Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we consider what it means that the US economy is becoming increasingly reliant on spending by the top 10% of earners to sustain the demand for goods and services that powers the whole economy.
And later on, we'll discuss why in our modern society, many have begun to feel overwhelmed by the news. And we'll take a look at strategies that some people have come up with to deal with it.
Hello, welcome to the Car Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys and joining me today is a man whose takes are good enough that they really could be part of an ultra premium from an ultra premium strand.
Lana Tunde, are you ready to hit him with some of that chronic today?
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Of course, man. Not only the strand and the chronic, but you've eugenicized my takes. I like it. I'm they are superior genetically. Yes.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe and like the show on YouTube or your podcast platform, doing so really helps the show out. Now recording on March 4, 2025. And in a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, we saw a breakdown of how spending in the US economy is really being propped up by the top 10% of earners over the past few years and how this trending is increasing, particularly the spending of the top 10% of earners. Their spending has increased relative to everyone else's. And While the bottom 90%, their spending has really stayed kept pace with inflation, but hasn't really gone beyond that. And now the top 10% have always spent more of a proportional share than 10% due to a significant part them having more dispensable income. But what we're seeing now is that that group's relative spending is going to levels beyond anything we've seen since they've been kept keeping records of this stuff. So either this is great or something's getting out of whack here. And so we want to take a close look at that. So to get us started, Tunde, what do you make of these numbers showing that the top 10% of earners in the U.S. you know, that they're spending pretty much is propping up everything else and becoming a larger and larger part of the overall consumption pie?
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it's fascinating. What I make of it is it's, it's a continued evidence of the trend we've seen.
I mean, we can go back, I'd say starting in the 80s with the concepts of things like trickle down economics, which for many it's well known that that was a shift in I would say the economic ideology of the leadership of our country, it's kind of the first time since the 30s we went away from kind of the New Deal era of kind of macroeconomics and how the system was going to relate to all that. So that's one thing that's.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Let me add a little more of that because I think it goes back even beyond that. Because even if you have an industrialist, somebody like Henry Ford made the decision and saw the insight, if you go back before the New Deal saying I want to pay my workers enough that they can be consumers of my product, you know, so that his workers could be buying cars and he saw that he would make more money if he's paid them enough that they could buy cars as well. And so that kind of concept of having working class, being able to sustain demand, be able to have the spending power to buy things goes back beyond the before the New Deal. The New Deal just kind of really, really weaponized it and says, hey, we can really build an economy if we have a strong middle class that is buying stuff and has dispensable income or single earners and all that, that can go in and prop up the economy and do a lot in that way.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that's an important point because that also speaks to the point of the Marshall Plan post World War II, which is for capitalism to thrive it needs a market and it needs customers. So that's a good point, that the middle class in the United States became the domestic customer for our industry. And, and then like Marshall, we said.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: We exported that to Europe and let's.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Go create middle classes there. I'm smiling and saying it'd be nice for that to not end, but we'll see what happens. No, but then real quick I'll get through a few points. Cause I think they kind of all lead. I think, you know, obviously we're talking about things that were decades ago and some of it even a century ago now. But I think the more recent post, the kind of trickle down economics, I would just say, you know, the continuing hollowing out of the working class that we know, kind of the stuff from the 90s, globalization, all that stuff. Right. But I think more directly we've got post 2008. Honestly, this is where the leadership in the country, both parties haven't done a good job of supporting labor. So if you think about it, the minimum wage hasn't moved for 15 years. It's still at 750 federally, even though we all acknowledge the amount of inflation and things in recent years. So that obviously doesn't allow the bottom.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: Portion and the amount of growth and productivity.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: It's nice both that translates to then the next phase and then I'll get off my soapbox here, which is after 08, I think that's when we saw this thing really bifurcate more so kind of with more acceleration, meaning the bottom and the top kind of splitting one is I think a low interest rate environment for a decade that really helped prop up asset prices. So people who already came into the last decade, the 2010s, already owning stocks and real estate just naturally kind of continued to float up their net worth where people who weren't owners of capital didn't have that ability then. To your point, the ability for low interest rates meant companies could borrow money. We see this explosion in the technology. So productivity increased a lot. So people like me and you kind of the entrepreneur class didn't have to rely on hiring as many people because we can deal with automation and ChatGPT and all that kind of stuff to help us. And so. And I think you see an extra kind of bifurcation even More so post 2020 because I think that one of the, I'd say dirty little secrets of the wealth class twofold one is the tax cuts, continued tax policy in the favor of the wealthy. I would say starting after the 2000 election. We just did a show about the estate tax, the ability for people to transfer more wealth over the last 25 years, the next generations. And then we've got things like the income tax plan from 2017 that plus the stimulus CARES act and all that. I think that the wealth class was able to just benefit much more than the rest of society.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: So I think the dirty secret that you left it out but that they know they're very good at getting money from the government in various ways. And a lot of that wealth comes from the government, not just, oh, they're titans.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: You know what the dirty secret, when.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: The government's handing out money, those guys are usually at the front of the line.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: Yeah, that's where I'm going to get at. James. The dirty secret is a lot of the people we've seen in the media being busted for not handling PPP loans and eater loans properly are kind of the smaller end folks. Someone who stole 30 grand, 100 grand, 200 grand. But I mean I remember there was a lot of stories about hedge funds getting $10 million. Tom Brady's company got 6 million.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Well, let's not go in. Let's not get lost in the needs Though, I mean, what I'm saying is.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: It'S the wealth class's ability, like you said, it's not a meritocracy. It's the ability to do financial engineering through the tax code and like you said, know how to deal with the government and get, extract money from the government.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I, yeah. I mean, I think the thing that, I think that I want to jump on that you, you threw it out there a couple times, but we didn't, didn't go into it at all. And that's the trick. This seems to be trickle down economics. Like this seems to be, and that was kind of a change in mentality from this. Let's have the middle 80% of the country, let's have their buying power prop up the demand and the consumption. And because it's so many people that you can just create this incredible economic engine because you got so many people that want stuff. So there's businesses opening everywhere. Like here's another dirty little secret is that businesses don't hire people because they get tax cuts. Businesses hire people when there's demand for whatever it is that they sell. So if you're a restaurant and you get some windfall of money, you don't just say, hey, you got a windfall of money, let's go hire some people. But when you got a line out the door, that's when you, oh, we got to go hire some people, we got to go serve. We had to serve more people, we got to go build more locations because we got all these people coming. So it's the demand that really drives everything. Not tax cuts. But the idea of trickle down economics was instead of having this, this large mass of people that are driving everything, let's, let's have it so that the, we'll give the wealthy more money and then there, the fact of them doing well will trickle down and so forth. Like it'll trickle down to everybody else being able to do well. So this kind of seems to be what the setup is right here, that, well, the wealthy are going to spend all this stuff and then that spending is then going to sustain everyone else. It seems pretty risky, you know, like, because the idea of trigger every time it's been tried before, what you end up having is the government having to borrow a lot of money. The idea of tricking out economics is that you can lower the tax code on the wealthy, but you'll collect more in taxes because there'll be more economic activity. Well, that thing has never worked. So when they lower the tax code, the wealthy Keep more and then they may spend more, but it doesn't make up the difference. So it seems to be risky because what ends up happening is that the government tends to have to borrow a lot of money to make up the difference in the gap between what was done. So this seems to be kind of the vision of the trickle down economics come to life. And so now we're going to live with the consequences, so to speak. Now, obviously our government still borrows a lot of money. It always has. You know, when, when Reagan tried to put this stuff in, you know, like he had the largest tax increase, you know, doubled the payroll taxes on the middle class, largest payroll tax or largest tax increase on the middle class ever. And then also they still started running big deficits. So it didn't really work. Then George H.W. bush had to raise taxes to kind of try to balance things out. But nonetheless, what we're doing, I like when we get to see different things now. I hope that we learn the lessons when we do like, and a lot of times that's not the case. But at least now we're going to see what happens when you create this top heavy economy where Only the top 10% of earners are the ones that have the prosperity to really go out and do all this stuff. And everybody else is kind of living tight, you know. And so it's not necessarily kind of the way I would draw it up, but I would like to see and be able to then use this as evidence in the future saying, hey, this is why we can't do this. If it's going to play out the way I think, or at least we'll learn something from it. And as far as the pros and cons and the thing, the ways it works, in a way it doesn't. So it's a, it's a data point that's about to happen and we're about to see it. And you know, we all have our thoughts, but you know, we're going to see now.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's, it's, I mean, there's a lot actually to, to kind of tackle with this. I know we won't get through it all today, but, you know, you say a few things. One is, because as you're talking about Reagan to George H.W. bush, and then I'm reminded that Al Gore was tasked in 1993 with trying to clean up the federal government. And it's interesting, now we have the contrast with this new doge thing because he did it over about four or five years.
They eliminated I think it was around 200,000 federal employees kind of jobs. But then what happened is we finished that decade with a $200 billion budget surplus by the year 2000. So. So look how different the world is in 25 years. But so to your point, James, it's interesting because people right now in our society are very nostalgic for an American period of time that they think was great. And that's usually when you ask people, they think about the 1950s till about JFK's era. And if you think about that, that is all the results of the New Deal like we're talking about. Right. That's the largest middle class in the country in the world. History.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: In world history.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: And, you know, it's just. It took a generation from the 30s to get there, and kind of the.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: Opposite of what we're doing now, you know, like.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: What I'm saying is that the current administration is intending to do, you know, the current administration wants to do that.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying is that. And that's why I bring up even the Al Gore thing, which is there's a way to cut budgets and all that. But, you know, it may have a different outcome the way it's happening now at lightning speed versus in a more measured way. But I know that's not. That's not the main topic. One, One example I wanted to give James, and you know, I'm gonna give some anecdotal, but I don't want to give away too much because my wife will be unhappy if I start spilling too much of our financial beans to the world. But I want to give people because I think people don't understand how this tax code stuff really does help wealthy people keep more money. So I'm gonna talk about me. I'm not super wealthy, but I do okay. And what happens is in the 2017 tax code, there was a. Something put in there called bonus depreciation. And if you buy certain assets, the IRS allows you to depreciate 100% of the value of the asset against your income. Now, the benefit, and the way I look at that is positive, is that keeps a lot of the velocity of money in the economy. It gives confidence demand.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: That creates consumption. Yeah.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: Someone like me who's an entrepreneur, I might not want to take the risk to go buy and make a big capital investment, but if I'm given this incentive by the tax code, maybe I'll do it. And guess what? Some company gets my money. I bought their product. They got employees, they get to pay, so on and so forth. The money flows through the economy. So the example is at the time in 2021, I bought a new capital asset which was pretty expensive, a few hundred thousand dollars in value and I was able to use 100% bonus depreciation, which was part of the first Trump administration tax, you know, situation tax cut from 2017, what that allowed. My accountant looked at me and said, Tunde, you got a couple choices here. We could stretch this out over seven years. You can take it all 100% right now or you can take half up front and stretch the rest out over the next seven years or however many years. And long story short, I did the half up front.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: That's amazing that you say that now.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Yeah, no, but I did the half up front and the, and the, and the stretching the other half. So in 2021 I should have been paying in the 30 something percent tax bracket because of my income. It was definitely in the top probably 5, 6%. Yeah, and that's my point. But I paid 0% income tax that year, federal income tax and we live in Florida, so I paid no state income tax because of bonus depreciation. And then since 2021, haven't done my 24 taxes yet. But the next couple of years I paid a, basically an 8% effective tax rate. So the point is, is that that's why I wanted to stay on this. Not to brag about myself, but to say from a personal level exactly what she said. The fact I'm not paying 30% for 35, 37% what I should be and I'm paying 8 has not like made me want to go hire new people. I don't need new people in my business. I don't have, you know, if I get more demand I'll have, need more people. But all I've done is keep that money. And my nihilistic attitude now is I'm waiting for this tax cut again this year. And I don't mean to sound like a, like an arrogant guy, but I just looked at my wife and say what kind of boat we going to buy again if he, if he gives us another set of goodies? And here's the other thing about where the policy is steered towards those assets for bonus depreciation that qualify are capital assets like you know, business equipment and stuff like that. But boats, jets, void vehicles over £6,000. Generally people in the wealth class are buying those kind of assets. It's not people that buying them anyway.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: Yeah, so it granted but if I.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: Get to pay 10 million for a jet and take that off my income.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Which I couldn't do before 2017. In the same way that means I'm not paying as much income tax. And that's all I'm saying.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: And isn't necessarily in terms of everybody paying their fair share isn't necessarily the way to do it. It's a way that people, that the system can be gamed, so to speak. But I want to get. Now this is what happens. We have an economic conversation with some of the wealth manager.
But I wanted to get more to support like salient things just in general.
[00:16:08] Speaker B: Sorry about that guys.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: But for me I see this and okay, the spending from the bulk of the earners in the United States is barely keeping up with inflation and that means that cuts are being made across the board because things are costing more. People are spending the same amount but they're getting less. More or less. But what that means is that makes sense if you look at some of the issues that are most politically salient right now, like that would, that it would make sense that then people would be very nervous or upset about the idea of immigration because 90% of the people feel like they're just barely getting by or worse, you know, or something like dei. All of these things that create this scarcity mindset amongst the bulk of the people make like okay, well yeah, we can't have more people or oh, if there's any chance that anybody's getting a leg up on me, I got any, I should say this, there's any chance that anybody in my class is getting a leg up on me, then you know, I'm going to react to it completely and be so, so like so amped up on it. The, that scarcity mindset, the idea that everybody is in the 90% is very tight. Issues that perceive can be perceived to affect their economics are just going to be more salient right now and are going to draw a sharper reaction. And so I mean I think generally speaking this doesn't necessarily speak to that but generally speaking the other piece I'll make on this is that the increasing wealth gap that we are seeing which drives this, that also is something else that we've said to care about is like having a democratic society, the health of our Republicans public and that stuff. It's known to be a risk factor when wealth equality gets really out of whack to, to be a risk factor for the, the, the ability to maintain democratic societies. People get, you know, that, that, that mindset of that scarcity mindset and it becomes harder to say, all right, I play by the rules, you play by the rules. It starts to feel like nobody's playing by the rules, so why should I? So this is going to put other pressures in other areas of our life and is more so my point with that. And so the economy so far has sustained. Now the question of whether it's sustained in a bubble way because the type of spending, the growth in asset prices, because of where all this money's flowing is something that eventually could, if there's a bottom that drops off out, could harm us. We don't know we're going to see. There's stuff to suggest that that's the case. But nonetheless, there are plenty of risk factors that are, that are present that don't. I don't think leadership is really concerned right. Right now. Like, the leadership is really looking at this from an ideological standpoint. And again, they're going to play it out. And the hope is again, just that whatever we learn from it, that the lessons can be remembered. Because like you point out, you know, people look at the United States economy from an installed standpoint, but they don't think about the fact that at the time when they like, oh, yeah, you know, this is when, you know, the middle class was great, the top income tax rate was 93%, like, that was what the rate was then. But people don't connect that to the prosperity of the middle class. They connect whatever else to it, you know, which, which is. Can be a lot of times what they're fed. Because nostalgia is not a accurate replaying of what actually happened. So listen, in this instance, if things go well, then, you know, you want to remember what the lessons are. But if things go poorly, you would want to remember what those lessons are, too. And that's just what I hope. Or that we can be reminded of those lessons.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Listen, man, whatever. When I win the Powerball, that's why I'm. I'm voting for guys that don't want a 90% down now. Got to keep.
And when my son makes the NBA, he doesn't play basketball, but by the way, he'll make the NBA and then he's going to make $100 million. So I want the taxes real low, but anyway. But you know what I was thinking, man? Because it's interesting, this conversation to contrast with what we're seeing now from the way that our current administration and leadership is handling just, you know, the idea of cutting costs and in order to balance out the budget, to be able to give more tax Cuts to people like me. And that's. I don't mean to sound like a smart ass, but I'm just like, all right, I'll take it. But I know I'm taking it at the expense of potentially the way our society has been. And I'm taking that very serious that.
Because if I look at. I don't know if this is a bookend, but if we look at the Reaganomics being the start of the 1980s, are really a kind of overt attack on the New Deal. You know what, James, I thought about as you were talking earlier, I'm thinking like, what happened that got the public not the leadership, because leadership always is going to have their ideologies, but what swayed the public from being this big kind of monolith blob from the 1930s to the 1970s that generally said, I'm accepting this New Deal thing and we like this middle class stuff and we like the GI Bill and everybody got to go to college and blah, blah, blah. Right.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: I mean, what you're describing is a level of class solidarity that existed in the mid-1900s that has dissipated in large.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: Well, that's where I'm kind of going with my guessing game here, because you said something of interest that I actually wrote down people they don't like seeing people like you said, people of your class or, or, you know, that they don't want to see taxes on people hired in their class or something like that.
[00:21:23] Speaker A: And what it's that crab in the bucket mentality that we see a lot of times with middle class working class where they're very offended if they feel like somebody around them is getting a leg up.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: And the reason I bring that up is because they seem to not, hey, have a blind spot or it's that kind of aspirational thing. If people at the top class are getting a leg up, it's kind of like, oh, you know, no big deal, or even they'll cheer for it. It's the crazy. It's like when you see in pro sports a lot of times when, you know, there's labor strife in pro sports and people are really hard on the players and then they're rooting for the owners. And it's like, I think you got this backwards.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: We want the people that are earning.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: The money to get more of the money now.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: But that's where I'm going is that, you know, because there was a somewhere in this. And from the late 1960s through the early 80s, there was this shift with a lot of Americans. And Ronald Reagan I think captured this perfectly. And I, it's interesting, I got this love hate relationship with how I feel about Reagan because I grew up, I'm from Washington D.C. and I'm born in 1978. So my memories, early memories in my life are Ronald Reagan was the president. So to me there's something special about him that way. I remember doing the Easter egg roll on the White House lawn and meeting Nancy Reagan. So I've got a very personal connection, I feel like, with the Reagan's because I grew up in that era and I'm proud that we beat the Soviets and all that stuff. Right. And he was an eloquent speaker. But as an adult, I look back at some of his policies and I'm like, hey dude, this was the start of what we're talking about here, this kind of hollowing out of the middle class. And one thing that he was very good at, Ronald Reagan was rhetoric. And he was the first politician and the US President that really brought in this idea that government is the problem.
And I think to your point, James, that's how they were able, meaning they, that the kind of wealth class was able to fracture the middle and lower classes at that time was using kind of the Southern Strategy. This whole, you know, we're getting far away from this now in living memory. Yeah, I was gonna say 60s and early 70s.
Yeah, was a lot. So I think that was the beginning of it. And to your point, James, the ability to create more fracturing of the lower middle class today because things are scarce and people feel like they gotta elbow other people out of the way is. We've seen it, right? Haitians, pets and the immigrant stuff, well.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: But it requires a level of deflection that in my opinion, boggles the mind. But it definitely like the wealth class, the haves, quote, unquote, you know, like they've been able to maintain, like the few have been able to maintain more of the resources than the many for a long time because there are a lot of techniques that have been proven to show that. But the idea that you have this scarcity mindset amongst the working people. Well, and I saw this, I know, I saw this on Twitter, so I don't know if it's true, but the idea that Elon Musk goes from a net wealth of 2 billion to 449 billion between 2012 and 2025, or Bezos goes from 18 billion to 245 billion, like the idea that the world we live in has that kind of wealth growth while the working class and middle class people are all knifing each other about, oh, well, you getting ahead and all this other stuff is just mind boggling to me because it does seem to me that at the top end, like you're saying all the tax cuts for people like you, it's not really for people like you, you get to ride the coattails. It's really for people like them, you know, and they're the ones who benefit much more from these type of stuff. Whereas, you know, somebody, like I said, somebody like you gets to ride the coattails of that. But the idea that so successfully that the working in middle classes, coming out of an era where there was such solidarity and the solidarity worked, like you did create this society where you had one earner households that lived a middle class lifestyle and had houses and all this other stuff, it actually worked, you know, and you had the most robust economy in the world in the history of the world and all this other stuff. And coming out of that, it's like it never happened, you know, now it's like, oh, yeah, we raise taxes. If you go above 40% taxes, the whole thing will fall apart. And it's like, yo, yeah, we had 93 at one point. We had 75 at one point. Like so, you know, I think they did a good job of kind of taking over the intellectual thought process.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I mean.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: Like where. And I think Reagan kind of where we saw that coming out. I think the work, though, remember, as soon as the New Deal hit, they started working on trying to undermine it. And so I think that the fact that so many of the assumptions of people now are in such favor of the wealth class, I mean, Warren Buffett said it, you know, there is a class war and my class won. You know, and he wasn't saying that because he's trying to take advantage of other people. He's saying that he points out the way that I pay lower tax rate than my secretary, you know, like, so there are people that say it, but that doesn't capture the imagination. The last point, I want to get out of here.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: You're right, because I mean, it's like me talking about my situation now in this discussion, right? I'm not saying it to be negative to people. I'm just saying, as a matter of fact, I just want to explain real quick what you're saying, because it's a great point about Bezos. Let's pick on him for a second.
Why would these people support this? So real quick, I'm just looking now, as of the most recent numbers, Amazon's gross revenue was 637 billion for the last year. Think about this, James. In 2017, prior to the first tax cut of Trump, the corporate tax rate was at 35%.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:37] Speaker B: Today they are talking about if this year goes the way that I'm hearing the chatter go, it's going to be lowered to 15%.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: Think about Jeff Bezos, as the largest shareholder of Amazon, gives now his company to keep 20% of $637 billion every year if this tax cuts go through. Right now the tax rates are 28. So he's still doing better than he was. So the point is a lot of people kind of question, well, why would Jeff Bezos, you know, tell the editorial board not to endorse a candidate before the election? All that. And this is what I'm saying about really the oligarch and wealth class. I don't say this to knock Bezos. This is just his self interest.
[00:27:14] Speaker A: He's playing the game.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: And what's happening, the problem isn't that.
[00:27:17] Speaker A: He'S playing the game. The problem is that everybody in the middle class and working class don't realize there's a game being played.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: That's exactly it. We're worrying about Haitians eating our pets and about if the hurricane's controlled by the government and what, you know, how much waste is in Social Security and things that, I mean, I guess they're important to a lot of people. But we're going to keep having this infighting and is being divided and conquered by this wealth class if we don't wake up and say, wow, these people are just financially engineering their way from siphoning, continuing to siphon money to the top. And you're right, James, I'm riding these guys coattails. And why not? Because my fellow Americans don't seem to be caring about trying to do anything else except fight. So I'm just gonna care.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: There are very few monks in the world that Are there.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: Exactly. I'm not dying on this hill. I got a few more decades to live. And I'm.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: Well, no, but I mean, and that's kind of the. To some degree, I don't know if the question is whether you should be foregoing these things that are available to you as opposed to kind of what you're doing now is trying to raise the alarm because you don't solve the problem if you just say, oh, well, I won't do that. You know, like that doesn't solve the problem at all. You know, like what solves the problem is if.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: What do you mean? I should just write a bigger check to the IRS, you know. Yeah, again, pay him to 35.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: Anyway, become aware of this to where? And then some of this is just an uphill climb because it's not all the time. But in many respects you have people that have extreme wealth. Their fixation on wealth allows them to stay focused when other issues are going on, whereas people who aren't fixated on wealth can be easily distracted from matters when it comes to this. So it's not, it's not something that is an easy swing, so to speak. There's a reason why, again, there's a reason why the few have had the resources and the many have been excluded from the resources for most of human history. But in this country, we did get it right once. We did throw that balance into where it was a more a place where the spoils that were being generated in society were being more fairly distributed. And so, and so it's possible that we can do it again if we again, if we learn the right lessons from that. So, but, you know, right now we are in the mode of, okay, you know, top 10%, you guys drive everything. Everybody else hold on for dear life and we're going to ride that train until either the train falls off the tracks or something else happens. And so, but it, nonetheless, it's good to be aware of that. That's what's happening right now. And so that's why I thought this was a worthwhile topic. So I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call. Like I see it, we'll have a part two coming out today, so check that out as well and we'll talk to you soon.
All right, so for our second part today, Toonday, we saw this piece in the Scientific American that talked about how news fatigue and people being overwhelmed with the news is something that is being observed more and more in our modern society today. And this struck me as pretty interesting because recently we read the book and then did a show on the book Nexus and it talked about the invention of news, like news, obviously we can't get away from it now, but the idea of quote unquote news, this collection of information about things that relate to you, don't relate to you, just relate to things you care about. Other stuff that was a creation that really followed the invention of the telegraph, you know, like where if you're in Maine, you'll get some information about Texas, doesn't affect you at all. But, you know, get some information about New York maybe affects you marginally, maybe it doesn't, or maybe in theory it affects you, but it doesn't really affect your day to day life. None of it really affects your day to day life. And that is so. So within the past few hundred years, you're talking about something that's been created and then now we're saying, okay, well, in the modern information environment, people are becoming overwhelmed with it. Fatigue is starting to affect the quality of their life. So, I mean, it seems like a real Frankenstein monster kind of thing here where society's created it, now it's starting to hurt us in tangible ways. So what did you think? You know, what kind of what stood out to you in this breakdown on how, you know, like following the news for many people has become something that's overwhelming and really harmful to them in some ways?
[00:31:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's obvious. I think, you know, many of us probably observed this for the last decade, decade or so, that I think the fire hose of information that we all receive digitally specifically creates mental health issues. I mean, there's people that I know, people that in the summer of 2020, when all that stuff between the COVID stuff going on online in the summer and all that told me they were having mental health, like breakdowns. And you know, it's interesting, James, because we all make choices and, you know, that's why I chose in 2019 to get off social media, because I felt it was putting me in an emotional state that I didn't like in general. And it's interesting to think that we literally have potentially hundreds of millions of people in this country. I mean, we have 300 million people. We could have up to 200 million people that are walking around every day totally stressed out because of all the information they're constantly feeling, whether tv, you.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: Know, the key piece there, all of this stuff that actually doesn't affect the day to day part of their life. Right? Like, that's the thing. They're like people stressed out, but it's like, oh yeah, I got to pay this bill or oh, you know, I got to go pick up my kid from school because this happened.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: Let me, let me, you know, like.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: There'S a lot of reasons to be stressed out in life, but we're getting stressed out about stuff that's like theoretically important in our life, but not actually important in the day to day life.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: Well, let me, let me speak to that a bit because I notice it's different. Actually. The difference in my practice with my clients, talking to some of them and as well as my personal life, my friends, somewhere in the middle of the last decade, like 2016, 2017, that era where I just started hearing things that I'd be like, yeah, what do you mean? Or why do you care about that? And I, I don't remember everyone back then. I just remember around then I started noticing this. But I'll tell you, in recent times, like in the last few years, I know exactly what news my clients watch. If I pick up the phone and someone says, doing it because we're in Florida, just for the audience, that might not, you know, know where we're at. So we're in South Florida, the Fort Lauderdale area, all that Miami, all that stuff. I got clients that all they want to talk to me about is how bad San Francisco is or how bad Chicago is or how bad, you know, how New York is so crappy and all this. I didn't hear 10 by the. Yeah, the street. I didn't hear that 10, 10, 15 years ago. You know what I mean?
[00:33:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: I just heard it recently and I started thinking, like, what do you care about, like, what's going on in San Francisco? Like, that's their business. I don't care. Let, let, let the California voters vote no people into their thing. What do we care?
[00:33:50] Speaker A: Right.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: And it's the same thing on other politics, right? That, that, you know, that somebody is going to be, you know, that coming to get you in the middle of the night or something. And I'm just like, you know, well, something happened like, or maybe like a police shooting, you know, that happened on the other side of the country, and there's everyone throwing up their hands over here. I'm like, well, our law enforcement is not behaving like that, so why is that an issue? And we even saw that recently with the, the hurricanes and the forest fires in la, and it becomes a national story. And that's when I realized your point, James. Like, you know, 100 years ago, if me and you were just regular dudes living down here in South Florida, you know, there was forest fires every year in California back then.
[00:34:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: Just like there's hurricanes every year in Florida. But if people in California didn't know we got hit by a hurricane until two, three months later when it was in their newspaper, and the same thing with us. We didn't know that some, some town in California got burned till a month or two later till it shows up in our newspaper. And to your point, therefore, our daily life wasn't distracted with all this wide berth of information that we got to digest as if it's important and we were able to focus more on our day to day lives, our relationships on and so forth. So I think that's, you know.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that I look at it, the 24 hour news cycle to me represented something very interesting because that's when like the daily paper to had a level of pressure to kind of come up with something every day that was worthwhile spending 20, 30, 40 minutes with it, you know, like, and have that ready to go every day. But the 24 hour news cycle had to do a lot to, to justify its existence and, and saying, well, why do I need 24 hour, like internally for our news network? You know, a news network that's on 24 hours a day, like what, what could you possibly be talking about? What's happening that needs that much kind of attention? And so I noticed that like, I mean with my, my dad, you know, like he, he became at a certain point, this was 10, 15 years ago at a certain point it's like I can't turn, I have to leave this on overnight because something might happen. And then, you know, it's like, oh, I need to know. And it's like, well what do you need to know? You know, you're sitting here in a bed and you know, like what, something's gonna happen somewhere and then you're gonna like, how does that affect you? You're. Are you. Regardless of what happens, unless the world blows up, which you're not going to hear about that on the news, you're going to be exploded, then you still got to get up tomorrow and do the stuff that's actually in front of you, you know. So I think that there was a switch at some point where the news, in order to justify its presence, its continued presence, had to adopt new kind of ways to approach us. But I'll start off or I wanted. Before I go too far into that though, I want to say that there are ways in which like this kind of broadcasting of news is helpful. You know, it's probably helpful in terms of having a country that can be over a larger space and you know, so forth. Because it would be difficult to have a country over a larger space of information, can't travel one way or the other. You know, like that would be very difficult to hold that together, you humanitarian reasons. It's probably helpful, you know, oh yeah, we saw the fires and then people. It wasn't just people in Southern California that were trying to help either put out the fires, other countries are sending, you know, like firefighters to help. And then there's people sending, you know, charitable aid and so forth. So there are benefits to the ability to disseminate information. This is why I look at it, you know, in kind of like our creation has these pros and cons and the cons actually seem to affect us more on a day to day basis though. The question is whether those benefits, whether the, the cost to us individually are something that overrides some of those benefits or exceeds those benefits. And like I look at it and you know, with the news and the news like that, that news economy like with them creating or competing for eyeballs, I wonder if we've just kind of lost the plot in terms of their incentive is not really to inform us. And this was, you know, in that bombshell movie, like I'm not, you know, people don't want to be informed. They want to feel informed. And so, so it's this kind of change of providing information to entertaining with information, you know, and so forth, and whether that information is true or not. So I think there's just kind of a. There's been a disconnect when we're seeing this overwhelmed thing and that the media from a profit standpoint, benefits from keeping you locked in. Keeping you locked in requires them to make you feel certain things. And making you feel certain things could result in you being overwhelmed. And so I just think there's been this progression that we may not have noticed. It's a different industry. And I'm not saying the industry in 1940 was fine when it's just a daily paper or whatever, but I'm just saying it's a different industry now than then. And the idea that we would be getting overwhelmed by something that is trying to evoke emotion in us for the purpose of keeping our attention is like there seems to be something misaligned kind of incentives there. If we want to be healthy and they want to make money, it seems like there's a misalignment there.
[00:38:48] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's why people can go back and listen to our show about the food industry.
Some of that.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: They want to make money hand over fist, I guess is the best way to put it.
[00:39:01] Speaker B: We have a lot of examples in our society like that where, yeah, the industry's need for profit overrides the interest of public health. And the food shows, that's right for the audience. Go listen to that one. We talk about how that on a physical level, but here we're talking kind of on a mental and one of.
[00:39:18] Speaker A: The pieces actually in that Scientific America or one of the points in the Scientific American piece stood out to me with that was that when you feel fear or anxiety about news stories, you have a tendency, a person has a tendency to then search out more stories. And so it actually that again, their incentive would be for you to search out more stories. So their incentive then would be. And I'm always on the lookout for misaligned incentives because people usually follow their incentive structure. And so a lot of times we subscribe evilness to just people. If you look at their incentive structure, their incentive structure is set up to behave a certain way. But yeah, if it's that putting you in a disturbed mental state means you consume more news than the people who benefit from you consuming more news would seemingly be incentivized to put you in a disturbed mental state. And fear and anchor anger and anxiety does that. So it's like, that's not a good.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: Thing about James, the first topic we just did today, that's how you lead to the fracturing of the public, right. That, that everyone is walking around scared and all that, and they're not able to think straight and critically think about what's being told to them. So because the article does a great job, I'm just going to quote a little bit here.
Like there's this part where it says, cognitively, fear hijacks our ability to think. Well, fear can also interfere with attention, leaving people vulnerable to what psychologists call cognitive distortion. And it's very interesting because for those who want to take society and have us start thinking differently, these are very important tools. And so I'll forward down here and say I'll just quote again. And because our fear has already reduced our cognitive abilities, because when we're scared, we, you know, we're not. We're not critically thinking. We're also more likely to instantly take on someone else's view of the world without examining it for ourselves, especially if we consider them a leader. Think about it. Yeah, to me, that was profound because it was like, yeah, you scare people enough so that their backs against the wall and they don't know what's going.
[00:41:24] Speaker A: On and they'll follow.
[00:41:26] Speaker B: They just, yeah, they just kind of crave somebody to fix it all. And then I'm thinking about, you know, didn't think about the 2016 campaign when Trump said, I alone can fix it. Yeah, that is stuck out of my mind. I'm like, wow.
[00:41:37] Speaker A: Well, to some people that was ridiculous. And to other people that was powerful.
[00:41:40] Speaker B: It was refreshing. Yeah. Like it was warming and saying, okay, this guy's gonna save us. So the interesting thing though, James, is that's kind of the part that honestly makes me feel uncomfortable with where we could go in the future and how this is becoming more and more Orwellian, our relationship with this technology. Because.
[00:41:57] Speaker A: Well, the only way to say that a little differently that the way the technology can deliver it right to us all the time now. Like, it's not cable now. It's like it's your phone, it's notifications, it's your scroll. It's all of this stuff that's so accessible to you and actually has a psychological pull on you in ways that it's almost like drug. Like, you know, so.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: No, that's what I'm saying. Like, it's like the Orwellian. I mean, that the. The state or the top down will be able to. To control, you know, what we see and how we think. Almost like a brave new world. I mean, this is. It's interesting. All these.
[00:42:29] Speaker A: Our emotions.
[00:42:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Like these. But these dystopian stories from the 20th century, you know, because of the totalitarianism with some of the regimes around the World War II era, it's like we're actually more. You know, the technology is allowing this stuff to kind of morph out now.
[00:42:44] Speaker A: Yeah. You've dropped Orwell and Brave New World here in the last few minutes.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: That's what I'm thinking. Like, maybe that's why they don't want kids reading those books anymore in school.
Not only did I think they were so boring back then, but now I'm like, damn those things. Actually, there's people that want that kind of style from the top. I didn't actually realize I'd live to see this. No, but. But that's the thing, James, because I feel like it's our own evolutionary processes, like the ability of fight or flight. And I think the fact that we respond so much to images. Like, think about, like, you're saying 1940 was newspapers.
[00:43:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:22] Speaker B: With cartoons.
[00:43:23] Speaker A: Having a photo was considered amazing. And that's big for sales and all that. Just a photo, you know. Yeah.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: And James, think about this. I thought about this actually, in preparing for our conversation. The power of images. Think about the situation in Gaza since, you know, October 7th of 23, and how images have moved so many people in the United States that have nothing to do with what's going on. And I don't mean that in a disrespectful way. I know that a lot of people have something to do emotionally with what's going on. What I mean is they're not physically in that place getting, you know, dealing with either the Israeli side or the, or the, or the Palestinian side. But yet through images, we had a lot of Arab Americans, Muslim Americans that were very passionate and that created a lot of stress and affected their lives and their health, I'm sure, and all that. Then through the images of things like the protests on college campuses, we had a lot of Jewish Americans that were stressed out over that. And think about the fracturing of that potential coalition politically. Right. And now we have. That's what I mean, it's so amazing to see how it worked.
[00:44:32] Speaker A: Let me run.
[00:44:32] Speaker B: Let me just finish this, though, James. We have leadership now that just is, is saying they're going to build, you know, hotels in Gaza. And another part of the current leadership is giving Nazi salutes. So it's like both sides that got stressed out by those images. We're entering an era where there's leadership that, that, that may not be that friendly to, to either side. And I just find it fascinating.
[00:44:53] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, and I think that you bring that up and that helps illustrate a point in this kind of the remoteness of most of the news that we consume in that, like you're talking about people getting stressed out about things that are happening in Gaza which are terrible. And again, that's. Yeah, that's from a humanitarian standpoint, it's good that this information get out. You can put some pressure. People generally can put pressure on, you know, the leadership and that are, that are involved with that, but also from it, you know, just rank and file people walking around, you know, in the United States, there's very little that you can do about that. And so not only is this bringing you something that's very emotionally disturbing, but it's putting something in your face that there's nothing you can do about. And, you know, when you're talking about people being able to have a good handle on life, one of the most important kind of lessons with that is to focus on things that you can control and things you can't control, to try to not put too much into that because you end up fixating on it in ways that are unhelpful and there's nothing you can actually do. And so what news does in many respects is brings things, bring things that are emotionally charged to you, but there's very, very little you can do in the moment. You know, and so it's one thing, if this is in your community and you can show up, you can protest, or you can, you know, like go to town halls and speak up and all this other stuff. Like you have much more hands on ability in your own community. But when it's halfway around the world or halfway around the country, there's just not as much you can do, which creates kind of that situation that's considered more unhealthy where you fixate on something that there's nothing you can do about. The other thing I'll mention, and this was touched on in the actual piece was in you. You kind of preceded this a little bit, was just the kind of this is not being unnoticed, like the way this is affecting people by the political class. The political class is looking in many respects to take advantage of this. And we've talked, you know, recently we did a show talking about the fire hose of falsehood, which takes lessons, you know, like would imply, like you would think they read this and then said, hey, well, we want to cause these effects in people. You know, we want them to feel so angry and overwhelmed that they just blindly will follow the leader. And they actually specifically name checked Steve Bannon. You know, in the flood, the zone strategy that was used from a political standpoint and has been used and continue to be used, where you put so much stuff out there, whether it be so much misinformation that a reasonable fact finder can't correct it all, or you put so much that you're doing so many things that the news can't. They focus on one and the other three things that you did go through without anybody talking about it. And so the gaining of this kind of media system and our attentions is again, it's not going unnoticed that that can be done and that you can acquire a lot of power and wealth by doing that stuff. So I mean, I think from this standpoint, I mean, I always think it's good to sometimes turn the kind of the microscope on yourself and just say, okay, well, you know, like here are at my, from a humanity standpoint, here are my vulnerabilities. You know, are there ways to kind of, to mitigate this, you know, or to try to avoid stepping into stepping on the rake too much with my, you know, with the vulnerability.
[00:47:58] Speaker B: You're asking a lot.
[00:47:59] Speaker A: Well, but were there any of the kind of things they threw out for, you know, to kind of help cope with it that, you know, were meaningful to you, that stood out to you?
[00:48:08] Speaker B: I'm just, I'm just laughing. You're asking a lot for people to do introspection you know, people don't do that. Come on. They look in, they look in.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: There's tick tock videos to view, man.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: They're like, they're. They introspect and find why they're a victim all the time. That's what most people do. And that's. And that's unfortunately what. Yeah, I guess, right. It's like, oh, well, I'm a victim because, you know, somebody else let me.
[00:48:31] Speaker A: Look inside myself and see what I can do better.
[00:48:33] Speaker B: Yeah, you know what?
[00:48:34] Speaker A: It's somebody else's fault.
[00:48:35] Speaker B: Exactly. No, it's.
[00:48:37] Speaker A: I think they got the introspection part wrong. But that's common, though. But yeah, go ahead.
[00:48:41] Speaker B: No, and I think so. It's interesting because as we rounded out here, right, it's like, all right, we know all this stuff. What can we do about it? And I think one of the things the article does, I'm looking here, making allusion to, is that we need to. It says that a psychologist realize this is posing like a new threat to mental health and we actually need to develop new skills. And I find that to be something serious. I also think that this is something that we should start teaching kids around middle school age how to deal with the Internet and information and how to, like, still, you know, know who you are. Like, learn how to grow up as a. As still your individual because, you know, your own self and your own kind of internal.
[00:49:20] Speaker A: How to maintain some agency with this stuff.
[00:49:22] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. That's the word I'm looking for. Exactly. Thank you. So, because I just think that, you know, like, me, like, I just got off social media because I was like, all right, I don't like what the. You know, how I'm feeling and where I see myself going with this. I'm not saying everyone's got to do that, but I think, you know, people need to develop their own way of dealing with this. So one is if you watch a lot of cable news, like you said, like, about your dad, you know what? Turn it off. Have the discipline. Just like you would have discipline if you wanted to lose weight on what you're eating or how you exercise, have the discipline to just not have things on, meaning your gadgets sometimes turn off the phone. One thing, James, I'm trying to challenge myself. I'm noticing because this popcorn brain we all have now with all these gadgets, I used to be able to sit down and read a book for like hours and be fine with it. I can't, man. I've sit down now. I try and read a book because I'm so used to listening to audiobooks and in like five to 10 minutes I got to get up, I'm just antsy.
[00:50:17] Speaker A: Well, that's what the audiobooks allows you to walk around and do things while you're listening. But reading, you got to sit there.
[00:50:22] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to retrain myself to actually like sit there for like one hour and just not move and actually just read. And it's difficult. And I'm just saying like the Same guy, me, 15 years ago could do that and now I can't. And it's because of all my brain just, just becoming much more shorter attention span with all the stuff we have. So I think to your point, like most things in society, most people won't be able to self regulate. This is where you would assume the role of a government would come in. And I'm not saying this because I love regulation, all this, but you've made some good points about how big tech could be regulated in a different way. Like you don't allow people to doom scroll forever. There's a limit on how many things they can see or whatever. You know, the changing of these algorithms and stuff.
[00:51:08] Speaker A: Yeah, the algorithmic part is not. Algorithmic part is something that goes beyond the, the configuring of the algorithms to be more addictive is something that, that's a little, that's controlling, that is not controlling free speech, so to speak. So you know, like there's, there's, there's definitely some ground to be covered there. But the tech companies are more powerful than, than the government in many respects. Like tech companies influence the government and with their algorithms, you know. So yeah, we might be a little bit behind the eight ball there if we want to try to regulate that, you know, if they'll let us, which they will. And that goes into the. Remember the techno feudalism, you know, that we looked at a while ago.
[00:51:43] Speaker B: I was going to say, man, that might be another show topic which is the effects of this kind of algorithmic manipulation on our actual politicians that make policy. Because I think a lot of them have been baked in.
[00:51:55] Speaker A: Yeah, we're still, we're still, we're still, we're so far in that storm that we don't even know the, the contours of it yet. But I mean that's, that's definitely something that's going on for me. I mean the, the, the easy one of limit news consumption was one of these suggestions like that's personally what I've done. But I'VE done that for so long that like I engage with news on my own terms. Like, it's like I will, okay, I'll take 20, 30 minutes, I'll look at things. I try to avoid the algorithmic presentation and that takes a lot of work because you got to do things with cookies and deleting them and you know, trying to make it so each time you show up at a website, you know that it, that it, that that won't work. For example, on my own Apple News, like Apple News is algorithmic curation. Nothing I can do about that. But I do have ways when I access things through a browser to try to make it. So it's not algorithmically curated. It's just, it's, it's how they would present it for somebody they don't know. So I mean, and then limiting how often you do with it. Don't you know, notifications turning off when you know, like that stuff again, Unless it's like, hey, nuclear explosion right down the block, then notifications being on is just, it's not going to really.
[00:52:56] Speaker B: Hey, bro, that happens. We can't do anything about it.
[00:52:59] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Like, so I think that there are techniques and I, you know, I will have the article in the show notes that, you know, some of it's like. And I use sports for this. You know, there's like, look for something else, like something that's not life or death. Because a lot of times this happens with political news and kind of societal news. And so maybe you know, like follow the Oscars or something like that where the stakes just aren't that high to you and so you're not going to get all worked up and everything like that or follow sports or things like that.
[00:53:25] Speaker B: And so get a hobby. Yeah, do something else.
[00:53:27] Speaker A: Exactly. Or the other one. Spend time with people, you know, like that, that's always a good idea too.
[00:53:34] Speaker B: Spend time with them. Not complaining about what you saw.
[00:53:37] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, and they actually said that specifically, like, but don't talk about politics when you're spending time with these people. So. But no, I mean, so again, it's good to be aware though of kind of the predatory nature of what's around us and that, that it is affecting people. And so, you know, for each person, you know, you try to, you know, try to do better, you know, like in terms of how you live your life. And so hopefully something like this reading, being exposed to this reading, it can, can help along that path. Yeah.
[00:54:01] Speaker B: And I just want to finish off with this because I just I actually do find this fascinating that we've been kind of living through this change moment in human society because, yeah, you know, human beings have never been exposed to this way of living, that all this technology and this like you said, in our phone, in our pockets, we have all this access. So I mean, what I find.
[00:54:21] Speaker A: Nexus man, just real quick from the book Nexus, like this is akin to the printing press, you know, and how that changed society, which, you know, led to the witch's hammer and burning witches. So that's not necessarily the greatest precursor. Also the radio. And you've pointed out examples of how when the radio, like how that affected societies, people think, you know, because they're listening to a radio broadcast that aliens are really invading and stuff like that, which we think is silly. But we're in one of these transitions now where that same kind of stuff is happening to us.
[00:54:46] Speaker B: That's why, James, I take that's why I joke on our show about the Haitians eating pets and the hurricanes being controlled by the government. Meaning it sounds stupid on its face, but you realize that actually we're in one of these moments. This is just like burning people for being witches or like believing that Martians were coming down in the 1920s, like War of the Worlds.
[00:55:06] Speaker A: War of the World was on the radio.
[00:55:07] Speaker B: Was on the radio. It's, it's. And so that's what we're saying though. But FDR or whoever, the president, maybe it was Hoover at the time, they weren't weaponizing that infer. They weren't saying, well, because these aliens are coming. Yeah, you're right. We need to shut down the border.
[00:55:21] Speaker A: Yeah. But the problem is, is that, you know, like, for example, you know, the current administration is weaponizing.
[00:55:26] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying.
We have a leadership and like we said about when people are stressed out, they're gonna. Their cognitive ability to, to discern things is diminished. So they're gonna look for a leader. So, I mean, it's. That's what I mean. It's actually fascinating to see. Okay, now, yeah, we have a leader that's gonna.
[00:55:42] Speaker A: We gotta end the show, man, now. Because now you're over here building fear and nervous and anxiousness. You turn the show into the source of the fear and anxiousness.
[00:55:51] Speaker B: Run into it. Watch it all burn. It's gonna be fun. You're going to do good.
[00:55:57] Speaker A: But no, we'll wrap this up from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call Like I see it. Check part one out as well. Subscribe to the show, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Till next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:56:07] Speaker B: I'm Tunde. Lana.
[00:56:09] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you soon.
