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The Wisest Man Who Ever Lived Had 700 Wives and a Demon-Binding Magic Ring

Episode 81 · 8 July 2026 · 59 min

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King Solomon's 700 Wives and Magic Ring: Does the Bible Have a Marketing Problem?

King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, and according to tradition, a magic ring for binding demons. In Part 4 of the series with returning guest Kristian Jaloway, the hosts ask whether the Bible has a marketing problem or the church does. They also talk about why stories like Solomon's get softened in church, and how young families choose a church.

What do you do with a Bible story about the wisest man who ever lived having 700 wives, 300 concubines, and a demon-binding magic ring?

In this episode of Tales of Abundance, Randy Lorensen, Dr. John Oberg, Anthony Marino, and Kristian Jaloway continue their conversation about the wild, difficult, and often ignored parts of the Bible. The episode starts with a blunt question: does the Bible have a marketing problem—or does the church?

From there, they explore why so many strange, dramatic, and deeply human stories in scripture often get softened or skipped in church. The main focus is King Solomon: his legendary wisdom, his massive harem, his spiritual drift, and the strange tradition that he used a magical ring to bind demons and build the temple.

The conversation also expands into ego, power, certainty, religion as control, how stories shape belief, and why many modern families are searching for a faith community for their children—even if they are unsure what they personally believe.

In the Abundance Briefing, Randy and Anthony discuss “AI boomerang companies” rehiring workers after overestimating what AI could replace, America creating over 1,200 new millionaires per day, youth unemployment, and Alex Karp’s warning that companies may be training frontier AI models to eventually compete against them.

If you are interested in faith, spirituality, the Bible, church, AI, abundance, and the tension between truth and messaging, this episode will give you a lot to think about.

King Solomon's Magic Ring, the Bible's Marketing Problem and AI Boomerang Hiring

What you'll discover:

  • Does the Bible have a marketing problem, or does the church? And why Penn Jillette's quote about proselytizing still lands
  • Why "safe" religion gets boring, and what storytelling and the hero's journey have to do with preaching
  • King Solomon's wisdom, his 700 wives and 300 concubines, and the legend of the ring that bound demons to build the temple
  • Ego, power and Solomon's downfall, and why biblical numbers may be symbolic
  • How young families can choose a church, and the intellectual vs. relationship paths into faith
  • In the Abundance Briefing: AI boomerang hiring, 1,200+ new millionaires a day, youth unemployment and Alex Karp's AI warning

Timestamps

  • [00:00] Part 4 with Kristian Jaloway begins
  • [00:12] Does the Bible have a marketing problem?
  • [01:16] Kristian’s answer: yes, there is a messaging problem
  • [01:42] Why Penn Jillette’s quote about proselytizing still hits hard
  • [04:22] Why “safe” religion can become boring and ineffective
  • [05:00] Randy on why churches often hide the flaws instead of leaning into them
  • [06:55] What Warren Buffett’s honesty has to do with preaching and trust
  • [07:39] Incentives: what motivates pastors and churches today?
  • [09:10] Why Protestant and Catholic preaching often work differently
  • [10:27] Why many priests never learned to tell the story well
  • [12:22] Would hard Bible questions get you the stink eye in church?
  • [14:16] The hero’s journey, storytelling, and why flat messaging does not land
  • [15:45] King Solomon: 700 wives, 300 concubines, and legendary wisdom
  • [16:02] The famous judgment of Solomon and the baby
  • [16:39] How wisdom, power, and wealth went to Solomon’s head
  • [18:05] Why biblical numbers may be symbolic, not always literal
  • [19:16] Solomon’s magic ring and binding demons to build the temple
  • [20:00] What are we supposed to do with stories like that?
  • [20:44] Did Solomon’s ego become the real downfall?
  • [23:34] Anthony hijacks the show: how should young families choose a church?
  • [24:26] Kristian’s answer: discernment, prayer, and honest searching
  • [26:07] The intellectual path vs the relationship path into faith
  • [28:35] Why parents may be returning to church for the sake of their kids
  • [29:47] Why this conversation clearly needs a part 5
  • [31:21] AI boomerang companies: why firms are rehiring people after AI cuts
  • [32:21] Why many AI layoffs may have been more Wall Street theater than real transformation
  • [34:15] How much of the AI narrative is balance-sheet management and marketing?
  • [36:03] What AI is really creating: new products, new workflows, and new jobs
  • [40:48] America as a millionaire machine: over 1,200 new millionaires a day
  • [42:14] The other side: youth unemployment and the Gen Z job struggle
  • [44:28] Are jobs missing, or are younger workers rejecting the jobs available?
  • [49:11] Alex Karp, Palantir, and why frontier AI may become a threat to its own customers
  • [52:42] Game theory, open source, and why companies may be training their future competitors
  • [57:20] Why local infrastructure and private compute may matter more going forward

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About Kristian Jaloway

Kristian Jaloway is a cradle Catholic and former priest who now works as a leadership advisor alongside the Church. This is his third appearance on Tales of Abundance: Parts 3 and 4 are Episodes 80 and 81, and his earlier conversations include Episode 39 (faith, miracles and giants) and Episode 60 (the Book of Revelation).

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Related episodes

Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

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] for part four. And uh we are going to continue talking about questions in the Bible. Christian, I want to start off today. You know, a lot of this in a recent lunch that we had, I asked you flat out, does the Bible have a marketing problem? And we talked about all these wild stories and all these things that could be out of a feature film. And you know, the Bible on one hand has outsold every other book in history, although it's had years, but yet most people don't read it, right? they're sitting around and they're not being read a lot. And we talked about all these contradictions and war, adultery, and I mean on and on and on, right? So, I think there's a marketing problem. I I think, you know, and I'll tell you this podcast will get great ratings. Like our episodes with you where we talk about this weird stuff from the Bible and all this stuff get very good ratings. And I got to believe if we talked about the normal going to Christian or going to church and singing hymns and you know the things that are generally promoted in church obviously very popular. I mean billions of people around the world or however many do this but I think it would be even more popular if they leaned into some of the things that you know. So what do you think is does is there a marketing — Yeah I I mean yes. The short answer is yes. It's like it it is so fascinating and you see it in in these movies when people start making them whether it's the chosen that came out not too long ago or the series about David or I mean those things do really really well. You do have to be careful and there are Christians who are who are very leerary of any type of marketing when it comes to these things because then it becomes like a it it it maybe it's more true or seems more true if enough people watch it or now you're making money on things those kinds of things. But I do agree with you. I I think in general we don't do a very good job messaging is maybe another way to say it to more sensitive ears where marketing might sound too business-like. We we don't do a great job sharing it. You know, there's if you guys know Pin and Teller who are there in in Las Vegas, I think with their their magic shows and I don't think either one of them are Christian or they're probably don't believe in anything, but I reading a book, one of them said that there was a quote in the book about it and it said here I think I found it said I always said that I don't respect people who don't procilitize. So proalitize is kind of a bad word of course like it's kind of like Bible bashing but when it comes to just if you just said marketing for religion he says I don't respect that at all. If you believe that there's a heaven and a hell and people who could be going to hell or not getting eternal life and you think it's not really worth telling them this because it could make them socially awkward. How much do you have to hate somebody to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?

[02:57] — Wow. like, dang, that's that's rough. But but he's like, you're just not being logical. You actually believe this and you won't tell people. It doesn't make any sense. You know, now I don't know about, you know, if you go to Sixth Street, you probably won't find too many people who want to listen to you, but maybe you will. And I actually heard today of some people who do that and just, hey, here's our card. If you want to talk about Jesus, come let us know. So certainly there is a marketing problem in the o big in the broad sense of just like people are so afraid to talk about this stuff. You know here we're we're just we're doing it on a podcast live and yeah we talk about this stuff over lunch sometimes but but people just afraid to share what they believe and we've got kind of this like we we shouldn't do it. What is it you shouldn't talk about politics, religion or basically anything interesting. And maybe that's just part of our our societal ills of today is like we're just trying to be so accepting and so nice to everybody that you don't want to make anybody feel bad. And it's like but then we're not having good debate. We're not having good conversations. So, you know, I I I've to be able to enter into these I've had to get past my black and white thinking and be able to listen to other people's perspective. I wasn't very good at that in the past. I've gotten much better at that.

[04:11] — You're amazing at that. Let's be honest, you're amazing. — Well, thank you. I mean, it's more fun to by the way, too. It's like it's really boring after a while being all in black and white. But — Randy, we are you when you say the a marketing problem, you're talking about a marketing problem for the Bible or for in this case Christianity or what? Because the Bible is still the bestselling book, you know, across the globe every year. Um, and in the United States last year, Bible sales were up 12%. And then there's also anecdotal evidence and discussion about an increase in attendance at various Christian gatherings, I'll call them, call it church, call it whatever you want to call it. So, um, — kind of curious what you meant by that. — I think I really like what Christian said about messaging. I think messaging is better than the words I used, marketing, right? And I'm just thinking, Anthony, I grew up in a church where to Christian's point with his kids last episode, it was boring, right? And and it just talk it like if it would have talked about some of these things and been been like, well, over here the Bible says, "Thou shalt not kill, but over here it's talking about war and all these different things." And we would have had I would have found that fascinating even as a kid. I find that fascinating now right when I start talking about it. So I think the way that it was marketed or messaged the Christian's word at least to me generally speaking is boring. And I think that's true to a lot of people right and I think getting into some of these things and some of the philosophy and really thinking about it to me is much more effective. And I look at this, um, one of the things I put in my notes for this is that I think they're scared of the flaws. And I think back the church that I grew up in, any pastor that I ever had, if I would have been doing my own research, which I certainly wasn't, and asking these types of questions and go, well, you say thou shalt not kill, but David killed and Saul killed and blah blah blah. All these people killed and they did these wars and they did these genocides and on and on and on. I would have got the stink eye, right? Like that would not that would have gone over about like a fart in church, right? And I think there I think this is similar to sales people.

[06:37] You know, I've been training sales people for years and one of my huge pet peeves is that if there's any flaw, anything bad, sales people try to hide it and THEY'RE LIKE, "EVERYTHING'S THE BEST AND IT'S THE GREATEST." And it's the opposite. Like look at Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett, one of the things he does, if you look at his shareholder letters every year, he almost always starts with, "Here's what we did wrong last year or here's where we made mistakes last year." And then what that does is the next thing you say has so much more credibility and believability and makes you relatable and it it makes you more trustworthy, right? Like leaning into what's wrong actually helps you sell. And I just I my guess is it's that and that's a hu the same reason salespeople have it have problems with it is the same reason a priest or a minister or just general people in the congregation that are you know prophetizing. So does that answer your question? — Yeah I agree. I mean Anthony I'll give you some examples but Anthony what's your take before I do? No, I I I'm I'm hearing what he's saying and I guess I it when you mentioned Warren Buffett and I went to Charlie Munger and I was going to ask Christian um about incentives and about you know what are the incentives of today's — and in Christian churches I I it doesn't really matter Christian or Judea Jewish uh temples and what have you.

[08:06] What are the incentives of the leaders of those of those religions — today in today's world? Muslims maybe they're the same — because as you said, you show me the incentives, I'll show you the outcome. — Yeah, that's a great point. I think in general your Protestant preachers today, they're they're generally speaking their incentive is to do well for sure. There's a there's a but but they are in a more competitive environment because generally it's their board of elders that hires and fires the pastor and so if they're preaching well they stay and grow and if they're not preaching well they get let go pretty quickly. So there's much more competition to be a a better preacher and I think that involves those elements you're talking about. If it's if it's boring, if people aren't coming, if you're not talking about the hard stuff, people tune out. You know, Andy Stanley is probably one of the best in the country today. He's out in Atlanta at uh North Point, I think it's called. [snorts] He's really good and he's very vulnerable. He's very He shares personal stories. He really does a good job doing that. In the Catholic space, it's a little different because it's really hard to fire a pastor. You got to do something pretty bad to get fired. So, it's kind of more of like a monopoly.

[09:26] And I think there their preaching is generally not not always because there's really good ones like Father Mike Schmidz, who by the way has the Bible in a Year podcast who you can he actually he'll read the whole Bible to you in a year every 365 days if you sign up for the podcast. Or like Bishop Baron is is typically a really strong Catholic preacher. their their motives are more they do the same kinds of things but their motivations are less financial and kind of jobreated and more just trying to get through to people and most priests don't know this but Father Mike Schmidz who's again you know now he can go and speak at a stadium and gets 10,000 20,000 you know 30,000 people to listen he was not always a good preacher he had to take it very seriously and read books about what good speaking looked like and really really work at it to get to where he's at now. And I think most people just don't take the time to do that. And that includes what you're talking about, Randy, which is you got to include the bad stuff. You got to include the like the drama. You know, if you look at a story, a story line that's flat is not a story at all. It's it's boring. The guy walks out of the house, goes to work, makes a good living, has a nice life, comes home. That's just boring. That's not a movie worthy story line. Like stories are always like you you walk you go to work something really bad happens it goes way down you're almost at the bottom you know then okay resurrection happens something you know you get back and all of a sudden now you're king of the universe or whatever it is but like there's there's drama and ups and downs and I used to sharing my story I used to always hide the bad stuff I didn't want people to know all the lows in my in my life and my story and it was actually John who kind of looked at me and was like dude you're you're missing the stuff. Now, I had to get comfortable enough and process that stuff internally where I could share it in a vulnerable way where I wasn't going to break down and cry or um although maybe crying every once in a while wasn't bad, but but uh but I needed to kind of get through that and be able to tell it in a way that was both real, which is therefore, you know, dramatic.

[11:36] It includes the drama, but also kind of polished enough that I wasn't gonna it wasn't inappropriate, let's put it that way. So that's a tough thing to do. And I agree with you as a salesperson. I think we can do that all the time, too. Like here's all the aspects that are great instead of asking what's really going to make an impact is ask the hard questions. Like what makes how does this actually make a difference in your life? Are you sure you this is really going to help you? Like is it really worth the money? Like those are tough questions and sales people don't want to generally ask that. And I think as preachers, we don't want to ask those kinds of hard questions either. But it comes across then as kind of flat and boring and maybe correct theologically like, yeah, you didn't, you know, you didn't scandalize anybody, but you also didn't change anybody's life. — I want to make sure I'm not making an assumption just because I grew up in a Lutheran church where that was the thing. Just again if I believe that if I would have asked those questions that I would have been considered controversial and a troubled child and and and you know gotten the stink eye. I'm assuming the Catholic Church is the same because I'm assuming this is more human like just this is what humans do. Is that but is that true? The three of you that grow. I think so. But I think so. But to Anony's point, I think it was much more the case in the pro in the Catholic world. You know, pre definitely prevatican 2, which was 1965, there was a big shift in the Catholic world than when back before then it was like all Latin that the mass was in Latin. It was it was a very different reality. And I think in that world it would have been much more frowned upon to ask hard questions like that. Maybe not in every area, but in most, you know, if you went to Catholic school or anything like that nowadays, I think that's changing for the better. It's, you know, we won't get into all the ups and downs of Vatican 2 and whatnot, but even though that's moving in a good direction, I think it's still slow going. I mean, we've given talks to priests where, you know, we we just explained what we said earlier about the story and they're kind of shocked and they're like, "Oh, I should tell stories when I'm preaching." It's like, yes, one, there's so many in the Bible. You don't even have to go look for them. They're right there, you know, but but that idea of kind of going unpolished and more raw is, you know, I don't know if human nature has changed.

[13:57] I think it's always been this way. Like people want a good story, but for some reason there's still a lot of Catholic preachers out there, for sure. That's the world I know the best, that are, you know, trying to make it all polished and sound nice and pretty. And it I I don't think it lands well. It's maybe correct but not impactful. — Yeah. It's, you know, when you were talking about the ups and the downs earlier, it's the hero's journey, right? And you know, when I was writing my book, I wrote the book and then I got into it and I I listened to a podcast because I was trying to become a better writer as I did it and they were talking about the hero's journey and I'm like, damn it, I'm not doing this. So, I had to go through kind of rewrite everything with the hero's journey. Then when an editor looked at it, they were like, "Oh, wait. Things are going way too good. We need some like the editor's feedback was I need so then I had to go rewrite a bunch of stuff to make some more bad stuff happen or some, you know, some more trials and tribulations." So, it's not natural as a human. Like, that's a skill. Just like you were talking about the pastor or the preacher that had to learn to be a good preacher and work on his skills. Like, that's, you know, being able to communicate that is a skill in itself. So, all right.

[15:07] Well, I think let's talk about this. So, we're we're if we're going to market, let's get back into some of the crazy stuff that the church should be marketing. So, let's go to Solomon. I didn't know hardly anything about Solomon. I literally in researching some stuff about Saul and David. It took me down this rabbit hole. And this dude's wild now, too. Had 700 wives, right? This is supposed to be a holy guy. 700 wives and then better yet, 300 concubines. You do the math. That's a thousand a year. There's only 365 days. So, you know, anyway, but this is also this is also considered the wisest man who ever lived, right? And by all accounts and foreign dignitaries, etc. — Tell me about Solomon. I mean, let let's tell me more about — Yeah. So, King Solomon is David's son, right? And you know, David starts to put all the materials together to build the temple. And then uh Solomon I think is the one who actually builds the temple uh with all those materials that David had you know gathered which probably means conquered right like mostly they were they weren't just like mining stuff they were conquering other countries and and tribes and then you know the famous the famous story about Solomon is where he is the judge and the two women come in claiming that the the baby is theirs and he says okay great to prove it you know or to to to to satisfy the both of you, we'll just cut the baby in half and uh and give you both half. And one woman's like, "Okay, great." And the other woman's like, "No, no, no, no, keep the baby. Give it all to her." And he's like, "All right, give it to the lady who just gave up the baby because clearly that's his mother." So, he had this wisdom that he was known for. You know, queens and people came from all around the world to meet him. Um, but I think I think overall the story when I read it is it went to his head. like all this power, all this wisdom, it went to his head. It says that he started bringing in instead of worshiping the one true god that they had been told about back from the time of Abraham. He starts to allow his wives and concubines to put their gods, right? They all had their different gods from their background and history and put them and, you know, in the palace and worship them. And he was trying to I mean, gosh, it's hard enough to get along with one wife. I can't imagine a thousand, you know, 700 [laughter] across all these concubines. It's got to be brutal trying to get them to get along. I don't know.

[17:34] I I suppose that's why you have a herum where they're all kind of separated and have to lock them up kind of. — That's true for most people, Christian. We know it's not true for you, but this is a public podcast. — She She knows we have our struggles. I tell her, it's funny. I learned this from somebody else, but we don't really have any marital problems. We have just what would you call them? household problems or like roommate problems like where she puts her shoes versus mine. But anyway, — yeah, that would be more complex with a thousand roommates. — Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I Yeah. You know what does it mean? The other thing about numbers is always interesting because the Bible especially in those times did not use numbers the way we use numbers. So in our today in today's business mindset like if you say a thousand people we're like you can go count a thousand people. I many times in the Bible numbers are treated more more figuratively. And so seven is a really important number that just means fullness or like a lot. So 700 might mean and I'm not saying it does. I'm not saying I'm not discounting there could be a thousand actual people in his herum. But seven had a significant, you know, a figurative meaning as well. 40 does as well. So when the Israelites go into the desert for 40 years or Jesus fasts in the in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights, those are figurative meanings as well. I forgot other ones, but you know, three, etc. So you you also have to look at that aspect of it and try to determine okay was it really historical in the in the strict sense of today's history or was it things that happened but they were giving their interpretation to it as they recorded it as well.

[19:16] So with Solomon there is something again as I I did I didn't know this at all never I don't remember magic rings right — and I remember pastor Dave when I was a kid telling me about magic ring to bind demons so supposedly Solomon used a magic ring to bind demons and conscripted them to build the temple right by the way we finally know how we built the pyramids but anyway I'm I — there you go — somehat that debate has been solved. — Back to back to Solomon in building this amazing pyramid with demons. I mean, again, what do we how should we take — I mean, clearly some more modern authors have used rings and powerful rings to uh to to tell some really amazing stories. Yeah. How should we take that? I mean, I I think probably, you know, it says he did, so I wouldn't I would think he did. And he was he was dealing with some you know, demons, people who I I I kind of wonder like, okay, how do you get to that point? Kind of like David, like how did David get to the point of, you know, having this child with, you know, you know, sleeping with somebody who's not his wife, committing adultery, and then getting the husband killed and all that stuff like it doesn't happen overnight.

[20:34] So, how does a king like Solom who's supposed to be so wise, given this wisdom by God, right? He asked for it because he said, you know, God asked him, "What do you want? riches or wisdom kind of and he's like I want wisdom and God said because you asked well I'll give you both wisdom and all the riches but then it it clearly goes to his head and he's starting to do things that are not at all in accord with what he himself you know said was important and the laws he had created. So he's he's he he gets this magical ring. He's, you know, entering into all this kind of magical area. You could call it demonic stuff. [snorts] I suppose because he just wasn't happy enough. He didn't have enough. Like really, dude? You You've got all this. How you're the wealthiest, smartest person in the world, and you want more? Like how is that a thing? And you know, as as I think about it right now, it's like maybe it's just that that there's like an infinite thirst in man's heart and no matter how much you have, the stuff isn't going to make you happy.

[21:40] — I think that's the lesson. I I think that's actually the lesson that none of us typically want to go back. you know, we you know, yes, we we contribute and we give back to our community, but we don't we don't want want less tomorrow than we have today. So, I think that's whether this is true or apocryphal or whatever that's irrelevant. The story is that you know uh the pursuit of that of pursuit of riches can bring the things that are are not good in your life that actually it more isn't more, more isn't better. I think that's the lesson here. And so, uh, but it is human nature to want a little bit more, to be a little bit better, be a little healthier, be a little richer, have a bigger family, you know, whatever the whatever that more is for you. So, I think that's really the — Yeah. I mean, it's ego, right? I mean, I mean, so much of what we've talked about this episode and last episode is just, you know, is man's ego and, you know, and these kings. And if you think about it, if you are the king of everybody, you make all the decisions, you have a thousand women to choose from and this and magic rings and building this amazing temple, then the ego is is the downfall. I mean I again bringing us back to psychedelics, this is one of the things that's inescapable if you do a large dose of especially iawaska but mushrooms too. Like there is a like it just wants to break down the ego and and that's where it goes. And it seems like there's a lot of messaging in the Bible to me that aligns with that. And you know that the ego evil or the ego is a you know a big problem for us that we all struggle with even you know even great kings. I guess that would be my — Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a — I'd like to hijack this. Can I hijack the the podcast for a second?

[23:38] — Oh, hijack away. — Yeah. I um I spent some time with family last week. the big family. Couple of the young couples with young kids are struggling with what to do around faith in worship in church and making a selection. Um and this is a very diverse family. Um they're not all not all raised Catholic. Some are raised in um I don't know if they were Hindu or Buddhist and so forth. So there's a there's a wide array. So Christian, how would you counsel someone, a young family to search for the right community for themselves. What would you say to them? — Wow. There's no nobody's going to like my answer because of [laughter] unless it's their answer. But but honestly, I think it's a question of what I I mean, it's a decision-making process that is really deeper and more important. So, I would call it discernment rather than decision-m. It's related, but it's more of a including kind of a more of a spiritual element to it because this is a spiritual process. And so, you know, in fact, we told somebody recently like, "Hey, this is a big decision." Like, and and it involves God in some way, shape, or form. However you think of God, you should probably pray to God. Like, ask God, you know, or or your version of God to to to show you, I mean, to illuminate you, right? That's that's a common thing throughout the Bible is asking God for help and often getting it in the sign of a message that's usually a dream. So even things like that we would think are like that's not wise advice. Don't don't do do whatever showed up in your dreams.

[25:28] It's like well maybe maybe not. Look at it and say is this is this a message from God because God speaks to us in many different ways. So just being open to that first of all I think is important. And then as part of that though you have to go and start looking at the options. And sometimes it's because you know somebody who you you look up to. So you met somebody who's part of a church or community and you say hey I I like that person. And I like the their example or you know sometimes it's just if you don't have those kinds of personal connections to kind of follow up and see if that's a good community a good fit and a good church you can look at more of an kind of intellectual approach which many people take as well. So many times people will go and they start research. I mean today I think everybody just goes to start Google you know Google it and say okay what do different churches well now AI what do different churches say what do they believe do my beliefs align with that belief system or close enough to where I want to go and research that uh and I know people who've come to our church recently and they did that and they started to go and visit different churches and just went on knocked on the door and said you know hey I want to speak to the pastor speak to somebody and they ended up at our church mostly because the pastor answered them quickly. Um, but then also because they they did like what they heard and and their questions were answered in a way that made sense and that there was enough space for those hard conversations that didn't, you know, were always black and white. So, I think there's kind of like the intellectual route which which is important, but also there's the the relationship road or pathway so to speak and I think both of those are important and really nobody becomes like nobody's going to really change their mind just because of the intellectual side. I don't think is and you mentioned Anthony like the community is is the bedrock or is the foundational part and and so I think you need both of those but I would you know you just got to start trying it and it's it's funny like I I tried for a while to go non-atholic and after a while like it just didn't work and I I kind of I never I never really lost the intellectual part. I always thought like the answers I got in the Catholic church were right so to speak but I definitely left the rel you know the relationship in the community for a while and h and and eventually I came back because I just I what I felt was like I can't not be Catholic and then I found the community that fit with where I was at and there's lots of different churches right there's churches there's different types of community there's home churches there's there's lots of options but you know you you mentioned core values earlier, Randy, I would almost challenge people to go back. I think you guys did an episode on that, like go back and look at what are your c what do you believe first, you know, if you're just and I say this because in today's modern world, there's so many options. If you're just out there and have no idea what you believe, maybe that's a good way to start. But it might be helpful just to go to go and start like what do I actually believe and what's my story and what's my history and where am I at and start with that and then try to go from there so you have some idea of where you're starting rather than just starting with zero you know blank slate.

[28:36] I think that's gonna be a tougher. — What was interesting in the conversation to me was in, you know, this is a survey of five groups of parents. — They were not talking about the church that they should. — They weren't doing this for themselves. — They were worried about their children — not having something, — which I found really I I'd never quite thought of it that way. I've always thought about joining a church because it was good for me. And so they were actually in some cases nervous about not doing it. What are we going to instill in our kids was kind of the — Not that's not word for word, but there was a a bit of a concern that they wouldn't have something. And that may be what what's up with the increased Bible sales, the increased attendance in churches and so on and so forth — that you know the pendulum swung too far — to the left or the right whichever — that would be and now it's swinging back — there's something missing in people's I don't — community that John always talks about and we could by the way this is a fascinating topic Anthony I wish I wish you would have brought this up earlier maybe even on a whole future episode but we have to wrap this up because we have a hard stop here I think what's clear to me is that we definitely have a part five with Christian and in fact Anthony the last time we had lunch you and Christian you asked a whole episode's worth of question or had a whole episode's worth that so I would like to see an episode of Anthony questions the next time that we do this because you act like you didn't have the great questions, but I thought you had fascinating great questions that we could put together for a whole another episode. So, uh, if you're listening, download, subscribe, tell your friends, stick around after the break for the abundance briefing. We'll be right back.

[30:28] Thank you, Christian. It was fantastic. — Thank you. — Here at Tales of Abundance, we know that fitness is just as important as money or milestones. It's one of our fivefs to lots of us. Taking care of my body while I build my life is one of the more timeconsuming and difficult goals to 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. $72 value. Go to briefing. Anthony, there are AI boomerang companies. What do we mean by that? There are a whole bunch of companies that have laid off workers for AI and now they're hiring them back. The one the headline I read was Ford was rehiring 350 veteran gray beard engineers after cutting 5,300 salary positions over the last few years. You know, they just found that the AI, they thought they were replacing this, but the AI lacked some of the nuance and the judgment, the instit institutional knowledge and some of the things they were needed at Ford. and uh they've just hired these people back. Same thing's happening. There's a bank in Australia.

[32:02] IBM had 94% of their HR tasks were being done by AI, but now they have actually increased hiring and uh there's just a lot of this going on. A lot of companies are hiring people back that they first let off at least in the name of AI. So, what say you? you know, there's so many contradictions and this this whole, you know, this whole AI thing is is just in a state of flux. And so, you know, one of the things that I think is going on here is that the the quote unquote layoffs or lack of hiring that has been going on has been attributed to AI, but it really it is has nothing to do with AI. It's it has to do with companies and CEOs wanting to sell themselves to the street that they're, you know, they are investing in in this technology and they want to quote unquote show a ROI on it. And so there's just a lot of knee-jerk reaction going on. The biggest knee-jerk reaction is uh Jack Dorsey over at Square who I think in I guess it was January, February, you know, announced the layoff of 50% of his staff saying he's only going to need half the staff to run to run that company. And you know, we'll see, you know, if that turns out to be true or was it really just the fact that he and that team overhired during COVID, which is seems to have been a pretty darn common thing in the in the tech industry, kind of a a you know, harvesting of talent so someone else can't get that talent. And and now they're cutting back. you know, Elon showed that he could cut his staff by 80% and still run a company for for the various reasons with nothing to do with AI. So, we'll see. But, you know, the fact is no one can see the future very clearly in terms of what AI and this, you know, new technologies are going to bring to bear. You know, where where are they going to gain efficiencies for for all of these expenditures or is it going to be efficiencies or is it going to be new revenue? So, it's a scramble right now and Wall Street's holding these guys — How much of it do you think is them trying to make their balance sheet look better for the stock market?

[34:20] — Well, that's exactly what it is. Even if even if the balance sheet doesn't look better, the story they're looking for the story, you know, and Wall Street invest in tomorrow, not today. So, they're buying stories. you know, when Jensen comes out and says, you know, he's he's cut a deal with, you know, Anthropic for, you know, $8 billion to sell them chips, those chips aren't going to be manufactured for for, you know, that, I mean, literally literally for years. And then Anthropic announces that, you know, Nvidia is going to spend, you know, $3 billion on tokens, you know, this this circular that's been going on in terms of revenue. So, I think a lot of it is is just to prop up uh their short-term Wall Street gains or prevent prevent losses because see these CEOs have a 90day — Yeah. No one's thinking no one no one's thinking like Jensen thought back in 2008 2009 when he was a video game guy and he re he recognized that the that wasn't going to do it for him. So he moved into other things and if people read history, they told him he was an idiot. You know, this is a big mistake.

[35:35] You you're going to you're going to sink this company. And sure enough, he was right. They were wrong. And that there's going to be plenty of that here. So I just don't know who's going to be. — And how much do you think is a CIA, right? Like how many of these people hired bad and now they're laying those same people off and saying, "Oh, it's — Yeah, exactly. That's a that I I think I'm not saying it's 100% of them, but you know, underline there's always there's always dirt underlying the this activity. I mean, I lived in this world. I mean, I lived in I work for a company that well, it's out of business now, but I I would get a phone call, you know, at the beginning of a quarter and I'd get an assignment, you know, you got to produce 10% 10 cents of earnings per Now, I was in a I was I was running a business that both generated revenue and had a significant overhead expense. So we had to do the calculations, you know, are we going to get uh are we going to get 6 cents from additional revenue and 4 cents from cost cutting? But that that was the assignment. Go get and and this went around the entire building. This is a $40 billion company and everyone got their assignment of you got to get x% improvement in EPS this quarter. Now, that that that created, you know, knee-jerk reactions all over the building because there's only two ways to do it. You know, you raise the bridge of revenue or you lower the water of cost. So, and then the following the the following quarter could be a different assignment. You know, you you got to increase EPS by revenue growth only.

[37:19] Don't cut expenses. You know, it's just crazy. So, — I I think those things are definitely factors. I would say the other thing that's going on here that ties into that is its marketing. You know, it's similar to Henry Ford back in the day when he was paying employees $5 an hour, which doesn't seem like much, but if you think about it that way, with the money in — What's that? — Five $5 a day. — A day. Sorry. Yes. Thank you. $5 a day. Doesn't seem like much, but money was priced in gold. That was a quarter ounce of gold, right? So now to make a poor quarter ounce of gold that would be a thousand bucks a thousand bucks a week, right? So it's not great, but it's, you know, more than it sounds like. Anyway, when they when the media asked him about it, he said, "Well, I want my people to be able to drive afford the cars to buy the cars that they're making." That was complete BS. The reason he went up to $5 a day is because he was forced to. I believe the unions and the negotiations and there was a big strike and he only did it out of negotiation because he had to, not because he wanted to. But what's carried on throughout the generations is, oh, look at what a good guy Henry Ford was. He wanted to pay his employees a fair wage when he just wanted to pay them as little as possible, but he turned it into a marketing message very wisely. So, but we got to be careful.

[38:44] You know, what people do and what they say are often two different things. And the other thing I think that's going on from my own use in AI, I feel really confident in this. Well, I feel confident in the marketing thing, too. But I think a lot of these companies probably did lay people off and they didn't know how to use AI when they did it. They just heard the marketing of AI. Oh my god, you're going to be able to do this and you can replace this. or they talked to somebody in another company and this is what they were working on and they thought by God I'm going to do that too and then they didn't know how to execute well enough to actually do it and now they're having to hire those people back. I will tell you though with recent things like Fable 5 and Claude I've been blown away by what it can do. My experience is I replaced a guy that retired and did it with a lot of automation. Not everything he did but a lot of things. But now I'm creating new products and new opportunities. But I think if people are really utilizing AI, I'm looking for more people that can help me execute on these and partner with. I think it will actually create jobs if people are really using it properly. So — yeah, I I I would agree with that. I mean, as I said, you know, you're just you're discovering things every day, every single multiple times a day of what you can and can't do. and it's create it's creating abundant opportunities for you uh business opportunities you know savings product development and so on and so forth and and I that's that's where we are with this you know no one has a clear line of sight I always use the analogy this is like looking for result on the other side of a fish tank you know you can kind of see what's over there but it's blurry and it you can't it's you can't clearly define exactly what it is. So, yeah, let's wait and see. But, uh, a lot going on here.

[40:40] — Yeah, I've got a I mean, I've got a product I've developed in the last few days that I've been wanting to develop for 15 years. It's a problem I've wanted to solve. I'm not quite ready to share it yet, but it is a like I wouldn't have been able to do it literally a week ago before with Opus 4.8 on Cloud. I couldn't do it with 5.0. It's running in the background as we speak. It's already a working prototype and beyond better than the competition now and I'm not even done with it. So anyway, next topic, but that's the type of opportunity that I think will be created and that creates more bodies, not less. So all right, our second topic. America has become a millionaire machine. I think this is pretty cool. The US added 441,078 new millionaires in 2025 alone. That's over 1,200 a day. And basically half of the world's millionaires last year were created in America. We now have about 9 million millionaires. Now I would argue a millionaire isn't what it used to be and it doesn't buy what it used to be.

[41:45] Certainly when we were kids. The other side of that though is as we've talked about in recent episodes, Gen Z has a hiring freeze. They are getting unemployment. Youth unemployment 16 to 24 hit 10.8 eight numbers are July of 25, but that was up from 9.8 the year before. So, you know, two different sides of the same coin. You know, what's your take on this? Well, you know, the on the first topic on on the millionaires, you know, I'm sure a lot of it's driven by the stock stock market and those that are in the stock market, their portfolios, you know, grew, you know, during the last couple of years. So, that's great. You know, I think that that's fine. And a million is a million. It's a starting point. and and if th those people keep stay in the market and keep their jobs, you know, they that that million will become 2 million and they'll be all set for, you know, the day they decide that they're going to retire and and move out of the workforce. As far as the youth unemployment, I I want to study that some more because my understanding is that there are significant job openings that aren't being filled and and I don't understand why are they, you know, where are these jobs? Now, I know there's a a lot of job growth has been going on in the health care sector. So, those are those are professional jobs requiring a certain type of education and training.

[43:16] So, okay. So let's put those aside. But there are also my understanding a lot of service jobs that are that are open. There are a lot of manufacturing jobs that are open. There are a lot of constru I know personally that there are a lot of construction jobs, you know, swinging hammers and, you know, lugging lumber and things like that. So why why are those younger getting started people, Gen Z, why are they not filling the available roles? Is it because they don't want those jobs? They they want a cushy job in a in an office with the man. Um I think that's, you know, a fool's errand. But yeah, I don't I don't understand I don't understand this because as I said there there are hundreds of thousands of job openings in this country. Now maybe they're in places where population you know so just use a silly example. Maybe they're not in New York City and, you know, 10 of the 10% are in New York City. You know, maybe they're in Kansas City instead of New York City. So, I don't know. I I I I want to I want to study this a little bit more and become try to understand how to solve this — I think I think what I'm seeing with a few young people that I've been interacting with is it's the type of job and you mentioned that, right? like they there's entrylevel jobs and they don't want them. They're like, "Well, I got a degree in this and therefore I should be able to work in this." Or they they want a certain type of job and they're not getting it. And I think that is the, you know, I I think that is probably one of the bigger disconnects there. But I, you could be right. It could be part of the country. I can only speak to Austin. I know in Austin and the surrounding area, it isn't that hard to get a job. But I do know a lot of college kids, you know, cuz I have a kid that age getting out of school and he's continuing his college job. But he, you know, my son's having a hard time finding a job right now. But again, he's looking in very specific industries instead of getting a starter job and working his way up.

[45:27] You know, I just asked our our dear friend chat, "How many job openings are there in the USA?" And you're going to be blown away by this. According to chat, so let's let's put that in quotes. 7.6 million job openings right now in the United States as of May 26. Okay. services, 1.4 in healthcare, 1.2 two in trade, transportation, and utilities. A million in leisure. And then it drops from there. And you're going to not like this one. There are 800,000 job openings in government. So there there are retail trade 700,000. I'm rounding up the numbers. Manufacturing 600 to 500,000. Construction I said that earlier 300,000. So there are jobs out there. And and to your point that maybe people, you know, I would say professional and business services maybe not qualified for, health and social assistance, maybe not qualified for, but all these others, these are all, you know, with rare exception, there are entry levels jobs in all of these things, certainly in the retail trade. So, I don't get it. Uh, I I just think that this is the greatest time of opportunity ever and the K-shaped economy is cool is is is cool is real and uh and people are, you know, people are going to have to adjust and they got to they got to chase the abundance and chase the opportunity and and sometimes that's going to mean starting out waiting tables and working their way up from there. So, — I don't know. You know, I let's let's call I want to call bull on the K-shaped economy real quick because it's it's always been a K-shaped economy to some extent, right? There's always — the numbers the numbers don't it's there's more people there there's a lot of young people and a lot of like like there's a lot of people that can't afford a ribeye right now or they can't have you know you told me a story the other day you're going to get lamb — Yeah. No, I get it. I — authority. Tell people the lamb chop — There was It was $62 for eight lamb six lamb chops, — which was in which And I I said, "No, I'll just get the burger."

[47:41] — Right. And you can afford it, right? But imagine imagine the person making 40 grand a year. I mean, there really was a message that that kids have been not just told, it has been pushed down their throats of, hey, go to school, get good grades, you'll get into a good college, which, by the way, has become hyper competitive and harder and harder and harder. They do everything right, and they still can't get into the colleges they want to, then you're going to get this degree, work hard there, and you'll go out and you'll get a job, and you'll make lots of money. And that is becoming harder and harder. and wages. Even kids getting out of school now versus a couple years ago, starting salaries have gone down. Now, it doesn't mean they can't work their way up. We just got done talking about that. I think I think there's people that are they expect to be given to them because they did that and they're not and and there's a disservice that they're not working for it. But it is also harder. I I really I — I'm going to I'm going to table the discussion and and say that we're going to do a full episode on this because I I just I I have a completely different view view of it.

[48:49] — all right. — Not for not for today, for maybe next — Send Boomer Hey to Anthony Marino at No, just All right. Okay. [laughter] — All right. Let's let's go on to another story that has you worked up. Um, the Palunteer CEO, Alex Karp, recently went on TV and, uh, I know you have a lot of thoughts on this. So, tell people what he said and then, — well, let's let's talk about who he is and and what he you know, Pal Karp is the CEO of Palunteer. He got his start in Silicon Valley in multiple startups. I think he's actually part of the original PayPal gang that all became billionaires years ago. He had something to do with Meta and so forth. company Palunteer, you know, for, you know, a lot of years was just a small little security company that was, you know, helping to secure data for, you know, big companies and the government and so forth. And in the last four or five years has really blown up. You know, cyber security is, you know, probably one of the fastest growing and most important industry. So, he's he's got his finger on the pulse. And you know he also has a vested interest in his business which is you know which drives some of what he was talking about. But the main the main thrust of what he was talking about was the front the frontier models represent the danger to their customers and the resp and the and from the aspect of when a when a when a company give uses anthropic or chat GPT or all these other tools that are out there perplexity or what have you they're allowing their their what he calls their alpha their their source code if you will their data and it's their data and their institutional — Institutional knowledge that's the better that's a better term to be uploaded to a cloud that can be used anywhere in the world. Now these get these frontier models chat and anthropic got their start by basically hoovering up all the free information that was out there books letters information healthcare you name it. So they they gathered all this information up for free and now created trillion dollar companies uh out of that. and he fears the same thing's going to happen with the institutional knowledge of a GE or a IBM or you know you name you name the company Salesforce and and his is his his fundamental out outcome he believes is going to be these frontier models are going to attack the application layer meaning they're going to they're going to be selling products you know not just information so they may let's say they develop their own legal application. You know, if you're a lawyer and you, you know, there's going to be an application for creating a brief or filing a lawsuit and so on and so forth. The the example he gave going back to the 80s was Microsoft. There used to be two companies called Lotus 123, which is was a a version of Excel and Word Perfect, which was a version of Word. Microsoft used to have that in their those two companies paid those two companies to put their application on its you know Microsoft Office product and then proceeded to replicate those two things in their own name stole all the intellectual property and created Excel and created Word and who knows anything about Lotus 123 or Word perfect today.

[52:20] So he's given real life examples of that and and I and I think that I don't know what the economic impact of that is on anthropic or chat but it it gives me pause because I don't think uh they can survive and grow trillion dollar companies without the applications. — So can I let me let me jump — because because of the go — let let me jump in here. So I think about things a lot of times from game theory and what's the consequences downstream. So let's go from not now but these companies if we go back a little bit into the the recent recent past they spent all this money developing data centers and training and they've raised money on these gigantic valuations. They're talking about trillion dollar valuations for OpenAI and Claude both when they go public. Well, investors want a return. Like, investors don't want to throw a trillion dollars at this or really billions at this and get nothing. And it's moving toward open-source, which is one of the things he's talking about, which we'll circle back to. But you can't charge if an open- source model gets really big, you can't charge a huge amount every month because people are going to start moving. I have moved stuff to open source because I didn't need the more powerful machine. because token expense goes up. Well, how are they going to get that money back? Especially, by the way, when you build a data center, that thing doesn't run for 25 years. You have to constantly be replacing chips and computers and — that stuff. You know, computer technology wears out. So, they don't just have to get back their initial investment. They got to get the ongoing investment back. Well, you use the example of a law firm. It doesn't I don't know what verticals. It doesn't matter if they go after office work, accounting, law, but they are almost forced to say, "Okay, how do we get these billions or trillions that we've invested back? We are hemorrhaging money. So, let's go after this — Great. And if they hoover up all your data and if you have an accounting firm and they start taking yours and everybody what they do with accounting, you're just teaching them how to put you out of business. So it kind of forces people on top of the token cost is what he's saying to go to an open-source model, right? Which is where he ultimately ended up.

[54:54] — You know, the the more recent example uh and you were you were part of this is back at the turn of the century two in 2000. I remember how difficult it was to get a URL to set up a website to get it registered and you know then figure out how to program it to do what you need it to do. And then along comes GoDaddy and legal zoom.com and these companies that made it so easy to create a company create get a URL held build the website. They had templates for building websites and they became these giant giant companies and all and all the uh the the individuals the consultants and the individuals that were doing this this work got pushed to the side. You know what I mean? He didn't go to Jack in the corner or in his mother's basement and ask him to do it for now. Got hoovered up in these big companies. And that's that's what what he's talking about. That's exactly the thing. Now, when you think about growth of a company, it doesn't matter what the company is.

[56:01] You're as we said earlier, the investors are looking at what are you going to do tomorrow. All right? So, you got a billion dollar business now. You got this run rate of of revenue. Terrific. How how how are you going to justify a 30 multiple on your revenue next year? Because I'm I'm investing in you for tomorrow, not for today. And the only way to do that is to grow the business. The only way to grow the business is to either win by breathing as we used to say. You know, you cut you just get more customers doing the same thing like Meta did for so many years. That stalled out now. They kind of they've kind of reached critical mass there for sure. So yeah, he he's he's striking fear into it and and you mentioned open source. You know, open source has got to be a problem for these guys because open source can do a lot of stuff. Call it the mundane tasks of the day if you want, but but not so mundane. Uh they're getting closer and closer to just as good as the other guys. So um and you mentioned expenses. Imagine the expense of paying these engineers to improve them all. I mean, we've heard unbelievable stories about how much they're paying these these folks. So, anyway, it's something to look at and and as we said earlier, who the hell knows what's going to really happen here down the road.

[57:20] — Well, to be clear, if you have a business, open source in a lot of ways is a solution because that's what helps you keep your sandbox and protect your intellectual property. I mean, I I've already had an example where Facebook Meta, they we had a conversation bot that was excellent, way better than the one they had. They first made it where ours would no longer work with their site, and then within a couple of days, their bot was speaking exactly like our bot and had clearly ripped off what we were doing. It's just there's there's a 0% chance it was a coincidence. They were using our terminology, our phrasing, things that were pretty unique, I would say, incredibly unique to our company. So, you know, I use a Chinese open- source model, Deepseek, and I don't have problems, as best I can tell, with them stealing my data, and I did with Facebook or Meta stealing my data. you know we haven't talked about it but you know in order to protect your data and keep it inhouse you know is what does this mean to cloud computing you know everyone you know everyone ran to the cloud put your data in the cloud right are people going to and I think he mentioned this in the in the in the uh discussion that you know this could be a boom for servers ser you know server architecture you know the the the data room might have a rev survive it where people, you know, buy the equipment they need to house all of their data and other data that they bring in to keep it in house and to keep and to protect it. So, I don't know. I I don't know if that's true. That's a that's a that's a hypothesis that I have. We'll see.

[59:01] — I would say with game theory, that's absolutely true. Right. I' I've even seen that myself, right? I was more the the computer that my agent runs on, I was more concerned about hard drive space than I have been on any computer in a long long time. Let's wrap it up there, everybody. Thank you for spending time with us this week. And until next week, go out and spread a little Take care, everybody.