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Robux, V-Bucks, and Buy Now Pay Later: How Kids Are Being Rewired About Money

Episode 85 · 5 August 2026 · 1 hr 2 min

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Teaching Kids About Money in a World of Robux, V-Bucks and Buy Now Pay Later

Teaching kids about money gets harder when real dollars turn into Robux, V-Bucks, casino chips and "four easy payments." Randy Lorensen, Dr. John Oberg and Anthony Marino trace that idea back to company scrip in the coal mines. They also look at how buy now pay later and deferred interest remove the pain of spending, and why money habits may be largely in place by age seven.

What happens when real money is turned into Robux, V-Bucks, casino chips, store credit, or “four easy payments”?

In this episode of Tales of Abundance, Randy Lorensen, Dr. John Oberg, and Anthony Marino explore how companies remove the pain of spending—and why kids may be learning dangerous money habits before they understand what money actually represents.

The conversation begins with company scrip in the coal mines, where workers were paid in tokens that could only be spent at the company store. Today, the names have changed, but the psychology may be remarkably similar.

The guys examine gaming currencies, buy now pay later, credit cards, deferred-interest financing, payday loans, business lending, gambling apps, leverage, inflation, and the financial complexity that leaves most people confused.

Randy also shares how he was charged $1,500 in deferred interest despite understanding the risks—and why he believes the modern money system is intentionally difficult to understand.

The practical takeaway: spend less than you earn, respect the effort required to create money, understand good debt versus bad debt, avoid emotional financial decisions, and own scarce assets that cannot be printed out of thin air.

In the Abundance Briefing, the conversation covers quantum computing, Bitcoin adoption, sugar during early childhood, America’s loneliness crisis, and the race to build abundant energy through nuclear, solar, hydro, and other technologies.

Kids Spending Money on Roblox, Buy Now Pay Later Debt and Deferred Interest

What you'll discover:

  • Why company scrip, gaming currencies and casino chips all make spending feel painless
  • How kids get desensitized to spending, and why money habits may be largely formed by age seven
  • The buy now pay later debt trap, and how Randy got hit with $1,500 in deferred interest
  • Predatory small-business loans, leverage and gambling, and how they backfire
  • The basics that still work: spend less than you make, know good debt from bad debt, and own scarce assets
  • In the Abundance Briefing: quantum computing, Bitcoin vs. gold, sugar in early childhood, loneliness and the race for abundant energy

Timestamps

  • [00:00] Company scrip, coal miners, and the company store
  • [01:05] Robux, V-Bucks, and the psychology of fake currency
  • [02:00] How kids become desensitized to spending
  • [03:33] Instant gratification and financial emergencies
  • [05:29] Why gaming currencies resemble casino chips
  • [06:20] Why almost nobody understands money
  • [07:49] Demystifying Money and simplifying financial education
  • [09:15] Money habits may be formed by age seven
  • [10:24] Teaching kids how to use money as a tool
  • [11:44] Buy now pay later and the growing debt trap
  • [14:13] Deferred-interest financing and Randy’s $1,500 mistake
  • [16:22] Predatory loans targeting small-business owners
  • [17:46] Using expensive debt to survive COVID
  • [18:55] Leverage, gambling, and the collapse of a massive fund
  • [20:29] How to build abundance with money
  • [21:08] Respecting the work required to earn money
  • [22:43] Spend less than you make
  • [23:32] Financial literacy and owning scarce assets
  • [25:31] Dave Ramsey’s envelope system and debt snowball
  • [27:31] Teaching financial responsibility
  • [28:11] A business owner’s costly gold and silver mistake
  • [31:16] The explosion of online gambling
  • [33:14] Why getting rich is usually slow and boring
  • [33:59] Bitcoin and assets that cannot be printed
  • [35:48] Good debt versus bad debt
  • [37:08] Is quantum computing finally becoming real?
  • [40:11] Bitcoin versus gold as America’s preferred hard asset
  • [43:21] Why less sugar during childhood may extend life
  • [48:14] Is socializing becoming too expensive?
  • [50:43] Loneliness and the decline of close friendships
  • [52:26] The K-shaped economy and unaffordable experiences
  • [54:55] Building community without spending much money
  • [56:49] New nuclear reactors and the race for abundant energy
  • [58:43] Solar, nuclear, hydro, and letting the free market decide
  • [1:00:48] Why energy is the foundation of human flourishing

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About the hosts

This is a hosts-only episode with no guest: Randy Lorensen, Dr. John Oberg and Anthony Marino. (Host bios are on the host pages linked below.)

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Transcript

A full transcript is below. It was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect some spelling errors in names and terms.

[00:01] in 1920. Miners waking up before dawn 10 hours a day underground. They come home covered in black and paydays come and they get script and not dollars like little metal tokens printed by the company. Good at one place, the company store. Prices are 25% higher than anywhere else. And the company owns his house. They own the kid's school. They own the church. A worker once said the wages he pays out with one hand, he takes back with the other hand. And when workers tried to cash out in real money, brokers would try to bribe their script for 50 cents on the dollar. Fast forward 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. visited Alabama and met with plantation workers who'd never seen actual US currency their entire lives. Tennessee Ernie Ford put it into a song. I owe my soul to the company store. And so the question, the script system is illegal now. So how is that different than Roblox and Robux for Roblox? How is that different for V-Bucks with Fortnite or Microsoft points or EA coins or any major gaming platform that takes your real money and converts it first into fake currency?

[01:08] Because they take the dollar sign away, people stop spending and there's an argument that the pain of spending fake money that's been converted from real money goes away. What do you call Clarna's four easy payments? Like these names have changed, but has the mechanism really changed? I mean, what do we actually accept as currency? To raise a kid who doesn't owe their soul to something they don't understand, you know, credit cards on college campuses, all of it fits into this big question like whose store is it? And are we giving people all the information they need to make good decisions? I mean, the the very definition of manipulation is when one side of an equation has more information than the other side. What are we doing to our children? What are we doing to the next generations? And is this system fair for people who are consuming? Randy Anthony, what do you You know, this this when this topic first came up, it seemed, you know, pretty straightforward and an easy thing to discuss that, you know, kids are being manipulated.

[02:12] They're they're being desensitized to to money, if you will. And then it it really started to hit me that this is a much broader bit of manipulation across, you know, all kinds of age groups, socio and e economic backgrounds and so forth. So sticking with the kids for a second by being desensitized at 99 cents at a time, right? Mom, can I can I buy some tokens? You know, show them, you know, here's $5 and off they go. and they get a quick rush of excitement because they can play the game, but they really don't know where that money came from and how it was actually earned and what had to what what mom or dad had to go through to get. So the kid is desensitized to the origins, the effort that it took to create that five or $10, which seems insignificant, but you multiply that times, you know, 30 days, 2 hours a day, and all of a sudden you've got some real money. And there's a lot of stories out there about kids who've run up some big credit card bills on various, you know, call of duties and things like that. And that's that's the real concern for the kids. You know, they you know, with so much that's going on in terms of the the need for immediate you know, the saving for tomorrow is just not something that they're being conditioned for. Are preparing for an event, you know, a costly event that they they're not going to have the money. I mean, we see that across society now. I mean, I don't know what the statistics are. Someone fact checked it, but some huge percentage of people if their car breaks down and they have a $1,000 bill, they can't afford they can't afford they can't reach into their pocket and pay the $1,000. They have to find some other means to get the car back on the road or to get the lights turned on or to fix their roof or whatever the case might be.

[04:16] — Car bill is not that's not a huge I mean, unfortunately, that's more common than we think. Sure. And that's you're lucky. $1,000 would be a lucky break on a if if your car broke down, right? Not not to mention the ability to rent a car for that's to stay in the shop for three or four days or whatever the case might be. So, yeah, things are I'm we've talked about this in the past. I'm I'm I'm concerned with, you know, society's movement to two things. One, instant gratification at all costs. And two, no, I got no concern because I I'm gonna have a government grocery store that's going to give me free groceries and I'm going to have free bus transportation and my rent's going to be controlled and medical medical care is going to be free and so there's like this, you know, no big deal. Everything's going to be okay. And frankly, I don't think everything's going to be okay. — It's all right, Anthony. You'll just pay more taxes for those people. That's the way that'll work. Just more taxes. Well, you know, as Margaret Thatcher said, you know, socialism is a great form of government until you you run out of other people's money. So, and um so I my take on this is having a kid that I watched play Fortnite, right? You mentioned in your opening, John, and it was a free game and him and his friends played it all the time, but that company made billions of dollars. And it is it's buying the tokens, not having any idea where it goes, how it works. And as I look at all of these games that kids are playing, I'll tell you what it really reminds me of is the casino industry.

[05:52] And I don't know if that's intentional that they were modeling the casino industry or if it's just they came to the same conclusions, but if you go into a casino, you don't spend $100 bills, you spend chips. And you they are trying to get you to disassociate the money. And it really is a lot of the same playbook. Again, whether intentional or unintentional, I don't have a clue. But, you know, I wrote a book about this cuz I'm weird and I've spent more time than I could count in economics and going deep into things and thinking about things at second and third and fourth level principles. And my big conclusion is almost nobody understands money. I think it's under 5% of the population and I'm not sure it's not 1% of the population. And that's intentional. The system is set up in a way that the people at the top have access to a money printer. They get to vote their politicians to get their to buy votes to pay off their friends or whatever else. And they keep changing. Money was not this complex 200 years ago. For all of history, money was pretty clear, but they have made it so complex. You know, people talk about CPI, but CPI changes like multiple times a year, they change the ruler. Like, you don't know unemployment. If we figured unemployment the way we figured in the 70s, I think it'd be like 15 or something like that.

[07:14] But we've changed the ruler. And how do you possibly when you have a full-time job, you have you're you're raising kids or you are a kid and you you got soccer practice and work and all this different stuff. You can't be reading and learning and what do all these acronyms mean and these big ter like Wall Street does it too. They just fill it full of big terms, confusing terms and financial products. And I kind of think most people don't even have a chance. like and you have to really like I go deep and some of this stuff takes me a long time to understand what they're really saying and what's really happening. So — real quick, you're not gonna promote your book, but demystifying money. There's a picture of it behind you. Check it out. We don't ever talk about that, but it's it's a complex topic. — Yeah. And yeah, the the point of my book is to try to simplify it and take it out of these acronyms and complex things and put it in everyday language and a story where people get the message and understand it. But it it is even that it's a tough topic. I mean, my first version of the book, if I would have put it out, would have been 1500 pages. I mean, I cut and cut and cut, you know?

[08:20] So I I think there's a lot going on there and it's tough for kids and I think we're doing them a disservice if we you know we start them in this hole and money here's the problem a lot of our lives are dependent upon money and I know there's other things that are more important command you know community and family and health and all these things but you know what schools our kids go to a lot of times is judged by money what house we live in what neighborhood how safe you know that neighborhood is what kind of food do we put in our body. Can we afford quality food or are we eating crap cuz that's all we can afford because we are on government assistance or whatever, right? Like like it impacts the vacations we take and it what restaurants we eat at, what car we drive. I mean, you name it. It really does. We people move across the country for a job because it pays more money away from their friends and family, right? And yet most people don't understand it. Well, and you know is there's a bunch of research. Cambridge, you know, research says the behavioral architecture, financial decisions is largely in place by the age of seven.

[09:23] You know, you have self-control, mental models, you know, by the time f formal financial education starts. A lot of the wiring has already been laid down. Now, I think at age 16, it really still matters. For me, I didn't really start learning about money deeply until 19. So, I'm convicted that you can you can change your mental models. You can change the way you see money and use money. But it did take me a significant amount of work over a period of time to get educated about using money as a tool. I had to work hard at it. And so there's a lot of transgenerational beliefs that kind of move from from, you know, parents to kids all the time. And those those things don't update just because you have more money. I I can't remember the percentage, but a large percentage of lottery winners are bankrupt within less than 10 years. Uh because the mental model doesn't actually change. And so if you want you know, there there are mental models you want to move away from and move toward, right? And and it's not just about schooling, but I think schooling is a part of it, but there there's more than that. So talk to me about that. — Well, it's got to, you know, everyone has a hand in this, right? So the the parent, the mentors have to have and I think we talked about this a couple episodes ago, have to have these these conversations and and actually teach, you know, the the the methodology of living life with money. You know, there's there's, you know, some percentage of your the money that's available to you is for sustenance and needs to be spent today by food and housing and so on and so forth.

[11:00] that on the other extreme there's there's money that should just be put away. You Randy, you said that there's all these complex terms and so forth, but actually investing is very easy today. if you want to, you know, buy an index fund and have that money sit in a in a fund for the next, you know, 10 or 15 years and continue to add to it. And then there's the discretionary stuff in the middle, you know, where we where we make decisions on, you know, delaying gratification or saving for a specific vehicle or a vacation or a toy, whatever the case might be. So that you have to teach that to people and not to anyone. — But what about debt, Anthony? Right now it's so easy. Like I'll just, you know, I'll pay later. I'll take it today and I'll just pay for it later. — Absolutely. The pay now the the buy now pay later crowd. I think that is one of the more evil to me. It's a uh — it's not that simple. Buying h buying a house was one of the best things in American history. making housing affordable for people to own their own house. I mean, isn't it's a little more nuanced than that, right?

[12:14] We're talking about the buy now, pay are breaking their grocery bills into four equal payments and they're, you know, they're seeing some sort of someone mentioned buying things because they see someone on TikTok opening five or six boxes of clothes or perfume or makeup or whatever they're doing and they're just buying it. Sometimes they return it and sometimes they don't. And and they're paying for it over time. To me, that's predatory lending. It really is. It's because praying on someone's emotion and charging of a ton of money to do it. It's just it's it's it's payday loans. You know, the unbanked, you know, uh the often mentioned in this podcast, Elizabeth Warren has always raised hell about payday loans. And I agree with her 100%. The unbanked have to go cash a check for working on a construction site and they got to pay I don't even know what the number is, maybe 15% of it to the it's it's just this is the same form of that. I have a I have a real I have a real issue with that. And and and oh by the way, their delinquencies are rising rapidly. Now, most of them aren't public companies and so they're not reporting like a Visa, Mastercard or American Express after report, but that's again all they all they'll do is raise their interest rate because this is a drug. This is an addiction people have and it's it's evil in my in my view and but it's not going to stop. It just, you know, my opinion is not going to matter one wit, but I certainly will teach my grandkids about it for sure. And thankfully, my my kids have grown up with a sense of uh responsibility for the most part with their money.

[14:13] You know, I hate these loans that even financing as as a business owner. I always had a problem like I I I I never was comfortable offering financing because all these financing companies that would do it, they're like, "Oh, no interest for 12 months, 24 months, 30." If you miss something, if you miss a payment or don't pay it off in time, all of a sudden it's 26% interest or 40% interest or some ridiculous insane thing that people can't afford. And even me who understands this, knows it, and fears it. When we bought this house, I bought three different things on that kind I'd go in like we went to go buy a new couch and you know, little did I know when I got a new house, I had to buy a new couch to get rid of the perfectly good old one. But anyway, we were getting ready to pay. I had no intention of even financing it. And there was a sign that said 0% financing for for 36 months. I'm like, well, that's too good to pass up. So, I make a it just automatically comes out of my account. It'll be paid. I won't get anything. But anyway, there were three different things and they had three different terms, all 0% financing.

[15:20] Well, even me that understands on one of them, I screwed up the water system for the house. I thought that the term was longer. It just passed a few months ago and I got charged with $1,500 worth of interest like at 26% even though like literally I went from like $3,500 I'd paid it down to under $2,000. It pretty much went back to $3,500, right? And my fault. I looked it up. I screwed up. I got the time frame wrong. Didn't mark it in my calendar. I know better and I still fell for it. Um and I think most people aren't as aware. The guy that wrote a 1,500 page book about money missed it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. — This is every — But guys, there's But hold on. But there's hope. There's hope, right? Is somewhere. Tell like tell tell me that. Tell me that if somewhere if I want to build abundance like we're still in the land of opportunity where everyone wants to be in America if they want to like we've talked about this in other podcasts like people come here because they want opportunity — Agreed. Agreed. So, you know, to create to be sure that you're protecting yourself so that you can create abundance, you've got to be very, very educated and unemotional about your decisions with money. On the other extreme, we talked about the kids and the, you know, running up bills on Call of Duty and what have you. The other spectrum are small business owners.

[16:46] There these companies that are predatory on small business owners where they'll call you up and they'll say, "We get give you $100,000 loan." Well, how the hell you going to give me $100,000? Well, how much how many how much did you uh how many credit card what were your credit card processing bill last month? How many people paid you with a credit card? Well, about $100,000. Okay. Well, we'll lend you $50,000 by tomorrow, 24 hours, and you just pledge, you know, next month's and following months credit card receipts. The average interest rate on that, and this is going back a few years, was something like 80. But the fees and the interest rate that they charged on those loans was somewhere between 50 and 80% if memory serves me right. Now, that again, it's predatory business owners. Maybe the guy owns a small furniture store. He's got payroll coming up on Friday. He's gonna be a little tight. Okay, I'll take it. I'll take it. And now he's just giving away his store. And now you're in a cycle. — Anthony, can I can cuz let me because it's building on your idea, but I I lived this during co we were hemorrhaging money and we didn't know how we were going to make payroll, keep the business float. You know, we got the PPP loan, but that was gone in a month.

[18:00] And you know, we went from debtree to hemorrhaging money. And we took one of those loans. I took one from American Express. Now, I had a virtually perfect credit rating and I still was paying something like 20% in with a ver, you know, somebody with a lower credit rating wasn't going to have that. And I knew this was a big gamble, right? Like, but we'd put all this time and effort into the business. And I be honest, at the time I was probably more than 50% convinced it was a bad idea, but I also didn't know how to survive and it it helped us survive and we paid it off. But yeah, we paid that interest. I mean, we did it. I mean, it's desperation. And I think, you know, it that was a gamble I didn't want to take. I knew the odds, right? And we rolled the dice and came, you know, were able to execute well enough we came out the other side. But there's a lot of that in today's society. Gambling has never been more popular, at least not in recent industry. And it doesn't matter if you're looking at sports betting, if you're looking at the stock market. You were talking about earlier how the stock market's easy just buy an index fund.

[19:04] Well, we got people listening that don't know what an index index fund is or they don't know the difference between an index and a mutual. And then I own an index fund that's so freaking complex that it is a derivative and it's paper and it's like I spent I bet you I spent 30 hours researching this thing before I bought it and it's kind of things I don't like. But anyway, it was right for me at least for this stage of my life. So I don't think it's that easy. But how many people are using leverage? I mean that guy in Korea I'm trying to think of the name but central awareness is the fund you know they — they yeah he he By the way, final note, he came from FTX. He was an FTX employee. Did this, built it from millions to billions, lost it all because he was leveraged. Like, — so real quick, just for the audience who doesn't understand any of that. So, a guy went out, he was with Sam Freriedman, whatever. — Sam Bankman Freed. Sam Bankman fraud. — Bankman Freed. Yeah. So, he went out and he he spun himself out. Then went under another company where he was accused of some financial misinformation at one of the big tech companies. Then he raised a bunch of money, a $45 billion fund, leveraged it up, meaning taking debt, right? So he took debt from banks. Then those banks uh when the stock market went down, called all those loans and he had to sell the entire $45 billion to pay it all back and lost a bunch of money through the investors. 45 billion, which is, you know, for some people it's real money.

[20:28] — Yeah. Getting there. — Yeah. I mean I mean at the end of the day, like that's how leverage works. Like that's how loans can get you into trouble where the bank then is a participant in your business and that's what we're talking about. Let's turn to the abundance side. So if I'm if I'm a business owner or a parent like what do I need to know and teach people about money as a tool so that I can actually make sure that I'm creating abundance with this tool versus just being because at the end of the day money is a part of our life. We have to like we're going to be interacting with it in some way shape or form. What are the top one or two things you want to make sure that your, you know, mentees in business, your kids, your kids kids, like what are the things that are most important to grab hold of if you're just starting out — Well, you have to develop a respect for it. You have to you have to respect the money and respect the the effort that it takes to accumulate it and having honest conversations about that and then having life experiences. So, you know, you know, I'm sure all of us have, you know, earned money from our parents for chores around the house, right? You know, you get a you get two bucks to cut the lawn. I'm showing my age here, but things things like that where you experience the effort and have conversations about that. You know, you know, that person makes $20 an hour.

[21:52] They have to work one full hour to get $20 and the government takes, you know, x% of that. It costs money to drive from the house to the restaurant to work in the restaurant. You know, have full conversations, robust conversations about it with your kids, with yourself, you know, and really and really cherish the effort that it takes to accumulate what what you have, however large or small it might be. I think that's the most important thing. And and back to the original discussion as we started, there isn't a respect for money when it's translated into Roblox and tokens and things like that. There's just there isn't a you're not feeling it. So yeah, I think that's I think where I think that's where it starts is developing a healthy respect. I I think it starts with spending less than you make. just simply spend less than you make. And there's a lot of people that don't like like taking out loans for the future and living on credit cards or whatever is clearly the opposite of that. So if you just do that and save a certain percentage every month and you start young, you almost can't screw up, right? And the traditional thing would be what Anthony says, buy an index fund.

[23:09] Buy a a simple S&P 500 or whatever, just a a straightforward index fund and forget it. But my real advice is that people, you need to spend time on this. And I know it's kind of boring to people, but that's why I wrote the book you referenced, John, is I it's like I people spend their whole lives working and doing this and chasing money, but they spend almost no time becoming financially literate. So, one, it's educate yourself. But the big the big thing for me is buy scarce items. For me, that's Bitcoin. It could be gold. It could be real estate. It could be expensive art or luxury watches. that could I mean buy scarce assets that the government can't print and there's something called the cantellian effect that is affecting everybody's life. It's a lot of the problems we have right now are because of this and it's that those closest to the money printer get most of the benefit. That's the politicians, that's the big corporations, the lobbyists that they are able to use this, they spend it and then it eventually trickles down to workers and eventually workers get a pay raise.

[24:19] Real simply, when you put when they print more money, it is making everything you own worth less. And even if you don't see the price of the grocery store go up, stocks go up, houses go up, that's in direct proportion to how much money is in supply. So if we go back to CO, it is the money supply basically then was 15 trillion. I'm rounding off. Now, last month it was 23 trillion or in June it was 23 trillion. They've increased the money supply by over 50 in the last few years. Well, guess what? Bitcoin, there's still 21 million of them. The same number. Gold, — it's up, but it might be up, you know, 8% 10% in that time frame, right? Real estate, I mean, we're building some islands off of, you know, K the place in the Middle East, I forget, Panama, etc. have some islands are building but generally real estate is the same. So I just I think a big thing is you have to and and companies and stock count for that as well. You have to own something that the government can't print out of thin air and you get last. So to me that's a that's a big big — So [clears throat] the first thing you said though might be the most important which is spend less than you earn like like that you bring in like that's the first thing and I think you know Dave Ramsey love him or hate him I think he's got that cool envelope system where you put cash into envelopes and it's actual cash into an envelope for more about this. I don't know what that is.

[25:47] — Oh it's cool. He has this cool concept where like he has he wants you to pay down debt and he he uses instead of paying the highest interest loan I think he's like pay the smallest one first. It's called the snowball effect. There's lots of debate in financial circles about whether you should pay the highest interest loan off first or pay the smallest one off first. And you know there's there's real zealots on both sides. I think he's a smallest loan first guy. He has this cool thing where you put your cash into envelopes and like this is how much you're going to spend on rent this month and here's how much you're going to spend on food this month and if you want to have Starbucks like here's your Starbucks envelope. When it's gone it's gone. And and so it really forces you to think through the spending of that cash, which is the opposite of what we talked about at the opening of the show, which was convert cash into this other thing that doesn't feel, you know, as consequential to spend, right? And so there's cool things you can do to build up those skill systems in your body, like build those muscles for yourself. And I think there's lots of complicated things, but start with the really simple ones. And there's another guy, his name is uh what's Dave's name? He he has a book called Smart Couples Finish Rich and Smart Women Finish Rich and I'll look his name up, but he has some similar concepts about how compounding interest and just being really smart and deliberate about what you do have makes sense. But, you know, I also recognize that, you know, when you when there's people that also gain money from the government, it can give a false sense of how much discretionary income I have and that can lead to bad habits. And so, it's tough. Like I met one person who was didn't have the same means that I do and they're like I spend it when it comes in because if I don't spend it on something I enjoy, it's definitely going to go to, you know, a broken down car or something anyway and that's going to be a struggle no matter what. So I might as well have something I like as well. That was their mindset and I I I have empathy for that.

[27:31] — Yeah. I I think it's how the it's our responsibility to teach, right? You know the more we can teach the people around us about be the way how teaching lessons sometimes can be difficult. I'll give you I'll give you an example and this this fits very close to home. I know a business owner who had about half a million dollars. He runs a business. had about a half a million to $750,000 in his business checking account and about I guess you know it was February, March, April somewhere around there was a a lot of movement in the precious metals market. So he was listening to YouTube guys and silver is going to go from $70 to $500 because there's not and for a while it jumped from 70 to 120 blah blah blah. Anyway, he went and he bought gold and silver hard assets to your point.

[28:39] Well, he gets this big job where he has to travel around the country with crews to do some work, construction work I'll call it, and he needs to buy about $150 to $200,000 worth of trucks and equipment and tools. And guess what? The money's not in the bank. So, he's got this $800,000 revenue job. He's got to invest 150 $200,000 plus another h 100,000 or so in labor and travel and so on. So he doesn't have the money. What does he do? He calls me. That's what he does. And so I helped him out. But man did I give him a talking to. And it wasn't it it was it was I managed to keep it under control in quotes, but man, I had a long conversation about that. And and oh, by the way, he's going to lose money on those precious assets because he bought at the height of the market and now they've kind of settled down into a, you at $58 as of this recording right now.

[29:54] Yeah, his pro his average buy was probably in the high7s. Gold he was probably at the $4,500 mark. You know, it's about four grand. So, he had to kneel down to someone he probably didn't want to kneel down to and, you know, ask for money and he's going to lose money because he he wasn't thinking clearly about the future. He didn't have respect for it. He thought, I'm going to get rich here. Silver's going to go to 500 bucks. He It's never that easy, but I I don't think he'll ever do this again. He's going to liquid. He's going to liquidate some of that those hard assets to refund the business. But, uh, tough lesson for a smart guy. Okay. Now, talking about a guy that, you know, graduated college, I was from a good family, you know, no, there's no excuse for this emotion. Again, get back to that emotion. It's so it it's probably it's probably the most dangerous thing in the world. We haven't talked about it, but do you know that 30% of men and I think it's 11% of women under 50 have either a online gambling account or a what what do they call the LI and prediction market accounts?

[31:16] — Back up. Give me that number again. under 50. Somewhere between 30 and 35% of males have a gambling account like a DraftKings or a Cali account or something like that. Over 50, it's like single digits. Okay. Literally single digits. That scares the daylights out. I mean that is, you know, that is, you know, addiction on your phone. So, yeah. Wow. — That's tough to deal with. I said that's something that has to be dealt with. — Well, so on the flip side of that, David Bach was the name of the author I was trying to think of a minute ago who has the uh book Smart Couples Finish Rich and Smart Women Finish Rich. Randy, you had a fact check there, too. — Yeah, it So, Anthony, your number is even higher than you said. Among men ages 18 to 49, it's 52% have an active 52%. Um, this is according to Chad GPT. Now that that should scare everybody, — especially 52% of men 18 to 45.

[32:27] — And I didn't even ask my age. I just asked it in general and it came up with that 18 to 49 number. — Yeah, it that's what I was talking about earlier. It's a gambling culture, but it's people are doing it in the stock market. The the story you told is with gold and silver. At least they're not using leverage or it doesn't sound like they're using leverage, right? But but you know like and he's not necessarily going to lose that. I mean the price it just he only loses it if he sells right and this is what I always tell people with Bitcoin. Bitcoin the price goes up and down but if you hold it for at least four or five years you're going to come out fine, right? And you got you've you got to buy stuff for the long term. But this is part of the gambling. People are trying to get in, get a quick profit, get out, buy the flashy new car, you know, and move on instead of, you know, steady wins the race. — That's it right there. You hit it. Like Dave Ramsey and David Bach and the wealthy barber was David Schilton and Randy Lawrence demystifying money. Like it's all the same message, which is, you know, it's it's if you want to if it's sexy, you're probably not going to be rich. Like, you know, I think Thomas Stanley did a 25-y year study on the millionaire mind and then he followed up with or the millionaire next door and then followed up with the millionaire mind. You know, how people generate wealth and it's slow and steady and and so so guys, let's let's leave people with some hope here. So, again, what are the two or three things you would do?

[33:50] Like just give me maybe even just one. So, Randy, I heard yours a minute ago. You said spend less than you earn. Would you add anything to that? — Buy Bitcoin. Buy Bitcoin. If you can't buy Bitcoin, then buy scarce assets. Don't do not hold your wealth in something somebody else can print out of thin air. I.e. the US government, politicians, lobbyists, big corporations are all trying to get your money. So, do not keep your wealth attached to something that they can create willy-nilly. That's that, by the way, has never ended well in the history of the world. This has been tried for thousands of years over and over. Zero cases where it worked out well in the end. I don't know that the end's tomorrow, but hold your hold scarce assets and yes, but you you have to start by spending less than you make. — So spend less than you make, get scarce assets that somebody else can't print. Anthony, do you have one or two you want to add? So we talk about respect, but I think it's I think we have a responsibility to teach. You know, this this problem is getting worse, not better. Th you know, I don't I I don't want to say it's dire, but I think it is dire. I actually think we're in a position where people are living on the edge. They're and they're and they're not and they're not happy with their circumstances.

[35:09] They think they deserve more or they want more. So, they're willing to take incredible risk. And — so, what do I do, Anthony? I think we got that from the show today. So, give me some hope. Like, one or two things. Randy gave me spend less than you earn. Randy gave me buy scarce assets. What do you do to help teach Well, do you have the That's what I'm talking about. I have a responsibility to teach those around me a better way the a a proper way to protect yourself against the things Ry's talking about. So that that's what I would say in terms of how I would create abundance. I'd create abundance around in my community, whatever that community is. And for me, I would just say I wouldn't take on debt for anything that isn't an appreciating asset like a house. like like having debt for my house I think is a great inflation hedge but uh debt on my car I would try to avoid that. So I think there's good debt and bad debt. Understanding which is which and if you're not clear 100% on which is which don't take the debt. That's where I would that's where I would go. Well there it is. I think you know like subscribe tell your friends about us.

[36:12] Have them come talk about this episode. Let's uh let's have more conversation. Leave some comments. We'll respond. — Here are Tales of Abundance. We know that fitness is just as important as money or milestones. It's one of our five Fs, but lots of others. Taking care of my body while I build my life is one of the more timeconuming and difficult goals to chase. That's why we're partnering with AG1. It's a daily drinkable habit. Less than a minute that's formulated with 75 plus vitamins and nutrients and designed to support energy, digestion, and immune defense. It even has a few grams of protein uh that we're all chasing these days. If you want to try it with our affiliate link, you'll also receive a free AG1 flavor sampler plus vitamin D3 plus K2 with your welcome kit when you first subscribe. A $72 value. Go to what our first topic is about the quantum advantage is real and IBM just proved it. I don't know if I agree with all that, but you have some questions about quantum. And so, let's just start with like what are your questions about quantum? And not, by the way, full disclosure, I am far from an expert here, but I think I have more knowledge than the vast majority of people.

[37:30] — Well, I think I know less than you, but my I think the promise of quantum is like this ability to line to process vast amounts of information in a linear way. And if you can get something like, you know, an LLM or a machine learning algorithm to use quantum computing, I think I think what happens is you get vastly more throughput. So you can process information a heck of a lot faster. I think you can do it with less energy as well. And I think quantum is going to really be one of the keys to unlocking the value of AI and technology for some of the really big promises around, you know, genetics and healthcare and some of the world's toughest problems. Like, am I thinking about that the right way? cuz that's that's that's the thesis that I've got today with very little knowledge in the — Yeah. I I think AI is what we're following and it's not going on its own path and unlocking intelligence and solving math and diseases and whatever else. The promise of quantum this is so hard to understand but is that it can basically see every possible future simultaneously and pick the best one. So when you hear people talk about it, they say, "Okay, if you need a drug developed, and it can take your genome, test every possible combination of drugs to see how it'll respond with your body and what you're trying to do and instantly give you the best one. And what's best for you might be different than Anthony, which might be different than me, which might be different than every other person." And it can do that.

[38:55] Now I Yeah, they they've been talking about quantum for a long time and they keep acting like it's around the corner and you know like Google came out with something recently and then when you looked into it it was They were like projecting and it was a theory. It wasn't actually a test or you know I think they did some other one and they kind of gave it the answers and there's a lot of fudging. It's really really early. I mean it's I feel like it's like fusion, right? We've been hearing fusion is around the corner for my whole lifetime and I kind of feel that way about quantum. I hope they break through. I hope people keep working on it and prove me wrong because it really does open up a whole new — But it's, you know, I mean it it's still theoretical at this point. Nobody's anywhere near being able to do it. But if they can figure it out, it will unlock the universe probably faster than AI if they can actually solve it. Okay, we'll keep paying attention here and then I think, you know, at the end of the day, we'll it'll happen or won't happen, right?

[39:57] — Yeah. And again, there's there's exciting stuff coming out of some of these labs, but I don't know. I think a lot of it's marketing is my feeling, and they're trying to raise, you know, keep in mind they're trying to raise money and be able to stay in the game until, you know, they're the ones that crack it. So, — let's move to the next thing. The headline is Bitcoin overtakes gold as America's prefer preferred hard asset. 49.6 6 million US holders. As you can imagine, I have some opinions. There are not, let's just call it 50 million. It's, you know, a few people shy of 50 million. There are not 50 million people in America that know they own Bitcoin at least. Now, I what they're counting here, I think, is a lot of Now, if you if you own Tesla stock or you own SpaceX stock or you own an S&P 500 or any of those things, you have Bitcoin exposure. Tesla and SpaceX both have over a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin on their balance sheet, right? So technically, you have exposure. There's people that have $10 worth of Bitcoin that they got somewhere. I don't consider those Bitcoin holders. And I keep hearing a number separate from this headline that says Bitcoin has one adoption worldwide. Well, if there's 8 billion people, right, you're talking what? 80 million of them have Bitcoin.

[41:15] No, like there's there's there's no way it's 1%. I don't I it might be one basis point, which would be 1/100th of a cent of people that really understand Bitcoin and Grocket. Like I just think there's I think that's such a small number and it's growing all the time, but this is like anybody that's got a pension has exposure and I think that's that's what they're counting, right? If you own a pension, you own this S&P 500, you have exposure. But my guess is a vast majority of those people don't even know they have exposure at this point, right? Because most of it hasn't moved. Like you look at Bitcoin, there's they're psychos like me. Like we're not selling. It's not moving. It's not going — Well, I mean, just back to the kind of the last topic, you know, with quantum computing is, you know, gold took 5,000 years to become a store of value or something like that, give or take, right? And Bitcoin, it's, you know, we've been around less than 20 years, I think, is the number. And so, here we go. Like, we're we're at a point in history where we're going to see a lot.

[42:16] — Well, here here's the thing I always think about. At this point in its history, it's growing significantly faster than the internet at the same point in the internet's history. Significantly faster. Right. So, we are still so early. Like, it's just it it's early early. And, you know, there's there's a long ways to go. All right. I still wish I still wish I had bought when you told me to buy at like 300. I really wish I had have paid attention. 10 Bitcoin at 300 would have been really lot lots of people do, but I can't I you know I don't know. I can't roll back time. I wish I could cuz I own a lot more, too. — So, and I wouldn't have made some of the mistakes I made with other coins and, you know, ICOs and different different things. So, all right, John, let's let's take this next one. And I know this one's kind of near and dear to both of you guys' heart. But John, you eating less sugar in your first thousand days, so roughly your first three years of life adds years to your life in a wartime rationing study. You want to take us through that? Yeah. I mean, I haven't seen these studies specifically.

[43:23] I I you know, I looked them this morning. We kind of did the run sheet, but here's what we do know. Like processed sugar has really acute insulin spikes in your bloodstream, and those aren't good for you for a number of reasons. Uh, and we can get into like the very nuanced science around it. And I probably need to bring Dustin back in to kind of walk through all those details, but the reality is that when you have highly processed sugar, insulin spikes more larger insulin response in your system, and that does bad things to your body. So, it really makes sense to me that when the body is early early in development, that if you're sending those massive insulin spikes during early development, they would have an impact on organs and systems of your body that aren't great for long for longevity. Like, that just makes sense to me. And even if I don't fully understand it, it's pretty easy for me to hit the I believe button based on what I do know about sugar and insulin in the body and how insulin resist resistance is developed and works. And so looking at this study from kind of postw World War II uh you know sugar rationing in the UK like I may not understand the science but I was like huh that makes sense to me.

[44:25] — Yeah. Well tell people what tell people what the study came up with like what are the what are the takeaways from that study. I I think that the re the reality is that that sugar rationing reduced mortality in like 19% of people according to Nature Communications just this year and the study was like 65,000 people in the paper. So you're not talking about like a tiny little cohort. And so pretty convincing science that that you know processed sugar not That's the short story. — This is a bigger this is a bigger story too in the sense of you know what is the definition of sugar? You know, people think of sugar as like this thing that's in a little packet or in a bowl on the on the table to put in your coffee, but there's sugar in everything. And for what, since 1964, 67, the government's food pyramid was built on sugar and carbohydrates as the foundation of a good diet. And we've all learned now how how awful that really is. So yeah, I think this um this is a bigger conversation in terms of the impact on you know longevity and so forth. I mean the our longevity metric has kind of flattened out. I think it started to flatten out in the late 90s early 2000s.

[45:44] Um and maybe you know that food pyramid is a signific it went backwards to be fair for some parts of society. So — end of the day, processed food not as good for you as, you know, whole food. And so I mean, I think there was an argument at one point that people would make that processed food was better than no food. But the reality is in my world, you know, you want to be moving toward whole food at every moment. — Yeah. It's Do you guys read the labels? When you go to the grocery store, you go to the store. How often do you flip the label over and read it? — Man, I try to get things that don't have a label, Randy. Like I want — I was about to say I don't think there's anything in my house that has that I would eat on a regular basis that has a — Maybe maybe some peanut butter and some protein uh powders and things like that. — no, you should go read the peanut butter, Anthony. I'm not sure you're going to love it. — No, no. I I mean the peanut butter, you know, I buy the allnatural peanuts only stuff with, you know, but even even there reading the label, you got to read the label and then interpret the label.

[46:48] You know, olive oil is a good a good example of that. — Well, I'm talking — I was just talking about sugar mostly, right? Because like I I went to the grocery store a couple weeks ago. I I ate a fair amount of Greek yogurt and I the brand I normally get wasn't there. So, I just grabbed this other organic Greek yogurt. I got home, I was eating it, and I'm like, "Wow, this tastes too good." Like I kind of was like, "How why I I look at the label and it's got 20 grams of sugar per serving, right?" Just organic Greek oak. You would think it would not have all this sugar added, but you know, they decided they had to add — 80 g to a, you know, to a container. — Here, here's my big surprise where I found sugar. Coconut milk in coffee at — Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. I I went and grabbed the other day. I wanted coffee and there was just there was a thing of like those cold coffee things and I just I grabbed one and I was walking to the register and I looked at the back and it had 45 grams of sugar in it or maybe it was more than that. It was un I literally turned around and put it back. I was shocked.

[47:54] I'm like, "Okay, I didn't need a Snickers bar." But anyway, it it's it really is hard to avoid in today's world. So, Anthony, let's go to we we've got kind of a big thing here just friendship in general. So you know in the first question that you posed was are we losing friendships because socialization is too expensive. You want to dig into that a little bit? — Yeah. And this is a again one of the a very broad concern in a in a number of ways. You know, it's it's extremely expensive for, you know, a vast number of a large percentage of our population to go out and socialize in a bar or a restaurant and have a meal and maybe a couple of drinks, it's it's very expensive and and there the alternatives are plenty to be alone. So if you combine the fact that I got to spend a lot of money to go socialize, I have to perhaps drive somewhere or get on a train, spend some money on a fair and so forth to get out, hang around with my friends, some of whom may or may not be able to afford it, may I may have to carry the tab or so on and so forth. And I have all these other alternatives to stay home yet be on my phone or my my laptop or stream a movie or — play a video game.

[49:13] — I was play a video game. I was just with my grandson. He says, "Oh, Dad, go to Netflix." Oh, what do you want to watch? I don't want to watch anything. I can play a game on Netflix. A free game on what? What are you talking about? Oh, yeah. You can do a bowling game. you can do that. So you have all these other options to be alone and it's creating a mess. I mean it is absolutely creating a mess in our society where it it just I feel like you know I I feel like I'm on the outside looking in and I'm watching a a video game of people just with their heads down on their phones just being by themselves and that just cannot be healthy long term. And we know that having a social community, being among friends, being active, you know, exercising, being outdoors is healthy and leads to a longer and more enjoyable life. And what we're what we're seeing now is with expenses and other alternatives, we're becoming an insular society. And I just don't think it's it I just know it's not healthy with all the other things we've been talking about today and in past episodes. We are we are in a problematic state in my 70-year-old opinion. So, — well, John, you've been talking about this for as long as I've known you, right? That men don't have as many friends. You want to expand on that?

[50:43] — Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can't find the stat that someone gave me years ago, but 20 or so years ago, people I was told that men had, you know, 10 or 12 friends they could talk to anything about uh in the ' 50s. And then in the early 2000s, that number had gone to less than two. And there's lots of kind of science around it, but I can't find those numbers specifically. I've been looking for them. But I think, you know, the surgeon general has certainly said that loneliness is the number one most important epidemic of our time. That's been VC Murphy's, you know, statement for probably going on 10 years now. now. And I think it plays out with the mental health crisis we have. It plays out with what people are experiencing during the pandemic. And the pandemic, I think, exacerbated that problem. And then everything Anthony just said, I think exacerbates that, too. And so, how do you teach, you know, for me, my children, to go out and have social skills? And then for my wife and I, how do we make sure we're reaching out socially? And then for me personally, how do I make sure I'm continuing to nurture my professional networks? Like those are all things that I spend very deliberate time and energy on. Even the group that the two of you are in that we started gosh going back 14 15 years now.

[51:47] Same group has been getting together once a month for 15 years. Like those are really important things for our society. My belief system and I think that the science kind of bears that out. And there's a lot of pressure the other direction, right? And I think spending money is a big one. Like you know why do we have to spend money to have relationships? Why not just go take a walk? Why not just have shared experiences together that can be fun? You know, there's so many free activities available, hiking and and biking and but you know, but but everybody wants to go spend money to do things right now. And I just I think I think we do have to be mindful of that. I don't think we have to regulate our way out of it. We just have to work our way through it. — Well, and I think a lot of this is the K-shaped economy, right? That there's you know, the problem is there are enough people on the top of the Well, this isn't a problem. This is a great thing that there's enough people on the top of the K, right? We want everybody on the top of the K and more and more people there is a good thing. But that pushes up the prices. You know, you look at the NBA finals, you know, not far from us in San Antonio, there were these Knicks fans that were spending 10 and $20,000 a game. And think about it. So, somebody's a season ticket holder for the Spurs. You have to be fairly well off to begin with. But somebody offers you from New York, some crazy offers you 10 or 20 grand for your seat. You've been waiting. You want to watch this NBA Finals game, but you sell it, right? But now take that to the people that can't afford season tickets in the first place. They have no chance to go to that game. Or, you know, concert tickets. It blows my mind what people pay for concert tickets. Like, I don't like music well enough. I just wouldn't do it. But plenty of other people do. I got to tell you, I'm not even an Alan Jackson fan. And I paid for my daughter and I to go see Alan Jackson's final concert. I'm fairly certain he's going to have another final concert at some point in his career. Just ask Anthony about The Grateful Dead, but we spent a chunk of change on that. I don't like country music. Now, the good news, I came away from that loving Alan Jackson's music. I think he turned me into a fan. I'm embarrassed to say publicly because I I generally don't like country and western music, but man, it was an amazing experience. But how lucky was I to be able to get to do that? to your point where most people won't be able — and I mean it's a really — you make you make a you make a good point John about you know you don't have to spend money to have a good time you know you can you can have a good time in a line at the airport talking to the guy next to you who you know is impatiently waiting to get through security as well and just converation — if you can afford an airline ticket or you're in the grocery store and you know you can you know just just have a you know a 30-second conversation with someone can give you a little bit of joy and a little bit of fun, a little bit of interest. You might learn something.

[54:28] There's more to life than, you know, taking out your credit card and swiping it to uh to go to a concert or to go to a restaurant. There's there's there's a lot of fun to be had all around you all the time. So, I just again I don't think people think about that often enough. I know I I I try to take advantage of every moment to have some have a little bit of levity and a little bit of fun in my life, but not not everyone does that. — Well, I think it also takes a Oh, sorry, Randy. Go ahead. — Well, I was just going to say like I intentionally put a pergola in my backyard that, you know, and I bought it a little bigger than I thought I needed and we put, you know, lawn furniture or outdoor furniture in there and I got my smoker. I got fans up on the ceiling. I'll probably during football season I'll probably put a TV up there. But, you know, there are solutions of just hanging out and talking to people or, you know, when I was a kid, people spent more time. You'd go to somebody's house and they would play cards. Now, it might be more board games, right? Back then, they were playing, I don't know, cribage or peuckle or whatever the hell they were playing mostly, which is great. I still play cribage, but there's that's fine. I No judgment. It's an old person's game. I didn't know you were that old, but that's No. Okay. Yeah. But anyway, you know, there's just a there's there are a lot of cheap ways to do it and socializing. You know, Anthony mentioned exercise earlier, right? Going and, you know, going for a walk together, exercising together, but John, you were talking about the loneliness and you couldn't find the report, but there's a Rand report that reports that 41% of Americans feel lonely at least sometimes and nearly threearters see people they feel close to no more than twice a month. Right. And you know, a great question is if you have a genuine how many people can you call? Can you genuinely call?

[56:21] I think for most of us, to your point, that's a lot less than it was 40 years ago or whatever. — That's right. — That's right. Well, and keep working on it. I mean I mean there there's ways you can work on it and so get together, but it takes it takes energy. It takes activity and you know in a world where you look for your whatever's you know the the open restaurant on your phone right now it's a little bit more energy to find out what community events are going on where the free events are and so there are ways to do it but it does take energy no doubt about that and our last topic is a pretty quick topic. We we talk a lot about power and I think this is one of the most important races if not the most in the world that you know AI everything is really based on how much power and you know how many electrons you can push around and whatever. But you know President Trump had a has a nuclear reactor pilot program that mandated that at least three advanced reactors new technology achieve nuclear crit criticality. I' never heard of that word but by July 4th of 2026. The good news is they got four each built by a different private company, each representing a new reactor design. So I I think this is pretty exciting, right? We're moving in that direction and and building these smaller, higher tech nuclear reactors. I mean, cleanest energy we're going to find. You guys have an opinion on this one?

[57:43] — So I listened to someone um that had a contrarian view about this. Not that this isn't a terrific source of power, but they believed that it's it's it's irrelevant because of the advances that are coming with the biggest nuclear reactor we know of, which is the sun. And their belief is we're not going to need these because of the advances in solar power that are coming in the next five or six years. So whether they're solar arrays in the in the space or on Earth or whatever, some battery technology that's going to be there to improve our ability to store excess energy when you know as as as we know there's only certain parts in the day where we exceed the max out the capacity of our grid. Most of the day is plenty of capacity. So, I don't know. Uh, this is this is a a terrific thing, but is it going to be necessary? I'm not I'm not exactly sure. So, — well, I think that we should be playing all these games. This is one of the great things about the free market is we don't have to figure it out, right? that we can have solar panels here. We can have solar panels in space. We can have better battery technology. We can we can find new sources. We can work on fusion.

[59:01] We can work on nuclear. We can we can do all of them simultaneously. And that is a much stronger backbone. I mean, if you just want to get down to think about nature, right? We learn a lot by by watching nature. Nature doesn't rely on any one thing. And I think that anytime you put all of your power or anything is reliant on one system, this is part of the reason I don't like government, but if it's if it's reliant on any one system and everything else collapses, that doesn't happen in nature, right? There's there's always checks and balances. So if something happens that all of a sudden solar doesn't work, we have nuclear, we have wind, we have water. I I don't care. the more the marrier and let's see what works and let's create a resilient system for human flourishing and abundance moving forward like I I — you make a great point the free let the free market decide not not Anthony let the free market decide what the best solution is going to be I agree with — and and it's going to be different things for you know for different one thing it might be nuclear another thing it might be solar another thing it might be hydro hydro is great right we just don't have waterfalls everywhere or running rivers everywhere but hydro works unbelievably well.

[1:00:15] There's a town in Scotland there, 7,000 people. They get 100% of their energy running a turbine that sits just offshore and the tide the tide generates the electricity. So the tide goes out, the turbine turns, the tide comes in, the turbine turns, you know, so that's, you know, that's another technology that may or may not have widespread capability. There's problems with being in salt water and blah blah blah and all that, but yeah, let the free market decide. So, I'm with you. — This is this is human flourishing and abundance. Like, if you really want to break it down to first principles, it's energy and moving these neutrons around. And I forget the exact these numbers will be rough, but there's there was human power. And then when you started burning wood, it was something like twice as effective. And then coal was twice as effective. And then oil was more effective than coal. And nuclear is literally thousands and thousands of times more powerful and efficient. And all of that just allows us, if you think about it in terms of horsepower, right?

[1:01:22] I mean, horsepower is what the name suggests. How many horses work can this do? Well, if humans had to push a train or then you have oil or you know if you go from humans to wood to coal to oil to nuclear, it just becomes easier and easier and you can do more and more things and it it you know a few weeks ago we talked about using solar power to make clean drinking water, you know, off the grid, etc. Well, if you could apply that to nuclear that's even more powerful. you can make more water, more desalinization, etc. So, I I just if society wants to win, whether it's here or it's the poorest place on Earth, having more energy is really the key to unlocking that abundance in in so many — Great. Cool. All right, guys. — All right. Do — Yeah. Thanks for making it this far. Download, subscribe, tell your friends. We've had some really nice growth recently on, in particular, Facebook and Instagram. So whether that's your thing or follow us on Apple, Spotify, just just help the show, tell your friends, etc. We appreciate it. And until next week, go out and spread a little Thanks, guys.