea that I did. Ask the compound or you do what are your thoughts? Or do talk your book of the unlock or the ownership. All this stuff. So we have a bunch of other podcasts. Check out the compound. That's probably your easiest way to find it, right? Check out the compound on YouTube. Had no idea. Said we need to do better self promoting job. Listen, I don't sell out like McConaughey. I don't say yes to every commercial there is. I'm sorry, who does more commercials today, McConaughey or Kevin Hart?

[Michael Batnik]

I don't watch commercials. I mean, outside of the Super Bowl.

[Ben Carlson]

I guess, but during sports. All right, okay. Anything else?

[Michael Batnik]

What else?

[Ben Carlson]

One month away from future proof citywide in Miami turning 40 there. When do people have to sign up by yesterday. Is it over?

[Michael Batnik]

No, not quite. But we're. It's getting to the finish line.

[Ben Carlson]

We know people, if you want to.

[Michael Batnik]

Still sign up, but anything else, Ben?

[Ben Carlson]

Nope. Email us animalsompoundnews.com See you next time.

[Michael Batnik]

That.