Should you give up owning a home? with Kyla Scanlon

Lemonada. You can count on the exchange rate you'd usually get on Google. No unwelcome surprises. Plus, ditch that where's my money feeling. Most transfers arrive in under 20 seconds. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees. Be smart. Get wise. Visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. If you're in America, you're probably feeling broke, angry, and exhausted. The vibes are cooked. The hottest 2026 accessories are third jobs, fourth roommates, and cortisol. All we have is the Knicks and the World Cup. Everything else is going to f***ing hell. Budgeting in America in 2026 is basically survival at this point. Six hours to make $50. $50. Bruh, how f***ing hard do I have to work in order to f***ing survive, bro? Why isn't anyone having children? Gee, I wonder. I think what older generations are having a really hard time conceptualizing is that we're f***ed. We're all going to get priced out. I did everything right. Can't. Can't get ahead. They just think they can squeeze more and more and more. It's going to collapse. Today, only 21% of Americans say that the economy is doing well. That number tanked after the pandemic and has not recovered. Now, obviously, there are a lot of reasons to feel s***ty about the economy. But the one thing that may connect them all? Housing. Home ownership feels increasingly out of reach for many American families. More than 75% of homes across the U.S. are unaffordable for the average household. Since the start of the pandemic, home prices across the country have soared nearly 50%. Today's median price, $416,000. The median age of first-time homebuyer, 40 years old. It's rough out here, folks. Every millennial I know is doom-scrolling Zillow like it's Al Jazeera. When housing is too expensive, it doesn't just make it harder to buy a house. It acts as a kind of bottleneck that makes a bunch of other problems worse. There was an economic article in 2021 called The Housing Theory of Everything, which laid this out beautifully. For example, when an extra bedroom costs an arm and a leg, people have fewer kids than they actually want to have, lowering the birth rate. When housing is hard to find, people can't move to where the best jobs are, which drags down productivity for the entire economy. And when housing is really expensive, people are more stressed out, which leads to homelessness, which could lead to addiction and other mental health issues. But maybe the most visible and obvious problem caused by the housing crisis is that it's made the traditional idea of being an adult, having a family and having a house to put them in, unaffordable. So now we have massive wealth inequality between the older generation, the housing haves, and the younger generation, the housing have-nots. Today, baby boomers are just 18% of the population, but they hold 34% of the housing supply. And they don't even need the space, by the way. You got two boomers and five bedrooms. What are you doing with those four extra bedrooms? They're just filled up with goddamn VHS tapes. Not only do the boomers have all the assets, younger people got to put up with their older relatives, shaming them for not working hard enough. My grandpa and I had a conversation the other day that our generation does not work as hard. We don't save properly. And that's why we're complaining about money all the time. You can look them dead in the face. Be like, hey, I graduated college and I'm making 50K a year at a mediocre job. I cannot afford a $700,000 house. And they'll just tell you to work harder and that you're lazy. Boomers will say, just work hard and you'll be able to buy a house. When they bought a house, it was $40,000. That was knowledge. The economy is not the same. Genuinely, like, they can all die. I cannot wait for them all to fucking die. Whoa, chill. Not all of them need to die for you to get a house. You just need two: your parents. Now, to be clear, I condemn violence, but the math here is basically correct. The economy isn't the same. You could graduate from high school in 1975, walk directly into a union job, and plunk down a down payment on a house when the average price was only $39,000. Today, that same house would probably be worth ten times that amount, way outpacing income growth over the same period. There's actually a single number that shows home affordability across time: the ratio of home prices over median household income. That's right, folks. Learning fractions wasn't a waste of time. This is what you came to YouTube for: to do math problems that make you angry. So basically, this ratio equals how many years it would take to earn what a house costs. In 1985, it was 3.1. By 2025, it was 4.9. But that's just the average for the country. Here in New York City, that number is 9.5. In San Francisco, it's over 12. At this point, if you can afford a home in San Francisco, you either have rich parents, or at some point, you sign an NDA from Peter Thiel. As boomers had careers and raised families, their net worth kept rising as their homes got more and more valuable. But while the boomers thrive, people in their 20s struggle just to get by. I'm so f***ing tired of life. I can't afford to live here anymore. Why is gas $5 a gallon? I'm f***ing stressed out. Job market is a joke. I have no choice but to keep the job I have now. The one that's barely paying my f***ing bills. You may have noticed that montage was all women. That's because most men don't vent their frustrations on TikTok. They vent it in LeBron James' comments. Young Americans feel locked out. They feel like the whole system is rigged against them. And understandably, it makes them cynical. When it feels like you can't get ahead playing by the rules, you give up. There was actually an economic paper last year on this titled "Giving Up." No, I didn't read the whole thing. I was like, "Size 8 font? F*** it. Close tab." But my researcher told me that it found that as households' perceived probability of attaining home ownership falls, they consume more relative to their wealth and reduce work effort and take on riskier investments. So basically, we have three ways to cope: little treats, quiet quitting, and gambling. Let's take the first phenomenon, which, some economists call the "little treat economy" or "treatonomics," which describes how when people can't afford a home or actual therapy, they do retail therapy. It's a TikTok meme. It's called "sweet little treat." After all, what difference does it make? There is no future. Daddy wants to feel good today. So get that gourmet cookie, buy yourself a $50 Labubu, or splurge on that coconut chai mix, a bold, warming blend crafted with 100% organic Assam black tea, whole cardamom, cinnamon, and premium spices. Use code HUSTON10 at checkout for 10% off everything on the website. Then we've got quiet quitting, the idea of doing just enough at work and never going above and beyond. Now, there is a question of how wide the quiet quitting phenomenon really is and what its impacts are, but the feeling behind it is real. I am not going to put in a 60-hour work weekend, pull myself up by my bootstraps for a job that does not care about me as a person. So many people my age are coming to the room, listening to the realization that we're just. The idea and the notion that we're just able to buy a home in this climate just by putting in some extra hours is outrageous and honestly just so ignorant. This feeling that simply working harder isn't a viable way to build wealth and own a home has led directly to Gen Z cope number three, gambling, where at least there's a chance at a big score. You might just hit a lick even if it's a small chance. So yeah, you may never save up for a down payment with your job, but maybe just maybe if you put $100 on a polymarket bet about whether President Trump will mention tampons in a conversation with Elon Musk, it will get you over the line. I'm not making this up by the way. That was a literal bet people made on polymarket over what Trump would say during his ex chat with Elon Musk in 2024. And this paid off. The odds were 7%. So anyone making that bet on this crazy-ass conversation made a 14x payout which caused one user to comment, "Congrats to my tampon bros." We're just f***ed. This is the only bet in history where you should get your legs broke if you win. Now, some people might say this is a degenerate behavior. Gambling is haram or my dad is dead because he owed money to the mob. But you're missing the bigger picture here. Gen Z is so desperate to get ahead that they now see gambling as a legitimate wealth-building tool. The system is broken. S*** is clearly not working. In fact, a recent poll found that nearly two-thirds of Gen Z and millennials think that the only way to build wealth today is through alternative methods like gambling and crypto, which might be why Gen Z now spends more on gambling than boomers. Although gamblers of all ages are still spending the same amount on therapy. Zero. So what's the solution here? Sure, we could expropriate the ruling class, nationalize all land, and euthanize everyone over 75. Or we could just build more houses, which would lower their price. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as it sounds. Part of the problem is you need to build the right housing, affordable housing in the right places. And the right places have spent decades passing laws to make sure that never happens. A lot of neighborhoods have basically banned apartments, townhomes, and duplexes. This is an issue often called NIMBYism, or not in my backyard. Now, it's important to remember that NIMBYs aren't all the same. Lower middle class NIMBYs have most of their wealth tied up in their home. So they don't want more homes to get built because that would lower the value of their home. Remember, Remember, they have one primary asset working for them. Their house getting lower in value would shrink their wealth. More wealthy NIMBYs are the kind who will lose their mind if you try to build a duplex next door because they would prefer that you die with roommates than have an afternoon shadow on their begonias. But at the end of the day, homeowners of all types have most of the political power, and they're using that power to prevent more homes from being built. So how do we break out of this cycle? How do we get more people who don't have homes into homes? To answer that question, I sat down with Kyla Scanlon. She's a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and the author of In This Economy: How Money and Markets Really Work. I'm telling you, man, this is essential reading. We talked about Gen Z's financial nihilism with the help of a visual aid drawn by one of my Gen Z producers. Looks like she's crying. And she works for you. She works for me. Now it says paycheck $1. That's not true. We talked about how the housing crisis is impacting birth rates, and if replacing dying Americans with more income. Immigration might be the answer. The Economic Innovation Group had a great paper about high-skilled immigration and how it can grow the economy. And that'd be great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, it would be. I think it'd be a great replacement. And our discussion of sewer infrastructure went way off the rails when I went on one of my classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle tangents. They're just teenagers that are underage, but they do have a guardian. Splinter. Splinter is their master. He's a rat. He is technically their legal guardian. I think what's interesting about it, Kyla, is that the whole movie is about brotherhood. Now the Foot Clan do follow them into the sewers, but the Foot Clan are human beings. Shredder and Splinter at one point were actually training together in ancient Japan. None of the mayors or the political establishment had the guts to stand up to him. Splinter was trying to protect his master. The problem is that everybody thinks they're a Michelangelo, but I'm more neurotic. I'm more of a Leo. Sorry, how was the sewer related to our conversation? Hey, I'm just saying. We talk about elite power and worker power. Let's not forget about Turtle Power. Kyla, thank you for joining us on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. Look, I'm not here to brag, but I'm going to talk your shit for you. You are famous in the economics world for coming up with a term in 2022 called vibe session. Now, when I first heard the term vibe session, I was like, what the hell is that? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Now, when I first heard that, I thought it was just a Spotify playlist that you would like queue up at a coffee shop. What is a vibe session? It's a disconnect between data and sentiment. So it's the idea that the economic data is saying one thing and then consumer sentiment is saying another. So that word came about in 2022 during the Biden economy when we were recovering from inflation, from the pandemic, the labor market was strong, the economy was growing, but people felt really, really bad. And so I wanted to understand that disconnect. So I wrote this piece in July of 2022 and it's like really, it's beyond me at this point. Like Treasury Secretary Scott Besson talks about it. Whoa. For the past year and a half and during the campaign, most of the media said, oh, the economy is great. It's just a vibe session. I don't think he knows that. I was the one who coined it, you know, Jared Bernstein, who is the chairman of the Department of Finance, the chair of Biden's Council of Economic Advisors, has done a lot of really great work on the word. He just did a big interview with Paul Krugman on Krugman's Substack about the term. So it has a life beyond it because, you know, sentiment, it just hit a record low very recently. And it doesn't quite make sense because economic data is still relatively strong. And so the word now, people will co-opt it and take it to mean that, you know, people shouldn't feel bad about their economic circumstances. But it's really that disconnect. Like, it's not saying that anybody should feel one way or another. It's like, why is this happening? Like, what is economic data not capturing that people are feeling? So you drew this diagram in 2022 to explain what a vibe session is. I have ADHD. So this hit me on a primal level. Talk to me about what's happening because I see two force fields, me and then a bunch of concepts I don't understand. So essentially, it's trying to describe the disconnect between the reality described by the economic data and then the sentiment. Right. Right. So the vibes is the short term for sentiment. And so what ends up influencing reality is all of these policy decisions. So the decisions that the Federal Reserve makes, the monetary policy body, the central bank, the decisions that the U.S. government makes, as well as what's happening in manufacturing, as well as what's happening around materials, what's happening to gasoline prices, housing, the labor market, and all of that ends up influencing the reality. But one quick channel to get to the vibes is discourse. So a lot. A lot of sentiment is shaped by what people are reading in the news. You know, during the Biden economy, the news was quite negative around, you know, prices. Everything was expensive. And so you saw a lot of news stories saying that the economy was bad, despite this economic data being relatively strong. So that's the discourse channel. And then, of course, it all feeds into your narrative that you have for how you experience the world. And so your experience of the world and the evidence that you have from your lived life ends up influencing the expectations that you have around the world. Yeah. And that influences your perception and then your interpretation of your experience. So as someone who lives and breathes the economy and economics, how do you make sense of what this this idea of the narrative is? For example, when you wrote this piece, a big part of the narrative was eggs and gas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll be honest with you. I don't even eat eggs in the morning. But I had to I had to be like, no, this eggs discourse is really, really super important because I'm just reading so much about. Eggs. I mean, the egg story was really interesting because that ended up being a sort of price gouging story where the egg sellers were raising their prices. Yeah. It was insane. Eggs were like the new Supreme drop where it's just like, hey, these resellers were really, really price gouging the fans of people who want eggs and they're diehard egg fans. I don't want to put you on the spot here, but people ask you for your expertise all the time. Kyla, how would you say things are right now for the American public because you have both the information. I mean, I think right now is really hard because, as I said, you know, sentiment hit a record low. And so that's been another puzzle is like, why are people you know what's going on? Yeah. And a lot of it comes down to structural affordability problems. So housing is really expensive. Child care is really expensive. Elder care is really expensive. So some of that doesn't quite show up in the economic data. So we have like this affordability issue. And that is really making people feel. Not great about the economy. I have to listen to the fake news talking about affordability. Affordability. I've won. I've won affordability. A new Reuters Ipsos poll finds 56 percent disapprove of how the president is handling the cost of living. I hear so much about the word groceries. It's like sort of an old fashioned word groceries. But groceries is the word that's the most accurate word. And then we also have this technology aspect where AI is creating a lot of confusion around delivery. And then we also have this technology aspect where AI is creating a lot of confusion around um barren wallet she figures she's going to retire at 87 yeah and then the vibes are in terms of dreams and plans no home no baby no wedding no retirement fund oh my god so this is pretty bad i mean i know it looks very dr seuss and it's colorful but it's it's pretty bad what do you have to say about this i think the reality is what a lot of people you know here here in new york are facing especially with the really small apartment so my first apartment in los angeles was about 300 square feet and it was so expensive way more than what i was making and so a lot of people are dealing with that where your salary is not covering what you need from a house and there's studies that show if people are not able to buy a big enough house you know they're going to have dashed dreams not be able to have a family not be able to build out the life that they want and part of that is sort of the generational hindrance handoff being quite stalled so boomers own most of the three to four bedroom homes in the u.s you know they're 18 of the population and they own like 30 of the housing stock so like that's one part i think of the dashed dreams is we do have this generational freezing that's going on but in terms of where the paycheck goes you know rent is eating up more and more people's housing costs a lot of that is the housing supply problem not building enough especially since the great recession health insurance is keeps up with the pandemic and so i think that's a big part of the reason why i think that's a big part of the reason why i think that's a big part of the reason why student loans is a big big issue the u.s savings rate just hit a i think an all-time low um you know people were saving a lot of money post-pandemic and they haven't been able to sense deodorant and toothpaste um i guess major yeah a big part i mean they're locked up behind bars at cvs yeah you try to go into cvs you got to get toothpaste it's like a committed vehicular manslaughter yeah yeah so there's two ways that financial nihilism is presenting itself right now you got gambling and you got little treats let's start with gambling nearly two-thirds of gen z and millennials think that the only way to build wealth today is through alternative methods like gambling and crypto jesus yeah why well i mean i think that it's sort of the lack of long-term trust like the harvard youth opinion poll came out in april 2026 and you know young people just don't trust institutions and so if you think about what trusting an institution requires it requires long-term thinking it requires believing in a 401k or believing in the stock market for a long period of time and so people are turning to these moonshot bets as a way to circumnavigate that because they don't necessarily believe in their long-term future i mean is it about building wealth that was the term that you used or is it really about hey i need to get rich yesterday i mean i guess like what do you think the difference between building wealth and getting riches i think i think what you had alluded to earlier which is building wealth and getting rich is a different thing than building wealth and getting rich is a a longer-term frame of thinking five years 10 years 15 years 20 years i mean they even talk about 30 years crypto the boo-boos flipping things on stock x that window is much shorter yeah no i think it's like are you saying the short-term versus long-term yeah short-term versus long-term yeah yeah i mean i think a lot of people don't believe that there's a long-term available for them you know here's a fun fact which is actually kind of depressing americans spend over 100 billion dollars per year on lottery tickets which calculates out to roughly 300 dollars per person per year when you hear a stat like that what do you think i think people are trying to strike it rich i mean my um my dad plays the lottery and his idea is that you know you have to try or else you'll never do it so i think for a lot of people they'll participate in the lottery put aside a little bit of of money just in the hopes that they'll have the moonshot do you think there's a element of desperation to it as well in the sense that hey the entire economy feels like a casino yeah so i might as well take my shot or like you were saying with your dad of like hey you can't win if you don't play yeah so i guess i'll get the scratcher yeah i mean right now it's such a hands off approach to the casino side of the economy like the trump administration themselves kind of gamble and foreign policy and so how they're approaching regulation for the economy and so i think i think a lot of people are trying to get away with it they're trying to get away with it they're trying to get away with it because they're trying to get away with it because they're trying to get away with it they're trying to get away with it because they're trying to get away with it and so a lot of people are doing that i think sometimes to their detriment here's another way that nihilism is expressing itself you describe this thing called the little treat economy what is that well it goes back to what you were saying about the boo-boos people if people feel like they can't afford a house or afford an economic life they're going to return to risky investments but they're also going to return to kind of buying little things for themselves because it's like well i'm not saving for a long-term plan so i'm going to buy the boo-boos or i'm going to buy like a pistachio dubai chocolate latte and it's all of this is very rational like i'm not saying that people are making the wrong decision i think all of it makes a lot of sense but that's a little treat economy is that people will you know get them get themselves nice little things which i think so is it essentially if i'm hearing this right hey tomorrow's gonna suck but i can make today a little bit more yummy yeah like your producer kind of drew out you know like some sort of the little treats are nice well there's a little treat there was no little treats actually um do i are there little treats that you like i like buying pens what kind um well i like this my pilot is that the um the pilot vision unique oh yeah okay um so yeah uniball vision is one of my favorites but pilot yeah the pilot g2 i like how it has the hook yeah yeah there's also one there's a pen store nolita i mean you won't talk about little treats they have like pens from pricey yeah there's this one store called muji or do you know it you're talking about i think i just muji muji ji right yeah yeah they have a bunch of pens yeah yeah they have a nice set of pens yeah they have a pretty pretty solid pretty solid so that's yeah that's what i like to do that's what you do when you you're like i'm just gonna go crazy i'm gonna drop you know sixty eight dollars on pens right now yeah okay yeah notebooks yeah i also have little treats too sometimes when i get depressed or somebody writes something mean in the comment section what i like to do is i'll just door dash ice cream at two o'clock in the morning and i'll get a couple pints ben and jerry's american dream and then what i'll do is i'll eat three quarters of it um my wife finds out in the morning and then what i'll do is i'll just blame the children and throw them under the bus yeah and then that's what kids are good for you know wipe my hand clean picture this it's summertime like any responsible parent you have plans to teach your kids the art of the cold plunge you inflate the pool in your backyard but the presence of a foreign invader derailed your fun not the norwegians visiting for the world cup i am talking about pests mosquitoes specifically these parasites these vampires are in your yard trying to drink your blood when you were just trying to reduce inflammation you need backup to defeat them but backup is expensive and gives you a 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like 3d surround cameras clear sight ground and rear views driver assist features and an intuitive infotainment system with three models the defender 90 110 and 130 there's a defender for every kind of adventure from city streets to remote trails this is a vehicle that like you is capable of great things explore the full defender lineup at land rover usa.com one of the things i think about when i read contemporary works that talk about the economy is is that the way this is right now? Or is this the way it's always been? Here's a quote from George Orwell in 1937 from his book, The Road to Wigan Pier, describing the British economy at the time. Did you read this book? No. Okay, let's take a look at it. All right. Trade since the war has had to adjust itself to meet the demands of the underpaid, the underfed people, with the result that our luxury is nowadays almost always cheaper than a necessity. And above all, there is gambling, the cheapest of all luxuries. 20 million people are underfed, but literally everyone in England has access to a radio. Whole sections of the working class who have been plundered of all they really need are being compensated in part by cheap luxuries, which mitigate the surface of life. Kyla, when I read this, I mean, George Orwell is basically talking about Bravo TV and Labooboos and Dubai chocolate lattes. So is this 1937 or is he describing 2026? I mean, there's something called Balmose cost disease, which John Byrne Murdoch just read about for the FT. Well, he wrote about it a couple of months ago, which is the idea that goods like these. Cheap luxuries get cheaper while services get more expensive. So health care costs will go up, but your radio will be cheaper. So people like even a TV, right? Like this TV is way cheaper than it would have been 10 years ago. So goods get cheaper over time because we get better at producing them. We get more efficient, but services are a bit harder to make more efficient. So they get more expensive over time. And so I think Orwell was kind of writing about that. Like everyone can have access to a radio, but these services are still hard to access. Well, it's an example of services? Health care. Okay. Would education be a service as well? Yeah. Anything that requires like people, like human capital, right? So like a podcast producer even as a service that might get more expensive over time. Kyla, I don't pay any a dollar. I just want to let you know that that was just a drawing for comedic effect. No, no. I don't know because I was like, I'm going to bring Kyla on the show. She's going to explain what's happening. But I also thought I may need to get a lawyer. Yeah. I mean, yeah. So these were two different. Two dollars, yeah. Two very different vibes. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Quick follow-up. Did anything bad happen after 1937? Yeah, the war. Great. You got that right. Oh, are there quizzes throughout it too? There's just sometimes I try to remind myself to just have follow-ups. Generally, comedy podcasts don't do follow-up questions. Oh, really? So if I do that, I think I'm just top of class. Doing a good job. Yeah. Now, some of the little treats in this economy don't seem that little. I want to show you a 100% real ad for a new service that I'm pretty sure is targeted at millennials. I think you've talked about this in one of your articles. Let's take a look. The future of travel is here. World-class dining. Critically acclaimed in-flight entertainment. Custom lay-flat beds with four times the leg room. And coming soon, Tailwinds. The first ever in-air dog. Introducing Bark Air. Finally, dogs will fly the way they've always deserved to. First. If you think this is a joke, you're not a dog person. Bark Air. A 100% totally real airline for dogs. Okay, so I have famously gone on the record and said that I am not particularly cool with dogs. Oh. But is this really a little treat? That's something a little different. Yeah, I think. We looked this up. A flight on Bark Air from New York to LA. Guess how much it is? A thousand dollars? Right now, it's $7,000. $7,000? That's what I'm saying. Wow. Kylo, you can totally go off on dog owners, by the way. Like, unload the clip. I have a dog. Okay. Her name's Piglet. All right. Yeah. Also, it doesn't kind of make sense because it's a dog. No, no, no, because she snorts like a pig. So, she's great. I would never put her on a flight, though. Like, she, yeah, we don't do that kind of stuff. So, as an economist, how do you make sense of this? Because, like, to me, this seems very luxurious of, like, hey, dogs get full flat back, first class. Humans will put them in crates. They will fly underneath. Yeah, yeah. I mean, part of that… What's going on here? There's a lot of rich millennials. Okay. And so, that's kind of part of the situation is that a lot of millennials have, and it's not a bad thing, but, like, a lot of millennials have invested in their dogs like you would a child. And so, they have this, again, this sort of excess money. Maybe they're not buying a house. Instead, they're buying their dog a first class belly rub flight. And so, it's just, like, there's something called aspiration. And so, it's sort of similar to what we see in the beauty industry, too. Like, people spend a lot of money on the self-care products because they have just enough to spend a little bit more on these things. Yeah. I want to sort of follow up on one of the ideas that you've presented, which is this idea that, hey, no matter how hard I work, I will never be able to own a home. A 2024 poll found that 42% of Americans and 46% of Gen Zers agreed with the statement that no matter how hard I work, I will never be able to afford a home I really love. Do you find that the lack of a pathway to own a house leads to despair, which ultimately… Yeah, yeah, yeah. This problem of perceived housing affordability leads to the displacement of, you know, people gambling on the economy or, you know, making these other decisions around little treats or, I guess, you know, big treats and sending their dog around the world. Yeah. Can you help explain a concept to me real quick? Back in 2021, there was this article in the online magazine Works in Progress called The Housing Theory of Everything. Now, I didn't read it because the font was too small and I was driving, but can you explain it to me? Yeah. So, the housing theory of everything is basically that housing is every, like, you know, the title gives itself away, but it's the fertility situation that we have in the United States where the fertility rate is below the replacement rate, meaning that we're not having enough kids to continue to grow the population. Part of that is a housing problem. The health of the general public is a housing problem, too. So, people are, like, really far from their workplace, and so they're driving for long periods of times or have extraordinarily long commutes. And so, they kind of lay out that all of these elements within America are, like, really important. American society, or even, honestly, this is sort of in most Western countries, all of these elements that are happening in these countries is driven by a lack of affordable housing. Lack of affordable what? Housing. You say housing? Can you say Boise? Boise, Idaho? Yeah. You didn't say Boise. You just said Boise. So, how do you say housing? Housing with a Z. Housing. Housing. But it's an S. Housing. Housing. The boys. The boys? The fellas. I don't know. The boys are a group of just rambunctious. Oh, I see. Like, a group of kind of, you know, knucklehead ne'er-do-wellers. Ne'er-do-wellers? Just getting after it in the basement, giggling, rough housing. Rough housing. Housing. Zing. Housing. Busy Phillips. Yes. Busy Phillips. You got it. Busy Phillips is doing a monologue about housing. Housing. Yeah. You talked about the low birth rate. This is a big issue with aspiring grandparents and aspiring Nazis on YouTube. How is home ownership exacerbating this problem? Well, if people feel like they don't have enough space to have a family, they'll be less likely to have a family. And then, also, it goes back to the affordability issue, where if housing costs are too high, then people will be like, "It doesn't make sense for me to deal with this. Childcare is really expensive." So, we have these structural forces that are making it really difficult for people to make the decision to have kids. I think that the natalist narrative is kind of harmful. Like, you know, I don't have kids, and, you know, they're like, "Oh, women should have kids by the age of 20." And I don't agree with that. Yeah. Because, like, there's two ways to grow a population. You have immigration or you have more children. And we can pull the immigration lever. We just don't want to. Right. I mean, yeah. If there's a bunch of older Americans that may die, you can always bring in more people. Yeah. And we, like, one in five Americans are going to be over the age of 65 by 2030. It's just, it's going to be a very different economy. But I think the fertility narrative can be quite, yeah, like what you said, Nazis on YouTube get really weird about it, you know. But you can pull that. You just said the immigration level. You could. Yeah. That'd be great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Economic Innovation Group had a great paper about high-skilled immigration and, like, how it can grow the economy. Like, all of these ways that we can, you know, have a more dynamic economy. And immigrants love to take care of older people. That, I mean, that's one part of it. Familial values, multigenerational homes. Well, that's not part of it. But, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean. So it'd be great. Yeah. There's, it's just, like, if people want to come to the United States, we should make it so they can. Like, that is sort of the whole thing with the United States. Totally. But it's not very popular right now. devil's advocate. Should home ownership still be a part part of the American dream? Yeah, I get asked this a lot. I mean, I think that like when we think about the economic ladder, right? So sort of the American dream ever since the GI Bill came out post-World War II is you go to college, you know, you get this career and then the career enables you to buy a house and then you have a family and then you retire. Like that's been the path that we've told people to go down. And that's been the path that a lot of people aspire to because it's a great path. But as home ownership becomes more out of reach, we do see people deciding to spend more money on their dogs or deciding to buy these little treats or deciding to gamble in prediction markets. And it is a different version of the American dream. I think home ownership is interesting because what home ownership allows and renting allows it to, to a certain extent, is home ownership allows you to build a community. The 30-year mortgage is this innovation that, you know, you're going to build a community. You're going to build a community. You're going to be there for probably 30 years if, if everything works out. And that allows people to build roots. It allows them to invest in their surroundings. You know, they care about the school that their kids go to. They want things to be nice because they are quite literally invested in where they're living. They have a converging interest with everybody in that neighborhood or community. Yeah. A multi-decade commitment to that community. Yeah. 30 years is a long time. Well, how do you explain that to a generation that's growing up now where, hey, do we even own a home? Do we own a house? Do we own a house? Do we own a home? Do we own a house? Do we own a house? I subscribe to Apple TV and I also subscribe to pay my rent. It's all just in the cloud. Yeah. I mean, I, I think that's, it's very transient. Like I'm a renter. I certainly don't own a home. Um, and yeah, you do kind of have this feeling of fleetingness, especially when rent increases and, you know, you're always thinking about, it's not permanent in any real way. Why are homes so expensive? Do you have a drawing that can explain this? Off the top of my head? I don't know if I have a drawing that explains it, but the reason that they're so expensive and this has been like very well documented is it's a supply problem. Um, so Wally Adeyemo, who is the former deputy secretary of the treasury and the Biden administration, he was doing a ton of work around housing. And that's one thing that he really hammered home is housing is really a supply problem. It's a zoning issue, right? Like we in Los Angeles, like I think it's 95% of LA is zoned single family. So if you think about the constraints that that has on building new housing in the apartments, the transitory aspect there, it creates a lot of issues. So you have to have zoning that is like, that allows for people to build out more housing opportunities. So everybody can live in a place that's not as expensive because it's just basic supply and demand. Like if you don't have enough housing and places where people want to live, it's going to get more expensive. Like it's just supply and demand. So speaking of supply, how many more houses do we need to build per year just to keep the price is level is somewhere between like one and a half to 3 million. It shifts because housing gets more expensive and stuff. So we have to build even more. You know, one of the things we love here in America is a villain, someone to be mad at. We can't control what's happening in the world, but you can get mad. Now, both Zoran and Donald Trump and everyone in between agrees that we need to build more houses. I'm in agreement on that. But I've heard so many different villains to blame for this problem. You got house flippers, hedge funds, private equity, foreign investors. That gets crazy. Talk about that here in New York City. Whoa. The countries that people scream out. I'm like, I don't know if this is about private investors or you just have a big problem with Russia. Airbnb. And I think Ezra Klein once blamed Ralph Nader. Who's the villain here? It's just policy, man. It's just like, it's really, we have. But you got to name names. NIMBYism is a big issue. Who's NIMBY? He's in Congress? Not in my backyard. It is people who say, don't build houses near me because I'm worried that my home is going to depreciate in value because a home in the United States is both a speculative asset and a place to live. So a lot of people are like, my home is my retirement plan. If you start building a bunch more homes near me, my $2 million house is only going to be worth $1 million. So you cannot build this in my backyard. Wait, so just to be clear, are NIMBYs those people that are like, turn the volume down or I'll call the cops? Are those NIMBYs? They might be a version of it. Yeah. Those people are the worst. It's like, dude, you didn't get invited to the party. Now stop being a hater. Yeah. Yeah. Or just be a cooler neighbor and you'd get invited. Yeah. But they don't want neighbors. That's the whole NIMBY thing. So what is their core issue? They want to kind of live in a bunker by themselves. What is it about for them? It's the home value. Okay. So they're worried that if people build a bunch of homes near them, that their house will depreciate in value. And like, there are studies that show that homes don't depreciate that much as more gets built around them, especially if they're like, higher quality homes. It tends to raise property values in some instances. But yeah, a lot of people are just like, I'm not, I don't want that. Like, don't build near me. And so they'll go to the city council meetings, which tend to happen at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, that people who are desperately needing new housing can't, you know, take off work to go to. Yeah. Even our music. That hit song named after the color of lemons. Not a coincidence. Big Lemon has been pulling strings in the industry for years. Think about it. But now, 7-Up is fighting back with their new lime lemon soda. Now lime comes first. 7-Up. Flip the sip. Chronic migraine. 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. Botox. On a budget. Botox prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. 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When you pay with membership rewards points for all or part of an eligible flight booked with a qualifying airline through Amex Travel, you can get 35% of those points back, up to 1 million points back per calendar year. American Express Business Platinum. There's nothing like it. Terms apply. Learn more at AmericanExpress.com slash business dash platinum. You know what? I want to apologize, Kyla. I need to stop being a hater. That is something that I just wrote down in my journal. Stop being a hater. Today? Just in general. Sometimes I'll be like, why is so-and-so in every mood? You know, and I'm like, stop being a hater. Yeah, yeah. Focus on solutions. Right. Let's talk about one of the solutions that you've talked about before, upzoning. What is upzoning? It's essentially you can zone to build more, build higher, build out, not have sidewalk restrictions where you can't build past a certain point. So it's just allowing people to build even more. But the problem with zoning is we, you know, you can talk all you want about building more housing, but you run into other constraints too. So I was at a New Hampshire housing conference last year and I had this man come up to me and he was like, listen, I work on sewers. And if you want to build more housing, you're going to have to tap into the sewer system, which is old. Like the Ninja Turtles? Yeah. They want us to live like Ninja Turtles? Well, that'd be funny if everyone, we can't make people live in sewers, but like, yeah, like where they live in the sewer, right? The Ninja Turtles? Yeah, they live in sewers. Yeah. Here in New York City. New York City. Yeah, yeah. They're just teenagers. They're underage, but they do have, they do have a guardian. Splinter. He's a rat. He's much older, but he is technically their legal guardian. Donatello. Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo live in the sewers. Yeah. Now the Foot Clan do follow them down there into the sewers, but the Foot Clan are human beings. They're part of a street gang, but they too are a byproduct of a society that's forgotten them. Shredder is their guardian. Shredder. Shredder and Splinter at one point. At one point we're actually training together in ancient Japan. Splinter was trying to protect Shredder, his master, when Shredder was doing some **** and so he scratched Shredder, which is why he has scratches on his face. This is all established in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1. The ooze actually goes through the sewage grates. The turtles start growing and then Splinter looks after them as a father figure and philosopher. Shredder then comes to New York City. And he starts wreaking havoc within the city. Now they start to get their ass handed to them by these vigilantes in the shadows. He comes to find out, "Oh, these vigilantes are very good at Kung Fu." And the vigilantes are the turtles? The turtles. You piece it together. You're totally getting the twist. Okay. The turtles, in their hero's journey, team up together as brothers to fight and defeat Shredder. Oh, so are they not related? I don't know the 23andMe on the four turtles, but they are brothers. Okay. and they are the family that they choose in heart. - Yeah, for sure. Logically, we don't know. Sorry, how is the sewer related to our conversation? So, well, it's where the turtles live, but it's also a big constraint on housing supply. Right. So you have to expand out the sewers. You know, there's some element of pressure there where a lot of the infrastructure in the United States is old. And so you have all these underground things that have to expand as housing supply expands. So it's not as simple as just like building more homes. There's all of these other things that you have to consider, too, that can make it very complicated. There's been this huge discussion in New York City around converting unused commercial real estate into residential buildings. Now, I've heard that's hard. Why? It requires a lot of work. You essentially have to take the inside of the building and add a bunch more bathrooms as well. And so sometimes it can just be more expensive to gut out. Okay. If you take a commercial building and take it residential, then it would be just build up residential. It's really a bathroom problem. From what I remember about this conversation, yeah. So do you remember how Toys R Us went out of business? They went bankrupt. Yeah. Yeah. Toys R Us, Blockbuster, Radio Shack. Yeah. Turned them into homes. Yeah. People argue that you should turn the bank branches into housing, too. Sure. Wells Fargo. Right. They're giant. They're pretty big in there. It's very fancy. And the bathrooms are pretty nice in there. But you have to have so many more bathrooms in a home. Well, former Mayor Eric Adams had a solution to this problem as well. Let's take a look. And I believe in this concept, something I saw in other countries call, instead of we work, we live. My son lived differently. He has a stove in his apartment. I don't think he knows how to turn it on. You know, he eats out. He loves his shared living. So why can't we do a real examination of this? Of the rules that state every bedroom must have a window. You don't need no window when you're sleeping. It should be dark. You know? He says a lot of stuff that I don't agree with. Former Mayor Eric Adams. I wouldn't. Do you want to unpack this? I wouldn't take him as a as a expert on this subject. That was a thing that I think Charlie Munger was working on, who was Warren Buffett's partner. Sure. Was this dormitory for a college. Where many of the rooms did not have have windows and it became a huge issue because, you know, humans need light. It's a big part of. Yeah. So Munger was was anti window as well. He was like, look, we can just put cement all around it. There is a full Guantanamo Bay. Right. There is this idea that people don't need things that they just need like a bed and a place to sit. But that's not how we should treat people. Yeah. So Mayor Adams was formerly a police officer, and I think what he was describing was a prison cell. Is he describing a prison cell? I think even those have windows in some cases. You're right. Yeah. So but it did sound similar, sort of the bare necessities. And then people like it's very much like people just should work and they should go home only to sleep. And that's not most how most people want to live their lives, at least in the United States. How do you feel about this as someone who, again, you're in. You're an economist, you think about this stuff deeply when he says crazy stuff like this, what's your reaction to it? I mean, it makes me really sad because I think there is this idea and you even saw it in the drafts that Charlie Munger had where people don't need a lot of stuff. They don't need nice things. So, like, why would we design them nice homes? Why would we allow them this level of luxury? And the standard of living in the United States has risen quite a bit. And so, like, you know, 100 years ago, windowless rooms were not that uncommon. But now the United States is so rich that it should be expected that we allow people a better quality of life than 100 years ago. And I feel like former Mayor Eric Adams is describing an America that should no longer exist. Yeah, I agree. Hot take. Humans deserve sunlight. Yeah. Circadian rhythms just even from sleeping. Unless you're a ninja turtle. That's right. But they're not humans. They're turtles. Yeah. And even they have the heat lamps, right? Not in the sewer, but, you know, they still have the heat lamps. They still do. Go upstairs. They go upstairs. They get out. They get out. They get pizza. The sewers are spacious as well. They're spacious. I mean, I would say they kind of smell and they're wet, but it works for them. If you're a turtle. Yeah. Hey, what's the name of your newsletter? Kyla's Substack. Or Kyla's Newsletter, rather. It's on Substack. Yeah. So, in your newsletter, you wrote that $10,000 invested in equities in 1974 would be worth $2.4 million today. If you invested the same money in housing, it'd only be worth $100,000. So, $139,000. Yeah. So, my question, Kyla, is that should people just forget about housing and just invest in the stock market? That's what a lot of people are doing. Like, a lot of young people are, you know, they're investing also in the prediction or gambling on the prediction markets. But, you know, they're investing in the stock market as well. The United States has an interesting relationship with the stock market because we retire people via 401k, right? And so, we have this expectation that the stock market is going to solve all of the problems that we don't really address with public policy. Like, we just assume that everybody's going to be able to retire based on their S&P 500 earnings. And for the boomers, that does seem to be quite likely. You know, for the 57% of boomers that are invested in 401k, they're going to be able to retire quite substantially. But, yeah, I think that we do treat the stock market, rightly so, because it has gone up so much as this thing that people can just fall back on. But the stock market doesn't go up all of the time. That's the concern, is that people have this expectation. That equity should continue to go up and up and up and up. And we have policy designed to make it so. But sometimes it goes down. And I don't think people prepare themselves mentally for that. Can you explain something to me? Because I want our audience to get their money up. Again, I'm not a financial expert and I'm not claiming to be. But I do want you to get that bag. Explain this to me. If you look at the past 100 years of the S&P 500, it is a rocket ship to the top. Let's take a look. Let's take a look. Now, I'm not a history expert, but I'm just going to give you a quick rundown of what happened here. It goes back about 100 years. We have World War II, the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Nixon did some really bad stuff. Then we have Grand Theft Auto 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. We also have, right here around 1990, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1. Then in 1992, you have… Is that old? It's that old. Wow. Yeah, yeah. And I did go to the anniversary screening of it here at the local AMC. Support your local movie theater. It was all just men that were by themselves. It was pretty sad. It's okay. And I did put my hood up. That way, no one would recognize me. No, no. You all can celebrate each other in community. That was the sad part is everybody just looked forward at the screen, and we did not look to our left and right. That's a missed opportunity. And that was a missed opportunity to actually stand hand in hand with my fellow turtles. Because you have this huge thing in common, which is the turtles. It was really sad. And what's crazy, and the irony of it, Kyla, is that the whole movie is about brotherhood. Yeah. And we could not look to our left and right, respectively, and say that you're Donnie, Mike, Raph, Leo. We're all here. We're all here. By the way, that was the original Sex and the City, if I'm going to be honest. Really? It was the turtles? Yeah. The reality is I see myself as a Michelangelo, but I'm not. Oh, what's his dynamic? Mike, he's supposed to be fun. He's supposed to be fun? Fun and cool, right? And that's you? No. I'm more of a Leo. Basically, the Karen of the group. He's always like, boys. That's him. He's actually saying boys with an S. He's like, boys, focus. And everyone's like, Leo. Okay. Kind of hallmark. Right, right, right. Turn the volume down. Right. Very much. NIMBY. He's a NIMBY a little bit. He jinks, yeah. So anyways, 1990, that's TMNT1. Then 1992, you have Secret of the Ooze. And then later, you also have Turtles in Time. Don't watch it. So I don't know. This looks like this is the only move. Why wouldn't you invest in the S&P 500? I mean, yeah. I'm not telling anybody not to. I don't give investment advice, and none of this has been investment advice. But I think that it's good to get exposure. And so what I tell people when the stock market comes up is that I invest in it. I put in a certain percentage of my income every month. And when I first was starting my career, that was like $10. And you just try to take advantage of compound interest when you think about the S&P 500, because it goes up 53% of the time. So most of the time, it does march to the top. And if you believe in the American experiment, and if you believe in these companies that are building here, you should want some exposure to it. But the thing is, it does have drawdowns. They look very, very small, but the dot-com bubble, that was a huge drawdown. Like a lot of people were freaking out. 2008, a huge drawdown in the markets. And so you do have these dips that, you know, it's kind of helpful in this big chart. You do have these dips that are very meaningful during that time. And you can see it continues to march back up. But I think one thing also for people to keep in mind is that we have a very different economy coming toward us with the demographic changes that are happening. One in five Americans being over the age of 65 is a very different world. In 2020, it was one in six. In 19, 20, it was like one in 20. So we have this very different economy that maybe won't be as focused on growth because it'll be more focused on maintenance, taking care of the older population. The healthcare jobs are very important there. And so that's just one thing to keep in mind. But, you know, the United States has always been number one. And if you believe it will continue to be number one, you should, you know, not investment advice, but it's probably smart to have some exposure there. I mean, you wrote a recent article in the New York Times, that's titled why the stock market makes no sense right now. the stock market make any sense right now? People did that. I got a lot of emails about that article. You got heat, huh? I got some hate. Yeah. Yeah. Because like a lot of people are like the stock market's like way smarter than you. And it is. It is. But the idea behind that was that the stock market has always been rescued. So all the dips that we saw in that chart, the stock market always had the Federal Reserve coming along and saving it. And so right now, the stock market, rationally, there should be some downward pressure. If you think about the war, if you think about the higher gasoline costs, if you think about what's happening to consumers in the labor market and higher inflation with the Federal Reserve independence threats, like there should be some element of the stock market going down. It doesn't make any sense, Kyla. I mean, the stock market is at an all time high. I know. But every single one of my friends in the Du Bois group thread wants to put a gun in his mouth. Yeah. What was the type of heat that you were getting when you said the stock market makes no sense? Who are these people in the comments? Well, I mean, it's people who, and rightly so, they're like, the stock market always goes up. It should continue to go up. You don't understand the profitability. And like I said earlier, the stock market is extraordinarily profitable for some of these companies. And so they were just like, of course, it doesn't make sense. It never makes sense. But that's why it continues to go up. Okay. You know, I want to give you just kind of full disclosure and kind of peel back some layers here. I spent a lot of time on Reddit and on reddit.com backslash R, backslash WallStreetBets. And I don't know if you've seen the meme, everything is priced in. Yeah. But I think you were getting a lot of everything is priced in energy. Let's take a look at that. ZSD99 came in with, don't even ask the question. The answer is yes, it's priced in. You think Amazon will beat the next earnings? That's already priced in. You work at the drive-thru for Mickey D's and found out that the burgers are made of human meat? Priced in. You think insiders don't already know that? The market is an all-powerful, all-encompassing being that knows the very inner workings of your subconscious before you were even born. Dot, dot, dot. It continues. It continues. Know that it has already been priced in and don't ask such a dumb fucking question again. Now, what do you say to the 21-year-old who wrote this on an air mattress in his apartment? So I made a meme about that a couple of years ago, too. I agree with it. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it was like a bunch of raccoons worshiping the sun. That was my take on it. But I think that- Wait, that was your everything's priced in meme? So the raccoons are looking at the sun and they're just like, everything's priced in. Well, yeah, there's a raccoon who is in the sun. There's a raccoon who is in the sun. And the other raccoons are kind of like bowing down to the sun raccoon. But yeah, I mean, I think what that person is capturing is that the market, it will sort of continue marching up. Everything bad that could possibly happen is sort of like the market's Teflon to these things. And historically, that's been the case. I don't think it's entirely true, but I think there's some substance there. How is that possible, though? Like, I just don't get it, Kyla. It's not entirely true. Trump will say the most insane shit on Truth Social, which can allegedly, quote unquote, move markets. Something is happening with the Strait of Hormuz. The United States is involved in an illegal war. People are not able to afford groceries or rent. And somehow it's a rip roaring ride. Stock market's not the economy. So and I think also the Trump administration has made it very clear that he will do whatever it takes to rescue the stock market. Historically, the Federal Reserve has had to come in and rescue the stock market. That's their job. Well, it's not entirely their job, but like that is part of their mechanism is making sure the economy and the stock market is stable. And so, you know, the stock market doesn't have to price risk properly all of the time because there is this idea that, you know, policy will come in and save them. People say that the stock market right now is being held up by this AI bubble. What risk is the market and investors currently ignoring in regard to the stock market? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't I mean, AI is like really challenging because there is a physical component to it, as well as this sort of like digital impact that it could have on the labor market, which is a very real component. But the physical component is the data center build out. So AI requires an enormous amount of electricity. And so the data centers are already causing higher electricity costs in places like Virginia. And there is also the circular financing aspect where the companies are doing a lot of things. And so I think that that's a big part of this. And I think that's a big part of this. I mean, it's just triggering, Kyla. Austin, can you put up the graphic of the circular financing theory? Look, I tried to read about it, but then this came up. And this just reminds me of the inside of a cell. Like, I don't know what in the mitochondria Krebs cycle is happening right now. Kyla, what in the endoplasmic reticulum is happening here? I tried to make sense of this. Please walk me through this. But he is buying everybody else's stuff. So everyone is everyone's customer. Yeah, that's kind of what's going on. So NVIDIA, you know, will buy up. I think it's so OpenAI will buy up. Okay, wait, just zoom out. So everyone, these are tech companies. Sorry. Yeah. I really, for real, I saw this graphic. And I was like, I can't. It's really, I really can't right now. It's a lot. So the concern is that everybody's the tech companies, I shouldn't say everybody, they're all pushing money around. And so there isn't really any, quote, unquote, real revenue. Because, you know, OpenAI will buy NVIDIA chips, and then NVIDIA has a partnership where they'll take some stuff from OpenAI. And so it's just kind of like moving money back and forth, rather than it actually being substantially impactful to the actual economy. So it's just these companies kind of papering their numbers up. Yeah. Sorry. I'm just trying to digest everything. So it sounds like you're describing a pyramid scheme. But this isn't a circle. Yeah. So is this a circle scheme? Right? Yeah, it's, um, I guess an Ouroboros might be kind of a it's a closed loop that keeps feeding it in upon itself. They're just sort of pushing money back and forth. Is the does this collapse at some point? Or does it as long as you just keep passing the hot potato of AI bucks? It'll keep itself afloat? Yeah, I mean, there's a paper called after the AI crash that came out also from the Vanderbilt policy accelerator that talks about the circular financing component and the worries that all this money being tied up in ways that are quite entangled, can create the domino effect where if one of those companies goes down, the whole thing goes down a very similar to it's not a pyramid scheme, but similar in theory, if you could give any financial advice to people looking for financial advice on Reddit, what would it be? I don't give financial advice. But I think it's just to keep it simple, right? Like, I think a lot of people are losing a lot of money on things like prediction markets, both the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg had some pieces come out about like, I think it's 70% of users of prediction markets lose money. They're most useful for the sharps on the platform, the bots on the platform. You're just kind of being taken for a ride if you decide to go for the moonshot route, which is really sad. But the best thing to do is take advantage of compound interest. Albert Einstein called it the eighth wonder of the world. You know, just more time in the market beats timing the market. Wait a second. I thought Hulk Hogan was the eighth wonder of the world. The documentary on him is really good on Netflix. Super fascinating. I think it's an inside look into the whole American psyche at large. I know. And I appreciate you backing me up here because I've tried to bring it up multiple times in our like pitch meetings, and everyone's like, you're insane. No, WWE is so important. Thank you, Kyla. No, I'm so serious. And I truly believe both the Hogan documentary. Now, look, there is a lot of omission. But in episode five, I think they gave important critical context to some of his political positions, which I think is important. But I also think the McMahon documentary is also an incredible analysis of America, geopolitics, Donald Trump, and where we are in this moment. The great entertainment. Yeah, totally. Everything is this sort of fabricated version of reality, right? We rely so much on narrative in the United States. And WWE is a perfect example of that. Yeah. I have one last documentary that was my holy trinity of the American experience. Do you know which documentary it was? Little America? The Jerry Springer documentary. Oh, I haven't seen that. That too. Oh, my God. Yeah. Strap in. Okay. It's fantastic. Yeah. Jerry Springer. Yeah. Last question. Who's your favorite Ninja Turtle? I think somebody who can provide that guidance to these people who have untapped powers is really cool. So he's my favorite, probably. That is the right answer. Is he a turtle by definition? He's not a turtle. Okay. That's the way you're supposed to answer it. But he's a rat. I know. He's a rat, but he's so not a rat. Yeah, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. You pass the test. Okay. Because it's not about the turtles. Right. Really what that question was about was it was about having a positive male role model in your life. Yeah. And you can do that through wisdom. Yeah. Splinter is also anti-ageist in the sense that the older you get, you actually have more experience and you do have an important place in society because not only can you practice Kung Fu, sure, for your own heart health, you can teach it to others. Right. Which he does for the turtles. Yeah. I think it's important. I feel like we kind of have this sort of isolated approach to everything where people don't want to invest in those that come after them. Yeah. And I think if you can pass the knowledge on, we all get a lot better. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Shout out to Splinter. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Kyla. Thanks. Thank you. Kyla Scanlon, ladies and gentlemen. Yay. Awesome. Did you hear my stomach growling? That was my tummy. You've never seen TMNT 1? No, I've never seen it. Oh, yeah. In fact, it was one of Jim Henson's final films before he passed. I didn't know he did films. Jim Henson did the animatronics. Experience a membership that backs what you're building with American Express Business Platinum. Unlock over $4,000 in business and travel value annually with statement credits on select purchases from brands like Dell, ChatGPT Business, Hilton, and Adobe, and other benefits. Based on total potential value of statement credits on select purchases and other benefits, enrollments required, monthly and other limits and terms apply. Learn more at americanexpress.com slash business dash platinum.