2052: The Year the Market Skyrocketed

It's time for a look back, a look forward, and a look at the timeless lessons learned over a lifetime of Foolishness.

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This video was recorded on Feb. 16, 2022.

David Gardner: Hello Fools. When the Rule Breaker Investing podcast started 37 years ago in 2015, Chris, I'm pretty sure I wasn't thinking I'd do it as long as I did and then podcast went away pretty much all together, so it didn't make much sense to do them.

Chris Hill: It was a bummer too, because at one point Motley Fool Money was the second most popular nonfiction English language podcasts over, there was that, but why are we back?

David Gardner: Lots of good questions. But I think Chris, it's because people wanted to hear one last one from us and so seeing the mailbag format always popular gave us an opportunity to answer your questions, dear listeners. Speak to people's mindsets where they are in the world today because it would've been impossible to know or predict what life would be like here in 2052.

Chris Hill: There are still some people complaining about it.

David Gardner: Understandably, but with optimism at its highest point in human history, so much innovation and growth we've witnessed together. Nothing's ever going to be perfect but Kevin Kelly's protopia. Do you remember Kevin? Founder of Wired Magazine? Kevin was right, infinitesimal gains in kindness, technology, cooperation, care for our planet, the list goes on. These add up.

Chris Hill: Protopia is a thing.

David Gardner: You know what else is, your health. Because you've taken pretty good care of yourself my friend, 85 looks good on you, sir.

Chris Hill: You as well. I'll just speak for myself, a lot of coffee that'll do the trick. [laughs] Look, I know this is an audio format, but I kind of feel like we should do a selfie right now.

David Gardner: Is that the iPhone 43?

Chris Hill: It is the 43. Should we use it?

David Gardner: I've got the 42 so.

Chris Hill: I upgraded, slightly better camera.

David Gardner: Thank you for joining us this week. We came back to these old school microphones to do an hour or so in an old media format called podcasts, which we used to do because in the year 2052, we wanted to speak to Fools for perhaps one last time. Reflect together on well, it's been quite a year, the year the market skyrocketed.

Chis Hill: We have guest stars a plenty.

David Gardner: But most of all, we're glad to have you on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. Chris Hill, David Gardner we're both so delighted. First of all, Chris, to be together. It's great to see again, my friend, as I said at the top, you are looking good at 85.

Chris Hill: Thank you. I'm reminded of the old adage. It's great to be here, but at my age, it's great to be anywhere.

David Gardner: I think the reason we thought we should do this podcast this week, many people are not going to remember but years ago, we did a podcast called, The Day the Market Crashed, and I still get notes about it. I still get messages about this coming in from different places. You remember this, Chris?

Chris Hill: There's plenty I forget but I remember, The Day the Market Crashed.

David Gardner: The truth is for the whipper-snappers among us that day the market did not crash. But Chris and I, we're in our mid-fifties back then it was the early twenties. We basically said we should do a podcast one week and just simulate the market crashed. Some people may remember the war of the worlds radio broadcast from the 20th century, which are famous accurate the time Orson Welles simulated our world being attacked by aliens, that sounded real to people over the radio and Chris, you and I talked about that 30 years ago. We said, we should do that for the stock market. We should help listeners, help Motley Fool members, process what it feels like and sounds like for the market to crash one day and so we made it all up.

Chris Hill: We made it all up and I remember one of the things that we tried to do, and I think we did a good job, is replicating the frenzy because look, we've been investing in the stock market for so many decades, David and that's one of those things that really has never changed. That when the market crashes, or just has a bad day or a bad week and all feels bad and it all feels like the financial world is going to end. Of course, we know now what we knew then, which is over time, the market goes up. But on any given day with the right set of circumstances, it can be a really bad day and it feels painful.

David Gardner: That's exactly why we did that way back when, but we thought, obviously we're not active that much anymore. Podcasts are no longer a thing, but we thought why not come back in do one more that might be the opposite. That might be reminding everybody, hearing us right now that the market goes up over time as you just said, Chris, things are good, it's worth getting on that train. It's a roller coaster sometimes, so you got to be ready to go up and down, but it's really worth it. The Dow trades and six digits that 477,000 just rounding right, that's where the Dow is. The median market cap of the S&P 500 today is $280 billion. Those numbers don't just appear overnight, you roll up into those numbers over time. Great entrepreneurs come up with great ideas. They eventually get capital and go public and if they survive and thrive, they probably end up in the S&P 500 here in 2052. I don't check this math that often, but it's interesting to see the median market cap is $280 billion, but well, yeah, Dow 477,000. 

How many people were fretting about the Dow back when it was, I don't know, 1,000 a long time ago or even 50,000 and to think where we are today is important. One other funds stat they're five companies today that have all returned over 20 percent annualized for the past 30 years. Those five companies are the 550 trillion-dollar market cap companies. I think a lot of people have a hard time thinking forward and looking into the future because they see the old numbers of the past but that's where we are today and I wish everybody way back then would know, would do the math, see compounding, and see how the markets play out. Now with the remove, with several more decades behind us, we're able to remind especially younger listeners right now of the great benefit of thinking and acting over the only term that counts, Chris, which is the long-term. The Day the Market Crashed, we did that and I think it was 2020. Here we are in 2052. We finally got around to doing a sequel. It's the year the market skyrocketed. Chris, how are you spending your time these days?

Chris Hill: I think back to a guy we worked with for years at the Motley Fool, Robert Brokamp, who was an expert in requirement.

David Gardner: I remember Bro.

Chris Hill: Yeah. Took Bro's advice which was to not fully retire and just like ease into semi-retirement, and that's what I've been fortunate enough to do for decades now, and like you spending time with the grand kids. Because it's amazing being a parent. But being a grandparent, boy, the fun level of being a grandparent is unmatched.

David Gardner: I remember you saying a long time ago, I think it was on one of your old podcast, Chris, but I remember you saying that you at that time in middle age, you hadn't understood how much fun it would be to have your adult daughter driving you around one day for errands. Just sitting in the car as your adult daughter drives you and just watch her do the errands. That almost sounded like early retirement right there to me. But what you say is true. It's a cliche. But cliches are often cliches because they are true. Grandchildren are pure joy. I'm so glad to hear that you are making that time. Because we've invested and we've invested successfully, I also find myself spending so much time with family. But a lot of it is setting up the legacy because when you make the money over time, you want to do right by it. You want to make sure it does good for the world that it helps the kids. It helps the world. But to do that, and do that with intention, well that's become a little bit of obsession for me these days. Yes, of course I remain lifelong, full active with the foundation and the company, so excited about where we are. But you know what? Enough with all that, let's set the chit chat aside. Now, you and I discussed this. We wanted to do this as a mailbag format. For anybody who remembers our podcasts from 30 years ago, you'll remember that on a monthly basis, we would take in messages from listeners and we would respond to them, and that's exactly I thought, Chris, how we should do it this time for this one special podcast so it's a mailbag.

Chris Hill: Particularly coming off the incredible year of 2051 hence the title of this episode.

David Gardner: Yes, this year, the market skyrocket, we're going to talk about that. In fact, at least one of these mailbag items speaks to that. Let me say, I am delighted. You mentioned this is the top Chris, we have managed to attract some of our favorite Fools from years gone by. We have guest stars are plenty, I think you said at the top and that is what's ahead. But the first mailbag item of the seven that we have for this one of a kind episode. The first one is a simple market question for you and me. Let's get this thing cranked up. Chris now I will mention, you know this, but a lot of our listeners won't. I recently had an experimental eyesight implant, which I have to say, first of all, I highly recommend it. It's amazing. It's enabled me to see all things I could never have seen before. I think a lot of people obviously are thinking about augmentations, you have friends and family who've done it. For me, it made sense at my age, 85 years old, eyesight. It's really important, but I had no idea of the sixth sense capability that I've been given. But the irony Chris, is I can't really read that well anymore. I'm just going to ask, would you read the mailbag items this episode?

Chris Hill: It would be my pleasure.

David Gardner: Let's kendrago forward Chris. Rule Breaker, Mailbag Item number one.

Chris Hill: From Dolan. Hello Fools, great to see you guys back in the saddle again. Global markets have had quite a run the last eight years, and I'm very grateful. I finally got the kids higher learning paid-off and could save some money and put it into Rule Breaker stocks. Now, you may think this is a silly question, but after the run we've seen from the stock market, isn't easy money all made by now? Should I really be putting new money into this market? Oh David, I'm having flashbacks.

David Gardner: Well, it's a timeless question, and I think that's the reason. You've made jokes about this over the years, Chris. The easy money has it already been made? What is that easy money that I'm always wondering people say has already been made?

Chris Hill: I always wondered that too. [laughs]

David Gardner: No one knows, but one thing is for sure about it Chris, it's always already been made and it was easy. Yes, obviously, Kendra is reflecting on the strong run the markets have had in recent years. I mean, we've seen this time and time again over the course of our investing lives, in our mid 80's now. I think Chris, you and I probably experienced this five or six times, this strong market. I would say to be empathetic for anybody who's just starting now, it's hard. It's hard to buy into the face of market highs and the run that we've lived through. But I think we've been saying this since we started the Motley Fool in 1993. First of all, Chris, the long game is the only game to play. To me, if you're going to play the game, that means you're investing every two weeks. Sometimes you'll realize in retrospect that the market was really high then and you wish in retrospect, you hadn't bought that stock then. But if you keep buying, if the market drops, all of a sudden you'll find it doesn't feel good, but you'll find you're getting great prices for stocks that two-week period. But I think the key here is dollar-cost averaging. Right Chris, persistence?

Chris Hill: Absolutely, and maybe it's easier to say now. We're more in our mid 80's. But we were always saying this. It was always the case that the long game was the game to play, the traders game, the short-term game. It's just exhausting. It's exhausting to think about.

David Gardner: It is. Beyond that maybe there's just two quick other thoughts for Kendra and everybody else listening. Second, we're investing in businesses. We're not guessing zigs and zags on stock market charts. We're not using AI algorithms. I often forget the ticker symbols these days of the companies that I'm buying. But I don't really care too much about ticker symbols. Because it's the real businesses and that for me, the mistakes I've made in my life are when I was investing in things that weren't real solutions or didn't turn out to be. I don't always kick myself about that because I thought that might be the new technology, the new trend. I thought, and so I tried and sometimes I am going to be wrong but in every case, I always knew I was investing in a business. A business with a balance sheet, Chris Hill, a business with real employees and I hope real products and solutions, otherwise you're probably not going to get my money. Kendra in thought number two for you, we invest in businesses.

Chris Hill: We invest in businesses, and we invest in businesses with an eye toward the future. Because as nostalgic as we get in our mid 80s, it's all about the future, and you have to look at a business and think, is this business going where the world is going?

David Gardner: Yes. Kendra I don't know how old you are, but Chris and I are 85 today, it's easy to think back and say, I wish you could rewind the clock. Thirty years ago we were in our prime, 55. If you're 55, listening to me right now, you're probably thinking 30 years ago, I was 25. I could've done anything from that point forward. It's very natural to look backward, and that's why it's so capital F foolish to look forward. Everybody else has their heads in the sand, they're worried about where the market's trading this week or the stock they just bought two weeks ago, whether the market was high or not. It always hurts to lose money when you lose money in the short-term. But if you're doing what Chris and I are doing, and everybody here at our company, The Motley Fool, you're thinking about the future and you're investing for that future. To your earlier point, Chris, you're playing the long game. The long game is the only game to play. Kendra, I realized and a lot of ways I feel like I could've been saying this on any given communication essays, I've written podcast, Chris and I have done media together. How many books did I write with my brother Tom? All of these messages crystallized down to those three cardinal points. The long game is the only game to play, invest in real businesses with beautiful prospects, and number three, think about the future. That's where I try to live, live backward from the future, invest for the future. That's all that really counts when you buy your stock. All that matters is what happens next.

Chris Hill: Rule Breaker, Mailbag item number two. Next message. Hi, David. Thank you for coming back to do one more podcast. It's amazing anyone is still doing podcasts. Anyway, getting you and Chris Hill back in front of the microphone is special, is this the last time? I'm just going to say parenthetically, yeah, it probably yes, but kudos. It reminds me of that old novel, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, where you guys are making one last ride though I hope it ends better. I never read Lonesome Dove, but now I'm guessing the ending is pretty dope Let's keep going on with the message. I got started investing right after the crash of 2029. I had a few earth dollars saved and thought I'm done with crypto, it's time to put my networks into actual corporations creating real solutions and new possibilities for the unmet a world. It was BOGO really. Anyway, it's been an amazing 20 years filled with Signature winners like three Meta, of world destinations and Crocs, though I should have held on to my MercardoLibre. Against those even my worst losers, and then he adds parenthetically, I lost faith in Star samurai even before your team did. They never held a candle against those 3100 baggers. I'm curious whether you guys still think the market would rise 8 to 10 percent a year going forward. Also, do you think president Beaver's potential reelection is good or bad for stocks? Signed Luis. We love the messages, David, but Luis should know we don't factor politics into these things. But you know what, do you want to bring in our special guest?

David Gardner: Yes. We thought about it. We thought who can speak to, I would say not just the last year, last 10-years, but how about our lifetimes, who's been there as an author and thinker for finance money in the markets? Our friend Morgan Housel. Morgan, it's a delight to have you back. I know that you are now pretty comfortably retired yourself, your fame proceeds you, and it's a delight to have you back to the show. Luis's comments here. Morgan is the market, going to keep going up.

Morgan Housel: David, it's good to be here. You and I have been working together for 45 years now. It's great that we can still do this together. I think to those comments, we have to look at what's happened throughout all of history. If you look at a very long period of history going back over a century, you will see that the market has gone up 8 to 10 percent per year. But that doesn't mean anything close to it going up 8 to 10 percent every year, you have periods of sometimes 10 or even 20 years when it declines. You have negative returns for 20 years. That of course happened during the great depression, happened during the 1970s, that happened during the great crash of 2029, of course, and I think that will keep happening. I think it's just the nature of markets to go through periods of a big boom and then a big wash-out bust. Now what was very different about the crash of 2029 is that, David, during the great depression, during the 1920s, five percent of Americans owned stocks, just five percent. Because of Robinhood and a bunch of other companies that brought somebody investors in the market during the crash of 2029, 70 percent of Americans owned stocks. Then when the market fell 70 percent, that had such a big societal impact that really washed over the economy and did a lot of damage to psyches in a way that we haven't seen in a long time. 

But the crush itself was really matched up to historical norms. I think what's really interesting about it, is that we spent so much time as investors over the last 40 years saying that what happened during the great depression and the inflation in the 1970s and those big events could not happen now. That they would not happen in a modern economy when we have so much technology and information and intelligence. We just fooled ourselves into believing that. The nature of markets of going through big booms and bust will always be with us. To answer your question, I think the answer is yes. The market still will keep going up at eight or nine percent per year over the long term. By long-term I mean 10, 20, 30 years. But we're always going to have long periods of pain. Sometimes when I'm saying long periods, it's not one-year, that's 10 or 20 years.

Chris Hill: Morgan, you are someone who studies history and I'm curious when you think about the impact that economic events make on people, sometimes on generation that when you talk about the crash at 2029, does it happen in smaller ways? I don't remember the exact year, I want to say it was like 2012, 2011, something like that, there was a stretch there with all we talked about for three months was grease. Is grease going to leave the European Union? More recently there was the whole thing with Scotland. Did those things also affect investors in the same way that the crash of 2029 would?

Morgan Housel: I think it does, but it affects everyone differently. Because if you are a young new investor, experienced the market turmoil from what's going on in Scotland, that's going to affect you very differently than if you are like us who are in our 80s right now, our late 80s of course. We experienced a very different path of history during life. We were, of course, alive during September 11th and the financial crisis of 2008, and all these other events that really marked us psychologically for the rest of our lives. I always saying wounds heal, but scars last. That's true for how we experience these historical events. You can recover from a great financial crisis. You can recover from the crash of 2029, but it's still going to mark you psychologically for the rest of your life. I think the problem with investors is that, it's not the thing don't learn from their experiences, is that they learn a too precise lesson from what happened. 

During the financial crisis of 2008, the lesson that people learned was, don't buy sub-prime mortgages, don't invest in highly levered banks. That was the really precise lesson that they learned, when actually the lesson that they should have learned was something about market volatility and a broader risk like rather than taking the really precise lesson, they should have learned something much broader. I think whenever we go through one of these crises, like what's going on in Scotland, I think we're likely to learn a too precise lesson about what we should do as investors. There's two takeaways that you should learn from these big historical hiccups. One is that all of these events were surprising. Nobody saw them coming before they actually happened, and that would be the case in the future. Then the other thing is just all that matters in investing. I use that word intentionally. All that matters in investing, is that you can endure volatility, that you can endure uncertainty. Rather than thinking you can avoid it, that you can just absorb it over a long period of time. That's the lesson from all of these surprises.

David Gardner: There always will be surprises, obviously 2037, we think back to the media and the amazing efforts that scientists put into shoot that thing out of the skies. Now, we remember what happen in the market, [laughs] it doesn't feel great when you have impending doom headed your way. It was like something like a bad Michael Bay movie, but for real. I totally agree with you there, Morgan. While we have you, I want to ask you obviously, to see the success of your books over time, for you to be one of the top three best selling authors in the world today. I want to go back to your first book though I'm still thinking about the psychology of money and to me for schools, finally to a recognized in the 40's that this should be read by all the kids. You can't graduate at any level of schooling without understanding money better. Then we finally got that. First of all, thank you for that, but I want to ask you, for it to be required reading right now in 52 of the 53 US states but the one state, Morgan, ironically, that has not required Psychology of Money a great school level, your home state of California. Why?

Morgan Housel: I gave a really bad talk in California in 2032, and I just bombed it. I was ostracized from the entire state. Then Chris Hill came and did a live podcast in 2023, I think, and It was the same thing. I think he may have been sick, you may have had too much to drink that day, but it just went over terribly, so we've been bombed out. The good news about it being in all the other 52 states, is that they're doing the audio book of Psychology of Money that of course, is done by Chris Hill. We're now at 47 million copies sold worldwide.

David Gardner: Unbelievable.

Morgan Housel: That's the good news. You get my writing, but it's delivered in Chris Hill's wonderful voice.

David Gardner: In Canada obviously as the most recent in-doc into the union, for it already too have been reading Psychology of Money, I think it was required back in the '20s in Canada. For you, that has to be things have come full circle.

Morgan Housel: It feels pretty good. Here's what's interesting about books like that. The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham was first written in the 1930's, and as recently as the 2020's, it was still selling a 100,000 copies per year. What's interesting about it is that there is a lot in that book that is totally dated, that is not relevant at all to a modern stock market. It's just completely outdated. But there's also some nuggets in there that are timeless and that's why it kept selling. The stuff about that in the Psychology of Money that is totally dated in 2052, that makes no sense given the modern economy, given the stock market and if I we're going to rewrite that book today in 2052, I would cut half of what is in there, because I learned through experience that what I thought when I wrote that book in 2019, I now realize it's wrong, and also because the economy in the stock market has evolved over time to make a lot of it irrelevant. But I do think that there are bits and pieces of those books that are timeless that will still be with us for a long period of time.

David Gardner: Well, very evidently. School children around the country today are experiencing and are required. It's great to answer the right questions about it. Morgan, could you have known back then what would happen to crypto?

Morgan Housel: I don't think anyone could have seen what was happening to crypto. It's completely surprised everyone with what happened in the biggest way, everyone knows what I'm talking about. It's just been a ridiculous thing to watch what's happened over the last 20 years. No one could have seen it coming. If you go back to the early 2020's and you look at what people were predicting both the bulls and bears, no one got it right. What actually happened with crypto surprised everybody.

Chris Hill: Morgan, we know you're headed off world. We really appreciate your time. Thanks for being here.

Morgan Housel: This has been fun. Thanks guys. Hopefully we can do this for our 100th birthday in another 10 or 15 years.

David Gardner: Let's keep it going.

Chris Hill: Rule Breaker, Mailbag, item Number Three. Hey Fools, if my math is right, David and Chris haven't worked for years. YouTube probably don't care that much about how work works today or will tomorrow, but I care.. I'm 27 years old and my grandfather was a Fool who left me too great gifts. The first was some seriously appreciated stock, which was a really big gift for me, though not so big that I'm not still in the workforce today, and thinking about tomorrow. Pop-ups, other gifts to me, and I'm not as clear on the value of this one was that he told me to listen to you guys, to always hear the Fools out on what they have to say, especially about the future. Even if you guys are now older than pop-up when he died. Wow. Can I just positive, David, let's keep going.

David Gardner: I'm just glad to be 85, Chris, thank you.

Chris Hill: Same.

Chris Hill: Even if you guys are now older than Pop Up was when he died, I wanted to ask you about work. Maybe you could get Aaron Bush or some other successful entrepreneur of today who is winning in the workplace, who's constantly thinking about this stuff, can he help me think about the future of work? Thank you. Signed Jake Coachella.

David Gardner: Well, Jake, very happy to say that Aaron Bush is with us this week. It's great to see you, Aaron. You're looking good by the way. You're basically the same age I was when I started this podcast back in the day and well, Jake is asking a pretty simple question. What's the future of work? Well, before Chris and I turn this over to you Aaron, I want to say first that, in my lifetime anyway, there have really been, I would say, two huge revolutions in work and how work happens. The first was back in the 20s in the pandemic. Remember what was it called? Skype? Face something?

Chris Hill: Zoom was one.

David Gardner: Of course, Zoom. That began a big shift that I would say it was the first revolution, but Aaron, the second revolution in the workplace came some years later.

Aaron Bush: Well, first of all, thanks for having me on here. I'm feeling older and wiser than I did 30 years ago so it's great to see you. But yes, the second revolution, I will get to that in a moment, but I think one quick thing to note is that these revolutions, they take quite a while to play out. You mentioned Zoom, all of us staring at our computer screens every day for a few years there, talking to each other, that definitely was the tip of the sphere of the first revolution, but it definitely wasn't the whole thing. Really the 20's and 30's, that was really about answering not only what does it mean to be a digital native worker, but what does it mean to be a digital native organization and so lots of companies, we're trying to figure out what that means for themselves. Not all companies figured it out by the way, and a lot of the legacy businesses of the time struggled to adapt, but we moved into a world where people could work from anywhere, work on anything and it was just a much more flexible world. The second revolution started 7,8 years ago but what's accelerating today is the leveraging of AI in the workplace. People have been talking about this forever, guys. I remember when I was a kid and people were talking about AI is going to take over the world and we're still not at the place where we have AI best friends and everything.

David Gardner: I'll just add, to think that we're still not doing the autonomous driving in any way, shape, or form at scale, I don't think people would have thought that years and years ago. I hear you there Aaron, keep going.

Aaron Bush: Well, in one hand it's pretty remarkable how long some of these incredibly ambitious technologies take to catch on, but we're finally at the point where we have actually helpful AI systems embedded into most of the software platforms that we use every day. These aren't the sentient AIs, but these are flexible, creative tools that can get a certain task done at lightning speed compared to the past. There are a ton of companies that specialize in different domains here, but for example, I just told one AI system to make a 15 minute presentation about my company's finances and it came back with perfectly aggregated and beautiful imagery. It happened in 10 seconds versus, that would have taken me like a week to figure out many years ago. One of my co-workers, she told another AI system to compile a documentary based on our past two years of virtual essays and that gave five options, again, within just a few minutes, which is something that would have taken months to do before.

David Gardner: Did you go with rom-com? Which one did you select?

Aaron Bush: We went with the spicy one, of course. It's incredible to see the rise of the smarter, used to be called no-code software, that really unlocks both insane efficiencies. But really, not only can anyone now work for any organization, from almost anywhere in the world, but now everyone has these incredible and efficient creation tools at their fingertips that people a few decades ago couldn't quite fathom.

Chris Hill: Aaron, let me go back to something you said there, you talked about software, but you also referenced sentient AI. Because one thing we continue to hear, you think about the global restaurant brands that everybody sees every day, Starbucks, McDonald's, Magic Freddy, all of them, they're all trying to make the sentient work like, "Hey, if we have robots flipping burgers then we don't need people to do it. " But it sounds like, from what you're saying, that's still pretty far off for them.

Aaron Bush: Well, in a lot of cases it's still happening and again, what we saw in crypto over the past few decades, anything as possible. But in the same way that a few decades ago, a lot of the jobs that people were doing couldn't have been envisioned at the time, today a lot of the jobs that are being done today couldn't have been envisioned 20 years ago. We have all these virtual world economists, people are starting to want to be terraforming scientists as we figure out how to take big next steps as humanity. I think as we look into the future, automation efficiency, in the same way that it's existed since the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago, we're going to continue to see big steps there. It's a mix of big leaps at certain times with the on-boarding of new technology, but also it's just a steady, ongoing change of the way that people work in the kinds of jobs that they have.

David Gardner: It's such a true point from history. In every era, I think we think that the jobs for our kids will be what our grandparents did. Just think about farming over the course of history, gramps was a farmer, I'm a farmer, my daughter will be a farmer. But, there's still farms, don't get us wrong, but jobs are constantly changing, obviously what robotics has done. But Chris, could you ever imagine how many people would walking around these days with MOF agents on their business card, MOF agents. I could never have dreamed that.

Chris Hill: Never could have imagined that.

Aaron Bush: On one hand, all of this change is incredible, but with every technology that ever emerges, there are quirks to workout and things aren't always perfect. Last week, for example, I heard about this guy who, again, using these AI systems, made deep fakes of themselves for virtual meetings. The crazy thing was, he ended up getting hired in 20 places before some bug in his system hit, and all 20 deep fakes went to the same meeting and confused everyone and it set the news ablaze and as with anything, it's going to take time to figure this technology out. There is always going to be mass outburst about what's right or wrong or fair or where things are going, but bottom line, it's really incredible to see how AI has improved. Even though it's not exactly where people thought it would go in the same way, we still don't have flying cars, even though that's the example people used a long time ago. But it's still incredible to see how AI has improved and be put in environments where it's super easy to customize and use and just be uses in remarkable ways.

David Gardner: Thank you, Aaron Bush. Now, Jake is asking about the future of work from here. I realize it's helpful to reflect back on a lot of what's happened and a lot we're skipping. Just thinking about genomics, I went in for a treatment yesterday and I can just flat out see new things today in a way that I couldn't have dreamed 50 years ago, let alone 10 years ago. There's a lot we're skipping, but Aaron, thinking forward from here, any thoughts about the future of work to Jake's question? Guy's 27 years old today.

Aaron Bush: Well, I think similar to the past, like in the emergence of the Internet and the emergency of like original software tools, it gave entrepreneurs and extremely valuable contributors and accompanies the means to build new stuff and scale it out. A lot of that same pattern exists today. Obviously the tools are different, the systems are completely different, the building blocks are working out a whole new level of efficiency and creativity. But if I were the start-up company today are trying to figure out how to add the most value today to the businesses that I worked for, I would be thinking about how can I use all of these new systems together and new ways to unlock creativity at a greater scale and speed than we've seen in the past. 

Whether that's again, virtual worlds, new forms of entertainment, new learning tools for kids which are always needed, etc, there's plenty of opportunity and the same way that lots of the interesting jobs of today didn't exist in the past, it's going to be the same way in the future. It's going to be the people who leveraged the building blocks of today to create something new that are going to see tremendous success. Of course, that's on the digital sphere, we still operate in the physical world and none of that's going to go away either and so there's still a tremendous advances we can make in manufacturing. David, you were talking about genomics and life sciences and space technologies, there's so many industries can use people who are thinking about using all of these new tools to unlock creative upside.

David Gardner: How many people were thinking when we started this podcast, what was it? 2015. How many people were thinking about Greenland and just what Greenland would become? You just think about how real estate was redistributed and you think about the self organizing political climate today in Greenland?

Aaron Bush: Yeah, it's incredible. My dad, again, he was using some of these systems the other day to create a board game about the battle for Scotland, and Greenland is a prime contributor in this new world environment. Who would've thought, what they've been able to unlock there, that it would be such an important part of the world these days? It's incredible.

David Gardner: Yeah, guys was Greenland even on Risk? Remember Risk, the board game? Was Greenland even a thing? People were blind to Greenland. You just never really know how things are going to play out. Well, Aaron Bush, thank you once again for your insights. Congratulations on your success.

Aaron Bush: Thank you too, David.

David Gardner: I still think I talked too much about board games. Chris, I think we need to keep the trains moving, let's go to Rule Breaker Mailbag, item number 4.

Chris Hill: From Ippolita S, who writes, "Hi, David and Chris, and shout out to Tom Gardner too, one of the best CEOs in these 53 states."

David Gardner: Very nice. She writes, one thing I've always appreciated about the Motley Fool is that you guys have a deep bench. People like Morgan Housel started at the Fool. The Friedman twins and genius stoops, hashtag, steps to conquer. Let's not forget the all euro AIs plus the ubiquitous green morph agents the list goes on. As a longtime fool, I'm so grateful for your company's ability always to come up with next-gen talent. But my favorite has always been Emily Flippen in part because she was one of the early female fools. I first heard on the final years of podcasts when I was a kid. My mother used to listen to them and she ran and my sisters and I would Bluetooth into her phone and run alongside her and listen as well. These days with web 5.5, Emily is everywhere, but I'll always treasure the 30-something Emily, because I grow up with her. What are a few lessons Emily has learned about business and investing that she did not know when she first started out, also, does she have any views on whether Chanca will be legalized. David, what a great message, and it gives us the chance to visit with one of our all-time favorite fools, Emily Flippen, so good to see you.

Emily Flippen: Thanks so much for having me here and I have to say that is some impressive company, I am considered alongside to their right, stoops, household, the morph agents, really an entire lineup there. Flatter to be here on the show and even more flatter but you believe this question.

Chris Hill: It's was great to see you, how many lessons have we all learned over the last few decades, but Ippolito in particular zeroing in on business and investing lessons. Chris, I think we should start there. What's a business lesson that you've learned in the last 30 years that you didn't know 30 years ago?

Emily Flippen: Well, genuinely are so many as you just mentioned, it's hard to narrow down and to be clear, even though I'm coming up on my 60th year here. I'm still learning and growing as an investor, as a business woman as I hope we all are. But one of the things that comes first to mind is really the importance of having a clear vision for the future of businesses and thus your investments. I knew that this was a challenge for me as an investor early on. I was and to an extent still am a skeptic on businesses that have a high level of innovation. But face these really large challenges with expansion. There are times, I think when skepticism pays off, which gives you that false sense of confidence. Like with autonomous vehicles or Twitter, but that's skepticism. It's shielded me from bad investments, but I think it did more harm than good because I never got behind some of the most innovative businesses of my lifetime. Apple isn't easy example, but also AI. Those black box businesses that I was so slow to the punch. I think sometimes not having that clear vision just holds you back as an investor more than it helps you.

Chris Hill: Emily, you mentioned Twitter obviously a lot of us look back with some regret, some sadness. What do you think was at the heart of Twitter's failure?

Emily Flippen: Well, just an inability to see what the future of connection would look like. When I say that, I mean the way that we communicate today. Think about what I'm doing right now. We're recording a podcast, say an outdated form of communication [laughs] here. But I'm sitting here and I'm recording this podcast on my SmartCast by a meeting setup by my artificial. There are just so many ways that technology berries itself into our lives today that I think Twitter was so behind the times on adopting to that it just decreased in relevancy. In fact when I look at all of the businesses today that have more than $10 trillion in market cap, they are using real forms of AI, and businesses like Twitter, and not to keep it limited only to Twitter, but so many of these businesses that have failed over the course of my life, we're just really slow to adapt to that change.

David Gardner: Emily, investing has always been about the future. Even though as human beings, we sometimes get tied to nostalgia and businesses of the past and that often doesn't work out for us as investors, it's about the future. EPA Leidos second question. Any views on Chanca? I mean, it's a question we hear a lot these days. The potential legalization, the ripple effects for different industries. What are your views?

Emily Flippen: As far as Chanca is concerned, I think I'm skeptical, but I'm hopeful about legalization. I have to say with Bieber standing for reelection, it was my hope that Chanca would become a talking point for politicians. We should maybe make it a more popular issue headed into this election season. But as we all know, they are just frankly more important things that I think voters want answered. The earth dollar devaluation, global warming, overpopulation, lots of things that are just more important to Chanca. I will say again, I am hopeful. I think there are use cases. But if you look at actually the consumption trends in area where Netflix has already rolled out its sleep solutions, Chanca has dropped over three times in consumption in those areas. I wonder if it's just not as important to consumers or voters as it once was.

Chris Hill: Boy, I can't imagine the Chanca heads like to hear that too much. But Emily, first of all, you've been very articulate. We remember decades past. Other illegal drugs. While they started to illegal, many were legalized. What do you think in particular is holding Chanca back? What are the reservations at this point? I think we've seen the science.

Emily Flippen: Yes, we have. However, I think what we're doing right now is trying to balance the demand with the supply. I think that's what's holding the business back more so than things like legalization or regulations. If you actually look at where Chanca is being produced in states like Canada, where it's being produced so widely than exported across state lines. Businesses right now are doing a poor job of predicting what demand in the state that they're exporting to will look like. Because we don't have that legalization, it is a state level issue, and the supply and demand imbalances are so individual state to state that we're seeing oversupply in some areas which is pushing the price down and a poor ability to predict those consumption trends. I think it can work out long term. That's again why I say I'm hopeful about the future for this industry. But I have to say, leadership and a lot of these businesses, as well as regulators, haven't done a great job in managing the supply and the trade for this product.

Chris Hill: I would say you in pretty well to Ippolito's question. Specifically, I'm thinking again about the clear vision and business. Let's go a little bit more toward investing that one more time. Emily Flippen, so investing lessons, I'm in particular thinking about, do you remember the so-called Metaverse?

Emily Flippen: I do.

Chris Hill: Yes. This was so much driving a lot of investment. It wasn't just mentality, but investment and obviously, some of it was so farsighted, some of it was so odd, but some of it was a complete misuse of funds. That's going to always happen, especially in a capital-rich world. That's the world we all want to live in, an abundant world where you can be wrong. But what did the VCs get wrong about the Metaverse?

Emily Flippen: Well, they weren't able, looking back on how metaverse has developed over time to differentiate the product that we have today versus just what was the Internet. Back in, say the 2020s, so when you're looking at the metaverse today, I mean, what causes a person to spend their entire lives? That's what was missing with those VC firms three decades ago was the future thought there. There's nothing about that first iteration of the Metaverse that made it so necessary and ubiquitous as a part of people's life that it was unavoidable. It's actually an interesting question because when I reflect on that first lesson, that inability for me to see that clear vision for the future, I wrote-off the Metaverse entirely because I could not tell the difference between that and what existed today within, say, Oculuses, so VR systems, the Internet, to me at the time, it was no different. As we know today, obviously that was not the case. But I didn't invest in the metaverse at all because of that initial skepticism.

Chris Hill: Some thing's change and some things stay the same. One thing I remember about you, I think this has been true your whole life, but disabuse me if I have this wrong, Emily, am I right? You still have never seen a Spider-Man movie?

Emily Flippen: I still have never seen a Spider-Man movie, I'm a cat person.

Chris Hill: Wow.

Emily Flippen: What can I say?

Chris Hill: I can totally respect that, but I, for one, Chris I'm excited about the coming fall release of Spider-Man origins. Emily, I think this might finally be the one that pulls you out of your crib and into the viewing zones.

Emily Flippen: Well, it would be a wonderful opportunity. I will say all of the targeted ads I'm seeing in my home devices are telling me that this has to be the first Spider-Man movie for me, so may I will see you out there, David, although maybe I'll hold out for another five decades.

David Gardner: Emily, we know you have the speech at the State House to give, so we will let you go in just a second. But if you could, and this is really in the spirit of EPA leaders. First question, if you could give some message to your younger self, whether it's about business or investing, to guide you in the future, what would it be?

Emily Flippen: I would just say, keep an open mind and you don't know what you don't know. It's a negative, I guess, note to leave on but I don't mean it that way. As an investor, I had almost two decades of investing experience before I experienced the great depression. That has been a long time building me up as investor to break me down very quickly. Throughout my career I thought that I knew how I would react to a scenario where I saw my portfolio in the stock market fall on the order of 70 percent. But I didn't know how I would feel until I actually experienced it myself. Just keep an open mind as you go through life. I will hopefully for the next years of my own life as I come up to seeing y'all as investors David and Chris. But I guess don't cry for spilt milk in the sense that don't beat yourself up for the things you have yet to learn.

Chris Hill: Well, Emily Flippen, it's been a little while. I'm delighted to reconnect with you again. Thanks so much for joining us back on this one special edition of Rule Breaker Investing the podcast, whatever that is anymore. Thanks, Emily.

Emily Flippen: Thanks for having me. This was such a nostalgic trip for me.

David Gardner: Well, whole new topic, Chris Hill, Rule Breaker, mailbag, item Number 5.

Chris Hill: From Joseph in Waltham Massachusetts. How come The Motley Fool almost totally missed the promise of Greenland? This is not a political message. I'm not saying the warming we've seen was all human-induced, and I'm grateful for what science continues to give us in terms of the bevvy of insights which are more balanced than people would have thought and eye-opening and he adds parenthetically, our increasing ability to control the weather seems like something no one was talking about when I first joined The Motley Fool as a member.

David Gardner: True that.

Chris Hill: He goes onto right, but still the undeniable heating of our planet seems like something you could have anticipated better, especially in your stock picking services. It's only because I'm a Million acres member, shout out to Matt Argersinger and your all euro AI bot. That I actually did finally start buying into Greenland. I realized Matt is probably more interested in his mountain communities these days, but I'm still curious whether he might come back on and talk some about his favorite Greenland REITs. Matt, what did the DMC and you saw that the rest of us missed PS because Matt, thinks some of the planetary land sales are overhyped at this point or is that an area for maybe a 10 percent allocation.

David Gardner: Well, a lot going on there. First of all, let me just say Matt Argersinger, great to see you again.

Matt Argersinger: It is great to see you, David, and great to see you, Chris. It's been too long, so happy to be back on this podcast, which I didn't think existed anymore, but it's here. This is fantastic.

David Gardner: You bet and I will say Joseph do about it. I know at Waltham, Massachusetts, I think that's where your alma mater is. Is this shot out to Brandeis?

Matt Argersinger: I was going to say, I think Joseph must be either a student or a professor at Brandeis because Waltham, Massachusetts, Brandeis University, by the way, one of the few universities in the world that still's holding in-school teaching. As you know most universities went virtual decades ago, Brandeis has always been a bit traditional. I can't believe I graduated there 50 years ago this spring, believe it or not.

David Gardner: Are you going to go back?

Matt Argersinger: I haven't been back in a long time. I should go back. It probably won't look like anything I remembered as. Although some of the older buildings might still be there so we will see.

David Gardner: Well, I'll say this Matt, clearly, Joseph is a pretty big fan. He obviously knows how you're spending your time. I'd love to get into that a little bit later. But Chris, what was the question? Yes, a lot of questions.

Chris Hill: Yes, what did the Dean see? You saw that the rest of us miss and it's a spot-on point. A lot of us missed this one.

Matt Argersinger: Well, we did. But let's talk Greenland. It's what Americans sometimes today refer to as the Florida of the North Atlantic for its many, of course, coastal beach-side retreats and boardwalk's, it's a fantastic place if you guys haven't been. But it's not just about an amazing coastline or its world-famous hot springs. Greenland geothermal technology, of course, now powers all of Europe. It's pretty remarkable. To Joseph questions, and thank you Joseph by the way, for being a member of Millionacres. It's great to have you along with us. Even I was late to Greenland. I didn't really get started investing or interested in the island until about 2031. It was a couple of years after the great crash of 2021. Of course, we all lived through that. I will say there was some infamous presence of ours back in the teens. The thought about annexing Greenland and making a part of the United States. Let's just say, I'm glad Denmark held onto it. I think it's a much better hand spread. Politics aside however. Greenland was always to me one of those last frontiers on earth. While everyone was following Elon Mask to Mars and beyond back in the 20s, I saw Greenland as this massive, captivating, untouched landscape, full place to explore right here at home. As the planet began to warm a little bit and the ice sadly melted away in many parts of Greenland, it started to slowly reveal itself for the world.

David Gardner: It's unbelievable.

Matt Argersinger: It was, as soon as it really started happening in earnest, David, I knew we were going to see a big surge in interest from energy companies, scientists, geologists of course, but also real estate developers. As I like to say in Millionacres, Joseph probably knows this, but real estate to me it always follows people and money. Plenty of that start flowing to Greenland's way a few decades ago. Speaking of money, here are my two favorite Greenland REITs, Joseph. The first one is Luk's hospitality REIT. Luk's of course is danish for luxury. It's the largest resort owner in Greenland, and of course, occupancy has really bounced back after the COVID 49 breakout we had a few years ago. It's great to see people back to those resorts. Then my second REIT is its Green Thumb REIT Grum. It's a collection of wind farms, geothermal plants, solar arrays. It's actually one of the largest landowners and collections of renewable energy assets on the planet. You also get a nice dividend with that one, by the way. There you go, Luks and Grum, my two favorite REITs in Greenland and then to Joseph, Postgre question.

David Gardner: Let's hold off there for a second. We're going to get outer space in a second. But let me just open this up to both you guys. It's obviously the Super Bowl time of year. It's amazing now the tournament that it's become such an international sport as well. It's great finally to see a team from the Far East win it all, but what year was it when Greenland finally started to show up Super Bowl ads? There it was. It's practically a continent. It's one of the largest land bodies that's not recognized to be that on Earth. It was just sitting there on maps for years. Nobody thought about it until this started happening. Chris, Matt, when did Greenland finally come to our popular awareness?

Chris Hill: I don't remember the exact year. I know it was in the '40s. You think back to when we were much younger and it wasn't unusual for there to be advertisements for the home state of whatever had the Super Bowl. California, Florida, Las Vegas, that thing. When Norway hosted the Super Bowl, back in, I think it was like 42, 43. That's where we started to see obviously the promotions for Norway understandable, but we started to see Greenland really pushing both in terms of the Medicast of the game. Then obviously, depending on your home devices and your preferences and privacies, a lot of us and I'm one of them got those personalized messages served up as well.

Matt Argersinger: I think that Chris if I remember, it was the year. No one lived on Greenland for decades and all of a sudden it was right. It was in the late '30s, Greenland suddenly had a million people. It was just out of nowhere. It stopped being this outpost for sciences and geologists. All of a sudden, you had resort communities really blow up. I was right when it got about a million people in the late '30s and then, of course, the migration just really surged and everyone started buying second homes. But I think you're right. It was in that mid-40s era where we saw that first come to Greenland commercial, which was famous.

David Gardner: Which was hilarious. Well, thank you for that, Matt Argersinger. Joseph had more in his mind than just Greenland. Chris, there was something about planetary land sales?

Chris Hill: I know we threw it in as a PS, but to me, this is the one I'm personally more excited about because I love thinking about investing in terms of allocation. I think this is prudent of Joseph to think about planetary land sales, small allocation, 10 percent, one, what do you think of that, Matt? Then two, within that allocation, what would you recommend?

Matt Argesinger: Definitely, I like the idea of keeping the allocation low, having a little bit of skin in the game, it's certainly not a big bet because it's gotten a little overhyped. I do have some big questions about some of those planetary land sales I mean, a 100 million dollars for one-acre plot on Mercury. I don't know. Have you guys ever been to Mercury? It's not exactly a sustainable place, I know Mars feels like it's already in a bubble and people are looking into secondary and tertiary planets right now. Of course, they're now building those massive hover pads on Jupiter and Saturn on the gas planets, which I just think it's unbelievable. Who wants to live in this gaseous atmosphere floating? But I know that's coming down the pike as well.

David Gardner: Mining rights included, there's no way that an acre of Mercury is worth a 100 million Earth dollars today. Funny fact, this is still true, I assume you guys know this, but the hottest planet in our solar system is actually the second planet, it's Venus, not Mercury, even though Mercury's sitting there tucked-in right near our sun. Venus because of its greenhouse atmosphere traps heat. Anyway, I'm geeking out a little bit on space. But Chris, have you bought any Off Planet real estate?

Chris Hill: Look, I had the one experience with the condos on Mars and it didn't really work out. I'm an investor, I'm optimistic by nature, but I've been burned once, I'm probably not going in even at a small allocation.

David Gardner: Matt, Joseph is asking, would you recommend a 10 percent allocation to this form of real estate? If so, how much you allocate within that?

Matt Argesinger: Joseph, to me, the upside is Galaxy size, of course, we know that, but even 10 percent seems high to me. I think maybe even at two or three percent allocation. Keep your earthly real estate a healthy, 15 to 20 percent of your portfolio, your solar system real estate may be in the two, certainly less than five percent. When you can buy a luxury villa in Greenland for a tenth of the price of a one-acre plot in Mercury that seems like the better bet to me. I don't have the vision to see what these one-acre plot on places like Venus and Mercury and those condos and Mars are going to turn into. If they're going to be a wonderful place for humans to explore in the way future.

David Gardner: I appreciate that. So often, we as humans can see what might happen and we see it well ahead of time then the hype cycle kicks in and things get overheated. I think that's where it is right now. I actually think Mars, not a bad investment today, even though it's premium-priced. Mercury, I think that was ridiculous. Matt, let me just ask you in closing, obviously, Joseph sounds like a big fan mentioning some of your work in your life now in mountain communities, one thing I remember about you, Matt is I think it was it on your honeymoon with your wife Gene? You guys literally climbed Mount Kilimanjaro for your honeymoon. I think I have that right but obviously, the transition to evolution, what's happening today within mountain communities, and what you're doing today, pretty remarkable. Could you just share a little bit?

Matt Argesinger: Absolutely, David. Yes, 2009 me and my wife of 43 years ago upcoming we climbed Kilimanjaro. Of course, back then, Kilimanjaro still had a glacier on top of it. It was still snow-capped. That is of course not the case today, but it's still a wonderful place to visit. I highly recommend the mountains. It's beautiful.

David Gardner: You bet.

Matt Argesinger: I've always been a climber or a Mountaineer and so I always dreamed of reaching those places, not very touched by man, where you could go and put your physical being to the test. I'm a little old for that nowadays, but of course, you guys, remember Star Trek V, this is going back probably 75 years now.

David Gardner: I've seen a lot of Star Trek movies scenes so I can't possibly remember what was happening in Star Trek V.

Matt Argesinger: There's a scene at the beginning when William Shatner, Captain Kirk, he's climbing up this rock phase and then he falls off a cliff and of course you're just watching this in your tab, then Spock catches them because Spock has hover boots, which of course are now all the rage these days. But back then, of course, it was just pure science fiction. That has just opened up a whole world of not just really courageous climbers like back in the day, but now climbers of all ages and experience types can now sore to the heights on Earth and of course, sore to the heights on other planets as well. Real estate, of course, is taking advantage of all that. You've got resorts now, well above 15,000 feet across Earth, which was never possible back in the day. The skies communities are building up everywhere. My answer to Joseph's question, which is, I just think there's still so many opportunities even though we're here in 2052, so many real estate opportunities on Earth to focus on rather than going intergalactic, like a lot of investors are.

David Gardner: Thank you, Matt. You brought a couple of reach out and in particular, I circled LUKS, looks really interesting. Obviously Greenland, fertile ground for a lot more real estate, a lot more trusts, a lot more dividends. I know you love your dividends, Matt Argersinger, and all you and your million-acre fans. It's funny reflecting now on million acres, Matt, I've always loved the brand and I know you you were there, you participated in it from the start, but maybe multi-million acres these days, or have you guys thought about billionacres?

Matt Argesinger: I would say we found out a billionacres just yet, but I think you're right. deca billion acres, is that the term?

David Gardner: But maybe not catchy enough.

Matt Argesinger: I think we'll stick with million acres for at least the next couple of decades and then we'll probably hit billion acres.

David Gardner: Well, thanks a lot for joining us this week on the special episode of Rule Breaker Investing.

Matt Argesinger: Thank you, David, and thank you, Chris.

David Gardner: That was fun Chris. It's great to see Matt again. Let's move on. Rule Breaker, mailbag, Item number 6, I would say from Off Planet land sales, actually, let's go to a much different place, Chris.

Chris Hill: Great question from Peter Adranker. He writes " Hey Fools I first heard David Gardner quote Arthur Schopenhauer in the teams. Here's the line and I have it graffitied on my Medicrib, talents hits a target no one else can hit, genius hits a target no one else can see."

David Gardner: Such a great line.

Chris Hill: To me, this is the central reminder for the Rule Breaker investor to scour the world for genius. Most of the genius I've seen in my lifetime comes from CEOs who had a vision and/or an invention that challenged, the status quo played, David to Goliath, and upended the way business was done in their industries and so often they seem silly. Netflix seems stupid when they launched, asking you to mail in DVDs in order to be able to see your next movie. Three Metro seems stupid when you had the mesh with the Cloud to access your Medicrib, instead of just pushing it out there on social media and there are many other examples. How many people wanted to watch characters in the past before they could be those characters today? 

Immersion probably goes back to the Greeks, but they couldn't have known or really understood, lived other viewpoints in a way my kids take for granted today. I have learned so much from Avatar. I mean, haven't we all? All that said, to me, no company embodies true genius as Schopenhauer says, "hitting a target, no one else could even see" than Babble Trulicity. I'm a huge fan of their CEO Larry McCloskey and what Babble Trulicity has done for every creature on this Earth. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I shed a fanboy tear, in front of my in-laws even, at the YouTube Bloomberg ceremony, where McCloskey got named CEO of the decade. For me, that put the icing on the cake since I've owned shares, ever since Emily pounded the table in 2044. Back when this was a podcast, I loved it when you use to bring people onto tell their stories, you guys seem to be able to pull in anyone for an interview these days. Any chance we could share directly from Babble Trulicity Founder and CEO Larry McCloskey, big fan either way.

Chris Hill: David, there's so much to unpack there. I will just add maybe the biggest no-brainer in the history of business awards, the McCloskey gets CEO of the decade. When you think about his vision and what that company has done to literally change this planet.

David Gardner: I agree and we're coming out of the raging forties where I don't think there's ever been a decade that had more different innovations, some truly horrible, but some so amazing. Then for you to say Chris, that it was a blowout, I don't think it was a unanimous vote. I'm not sure the voters release, but I think it was an obvious blowout and I'm excited because here in the studio, we have Larry McCloskey, Founder and CEO of Babble Trulicity and yes, as you mentioned, you too Bloomberg named him CEO of the decade, Mr. McCloskey. Thank you so much for being with us on Rule Breaker Investing.

Larry McCloskey: David, Chris, thank you so much. It's been so wonderful to listen to this entity that you've created over these years grow. I'm so happy to be a part of it. Thank you. Thank you for having me on.

David Gardner: Hey, thanks for doing an old-school thing up podcast. I think a lot of our younger listeners don't even know what that word means, but here we are, Mr. McCloskey and let me just start. Can I call you Larry?

Larry McCloskey: Yes, please do.

David Gardner: Larry, one founder to another. How our ideas come to us, how they start. It's different for everyone. Tom and I take a lot of pride in what the Motley Fool's become today and it started from the germ of, hey, maybe we can help people invest better in a world where people didn't really understand money. How did you frame up your initial insight that led to Babble Trulicity?

Larry McCloskey: Right. That's a good question. Most people know the story and I'm not a same to admit that it was an accidental windfall, right? As a lot of things are right over the years. But the point is still there that I was focusing in an area. I will go into the story a little bit. We all know about the things hit rock bottom in 2029. Took a couple of years to get myself out of all that mess, but I end up working or one of those DNA injection facilities where you drive up and get your hair color switched or big muscles or something like that, right? I'm working there and it just felt like I this pawn in a giant system. I started thinking, why aren't people using this for better? They are using it for vanity. Why aren't they using it to make the world a better place? I started specifically I'd done my thesis on the frontal lobe of your brain and why can't we change our DNA to use more of our brain? 

They say we only use 10 percent. Now we know that's completely bogus, of course. Can we harness our DNA to increase our communication abilities, right? I would stay up late, i will be working. I will be doing a lot of experiments, but I ran out of funding. Well, fortunately as we all know, I partnered with Wordle and they gave me all of the funding that we needed to crack the genetic code. I was looking at the big picture of the genetic code. They told me to focus more in groups of five and that really narrowed me in on the big breakthrough. I'm modifying the DNA and I hear this whimpering as I'm experimenting, right? This whimpering and I look around, there is no one in the room. I realize it's the guard dog for our facility. I couldn't hear a word, but it was a hint of like hunger of food and I was like, wow, I can hear this dog.

David Gardner: Larry, let me pause you there. I do want to mention, especially for our younger listeners, this occurred against the back drop of, I would say, increasing amounts of empathy toward animals, especially pets certainly, I mean, decades ago, all of a sudden, pets became members of the family. So there was a greater affinity that human to other mammal connection and then I also want to mention obviously we all know what Beyond Meat has become now and just how spectacular that industry has become. The quality of the food itself, synthetic, that tastes so much better than anything we could have thought. Especially for our younger listeners, I just want to lay in some of that context because what you discovered and what you did, I don't think could have happened outside of what I just described.

Larry McCloskey: Absolutely. Looking back on old movies, even how animals are caricatures, like the Budweiser frogs, they're burping out things they say [inaudible 01:10:56]. That's comical now that we know that frogs and amphibians have hopes and dreams, just like all of us. If it weren't for the research that our company, and it is Babble Trulicity by the way and I'm sorry to correct you or whatever, but I do want to get that right. It's Babble Trulicity.

David Gardner: Oh my.

Larry McCloskey: No worries I get it all the time. You haven't budgeted and like a lot of people have. So don't worry about that.

David Gardner: Chris, side note, but my recollection, you butchered a trade on Babble Trulicity?

Larry McCloskey: Chris no.

Chris Hill: Mr. McCloskey, my respect for you is enormous. I will confess. When I bought shares of Babble Trulicity, I talked about keeping certain stocks on a leash, which way back in the day, older folks like us remember, I mean, this is how pets, particularly dogs were dealt with, usually on a leash and I don't know about this and it had nothing to do with you. I've never own pets in my life. To the extent that I had doubts about Babble Trulicity, it wasn't about you and your team, it was about the animals. When I got a 15 percent gain in that first six months, I thought, boy, it's not going to get better than this and I sold all my shares.

David Gardner: Wow.

Chris Hill: It's David, it's the classic mistake, right? We've had this forever. What biggest mistake you made I sold too early. That was the mistake.

Larry McCloskey: While if you look back and quickly wrapping up the story through the guard dog learning that we could hear pets communicate with animals. I'm sorry to being used the word pet. That's so archaic. The concept of owning and animal [laughs] right? But being able to communicate and co-exist with animals and all the species on our planets. Taking it to a whole fundamental level of a greater place than where we used to be 40, 50 years ago. But if you look back in the history of Babble Trulicity, there's so many points where people sold on all the things that happened, all the skeptics. I've been sued 23 times. Five of those by animals and during each one of those times, our stock plummeted because people just didn't believe in me or the vision. Even though we've shown success after success in so many we have billions of people on the planet eventually using our product. All it takes is a skeptic or two or whatnot bad story. A bad story comes out like a ferret explodes and we had nothing to do with that. But for some reason, the point the finger at us and then we take a hit.

David Gardner: Larry that was a while ago. I don't know whether you refined, I guess it's Babble Trulicity's technology well enough. Were you able to capture that ferrets last words?

Larry McCloskey: Well, there was I mean, there's a lot of background noise and screaming, but it seemed it was mostly you can do better. It was almost a little bit patronizing like really this is what it's come down to. He was trying to use an app or something that wasn't compatible in iOS. I don't know that we all remember the story right it was everywhere.

David Gardner: Yes, we thank you.

Larry McCloskey: Someone hearing that would laugh a fair at exploding. But now it's a horrifying thing. It's like the Hindenburg or just all these tragedies that have happened and it's so great that our society is in a place now where you take back anything in our history where we sort of comically treated because we don't understand it. Disney movies. Oh my God, looking back at some of those, Lion King, my God [laughs] I'm afraid even tell my grandchildren that that exists.

David Gardner: Wow. Yes.

Chris Hill: Larry, we've seen over the decades, the truly transformative businesses obviously create opportunities for investors who are smart enough to take advantage of them, but they also extend beyond themselves. There are ripple effects that a business can create. You think about Amazon at the early in this century. When you think about the way Babble Trulicity has fostered global, mammalian relations. Are there any surprises to you at some of the ripple effect, businesses that have popped up as a result of what you've created?

Larry McCloskey: Well, whenever a new technology comes out, the first thing that seems to happen is people exploiting that. That's a shame. Gameshows, for example, just to name one thing. But slowly over time, the irony of the whole thing is that human started treating humans better when the animals were the ones that had to step in and say, look, you guys need to treat each other better. So it was the companies ironically that reconnected humans to one another. It was only where we had to step back and realize that we're all part of this together that those things can happen.

David Gardner: Well, I just want to say for myself Larry, I mean, first of all, Babble Trulicity, the company didn't just opened my eyes. But you think about looking back on human history now and for thousands and thousands of years, humans only were talking to other humans. The reason that I'm obviously first all very happy I'm an early stage investor. I wish you guys would have taken our Motley Fool Ventures investment at the VC level, but happy after your 79 percent bump on your first day as a public comedy, happy to you both and done so well since. But more than anything, I think it's the realization that there were millions of voices all around us that were human, that we were not listening to throughout all of recorded history until you, Larry McCloskey followed your dream and brought us Babble Trulicity.

Larry Mccloskey: That's right. If you just flashback to a point in time 30, 40 years ago and someone mentioned that they will be laughed at, that this would happen, like multi-speed sees communication, you'd be laughed out of the room. But you could say that about all the other things that would have seemed ridiculous, that we can't regrow limbs or maybe we should sell Idaho to Ecuador where we know how that worked out, I won't even go into the details of that. But there's so many things that seems silly at the time, but if you step back and have an open mind to it. I remember I was having dinner with President Manning at the Yack Sherpa accords of 45 and he just said to me you have done more for the world than I think anyone that I've ever met and how could I not be humbled by that.

David Gardner: Larry. Thank you very much first of all, for the special appearance on Rule Breaker Investing. Chris, this was your question, Chris, so you should ask the closing question.

Chris Hill: Thank you again for your time, we want to be respectful. Investing is all about the future, you saw an opportunity that no one else did and so I and others look to you and can't help but think, what else does he see? Not that you have a crystal ball, but if you did when you look over the next 20 years, what do you see?

Larry Mccloskey: I think someday we could hope to be in a place where automated driving would work, like vehicles could self-drive themselves.

David Gardner: Always 10 years away.

Larry Mccloskey: It's always 10 years away. Why can't we crack that? That's a project that I've been working on now and maybe I shouldn't have revealed that but that's because I'm like we got this right. Now because now animals are involved and another deer gets hit by a car, and it makes national news because now you learn about the deer and what he was saying in his family and his thoughts and so we have to get automated driving to work. That's my vision that that will eventually happen.

David Gardner: That's beautiful. Every creature has a story, but until Babble Trulicity showed up and Larry McCloskey, so many of those stories could never be told. Obviously you got a lot of fans listening, you have a lot of people who own a lot of your shares, Mr. McCloskey, we wish you the very best and the future of driving, it sounds like it's now so we wish you best of luck with that as well. Thanks for joining Chris and me on this episode of Rule Breaker Investing.

Larry Mccloskey: Thanks both of you, it's been an honor.

David Gardner: Chris, I will not forget having Larry McCloskey on this show anytime soon, that was spectacular let's close it out. Rule Breaker Mailbag, item number seven.

Chris Hill: From Dolores DJ Johnson who writes, hey guys, thank you for this episode, I was really excited to see I could submit this message to the address that still works RBI at fool.com and that I could do it in time for this episode. What you don't know, but may appreciate is that my entry was sent a few days ago from the bridge of the space carrier Audacity, where I served the US space force as a tech ops ranger, goes space force. Anyway question is pretty simple. I saw ahead of time that you were going to call this episode the year the market skyrocketed, to which my reply was going to be, which year is that? Do you mean last year? Because in 2051, the market was only up seven and half percent. Don't get me wrong, I like my up years like the next full, but 2051 was actually below average. Guys, why sky rocket and she signs it simple super awesome.

David Gardner: Well, thank you for that Dolores. Yes, Chris and I discussed this with some intentionally a few weeks ago. Here's the fun thought about why for some of us, when you think about it, the market skyrocketed over the past year. DJ, you're absolutely right, mark was up seven and half percent, that's a little bit below normal yearly averages. But with the Dow at 477,000 if you do the math, seven and half gain last year was about 35,000 points up. Chris and I were talking about this back when we used to do this podcast way back in the day, back in the 2020s, the Dow was at 35,000. The Dow was at 35,000 back in that era and now last year, in the subpar market year, the Dow gained 35,000 points, so skyrocket Chris, it's a relative term, it's where you are in time that really makes it a skyrocket or not. For those of us here in 2052, it was a decent year last year as DJ said. I like my up gears like the next fool too, I do too DJ. But let me say if you were one generation ago talking to your kids, if they heard the Dow went up 35,000 last year, I think they'd call that a skyrocket.

Chris Hill: It's something that Morgan household made a career out of writing about, and it's not particularly sexy. But this is compounding in a nutshell. This is what happens. It's such an astronomical number when you are staring up at 477,000 from down at 35,000. You'd look at it and you think how could we possibly get there. Basic compounding over time that's how you get to 477,000, David.

David Gardner: Don't let people sometimes your own self head-fake you out of the market, head-fake you out of the power of compounding. Chris, it was a lot of fun to do this with you again this week, it takes me back in the day, remember the day the market crashed, I'm so glad that we shared the year the market skyrocketed together. We want to thank our special guests, some of them I hadn't seen for quite a while. Voices that I'm so glad those of us up today get to hear some voices from yesteryear. Chris, most of all, thank you for you.

Chris Hill: I was so thrilled to get your message last month and delighted to join you in this. As you said, it's a wonderful bookend, 30 years plus in the making to the day the market crashed, but here we are at Dow 477,000. If you're younger, it doesn't seem like a skyrocket but over time, that's what the market can do for investors.

David Gardner: Chris Hill, say lot of the grand kids, fool on.

Chris Hill: Fool on!