How to Deliver the “WOW” in Everyday Life (with longtime former Royal Caribbean Chairman and CEO Richard Fain) SB1748

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Stacking Benjamins Show

Episode Title: How to Deliver the “WOW” in Everyday Life (with longtime former Royal Caribbean Chairman and CEO Richard Fain) SB1748
Air Date: October 15, 2025
Host: Joe Saul-Sehy with OG and Doug
Guest: Richard Fain, longtime Chairman & former CEO of Royal Caribbean Group

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Episode Overview

This episode revolves around the concept of “delivering wow”—bringing surprise, delight, and excellence to everyday life—through the experience and career of Richard Fain, the longtime chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean Group. The conversation explores how intentional culture, long-term thinking, risk-taking, and talent-centric leadership generated “wow” moments for both customers and employees at Royal Caribbean, along with practical takeaways for listeners to implement in their own family, work, and financial lives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining and Creating the “Wow” Factor

• Richard Fain describes “wow” as both big and small gestures that delight customers and make experiences memorable.

  “The whole concept of delivering the wow… is what our people do each and every day. It’s big things, but it's small things. And altogether it gives people an amazing vacation.” —Richard Fain [09:28]

• There are both “good wow” (surprise and delight) and “bad wow/woe” (unexpected setbacks). Coping with both is a critical leadership skill.

2. Culture as a Strategic Asset

• Fain stresses that a winning company culture isn’t accidental. It’s built intentionally and maintained over time.

  “You really need to go at it with intentionality… to get a culture that drives success. You need every day to keep working to make that happen.” —Richard Fain [11:56]

• Royal Caribbean's journey: From a $550 million company (1988) to a $90 billion leader, largely attributed to its people-focused, innovation-driven culture.

3. Long-Term Vision Over Short-Term Gains

• Major decisions at Royal Caribbean, like cutting ships in half and enlarging them, required sacrifices in the short term for transformational long-term payoffs.

  “If you want to really change things, you have to accept change and you have to do that with intentionality.” —Richard Fain [16:04]

• Analogy to personal finance: Like investing in education or new skills—short-term investment, long-term gain.

4. Leadership, Mentorship, and Building Talent

• Mentors shaped Fain’s long-term perspective. Even without a formal mentor, anyone can influence and coach others by example.

  “It was hard to do way back then. Today it’s really difficult because the pressure is, ‘What have you done for me lately?’” —Richard Fain [13:48]

• Involving employees in decision-making increases buy-in, even if they don’t get the final say. Trust and alignment are crucial for driving innovation.

• Advice for leaders: Value passionate debate, then make clear decisions that everyone rallies behind.

  “We don’t simply make compromises. We don’t try and please everybody. We look at it, get everybody’s input, and having everyone’s input, we make a decision.” —Richard Fain [20:34]

5. Taking Smart Risks and Embracing Change

• Example: The decision to install a real ice skating rink on a cruise ship despite cost and technical challenges.

  “Who puts an ice skating rink on a cruise ship? It epitomizes what’s different about Royal Caribbean.” —Richard Fain [25:11]

• Success attracts top talent and drives further innovation. Building a reputation for bold ideas makes it easier to recruit great people.

6. Cross-Disciplinary Development

• Fain advocates for cross-functional career paths—rotating through different areas (finance, operations, investor relations, etc.)—to enrich experience and break down silos.

  “We've always said we want people not to go purely in a vertical way… and so you look at any of our people and you see that they have almost all been involved with other things.” —Richard Fain [27:10]

7. Delivering Value Before Counting Costs

• At Royal Caribbean, project ideas start with desired guest outcomes (“what will it deliver?”), then move to cost/feasibility.

  “How do we deliver? And then how do we make the necessary cuts to the budget to make it work?” —Richard Fain [30:11]

• Example: “Win on Waste” project—improving food efficiency using AI, equally benefiting the environment and company costs.

8. Most Memorable “Wow” Moment

• Restarting cruise operations after Covid hiatus: Fain’s most profound “wow” was reconnecting with crew and witnessing their gratitude and passion.

  “It took over an hour and a half to go from the shell door to the elevator lobby. It was packed with crew members who were back… Everybody had a story, everybody had tears, everybody had a camera, and we took an awful lot of selfies.” —Richard Fain [32:58]

9. Personal Application: How to Bring “Wow” into Everyday Life

• Fain’s advice: “Love what you do, do what you love, and have a goal—your ‘North Star.’”

  “The answer is love what you do. Do what you love and have a goal… Nobody expects us to reach the North Star. But the North Star is absolutely critical in navigating a ship.” —Richard Fain [36:14]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On intentional culture:

  “It doesn't happen on its own… It happens by intentional, consistent, focused effort and looking at a long term.” —Richard Fain [11:56]

• On risk and transformation:

  “If you want to really change things, you have to accept change and you have to do that with intentionality.” —Richard Fain [16:04]

• On mediocrity:

  “Fine in our vocabulary is not a compliment.” —Richard Fain [18:06]

• On leadership and buy-in:

  “If we're not aligned, we're not going to achieve our goal… You do it by example. You don't do it by using a hammer.” —Richard Fain [22:50]

• On cross-functional work:

  “Your life gets better. It’s more interesting… Don’t we all want to have fun?” —Richard Fain [29:52]

• On his proudest “wow” moment:

  “It was packed with crew members who had gone through the trauma of the last 18 months… One person said to me, ‘these guests who are coming on in a day or so, these guests are going to have the best vacation any guests have ever had.’” —Richard Fain [32:58]

• Personal philosophy:

  “Love what you do. Do what you love. And have a goal… Having a North Star that takes you there is just as essential in family life.” —Richard Fain [36:14]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [09:16] – Richard Fain joins, defining “wow” and its origins
• [11:37] – Building intentional, long-term company culture
• [13:22] – Mentorship lessons and future-oriented thinking
• [15:15] – Taking calculated risks (cutting ships in half)
• [18:06] – On avoiding mediocrity and striving for excellence
• [20:04] – Steering committees, disagreement, and decision-making
• [22:50] – Leading passionate teams and building trust
• [25:11] – Ice skating rink innovation story
• [27:10] – Importance of cross-functional careers (“cross fertilization”)
• [30:11] – Starting with value, then cost control; Win on Waste project
• [32:58] – Fain’s most memorable “wow” moment: post-Covid crew reunion
• [36:14] – Actionable advice for listeners on “finding your North Star”

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Practical Takeaways for Listeners

• At work: Be intentional about the “wow” experiences you create for customers and colleagues; foster trust and alignment through open debate and clear leadership.
• As a leader: Build a culture of innovation and long-term thinking; rotate high performers across disciplines; involve teams in decisions; trust and recognize talent.
• For personal goals: Set ambitious, inspiring “North Stars;” endure temporary discomfort for transformational gains; bring excellence and curiosity into everyday tasks.
• In family & financial life: Don’t be afraid to invest in changes or sacrifices that enable future growth and happiness; focus equally on creativity and efficiency.
• For everyday wow: Enjoy new experiences, spread positivity, and regularly challenge yourself to “do what you love.”

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Closing Notes

Richard Fain’s new book, Delivering Wow, is out October 21, 2025. Joe and the team wrap up with signature banter, financial headlines, trivia, and community shoutouts, keeping the show both fun and functional for all listeners.

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Transcript

[Joe]

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[Richard Fain]

It's easy to grin when your ship comes in and you've got the stock market beat. The man worthwhile is the man who can smile when his shorts are too tight in the seat. Okay, Pookie, do the honors.

[Doug]

Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and let me be the first to welcome you to the good ship Better Money Habits.

[Joe]

Sure.

[Doug]

Instead of the lido deck, we have canned peaches and the hot water heater rattles so much it gives a great spa experience. But today we welcome a guy who knows how to deliver the wow and will teach you the same. He's the longtime chairman and former CEO of Royal Caribbean Group, Richard Fain. In our headline segment, what do advisors think about options? We'll share a recent piece on the topic along with a primer on how options work and whether you should think about using them yourself. And now, two guys who had an option to podcast today and grabbed it because they're excited about bringing the wow. It's Joe and. Oh, J.J. juja G.

[Joe]

Hey there Stackers. And Happy Wednesday to you. So glad you're here. Sit back and relax cuz you just Found your home. For the next hour, we're, we're going to have some fun as we, hopefully with the help of Richard Thane, we wow you. But the guy who wows us every day here in mom's basement, it's Mr. OG. How are you, brother?

[OG]

What's happening?

[Joe]

Doug thought so. Certainly we were coming to him.

[Doug]

I did like, what? He's going to say my name and.

[Joe]

Wait a minute. So, so. Oh, gee. Did he say primer? Did you say primer?

[OG]

Yeah, that's. That's not right, but okay.

[Doug]

No, Doug, I did say primer. That is how, like, if you have an introductory book in an educational setting, it's primer, not primer.

[Joe]

I. I don't know, Ochi. I think we're, we're off to a bad start today. We had a great start on Monday by getting you all riled up. But this whole primer thing, I don't think I'm down with that.

[OG]

I don't think it's right.

[Joe]

Okay. I don't know. But what I do know.

[Doug]

Talk your fancy financial stuff and I'll go look it up.

[Joe]

Here's what I do know. I do know that, you know, a lot of people talk about they don't like their job and they don't like the work that they do. Richard Fane is a guy who believes in community and collaboration and built a company that's known for wowing guests and customers and wowing even employees of the company. So we're going to talk to the longtime chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean. You know, there. There's a certain wow, no matter what industry you're in. OG I think that even in financial planning, the people think, okay, well, that's all about the numbers. There still has to be a little customer service aspect to it. There's got to be.

[OG]

Got to be some fun.

[Joe]

Yeah. I remember reading a book back in the 90s called all business is Show Business and talking about, you know, whether you drive a UPS truck, you're working on a line somewhere. There still is a. There's still a wow factor to working with your boss, working with a spouse, working with.

[OG]

It's like how Doug thinks. Every day we're like, wow.

[Sponsor Voice 2]

I'm.

[OG]

We're working with Doug. Wow. It's not the wow we're looking for, buddy.

[Joe]

It's weird how we'll put a different emphasis on the wow. Wow. So, wow.

[Richard Fain]

Wow.

[OG]

Can you believe Doug did that?

[Richard Fain]

Wow.

[Joe]

Richard Fain was for a long time the chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean Group, but today he's in Mom's basement talking about the wow. So before we get to Richard, we have a couple sponsors to make sure we can keep on keeping on. You're not going to pay anything for today's mentor or the rest of the show, so we're going to hear from them. And then coming down the stairs to Mom's basement, Richard Fang Thursday Night Football.

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[Joe]

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[Richard Fain]

I'm terrific. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[Joe]

Well, I'm super happy you'd come down to the basement and talk about wow because, hey, what's better than taking a cruise and getting some wow right in your life?

[Richard Fain]

Well, it's absolutely true, Joe. You know, the whole concept of delivering the wow, it's what we do, and the term came up by accident, but we really appreciated the fact that that is what our people do each and every day. It's big things, but it's small things. And altogether it gives people an amazing vacation.

[Joe]

When I think about wow, Richard, I think about two things. I think about good surprise, which is what you deliver. Surprise and delight. Right. Have delivered. But I also think about bad shocks, right? There's times that I go wow. And there's times that I go, oh, wow. Either one of us have both kinds of those, like the surprise bill that came up or a job change on the bad side or something unexp. When in your own life did wow go first from a reaction to something that you write about here, something you could create?

[Richard Fain]

Well, thank you for starting this with such a negative concept.

[Joe]

It's all uphill from here, but, you.

[Richard Fain]

Know, it's good because we do have to understand this is what life is all about. And our ability to handle, I would say woes rather than wows is just as important as our ability to do something special for good things. So I'm really happy you've raised that. And clearly the cruise industry has had a lot of things. We've had nine, 11. We've had Covid. We've had other bad things happen to us. One of the things that I talk about is how important the culture is to our ability to handle those and to take something which could be pretty, pretty negative and make it either hopefully much less negative or Even a positive. And I think if you create a culture where you're never going to accept that things can't be made better. And that's true. If they're good, they can be made better. And if they're bad, you want to make them less bad or even to turn it to good. So that's what culture is all about. And I've been blessed because the people at Royal Caribbean are just so obsessive about creating the wow in a good way, that that has made us been very successful.

[Joe]

But it doesn't happen on its own, Richard. I mean, you had to do a lot of stuff to create that culture. Certainly there was a culture when you first got there. It sounded to me like it was an unstable ship when you first got there. But how do you turn this, this, you know, laissez faire thing into intentional culture where we're building wow?

[Richard Fain]

Well, you're right. And I love the fact that you use the word intentional, because intentionality is a key part of it. So many people say, oh, yes, we have this great culture, as though this is something that just happens on its own. To get a culture that drives success, you really need to go at it with intentionality. You really need to say, I want our culture to be like this, and you need every day to keep working to make that happen. It didn't happen overnight, and it doesn't happen by accident. It happens by intentional, consistent, focused effort and. And focused effort, looking at a long term, because in the short term, you can't change a culture. Actually, I was fortunate that the culture that I inherited was actually a very strong one, and our focus has been on making it even better. Royal Caribbean was founded by Ed Stefan with a view to transforming cruises, and he was successful in that. And then we took that and we went one step further and said, we want to do more than just be a better cruise line. We want to be a really strong provider of vacations for the vacation market. The result has been that the company has gone from a market value of $550 million in 1988 to over $90 billion. $90 billion. That's with a B. It's hard to even say that today. And I really ascribe a lot of that success to the culture, the people that made that happen.

[Joe]

You mentioned in this work that a guy named Kenneth Tripp mentored you early on and really, I think, gave you real feeling for what culture could be. And most of our stackers, Richard, they don't have formal mentors, but they do have people Watching them. Right. Maybe kids, maybe co workers. What's one thing that you learned from Tripp that we can all apply to mentoring or being mentored in our everyday life to get more wow or develop wow and other people?

[Richard Fain]

Well, Ken was the head of the company and my previous employer, and he really did focus on the longer term. And I think that's something it's very hard to do in, especially in today's world. It was hard to do way back then. Today it's really difficult because the pressure is, what are you going to do about tomorrow? What have you done? For me lately, this is especially relevant to a cruise line because any decision we make, I never made a decision that had any impact on the next 12 or 24 months. You know, we want to build a new ship that takes five years. We want to create a new island destination, it takes seven years. Everything we do is so much in the future. He was one of the early ones that really focused on what are we doing long term, what's our goal, what's our North Star?

[Joe]

Well, and I love that because of the fact that, you know, I think about Richard in my own life, or even the stackers that listen to this. Like, you know, you're looking at, what am I going to have for dinner next Wednesday or. Or what's this next project that I'm working on, Right? You have this early thing, early decision in your book. Well, in. In your career where you have to make a decision. Royal Caribbean at that point has three ships. They are not very large. And the head of Royal Caribbean comes to you and I think, Kenneth, and says, hey, I want to cut this ship in half.

[Richard Fain]

Which.

[Joe]

Which, by the way, I never knew this could be a thing. I don't know if you did, but I didn't think this could be.

[Doug]

They.

[Joe]

I want to cut it in half. I want to put a new middle in it. And then we want to kind of fuse it together and make it bigger, which is crazy. But at the time, I felt like Royal Caribbean's dealing with the same thing that our stackers are dealing with in their everyday life. I don't know if I can go without income from this ship for the next few months. You know, this might be the same thing, guys, in your life as a stacker of deciding to go back to college for six months or take some training classes or whatever. I'm going to pay for this thing. I'm not going to make any money during that time. That's the short term. But Kenneth, like you said, said, let's think long term. How difficult was that to make this long term decision and forego this short term, you know, cash cow you had going on?

[Richard Fain]

Well, Joe, I think you've said it very well. The temptation to just say, look, we have this cash cow. It's generating money every year. Why, why mess with success? If it's not broken, why fix it? It is interesting. You talk about it as a small ship. At the time, that 720 passenger ship seemed like it was an enormous vessel and to go to a thousand passengers seemed almost unbelievable. So the first issue, I mean just the shock of the idea that you can cut a ship in half and make it bigger was mind boggling. Frankly, it was mind boggling back then. It's still mind boggling. I don't know how they.

[Joe]

Had you heard of that before, Richard?

[Richard Fain]

Oh, absolutely not. But it was so successful, we ended up doing it three times with three different ships. So it clearly worked. The guests liked it, it made more money. But it did mean making that short term sacrifice. And that was painful, painful for a while. You had to keep in mind where you were going. Because we could have carried on, but if we had, we would have been, we wouldn't have had gone through that short term pain, but at the end we'd be eh, eh, we're another, another cruise line, maybe a slightly better cruise line, but nothing really changed. If you want to really change things, you have to accept change and you have to do that with intentionality. You also have to make sure that everybody is along for the ride, that it's not something you're imposing on people, that people understand why they're involved in the decision. They may not get the final say, but they need to be involved in that decision. And that's the culture that drives innovation. That's the culture that drives success.

[Joe]

I love how you painted that picture, Richard, because the feeling I got was there was this inflection point where we can be small and unique, which is pretty badass. We could be big and bold, which is the way you decided. But the way you were headed was middle and mediocre. No, nobody on earth wants middle and mediocre.

[Richard Fain]

Well, it would have been fine. I mean, we would have been an even more successful cruise line. We would have been fine. But fine in our vocabulary is not a compliment. And if you're going to really move forward, you have to have transformational ideas. And the result has been we've gone from being an excellent small cruise line to today. And we, we, as I said, our goal, our North Star was not to be a cruise line, but to be a vacation provider. And today we are larger than any hotel chain. We're larger than any airline, we're larger than any travel provider you can think of. And it's all because we said, oh, what's our focus is long term, not short term. And our focus is to have a culture that, that drives long term transformation.

[Joe]

What's powerful to me though, Richard, as you say, that is and striking to me is that as a passion project on the side, a friend and I have a travel podcast. It's not big. We don't market it. It is just ply. A passion project. I don't know Royal Caribbean that way. I know, I don't know. Royal Caribbean is huge and the biggest. I know them as good at what they do. Like, that's the reputation. Not big. So to be able to fuse those two things together is pretty powerful.

[Richard Fain]

Yes. But if you're good, you get bigger because people want to go. And that was it. It's not science for its own sake. It's quality for its own sake. It's excellence. It's excellence in all we do and excellence in innovation drives growth and success. And that's what I think we're all looking to achieve.

[Joe]

That's striking. New podcasters often ask me, how do I grow my audience? And my answer always is, have a better podcast. Right? I mean, it's the same. It's the same. Same exact thing.

[Richard Fain]

It's exactly the same thing. How do we grow a cruise line? We have better ships, better crew, better operations, a better experience, and the growth comes.

[Joe]

You were asked to lead a steering committee to do at that time, which was the next big piece of magic at Royal Caribbean to build an even bigger vessel. Right. You get all these smart people in a room, Richard, that you have to lead. I love this idea of kind of a board of directors, a steering committee. I think we all need that in our life. We need to be the dumbest person in the room. Right? But these people often disagree. How do you manage having these smart people with valid opinions disagree on where the company's headed?

[Richard Fain]

I think you really put your finger on something because we really value passion. We really do value where people care about stuff. The corollary to that is sometimes they care too much and they say, I'm really passionate about this. It really has to be this way. I think what we found is this is an important part of our culture, is that we talk these things through. Everybody plays devil with advocate. Everybody gets to weigh in on the subject. So there's really good input into it. And then again, leadership does have to come to the fore. And leadership has to make an ultimate decision. And a key to our success, I think, is also that we don't simply make compromises. We don't try and please everybody. We look at it, we get everybody input, and then having everybody's input, we make a decision. And the culture is such that people trust that decision. One of the key metrics that we look at is how do our people trust their bosses? If you trust that your point of view has been considered and thought through and the organization is going a different way, you say, okay, that's where we're going. And we all understand that. Just like on a crew boat, I may think that a longer stroke is better for me, but if I'm doing a long stroke and you're doing a short stroke, this skull isn't going very far. So the coxswain has to decide how frequently we should be pulling, and we have to follow. And that's the same thing in business. We can discuss later on whether we should have a longer stroke or a shorter stroke, but when we're doing it, everybody has to pull in the same direction. And fortunately, that's part of our culture.

[Joe]

Is there a technique, Richard, that a good leader will use to make sure that everybody's pulling the right direction? Let's say I've got a talented person and they want to do things differently. It's easy to have hurt feelings, right? I had a friend one time early in my career when I was at American Express, who said, joe, you need to put a little velvet on your hammer, right? Because I had a pretty strong hammer, Richard. But how do you do that where you're not acquiescing and trying to please everybody, but you're keeping the talent on board when they still might disagree?

[Richard Fain]

Well, it's always a challenge. And, you know, I think actually a key point, and you touched on it, a key point is, this isn't a cookbook. This isn't. Here's the trick of. You say things to people in exactly this way, and you effectively trick them into going along with you. No, you make them feel valued. You make sure, because they are valued, you want that input, and you do look at that input, but then you have to look at it all together, because if we're not aligned, we're not going to achieve our goal. And we do it by example. So it isn't so much that we're. And I'll give you an example of how we've done that. For example, at one point we were considering what became an ice skating rink on board the ships. Most of the people looked at it and said, well, an ice skating rink is pretty far out there, people will like it. But it's a horrific technical challenge and it's ridiculously expensive. So we'll sort of make a compromise and use artificial ice, which is essentially Teflon. And you can skate on those artificial ice, but you don't get that magic, you don't get that frictionless, smooth, graceful skating that you see on real ice. And so we made the decision, no, either we're going to do this right or we're not going to do it. Either we're going to do this with real ice that real skaters will say is the white thing, or we'll do something else. Once we made that decision, everybody came on board and everybody said, well, I hope this works, but this is what we're doing. And the imagination that went into making overcoming the technical challenges and frankly overcoming the financial challenges was terrific. When it was done, people were blown away. I mean, who puts an ice skating rink on a cruise ship? It epitomizes what's different about Royal Caribbean. And it was so successful that we are now, I believe, the largest employer of figure skaters in America. So how do you convince people? Well, you do it by example. You don't do it by using a hammer.

[Joe]

How fun is that, by the way, Doing something people say you can't do. You can't put a skating rink, Richard, in a cruise ship. Are you crazy?

[Richard Fain]

Who gets to do the kinds of things? I've had the best job in the world. Who gets to play? You know, I like toys as much as the next person, but my toys cost $2 billion. I mean, who gets to do stuff like that? And one of the beauties of dealing with billion dollar kind of assets is that you can attract the best talent, because everybody wants to participate in that. And once you establish a reputation that you're willing to try weird and wonderful things, we are able to attract terrific talent that can help us overcome the technical challenges, the financial challenges. We found a way to do it less in a call as costly way. So success breeds success.

[Joe]

Yeah, that's what I was gonna. I wanted to pause there for a second, Richard, for our stackers to make sure they hear that, that you might not get the best talent right away. But certainly as you build this reputation for being consistent and consistently good and looking for the best and, and creating a great product, talent wants to work with you.

[Richard Fain]

And talent is our key. So the success also helped us attract the best people. And the truth is it's the people. It's the people. It's the people. It's the people and the people create the culture. It's not a question of a few tricks or seven principles of successful business people. It is a consistency alignment all towards a given North Star. And it really does work. You see it all the time.

[Joe]

You do have a magical way of approaching this though, Richard, that you bring up that I thought was brilliant. We often surround ourselves with people that think like us. You have a contrary opinion to that. You call it, I think, cross fertilization. Can you talk for a second about this idea of cross fertilization?

[Richard Fain]

Actually, that's been a very important benefit to Royal Caribbean and I think it somewhat reflects my own career. I started out in a fairly narrow field of finance and found that that really gave me entree to other areas and that made my life more interesting, but also meant I could be a better contributor. We've always said we want people not to go purely in a vertical way, not to. I go from this job and I get a promotion and I now become my ex position's boss and I keep moving up the track, but I go to different things. And so you look at any of our people and you see that they have almost all been involved with other things. So Bert Hernandez, who runs now Silver Seas, he started in finance in the planning department and then he went over to an operations role. Then he became in charge of investor relations. And so one of the interesting things in that case was he went from managing a department of a whole bunch of people and everybody wants to manage a lot more people. And he went to investor relations, which is a two person department, and he went to China, of all places and started operating the operation China. That's just one example. Laura Hodges, who runs the Celebrity brand, actually started as our accessibility expert. And so everybody goes from one area to another and the moves aren't always vertical, they're sometimes horizontal, they're lateral moves. Then when we get in a room and somebody starts to say to me, well, in my area, this is the way we do it. And I'm able to say, I sat in your seat, I know what that is. Don't tell me that this is how we can do it. And you can actually have a dialogue instead of each silo saying, this is my responsibility and don't bother me.

[Joe]

It's funny how successful people often, you know, if one person says something Richard, as you know, it is their thing, and it might have been great for them, but when you hear several successful people say things, it truly is, I think, maybe a truism in life. And. And Oscar Munoz, the. The former CEO of United, said something similar. His success in his career was starting out in finance, much like yourself, but then working as an engineer and going back to school and becoming an engineer. Now he could see both parts and then working in human resources for a while. And by the time he got to Frito Lay, I believe he had all these different ways of looking at a problem and was able to be a better listener because he'd seen all these different areas of the cube.

[Richard Fain]

And by the way, I'm sorry, Joe, if I could just make one more thing.

[Joe]

Sure.

[Richard Fain]

Frankly, your life gets better. It's more interesting if you spent time doing human resources and investor relations and gone to China, and now you're in culinary, and next week you're in marketing. It's life's more interesting. And. And don't we all want to have fun?

[Joe]

It's like a science experiment instead of a drudge. Right. You know, often our stackers look at things. They look at retirement planning. They look at the next house that they're going to buy. Whatever it is of what is that going to cost? One thing I noticed in this project, when you're trying to deliver, wow, you don't start. Don't get me wrong, finance is everything, right? Can we afford it? I think is really important. But you begin with, what will it deliver? And then, can I afford the cost? I would love for you to talk about that. How do we flip that? How did you flip that? Because that, I think, is a big part of your culture, too. How do we deliver in then? How do we make the necessary cuts to the budget to make it work?

[Richard Fain]

Well, the irony is the whole concept of continuous improvement applies not only to make things sexier, but also to make things more efficient. And so even though we work hard to provide absolutely the best possible service, the best possible product, our costs are at the best level in our industry. We are in the top rank of cost. And the reason is we put just as much focus on being more efficient. For example, we've just been working on our project to win on waste. Well, we spend a lot of money on food. We serve 700,000 meals a day, so we certainly spend a whole lot of money on food. And a lot of that food gets wasted. People take more, they have a larger more on their plate. They don't eat it All. So we started a project a number of years ago called Win on Waste. And we used AI and other materials to figure out how to be more efficient with our food budget. This was not only for money purposes, but this is also environmentally to be more sound. And it's been hugely successful. What we find is, if you're clear on what your objective is, you're clear on that. North Star, the people that we have who are just awesome. Did I mention the people are awesome?

[Joe]

I've never heard that from you. These people, you might have insinuated it once.

[Richard Fain]

And they care. They care. And if they care, they make it happen. So the result is, yes, we are absolutely obsessive about providing the best vacation, but we're equally obsessive about doing it in a way that makes our vacations affordable. And we've been successful at both.

[Joe]

You've delivered so many wow moments over the decades, and I'm wondering if there's one wow moment that makes you grin more than any other wow. You've been able to deliver for your customers.

[Richard Fain]

Yes, but it's not for our customers. If I have to sue one moment. And by the way, it's been 30 odd years of just everything's been wonderful. But if I have to say one moment. It was probably in the middle of 2021 when we restarted operations after Covid, and we'd gone 18 months with our ships idle with no revenue, our crew at home finally desperate for us and for them to get back operating. And we were the first cruise ship back in the United States to be operating. And the very first ship was Celebrity Edge. I went to the vessel that morning. The plan was I would enter through the crew gangway because of course, the main entrance is not open. We're not taking guests at that point. We're just getting ready for it. And I enter through the gangway and the plan is I'm going to go across from the crew gangway to the elevator lift lobby, which is maybe 30, 40ft away, and then meet all the officers up in the plaza. And that plan lasted about 10 seconds till I saw the first crew member. In the end, it took over an hour and a half to go from the shell door to the elevator lobby. It was packed with crew members who were back from vacation. Not vacation. Yeah, back from. That's a terrible word. It was packed with crew members who had gone through the trauma of the last 18 months. We had all gone through the trauma of the 18 months. Everybody had a story, everybody had tears, everybody had a camera, and we Took an awful lot of selfies that literally an hour and a half to get however long from the doorway to the elevator was mind blowing. And, you know, there was a lot of things. These people had gone through hell. We had all gone through hell. And you could see why this could be just a time for expressing bitterness. And it wasn't. They were joyous, they were happy. They were just everybody and they were grateful. I mean, it was just an awesome experience. And one person said to me, you know, these guests who are coming on in a day or so, these guests are going to have the best vacation any guests have ever had. It was just so an emotional time. And by the way, yes, the guests ended up benefiting from that because these people came absolutely determined to provide that. To provide that. Wow. It just thrilling.

[Joe]

It's fabulous when we were able to get back together. And the fact that not only are you getting back together, but in the service of others is so just. I can feel the magic. And I wasn't even there.

[Richard Fain]

Oh, it was. Yeah.

[Joe]

Last question for me, Richard. If somebody listening wants to just start bringing more wow into that everyday life that our average stacker has, family, work, money, where's the bedrock place that they start?

[Richard Fain]

Oh, I wish I knew. I've been doing this for a long time and I don't know the. The. And there's not one answer. I think the answer is love what you do. Do what you love and have a goal. Have a goal that you can reach, not that you can achieve, but I keep using the term North Star. We navigate by the North Star. Nobody expects us to reach the North Star. I don't know how many light years away it is, but the North Star is absolutely critical in navigating a ship. And having a North Star that takes you there is just as essential in family life. I have been blessed. My first mentor, I actually met in college and I married her. And we've had four terrific children and eight extraordinary grandchildren. And we've just had always been. Because we've lived life to the fullest and we've taken advantage of it and we've been appreciative of all that we've had.

[Joe]

Richard, thank you so much for mentoring our stackers today. I appreciate it so much. Richard's new book is called Delivering Wow. It comes out on October 21st. But good news, you can pre order it now. You heard a couple stories here today, stackers. There's about 90 more phenomenal stories that we couldn't get to, but it's available everywhere. Richard.

[Richard Fain]

Yes. It is. And thank you, Joe. I've been so incredibly fortunate to have this career and I would thank, I hope they're all cruising. And by the way, not only should they buy the book, their lives will be better when they take a cruise too, if they haven't already.

[Joe]

Spoken like a guy who loves what he does. By the way, one question that shocked me, I know I said we were done. It took you a while to take.

[Richard Fain]

A cruise, Mr. Well, it did, and I didn't intend to. I didn't think cruising was for people like me. I was, I was so arrogant. Oh, I'm too sophisticated, I'm too special. And Ed Stefan who founded the company said, Richard, this is nonsense. You don't know what you're talking about. You've never taken a cruise. So we did it, My wife and I did it and it was eye opening. It really made us appreciate how special cruising is and why it's for everyone you can think of.

[Joe]

We did a case study a long time ago, back when I was with American Express. So this was maybe 20 years ago, Richard. I believe the number was 92% of people that took a cruise at that time took a second one. So the goal with your marketing wasn't to convince the people to come back just getting on the cruise ship, they came back. The goal is in your marketing back then at least was to just get them to try it once. Is that still the case today? Are those statistics similar?

[Richard Fain]

Well, I don't know the current statistic on that because it is different ways to look at it. But we do find that once somebody has taken a cruise, we own them. People who've taken a cruise come back, they don't just have a great vacation, they become obnoxious about it, they become ours. You know, I hate the guy because they won't, it won't shut up how great my vacation was. That's actually how we, we are successful. And so people who do our satisfaction, I mean chocolate doesn't have the level of satisfaction that we do. So yes, I think if we get somebody to cruise with us, they will come back.

[Doug]

Hey there, stackers. I'm Joe's mind neighbor, Duncan. How about Richard Fain and the Pursuit of Wow, huh? I'm inspired. You know, this got me thinking while on Monday we focused on some gruesome October worthy trivia today. Yeah, we did, we did one of my favorites of the year. But today we'll wow you by enlightening you with a heartwarming tale from the life of a man who had a much happier ending. Abraham Lincoln.

[Joe]

Nope, that's not a thing.

[Doug]

All right, well, Lincoln early in his career on today's date back in 1860, the future president received a well publicized letter from an 11 year old girl asking him to do one thing that he said would be silly to do. But then he he later did. I'll be back right after I go check and see if Richard would care for some of Cho's mom's brownies. Wow. Starts right now here in the basement.

[Joe]

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[Doug]

Hey there, stackers. I'm history lover and guy who loves a good play, Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. Too soon. On today's date, back in 1860, Abraham Lincoln, future president of the nation, received a letter from an 11 year old girl encouraging him to do what? Which Lincoln said he would not do. I think literally what he said was, I am not down with that.

[OG]

She told me he said, homie, don't play that.

[Doug]

Homie don't play that. That's right.

[Joe]

Check the audio tape. I'm sure it's on the audio tape. Check the YouTube of the moment.

[Doug]

What did she tell him to do? She told him he should grow a beard. And now back to the bearded guy and his co host, Joe and OG.

[Joe]

Hi, it's Chuck Jaffe. And every day while I'm living the money life, I'm also stacking Benjamin's huge. Thanks to Richard Fain for stopping by. You know Doug, though, the whole time I'm talking to Richard, you're like waving your arms over his head. I'm trying to have a great conversation about wow. And certainly Royal Caribbean is known for bringing the wow.

[OG]

Doug's all like, man overboard. Man overboard.

[Doug]

Life thrill.

[Joe]

He wants to go all the way back to the beginning of the show and this pronunciation guide for primer.

[Doug]

No, not for primer. For primer. Well, here's the thing. I looked it up just because I was pretty sure I knew this, but I had to look it up because if you don't, OG is all over you and then he just lords it over you for weeks after that. So here's the thing. The word that is spelled P R I M E R can be pronounced two ways. With a short. I like primer when referring to an introductory book or topic. With a long or with a long. I like primer when referring to a base coat of paint or an explosive device.

[Joe]

We're talking about paint, not talk about.

[Doug]

Explosive device or an explosive device.

[OG]

We were going to put an initial coat of paint on this topic. Like Monday's show was an initial coat of paint. And now is the second coat of paint.

[Doug]

Weak sauce. That is weak sauce right there.

[Joe]

There it is.

[OG]

Did you guys talk to each other ahead of time and make sure that your plaids matched?

[Doug]

I think my plaid's like the inverse of Joe's plaid.

[OG]

That is peak boomerism right there.

[Joe]

Let's do a headline.

[Richard Fain]

Hello, darlings.

[OG]

And now it's time for your favorite part of the show, our stacking Benjamin's headlines.

[Joe]

Our headline today comes to us from CNN, a new rule means some 401k contributions will be no longer tax deferred. Here's who's going to be affected. This is written by Gene Sahati. A new rule is going into effect next year. Gene writes that will affect high earners who make quote catch up contributions in their 401k. And no, we're not talking about ketchup like the thing that Doug smothers all over his hot dogs. We're talking about in catch up, like getting caught up in your 401k. First of all, before we get into the rule change, OG let's talk first about what the heck is this ketchup contribution thing?

[OG]

Well, it's precisely the opposite of the mustard contribution.

[Joe]

And there we go. No, how does the mustard contribution work?

[OG]

Well, the mustard contribution is your normal contribution of the 23,500. That's what we call, we call that the mustard contribution.

[Joe]

That's what most people put out.

[OG]

The way it's supposed to be.

[Joe]

Yeah, yeah, the way it's supposed to.

[Doug]

Be on hot dogs.

[OG]

And then you get a little sporty and if you're old like these guys, then you can put a little extra into your 401k. And they call it a catch up contribution as in K E T C H U P ketchup contribution. And that is $7,500. So you can get to $31,000 this year of total contributions if you're over the age of 50. Once you get to 60, you get a super mega catch up. But we're talking about the catch up from 50 to 60, the extra $7,500 and the rule change that takes effect next year for people that are super rich, all those people that make over $145,000, you guys are mega hella rich. And so there's a new rule that takes effect for you guys.

[Joe]

Yeah, Currently if you're over age 50, max out your 401k, you can make this catch up contribution like you said. Of course those are adjusted every year for inflation. The numbers that you just said, OG so if you're listening to this in 2026 numbers may be a little different but increased by 500 bucks starting next year. Oh gee said it. You make more than 145,000 in FICO.

[OG]

Wages if you're ultra wealthy. That's what this is for. This is for the ultra wealthy people who are making these contributions. Everyone above 145,000. So go ahead.

[Joe]

Any so called catch up contributions automatically are going to be Subject to income tax. In other words, they're going to be treated like Roth 401k contributions.

[OG]

Yeah, they're Roth contributions. And so how this all went down was this, this is part of the cost justification. There's a word for it in Congress and I can't remember the name of it now, where they have to, if they take something out of the tax law and say, hey, we gave you this credit, they have to offset it with some sort of other nominal increase to kind of make that tax neutral for that tax period. And so one of the ways to do that was to say, well, these contributions that super, super duper rich people make, they can pay taxes on that today. And so now you don't get a tax deduction on the 7500. You can't do those contributions pre tax. They're going to be Roth contributions instead, which frankly is probably a good idea if you're going to be doing the contributions anyway. Let's say that you're 50 and you can do this for the next 10 years. You know, that's another 75, 80, $85,000 depending how the inflation numbers work out over the next 10 years. That is on top of any other Roth contributions that you can do. And just saying that that 80,000, let's say that that works out to be 100k after it grows, that's 200 when you're 70, that's 400 when you're 80. That's some pretty nice tax free bucket. You know, 70 to 80 is to be able to utilize in the future. And there's no required minimum distributions with that, so that's beneficial too. So I actually think this is a good idea for most people. If you've been doing the catch up contributions and they've all been pre tax, then you're gonna have a little higher tax bill, you know, call it two grand. But in the long run I think this works out for everybody.

[Joe]

I think that's the bigger thing is just to note it that now you're gonna owe two grand. I would keep making the catch up contributions.

[OG]

100.

[Joe]

I wouldn't change the plan at all.

[OG]

Because you're super rich. Because you make 145,000.

[Joe]

Might change your after tax income. So if you're spending every dollar of your after tax income, which you clearly wouldn't be because you're super rich, super rich, then so much extra, then your paycheck's gonna look a little different next year than it does this year because they're gonna take the tax I Mean.

[OG]

The total is gonna be like 75 difference. If you get paid twice a month, you're gonna notice 75 bucks a take home per paycheck less. So hopefully not too, not a big deal. I mean it's not zero. Right, I get it. 75 bucks is not zero. But, but before you go and change your catch up contribution to like 5,500 instead, you know, to kind of offset the cash flow impact, see if you can make it work. Like I get that some people are going to be trying to stuff every, every dollar they can and, and it's right at the limit of cash flow. But see if you can make that 75 bucks a paycheck work that'll help you in the long run.

[Joe]

A position og that you and I have really I think we think of as foundational for our stackers, you know, as you're just starting to build that foundation on your stack of cash, is to think about tax flexibility. And man, if you've had everything going pre tax just to have some money that is flex it, it's not going to be a bad thing. It's not going to be a bad thing to have some money that is being taxed now because A, we don't know how tax rates are going to go in the future and B, I think this will let you maybe do some things down the road with tax brackets that you might not have thought you were able to do.

[OG]

Yeah, I mean if you've got a bucket of tax free money that you can draw from to fill up your spending without having to go in the next tax bracket or allow you to do conversions in a year because you have zero taxable income for a year or something like that, that'll pay dividends down the line. And it's not so much about like trying to exactly optimize what the tax rates are in any particular year because frankly we don't know what they're going to be in 2027 or 2028 or whatever we can guess and we can say based on the trajectory of the spending and so on and so forth is what we think might happen. But the biggest piece is if you've got the flexibility of somebody that's going to be fully taxable, somebody that's partially taxable and somebody that's 100% tax free, you can design that year an income stream that optimizes from each one that particular year. So if you're 50 right now and you're going this sucks, I'm going to lose 2000 bucks a tax you know I'm paying extra $2000 in taxes with this tax change. Yeah, you are. But I think in like I said, when you're 70 or when you're 75 and you have to start taking RMDs and this tax free account is now worth 250, $300,000, this will provide you with that flexibility to say, oh well, I can only have to take a little bit out of my IRA and therefore my Social Security is taxed differently or my Medicare premiums are more affordable and I can supplement my income with this little bit of distribution for my tax free bucket or a little bit of distribution for my brokerage. So flexibility is, is the key here.

[Joe]

If you're somebody who's just catching up on all of this stuff mustarding and you might not even know that at 75 you're gonna have to start taking money out. But from your pre tax plans you will have to. The government's gonna come and knock in and they're gonna make sure that they finally get their money. You know what? For 93 of our stacker audience, they're technically 93. Well it is exactly 93. You know how I know? Because a stacker audience reflects the the populace and the vast majority of workplace retirement plans. Gene Wright 93% offer employees the option of creating a Roth 401K. And this is according to the plan sponsor Council of America. But Gene writes if your plan doesn't, you're going to no longer be permitted to make catch up contributions after age 50. If you're in that bucket, you're the 70, you're the 7% of people, they can't do this. OG what do you do then?

[OG]

You go to HR and you go, what are you knuckleheads doing? Flip the switch to let us do this.

[Joe]

I can't figure out why they wouldn't have the Roth 401K.

[OG]

It's that simple. Flip the switch.

[Joe]

But if HR says like a lot of businesses, oh yeah, we'll consider that, like ask your mom, you know, or we'll consider it, which always meant no when you ask your mom stuff.

[OG]

But if they don't, then you do it the next day and the next day and the next day.

[Joe]

I think during that time though, you.

[OG]

Stop, we'll do it, we'll just flip the switch and be done there.

[Joe]

I think you take 15 minutes and you set this up on your own. I mean I think you set up, set up, just save into a non IRA brokerage. Just set up, set up just a savings into a brokerage account to still catch up. I mean, I think we worry a lot about the retirement plans and about the ability to put money into a tax shelter. But still, putting money into just a mutual fund or into an exchange traded fund is more money than you had yesterday. So let's still keep the saving going.

[OG]

I'll also add, because I was thinking about this, not that I am anywhere near old enough to do it, but for those people that are, you're just killing it.

[Doug]

You're like six months away, dude.

[OG]

Well, it's not. It's like a year and six months.

[Joe]

But big difference, Doug.

[OG]

A very long time, but huge difference. But what I was going to say is you don't have to wait just as a note. Bene. How's that, Doug?

[Doug]

Oh, that's, that's pretty good.

[OG]

Okay.

[Richard Fain]

All right.

[Doug]

Give you.

[OG]

Checking my Latin if it's still active. Just a little note at the end here. If you are turning 50 at the end of a year, right? So my birthday is the last 11 days of the calendar year. You don't have to wait until you turn 50 to take advantage of this. So if you look and you say, well, my birthday is Christmas. I can't. There's no way I can stuff 7500 bucks in my 401k in the last 10 days of the year. That doesn't work. It's the year in which you turn 50. So I'm starting to think about it. Although I do have a solid year to go in 2027 because my 50th birthday will be at the back end of the year. I can start planning for that in January of 2027 and say I'm going to do the. If I want to do the catch up based on Today's numbers, that's 31,000. I can spread that out over the whole 12 months. You don't have to try to try to jam it all in at the last half of your birthday's late. So anyway, just thought I'd put that in there.

[Joe]

We dive in deeper into topics like this in our newsletter, the 201, which is free and comes out every week. Stacking Benjamins.com 201 gets you to that. And of course we'll have a link to this piece and related pieces on our show notes page for today@stacking benjamins.com that brings us to our wonderful community and what's going on with you. And we've had a lot going on in the community, Doug.

[Doug]

I like going out on the back porch you know, when you're in a neighborhood, people are usually like yelling across the fences, across the backyards, like, hey, turn your TV down. Well, we kind of the same thing with our Facebook group, the Basement. And there were a couple of things that caught my eye recently. You know, I think it's maybe once a week Gertrude will ask everybody to just post what they've been up to. What are they doing? And one of these caught my eye. Stacker, Shauna said. And this she considered an achievement. I think I would too, because she said I operated on a dear friend's mother in law.

[OG]

Wow.

[Doug]

A huge honor and compliment that I was asked to care for her during a vulnerable period in life.

[Joe]

No stress or pressure there.

[Doug]

How?

[Richard Fain]

Right?

[Doug]

Like, oh, I read a book. I weeded my garden. Oh, you know what I did? I performed surgery. That's impressive.

[Joe]

It just kind of reminds me of this moment. One of our favorite comedians, Brian Regan, references.

[Comedian/Brian Regan]

Why do people need to top other people? I've never understood it and I see it all the time. I obviously people get something out of it. At best, people wait for your lips to stop. Yeah.

[Joe]

Okay.

[Comedian/Brian Regan]

Yeah.

[OG]

You, me, you, me. You see the difference?

[Comedian/Brian Regan]

You see that now I do. What is it about the human condition? People get something out of that. That's why I have a social fantasy. I wish I was One of the 12 astronauts who have been on our moon. They must love knowing they can beat anybody's story whenever they want. They can sit back quietly at a dinner party while some other person, some me monster's doing his thing and let him go. Let him run with the line while you be quiet. Let him have his moment.

[Joe]

Yeah.

[Comedian/Brian Regan]

I'm a big traveler. I have my business. I got my own global enterprise.

[Joe]

I got to check on, you know.

[Comedian/Brian Regan]

Driving in the Autobahn because I keep a fleet of sports cars over in Zurich.

[Doug]

You know, get a Swiss account that.

[Richard Fain]

I want to check.

[Comedian/Brian Regan]

Mount Kilimanjaro expedition. Might have to cancel that. You know, Runway is an aspirin. A lot shorter the first time you go in there. You know, the Pacific Rim company going to try to take that over global enterprise. I walked on the moon.

[Joe]

Winner every time. Every single time.

[Doug]

Yeah. Coming over the top here. I don't know what's a bigger. Like, Shauna walked in the room on Gertrude's post and she's like, oh, I can dunk on all these people.

[Joe]

Yeah.

[Doug]

But then Jonathan chimed in because they had a baby.

[Richard Fain]

Oh, see?

[Doug]

So we have a news stacker that's incredible. I mean, that's that's going toe to toe with Shauna. Like, I'll see your operation and I'm bringing new life right into the world.

[Joe]

And a lot less stress making the baby as well.

[Doug]

Well, just that part.

[Joe]

But the stress comes later, Jonathan. Yeah, but congratulations on the new stacker in the family. That's awesome.

[Doug]

The great thing is Now Jonathan has 23 hours a day to listen to our whole back catalog because he ain't sleeping anytime.

[Richard Fain]

No.

[Joe]

Put those headphones in so you don't hear the crying now, Jonathan. And we got you covered. Just go back to the 2016 episodes and start there. And you're good. By the way, Doug, we've got one more, which is we had a very important day here in mom's basement yesterday, but we didn't record yesterday, so I think we have to. Oh, gee. Going to do the Marilyn Monroe impression?

[OG]

Yes, please. I. I was going to get up the little to like.

[Doug]

Are you going to let your skirt blow up in the wind? Is that what's about to happen?

[OG]

Happy birthday to.

[Joe]

Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to Dougie.

[Doug]

Why is he making that awkward face?

[OG]

Happy birthday to you.

[Doug]

It started out so nice and now.

[Joe]

And many more.

[Doug]

Thanks, boys.

[OG]

How old are you?

[Joe]

Oh, God, not that. Will you burn the house down?

[OG]

You just have to use the numbers, not the actual number of candles.

[Joe]

Because I feel bad because it's his day and now we're going to delegate to him. Like, what's the big takeaway today, Doug, Besides the fact that it's the day after your birthday?

[Doug]

All right, Joe. I don't know. Let's see if I can just fall on my face on this one. First, take some advice from today's headline gold. No, thanks. Diversification?

[Joe]

Yes, please.

[Doug]

Second, winning the lottery or trying to control volatility? Annuities can be an answer, but watch out for who's peddling them. But the big lesson, maybe run your can't lose trivia ideas by your boss before going live with them on air. Now I gotta go down the hall and see Gertrude and HR again. This show is the property of SB Podcasts, LLC, Copyright 2025, and is created by Josal Sehi. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You'll find out about our awesome [e-mail] along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh, yeah. And before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And we'll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin show.

[Joe]

Og, you and I both saw movies. What do you got, man?

[OG]

Oh, yeah, sure. Let me pull this up. This is a Apple movie.

[Joe]

Johnny Appleseed. It was about apples.

[OG]

Was not about apples. It was on Apple tv. Let me get it here. And I'm gonna crank it up the volume. And here you go. Here's the trailer.

[Sponsor Voice]

It's another dry and windy day in paradise.

[Joe]

Thanks to all drivers. There's a situation developing at Ponderosa elementary. There are 223 kids who are stranded. Is there anybody in the area that can pick them up? Is there anybody that can go and pick these kids up?

[Doug]

963 the base.

[Richard Fain]

I can get them.

[OG]

Oh, it's just another brush fire.

[Richard Fain]

Nothing new. Hi. Hi.

[Joe]

I'm Mary.

[Richard Fain]

Kevin.

[OG]

Kids, this is our bus driver.

[Doug]

Kevin.

[OG]

I don't think you understand the urgency of our situation here.

[Richard Fain]

Quietly, calmly, one single line.

[OG]

Do you know the bus are going to be there?

[Richard Fain]

It's going to take 10 minutes.

[OG]

Do you have any safety protocols on this bus?

[Richard Fain]

Yep. You got that? Great.

[OG]

Yeah, that'll make all the difference. Guys figured out what this is yet?

[Richard Fain]

No.

[Joe]

The kid's trying to make it through out of a fire zone where fires and. And I bet the bus driver is evil. 6:30am this morning, a fire entered the town of Paradise.

[OG]

Where do you need to get to? So this is the story of the paradise fire. In California several years ago, there was a school full of kids that their parents hadn't come to get them yet. The emergency system, the notification to evacuate didn't go out correctly. And so not all the parents got it or they worked out of town or whatever. So finally this bus driver was like, fine, I'll do it. I don't want to. He had other stuff on his mind. He's got a lot of family issues. I don't know how much of that is real.

[Doug]

I feel like saving children's lives today.

[OG]

But he goes and gets the bus full of kids and it's just basically, how do we escape? As this fire is closing in around us and people are catching themselves on fire and cars are burning and. And all that sort of stuff. It was pretty crazy. And I thought I didn't have the emotion tied up and like, I wonder if they're gonna make it because I was like, oh, they're I'm sure it's a busload of kids. Of course they're gonna make it.

[Doug]

We would have heard about it.

[OG]

There was no energy around that. But then I remember thinking there was a movie some time ago about the hot shots, the firefighters who go up into the mountains and. And fight all these wildfires. And at the end of that, a whole bunch of people died. And you're like, oh, snap, I didn't make it out. You know, it was not like how you expected it to end. Josh Brolin was in that movie. And so then for a second, I was like, well, maybe they do all day. But I figured we would heard about it appears to be a true story, or at least largely based on a true story, because at the end, they kind of have a little note of like, Kevin does this now and Mary does this now and whatever. But not a huge emotional roller coaster. Not too much of like, you know, there's. There's some scenes that you're like, boy, I bet that really sucked. You know, as they're sitting on the bus on the side of a cliff with fire in all directions going, you know, so I can get behind watching it. I wouldn't put it top of your list.

[Richard Fain]

No.

[OG]

Matthew McConaughey is the bus driver.

[Richard Fain]

Oh.

[OG]

And America Ferrara is the lead actor. Wow. So, yeah, it's a bunch of big names, high people, names in the directors and producers and all that sort of stuff. People you'd all recognize. They didn't talk too much about PG&E. Although there's a couple of scenes in there where there's like, the fire captain, he's like, where's PG and E? And the guy's like, here, I'm here, sir. He's like, why haven't we turned off the power yet? He's like, well, we're trying. And he kind of gets after him for. You guys started this. You knew the winds were coming and you didn't turn the power off. And then there's a little parenthetical at the end of the movie about how much they got sued or fined or whatever. But anyways, like I said, six and a half out of 20.

[Joe]

Out of 100.

[OG]

It's okay. It's not McConaughey's best production.

[Doug]

We haven't gotten a movie review out of OG in what feels like years. And this is what he brings us.

[Richard Fain]

That's good.

[Joe]

I like that. They're not all great. I mean, I do. Otherwise, it's just movie fandom, right? Like, if. If you love every single really good.

[OG]

I reviewed that inside of a year ago.

[Joe]

You like every single movie, so thank you for helping us not waste our time on that. Yeah, I saw one.

[OG]

I'd put it on the list. If you're just sitting there going, cal there, it's nothing to do. I'd watch it.

[Joe]

I saw one at the theater last week. Guys, this is starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt called the Smashing Machine.

[Doug]

Well, have you ever heard of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the ufc?

[Richard Fain]

That's the bloody thing they're trying to ban.

[Doug]

This guy is the best he has ever seen.

[Richard Fain]

Do you hate each other when you fight? Absolutely not.

[Doug]

Huh?

[Richard Fain]

How do you know?

[Joe]

So this is the story of one of the early UFC fighters, Mark kerr, back around 2000. Dwayne Johnson plays him. Emily Blunt plays his. His girlfriend. And it's the story of the end of Care's career in UFC and kind of all the times when UFC is just starting to become a big deal. And I know there was a documentary around that, Mark Hare's life as well, but it was wild to see Dwayne Johnson in a role. I mean, don't get me wrong, Dwayne Johnson's UFC fighter, okay, we. We can all imagine that. But I don't know if you guys seen the previews for this. He doesn't look like Dwayne Johnson. Besides the fact that he's huge, the things that they did to change up his face, the things they did to change some of his body language, and even just the part that he plays is a different Dwayne Johnson. And I'm a guy that likes watching Dwayne Johnson, but it's the same Dwayne Johnson every single time, right? It's just, oh, look at Dwayne Johnson is a God in Moana. Oh, look at Dwayne Johnson in. In this other, you know, top movie that's just kind of a romp and it's just kind of funny. This movie's not funny. This movie is very slow paced, incredibly slow paced, a lot of artistic direction. It's an A24 film for people that know. A24, kind of an art house film. And Dwayne Johnson's a producer. I think he really wanted to make sure this got made because the storyline is very, very slow, very almost non existent. But I'll tell you, Dwayne Johnson as a guy that in parts of the movie that I really like and other parts of the movie I can't stand, I just want to throttle him. Emily Blunt is his girlfriend. Sometimes you're like, what are you doing? She just seems like a. And then other times you're like, wow, she's saving his life. And you just keep going back and forth on these characters. I don't know, man. I just love a movie where the characters are so textured that it's not a, quote, good guy or a bad guy. It's much more like real life. Right. Happening to these people.

[Doug]

Joy, I can't stop. In my mind, I haven't seen the movie, but I can't stop drawing comparisons to a movie from, oh, 2008 called the Wrestler with Mickey Rourke.

[Joe]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Doug]

Did you see that?

[Joe]

Yes. Yeah.

[Doug]

That movie's phenomenal. And it. And it seems to have a similar tone or vibe to what you're describing. 100 talk about textured characters. Who was the female lead in that was Marissa Tomei. I think she got an Oscar for it. Kind of fallen from grace. Wrestler played by Mickey Rourke. And if it's anything along those lines, I might be in on this. I wouldn't have been until the way you just described it.

[Joe]

This movie is not going to win an Oscar. It is a little too slow, but huge characters I can do without plot. A lot of people can't. The plot is just. It's just kind of plotting. But I really, really like this movie. It is in that same vein. Doug. It's a different movie, obviously. Different stuff going on. But I thought that Emily Blunt, just having her in the movie, you just see what a great actress she is and the writing back and forth and how we get these great clues about what a. Just what an egomaniac Mark Hare is sometimes, and he's so caring at other times. And when he's completely whacked out on drugs. One part of the movie, like him, he's just going after the high he's chasing. The high of what he does is huge. I thought it was a great. At the end of this is not a spoiler. At the end of the movie, they have Mark Hair play himself. They no longer have Dwayne Johnson play himself. And I think it's a little bit of a flex about what a great job Dwayne Johnson does. Because when they substitute the real Mark Care in the movie for Dwayne Johnson, you barely notice. You're like, wow, they did a great job in his makeup and his work and his gesturing and the way he talked it. It was good. So for me, it was solid. It was the second best movie I've seen this year.

[Richard Fain]

Wow.

[Joe]

The best movie I saw this year. Was the one I talked about just a few weeks ago, which was Caught Stealing. Caught Stealing was a fantastic movie. This is not as good as Caught Stealing, but really good. Now, that said, many years, I see a bunch of great movies. I haven't seen any great movies. This year I saw movies I like, like Downton Abbey, but that's just because I like Downton Abbey. The Grand Finale. This movie, I thought was fantastic, but you got to be okay with a slow movie. Doug, you taking a look at the way they have Dwayne Johnson looking? He doesn't look like Dwayne Johnson.

[Doug]

Yeah, I was looking at that, and then I actually looked at that earlier as we started talking about it. But then I had to go back and remind myself about Caught Stealing, and I forgot to put that on my list. And because it has anything to do with baseball, I definitely need to watch that movie. I'm not a huge Austin Butler fan.

[Joe]

Me neither.

[Doug]

The premise of the movie sounds pretty good, and there's maybe a little bit of baseball in it, so that part sounds great. I don't know. I'm still skeptical on the Dwayne Johnson thing.

[Joe]

Which movie you talked about?

[Doug]

The Wrestler?

[Joe]

No, no, no, no. Oh, gee. The movie you talked about. It's called Paradise. Is it called Paradise?

[OG]

Oh, I'm sorry. It's called Lost. The Lost Bus.

[Joe]

The Lost Bus. Okay.

[OG]

Yeah. Because the communications go out. They're trying to find this bus, and, yeah, it's full of kids.

[Joe]

And this will be interesting enough. Mind the Smashing Machine. I think Doug will be interesting enough for you that you start it. I'll be curious.

[OG]

That was Doug's nickname in college, the Smashing Machine.

[Joe]

But with Doug, it's what he could do to a hamburger.