My safe word is pineapples.

It's questionable safe word these days.

I just want to be honest with you.

You know that, right?

Pineapples.

Nobody came to save you.

Nobody.

All right.

I got a mouse in front of me.

This is weird.

This is.

Yeah, this is new.

Yeah, this is new.

Is the microphone on?

Yeah, that happens all the time because we're recording.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, it's a normal.

A normal thing.

All right.

I know it's awkward for you, right?

Shall we?

Being recorded and all.

Welcome back to the number one financial literacy podcast in the world.

This is the Higher Standard.

Sitting in front of me is my partner in crime, Christopher Nahibi.

How you doing?

How you doing?

Yes.

Sitting across me, my partner in time, the quarter zip king.

The one, the man, the myth, the legend, the only.

So don't worry, everybody.

Thank you, my man.

And sitting behind the desk in the production suite, if you will.

We have nobody.

He's lost so much weight.

He's just gone now.

That's what happens.

And if you want to lose weight, go to join Friday.com.

use code higher and maybe you will disappear.

Yeah, exactly.

Good afternoon.

Today, the Higher Standard team remains squarely focused on bringing you great quality content.

I didn't know you go with a good afternoon there.

I was like, wait, what?

Every time.

Squarely focused.

Yeah.

The.

The script from the FOMC has not changed a whole lot.

If you're the script writer, like, do you go, hey, guys, can I throw in some extra words?

Yeah, just change.

I want to change like a few things up.

The problem is you change one or two words up out the gate, post game, press conference, they're like, why'd you change this?

Oh, oh, oh, oh.

You said maybe.

Oh, yeah.

I'm not gonna lie, you know, because I do those lives now and I spend a lot of time listening to them and reading them.

I did the same thing, though.

I hang on every word.

Yeah.

Cuz well, now he.

That's how they've positioned it that way.

Yeah, right.

I mean, if.

If he would came, if Jerome Pow would have worn like a.

A green tie.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Yeah.

What are you reading?

The money.

Yeah, right.

What are you trying to say, bro?

I know, I know, I know exactly.

I see what you're putting out.

Imagine.

Imagine what he could single handedly do to the stock market, right?

If he just came out wearing like a green suit.

I just wanted to come out one time wearing the exact same suit, but with like a velour jacket or like a fuzzy like.

Or the Fresh Prince of Bel Air jacket.

Yeah.

With like a pipe.

Just be like, since it's my last time here, bang the pipe down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right, right.

And I love.

I love how they asked them.

They're like, okay, so we know you're out.

We know you're out in May, but, like, have you even decided whether you're gonna stay like, guys, he's not touching on any of that.

Dude, I was so pissed during the live stream today.

I was covering it.

The first three questions from notable journalists from notable, like, periodicals were coming out.

Like, hey, man, you're not gonna get fired, right?

I know.

I was like, come on, dude.

Like that.

What are you doing?

I know.

Like, that's a stupid ass question.

As journalists, part of their job, Right.

Is to bait somebody in that got you moment type question.

Listen, if there's one guy you're not gonna get.

Yeah, he's good.

It's Jerome Powell.

He's bro.

He's stoic.

Yeah, he's right there.

Yeah.

He's not.

He.

He.

I don't think I could be as measured as he is in his responses.

And he was even like chuckling a little bit or he kind of, like laughed.

He was all right.

In his mind.

He's just thinking like, man, I don't get paid enough for this.

Well, I had an epiphany today that this show is going to expose that the tariff debacle is going to create a massive problem that I'm not aware that anyone's talked about.

Okay.

And because of that, I think there's a whole lot to break down.

But we're also doing this because we're.

Jill's not here.

We're testing out what would ultimately be kind of our live setup.

When you join the show live.

We're.

We're on screen here, and I'm controlling.

I got a mouse in front of me.

So if you're watching us, number one, I'm sorry, we're hideous.

Number two, this is what the live structure is going to kind of be like whenever we have a live with Saeed in the studio.

Yeah.

And I don't know exactly where you're going with the whole tariff conversation.

So the listeners and the viewers are.

We're.

We're together on this.

You had to put an asterisk.

Yeah.

I just want you to know, get prepared for.

For my response.

If I myself live, I want everybody to know I didn't know that's real.

Exactly.

This was not planned.

Yeah.

All right, well, I'm going to build up into it a little bit because it's going to take some time.

But I. I want to be clear that I know this is going to happen.

So in and of itself, problem.

And the FOMC today did exactly what we expect them to do.

They did not cut rates.

It was a foregone conclusion.

They weren't going to.

I think everybody leading into it was going to feel that way.

David Kelly from JP Morgan Chase had some excellent comments.

I'm loving that dude.

Yeah, I know.

You were getting all geeked out on him.

Yeah, I got a nerd crush.

Hard on him.

He's good.

Why?

He's got a pretty palpable amount of humility for a guy in his position with his pedigree and prestige.

What does he do over at J.P. morgan?

I remember his actual title.

Okay.

Yeah.

You know what we can do?

Yeah.

We can actually look this up.

David Kelly, JP Morgan.

There you go.

It's just crazy right there.

Salary.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah, Salary.

Let's see here.

Okay.

Chief Global Strategist, head of Global Market Insight Strategy Team.

All I'm hearing is he gets paid a lot.

Yeah.

Dollar signs.

Yeah.

There he is.

There he is.

This is.

This is the younger version.

Honestly, that's a rich smile.

Yeah.

David's research.

I don't have research.

Like, do you have research focused on investment implications of evolving economic environments?

He has written extensively in all aspects.

Have you written extensively on all aspects?

I do research for this show, though I don't get paid for it as.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

Throughout his career, David has developed a unique ability to explain complex economic and market issues in a language that financial professionals, like the higher standard, can use to communicate their clients.

He's a keynote speaker at many national investment conferences and a frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg and other financial media outlets.

Prior to joining J.P. morgan Asset Management, David served as economic advisor to Putnam Investments.

He also served as a senior strategist economist at SPP Investment Management, Primark Decision Economics and Lehman Brothers and Dri McGraw Hill, the publisher.

Great.

He's a CFA.

Of course he is.

And has a Ph.D. in MA in economics from Michigan State University and a BA in economics from University University College Dublin in the Republic of Ireland.

He's Irish?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

He's got 19 years.

JP Morgan Chase.

Yeah, it's cool.

Not.

I'm not bitter about that at all.

Okay.

And what was, what was his take on.

On the FOMC meeting today?

He was just very clear.

He's like, look, I don't think you're Gonna get a rate cut.

I'm not sure there's anything here to prompt a rate cut.

Mm.

I.

You know, I don't know how this all plays out, but there's the wait and see approach.

And they talked to him about jobs and affordability, and he was just really, really good.

Yeah, a lot of economists will have a slant, and he didn't.

He was just very, like, matter of fact about it, and he was calling shenanigans on some of the affordability stuff that other people were saying.

Like, he.

He's got.

He's got kind of a very dry personality.

I always suggest listening.

I like him from a personality perspective.

He doesn't, like, come off like, oh, this guy's amazing.

But once you get to hear him speak enough times, like, he says the right things.

Okay, okay, so let's get into some of the stuff that I put.

This is going to be all heavy Instagram today.

I apologize in advance.

So if you guys see anything pop up my Instagram, it's.

It's fault.

All right, so this from Morning Brew.

American consumers are overwhelmingly footing the tariff bill.

You ready?

You ready to jump in?

We knew this, right?

Because when the price of things go up, the companies who are actually making or selling these things aren't going to foot that bill.

Yeah.

That ultimately is going to get passed on to the consumer.

Right.

So, okay.

So much so that American consumers are bearing 96% of the tariff costs.

I mean, believe it.

Yeah.

Study finds.

New research from Germany's Kiel institute finds that U.S. tariffs have worked less like a tax on foreign exporters and much more like a consumption tax on Americans.

So let's frame this.

We as Americans are now being taxed more because we decided to penalize other countries by increasing tariffs.

So what happened?

They ship their products over here, but they raise their prices to sell it to us so they can pay the tariffs, and they still make the same amount of money.

The government makes more money.

We pay the government more money vis a vis these tariffs.

We do.

You do.

I do.

Everybody does.

And everyone's like, oh, that's inflationary.

Yeah.

That's why.

Right.

If companies are raising their prices to cover it.

So everybody on.

On conversations that we've had lately has been like, hey, dude, guy, bro.

Have we seen all the inflation impact from tariffs?

And you would say, I mean, I.

Would say, yes, we should have by now, but it's going to slowly trickle in more and more as time goes on.

Yeah.

And I think that's a fair assessment, except there's A couple things we need to think about in the context of this, and trust me, I'm gonna get to the big tariff epiphany later on.

Okay.

Right.

But I want to set the stage.

You have to.

Right.

I want to light the candles.

Okay.

Get the bubble bath going, lay some flowers, make some tea, get ready for Valentine's Day with my guys.

There you go.

Okay.

Okay.

So what we're doing right now is we're talking about how this happens, but here's what happens.

The tariffs come and then they go, Right?

That's right.

We've seen a lot of conversations.

Hey, we're going to raise tariffs.

People raise their prices, and the prices don't go back down.

Yes.

So these companies walk into more profit.

Yeah.

Right.

So we're not going to ultimately pay less because of this.

This is not the epiphany.

No.

This is the aperitif.

I'm cleaning the palate a little bit.

I'm.

This is a foreplay.

Right.

Okay.

Just want you to know, you get mad later on.

Right now, I'm just setting you up.

All right.

I'm getting you in the mood.

So we know that the tariffs have increased prices permanently.

And this has been inflationary permanently.

We know that inflation has been bad from 2000 to 2025.

You know that the necessities in life, things you absolutely have to pay for, have gone up disproportionate to your wages.

Right.

While the nice things to have, like TVs, have gone up, but not as much as your wages have.

Right.

And we know that even though you get the prints from the CPI or PCE that the Fed likes to look at for inflation, although it might say it's, you know, in the 2.8% range or 3% range, that's not really what inflation is.

Inflation is probably closer to 6, 7, or 8%.

Yeah.

Read a great study over the weekend about how putting your money into a savings account is actually losing money.

They broke it down.

Especially when you factor in the taxes you got to pay on the interest income.

Yeah.

They don't like to account for.

They.

Nobody wants to account for that.

Nope.

Hey, man, you made money putting in your savings, your high yield savings account, except we're going to tax you on it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You got to report that.

Yeah, that's a problem.

So after analyzing $4 trillion in trade flows from January 2024 to November 2025, researchers estimate that US consumers and importers absorbed about 96% of tariff costs, while foreign exporters ate just 4% by cutting prices.

So the idea that tariffs force foreigners to pay up isn't holding up.

That dynamic still generated serious cash for Washington, about $200 billion in tariff revenue last year.

But it's largely money pulled from American pockets.

So far, inflation has stayed relatively moderate, largely because importers and retailers have swallowed much of the cost, per Harvard Business School research.

But economists warn those pressures are likely to show up more clearly in consumer prices over time as margins continue to get squeezed globally.

The pain hasn't even, hasn't evenly spread.

Indian exporters, for example, cut shipment volumes to the US by 18 to 24%, a meaningful amount, might I add, rather than slash prices while Europe faces slower growth if tariff threats escalate further now, that in and of itself is bad.

Everything in that was bad.

Yeah, no one's going to hear that and go, hey, that's great.

Yeah, yeah, the, the future looks promising.

No, yeah, the future does look promising if you're exporting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So let's just.

Yeah, that's true.

Because a.

A week right now, it's no secret.

And we'll probably find time later in the show to dive into what a weakening dollar does.

Right?

Yeah.

A weakening dollar ultimately who it benefits.

It benefits the people exporting things out of the country for sure.

Right.

Because that means it'll.

The assets that you're selling are in higher demand because it's cheaper relative to than the rest of the world.

And it benefits the stock market.

Benefits things like gold.

So yeah, gold at all time high, stock market at all time high.

We had 7,000 in the S and P today, which was insanity.

You got homes at near all time unaffordability, but certainly near all time high prices.

And it's a bad, it's a bad multi cocktail and gold rising at the same time.

These things happen is an inverse relationship.

Yeah.

There's been a decoupling of so many things all at the same time.

Jobs and inflation were very much coupled together.

I don't think that's the case anymore.

I think technology displaced that.

I think that the gold and stock market being kind of this inverse and reverse inflationary trending of hedging inflation in your bets.

I don't think that's happening anymore.

No.

Yet crypto's been high up there for a while.

I don't think that's happening happening anymore.

Right.

So it's been a strange, strange time.

I don't have any like real meaningful answers, but I do know one thing.

Okay.

This from Yahoo Finance.

Tariffs have raised $200 billion in revenue for the U.S. but a recent study found that American consumers are absorbing 96% of the tariff costs.

We already know that from the Keel Institute.

The tariffs are an own goal.

Interesting.

Tariff revenue increased by $200 billion in 2025.

A new study says 96% of the burden was passed off on.

While importers and wholesalers face the immediate burden, they must pay the tariff at the border.

Next, they face a choice, absorb the cost to reduce margins or pass it on to their consumers.

The study analyzed shipment level Data covering over 25 million transactions valued at nearly $4 trillion and determined a near complete tariff pass through to consumers.

The $200 billion surge in customer revenue is not free money.

It comes from American wallets.

The study's author states.

You start to see some of the tariffs creep into some of the prices.

Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO, in an interview with CNBC so this is not speculation, this is not hyperbole by Said and I.

We don't have a political agenda.

These are just independent facts with a massive amount of data which we were.

Calling from day one, calling from day one from ever since, you know, the we were all prepped on Liberation Day.

We knew that, you know, this was not going to help.

This is only going to make the.

Problem worse and it is going to get much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much.

I can't have enough muches here.

Much, much, much worse.

And let's before we get to the the main meal of tonight that we're gonna spend some time on.

Yeah, let's talk about this.

That came up today.

This is also via Yahoo Finance, via Instagram.

Consumer sentiment up 2.5 points from December.

I would argue from December holiday pressures, people having to spend money to buy gifts and all the pressures in around year end, maybe bonuses.

Yeah, 2.5% jump in that from December to January is not meaningful because it's still down 21% year over year.

56.4 was the index in January 2026.

In January of 2025 it was 70.

Yeah, 71.7.

So down 21% year over year.

Okay, maybe there's a healthy consumer sentiment, maybe it's perspective shifting.

I don't know.

Yeah.

What I can tell you is that consumers are in a wait and see mode as they weigh inflation in the weakening job markets.

And the rhetoric that we saw today from the FOMC in my mind was strange, which was what they continue to say that job creation and technological advances tend to go hand in hand, that we've Seen historically over the cadence of history, we've seen like the Internet.com boom, those Internet things that were supposed to displace jobs.

I mean, I know created jobs.

That's like 20 some years ago.

That's not a whole lot to like base off of.

You know when you say based on history, right?

Like, yeah.

I mean, every.

Everything that we're hearing is the technology is going to replace the worker.

Oh, said.

Who do you think would be a subject matter expert on this?

Just give me somebody, some people like, perspective, wise.

Sam Altman.

Sam Altman.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

What do you think about Jerome Powell?

You think he's subject matter expert?

He should be.

Do you think anybody on the FOMC is a subject matter expert on AI?

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

What about Elon Musk?

You think you trust him?

He should probably.

In this space?

Probably in this space, yeah.

Okay, well, I'm glad you said so.

I would trust someone like Lex Friedman on this.

I would trust someone like Lex Friedman as well.

Elon Musk in his first appearance in Davos, the subject matter of episode 319, where we cover the World Economic Forum.

So he's got a big grin on his face.

He's looking at it.

Oh, man.

On AI.

I don't know what's going to happen in 10 years, but with the rate at which AI is progressing, we might have AI that is smarter than any human by the end of this year, and I would say no later than next year.

He's talking about AGI.

Artificial General Intelligence.

Yeah.

Okay.

So.

Wow, that's a pretty brisk timeline.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

You know, okay, it goes on.

If you have ubiquitous AI that is essentially free or close to it, and ubiquitous robotics, then you will have an explosion in the global economy and expansion in the global economy that is truly beyond all precedent.

I mean, yeah, if.

That's a big if.

I don't know that it's a big.

You've seen robots all over the news.

I've seen them.

You've seen them?

Robots that can run, right?

Robots that do cartwheels.

But how they get implemented.

Hold on.

I've also seen robots like go to meet a human and it's supposed to be like one that can, like, you know, prevent itself from getting attacked and like somebody just walks up and pushes it and just like collapses.

Yeah, I get that.

But if you have artificial general intelligence, it can say to go fuck yourself after you push it.

Yes, they could.

That's true.

This is a big.

This is a big if.

But how?

Okay, first of all, how expensive would it be?

Right.

How long would it take to implement it?

Who would come in to have to train the robot?

Like, I think the rollout will be slower than this timeline.

That's just my, I, like so my.

Hopefully I don't think we, the consumers will have it, but I think that the corporations will.

Okay.

And.

Well, let's go on here.

Well, I mean, yeah, we heard, I mean, Amazon saying that they're getting ready to, you know, really lay off 30,000 jobs.

Yeah, well, they, so they said 14,000 was the original prediction.

Today they announced 16,016.

But the ultimate goal is going to be 30.

Yeah, that's a problem.

And there's internal memos and emails circle circulating where they talked on like their version of Slack where people were saying what, who was in what department when they got laid off.

And it's, it's a meaningful layoff on the rise of robotics.

We don't want to find ourselves in a James Cameron movie.

Musk said, you know, Terminator.

Yeah, we don't want, we don't want that.

Yeah, not, not Avatar.

Just to be clear.

Right.

And for quality of life, it's actually better to err on the side of being optimistic and wrong rather than pessimistic and right side.

I think you're pessimistic and right versus optimistic and wrong.

I'm just saying you're doing what Elon Musk is telling you not to do.

No, I know, but hold on.

The, the problem, the problem with this is Congress is always going to be slow to react and approve any type of like, regulation against any of this.

Right.

That is right.

So, and, and I, that because of that, I feel like we have been, the, have had the benefit of seeing the technology that we've seen over our lifetime and the way it's been expanding.

Right.

At an exponential rate because of that.

Right.

But at some point you got to think to yourself, do we might.

If there isn't, we might end up in a James Cameron movie.

I mean, Elon Musk is kind of telegraphing that.

Right.

He's basically saying, like, look like there's a high probability of this being a reality in the near future.

And I'm not here to be one way or the other.

I just.

This all relates to the economy and finance and I'm going to get back to it.

This all relates to tariffs, believe it or not.

So one of the things I think he's also been saying is, is that you really shouldn't worry about saving your money because we're going to have to go to some type of, you know, universal life, you know, income stability, you can call whatever you want.

Because there's going to be such efficient robotics and intelligence that human labor is going to be an outdated concept for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that robots can run 247 and humans have, you know, to sleep.

Yeah.

And yet you.

This is the week before at the World Economic Forum, and yet the drone pal comes out going, yeah, there's gonna be impact.

So you gotta, you gotta have.

You got.

You're gonna have to get a degree, buy your own robot to represent you that can work 24 hours a day.

You have to program that thing, right?

Like, pass.

They're gonna pass the cost of the robot onto the, the worker, the employee.

So before I go on, I think now is a good time to pause and.

Well, you know what, let's do one more.

I think this is actually relevant before I get into the whole tariff problem.

I think this is going to be a good one.

You ready?

Yeah.

Now, you know, I've got a love hate relationship with Jane Fraser.

Over at Citibank, their CEO, Jane Fraser cdo.

I'm sorry, Citi CEO Jane Frazier warns staff in a memo that old habits are out and performance is in.

What do you think she means by old habits?

I don't have to wonder.

Business Insider via Instagram explains this.

Citi CEO Jane Fraser is adopting a player coach mentality with her team this year, and she's making clear she expects them to run another lap.

I figured this was a right up your alley as far as analogies go.

Okay.

In a memo sent on Wednesday titled the Bar Is Raised, Fraser told the firm's more than 200,000 employees that she expects higher performance this year.

And you see, better quoting.

Every one of us has to adopt a more commercial mindset, asking for the business, competing for the full wallet, and not settling for a secondary role or missed opportunity.

Yeah.

Ask how.

Well, ask Wells Fargo.

That went for them.

We are not graded on effort.

We are judged on our results.

And I expect to see the last vestiges of old bad habits fall away and a more disciplined, more confident winning city fully emerge in 2026.

Frazier wrote in the memo, which was earlier reported by Bloomberg.

Oh, Jane.

Janie poo.

That's the part of, like, my time over at Wells Fargo when I was there.

And it was during that time where, you know, they got in trouble for all the stuff they got in trouble for later on.

Right.

Opening the accounts and whatnot right.

But I mean, at the time I was behind the teller window.

Right.

But the amount of pressure of.

I know you hit record numbers last month.

Yeah.

What are you doing now?

You're like, what kind of culture is this?

Yeah.

I can't wait to leave this place.

So I should point out this is pretty obvious to some, but for the record, I'll say it, that and when it comes to banking or any company, the more products they have into you, the stickier relationship is, the harder it is to move.

That is the nexus of some of this in banking as it particularly relates.

If you have loans with them, they want to increase your deposits because they can lend that money out.

And that's how they make money.

Right.

They take money in as deposits, they pay a 2% for it.

Let's say they make a loan at 7%.

Let's say the difference that 5% is their profit.

But you need more cash to make loans.

And of course, there's ways to lever that up.

But for the purpose of the conversation, banks want that.

So.

And they want the relationship.

Right.

They're trying to drive credit cards at point of sale, they're trying to drive deposits at point of sale, all because they're trying to build up this stickiness and continue to drive this revenue which.

Builds their business and get you into their full ecosystem.

That's right.

To where there's no way you're gonna go through the pain and hassle to ever leave again after you've.

We've like built this all out for you.

Yep.

And it is a hassle.

So it's a real problem.

And so look, now we have pressure by CEOs to come back to the office.

Right.

You have pressure for performance, like by people like Jane Frazier.

You've got people like Jamie Dimon talking about AI as a part of every conversation at the executive table.

And he discussed that in Davos, which we went over, excuse me, in episode 319.

So we know that there's this really palpable dynamic happening as it relates to employment.

And yet the fomc, Jerome Powell comes out and says stuff like, ah, you know, I don't.

You know, there's always an error, you know, an area of job creation that comes out with this job destruction.

And we're just not seeing anything.

Should you see anything like this, Jerome jp Bang bang Powell.

Bang bang Powell.

Yeah.

You know, should you, should you be seeing.

I mean, is there.

Has there ever been an event in history which we can point to that has been.

I mean, the industrial Revolution, maybe.

Okay.

Where do you think we're going with this?

Okay, no, keep going.

No, no, no, no, no.

I'm following, I'm following.

Yeah.

I'm just saying that Jerome Bang bang Powell probably is not thinking this through.

And the fomc, I get it, you're data dependent.

You can only look backwards.

You can't forecast forward.

Okay.

But we also know that their changes from an economic rate perspective don't stop the economy on a dimension.

They're generally reactive and they're lagging.

Yeah.

To matriculate through the system.

Yeah.

And he knows that.

Right.

So I, I think that there is a problem here.

And then I'm listening to the FOMC today.

I'm listening to the, the tariff conversation.

I'm preparing for the show that was tonight.

And I had the epiphany, the light bulb moment where I realized this is about to get really.

And I'm going to be very terse here.

Ugly.

Okay.

And I'm the only person that I know is talking about this.

Okay.

So let's just walk this through.

Saeed, you ready?

Okay, I'm ready.

I want you to, you know, dial in, baby.

I'm dial.

I'm in.

Okay.

All right.

We know that the government has just generated $200 billion in revenue vis a vis tariffs.

Yes.

We know that those tariffs were charged to the American consumer.

96% of them passed through to them.

Yes.

Right.

We predicted this.

And now you've probably heard the government saying that they're going to give higher tax refunds.

Some people have said 2000, some people have said 4000.

The tax returns.

Yeah.

What does that remind you of?

Stimulus checks.

That's right.

And what did the stimulus checks do to the economy?

Inflationary, Hyperinflationary.

Yeah.

It drove pricing through the roof on homes.

It gave American consumers so much money they hadn't had in savings.

And I'm all for it, but the problem is it lights the economy on fire.

But, but for the administration, we.

I think it's pretty clear that one of the things that's probably the most important is how the market's doing.

They care about the stock market more than anything.

So you know what we all just did.

Let me break it down real simple.

Tariffs were an interest free loan from us to the government.

All those products we're paying now more for that we were overcharged for.

Yeah.

We're going to get a small portion of that overpayment back in the form of a tax refund one time to $4,000.

One time.

But those prices on the things that we overpaid for remain elevated.

Remain elevated.

So we gave the government a $200 billion interest free loan and they're going to give us these pseudo stimmy checks in the form of an extra tax return ahead of the Republican midterm elections.

Everyone's going to be fat and happy.

It's going to be their version of stimulus checks.

How much more?

And we're going to light the fucking economy on fire.

But, but it's also, it's also going to be unfair.

Right.

Because I think when this proposal was being floated around, it's, it's capped at certain income earners.

That's right.

So it's the, the people that earn more, like, I think it was like over a hundred thousand dollars.

Right.

If you, you're out.

Yep.

Right.

So then a majority of the population falls like under that.

Right.

So they go, they get it.

And you're like, wait a minute, we all overpaid for things.

That's right.

That doesn't make sense.

So now we're going to give people interest, their money back, a small portion of their money back.

We're going to repeat the past mistakes of stimulus checks.

We're going to put this extra money in people's accounts.

They're going to get refunds they otherwise would not have gotten.

And reminder, as a reminder, a tax refund is not a good thing.

It means you overpaid.

Hold on.

And the, the, yeah, and the, the stimmy check that you're going to get vis a vis this.

Right.

You're going to go spend it on things that you're going to have to pay taxes on.

That's right.

So where does the money go back to?

Ultimately the government.

Yeah.

Wow.

So we got royally screwed.

This is.

Yeah.

Wow.

What a hustle.

What a hustle.

And they all did.

Under the auspice of, oh, I'm making the economy great.

No, you're not.

Yeah.

Oh, hey, you weren't allowed to actually do this with the tariffs.

Okay, fine.

I'll give it back to everybody.

And what?

My bad, my bad, my bad.

So what do we know?

The Biden administration said when there was two successive quarters of negative GDP growth.

No, no, no, no, no.

You got to average it out, bro.

It's got to have two successful quarters of negative GDI growth.

Gross domestic income as well.

Yeah.

We got to average the GDI with.

The gdp and then if it's still negative, artificially inflated.

Because we handed out stimulus checks.

Yes.

So if you're the government and you know that possibly that's on the horizon.

That's dirty.

You hand out additional stimulus checks and I don't want to be this guy, but I'm going to be this guy.

Google.

I love when you did this on the live, by the way.

Like fact checking in real time.

Yeah, it was, it was naughty.

Yeah.

When are the midterm elections?

In 2026.

Tuesday, November 3, 2026.

Oh, that's interesting.

Okay, so we're gonna give people tax refunds in April, right?

May, June, they're gonna get it.

They're gonna spend July.

They're all gonna be happy.

By November they should be happy.

They'll have more money.

Yeah, I, yeah.

That's disgusting.

Whoops.

It's disgusting.

Dope.

We got, we got the biggest like rope a dope in history and no one, no one's calling it.

Let me get it straight.

We're gonna say, we're gonna say, oh, the tariff inflation's passed through.

It's all fine.

We all just got charged a ton of money.

Yeah, yeah.

Everything went up price wise.

And we, and we talked about it too.

How, right, like that, that new poverty line is really 140,000.

Right.

And they'll never admit to that, Right.

Because that means like the entire population is like below the poverty line or you know, a majority.

Right.

So way more people should be getting some, some of that stimmy back.

But I don't know, man, but is.

It so again, and here's the part that trips me out, right?

So companies will earn more money, right.

Then they're going to earn more money because we've put money in people's pockets and people are going to spend that in one way, shape or form.

Right.

So all this trickles down, but wages have not kept up with inflation.

So.

But we're not going to pay the employees more.

We're going to demand, AKA Jane Frazier.

Yes, demand they become more efficient, more dedicated, more cross, sell more work.

Right, right.

But then you got Amazon laying off a ton of people.

So at what point do we go, we should probably rethink the humanity here.

Capitalism has run its course.

The corporations are winning.

At what point do we say, okay, like this, this is going a direction that's not good.

I don't think, you know.

No, no, everyone's going to continue to ride the wave, man.

Right.

I was doing some research, I was riding, I was doing some research before the show.

Right.

And we, we've like routinely talked about like Michael Burry on the show.

Right.

And There was a tweet of his like that, a really popular one that went viral years ago.

I think it was in January of 23.

Right.

That just came out itself.

Right?

Yeah.

And if you listen to that.

And first of all, he had all the data to back it up, to show, like, there's a problem here.

Right.

That was back in 23rd January.

Yep.

If you listen to that back then, I think when I looked it up, The S&P 500 was at 3900.

We're now at 7000.

Yep.

Right.

It's like, markets don't crash because of, you know, headlines or certain data.

They crash because something breaks, ultimately.

Irrational exuberance.

Oh, was that green Field?

No, that's me, baby.

No, I stole it from somebody who said.

But, yeah, it's.

It's.

Yeah, something breaks.

And the problem is, is we are pushing this to a point where something absolutely has to break.

Yeah.

Because here's the problem.

If it doesn't break, we all can't afford to live.

I mean, this.

That's.

That's the sad part is people are like, oh, this is.

Everything's.

I, I hate.

I detest getting on like an FOMC meeting.

And everyone's like, gumdrops and lollipops.

It's amazing.

Things are going well.

Things are great.

We don't need to cut.

And some of these talking heads on CNBC are like, this is amazing.

We're great.

Why?

The market's gonna go up 20 this year.

14.

We're gonna have four years.

They said this in the FOMC.

We're gonna.

Four years of a bull market with 14 gains.

And I'm like, and do you really think that's good?

Are you really going to look me in the eye and say, because you're getting fatter and richer, that the rest of society isn't in peril because of what's likely to happen?

Right.

And I don't want to sound like Peter Schiff where I'm ringing the alarm freaking out, but we're doing.

We're doing wildly stupid shit.

Wildly stupid.

Right, Tariffs.

Okay, great.

Great in theory, but that doesn't penalize a country.

Yeah, it penalizes the citizens.

And I understand you want to negotiate, do all these things.

Tariffs have come and gone.

All good, fine.

Show me how this improves the deficit.

Oh, so we, the consumers, are going to pay for your deficit?

Because that's what's really happening.

Right.

If someone came out and said, hey, man, we're going to punish China by making you guys pay down Our debt.

Mm.

You've been like, wait, what?

What?

Yeah.

Hell no.

No.

Right, Exactly.

Right, yeah.

Why would I do that?

But instead, you.

You use the economic unintelligence or the lack of financial literacy of most Americans against them.

Yeah.

You charge them.

You show them who's boss.

Yeah.

I don't know.

The whole.

The whole thing really bothers me.

And the.

The problem is it really goes back to the great financial crisis.

Right.

The whole.

This whole problem, it was either die a quick, painful death.

Right, Right.

Right then and there.

Or a slow, painful inflationary death.

Okay.

And they are.

They chose the latter.

Right.

A lot of bailouts.

And here's the problem.

When the debt level gets to the levels that we're at now, you can't raise interest rates high enough to solve this problem because the debt payments are way too high.

Right.

So, like, I was listening.

I don't know what website this is.

Was amazing.

The U.S. national debt.

U.S. debt clock dot org.

Yeah.

Wow.

Look at this.

Yeah.

$38 trillion.

Yeah.

Insane, man.

So now you got this problem, right?

Where we're all seeing gold hit all time highs, all time highs, all time highs.

It's only happened gold outperforming the market.

It's only happened a handful of times.

And they almost always recessions.

And we talked about it on the last episode.

Right?

The Great Depression.

Right.

The seventies during Volker's era.

Double dip recession.

Right, Right.

Right around the time we came off the gold standard in 71.

Yeah.

The dot com bubble.

Also, Jerome Powell referenced Volcker today.

Did you catch that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's his boy.

They asked him why he attended Lisa Cook's hearing in Supreme Court, the most important case.

And for the Fed's history.

Right, The Fed's history in modern history.

Because it has to do with Fed's independence.

And then he cited that Volcker did the same thing for a case during.

His error as well, but also like, like, why?

Why?

And it was like one of the first questions, right?

Yeah, because they were trying to.

The media was trying to prod Jerome Powell.

They were trying to like poke him to get him to say something.

And I'm sitting here like, I was so annoyed.

I'm like, can we all be professionals here?

Yeah.

Like you guys are in the room, you know, like, take pride in that.

Ask a material question instead of like, hey, man, you don't get no fight with Uncle Jamie Diamond.

Hey, man.

Yeah, yeah.

Trump said he gonna fire you, dog.

Yeah.

What you got to say about that?

Yeah, I heard you got sued Bro, how you, how you holding up?

I mean, is it true you have this real question?

Is it true that you guys haven't complied with submitting your documents in the court case?

Bro, he's represented by counsel, you moron.

You think he's gonna answer that question for you?

He's just looking at you guys like, what are you guys doing?

Come on, you're better than this.

Meanwhile, Steve Leesman, who does have a personal relationship with Jerome Powell.

Yeah.

He finally asked like a series of really good questions.

Thank God for him.

Yeah, yeah.

But then I.

You look and you're like, okay, the problem has gotten to the point where it's gone so bad.

Right.

Where the value of the dollar is weakening.

I think we hit a four month low.

Right.

And gold is reaching all time highs.

Right.

Where usually the conversation around gold, and we've talked about this on like recent episodes, that it's, it's a hedge against inflation.

That's one way to view it.

Right.

But it's also where it's also viewed as when people go into gold, there's a lot of volatility going on.

And countries around the world, central banks around the world, are trying to get away from the dollar system.

Yeah, Right.

And they're going into gold.

That's the reason why gold is going up as much as it is.

It's not that everyday investors are, hey, I think gold's a good option.

I want to maintain my buying power.

No, bro, they're getting away from the dollar system, central banks around the world, and they're going into gold.

There's a couple of conversations internationally happened today about that as well.

People going off gold standard as well.

Yeah.

100%.

And it's.

I only see that going up further.

So if I can, I can.

We talked about on the last episode, I always heard like financial planners saying gold should, you know, probably make up somewhere between 2 to 10%.

And I think we saw Ray Dalio said 15%.

Right.

And like you're like, I mean, sounds a little bit more reasonable now.

But here's, here's my problem with all of this.

Okay.

Again, everyone's trying to navigate a market which is manipulated.

Yeah.

And I'm not sitting here telling you not.

You got to play the.

Jamie diamond says you got, you got to live in the world you got.

Right.

I get that.

I'm not, I'm not judging one way or the other.

But what I'm saying is you'd be lying to yourself if you didn't acknowledge the game is rigged against You.

It was.

Yeah.

The game was not made for you and I.

And I'm trying to level it out for most of our listeners to the extent that I can.

In the.

The frustrating part is sometimes I feel like this comes off too cerebral or too.

I think there's a natural human aversion to wanting to deal with the realities that you're dealt.

And let's just remove it away from finance in the show so people don't get offended.

But people don't want to believe that their narrative, whether it's religion or fitness or whatever it might be, you know, might be inaccurate.

Okay?

Okay.

That's why you hear all these old wives tales of eat this, don't eat that, and people.

The science has been proven otherwise.

People still do it.

Do you got to go paleo, bro?

You got to go paleo the way.

What do you mean, bro?

Atkins all the way, no carbs.

And you start looking at stuff and you start thinking yourself.

There's a reason why conspiracy theories exist, okay?

There's a reason why some of those theories are real.

Some of those theories are right.

Humans are very fallible creatures.

They will do what's in their own self interest.

And we like to think that we're like the species that cares about their fellow man.

Look, I've seen way too much of it and I think.

Here, here.

Did you see the dead Internet thing that I posted today?

Yes.

It was great, right?

And let me, Let me actually.

X. I put on X.

You're right.

See, look, that's why you're here, Saeed.

I got you, bro.

Handsome and intelligent.

And you put it on the LinkedIn's.

I did put on the LinkedIns, but let's be honest here.

Nobody goes to my LinkedIn.

I cannot grow on.

On, on X to save my life.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the dead Internet theory, humans now only make up about 38.5% of Internet traffic.

The other 61.5% is non human, meaning search bots, hacking tools, scrapers, et cetera.

There are also about 5 billion users worldwide, or just under about 63% of the world's population since the Internet first launched in 1990.

Elon Musk initially claimed around 20% of X users were fake, with one 2025 study by Fifth Column AI estimating approximately 64% of profiles could be bots.

Take a great deal of pause before you buy into the extremism and radicalization you may be provoked by on the Internet and social media.

The algorithms are now programming us, weaponizing the perception of, quote, popular opinion, end quote.

And I think that's a very powerful statement.

All this was really to say that the algorithms are feeding us stuff that they want us to see that we might have some interest in because they know we will continue to be programmed by it.

Yeah.

And that's why these laws around antitrust laws and for companies getting too large and having a monopoly while are so important.

Right.

Like, I think meta is always like, you know, you know, get in trouble or on the brink of getting in trouble for that, or Google.

Right.

Can I ask a question?

Yeah.

And this is.

I mean, I'm on social media.

I think.

I think Zuckerberg said like 3.5 billion people use one of their products every single day.

Yeah.

How many people are there in the world?

Yeah, man, that's influence.

That's influence.

But why are the algorithms all black boxes?

Why don't we have.

Why aren't they required by law to keep an ongoing current?

This is our algorithm.

More transparency.

Transparency?

Yeah.

Like, why is that not transparent?

Yeah, I mean, there.

Yes.

These companies, especially the public ones, are, you know, regulated.

Why isn't this part of the regulation?

Again, I'm not demonizing anybody.

I'm not suggesting anything, but it's.

It strikes me as strange because it's proprietary.

Even name for Pelosi to disclose her trades.

This is my.

This is.

This is our ip, bro.

You can't.

We can't have you get into our ip.

What's your ip?

Your IP is.

You have users now.

You're.

You're of a certain size and stature to where.

Let me give you a great example of this again.

Outside of this sector, banking.

Nothing a bank does is proprietary.

I'm sorry, There is no unique product.

There is nothing special.

J.P. morgan Chase, Wells B of A.

It's just, who gives you the better service?

At the end of the day, it's the concierge service.

Right, Right.

It's the same thing for social media.

Now, who gives you the better experience?

Okay.

Your model, your algorithm means nothing to the consumer, but you disclosing it means everything to the parents.

Yeah.

I guess for the, for the consumer, I'm, I'm not.

I'm not so much tied to one.

I remember when everybody was jumping on like the Instagram bandwagon back in the day originally.

Right.

And then like Snapchat came around.

For some reason, I fell in love with the whole Snapchat model and the way, like, I could, like, I could follow all my news outlets.

Yeah.

And the way that I Could just go and select versus it scrolling on my feed.

Right.

So I guess you're.

You're hostage to their algorithm because everyone else has adopted it.

Yeah.

Right.

It's kind of like fiat currency.

If everyone else believes in this thing, you're now forced to have to believe in it too.

It's interesting too, there's a couple of things that are somewhat developing in the social media sphere.

Number one, TikTok being acquired by US company.

There's been a mass exodus of TikTok in the last day.

So I never, I never got on TikTok.

So I'm on.

Has these algorithms have all changed.

I talked to a very.

I think I told you this off.

Off the show.

I talked to a pretty popular YouTuber.

He's got over a million followers and this is what he does for a living.

It's his primary income.

And he was telling me that his views are down 50% since December.

Yeah.

And he's got no reason for it other than there's just an influx of information and media coming now largely because of the influence of AI.

Right.

It's easier people to edit, to build.

It's also easier for people to do faceless channels.

And it's just there's so much content that original content's being drowned out.

Yes.

Yeah.

You're also seeing this shift from produced content to people to algorithms pushing your phone.

And I don't know even if I told you this, but, you know, we can't stream live on Tick Tock anymore.

You know why we got banned?

Why?

It's gonna blow your mind.

Tick Tock doesn't want a produced show fed to their algorithm.

So unless you're shaking or like showing like, like movement of like using your phone.

Yeah.

Then they're gonna ban you because they don't want you pushing video content to their platform.

Which to me is interesting because I get on one hand, you don't want somebody using AI and like pushing it to your platform, but at the same time.

So you're going to encourage fake content or content that's lower quality.

And sadly, that's what all the major, like people in the, in the algorithms are saying now is lower quality product pushes farther in all the algorithms, including Instagram.

Yeah.

I mean, for the algorithms.

We've talked about this on the show, where sometimes I wonder, because it's no secret, if somebody has the ability to manipulate the algorithm and control what you see and what gets fed to you, they're going to, they're going to exploit that.

They're going to take advantage of that.

Obviously, anybody who wants to grow their company or get a certain agenda across, they're going to take advantage of that.

On a basic human level.

Parents do this every year around Christmas.

Right.

With Elf on the shelf.

We're going to.

I'm going to manipulate this thing.

I would make you believe.

So if parents are doing it, then you better believe the government's going to do it or whatever company, whatever hidden agendas there are.

Okay.

I just think there's so much going on around all around the world at all times now, and we're exposed to all of it that it's hard to pay attention to everything and have to care about everything.

Everything how I'm supposed to care about what's happening in my current local neighborhood.

And also things that are going across the country and.

And also things across the world and stay up to date with what's going on in my local politics and my national politics and also.

Also manage my finances.

Also make sure it's like, dude, there's people are becoming desensitized to everything.

Yeah.

Progressive.

And I think that works to a point.

And then after that you just go, I can't do this.

And I also think that's part of the plan.

That's.

That's always been part of the plan.

Yeah.

Look at tariffs.

Tariffs where we're going to hit you so hard with tariffs in international geopolitics, you're not even going to look the best magic tricks are the tricks that are laid out so far in advance you don't understand them.

Yes.

Right.

100.

And that's what tariffs were.

If.

If part of.

Okay.

If part of the.

What's going on systematically.

Right.

Is we need to.

Hey, show you a shiny object over here so you can't pay attention to what we're doing over here.

Okay.

Then the whole algorithm is that I'm going to show you what's going on over at this part of the world and guess what your algorithm is going to do.

You're locked into that and now you're manipulated over here.

Or I'm going to show you what's going on with the Department of Homeland Security and what's going on over here.

And guess what?

You're going to be so invested in that that that's all you're going to be able to focus on while we take care of whatever we want to do over here.

Right.

And that.

That's like, I'm going to be pointed here and don't comment if you don't feel comfortable given your current situation, but I'll comment on it.

And this is why you see hyper extremism from a geopolitical standpoint.

This is why you see ICE raids in your feedback because it's also a parasitic cycle, right?

What's going to happen, people, governments will do this to keep your focus on other things.

Like I'll be honest, let's be clear, when is the last time you heard about Trump and Epstein?

And this video won't get produced in the algorithm, but I'm just saying when was the last time you heard about it?

All you hear about is, is you hear about the geopolitical noise.

You hear about ICE in some of these places doing insanely terrible things.

And then guess what?

News media outlets who are on social media pump this to you because they want to get more views.

Listen, man.

And then your friends share it because they want to get more views.

And then everybody virtue signals.

And I'll be honest, your virtue signaling ain't helping anybody, dude.

You're just adding more noise, furthering the agenda of taking us off of what was supposed to keep our focus in the first place.

That's protecting home base.

And it's really, but it's, it's also really hard for people because I know that there are some people out there with the purest and most genuine of hearts.

100 they, they mean, they mean well by it, right?

They're.

They don't know.

Weaponized and radicalized.

They don't know without even seeing it.

They don't know it.

And that's a terrible thing to see is if you see people, you know, care, have big hearts and want to help, they don't know how and they're being manipulated by other people to get, to appeal to those instincts, to get them outraged, to get them so focused on their outrage, on their extremeness that they're forgetting all the other stuff that is still a problem.

Right?

I, I've said this before, I'll say it again.

The system's working effectively.

And, and again there are.

And Joe Rogan covers this and I know it sounds crazy because Jorgen's in a bunch of conspiracies and I'm not going to advocate one way or the other.

But what I will say is there are known studies from China, from Russia, where people talked about getting into the US and having this culture war be created.

It originally started by, quote, manipulating the youth by teachers, pre social media, getting people in there to give the youth different perspective.

And this different perspective led to things that were very extreme ideals this extreme liberalism, for example.

And again, I'm not advocating one way or the other, but that was a known political warfare, like, strategy.

Yeah.

And you.

If so much of the Internet is now bots and fake and social media is bots and fake, you would be lying to yourself not to consider and pause and consider the rhetoric of what you're seeing on these platforms as being weaponized to you.

Because I guarantee you a lot of what you're seeing, a lot of what you're seeing, you're taking at face value, and you're not going, why am I seeing this?

I know.

And that's.

So when I'm.

And that.

That was to my point.

Or I. I was saying about when I'm on Instagram or I'm on YouTube and you know the.

I rarely go to the.

The for you pages.

Right.

I'm like, bro, I know what's for me.

I don't need you to tell me what's for me.

I'm not gonna.

I don't want to just, like, fall into something new.

Because you told me if I get a referral from a friend, like, hey, check this out.

Okay, I'll check that out.

Right.

But I don't need you out, Mr. Algae Rhythm, letting me know that's a space jam reference.

The better one.

Right.

There's only one.

It's got bug bunny in it.

Right.

But I'm always.

I'm always curious.

Like, I've always had this thought of, did I make this decision on my own?

Where did I come up with this decision to buy this product or to do this thing?

I looked at phone cases because my phone cases, like, yeah, for those of you who are driving, you can't see it.

This is my phone case.

I want you to say hi to my phone case.

It's such a great phone case.

Watch this.

It just falls right out that from Apple, bro.

It just.

I've been walking around it.

This is like a time bomb waiting to go off.

Yeah.

Stay in there.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, you make these decisions every day, and you're like, why did I make this?

It was a convenience.

My algorithm.

All phone cases now.

Yeah.

It's the only thing I see.

Right.

I told you about this.

So, like, with everything going on in the market and everything that's going on, like, personally.

Right.

I told you.

We were having this conversation right before the show.

I was on Instagram right before we get on, and there was an ad for a new hat.

Everyone knows, like, I love black hats, right?

And it.

All it said was Overthinking on the, on the hat.

I was like, this hat was made for me.

How did the algorithm.

Your impulse to buy it was strong.

But hold on, it's not.

It was a new era hat.

Like, how.

That was the first one that it showed.

The next one was like, LA, NY.

But the first one to show was overthinking.

I'm like, how you.

How you know that was for me.

This was right before we listened to Adam from Mind Pump.

Mind Pump.

Mind Pump.

Say that he spits on toilet seats to clean them.

You were giving me, hey, Jackie, I know you're listening, girl.

Hey, talk to your boy.

Hey.

I was getting beef for saying that I sit on that wax paper.

Ass gaskets are useless.

But he.

The, the argument there for them was like, wait, you're gonna touch the door handle, but you're gonna use a.

What do you call it?

So not only does Saeed only pee sitting down at his home and never pees anywhere else.

Yeah, but he never touches door handles.

I'm the guy that washes his hands, right?

And then I go take the paper towel and then I, I.

And then I wipe my hands.

So.

But to be respectful of everybody else, I'll throw that one away.

I'll get a brand.

A brand new clean one.

I'll go to the door, I'll open the door, and I'll kobe it into the trash can.

If I, I do something and I can't.

If I can't throw, like the towel away by the door while I'm going, I'll take it with me somewhere.

Oh, yeah, But I'll go.

If it's like, even if it's far away and there's.

It's not like a cylinder, right?

I got to shoot it through.

Through a hole.

I'm still drunk.

I'm going to go copy it.

Nobody from, from this office building that I'm aware of listens to the show, but there's a couple dudes who do not wash their hands when they leave.

That's terrible.

I'm telling you right now, bro, don't touch that handle.

No, don't do that.

I know, that's terrible.

And the whole argument of, like, I'm clean, I'm a clean person.

What?

Well, you shake my hand like, what's the difference?

I'm like, don't do that.

That's.

So is Magic Johnson too soon?

The most, the most dangerous mosquitoes when they leave Magic Johnson.

All right, hard pivot.

Starbucks jumps after us.

Sales rise for the first time in two years.

Mr. Nickel.

He's got a plan that's working over there.

And I read an interesting fact I thought I wanted to share.

He was getting an allowance for250,000 a year for private.

Private jet travel to their corporate headquarters, which is in Seattle.

Right.

And he lives in Newport.

Yeah.

Down here with us.

Yeah, yeah, with us.

Not me, bro.

The poor people.

That's your side of Orange county, bro.

I'm on the poor side of Orange County.

Yeah.

And the palazzos.

How many orange groves do you have around your house?

I'm inland.

I am inland.

Yeah.

Where the orange groves are.

Oh, yeah, I get it.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It smells like citrus when you wake up in the morning.

No, just breathe that in.

You don't have to squeeze juice just right there.

Yeah, yeah.

What's your housekeeper's name again?

Oh, I don't got one of those.

I'm sorry, what was it?

Person who takes care of the house.

I don't remember.

The proper vernacular is here if you want to help us out.

Groundskeeper.

Groundskeeper.

The housemaid.

No.

Yeah, which, by the way, I saw the movie the Housemaid.

Have you seen that?

Why would I see that?

What do you mean?

Why would you say.

Who's in the movie?

It's some actress that's super pop, but it's off a book that was like viral and like everyone's.

Everyone's read it.

Not gonna do it.

Yeah.

That's wild.

Yeah.

Anyway, so Mr. Nicole over at Starbucks just got unlimited private jet travel because Starbucks is requiring unlimited only travel privately moving forward because of, quote, security risks.

I mean, you could, you could touch on that a little bit.

Right?

I mean, look, like, isn't it true?

It's kind of like the.

The President of the United States and the Vice President can never fly on the same plane.

Right?

Yeah, that's.

That's just so I.

Security reasons.

I had the same problem with, with my.

With my travel when I was at the bank.

Right, yeah.

We're publicly traded company.

You can't have all your executives on one flight.

It makes sense.

Down the company suffers.

So you gotta space them out.

That I get.

But just saying, bro, you can't drive, you can't fly public anymore.

You're too special to us.

What?

You're too good.

God, how good is this guy?

They just had sales increase for the first time in two years.

And he's good looking too.

Stop it.

He's a good looking dude.

What's wrong with you?

Come on, he's a stud.

No, he's not.

Absolutely not.

Disagree.

Clearly we have different types of men, bro.

Come on.

He looks rich.

I look at rich.

To me, looks good.

Starbucks.

Brian Nicole.

And he spells it against.

Come on.

That is not a good looking dude, bro.

Look at his jawline.

Come on.

Are you kidding me?

Guy's a stud.

Okay.

No, Andy, I think I like him.

I think I like him because isn't he the former?

Doesn't that.

That looks very caveman.

Is he the bro?

Is he?

Is he.

Isn't he the former Chipotle guy?

Maybe that's why I like.

That's why I like him.

I'm a Chipotle.

Yeah.

I look, I don't.

I.

You don't strike me as eating Chipotle anymore.

Huh?

You know, sodium's too high.

I always get like swollen up afterward.

It's okay.

And then I gotta, you know, spit on toilet seats like Adam.

And it's the whole problem.

Adam, what's going on?

Sexy Adam?

You know you made it when you got a Wikipedia page.

Brian Arnicle, born 1970.

He's six years older than me.

He's six years older than me.

Honestly.

Yeah, that's not.

That's not a flattering photo.

That dude's 51.

That's a terrible photo of him.

He's 51.

Damn.

That's occupation.

He looks like 80.

CEO.

I will say this.

I will say this.

How on I have mentioned this before, I've started noticing.

Never in my life have I ever seen a Starbucks ad.

I'm starting to see Starbucks ads.

Yeah.

I feel like sales were down.

Sales were down for a while and they had to start because, you know, some companies just.

They don't need to market themselves.

You already know we're on every corner, but now I bet you.

I think sales have been down for quite some time.

Probably for a number of different reasons.

For us, what it takes to make it in corporate America.

You got to look like this, dude.

Is that what it is?

Is my mullet not good enough?

You got to play the part, bro.

You got to play the part.

That's what they want.

They want someone.

They want someone who's polished.

And that Paul and being that polish has a price tag.

I'm polished.

Not that polished.

Stop it.

Sexy.

I need to see a picture of a CEO that has a beard like.

Like you do.

I'm sure there's none of them.

None of them?

Yeah.

Why?

You know, why is that?

Because you can't have a sense of style.

Guys with beards are more attractive and thus Untrustworthy.

We don't know what this guy's gonna do.

You don't know what you're doing over here.

All right.

Rental concessions are on the rise in America's Sunbelt cities.

This makes sense.

This is where you've seen the most real estate value corrections and a lot of housing supply come online.

The struggle to find affordable apartments is tormenting renters in major cities across the country.

But not in Phoenix, the US capital of free rent.

Shout out to Phoenix.

Free rent.

About 54% of rentals in the metro area are giving tenants at least one month off their rent, the highest percentage of anywhere else in the country, according to October data from listings website Apartment List.

The discounts can range from one month to more than three months.

And that doesn't count the other perks that landlords give out to attract tenants.

Amazon gift cards, discounted sports tickets and free moving trucks.

The renter friendly environment in Phoenix is a symptom of the city's enormous glut of high end apartments.

Because we saw all those high end apartment units being delivered to the markets, everybody thought they were gonna get these crazy above market rents.

Well, not so much.

Yeah, just like the home builders giving away concessions in order to get you in owner, you know, buying purchase concessions, buying down your rate, giving you higher end appliances.

Yeah, stuff like that.

Well, the apartments are doing these same areas and metros are doing it.

We were warned about the Sun Belt region last year in the middle of the year.

And certainly you're seeing this as a result of it, the apartment rentals here.

I mean, I mean if we're, if we're going to talk about like the home affordability crisis and we, we say this problem needs to be a combination of three things.

I think we need to start, we need to start adding a fourth thing.

What's that?

So we know mortgage rates need to come down, wages need to go up and values need to come down a little bit.

All, all in, you know, conjunction together in some very, some form or another, working together to ultimately help fix this problem.

And we know that's not gonna happen, right?

Yeah.

I mean, I think you said on the Live Today, how come nobody's talking about people needing to be making more money?

Yeah, because nobody wants to impact people's wages.

Okay.

So the fourth thing that needs to start getting adopted more is you need to allow for more remote work.

More remote work.

That's the, that trends going the opposite way.

And it's going.

And another thing going the opposite way.

Right.

Like, okay, I cannot Afford to live here.

Right.

Jane.

Jane Fraser.

So allow me to buy.

Yeah, right.

Allow me to buy a home somewhere else where I have already proven that I can do the job.

The numbers came out today.

What is the one state in the country that had the most influx of new people to its population?

Texas.

No.

Nice guess, but during the pandemic, sure.

Texas, Florida high.

South Carolina.

Oh really?

South Carolina had like a 12 gain.

It was insane.

And I get it.

I get it's been, it's been a pretty big exodus, dude.

My.

My sister's over in North Carolina and she sent me photos of like the snowstorm.

She was, she.

She had to tell me all the things she had to do.

Like things that like I never even considered.

On the hatches.

Yeah, you have to like drip your faucets.

Like that was like I never even.

Thought of that water going away.

The freezer.

Yeah, otherwise.

Otherwise it freezes over.

And they had like wood burning like fireplace that they had to make sure they had ample firewood.

I'm like, God dang.

And it's a problem.

So developers flooded the Sunbelt with new luxury buildings in flashy amenities during the pandemic years when droves of remote workers were moving in to Sides Point.

That led to a record surge of new apartments hitting the market.

Now there aren't enough renters to.

To fill them.

Places like Denver and Charlotte, North Carolina are similarly over supplied.

And more than half of their rental properties are also being offered at least one month free of rent, according to apartment list.

It is a contrast to the housing scarce coastal cities like New York and Los Angeles where renters endure cutthroat apartment hunts to find a place to live.

This of course from the Wall Street Journal vis a vis Instagram.

I've got only got a few more tonight, kids.

It's been a long trip, but one of my favorite ones of the night.

Saeed's already seen the headline here.

Why aren't you clicking?

Click, you son of a.

Okay, you know what?

Sometimes you gotta accept the world that you got right.

That's what Jamie Dabson said.

Jamie Dimon said.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna old school it.

There you go.

The Inverse Kramer fund launched three years ago.

Here's how it's doing.

Okay, this is fun.

Are you ready?

So explain to people what the Inverse Kramer fund is for those that don't know, and hopefully you do know.

But we get.

We get new listeners.

We get new listeners.

Yeah.

So you've heard of the inverse Kramer tracker?

This is how it's doing.

In January 2023, investors noticed something interesting.

Okay.

When Jim Cramer hated a stock, it often ripped.

When he loved it, it lagged.

So the inverse Kramer portfolio was launched on autopilot.

It simply does the opposite.

Micron mu was added after Kramer said he was waiting for it to come back down.

It never did.

Intel intc, if you're following stocks, was added after he highlighted a multi billion dollar loss.

Soon after, the US government took a 10% stake and the partnerships followed.

That's wild.

Yeah.

Caterpillar was added.

When he told viewers to wait.

The stock surged on AI demand and government contracts.

So I don't think people actually realize that the US government can actually take ownership in stocks.

Yeah, like they don't.

Like.

I think they have a huge like portion of intel too.

Right?

That's what this.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

10% stake.

Yeah.

Oh, and you know who knew about that in advance?

Not Jim Cramer, Nancy Pelosi.

Yeah, UPS was added after Jim Cramer said he didn't like it because of the dividend.

It's up 23.5% since UnitedHealth was added after he called it a tragedy.

It's been recovering as institutions like Berkshire Hathaway and Michael Burry stepped in.

It did have a bad day today.

Anecdotally, people warned to invest in the opposite of Jim Cramer.

Okay.

They wanted to, so they, they built it.

And the best part is you can follow it directly through your own auto, your own brokerage account.

Only on autopilot, of course.

It's a, it's a sale.

But let's go through, through this numbers here.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's see.

In January of 2023, the inverse Kramer fund was launched on autopilot after noticing that the Mad Money host did not usually have successful stock tips.

This portfolio does the opposite of what Kramer recommends.

It buys what he hates and sells.

What he loves, up 177.6%.

So either he either.

It's one of two things.

Either he's in on it and he's laughing like in the back, or I.

Have a theory in this or all.

Of his boys are roasting him.

So Micron up 229%.

Intel up 174.5%.

Caterpillar up 59.2%, UPS up 23.5% and UnitedHealth up.

Hold on, hold on.

This is only referencing the stocks that have gone up after he said to get out.

There have been plenty that have gone the opposite way that he said to get into.

I Believe Jim Cramer is the biggest intentional, like, mole troll.

That's right.

Mole troll.

New words here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think he's the biggest troll on the Internet.

Yeah.

I think he's the biggest troll in the media.

And I think he's been playing this game for so long, it's just now like an inside story.

Everybody knows it.

Yeah.

And if you listen to.

Have you ever listened to a show?

I used to back in, like in high school.

Okay.

So I'm an idiot.

And I used to like, I.

That's how I first got into this song.

When he was talking.

I'm like, man, this guy is way too passionate about this.

It's not that serious.

Well, honestly, it's kind of like what I sound like.

No, at least he's talking to people.

I'm talking to myself most time.

Are you.

He looks like he hasn't aged.

Yeah, I mean, he's always looked old.

Kind of like Brian Nicole.

Yeah.

That dude turns 70, you'd be like, he looks exactly the same.

I am very much a hater right now.

I fully appreciate.

I feel like he's gotten some work done too.

Yeah, I'm sure he has.

And yet you think he's attractive, which is a questionable source.

Dude.

Yeah.

I like my man to be a little more olive.

The synthetic version I like.

Yeah.

In any event, yeah, I think he's a.

He's a big time troll.

But if you listen to his show, it's usually older sounding people who call into a show.

It's a very different aging demographic.

I'll say.

My uncle's the one that got me into.

Yeah.

So I think that demographic is very much outdated.

Just one more article today.

This link doesn't work either.

I hate you.

Apple Studio share of the domestic box office.

Yeah, this was interesting.

Yeah, I love that for you.

I love that for you.

Studio share.

The domestic box office we got Disney.

20th Century Searchlight owned 28% of the the tickets full year ticket sales.

United States and Canada rose about 4% from 2024 to $9.05 billion.

Disney accounted for the highest share of that haul with 2.49 billion in ticket sales, or 27.5% according to data from.

Com Score.

Never heard of.

Its closest competitors were Warner Brothers discovery, which tallied 1.9 billion.

A very, very big drop off.

Yeah.

Domestically or 21.

And Universal, which took about 1.7 billion or 19.7.

Together, these three studios accounted for nearly 70% of the domestic domestic box office market share.

So when you think about it, in the perspective of what's happening here, all these other four, like a 24, I think, is Brad Pitt, Lionsgate, 3%, 4%, Paramount 6%, Sony 7%, Universal Focus.

Universal Focus 20, Disney 28, Warner Brothers, 21.

There are very few studios left.

I know.

And that's sad.

Right.

Because studios tend to have their own way of doing things and producing their own content, their own kind of way.

Right.

And if there's fewer studios, then less room for creativity.

Right.

So they're going to have.

Yeah, I'm.

I'm not a fan.

Not a fan.

Neither am I, but I thought it was interesting to share that.

I didn't.

Disney, it goes to show you.

And this.

You see this prevalent on YouTube, too.

Pandering to children gets you the most income.

Yeah, of course.

Because parents just want to keep their kids occupied.

Yeah.

So from now on, we're going to have a coloring book companion to the higher standard.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, I'm out here.

Yeah, I would love.

I would love to get.

To get to the point, and I don't want to rip it off.

One of our listeners.

One of our listeners actually got inspired by us, like, back in the day.

That's not good.

And was working on creating a series of children's books for, like, financial literacy.

Oh, really?

Do you remember that?

Yeah, I do.

Whatever.

I think.

Was it Ross?

I want to say it was Ross.

Shout out to him if it wasn't.

If it wasn't.

You still.

Shout out to you, by the way, bro, what's up?

Sorry.

Sorry for whoever it was that did, but I was like, that'd be awesome if we.

If we could do that.

If we just need more time.

There's no time.

There's so many ideas.

There's no time.

Between the hedge fund stuff that I'm trying to put together right now, the.

Hedge fund stuff, and.

And the charts, man, those are.

Those are if.

If you haven't done yourself the favor or if you haven't been afforded the time to check out the lives.

Right.

I think shout out to Regil, who said that we're gonna do breakdown videos of each of these charts.

Right?

Yeah, they kind of.

They kind of necessitate it, but ultimately.

So I'm going to do this now because it doesn't really matter at this point, but we own the trademark, the higher standard.

Bang, bang.

Yeah.

And we own it for categories, for the word mark, which is a normalized way of doing this.

Entertainment, podcasts, finance, leadership.

Right.

There are some people out there who have A similar trademark, but very different.

There's a particular girl who we've gotten and we've had discussions with and filed cease and desist letters against.

She has it for fitness in coaching.

But we certainly filed cease and desist letters, protect our intellectual property with her because she was bleeding into our space with a podcast called the Higher Standard.

Not that we were against anything that she was doing or what I was just.

It's.

It like, like you said, it bleeds into our space.

Yeah.

And.

And under trademark law, there is a legal requirement for us to defend our intellectual property or use.

Lose the rights to do so against other people who may violate it in the future.

Yeah.

Think about like, like almost like a statute of limitations.

That's right.

So you want to develop a pattern in practice of aggressively defending your intellectual property.

Well, there is somebody who owns the Higher standard dot com.

That's why if you had trouble finding us online, if you just went to search the Higher Standard.

Right.

Then I guess it takes you to like a blank page.

Now it does.

He took the website down in response to our cnd, our cease and desist and then subsequent we have a claim in with the world intellectual property organization wipo and said werp.

Yeah, it says there's a lot of complex up there.

So we're going to, we're going to see how that plays out.

And I don't want to talk too much about it, but suffice it to say that I strongly feel that we should win that.

But other than that, what I will say is at some point we're going to be redoing our websites, whether that comes under the fold or not.

And we're going to have pages allocated towards explaining what these models do.

And even myself who's developed these with Vibe coding, if you will.

Yeah.

So, you know, I just learned that.

Words out of the revive and vibing with the code.

We've been Vibe coding a lot lately, but doing that has allowed us the ability to put out what I think are really institutional grade charts and a show that does look different than anything else on YouTube, for example.

And the goal is for everyone to fully understand what these charts represent and all the data that's being presented within the charts.

But and also ultimately once you do, and hopefully we've been successful at teaching those things that you can rely on, you know, the scorecard that it gives you on.

On where these, where these things fall into.

So right now I'm very, very, very confident in some of all the static.

This is what the market is Saying cards.

We have the synthetic volatility index, we have market liquidity, we have affordability index, we've got the market status in general.

I'm very, very comfortable with how that proprietary algorithm set works.

It's a static shock at the market.

And I can look at and go, okay, this is what the market is right now.

Yes.

It doesn't mean 10 years ago or yesterday or tomorrow, but that means right now that is always going.

The intent was always to serve as the backbone for what will be a market conditions based recommendations on stock.

Now, I'm not saying to buy stock or not buy stock, but if you said, hey Chris, is Tesla a good buy right now?

Yes.

We can look at those market statistics and that data, pull those indices and their corresponding regimes and results back out and put it in here and look at the trade activity of that stock.

Look at the market conditions, the macro calendar, the events that we've labeled important.

And from a proprietary algorithm that we have built over months and hours of work, it'll tell us whether you should be looking at that stock.

To buy stock, hold money in cash or buy options.

Right.

Like is it a good value?

Right.

Is it a good short, near or long term hold or even intraday hold?

Yeah.

And the other charts will showcase where the capital across the market is flowing.

So you can further understand whether, you know, if the capital's flowing in one direction, is this stock going to benefit off that?

Right.

So in theory, we, we test this out a little bit and what, what we're doing is, and I want to be clear here, we're not creating a hedge fund, at least not as of yet.

And a hedge fund is taking the.

Leaving the option open.

Yeah, leaving the option open.

Got to do that.

Is taking other people's money to invest.

What I'd like to be able to do is once we feel comfortable enough with this and we've tested with everybody else and the shows are really a date down of this, take a sum of money, probably about 10 grand, and start investing using the same logic, openly and clearly.

Not saying, hey, you should invest in.

This, but say, this is what we're.

Doing, this is what we're doing.

This is how we're tracking it and making decisions and seeing if it works.

Yeah.

And if it does work, that is the same analytical framework with their own proprietary algorithms that hedge funds do use.

Hence the hedge fund based analytics that we're talking about here.

I don't know that it'll work, but it's an exercise in giving people access into these Black boxes that they hear a lot about.

You hear about Bridgewater, hear about all these people?

Well, we're going to build something that effectively will allow them to see into how those things work.

Yes.

And allow them to trade, if they want to, with the same degree of intellectual insight.

Yeah.

And we're going to remain squarely focused on serving the.

The American peoples and just continue to remain data dependent and take this meeting by meeting and we'll go from there.

Yeah.

We gotta follow Bang Bang, Omar.

We gotta follow in JP's.

Hey, it works for JP.

It's gonna be fine.

I really, really want to know, like, is he.

Is he gonna say, you know, I'm old, I'm done, I'm.

This is getting too much for me.

I don't even want to sit at the table anymore.

Or is he like, no, man, I want to piss you off and I'm gonna sit on this seat?

I don't think he looks at it that way.

I think he looks at it as he has a fiduciary responsibility to the American people to ensure that the institution is preserved.

He's a boring man.

No, come on.

You could tell he's bothered, bro.

There was a lot of.

A lot of throat clearing.

There's a lot of.

There was a lot of throat clearing.

Yeah.

He has an extra skin.

Fold it because.

Leans over the top of his tie.

He doesn't.

He doesn't.

He.

You what?

He doesn't.

He doesn't clear his throat when he's given the postgame press conference, but he did when he.

When he addressed that.

That lawsuit.

Yeah.

And like, he's got mannerism, he's got tells.

He's.

He's definitely not a poker player.

But what I will say is, look, he has tried to the extent that he can, to keep it professional.

Oh, he gets.

He should get all the credit in the world for that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kudos to him.

I invite him on the show one day whenever the seat is open for you next to me.

Listen, Bang, bang, side.

And I want to.

Oh, I have a revelation today.

How does it feel that Kashkari has a vote now?

How does that feel?

I want to know.

Take me through that.

He gets crayons, right?

Is he checking the box of crayons?

David Kelly.

Two first names.

I now realize your frustration.

Everybody kept calling him Kelly.

Like, no, no, no, no, dog.

Not the first name.

Yeah, right.

A first name, but not the first name.

Yeah.

You know, I'm always like that too.

When people put some respect on my.

Name, I Know a lot.

This happens to me all the time.

It's like, okay, it was cool.

When you're in youth sports and they.

They call you by your last name.

Hey, Omar.

Yeah.

Hey, Omar.

Come on, let's go.

Pick it up.

Right?

But now, like, in the corporate world, and they're like, hello, good afternoon, Omar.

I'm like, I so badly want to respond by using their last name and be like, hey, is that what I thought that's what we were doing.

Hey, Shibilski.

So many names I want to reference.

I can't.

Reference.

Yeah, you can't do it.

You gotta pick a nice Anglo name.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I had.

I was on the.

I was on the phone the other day with an attorney and.

And he.

He ref.

He caught.

He was one of the people that called me about, Omar, nice to get a hold of you.

And I was like, oh, my name's Saeed.

He's like, oh, two first names.

I was like, it's actually three.

It's very complicated.

Middle names are first name, too.

He's like, well, I'm an attorney.

I can get that fixed for you if you ever want it.

Smart.

Sounds like an attorney needs some money.

It'll be $10,000.

Say, Omar.

Yeah.

I'm in the process of changing your name.

No, trying to get family Trust situated.

Yeah, you should.

Yeah, yeah, I've got one.

I need to redo it.

Actually need to look at it again.

That's the thing.

And that's.

That's an episode that we.

We need to do every one of the four months.

One of the hundreds of Evergreen content that we need to create is, you know, questions that you should be asking someone who is helping you create the trust.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, just revocable trust in.

In general.

Like, family trust in general.

Living trust in general.

But also, like, because when I was having this conversation with how my wife, I was just letting her know, like, look, this is what the process is going to be.

There's some tough conversations in the.

In those conversations.

A good one.

Like, a good one should.

It should take you some time because they're going to provide you with questions.

You have to go back, you go revisit.

Right.

Who's going to take care of your kids?

I mean, that's a big one, right?

If you both die at the same time.

Question.

If you each die individually, what happened?

I mean, these are.

You die.

These are grim discussions, man.

If you die and your kid is at this age, what's going to happen, like, what's going to happen?

Or if you die and they're an adult, when do they start to get through?

Who do you trust?

Take care of your kids if you die tomorrow, I mean, it's.

Who's going to be the trustee?

Right.

Yeah.

And it's dark stuff.

And, man, I.

When I first did the trust, it was before our son was born.

And then after our son was born, I had to redo a lot of it, and I have to redo it again now that he's six.

But it's supposed to be.

It's a good practice.

Do it annually.

I don't do it annually.

I'm not gonna be.

I'm not gonna lie to you.

But the more your kids develop personalities and you see them, like, do things and live, like, you think, you start thinking through the logistics of, like, my sister lives in Oklahoma.

Like, would my son go live with her?

Right, right.

Like.

Or, you know, like, you start thinking, like, things through and be like, how would that uproot his life?

And, yeah, I'm just using this.

You have to, though.

But you have to.

You have to have these conversations in the dark, man.

And then you got to talk to the people.

You can't just name people in your trust that you haven't spoken to.

No.

Yeah, yeah.

You got to put them on notice.

Like, hey, you.

Are you cool with this?

But part of me also just have.

Start beginning to have these conversations with my wife.

Feels like I'm old.

Yes.

Old for sure.

But prepare.

Like, I'm.

I think as I continue to get older, the stress of that portion will slowly dwindle away because you feel like, although it's never going to be perfect, I've started to prep and prepare, so God forbid, if something were to happen, things should be okay.

Yeah.

But then I fall into the trap of, like, every time I get on a plane, I'm like, okay, is.

What do I need to update?

Should I write something down on a piece of paper?

Should I send an email right now?

You think like that.

Oh, yeah.

Every time.

Yeah.

Geez.

That's every time I get on a plane.

And every time I get on a plane with my wife and without my son, I freak out.

Yeah.

My wife and I talk about that all the time.

Like, I don't like flying.

We rarely have time to go on, like, date nights.

Yeah.

But when we go on date nights, I'm like, bro, this.

Like, this would be.

This would be tragic right now.

You know, on a date night, maybe.

Your son's Batman you know, it's just.

Yeah, but it's.

It's not good, dude.

Like, I think I know we went on a flight.

My wife and I took a flight, and it was a flight to Oklahoma City and then back the next morning.

I mean, it was a real quick turnaround.

Right.

We went up there for a birthday and came back.

Yeah.

And the whole time, I'm like.

Even that night, I'm like, I can't.

Like, I'm just so worried about our son, and I'm not worried about, like, him that night.

I'm worried about us getting back and being safe.

Yeah.

I don't know how much of this has to do with, you know, coming out of the pandemic or just me getting older and just thinking this way naturally.

Right.

But I get.

I ate real, like, anxiety when.

Like, when I just said we went to the movies to watch that.

That movie.

Like, I had anxiety the entire time, you know?

Like, I'm not one to save, like, all my money.

I think your anxiety level is different than mine, though.

You have a high anxiety issue.

Like, you were.

You were.

Let's be.

Let's be real.

I'm a habitual overthinker.

Yeah, so am I.

But it's like Charlie Murphy over.

You can't see the light.

I can't see the light.

Okay.

You don't see the light at the ends of tunnels?

Like, you just.

No, I see.

No, you get so dark, bro.

Like, I hear it in your voice.

No, I'm.

I'm doing.

I'm doing the whole flowchart, and I'm like, yo, the Oz ain't looking good right now.

I'm doing.

Doing.

I'm doing the whole poker odd calculation.

Yeah.

But at some point, this ain't it.

Look, I. I don't know.

It's got a God conversation or whatever it is.

At some point, you've got to find a way to have faith.

I will say this in the outcome.

I have been.

I have been more spiritual as of late, I'd say over the last several months.

That has helped a lot for me personally.

It's helped a lot.

Now, I'm not saying it's.

It's.

It solves anything, obviously.

I mean, that.

That whole process, I think, is.

Is very intimate and personal.

And it's a journey, Right.

For me personally, and especially because I grew up in a household that.

That was not pushed on us at all.

Neither was it for me, man, But I spend every day of my life not wanting to be broke again.

Yeah.

But for I'M trying to.

Like.

It does.

As sad.

As sad as this may be, when you see some of the horrific and tragic things that you see happening all around the world sometimes in your own backyard, right?

You just think, thank God we're healthy.

And that.

That somehow does make it a little bit easier.

Obviously, you feel.

You feel for what you see, too.

But you're like, okay, my situation, like, worst case scenario, if I, like, I'm with my.

My people, then I'm good.

Like, I should be good.

But we're trying to get.

This is.

This is.

This is not.

I.

This isn't solved.

This is a roller coaster.

I know.

Yeah.

I see it with you daily.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, you see it.

I call you every morning.

I have an aunt.

Yeah, you call you every night.

You do.

I feel so bad, too.

I know.

And I know it's.

I know.

It's more so to check in as a good friend.

No, But I keep hoping one day you won't answer because you'll tell me you hate me.

Stop talking to me.

Why are you calling me?

But, no, man, like, I have had, like, this, like, continuous, like, right eye twitch that just won't go away.

I know.

At least you don't have a style like I do.

Thank God it's on this side.

I've never had a sty.

Neither have I.

Is it painful?

Yes.

Like what?

Like, burning sensation.

So the first night I had it, like, I. I was.

I was going to bed and I rubbed my eye because, you know, you put water in your face and you clean your face and you every once while you, like, rub your eyes a little bit.

Yeah.

And the right side felt like.

Like a sharp pain, like, right here, like, on the side of my eye.

God.

And I didn't know it was a sty.

I thought maybe I was getting pink eye or something because my son's had that before.

I've never had either.

And so I'm like, all right, well, let me see how I feel in the morning.

Maybe it's just like a eyelash.

Something poke.

But it hardly hurt.

Right.

I woke up the next morning, my eyes swollen.

Whoa.

So I thought it was pink eye.

Go to urgent care.

This I'm the third time in urgent care in, like, a week and a half.

They're like, what's wrong?

They're like, bro, like, stop touching your butthole.

Like, stop spitting on toilet seats, dog.

So because I had.

I had MRSA in my nose, which is a staph infection.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was a whole problem.

I'm still recovering from that.

That was not fun.

But so, yeah, I thought maybe that is a spread.

Yeah.

You know, stick your finger, nose in your eyes, whatever.

You know, touch doorknobs at the bathroom here.

I know who touched it.

I know where that came from.

Check.

Yeah, yeah, Right.

Like that checks, right?

So I go there and like, oh, no, it's.

It's a sty.

And I'm like, how can you tell?

They're like, oh, because if you look at here, there's a white spot inside.

And you're.

I'm like, all right, great.

So what do I do?

They're like, oh, just put a heat compress on it.

I'm like, I'm sorry.

That.

That's.

That's our technological solution.

Well, I give you antibiotic drops.

I'm like, yeah, give me that.

What else can you.

Me?

Yeah.

And she's like, why do you want stuff to get?

I'm like, cuz, I want this to go away fast.

It's been like a week now, dude, bro.

And I still look like somebody punched me the side of the face.

Dude, that's.

No.

Is that actually.

It doesn't even look that bad.

No, no, it look.

So towards the end of the day, after putting.

Cuz I have a heat.

I have a pirate eye patch in there I put on as a heat patch.

Oh, you do this?

I love to scare people.

Yeah, man.

I got.

I got pink eye.

You want a hug?

So true story.

When my daughter was born, I got pink eye in the hospital.

Right?

Probably butthole.

Probably touching a door.

Not that somebody didn't clean.

Right.

You know?

Yeah.

Shame on you.

Yeah.

Shame on you.

Okay.

I don't even want to put the hospital's name out there, but.

But so I had big guys, so I had to stay away from Aria for the first week that she was born.

Wow.

So it really sucked.

Right.

I didn't get to hold her for the whole first week.

But I was in quarantine.

Pre, like, covet quarantine.

So I was like, this is like I'm in a room all by myself, like, in my own house, just sleeping all day and night.

Like, not getting.

Not getting.

Because my wife's like, you're not getting the kids sick.

You're not getting me sick.

Like, I. I'm gonna take care of all this, and you're just gonna get better.

I need you to get better asap.

Stop messing around.

So I didn't.

I didn't get to butt.

And then coincidentally, Arya had a closed tear duck at the same Time.

Oh, yeah.

Very similar to star.

Okay.

Very similar to side.

And it had, like, pus coming out.

Right.

Naturally, when you first see that as a parent and you couple that with, like, me having pink eye, like, oh, she got pink eye.

You did this.

Yeah, I didn't.

I tell you to stay away from recited.

Right.

I'm like.

I'm like, I swear to God, I haven't left the room, only to use the restroom.

Right.

And sitting down.

Our parents.

Our parents, like, coming from, like, you know, Homeland, right?

They go, no, like, this is what you do.

You just put a black tea bag on it.

Right.

I heard that before.

Okay.

Like, so I'm like, this.

Actually it's supposed to be good for swelling.

So I'm like.

I'm literally like.

Wife and I are very skeptical with, like, some of the, like.

Some of the, like, old school, like, remedies.

Yeah.

Right.

And so we take her to the doctor, and they're like, okay, well, you got to take a Q tip and you got to rub the inside of her eye to, like, open up the tear duct.

And then.

And then.

And then, like, anecdotally, they just threw in.

They're like.

And if you want, maybe just put a black tea bag on it.

I was like, I hate when they're right.

I hate when they're right about stuff like this.

I think the black tea bag thing, because now I have this.

I think it's because it retains heat.

So when you put it on there, the heat just increased the blood circulation.

I don't think the tea is doing anything magical.

Yeah.

It's not like Windex for Greeks, but it's.

You know, it's.

But that's what my eye patch basically is.

And it's a combination of moisture and heat.

Yeah.

And because of that, it creates, like, a good blood flow, and that's.

I think that's what that is.

So I'm giving your parents, like, a little bit of a discount because there's some value there, but it's not, like, special.

Yeah.

And there's.

There was, like, another one, too, that it was funny because Google called them out.

Pee on it.

No, they were like, add.

Remember.

Remember when they were like, add.

Add rice to the formula or the milk, Right?

Oh, yeah.

And it'll keep their stomach full longer.

But, like, you're not supposed to do that till they get to a certain age.

Right.

But our parents were like, telling them, like, no, started early.

Right.

And so I was like, quick, Google search.

Thank God for Google.

I'm like, hey, like, this is what our parents are telling us to do.

What do you.

What do you think?

Like.

Like.

And it literally calls out Middle Eastern cultures, even though Middle Eastern cultures will tell you to do this, do not do this, until they reach this age.

I'm like, okay, got it.

It.

Isn't it wild how, like, their regional, like, idiosyncratic, like, things like that.

Yeah, yeah.

Makes you wonder how much religion has got that from, like, that's where that came from.

Right?

Like, has to.

Right.

But they also.

It's like.

It's worked for them.

Bro, stop talking to me.

It's like an hour and a half in.

What, you don't want to talk to me anymore?

Not really.

All right.

It's a good episode, man.

Was it?

Yes.

Remember, remain squarely focused.

Remember, you, like.

You like being blindsided.

Yeah.

That was rough, man.

What?

We got hustled.

The tariff hustle.

We got hustled.

Everybody got hustled, and I'm not getting that back.

Bang, bang, pow.

You're not getting it.

You make too much fucking Pilates.

Good night, everybody.

Say hello to your gardener for me, asshole.

You got an hoa?

I don't got hoa.

Bye.