This Fourth Turning's Market Crash Risks Are 'Exceptional' | Neil Howe

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What's interesting is you have all these possible triggers of bad news, but it's the high valuation which I find incredible. This is this is a rare combination, right? As I said, uh by the time we were very late in the depression, 1940 41, these were still depression years. Uh interest rates were at record lows. We still had slight deflation. I mean, these were these unemployment was still barely up in the double digits. So those were low valuations, right? When when trouble hit, this is going to be trouble hitting at very high valuation. This is >> this this is exceptional even for a fourth attorney. >> Welcome to thoughtful money. I'm its founder and your host, Adam Tagert. Today's guest has long predicted that widespread systemic change would occur during the 201s and 2020 as America and much of the rest of the world experience a replacement of the old order and the birth pangs of a new one. All of us who have lived through this period and especially the year 2025 that just ended probably find it hard to argue that massive change culturally, politically, geostrategically, and economically is indeed now a foot. So, how much more of this change still lies ahead? How disruptive will it likely be? And what kind of new system does it look like we'll have on the other side? For perspective, we've got the privilege of welcoming back to the program demographer Neil How, co-author of the seinal book, The Fourth Turning, and author of its sequel, The Fourth Turning is Here. Neil, thanks so much for joining us today. >> Great. Great to be here, Adam. >> Thanks, Neil. Hey, first off, happy new year. Happy 2026. Hope you had a great holiday season. >> I did. I did. Uh, no real snow up here yet, so that's about uh all I can be thankful for. >> Yeah. Well, be thankful for it. I I moved to Nevada since the last time we talked, and we have had our fair share of snow of late. So, um, it's it's it's pretty, but it's also pretty cold. >> You live uh in the east, west, Las Vegas? >> Nope. Uh, I'm up in Reno, so I'm in the the northwest. Right. Right. Literally right on the the edge of the Sierras. >> So I I grew up in California and we used to hike into the high Sierra was from Owens in the Lone Pine. You know that there >> so I'm very familiar. It's also where they interned the Japanese, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> It's a beautiful area though. Um I I I would just voluntarily move there. I mean Anel Adams did those wonderful black and white photos of the Sierras from the eastern side, right? They go up like a cliff. Um, >> it's it's it's gorgeous out here. And as this audience has heard me sort of gush over the past, you know, two months or so. Um, every day I find out something new and wonderful about this area. It's been such a hidden gem. So, yeah, Neil, if you're ever back here, I'd love to host you and you can take me on some of your favorite hikes. We can go up to 12,000 ft together, Adam, and see, you know, >> I I would love that some I suspect that there's probably more than a a small number of people watching this who'd love to come join us on that event, too. So, maybe we make a >> That's a germ of an idea, you know? How does how does the how does the world look from uh up near a a glacial lake and a lot of granite? >> Yeah. Or maybe more importantly, you know, if the fourth turning gets really bad, you can go hide up in the mountains with Neil How and Adam Tagert. [laughter] >> There we go. >> Um All right. Well, [clears throat] look, um Neil, you I think it's probably safe to say you're probably the most uh asked for guest of of for 2026 amongst my audience. You know, I get people hitting me all the time, hey, get so and so and get so and so. Your name, I think, has probably come up the most. Um, and I think the people that are aware of your concept of foreturning, um, you know, are have no questions that we're certainly in the thick of it right now and are very concerned/curious to know, you know, where you think we're headed from here. Um, I I asked my audience for questions for you. Obviously, I got just, you know, buried under an avalanche of them. I'll try to get through as many of them as possible here. Um, but I've got a few of my own and and why don't we why don't we start with one of those which is um uh you know very quickly I'll give a 30 second description amend it any way you like. uh Neil and his uh his uh research partner um William Strauss um had uh written a book, seminal book back in the mid '90s basically uncovering their research that revealed that um uh America but but an increasing number of of of other countries largely in the west um go through uh these the secular this sort of period of cycles not unlike the seasons um that uh repeat roughly on the order of of a human lifetime. So about 80 years or so. And they they break them up just like we have four four seasons into four turnings. And the fourth turning is sort of like winter. And it's one where the order that is persisted for the seculum um basically falls apart and gets replaced by a new order that will be dominant for the the coming next 80 years. and Neil uh you know predicted that um you know kind of 201ishish 2020s that's when we're going to be going through the next fourth turning there certainly has been an awful lot of change of the the kind I just mentioned in the intro there. Um so to the extent that we're in a fourth turning and of course Neil your your most recent book is the fourth turning is here. How is it playing out versus the expectations you had coming into it? Adam, thank you for summing up uh you know in in in just a couple of minutes uh the main thesis of you know our work uh and obviously as we've gotten into it and up close I study forth earnings a lot more right I I become much more familiar and interested in how they actually turn out it was something very different back in the mid 1990s right when it >> was all academic back then Well, it was way in the future and and I'll tell you something very interesting about the difference in perspective back when you came out with a book in 1997. Uh, everyone said, "Oh my god, what a what a horribly, you know, pessimistic book." Um, you know, everything seems to be going fine. It was the end of history. It was, you know, global superpower, you know, all that stuff, right? >> And then they came out with a new book in 2023 and the reaction was the opposite. is basically saying, you actually think there's gonna be a positive ending to this? [laughter] How can you be so optimistic? It's very interesting actually. It says something about how our perspective has changed, right? >> Yeah. >> Uh back then it was this great kind of global integrated right uh uh democratizing uh freedom loving world which everyone took for granted. And now it's uh everything going to hell. the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, everyone getting unhappier. Uh, and right and and what do you think is possibly going to change this? Right. This is going to be a slow road down to predition uh uh if not you know the complete decline and fall of the west or the world or something like that. I will say that um uh in the in the most recent book I did get more spec I don't know which perspective uh viewers will be coming at but in the most recent book I got a little bit more specific about the scenarios that we that I think are most likely and to be most in instrumental in sort of affecting people in the for turning and I really focused on three of them. Um uh one is the theme of conflict which I think is always reappears during forth turning. As as you know Adam a big thesis of of our book is that uh and our work is that generationally conflict is the incubator of community. It's always been true historically and it always recurs and it will happen again this time. Right? uh what this world lacks, what certainly the country lacks as well is any sense of community. conflict uh makes sort of re-enders community, forces people to rediscover community and uh and as well as a lot of other things come out long term for fourth turning, not only as we go into the following first turning, which I suspect will be sometime in the mid 2030s, but that's going to be not only community uh but authority, a focus on the future um and um and u uh cultural conventionality uh as well as um equality, right? Uh these are all missing today, right? All of these things, right? We complain about inequality today. We complain about lack of community, lack of authority. So, we can talk about how that plays out almost as though the fourth turning as a as a as a cold front moving in with a with a warm front, you know, and all the storms that occur. I would say to go back to those three dynamics. One is um uh internal conflict. Uh the extreme example being civil war. Uh we've certainly had one and a half in American history. I say one is obviously the US Civil War. I often say the American Revolution. Uh although, you know, don't pay attention to labels. Uh it was basically a civil war between patriots and loyals within the colonies. A lot more people were killed in the American Revolution by Americans killing Americans, right, than >> British or Russians, right? Um and and so we've had those before. You're going back even further in the colonial experience. We've had plenty of civil wars in American history. And the other is geopolitical conflict, right? External. Uh we've had those as well. And um and those are both very real and alive today. So we can go into both of those, right? Th I think those are they have both equally became more salient in Americans minds recently. Right? We see what's happening politically in the United States. How completely wackily polarized this country has become, how the two sides don't even talk to each other anymore. You know, they're basically they've become the other, right? The enemy within. This is Trump likes to put it. And my point is, >> and they've gotten to the point where they they feel sadly more comfortable justifying violence against the other, right? Uh we've gotten to the point where, hey, you know, we're we're seeing some political assassinations or assassination attempts. >> This part of the dehumanization and and but this Okay, so you got that >> and then you've got the growing fear of geopolitical conflict. Um um I think that's on everyone's mind. We can go in and talk about Russia and China. I think China is the big one. Um and I think to to an extent I know we we we speak today right in the shadow of the um of the extraction of Maduro from from Venezuela, but I think the the hidden story is about how this is this actually has something to do with China, right? Uh China is getting oil from Venezuela and it's also, you know, beginning to design uh Venezuela as a sort of a Chinese colony. I mean, it's exporting, you know, Madura has been importing huge amounts of national security and weaponry and so on and communications bases and all this into Venezuela. This is kind of a backstory here, but I think geopolitical conflict is increasing. Um, and then the other is, and this I know is dear to your heart, and that's financial crash. And unusually at this stage in the fourth turning, we are at a point of extremely overvalued financial markets. So that's something we can talk about as well. But I see that as a as a as a big problem and a and a big compounder of the trouble we're going to be in, right? Um so we can do comparisons. We can, you know, look at how much, you know, financial markets fell um uh in in in in the late fall of 1860 after Lincoln was elected or we can talk about how they much they fell in the three or four months after Pearl Harbor, but those were much lower valuation markets. This is astronomically higher valuation market, right? So that has actually been interesting more and more as well. So, so that is kind of where my that is really where my focus is on looking in detail at a granular level of why all these things are interconnected and how they play out. >> Okay. Um well, let's get into let's get into all of them. Um and I've got some specific questions about 2025 I want to ask you first real quick and we'll we'll get back to this later. Um, but I'm just curious the the financial crash element to the fourth turnings. Um, is that kind of like a feature and not a bug? Meaning if inequality is an issue, um, obviously one way to to decrease the inequality is to bring down asset prices and make the rich less richer as a result. >> Oh, totally. Uh, and actually that occurred during the Great Depression, World War II. Obviously, it occurred um uh you know about 12 or 13 years before World War II, right? The crash of 29. >> But if you want to look longterm at the genie coefficient, which is sort of way we measure inequality, right? It rose to a high in 1929. It be it fell obviously during the 1930s somewhat. It fell even faster during World War II uh because of the enormous production which suddenly gave high wages to ordinary people and the ongoing inflation, right? Inflation plus wage controls plus financial repression. These are these are this is a package which always comes about during a forth turning climax and it it's a great way of redistributing wealth. And then in the 19 late 40s and 50s, we continued to have fin we really continued to have financial repression until the the uh u you know the the the end of the the the Treasury Fed in with William Machznney Martin in in 1954 and then the Fed sort of had its own independence again and started waging uh raising interest rates. But the point is is that in the climax of before it turning inflation and financial regulation, what I call financial repression, are not problems. These are solutions. They're solutions to the problem of redistributing wealth and redistributing income at a time when either a people demand it or it's necessary for the country's survival or both. You know what I mean? >> Yeah. and and and and that is what people don't understand about inflation. Inflation is a wonderful tool for wiping the slate clean of uh a lot of rich people have nominal claims and opening up opportunities for those who don't and to be able to to to push resources toward purposes for instance like I don't know building defense fielding a military you know all kinds of things you need in a crisis or simply employed people who are out of work >> uh that would not be possible without inflation because >> the great thing is you don't actually have to take any money away from people through law. You just inflate everything so that their claims no longer are worth anything, right? Um and it's a very convenient way of doing it across the board. This is why forth turning climaxes again and again feature accelerating inflation. Uh every one of them, the American Revolution, you remember the the Continental dollar, you know, it became an expression worth as much as a continental dollar. Yeah, the things were worthless by the end of the war. The same is true in the Civil War, right? You think of the Confederate dollars became worthless. And even the Union um relied about one-third on raising taxes, one-third on issuing debt, one-third on inflation. And of course, we had a big deflationary push. We went back to the gold standard after after the Civil War. And that had a deflationary impact on the economy. And of course, all the populists were upset about it, you know, out there in the Midwest. And then the same thing in World War II. Um uh but you can look at other nations as well even more catastrophically. This is done time and time and again. Um so that is definitely one of the dynamics we're looking at. >> Okay. Um I said I was going to come back and revisit it, but we're we're pregnant enough in it. Why don't we just see it through here now? I'm I'm sure we got people's attention here. So um All right. So we have uh we have an economy right now where uh certainly on the fiscal side we're running you know deficits out the wazoo. Um on the monetary side we've actually had some restraint of late um which has been kind of rare for for the Fed that we've had over the past couple of decades. But the Fed is now back to cutting rates and even though it doesn't want to say it, it's basically back to QE. Um, [clears throat] so I guess none of that surprises you as someone who sort of is expecting more inflation from here. Um, where do you see us? So, so valuations are crazy high. You're absolutely right. You know, on on on most of the major valuation metrics, we are at if not at all time extremes, we're very close. Um, so there's definitely that risk. You know, economically, we're seem to be chugging along. Okay. You know, if we if we listen to the administration, they're saying, "Look, this is going to be a gang buster year because of everything that we just laid pipe for in 2025 with, you know, tax cuts and one big beautiful bill and deregulation and stuff like that. So, do you see us like like how close to the precipice of financial crash do you see us right now? Do you think it's going to happen on on this administration's watch or is it going to require more severe types of of policies that have not been enacted yet? Well, you know, Jeremy Grantham once had an interesting observation on that. He said, you know, once once a valuation goes up to two sigma aberration, uh you never know if it's going to go to 2.5 and then to three and then to 3.5. You know, you remember the Japanese bubble famously um just kept on going and going and going. It's it's very difficult to time. Right. >> Right. And that that requires a very robust strategy where you need to be able to ride it to some extent while it's still going but have in um protective measures for when it hits. Right? That that's the issue. But knowing that it's coming near uh is is is critical. I I you know I follow uh obviously uh uh Robert Schiller's you know Cape PE and he has he has new versions of it somewhat more sophisticated. John Husman I think has been excellent and he's been at this for you know 10 or 20 years. He's been at this for a long time >> for a long time since the GC. Yeah. What's amazing when you look at all these measures you know from from Q which is marketplace to replacement value of capital to uh uh to you know market cap to GDP to to you know price over sales price over earnings you all of these measures there's not much disagreement between the different measures because they all follow each other they all say the same thing it's it's not like they disagree with each other right they they all move in unison Listen, the disagreement is not among the valuation measures. They're all telling you the same thing. The only question is when will it when will it pop? We know historically it always reverts to mean. Not only that, it usually overshoots, right? It usually overshoots to a undervalue. Right. And then it kind of comes back. It's like one of those oscillators, right? >> Right. Um, so and and I think I think people are pretty sure and you can you can see a lot of people endorsing this opinion that if you like five or 10 years out it's very unlikely you're going to get a positive real total return in equity markets, right? >> Well, that's that should that should tell you something. [laughter] You know what I mean? I mean, if that is your object 10 years out, then maybe you don't completely have to think too much about the path that's going to take to get there, if you see what I mean. It relieves you a little bit of the obligation to time, but but again, I mean, you're always there's always going to be FOMO. Um, and just to quote someone else here, I think it's this is um I think this is a Warren Buffett or uh the guy who worked with Warren Buffett all those years. Yeah, Charlie Mer. >> Charlie Mer. >> He he passed away a while ago. >> He had a great quote. He said that um what motivates stock markets uh is not so much greed, it's envy. And that explains a lot. It explains why >> the fear of missing out in an up market >> is just as real as the fear of loss in a down market. Right? Because what do we compare ourselves to? Do we compare ourselves in an absolute? No. We compare ourselves about am I keeping up with that guy and that guy? Because a lot of what we value are ordinal goods, which gets priced higher as everyone has more income, right? There's only so many houses on the top of mountains that you can buy. >> And the richer your peers are, the more they're going to bid all those houses up. So in a way people are just as fearful of not keeping up uh to some degree as they are of of you know this this the spy kind of the logarithmic you know disaster going down which is which is obviously which is obviously horrible >> but I but I do think that that that it's easier for me to say in the abstract oh look five and 10 years from now but that's not going to restrain many people from saying no no no I've got to be in the market right now you Right. >> Uh but but uh but yeah, I think that's at least a short answer to your question. >> Okay. Well, so it's funny when you were talking about the sentiment of when you published the first book and then you published the second book, it was reminding me a lot about sentiment during market tops and bottoms, right? At a market top, nobody wants to entertain the idea that it could be anything. The market could be doing anything but going higher, right? They're all caught up in the FOMO. they're all, you know, fully in on the party. Same thing at a market bottom. Nobody wants to touch a stock, right? And so what's funny is is, you know, usually the prudent investor wants to do the opposite of what the herd is doing, right? You you lighten up at the when people are manic and you buy when everybody's depressed, right? Um, so that's that's the other famous Warren Buffett quote, right? You're fearful when everyone else is greedy, be greedy when everyone else is fearful. >> Yeah. And hey should you know look it world's most successful investor more people should listen to him. >> Yeah. Um so okay [clears throat] so when you were talking about kind of these big themes you had financial crash in there and you know obviously you're making the case that hey um the math is telling us probably at best we have a lost decade ahead of us in the markets right where they kind of go nowhere. And uh and the best we could hope for in with that math is kind of just a sideways market for 10 years. Probably highly likely not going to go that way. Probably have some years that are up, some years that are really down, right? True crashes, that type of thing. >> Yeah. Just just to say the history of these plateaus, it it's and you can look at all of them, you know, throughout America. The history of these plateaus is it it achieves a high, it goes way down, and then it kind of struggles back up and then you draw a plateau line, right? So you can that's it it actually doesn't very often go above the plateau but it kind of um you know the that the market um uh you know bleeds down fast but grinds up slowly you know >> and to your point historically when the market's gotten to an extreme like this we basically have zero instances where it then just went sideways to burn it off. >> It never does that. It never does that. It always it always drops and comes back. Yeah. But but I guess in terms of a forth turning, so you expect, you know, we'll say financial turmoil, but probably a financial crash somewhere in there. Is it just on the financial side or do you expect a concurrent economic crisis like we had with the Great Depression? Uh I I know the history of the 1800s less well, but I'm sure we had some economic, you know, issues in there during the four turnings. Um so you know are you expecting some sort of concurrent economic malas to accompany said financial crash? >> Yeah I think there will be restructuring of the economy. I mean for one thing we're going to have to do a lot less consuming and a little bit more producing that's going to restructure our economy. >> Y >> um we are uh in debt to the rest of the world. If you look at the US financial pos, you know, US financial position, which the commerce department, you know, recalculates every year, we're about 100% of GDP, you know, owe more to the rest of the world than they'd owe us, which is amazing because if you go back only about 15 years or so, we were about on par, right? This is a steep trend downward and it almost exactly parallels um our large deficits, right? And the two are related, right? We have uh enormous deficit spending at the government level uh reduces the national savings rate in America which pushes up interest rates here at home and requires us to import capital right in order to keep to keep our own investment going right >> and and it's a pretty simple dynamic and that raises the question actually of whether the next crash will be just another, you know, sand on the, you know, a grain of sand on the on the sand pile, you know, just reaching a critical point or whether it will be something truly substantive such as a global run on the dollar, a a increase in interest rates. So, there's a a global reaction to what is going on in the US or even something more serious. Obviously, we did talk about, you know, conflict, uh geopolitical conflict. If you can imagine uh a a war in the Western Pacific, you can imagine a very serious um uh uh uh deadlock, you know, over Congress and the Supreme Court and and where government simply comes to a halt, right? Two sides simply refuse to cooperate with each other. You can paint scenarios like that and either of those you can imagine also, you know, kicking off. But the point of what's interesting is you have all these possible triggers of bad news, but it's the high valuation which I find incredible. This is this is a rare combination, right? As I said, uh by the time we were very late in the depression, 1940 41, these were still depression years. Uh interest rates were at record lows. We still had slight deflation. I mean, these were these unemployment was still barely up in the double digits. So those were low valuations, right? When when trouble hit, this is gonna be trouble hitting at very high valuation. This is >> this this is exceptional even for a fourth turning, I guess, is what I mean to say. >> So I I I'm not going to ask you to to, you know, predict a size of a crash. You get give me a number. But in the GFC, we basically saw the S&P go down by 2/3. It sounds to me like you wouldn't be shocked to see that type of financial correction here given the stakes at play and the the extremes of the valuations. >> Yeah, I mean you know 29 to 33 was about you know 75% um looking at a total return basis and taking into account deflation and so on. I always look at total return. Um, and if if if the reaction after Pearl Harbor had been from the higher valuation point, >> it also would have been about 75%. In instead, it was something more like, you know, 20 25%. >> Um, but the point is is that it will hit a a very low valuation. Um, and I wouldn't be surprised at all. Now if it starts coming down somewhat well then you know you have less of extreme valuation >> you've got less froth to bleed out. Yeah. >> Yeah. Exactly. But but I do I do think that the extraordinary um an extraordinary angle of having such high valuations is we're getting to the point where you know we normally think of the the economy as driving the stock market. you know the the economy moves and the stock market kind of responds to it and say we're at the point Adam where it's the stock market driving the economy I mean it's the fact that you have all of this wealth the the share of all consumption basically retail spending by the top 10% is about half of all consumption today this is this is greater than we've ever seen before I mean back in the late 1980s it was about a third right This is this is unprecedented and this is why we have uh an ongoing K-shaped economy. I live up here in West Virginia and I guarantee you, you know, nobody has any money up here and there's a lot of poverty up here. >> Yeah. You got a lot of the bottom of the K surrounding you. It sounds like there. >> Yeah. And and a lot of the bottom of the K. And it's also I must say capital spending is also K-shaped. I mean other than TAC, no one is spending much on capital. I mean that's the other interesting thing. This is structural within our economy. It's it's it's a it's a unbalanced disease state. Uh partly be partly because of these valuations. >> Okay. But but to the earlier point we talked about one of the fastest ways to address that and I'm trying not to put a good or bad on it is the fact that if we had a very large uh asset price correction event that would bring the top of the K a lot closer down to the bottom of the K. >> Yeah. And it would allow younger people to buy into the market at much better valuations and much greater odds of actually being, you know, substantial real appreciation, you know, over their lifetime, right? Um, you you don't want to be the person who buys in at the highest price, >> right? Right. >> I guess that's uh uh and I think that leads to a lot of pessimism among the young. I think I think we also have a parallel problem in housing valuations. You know, we have this absolutely crazy housing market with the locked in mortgages >> and all the nimi rules to prevent people from buying, you know, from building new homes, particularly in the Northeast and the West Coast. >> And it uh this is leading to a sense of blockage for a lot of young people. How do I get ahead? >> You know, when when asset prices are so high and and housing prices are I feel like I'm being set up. >> Yeah. And and I I I don't I don't want to rattle hole in housing because we could talk about that forever, but another factor there that is tied to the asset price inflation is, you know, we've got record ownership of single family homes by investors, both single mom and pops up to big institutions. Um, and that's one other thing. You know, as long as that top part of the K is doing great and and snarfing up those houses, they're out competing the regular people that just want to have a roof over there. And this this has a political dimension Adam because we live in a kind of winner take all world record you know the the the total number of companies that matter are declining and within each sector we have one or two companies that are just dominating market share and and the problem is these are the they set prices now and they get to dictate you know what the consumer takes. We also have price discrimination which I think is rampant in our economy. I mean, these companies take out every little piece under the consumer, you know, welfare curve. And I I tell people all the time that when you see, you know, my FedEx and my Safeway and, you know, all these special, you know, consumer reward things, >> just another way to rip you off. I mean, they know your habit. So, they're going to price it exactly to the extent that you can buy and they're going to charge someone else some other number that they can buy. I mean, whatever happened to the single price for everybody? No, no, no, no. this is much more clever and it's it's tanamount to another form of monopoly pricing. Um but but let's not get off on price discrimination, but you just you you you touched off something I I I >> you're passion you're totally passionate and I am too. I've said many times it's it's almost, you know, hard now to find an industry that isn't really run like a cartel, right? With a few big players who then protected them with with regulation and buying off, you know, the regulators and politicians. Um, so presumably then as part of the forth turning on on that dimension, uh, you expect I'm guessing, you know, trust busting and stuff like that to start to become back into vogue. >> Yeah. Typically what happens is not so much trust busting, it's just that the the restructuring of the economy is so extreme because what the country needs to do that just no one cares about, you know, who's an incumbent anymore, you know, whoever can do it. And the other thing is is it is that uh uh uh the public sets in to set price limits not just on goods but on profits and even buy up the capital. By the way, I don't know if you saw but you know Donald Trump is becoming a socialist. I mean he's buying up Intel. He's buying up all these ke >> I know. So, but but this is a sign of where it's going. During World War II, despite the fact that you had all the auto manufacturers producing, you know, tanks and war planes and all these people, you would think they would have made a fortune, but actually they didn't. They their first of all, the the much of the capital they invested was directly uh purchased by government. By the end of World War II, manufacturing companies in America, over half of their capital stock was owned by the government. Believe it or not, we we don't realize to what extent that occurred. Now, that was sold off in the late 40s. But my point was is that a lot of the returns on that capital, first of all, were price fixed uh by people like Harry Truman. By the way, Harry Truman was was a senator and he was traveling all around the country looking at at at uh at at uh companies, you know, mills, steel mills, and all that stuff and making sure that all of their margins were, you know, capped, right? But this was this was the expectation. Everyone was supposed to sacrifice because of what this country was going through. Uh, and you want to explain that declining genie coefficient we talked about, right? This was part of the mix. >> Okay. Um, but it took something like World War II, as you said, sort of conflict being the incubator of community. It gave us something that we could rally around. >> We had no choice. We had to rally around. We didn't voluntarily do this. I want to make this clear. We didn't wake up one morning and said, you know, let's equalize incomes. No. >> Right. But it gave the government the quote authority to say, "Look, you're going to eat this because of X." Yeah. >> Yeah. And and the the public gave the government the authority because the public was scared. Everyone was scared. You know, we we didn't know. We thought fascism was going to take over the world. I mean, we were the only major democracy left, >> right? All right. Well, look, I'm going to stick on finance just for a few more minutes, then we'll get to some of the other bigger themes. Um, so just a quick little preview. Um, a lot of folks watching this, Neil, as they hear you talk, are thinking, "Okay, you know what? I can be in favor for the events of the fourth turning that that bring inequality down. Like, I can I can emotionally get on board with that. Personally, I don't want to be collateral damage when that happens, right? I've worked really hard to build my my wealth. I want to protect my family. How do I make it through the fourth turning without losing what I have?" Now, we'll I'll ask you that question directly as we get near the end, but but um I just want to let the audience know something that you've been actively involved in recently is trying to give people a solution there and you've recently come up with an ETF and we'll talk about the details of that in just a moment, but can you just maybe speak for 30 seconds as to kind of why you created this ETF? >> Um I created this ETF uh which I should just say it's HFT, a hedge fourth turning fund. uh so it's easy for anyone to find for a very simple reason and that is that the single biggest question that I got from readers after reading the book is okay Neil I agree with you what can I do >> how can I prepare and um and I thought the ETF was the perfect vehicle because is completely democratic you know anyone can invest in an ETF right uh uh with almost any money there. You don't have to be a qualified investor or any of any of that fancy stuff. So, I thought this was a great tool for anyone to be able to invest in which focused on something that very few funds do, which is um which is uh real return uh uh over time. That is to say inflation adjusted uh uh uh real total return over time. And uh and and we have some strategies for that which which differ significantly from from a lot of other funds which we can talk about later but but that is the purpose to protect people's savings whatever they've earned for these kind of things we've been talking about right and also to do better than just you know putting your money into tea bills or something like that. you obviously do want to participate uh to a substantial extent in stuff that's growing. Uh and this is the answer to that. >> Okay, great. Thank you. So, I just wanted folks to know we're going to continue talking about kind of the problem set for a while, but we're not going to ignore potential solutions and constructive actions you can take and and one of the ones, like I said, we'll talk more about it, but it's this new ETF that that Neil has launched. Okay. So, Neil, um, uh, [sighs] you know, Donald Trump, um, definitely disruptive, right? Um, of the type of leader I imagine you expect to see during a fourth turning. You expect to see disruption. Um, he is taking a very much America first, you know, mindset. So, forget so much the rest of the world and globalization. We're going to take care of our own. we're going to address some of these long-standing problems that we've had here. Um, you know, whether it's immigration, whether it's uh I mean, he's he's talked a lot about Wall Street benefiting on to the expense of Main Street and we want to have Main Street come back. We followed out on manufacturing. He says he's trying to bring manufacturing back. He's done the the the the tariff wars and everything. Um, so I'm presuming these are these are of the flavor of the type of disruptive policies you expect to see in a fourth turning where somebody says, "All right, you know what? I've been given a mandate to come in and do things differently." Right? So, I'm starting to do things differently. In terms of like where you think we're headed in the fourth turning, is is Donald Trump putting us on the path to get there? like are these the types of policies that you would expect to see on the way to a for a for you know an end of the forturning where we've got more community inequality and authority and all that stuff um or are you anticipating that this is you know the pendulum's going to swing to a different direction before this is all over >> it may well swing to a different direction before this is over right we see quick swing >> the president mandami direction maybe right [laughter] >> for all you know right we we have enough time left and I do think it's interesting the you do see certain trends which uh and I think it's important to look at them which characterize both red and blue you know that we don't like to talk about or we we often minimize right >> but in both sides there's a growing populism I mean there's just no question about that right that for instance there's no problem uh for the government to go in and do something about big tech or you know the these these companies the the public mood about AI is incredibly negative. I mean, when you ask the public about what they think AI will do, they they >> this is nothing like the dot was back in the late 1990s when people were kind of, you know, cheerful about it. All these little new companies, they just see these big behemoths coming in and just, you know, gobbling up, wanting more market power, right? Gobbling up a greater share of our economy and doing things that don't seem positive at all really in their lives when it comes to their family, their kids, their schools. um and and perhaps even their jobs. >> Well, I was going to say, yeah, you got you've got three big factors there, which is one, I don't really see how it's going to improve my life that much. Two, it's just going to make the corporations even richer. And three, they're going to get rid of us. >> Yeah, they're going to get rid of us. And and by the way, I now I have I have a I have a special take on this. I I'm look I believe that all of these great tech revolutions ultimately do transform the economy and transform us over time, right? The the dotcom revolution certainly did this. I have no doubt that that AI will do this even the you know the large language models >> um uh but they will do that over time and they will do that despite the fact that some of the biggest names in it today will wipe out entirely. That is the lesson of history, right? Amazon, do you know how much it declined between 2000 and 2003? >> 95% something like that. >> That's about 95%. Right. And the others went out there completely, right? But Amazon was up there almost completely wiped out. >> What was the greatest epito what what what technology epitomized the new economy in the 1920s? Right. The one technology that was truly the modern thing of the 20s, right? was radio car. It >> was actually radio. >> Yeah. >> And RCA, Radio Corporation of America, right from 1932 to from 1929 to 1932, top to bottom, was down 98%. Now, most of the other radio companies actually went completely bust. Radio Corporation of America was finally bought out by General Electric in the late 1980s and you would have had to wait that long to get your money back. Not adjusted for inflation, by the way. You wouldn't have gotten the inflation adjustment, but you would have at least gotten your dollar value. But here's the thing. We forget that even though the underlying technology may well change us, uh that says nothing about the the financial roller coaster that occurs in the near term. It it occurred with with with I mean it occurred with steamships, it occurred with railroads, it occurred with cars, I mean, you know, it occurred with computers and as we've just seen with with the dotcom. So I have no doubt uh that this will happen. I also have a unique perspective. One thing I think that is a is a weakness of large language models which people aren't talking about sufficiently and that's my unique perspective as an author, right? I write books for a living. >> Um and you know I get returns on my IP so to speak I guess royalties. >> Sure. >> Uh but one thing we haven't thought about is that you know everything in my books is completely hoovered up by these people right? So, you know, they go behind pay walls, they go everywhere, you know, they have their little web crawlers, they they just they're everywhere, right? >> Yep. >> No one has thought about the fact that once everyone's IP has been amalgamated into the AI, no one's going to go to the creators of the IP anymore. You understand what these large language models do? They don't think of anything creative themselves. They just go out and find what everyone else has been writing, right? the most popular people, the people that seem to know, and they take all of their words, and they kind of, you know, reshuffle them for you when you ask a question. >> But what's going to happen to pay the people back that's doing all this stuff? When when um when Google put on this, this happened about nine months ago, right? Google put on its little AI summary at the top of the page when you go in and make a query. >> Click-through rates to the site went down by 50%. >> Yep. >> This is a disaster for the very com economy which we created a couple of decades ago, right? Because there's nothing left now for the creators of web content. Either two things are going to have to happen, Adam. Either they're going to have to find some way of AI of compensating these people, which is going to take a huge chunk of their revenue away, >> or the web's going to dry up and be just filled with nothing but AI generated content. >> Right. Because there will be no incentive for content creators to create anymore. >> Exactly. I won't put anything on the web anymore. I'll just I'll go and if you want to invite me to come and talk with you personally, Adam, I'll do it. >> Yeah. [laughter] But but it's interesting that >> but you'll charge me as you should. >> But but it it's and and it will completely negate uh the power of the dotcom revolution which I think really was a a a boon for all of us. And I do think this is a case of the parasite killing the host. Uh it won't do it in the short term but ultimately all you're going to have is AI content. And when you feed AI content into AI, it just produces mush as you know. There there's no nothing new going into it. Right. >> Right. >> This is a this is a problem which I think is is gradually it's it's one of those hidden costs that no one quite thought about, right? Which is beginning to sort of ooze up here. >> So So I think I think you're making a great point that I agree is not being talked about enough. Um, but I will say personally, um, one man's opinion, um, the bloom coming off the AI rose is kind of I have a high on my bingo card for the thing that could trigger the financial correction that you're worried about. Um, because so much market value now is is uh in such a few number of companies that are now worth trillions. And how much of that market value is potentially phantom market value that's going to dissipate the moment that you know Wall Street says you know what we're this thing's not going to generate the returns we thought it was going to at least not on the timeline that we currently have priced into these stocks and when they go down I just don't see how that doesn't pull so much of the rest of the market down with it and then as you said the market's really driving the economy now these days how that doesn't then trigger you know some pretty some pretty unfortunate economic implications Well, and and also we're going to see how it reflects back on sort of the the the false signals we're getting for GDP. I mean, 4.3% real growth, right, last quarter. Well, you know, when you consider all the investment and stuff that may not have any worth and all of the market cap that these people are consuming on which may be disappear in the future. Do you see what I mean? we pulled from the future a lot of spending power into the present >> when that future value may not be there. Right. And that's that's true of every bubble that we've had on these technological buildings. Yeah. The difference though, and I'm curious to get your thoughts on this. So So let's look at the railroads. Let's look at the internet >> where we overbuilt, we overinvested, and that's the way these things go, right? Because nobody knows how high the mania is. So they're just putting capital in until we find out where the limit is. And then, okay, we've got all these railroad tracks that no one's going to use immediately or we've got all this dark fiber now that, you know, there's no use for. Well, over the intervening years, once you have the correction, the survivors and the new players come in and start putting that that uhow infrastructure into productive use, right? And the thing there is is iron railroad ties, they were perfectly fine 10 years later from the day they were put down. Same thing with the dark fiber. There's a big question whether these data centers that are being built out and all this compute that's being built out is going to have a long shelf life. Like a lot of these Nvidia chips, they kind of be they kind of get obsolete every 12 months or so, right? 12 18 months. So could we be could this time be different in the fact that the overbuilding has even less value than previous overbuilding periods? >> Well, they they they still will be pretty fast graphic computer units, you know. I mean, they'll they'll they'll be out there. They can I'll tell you what, though. >> The cost per GPU >> will go down to practically nothing. >> Nothing. >> You know, you'll be able to do a little bit like Global Crossing. You remember how cheap it was afterwards to it's going to be the same thing. You're going to be able to do all kinds of fun things with machine learning and you LSTM models. I mean, we will all be able to run them for practically free. It's going to be kind of fun, you know. That's gonna So almost everybody will have their own like personal cray cray computers worth of compute available because they're just giving it away. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. >> Be fun. >> Super fast. Well, again, and that's part of your we we'll hopefully get a chance to get to some of your optimism here before we're done here, but okay. So, we've we've gone through the economy and the financial side of things. Um, how about uh [sighs] how about society? You know, right now, as you said, we're sort of hyperdivided. um and kind of on every dimension, you know, politically but also socioeconomically uh a lot kind of demographically. You know, there's there's not a lot of love for the boomers, you know, from amongst Gen Z. Um so, uh G give me kind of your your current like real time commentary on on where we are there and where you see it headed from here. Well, first of all, lot a lot of the craziness out there. Um, you see this every time the market reaches highs. You ever notice that? It was true right after COVID. You remember that time when the market was really high? People are doing crazy things. You remember AMC and all those those weird things getting the the the people to cover their shorts and all. I mean, >> ape strong together. Sure. >> Yeah. Exactly. [laughter] But there's always a lot of weird craziness at the top of the market. Um, and um, a I think everyone will become a lot I mean I I hate to say this, this is maybe a commentary on on humankind, but I think all of us will get a lot ser and and a lot more down to earth and practical, you know, uh, if and when the market is down 30%. You know what I mean? It's just like, okay, the casino money is gone now. uh let's actually look at the real things going on in my life. Right. >> Right. And and maybe to that point like pay more attention to the things that really matter, not just did my meme stock go up another 10% today. >> Well, exactly. Exa Exactly. U you know, prosperity does not does not always make us happy. Um this was noticed by a lot of people in the late 1920s. Uh I think F. Scott Fitzgerald did plenty of commentary on that. Mhm. >> But but but I but I do think that I see some trends um just in terms of people's habits which are very interesting. Um we're we're beginning to talk about them. This populism, the idea that the community, the public, the government, however you want to talk about it, should start assuming control of some of these things. For instance, investing in big corporations. Here you have a Republican that's doing it, right? Everyone complains about Manny, you know, taking over a few grocery stores. Well, what about some major industrial companies >> or or or what about a country like Venezuela? >> There you go. And run that. And and what's interesting too is it is that and I find this is an interesting point is that when we talk about one forth turning attribute is this movement toward authority, right? Mhm. >> Um Trump doesn't really want um uh Maria Karina Machado in there, right? This was the democratically I think Trump prefers a flunky of a dictator. I mean just a yes man, you know, or a yesw woman in this case, right? >> I don't think he wants Now what a clear contrast with with, you know, Reagan conservatives. You know, John Winthrip's uh city on a hill, freedom and democracy for the world. you know, America has been this example of of of popular participation. It's very interesting to me and I' I've seen this uh over the past, you know, five or 10 years, Americans are less enthralled with the very idea of democracy, particularly young people. You look at the biggest decline, young people look at democracy and they think it just means uh older people talking all the time and never changing anything, right? Um and populists since the beginning of history have always wanted someone with dictatorial powers to overcome the corruption and the uh the the the indolence and the sclerosis of the system, right? >> You you need for the for the corrupt Roman Senate, you need a Julius Caesar. You know what I mean? I mean, it's always that same pattern. You need a the popular race was always going to be a strong man. >> Yeah. >> And I think Sorry to interrupt, but I mean that was kind of Trump's platform, especially the second time around of not only am I going to clean up the swamp, but we're going to have Doge, right? We're we're we're going to try to get rid of the rot. Now, we can debate on level of success and stuff like that, but that was kind of a big part of his populist appeal. Correct. >> Yes. I think it continues to be. And I think where the where the Democrats could make some real headway, you see it in some of the congressional candidates they're running, is I think the Democrats going to move very strongly to the right in the culture and to the left in economics. There's no question about that, right? So, in other words, they're going to be like, okay, you know, when it comes to family and all that stuff, you know, we're okay with that. You know, we're going to put up American flags and we're good with all that, but we're going to be really aggressive about stuff like healthcare, right? Mhm. I >> mean, look, you want to know most Americans feeling about healthare? Uh, you know, it's it's it's beyond despair. You know, our health care system is so completely messed up. I mean, it's not a market system. It's not a states it's it's just a mess, right? And it costs are ridiculously high by any global metric. And no one really >> And outcomes are have been going down. Yeah. >> Excuse me. >> And outcomes have been going down. >> And outcomes are atrocious. They're the worst in the world. We're we're the only country which has had declining life expectancy since 2014. Uh we might you know I'm a demographer so I follow these things. We might actually uh this year actually uh postcoid recovery be back to slightly higher than we were in 2014. That was like 12 years ago. Meanwhile Europe and all these other countries are up another two two and a half three years. And and we spend so much more than the rest of the world on that. You know what I mean? I I don't want to go on and on about healthcare, but healthcare is a great example. You have this industry which is massive. It's 17 18% of GDP. It in my opinion has negative productivity. >> Meaning it it is worse outcomes for this despite the fact that it gets more and more input every year and basically it's run by all the medical specialties who control the treatment guidelines for their own profession and they just punch their credit card. you know, it doesn't matter what the outcomes are. No one no one has critical oversight, but patients can't really input it. I mean, do do you want to tell someone whether you know a surgeon whether you really do need a quadruple bypass? I don't think >> but my point is is that this is the kind of stuff where people think you just need authority. You need someone to go in there and said, you know what, >> tomorrow we're just going to change all the rules big, right? We're going to do it. We're just going to start over from scratch here. And and there's a bigger mood for that. And I think to some extent this is the forth turning mood. We did the same thing by the way during the Civil War, the enormous institutions we created then transcontinental railroad, the the land grant college system across the country, the the national banking, I mean all that stuff. And we did the same thing um uh you know during World War II. We created these big national institutions, social security and you know all of that was one of them. >> But my point is is that we do our biggest institution founding and building at a time of crisis. We never do it at a sunny day. We always do it at the worst possible thing. Can you imagine? We founded social security. Uh the plans were set out in 1934 and and the legislation was signed in 1935. Do you want to know what the American economy looked like back then? And yet we chose that moment, right? And and you look again and again, this is actually one big message in my most recent book before it turning us here is that every time we actually found huge durable new institutions which last much longer than a lifetime, we do it at the darkest darkest moment of our history. >> Yeah. Now, that's that's a that's a good message, right? As well as a bad message. It means that we go through a dark period, but it's a period that's enormously creative. It's creative for a future and it switches us toward thinking about our future. >> Yeah. So, it's interesting because it's kind of the the worst and the best of human nature, right? I mean, the the most people don't change their health habits until they've had the first health scare, right? The first heart attack or whatever. Okay, that now I'm going to start really getting serious about eating better and going to the gym. Right. And it seems like as a as a populace sort of the same thing, right? But to your point, we we have a history at least so far in this country of tremendous creative production in terms of creating new institutions that are better and stuff when the chips get on the table, but we don't really do the work until our backs are pressed against the wall. >> Yeah. And I I would say, you know, one one sign of that is the fact that um democracies perform very well under crisis. I I think it's a it's a a stereotype. I think it's an incorrect one, but it's sort of a truism out there that when you go to war, you know, you want to be a dictatorship. But if you look historically, the opposite is true. Dictators actually run pretty well during peace time. Democracies are terrible during peace time. But when it comes to war, when you've got everybody on the public on the same page, >> democracies can vastly outperform autocracies. And the reason is is because when a democracy goes to war, everyone only has one object, defeating the enemy. When a dictatorship goes to war, the dictator has to worry about two things, the enemy and his own people. Uh, and it's very interesting when when when France invad when Germany invaded France umh in May of of 1940 uh the UK England uh put its production of Spitfires into 247 production. In other words, they had production runs around the clock all night going along. Right? Everything in Britain was completely mobilized because of course they had complete popular support for this. Hitler did not put the German economy on wartime footing until late 1943 basically when the when the war was practically over. Why? Because he didn't want to impose burdens on the he thought the German people would actually, you know, resist or or try to move him out of office. >> We forget this though. Democracies because of the the scent of all people when they know that they're up against the wall are an absolute force to be reckoned with because you can have popular cooperation and enthusiasm with authority at the same time. Right. And that's a dynamite that's a dynamite combination. >> Okay. Well, good. That's so just injecting some of the optimism into here. Um just because you love these great historical quotes. There's the one from Winston Churchill about Americans, which maybe you can just apply to democracies, right, which is um you can always count on them to do the right thing after they've exhausted every other potential option, >> every other option. Yes. Exactly. But it but at least Americans do move on, right, to a to a new solution. >> Um Okay. So, uh, so what's interesting is kind of what I hear you saying is is, um, we're going to see more Trump-like leaders both in America and I'm guessing probably other places in the world, too. And I don't mean they have the same policies necessarily, but a guy that just gets in there and says, "I don't care about the old rules. I'm just going to do what I think is right. I'm going to break things that need to be broken. I don't care so much about the the blowback on my popularity from that because we just need to get this done. >> Yeah. And and and the breaking of a lot of institutions have been with us for decades and decades which no longer work. That's why I talk about sclerosis, right? These are and much of you know you look at much of Congress. Congress has been sidelined by Trump. >> Um I think that's definitely cause for concern. We are after all a republic based on a constitution. And as I remind people, uh, twothirds of the US Constitution is all about Congress. Only a little bit of it is about president. You know, just by the way, that's what our constitution says. We're supposed to be kind of a republic, right? Run by a legislature. But nonetheless, I totally understand people's um uh impatience. People's impatience with its inability to get things done. And so >> yeah, it's kind of a gridlock fac become a gridlock factory in the past several decades. >> And I and FDR was seen by that in the 1930s. A lot of people called FDR a dictator. And by the way, they didn't always call him that disapprovingly. You know what I mean? Um but we're going to draw on we're going to draw on that both the populism and the authoritarianism. uh basically someone acting as an authority uh and uh getting things done and in the process uh this this this uh this whole this whole transformation toward from inequality to equality and from uh from uh sort of uh you know individual uh pursuing their own ends to community is going to be part of that. Now, obviously that doesn't really ramp up until we're, you know, in a conflict, but I but I think I can say this increasingly we see the conflict right on the horizon. Uh I think we see it in foreign affairs and I think we see it here domestically at home. >> So, so on that point, what do you think is more likely right now? um the conflict that unites us uh in the end or whatever it was uh incubates community is it more likely to be an internal one or an external one? >> I I wrote I wrote this in my last book. I said the the the knife edge between a tipping one way or that way is often one of the last things that's decided in the fourth turning. You know dur right before the climax. Interestingly enough, there was a uh William Seard who was a uh Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State. Um he thought he should have been the nominee for the Republican party. So, he was a little bit sour about that, but but you know, Lincoln was magnanimous. He grabbed all these people who were his competitors and brought >> his cabinet arrivals or whatever. Yeah. >> Exactly. Exactly. and um and um and Seward wrote a memo because of course the first thing they encountered immediately getting into office is the all the Confederate states had secceeded and there was this crisis building up over Fort Sumpter right in South Carolina. Um so Seward wrote this long memo saying, "Okay, here's what you need to do to deal with this problem. immediately declare war on Spain, France, and Britain because that would unite America, right? We would and you know, it was kind of crazy. It actually makes you think that uh uh we're lucky as a country that Lincoln was elected, >> right? And not but but you do see his rationale, right? is that by even at the last moment we could galvanize for a external conflict and somehow forget our internal conflict. Remember that when we went to war in uh after Pearl Harbor, America was a hugely divided partisan nation. I mean a lot of people thought of FDR as Franklin Stalin Roosevelt. I mean he was a you know he's part of the popular front. he he might as well be allied with the uh the Soviets and u uh you know on the other side people saw the Republicans as as fascists and and of course some of them were sympathetic to the you know what I mean but we forget that >> that that was a time of tremendous ideological division and that if you would ask most people back in 1939 say of if we had a crisis coming up what would it be they probably would have said internal. I mean, people still had memories of Huey Long, Share the Wealth, Demagogue. >> So, we here's here's my final point. It's so much easier to see history backward than it is to live it going forward, right? Because we know how it came out. >> So, to totally agree. Um, and I'm going to ask you some external questions in a second, but but internally, what are your top candidates then? So if there if there is a a a societal rift that that becomes potentially violent, what's going to be driving it? Is it is it going to be between the classes? Is it going to be between the races? Is it going to be between the age demographics? Is it going to be geographically? Where do you see the tensions greatest? >> I think it's going to be if it were >> politically, I should have said >> for globally, uh I think it's obvious. I think it's it's, you know, China, Russia are the two together. I mean, I guess behind everything, you know, frankly, and and and arguably even behind some of the issues we're having in South America. >> Um, I think that's clearly on the table right now. And I also think that China does have a timeline, right? I think Xiinping wants this thing resolved in the in the Western Pacific, you know, before he passes from power. I I think the clock is ticking on that. Um, and and I I also don't think we can afford to let that go. There's too much of the world's GDP in the neighborhood. You know what I mean? Plus all the all the microchips, you but you know, it's just too important an area uh for us. I think our our any reputation America would have would be uh would never recover, you know, from from simply giving that up. So, I just don't think that's on the table. So, I I do see that at home. I see it as one party championing one side of their, you know, their blue zone or their red zone. Uh, feeling that there is a danger that they, and this is classic for civil wars. Civil wars take place when one side fears that some outcome that is just about to happen or has just happened may permanently um uh may may permanently take away uh the future that they were expecting for for for their class, for their culture, for their people, for you know what I mean for for for the those in their tribe. The reason why we had the Civil War, uh, it didn't have to do with slavery in the South. I mean, you know, Lincoln promised to leave slavery in the South alone. It was the South's fear that the free soil policy of the Republicans would forever prevent the South from spreading slavery throughout the rest of the country. And that meant that in the long term, their way of life was doomed. Right? It was the fear of the future. And that's what always triggers a civil war. It's like if we don't do something now, we will be now forever diminished from this type. Right. Yeah. And you have to remember that up until the civil war, the south had dominated Congress. They had dominated the presidency. Most of the presidents were southern to the constant complaint and whining of northerners. You know, the Democrats were actually very successful politically and they thought with their cotton economy was actually pretty successful economically, but they suddenly faced this moment where their future now seemed permanently in doubt unless they resisted. Now I think the same kind of moment is going to occur for instance if the Democrats fear that whatever Trump will do with regard to um you know bringing the National Guard into cities or or somehow regulating the vote would mean that the Democrats would be permanently disadvantaged. And and you know I mean to be fair to these Democrats Trump does sometimes talk like that. you know, he will actually talk to the Republican senators. If you give me the filibuster, the Democrats will never be elected again. We can imagine how how Democrats are reading that. It's like, you know, this is >> so probably pretty similar, just to give a counterweight there, to how the Republicans felt about the open border policy where they felt like, hey, they're bringing in permanent Democratic voters and we'll never get reelected again. >> Very similar to that. or or how Republicans felt when Trump was being serially indicted. >> You know what I mean? By by all these court case No, I don't mean to be say one side or the other. I'm just saying >> you're not you're not being partisan. You're just saying what could be >> the mood here. It's the mood. It's like there is there is a mood of take no prisoners, right? We need to make sure we win once and forever. >> Yeah. And that is what would imagine imagine if uh at some point um the Democrats simply and or imagine a Supreme Court decision that Trump ignores. I mean it would be another one. Imagine the Democrats say you know what no one listens to us. Trump isn't following anything we say. Supreme Court isn't we we are doing nothing here. We're no longer gonna sit in Congress because we're just giving legitimacy to Trump. Mhm. >> We're going to meet in some other city. I' I've sometimes suggested Lake Placid or somewhere up in a, you know, a blue zone militia or something, you know, I don't know, way up there. >> But is is that unthinkable? I don't think it's unthinkable anymore. I think if you had said five years ago, I said that's unthinkable. I actually I I ask you, Adam, is that unthinkable? I >> I don't think it is. Although hearing you talk, I'll tell you the one that's bubbling up most to my mind that could could could be on this dimension is the capitalism versus socialism, which is that we have enough especially younger generations uh who are now coming into their voting majority who just are losing hope that you know what if we just keep the system going the way it's been going, the big corporations are going to own everything. The top 1%'s going to own everything. we're just going to be surfs and therefore we need to permanently we need to switch to some new model or else we're going to be just permanent surfs [clears throat] the rest of our lives. >> I agree with you. We're talking about two different things. You're talking more about the issue. I'm talking about the mechanism by which that would happen. Right. >> Sure. Sure. Yeah. To totally true. >> You may be right. In other words, the issue that could push it but there's always a a mechanism like the election of someone or you know what I mean? There's always like some event. But I but I will say that if the two parties begin to stand for two different things, I mean, what's the biggest complaint about Trump and Venezuela? It's clearly all about enriching the oil companies. I mean, this is not exactly a MAGA or Bannon friendly um line, you know, for for Trump, right? And and so you do see an opening, a a potential opening for Democrats, right? if if they decided to seize it. My point is you you don't know exactly how it's going to shuffle out. But I'm saying one side will be on one side, the other side will be on the other, and the other side will be we will be permanently marginalized with no hope of recovery unless we act now. And that's how you take the rising propensity for violence and the rising toleration of violence. If you ask people is it, you know, ever ever correct the increasing number of people will say it is, particularly if you ask them is the if the other side starts first. >> Right. Right. >> But that's kind of where we are. >> Right. And and so again, just to make sure I'm good on your understanding of fourth turnings is um while that breaking point um may be very disruptive um you know maybe very unfortunate um it it tends to be the thing that kind of hastens the end of the fourth turning because it pulls people together. They've got to pick a side and they've got to start working together towards some greater good. Right. Yeah, >> let's let's heal the country or, you know, hey, we all just became 50% poor [laughter] and we got to pull each other together now or whatever it is. Or, hey, that country's, you know, trying to invade us. Whatever it is, we got to we got to pull together. >> The the problem is is that is that this time around we have two things. One is this very highly overvalued stock market >> and the other is um some huge geopolitical rivals that would love to just gobble up a lot of stuff while we're distracted. You see what I mean? >> Yeah. >> And and so that's that's what did not occur the last time we had um you know this breakout in the 1860s. So in other words, we have a lot today where all these things rest on each other in a way, right? Obviously, the market economy is vastly more important that it is today than it was back then, >> right? >> And and back then we didn't have geopolitical issues that really mattered much. >> Um so, so this is going to be a fraught with danger because you see how all these things are interrelated. Adam, do you see what I mean? I mean, you absolutely get wrist on the geopolitics on how divided we are. Um uh and and every time we go through these convulsions or or perhaps you know we get sidetracked in a way we don't want to in in South America perhaps you you can understand why uh America's rivals Xiinping and Vladimir Putin are absolutely delighted right I mean this is wonderful news for them >> um well let me let me ask you this um I just because I'm I'd love to get your thoughts on you know the current administration seems to have, you know, really um uh rediscovered an appreciation for the Monroe Doctrine, right? You probably heard Trump refer to it the other day as the Donro doctrine, right? >> And um and you know, part of Trump's uh his campaign was, look, I I want to get out of American um intervention and all these other foreign wars and stuff like that and and let's really focus on home and let's build Fortress America and let's Yeah. let's try to clean up our hemisphere in a way that's makes it much more America friendly. It becomes a massively powerful trading block. We get Greenland hopefully peaceibly. Um but we're able to really secure ourselves more and we're less in everybody's business around the world and and and kind of wasting a lot of treasure and blood where maybe we we shouldn't have been anyways. Um does that increase or decrease the likelihood of geopolitical conflict for America? Well, I think I think you have to look at it in the total global context. Uh u one one idea that's often raised is this is this idea of spheres of influence, >> right? Uh yeah, let let China have the Pacific or the Western Pacific, right? Let let Russia have Eastern Europe and we can have the Western Hemisphere. So, uh, and I mean, if Russia has Eastern Europe, they could pretty much dictate the terms for the West, right? But my point is is that that's a pretty lousy trade for America. >> America. Okay, >> I hate to say it, but just add up GDP. Go on a global GDP map, see what you're losing in the Western Pacific, take a look at Europe, and see this little thin sliver over here, right, which is Latin America. You understand where I'm going with this, right? >> I do. I do. Now, yeah, I I I can't talk for the the administration. I'm sure they would say, "Well, we're not giving up everything else that we currently have." >> Okay, but that gets to the next point. So, so we're already complaining. See, the Trump administration say, "We have so limited resources. You know, we can't defend the Pacific and the Middle East and, you know, Ukra even Ukraine is too much of a burden." >> Yeah. >> But apparently going in, I mean, Trump says he's prepared to put boots on the ground, right? So, I mean, think about it. Um, I'm not sure where Trump is when it comes to resources or what where is his focus, you know what I mean? That's would be my question. Is it is it China or is he more focused on Chapismo, [laughter] you know, >> right? And I don't know, and again, I'm not I I can't speak for the administration. I I believe part of the Venezuela thing, and I'm right there with you, which is like, hey, we we broke it, now we bought it. We better make sure we handle it well. And it could be a big morass for user. Who knows? But a big part of that was, and I think you said this earlier, trying to, you know, push China from making Belt and Road partners, you know, in our hemisphere. >> And I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think the way you do it though and certainly the way America has always done it in its history which is well exemplified I think during the Reagan administration is you get all the world on your side by talking about basic universalizable principles right we support freedom we support democracy we support rules that everyone will follow and the problem is when you start saying well we get to just bully up our back yard. Well then obviously then you know China is going to say well that means you know we can finlandize uh what South Korea and Japan as well as Taiwan and B here's my point Trump cannot do that right he cannot do he would never be allowed to do that both by you know you know even even a Republican senators as weasily as they are would get up and get in Trump's face on that one right so my point is that he cannot do that he cannot let uh uh Eastern Europe go and I think that's one of the reasons why he hasn't been able to you know bring about this peace treaty in Ukraine I think >> right the war that he was going to end in a day yeah >> yeah there are constraints that that Trump even though he might not wish to be bound by these things he is bound by them um and and u but look how all this is going to play together right it's it's kind of a three-dimensional chess as you can imagine because you've got all this stuff um influencing each other. >> All right, so Neil, I'm going to do my best to try to start landing the plane here. Thank you for giving us so much your time already. And I do want to get um to the okay, what to do about this stuff, especially on the financial side. Talk a bit more about your your ETF. If you don't mind, let's just do a little lightning round here. Um so here are some of the questions that that uh viewers had asked here when they knew you were coming on. Um, what US and global institutions currently considered sacrosanked by most Americans do you think are most likely to see radical reform or elimination? >> Almost all the global institutions, right? Okay. I think >> like like NATO type of deal. >> H well even NATO will be fundamentally recast but the UN and everything else. I mean Bimir Zalinski was absolutely right. He was interviewed about a month after the the Russian invasion. And he basically said, "Look, none of these," and he he spoke to US Congress. He said, "None of these global institutions work anymore. You know it. I know it." Right? We need to actually do something different this time. And and so those are all going to be redone. Uh and the the question which is much harder to say is is how national lines may be redrawn. As you know, that often depends on the outcome of of conflict. >> Yep. Um, and I do think we're going to see major changes internally within the US government. I I think we're going to have some way what the Supreme Court is trying to do, at least the majority on the Supreme Court, is uh through the major questions to auction the chevron doctrine is they're trying to um they're trying to require they're actually pushing in an interesting direction. They're trying to acquire that Congress do more things on their own rather than just leave discretion in the hands of the president, right? Which is a little bit at at cross purposes. But on the other hand, the president when it is his authority has, you know, unitary power over everything. He can fire commissioners. He they're trying to the Supreme Court right now is trying to create a much more clear boundary line between Congress and the administration and the executive. >> Good. I I think I mean personally I think we probably need that. So that actually sounds >> I think they need that. I think the I think the unitary executive is an okay theory and I do think that the idea that Congress needs to actually they can't just say uh we're going to appoint a commission with everything regulating everything about the environment and the executive can do what it wants to enforce it. I mean I think at that point Congress is just abregating its constitutional responsibility, >> right? >> Um but but that is going to be a huge issue. I do think our republic is going to be fundamentally reshaped. Remember, out of all of these fourth turnings in our history, it's either given us a new constitution or a new reading of the constitution or amendments to the constitution. Remember how the commerce clause completely changed >> um uh what the federal government could do after the new deal, right? Uh the federal government could go in and you know for the next I don't know all the way up until today can regulate pretty much anything it wants. Um I think it's going to see another big change. I think every foreternity at its climax sees this big change going on on government structure. Okay. Really fascinating. Um just quickly curious, there seems to be more interest right now in reforming the Federal Reserve uh than I've seen in a long time. Do you see the the role of the Fed actually changing materially here? >> You know, I don't I don't know. I I think I I think the the the Fed is going to bend a bit. I think it already is to the popular will. Um but look, I I think this is bipartisan. Uh uh I'm not sure it's wise from the viewpoint of if you're really interested in keeping inflation down, you probably want an independent Fed. But on the other hand, as we've been just saying, maybe inflation's going to be in our future regardless. >> Regardless. Yeah. And maybe in the future people would see inflation more as a tool than a problem. I I I realize this sounds heretical now, but I I I do think when it comes to the Fed, uh both the Democrats, both a Democratic president as well as a Republican president is going to be pushing the same direction, namely uh lower interest rates and extremely fast reaction time if the market starts going down or if unemployment starts going up. >> Yeah. Okay. I agree with that, too. Um, all right. Um, [clears throat] this one kind of a negative point, but but I think maybe be part of the optimistic side of the story. Um, there's an article that came out today. US mental health ratings continue to worsen. I mean, they're just like the worst they've ever been in terms of people's reported um, happiness and general mental health. Do you think the transition into the first turning will reverse this? >> Yes. Yes, >> you know, as we have sort of a renewed sense of purpose and roles and >> everything suggests that um mental health is is strong correlation degree of community integration, community rootedness and it's hugely lacking today particularly among young people. Um >> and also just lack of participation in local government. Um it's interesting out here where I am, I'm in the rural red zone, right? And out here it's very easy to get involved with government. You know, it's easy in a rural area. You just decide you're the neighbors to do something and then suddenly the city says, "Okay." You know what I mean? >> I don't I don't think it's that sense when you when you look at these big metropolitan uh uh cities and and counties. Um and and I do think that that sense of detachment both from family life and from local community uh is absolutely a source of uh of mental health problems. And by the way, that's a that's a very particular part of an industry I'm long on, which is mental health treatment hospitals. Yeah. >> Okay. Um, the next question kind of dovtales into this, which is what what practical actions can individuals take that will best prepare them to weather the crisis other than developing a strong sense of community. Um, so obviously that's the community part's a big one, but um, uh, you know, we're going to talk about the money stuff in just a second, but presumably there's a lot of other, you know, investments you can make in your own resilience. A lot of them aren't financial um, that that probably will help see you through this. >> I'm actually writing a book about that. I have a new book out, Contract with Simon and Schustster. So, we'll be releasing it. It's it's about how to prepare, right? Um and some of it will be on the financial, but a lot of it will be on what the threats are, how to assess the threats, particularly on issues such as how to prepare personally, which is what you were just talking about. >> Yep. >> Um where to go geographically, right? Uh which I think is a really interesting question. Um and and how to deal with with community and family. I mean family is a big question for most people. Um and and uh so how to deal with that and what optionality do you have? In other words, a lot of people believe I I think by and large although in not all circumstances but I think by and large correctly that if if a crisis gets really bad a rural area is a better place to live than an urban area. >> Uh but the question is how do you how do you make that how do you leave that optionality open and how do you work that into your own life? And so, so I'm going to be these are the issues that be going through in this book. >> Fantastic. Um, so this is near and dear to my heart for reasons I'll share in just a second, but um when when is that book expected to be released? >> Uh, at the end of the year. >> End of the year. Okay. So, Neil, when that is ready for pre-order, uh, I have a strong sense I've got a lot of viewers that would love to pre-order that. So, we'll have you on here as soon as that becomes back on when that becomes available. Yeah, >> absolutely. >> Okay. So, yeah. So, two reasons why, you know, what you said is near and dear to my heart. Um, one is my wife's a marriage family therapist, so I just see, you know, on a daily basis from the sidelines. Um, so many of these issues that that are plaguing people today. and and really they just this resolving them all has their roots in better community, better communication, um stronger relationships, a more a greater sense of involvement with with the people around you or the people, you know, either family or community neighborhoods. Um, in so many ways, too, it's just a return to kind of how life used to be like like probably something that your grandfather or great-grandfather just would have thought was the way the world worked, but we've lost a lot of that in recent generations. There was a there was a very large study done about six years ago and they actually looked at the looked at the correlation between um the population density of where you live, you know, down to zip code level uh and the probability that you know your next door neighbors and it's ex it's an exact negative correlation. >> It's an inverse correlation. Yeah. Surprise me at all. at the most dense urban areas, the people know least who's living just yards from them. >> Right. Just on the other side of the apartment wall. Yeah. >> But if you're living in a place like I am out here where your next door neighbor is a half a mile down the road, you absolutely know who that person is. >> Right. Right. Because you may need to rely on them. Yeah. >> It's it's ironic. Uh but I think it says something about what we lose in these big urban areas where you have infrastructure serving us all the time. Of course, that creates great vulnerability at times of crisis, too. And that will be something I'll be talking about my book. I mean, if you, you know, you don't know, you imagine if you live in a city and all your services are being delivered to you, you have no idea how the water gets into your faucet. You have no idea what's under the hood of your car. I mean, but I mean, you don't have a clue. I mean you don't even know there's between a carburetor and uh you know and a brake pad or but but but this is what we're talking about in terms of personal resilience I think in a time of crisis although we are constructing a new system in the interim the existing system breaks down and you need to be more resilient on your own right >> on your own. Yeah. The other reason why this is near and dear to my heart is you may or may not remember this but back in 2012 uh I co-authored a book pretty much on this exact topic um called called Prosper and um you know the the whole theory was we we weren't at that time I I don't even know if I knew about the fourth turning model um but we were focused on a lot of the same risks that that you and I talk a lot about Neil and it was all about okay here are steps you can take to to reduce your vulnerability if these risks really become if they really manifest. But even if they don't, you're just going to include improve your quality of life. >> You're better off anyway. That's that's what I always say. It's it's a little like Pascal's wager. You know, believe in God and if he doesn't exist, you still will have lived a better life. [laughter] >> Exactly. Well, look, I'm very excited to see a a modern revisiting of this. And you're a much smarter man than I, so I I'm sure your book's going to be even way better than what mine was. Um, but very much look forward to that. So, um, we'll earmark that again. When it comes for pre-order, we'll have you on here. Um, okay. So, uh, this this gets to the finance stuff and and we'll talk about your ETF. Let me ask the question the way the person answered it and then you can answer it in any way you like and it is it was what does Neil have in his stock portfolio? Um, I think the spirit of the question is is, you know, what do you think is is is wise for people to consider prudently to in ways to build their protect their wealth or maybe even prosper from some of this. If you want to share some of your personal holdings, great. But I don't want you to feel pressure to do so. >> Well, you know, the the great thing about an ETF, Adam, is that all of our holdings are public. >> Public? Yeah. >> At the end of every day, they're on the website. just go to for hedge just you know if you type in half and you just go to the to the holdings um I mean you can get there from almost any brokerage site or almost you know uh uh any any any market site Yahoo Finance whatever uh you can go see um and I would say that uh I'm talking about just in general what the philosophy of this of this fund is is that it it it's really two things to think of it from a portfolio perspective perspective one is is that we we match uh it's first of all a 15050 fund so we can go short up to 15 you know up to 50% of AUM >> okay >> um and the other is it's designed again for real return uh real absolute return so you want >> total return so you're factor >> we're not an index tracking fund and this is a fund designed for people who just hate indexes and keeping up with index we don't really care about the indexes we care about having you preserve all your capital and do considerably better than any kind of interest you know guaranteed or whatever uh inflation protected interest earning fund you can get right so that that's what we aim to do now one the one strategy is that instead of pair net long and equities that we certainly have with um with bonds which we think are a complete loser you've been hearing me on inflation right >> longer term bonds I presume Yeah, longer term bond longer term bonds uh which are nominal not tips I'm not talking about tips but just longer term nominal bonds uh instead we pair our net long equity position with um with uh commodities and commodity futures. Uh this has been shown in in in you know back testing going back to late 18th late 19th century that this does particularly well um uh in times of rising or high inflation and uh in fact commodity futures do pretty well most of the time. Um, so that's our basic shift, right? Get rid of bonds, put in commodities, commodity futures, commodity futures because you you kind of take advantage of the backwardation. You know, you're taking advantage of the fact that people want to lock in these prices for money. >> The second thing we do is it's basically a long-term a long short uh trade on poor turning trends. So you know what what are we longing you know particularly? Well, defense obviously, right? So defense not just the United States but to some extent around the world and some of the most innovative companies uh we're we're relying on it on uh power and energy right now partly because of the all of the hyperscaling going on but also because you know we're we're breaking out of the uh of the uh of of the the limit we used to have in America for gener generating electrical power. we suddenly need all this new marginal power particularly with regard to national natural gas production and so on >> right and not not just for our own economy but but for national security reasons because we're trying to outproduce other >> countries exactly and and and and always you know with resource distraction you begin why are we in Venezuela and why is why is China now stockpiling uh everything you know from from uh from oil to food to soybeans and all because everyone is beginning to be concerned at these kind of resource sphere of influence. We think that's that's a winner. Um and and u obviously you know precious metals is kind of in there with the commodities. Uh and we have a number of other things. There are a number of uh particularly good defensive uh stocks were in there. I think that the bottom side of the K the K-shaped economy uh has some good opportunities ahead of it that are already doing actually pretty well as we get you know at this point of the late late business cycle you might say. Um so that that just gives you a basic overview and and and also taking advantage of the the nearshoring and onshoring and and import substitution that we're going to see in the American economy, right? Uh and I think the long-term bias is more toward uh resource and capital production rather than uh consumer spending, particularly the the stupid side of consumer spending. We we talked about uh uh we're we're sort of more short the the sillier side of the consumer spending and that's kind of it. Um but again, this is part of the democratization of investing with ETFs. Anyone can look at it. It's right there. you can just, you know, scroll through them. >> All right. Well, look, Neil, fantastic. Like I said, this is something I think a lot of this audience has really been eager for a resource like this to be able to say, hey, how can I not just listen to what Neil is saying, but actually put what he's saying into practice in my portfolio. Now, you're making it really easy because you're like, well, you don't have to build your own forth turning portfolio. You've done it for them. Um, and when I edit this, I will put uh at several times throughout the conversation here, we've mentioned it, Neil, I'll put up the ticker symbol for your ETF, which again is heft HFT, folks. And >> yeah, you you you can go and and click on it. You'll you'll you'll see it. It has it has a nice logo, too. >> All right. Um, and uh and presumably, I mean, lit literally any place stocks are traded, you can go get this ETF. >> It's like spy, you know what I mean? SPY. I mean, it's like that. Uh, yeah. >> All right. Fantastic. Um, well, Neil, it's it's paining me to wrap up here, but you've given us so much time. I also have another interview coming up in five minutes. >> Oh my gosh. >> No, no, it's all good. It's all good. It's been fantastic. Um, for folks who beyond looking into heft would like to just follow you and your work in general on a going forward basis while they're waiting for your new book to come out, where should they go? Um we do have a uh a substack uh uh called uh demography unplugged and uh mainly what we do is we do a uh we we do a short short written pieces but mainly we have a weekly podcast where we kind of discuss headline news around the world. That should be interesting to people who kind of want to know what the weekly news in the world looks like from a foring perspective. Well, I'm a huge fan of your Substack. Uh, and again, Neil, I'll put the the URL to it up on the screen here when I edit it. Folks, the link will be in the description below this video as well. Highly recommend you go sign up for that and listen to Neil's weekly podcast as well. Um, all right, Neil. Well, look, we're going to wrap it up here. I'm going to give you a chance at the last word. Just give me 30 seconds here. Folks, please thank Neil for coming on and giving us so much of his time and expertise and perspective. um let them know that by hitting the like button and then clicking on the subscribe button below as well as that little bell icon right next to it. Um you've got a great resource to go look into there with Neil's new um ETF. Um, if you'd like some additional help from a financial advisor in both just sort of preparing and positioning your portfolio for these fourth turning developments that Neil thinks might be ahead or even just asking the question, hey, how much of my portfolio should be made up of HF or H heft? Um, then if you don't already have a good professional financial adviser uh advising you, especially one that takes into account all the things that Neil talks about, then I highly recommend you scheduling a free consultation with one of the adviserss that Thoughtful Money endorses. These are the firms you see with me on this channel week in and week out. Um, and again, just ask the questions that I just mentioned there. Uh, to to talk to them, uh, just fill out the very short form at thoughtfulmoney.com. Only takes you a couple seconds. There's no commitment to work with these guys. It's just a free service they offer to be as helpful to as many people as possible. Um, all right, Neil. Well, look, um, again, I can't thank you enough for the person who is watching this channel, which is in most cases just a curious-minded, intelligent person who's been working hard to build um, a quality of life for them, them and their family. Um, obviously try to build as much financial prosperity for them. Really don't want to lose it. They don't want to become collateral damage to the further changes of the fourth turning that are lie ahead of us here. Um, in addition to everything else we've talked about, do you have any parting bits of advice for them? >> Yeah, look, this is going to be a difficult time ahead of us. I think it's a good time to assess, you know, where your loyalties are, what your future is. Uh, and, you know, I you hear all the time, right? uh a lot of these Silicon Valley moguls preparing bunkers in New Zealand, you know, and and you just think really, [laughter] right? Um that's what meaning, you know, that's when you really understand what a community means and what it doesn't. >> Uh but I do think that I I have an incredible optimism and attachment to my country, particularly long term. And what I plan to do even after this new book coming up is done is actually do do something just more in the foundation side of simply alerting America to what kinds of issues we have to deal with. It's more than just our petty internal problems. Right? We have a mission in the world. We have a role in the world. Um our country stands for something. We've inherited this magnificent legacy and we owe it to ourselves and our children and grandchildren to pass it on. And I I'm very optimistic that we will after navigating this period uh pass it on uh refreshed uh and rebuilt. But I think the underlying impulse what this country st stood for and still stands for uh will continue to be viable. So again I am I'm a big long-term optimist. Well, very well said and I I very much appreciate you underscoring the long-term optimistic optimism of your view because it even gives those of us who might not see it faith to just say, "Okay, well, look, if Neil sees it, I can trust in Neil, right?" Um, what I love about what you said though is is, you know, yes, it totally understandable to say, "Hey, look, how do I kind of just focus on on me and mine and making sure that I'm I'm not I'm as least damaged by what might happen here as as the the old order crumbles." But I think we have a both a responsibility, but also an opportunity to ask ourselves, what role do I want to play in the new order? like how can I actually be part of something constructive and good that comes out of this, right? Um >> and and your kids um you know and being proud of what they do and and and urging them to to be part of this, be part of something constructive, not just try to hunker away or try to avoid everything. Um look, we only have one life to live, you know, and you either live it in a way that means something or you live it in a way that doesn't mean something. And and I I think let's let's make it meaningful obviously trying to prevent damage to ourselves, damage to our family. Absolutely. But also trying to extend ourselves in in helping our national community uh come out better than it was before. >> Well, that that that's a great way to end it and uh you know, a call to action. I would say even a call to greatness and that's a privilege to be able to step into something like that. So seize it, right? >> Yeah. Exactly. All right. Well, look, Neil, can't thank you enough. I I do want to say even though we live on pretty much opposite sides of the country here, uh I feel very fortunate to consider you as part of my community here. And obviously, anything I can do to help you uh out and add wind to your sales, but also just as any forth turning curveballs come along, I'm one of those guys you can call at three in the morning. Well, send me your number and I will let No, I mean, you know, let let me send me your number and I might do that. It I I envy you for where you live. Um uh again I um some of the most uh special moments of my life was you know cruising down early you know 4 or 5 in the morning uh down what is that highway that goes down the um that goes through Independence and Lone Pine and and um you know that that side of that side of Nevada. I think it goes into California a little bit. You know what I'm talking about. I >> I do. And there's actually >> Mono Lake. goes around Mono Lake and and um >> yeah, there's there's two different numbers, interstate numbers or that are coming. >> Could it be 89? >> Well, there's 80 that goes east west. Um I don't know. I'm going to I'm going to forget it, so I'll butcher it. But but anyways, let me put it this way, Neil. Uh I am completely serious to say that if you ever want to come out here and uh and you know, revisit some of the places you've got the best memories of or go explore new ones, love to do that with you. >> Yeah, that's something. Let me think about that. All right. >> All right, my friend. All right. Well, look, thanks thanks so much again for everything. Um, look forward to having you back on again uh in 2026 whenever you want to come back on, especially when your book's available for pre-order. But can't thank you enough, Neil. >> Absolutely. Thanks so much, Adam. >> All right, and everybody else, thanks so much for watching.