What we saw from the outside: a formidable 6’6”, 220 lb athlete who had just signed a 10-year, $23 million contract. (about $85 million in today’s money)

What was happening on the inside: self-doubt, anxiety, and the stress of a boss intentionally sabotaging him in the press and among his peers.

In 1980, Dave Winfield signed the biggest contract in baseball history with the New York Yankees, who had won two of the previous four World Series. From the minute he arrived in the Bronx, Dave became an object of derision to George Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ mercurial owner.

For no apparent reason, Steinbrenner insulted him in public, smeared him in private, and reneged on multiple contract obligations. He seemed to make the star player’s life miserable just because he could.

It seems counter-intuitive that a rich and famous athlete at the height of his physical and commercial prowess—someone who appeared to have everything—would describe those years as “the worst period of my life.”

And yet, that’s exactly the story Dave tells in his new memoir Touching All the Bases: A Story of Power, Purpose, and Surviving the Bronx and what he told me on this week’s episode of Reasonably Happy.

The 12-time All-Star, seven-time Gold Glove winner, and World Series champion lays out his side of the decade-long feud with Steinbrenner, and how he kept making All-Star teams despite the toxic work environment. We cover his getting drafted by three professional sports leagues, Hank Aaron’s warning about playing in Atlanta, signing the first 10-year contract in sports, finally getting his World Series ring in 1992, and, of course, the Canadian seagull that got him arrested.

Dave also shares what it was like to finally make peace with Steinbrenner before The Boss’s death in 2010.

Follow Dave:
Instagram: @davewinfieldhof
X: @DaveWinfieldHOF


Follow Me:
Instagram: @Paul-Ollinger
X: @Paul-Ollinger

Timestamps
00:00:00 Trailer
00:00:50 Intro
00:01:56 Pro baseball in 1973, when nobody played to get rich
00:04:40 His first bank went bankrupt, his second bank burned down
00:06:25 Growing up in Saint Paul
00:07:40 Drafted by the NFL without playing a down of college football
00:11:37 The yellow legal pad and studying the veterans
00:14:51 50 years of the Winfield Foundation
00:17:31 Free agency and the first 10-year contract in sports
00:20:05 Dinner with Ted Turner and Hank Aaron’s warning
00:23:13 Steinbrenner throws his lunch across the boardroom
00:26:22 “If you don’t like it, sue me”
00:29:58 How he kept performing through a toxic workplace
00:31:46 “The worst 15 years of my life”
00:33:19 Honorary doctorate in Syracuse, first pitch in the Bronx
00:35:09 The seagull incident in Toronto
00:37:39 Winning the 1992 World Series with the Blue Jays
00:39:25 Lightning round: toughest pitcher, best teammate, worst fans
00:42:53 Making peace with George Steinbrenner
00:46:22 Outro

There’s an AI video making the rounds this week on X, aka Twitter. It shows an '80s-era holiday-bedazzled mall, with schmaltzy Christmas music playing, and families strolling about, holding hands, presumably talking about who they love more - Santa Claus or Ronald Reagan.

The VHS timestamp evokes a supposedly simpler time, in an analog shopping world, filled with now dead or near-dead retail concepts like B. Dalton Books, Orange Julius, Sears, and JCPenney. The caption laments the decline of mall culture: “Amazon and private equity killed so much of American life.”

Reading this, I could’ve sworn I heard a record scratch and a voiceover ask, “Wait, what did she say?”

I’m not familiar with the person (or bot) behind the account, but with almost 10 million views and 98,000 likes, her idea has traction. It echoes a line of populist thinking I hear or read about constantly: Big, evil money murdered something good - in this case, the cultural touchstones of your childhood.

This assignment of blame might feel comforting, but it’s completely wrong. You killed the mall. I killed the mall. We all killed the mall, and I’d do it again, because when you clear your mind of all the nostalgic bullshit, you can see that the mall had issues.

I’m as sentimental for the ‘80s as anyone. By my calculations, I peaked physically around June of 1986, and I stopped caring about pop culture shortly after Tears for Fears released Songs From the Big Chair in 1985.

That same year, I served ice cream at Atlanta’s Perimeter Mall Häagen-Dazs, where we thought it hysterical to pretend the scoopers were microphones, and sing “Raspberry Sorbet” along to Prince’s “Raspberry Beret.” We were young and beautiful, with heads full of dreams and full heads of hair.

So, I’m no mall hater. But the first part of her comment, “It’s actually criminal how many of these are gone,” implies that we should yearn for gentler days when behemoth retailers like Sears anchored the town squares of the time.

Sears was a great concept 100 years ago when 98% of Americans lived on farms, and 46% of female babies were named either Martha or Gertrude. The retailer’s mail-order business served this widely-dispersed, agrarian population with a broad offering of corn seed, hammers, and frilly Sunday dresses.

So yeah, if your era’s technology meant getting your fashion from the same place you acquired your farm implements and toilet brushes, Sears was the best.

Decades later, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, suburban Sears stores retained this general store vibe. I remember going there with my mom to buy Toughskin jeans (KidsXL, Husky), which were less denim and more industrial-grade canvas that only became pliable after 400 washings. While perusing clothes at Sears, you were treated to the aroma of fresh tires and sounds of carburetor repairs wafting over from the Automotive section, 100 yards away.

So no, private equity didn’t force anyone to abandon these stores. We quit going to Sears because it wasn’t cool. We opted for the Gap, nicer department stores, or —if you lived in New Jersey—Chess King.

Specialty retail, then e-commerce, created more satisfying ways to get better versions of the things we wanted. Oh sure, the Sears catalog was still an efficient way for a young fella to peruse women’s bras and panties in the privacy of his family’s basement, but eventually technological innovations also replaced that part of the company’s value proposition.

Today we might remember malls as some Edenic paradise, but they were not. Lines were long. Parking was limited. And, over time, malls became dangerous.

From 2019-2024, there were ten shootings at the two malls closest to where I lived in Atlanta. Ten! Is that private equity’s fault?

These complexes are in the wealthiest zip code in the Southeast, yet none of the gunmen were wearing fleece vests emblazoned with “KKR,” “Blackstone,” or “Amazon Corporate Development.”

Share

Collectively, we let the mall die because, as a society, we accept this bullshit. Instead of fighting to keep public spaces safe or mustering the will to look for parking, we just say “fuck it,” open the Amazon app, and shop from the security of our couch.

Bezos didn’t put a gun to anyone’s head and make them buy razors or Shetland wool sweaters from him. He just created a hassle-free way to get the things we need while not getting shot and still having time to go for a run.

Over a couple decades, tens of billions of your and my voluntary, micro choices added up to macro societal changes, including the closing of many malls. But it feels good to blame our discomfort with a shifting world on faceless, presumably evil actors who stole our culture and our youth.

For anyone out there lamenting the demise of Sears, I have good news - it’s still around. It’s called Costco. You should check it out - they have great hot dogs.

Not sure if they carry Toughskins.

THE END

WHAT DO YOU THINK? COMMENT HERE ↓↓

Vitaliy Katsenelson grew up in the Soviet Union - in Murmansk, the largest city north of the Arctic Circle. Today, he is the CEO & Chief Investment Officer of IMA (Investment Management Associates).

An award-winning writer, Vitaliy has authored two books on investing and the widely acclaimed Soul in the Game: The Art of a Meaningful Life, which has been translated into multiple languages. Forbes has called him “The New Benjamin Graham,” and his writing has appeared in the Financial Times, Barron’s, and The Wall Street Journal. His newsletter reaches a global audience of over 100k subscribers.

In this Substack live-streamed conversation from last week, Vitaliy and I discuss:

• Daily life up under a communist government

• The rise in anti-Semitism from both the Right and the Left

• Why he is so disturbed by President Trump’s profiting off of market-moving social media posts

Vitaliy lives in Denver with his wife and three children. In his free time, he enjoys reading, listening to classical music, playing chess, and writing about the intersections of investing and life.

Subscribe to Vitaliy’s Substack here or his newsletter here.

Subscribe to Paul’s Substack here.

Phil Gramm is an economist who served 24 years in Congress, including three terms as a United States senator from Texas and as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. He later spent years in investment banking and now serves as a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He’s also the co-author of the book The Triumph of Economic Freedom: Debunking the Seven Great Myths of American Capitalism, which seems particularly well-timed for our current moment.

I was thrilled to talk to Senator Gramm about his career, the misunderstood causes of the Great Depression and the 2008 Financial Crisis, and how alleged rates of inequality and poverty plummet when you factor in taxes on the affluent and the trillions in entitlements received by low-income households.

Senator Gramm entered Congress in 1979 during the Carter administration and served in the Senate through 2002, under President George W. Bush. Since he was a primary co-author of the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act, I was most interested to hear his take on the federal government’s $40 trillion in debt. Spoiler alert: it won’t end well!

I hope you enjoy this chat — I sure did.

“Tell me more,” says the drooling Vice President of Scripted Series.

The idea man continues, “Based on Less Than Zero’s even hornier origin story, it features tons of sex, cocaine, and Cindy Crawford’s daughter swimming in her lingerie. Bret Easton Ellis wrote the source material, and Ryan Murphy adapted it for TV.”

The brief pitch leaves the network rep with only one question: “Where do I send the check?”

The show is The Shards on FX, or maybe it’s from Hulu - I can’t really tell. Anyway, it’s about a serial killer who stalks the wealthy, gorgeous, immensely orgasmed teenagers of 1981 Los Angeles. It is crass, overly earnest nostalgia wrapped in the transparent absurdity of a serial-killer thriller.

I cannot stop watching it.

(Spoiler alert: the following paragraphs divulge important plot points.)

The spectacularly attractive cast features Evan Rachel Wood as a clichéd drunk, washed-up actress, competing for attention with her teenage daughter, Debbie. Played by Hayes Warner, Debbie is the quintessential 80s beauty - a feather-banged Barbie with a perfect body and well-earned daddy issues.

Her father, a juicy-permed film producer, slithers around Hollywood in Armani and his convertible Jaguar, seducing Debbie’s budding novelist boyfriend Bret with promises to acquire the young man’s screenplay (what would become Less Than Zero).

Meanwhile Debbie—follow me here—ends up in the sack with another bisexual classmate, Ryan. This guy not only has a huge schlong, but is Bret’s former lover, and recently banged Debbie’s mom on the set of a VHS porn production.

In this way and many more, The Shards scrapes the bottom of the television barrel, dispensing utterly deplorable, dehumanizing filth. It is putrid, vapid smut of the lowest order.

And I cannot wait to see the next episode.

Watching The Shards is a funny experience. I know Ellis and Murphy are manipulating me with their beautifully curated period piece. The pitch-perfect soundtrack, vintage Porsches and Mercedes, and designer wardrobes weave a tableau of the idealized ‘80s lifestyle. This is exactly the way you would have lived if you had loads of money, impeccable taste, and chronically absent parents.

You too could attend a prep school where kids smoke cigarettes, share Klonopin like Tic Tacs, and treat each other like human charcuterie boards.

The serial murders put a damper on the otherwise cheery zeitgeist, but we must endure them because, in the modern app-TV world, sex and drugs get you only so far.

These gruesome killings provide scenes where carnage and pop culture coincide in “on-the-nose,” but still glorious ways: a corpse in the parking lot of the Tower Records; hostage messages recorded on Maxell cassette tapes; a backpack with an Elvis Costello backstage pass soaked in blood. It’s that irresistible part of a Venn Diagram where kitsch and gore intersect.

Unable to turn it off, I consciously ask myself, “Why am I watching this nonsense?”

I feel the same way about another show in the “Rich White People Behaving Badly” genre, the Apple TV series Your Friends and Neighbors.

Its likewise beautiful, if older, cast features Jon Hamm, Amanda Peet, and Olivia Munn. They play out the preposterous plot line of Hamm’s newly divorced, middle-aged banker character who gets fired, then starts stealing watches, first-edition books, and rare baseball cards from his friends who, apparently, don’t know how to install Ring security cameras.

These shows aren’t different stories so much as they’re before-and-after pictures of the same appetites. But while The Shards teens come across as sophisticated beyond their years, the characters in Your Friends and Neighbors (YFAN) appear self-indulgent and childish.

The financial adviser who drives a Rolls-Royce (hint: if your wealth manager drives a $450k-car, get a new wealth manager), the man-child retired NBA star, and the psychotic billionaire, because anyone who has earned that much money must be a little bit evil, right?

Also, somebody gets murdered. Or maybe they don’t. But there’s a great deal of blood.

Both shows are reprehensible while being totally unmissable. But I hold the YFAN characters in greater contempt because watching people my age bumble around life is considerably more depressing. The teens in The Shards are shallow, but still radiate possibility. They’re using sex, beauty, drugs, and status to discover who they might become.

The adults in Your Friends and Neighbors have had their chances and screwed them up. Their promiscuity isn’t exploration - it’s a lifeline. Their drinking and using aren’t experimentation – they’re maintenance.

Maybe this is what our parents’ generation experienced from prime-time soap operas like Dallas and Dynasty, i.e. the joy of watching flawed people make enormous mistakes in enormous houses. We get to envy them and judge them simultaneously—to covet their beautiful lives while reassuring ourselves that none of it would have made us happy anyway.

The Shards makes emptiness look exciting. Your Friends and Neighbors makes it look regrettable.

“My God, that was dumb,” I think after every episode.

Then immediately: “Same time next week?”

In that time, I’ve interviewed some pretty incredible people, from a superstar like LL COOL J to Peter Singer, the world’s most influential living philosopher, to dozens of amazing authors, academics, and winners of the Nobel Prize, Heisman Trophy, PGA Championship, and Olympic gold medals.

Upcoming episodes include conversations with former Texas Senator Phil Gramm and MLB Hall of Famer Dave Winfield.

Thank you for your support, interest, and for sharing this with all your friends and family!

Share

This week, I’m talking to , the guy behind the mega-popular Substack Young Money and author of a great new book called Young Money: A Field Guide to Wealth and Purpose in Your Twenties.

After graduating from college and landing a finance job at UPS, Jack turned $6,000 in retirement funds into $400,000 by trading SPACs in his spare time. Then, by continuing to trade SPACS, he turned that $400k into $200k! This experience was expensive but vital.

Jack started publishing his thoughts about careers and finances on Young Money, and has built a following of over 60,000 “anxious but ambitious” readers. Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money, called him “one of the best money writers around.”

Perhaps that’s why he got a call from Penguin Random House and an eventual book deal. Like Jack himself, it’s a book of unbridled enthusiasm and optimism. It’s a trip to read about money through the eyes of a 29-year-old who’s had just enough interesting life experience but has lost zero of his youthful energy.

If you have a young adult in your life who has found her way or one who is trying to figure himself out, Young Money might be the perfect read for them. In the meantime, check out my conversation with Jack, aka, the pride of Tifton, GA.

We talk about working at UPS, billboards along I-75 (“Repent or die!”), the Allman Brothers Band, playing Call of Duty in his pajamas during COVID, Wall Street Bets, and the Wall Street Journal’s .

Stay gold!

Follow Paul on Instagram here and Twitter here.

Get Jack’s book here.

teaches economics at the University of Southern California, and is the creator and host of Econ Nerds, a project devoted to finding the economics hiding in everyday life. It’s like Freakonomics for the YouTube and Substack age.

Matt has the rare ability to take economic ideas that normally require a textbook, a slide rule, and three hits of Adderall to get your head around and turns them into entertaining stories about things like Ozempic, the lottery, OnlyFans, gentrification, and why it took humanity so damn long to put wheels on suitcases.

In other words, he can help you learn about economics without making you feel like you’re studying economics!

More importantly, Matt uses story-telling techniques to shed light on important issues where the data and the prevailing public rhetoric diverge. Examples include the true nature of inequality, what’s really happening with climate change, and the actual number of alleged police violence incidents. (HINT: it’s much lower than you might think.)

He’s using his great mind, a sense of humor and the power of economics to help spread understanding.

Follow Paul on Instagram here and Twitter here.

SUBSCRIBE TO ECON NERDS:

The Econ Nerds

The home for all Econ Nerds content.

By Matt Hill

The other day, I was doing research for an upcoming podcast interview with a 29-year-old author. I wanted to ask him about his generation’s outlook on money but wasn’t sure whether he was considered Gen Z or a Millennial.

So I opened a web browser and started to query, “How old is the oldest person in Gen Z?” But before I finished typing, Google autocompleted my search: “How old is the oldest person IN THE WORLD?”

As with so many internet rabbit holes, this one started with my hungry brain snapping at some juicy bait. I thought, “Heck yeah, I want to know that,” and hit Return. I learned so much.

As you probably could have guessed, the oldest person in the world is named “Ethel.” Ethel Caterham is 116 years old and lives—for now—in Surrey, England. Someday, humanity’s reigning longevity champion might be a “Chad” or a “Britney,” but that’s not going to be any time soon.

Currently, about half a million earthlings have reached the age of 100. While these “centenarians” comprise only .03% of the population, they consume 80% of the world’s soup and Werther’s candies.1 Who knew?

A person over 110 is known as a “Supercentenarian,” a title earned by only 1 in 1,000 centenarians. (Spoiler alert: the rest die.) At any given time, there are estimated to be 300 to 500 Super C’s on Earth, and Ethel is their Queen Bee.

Born August 21, 1909, Ethel was 20 years old when Black Friday kicked off the Great Depression, 34 on D-Day, and a spry 92 on 9/11. Can you imagine being so old that you think back nostalgically, “God, I miss being 92”?

Ethel told People magazine that her hobbies include gardening, puzzles, and visiting with friends. Shockingly, she did not mention jiu-jitsu, MMA, or parkour. There is no record of Ethel taking part in the Tide Pod Challenge.

Ethel is almost twice my age. The idea of living that long blows my mind. At 57.5, I don’t think of myself as old exactly, but I sure don’t feel young. I’ve got creaky knees, crow’s feet, and my hair is a misty mullet of a memory.

None of us knows when our time will come, but the actuarial tables give me an over/under of about another two decades. I guess I’d take that, but I’d prefer to beat the odds by a little bit. It would be nice to play golf until I’m 80, then enjoy a few years puttering around the old folks’ home, hitting the dinner buffet at 4:30, then hitting the sack at eight o’clock. I think I’d like to bring things in for a smooth landing just before hitting the big 9-0.

I have no desire to squeeze out another 26 years beyond that! If I lived to 116, my children would be 74 and 76, respectively—and I started late! My poor kids—err, my poor septuagenarian offspring—would have given up on the concept of an inheritance long before that time, if they were even still alive.

Sadly, Ethel’s husband Norman died five decades ago, and both of her children are likewise deceased. One of her daughters died in 2020 at age 82.

That’s crazy. Think of the things you can do if you live this long.

Not only can you share diapers with your 82-year-old daughter, but you could attend your 94^th college reunion! (Not that there would be anyone else there.)

You can reminisce about the good ol’ days under President Coolidge, remember when the zipper was invented, and utter phrases like “100 years ago, when I lost my virginity…”

And you get the benefit of compound interest—if Ethel saved a mere $100 per month, starting when she was 26, today that would be worth over $37 million!2

I love the occasional stories I hear about the 95-year-old who still drinks whiskey daily and smokes Marlboro Reds. I find these tales way more interesting than that goofball who wants to live forever. But that’s not Ethel. She never smoked and advocates all things in moderation, including booze.

Perhaps the most important lesson Ethel can share with is her rule to never argue. After all, who’s go the time to argue? Ironically, she does! She’s had more time to argue than anyone else in the whole world.

But she makes a good point. You’ll probably never hear the oldest person in the world tell you she spends her days either protesting about Trump while wearing a pink hat or wasting her day “owning the Libs” on Twitter.

“Never argue with anyone,” she says, summing it up. “I listen, and I do what I like.”

In other words, keep a positive mental attitude and enjoy life in moderation.

Who could argue with that?

THE END

Brad Todd is a political consultant in Washington D.C. You’ve probably seen him on CNN being smart and cordial.

Paul Ollinger is a comedian, podcaster, and writer in New York City.

We are both graduates of Rhodes College in Memphis, TN.

Check out my 2025 conversation with Brad on the Reasonably Happy podcast.

“People do not decide their futures: they decide their habits and their habits decide their future.”

– F.M. Alexander

If you want to improve, be kind to yourself. That’s the message from this week’s guest, Dr. Beth Cabrera, a positive psychologist, professor, and author of the new book Being Well: A Positive Path to a Healthier, Happier You. Beth is also an old college friend who's now the first lady of Georgia Tech.

In her new book, Beth argues that willpower and guilt are the wrong tools for lasting change (sorry, Catholic and Jewish moms). Because our brains are wired to survive, not thrive, and default to scanning for threats instead of good things, feeling good is actually the more effective fuel for building habits that stick.

We cover the chicken-and-egg question of whether happiness causes success or success causes happiness, why optimistic salespeople at MetLife outsold others by 88%, how much of optimism is genetic versus learned, the brain's negativity bias and why social rejection registers like a broken arm. (So, please don’t reject me. Please!)

Beth and I talk gratitude, hedonic adaptation, the basics of diet, sleep, exercise, and meditation, what it's actually like being the first lady of a major American university. And how the way to cheat death is to have a Purpose (capitalized intentionally).

Get Beth’s book here. See her website here.

Follow Me (Paul Ollinger) on Instagram here or on X (fka, Twitter) here.

We got pinged because our home is owned by our trusts, which are not New York entities. The good news is that, since we are legit full-time residents, we will get out of this. Still, it’s pretty scary to get this kind of unexpected invoice.

Suffice to say, it’s a wild time in New York city real estate. In addition to this new second—or third or fourth—home tax, there are a ton of policy changes in the works, including but not limited to:

• The mayor and the Rent Guidelines Board just implemented a two-to-three year rent freeze for all the city’s rent stabilized units, comprising 41% of the supply of rental housing in the city.

• Pending in the City Council is the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) that, when it passes, will impose major restrictions on a multi-family unit owners’ freedom to sell their building.

• Potential “Mansion” Tax reform could lower the threshold from $1 million to $500,000 transactions, increase rates by 40%, and switch the liability from the buyer to the seller.

In short, there’s a massive amount of uncertainty about the future, but all trends point to an increasingly hostile and expensive environment for property owners.

To try to make sense of how it works, I interviewed this week Paula Pant, founder and host of the Afford Anything podcast, a former newspaper reporter, and Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University.

Paula is a NYC-based landlord who has developed an expertise on the city’s rent stabilization system, where it came from, and how it works.

Subscribe now

Most people assume that rent stabilization exists to help poor people, but that’s not the priority. It operates more like a lottery system where random, lucky “winners” lock in below-market prices regardless of how much money they make. In fact, a recent Wall Street Journal analysis indicated that more than 86,000 rent stabilized households earn over $200,000 a year!

The system and its adjacent policies protect bad tenants, disincentivize capital investment and construction, and have led to 57,000 vacant apartments because it’s less expensive to leave them empty than to participate in the city’s rigged game.

The whole thing is wacky and totally non-obvious. I learned a ton talking to Paula and I know you will too. Check it out.

Follow Paula on Instagram here, or X (aka, Twitter) here. Get your free download: 7 Expensive Rental Property Mistakes to Avoid

Follow Me (Paul) on Instagram here, or X (aka, Twitter) here.

Get tickets to see me live in Sarasota 8/13-16 here.

Timestamps

00:00:00 Trailer
00:00:59 Intro
00:03:03 Hyper frugal in her twenties, for all the wrong reasons
00:05:31 A $27,000 down payment on an Atlanta triplex
00:08:21 Never be a landlord in New York City
00:08:33 The price to rent ratio, and how to run it on any apartment
00:14:10 Nobody has a right to 12% returns, and what a 9.9% cap would actually do
00:16:24 Rent control versus rent stabilization: 16,000 units against a million
00:20:16 If it were designed to help poor people, there would be means testing
00:23:36 True working class people are subsidizing the rich
00:24:23 How the units actually get handed out, and the friend earning over $300,000
00:30:32 The Rent Guidelines Board, the 7 to 1 freeze, and the resignation in protest
00:37:07 Check credit or verify income, but not both
00:41:21 The 2019 law and the $100,000 turnover no bank will finance
00:49:25 57,000 vacant units and the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act
00:54:22 Austin as the model, and where Paula puts her own capital
00:57:13 Analyst, not advocate. Data over dogma
00:58:36 Outro

This week, Zohran Mamdani announced that New York City will open five city-owned grocery stores beginning in 2027.

While I would normally applaud a politician keeping his campaign promise, the mayor’s plan to peddle poultry and potatoes is a dangerous distraction from far more serious problems. And it’s all part of his bigger, disturbing vision for a socialist city regime.

Government-owned grocery stores are a bad idea. For starters, they will hemorrhage cash. The initial build-out budget is $70 million, not including the cost of using city land and buildings that could otherwise generate funds for empty municipal coffers. He promises staple items at prices 30% below other retailers that survive on margins of just 2–3 percent (how’s that for “price-gouging”?). So, the stores will open tens-of-millions in the hole, then lose money on every sale. Not a great business model.

These stores will also compete with small, private businesses. Even if Crazy Z’s Mini-Marts aren’t selling prepared food, cigarettes or lottery tickets, their taxpayer-subsidized prices will penalize neighboring bodegas operated mostly by independent owners, many of whom are first generation immigrants. So much for lifting up el hombre pequeño.

The bigger issue here isn’t the stores themselves—it’s what they stand for. In his 2026 inaugural address, Mamdani boasted, “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.”

In Mamdani’s world, every problem has the same answer: more bureaucracy.

• Wife was mean to you? Call the NYC Department of Hurt Feelings

• Shower drain clogged? Consult the Manhattan Bureau of Pipes and Hairballs

• Your brother got a cookie bigger than yours? Text 311 and enter keywords #Inequality #MeUnhappy #NotFair

Like the man said, there’s no concern too small for government.

Yes there is! Indeed, the whole reason governments evolved was to help our predecessors deal with problems that required collective action in the form of massive resources, cooperation and coordination. If you or I could staff our own police department, pave thousands of miles of roads, or maintain a sewer system, we wouldn’t need government.

But Paul, “discounted groceries” sounds so good! Yeah, so do “hangover-free alcohol” and “zero consequence sex.”

Unfortunately, these staples are anything but cheap and, most importantly, they’re a huge distraction from far more critical projects. Since time and tax dollars are finite, every hour or dollar spent trimming the crusts off subsidized PB&J’s means less work done on more important issues.

Every grocery store press conference Zohran conducts is less time fixing schools in which 43% of students fail to meet state reading and math standards. Every million dollars squandered on public cheese shops is a million less invested in the tens-of-billions of dollars in deferred maintenance of city-owned infrastructure or emergency preparedness.

Don’t think this matters? Los Angeles reservoirs ran dry just before fires reduced 10,000 homes to ashes in one of the most catastrophic disasters in U.S. history. That’s what happens when government takes its eye off the ball.

But never mind that – let’s spend $70++ million to help New Yorkers save 60 cents on Cheerios!

If the goal were about feeding poor families, there are far better ways to do that. The city could simply send $500 gift cards to the poorest 140,000 households, meeting the same objective more efficiently while supporting existing food retailers.

However, that’s not the objective. This is about the government insinuating itself into areas of life where it doesn’t belong. It’s socialism’s matriarchal creep into citizens’ everyday life, absorbing power from individuals toward the end of state control.

Taxes go up. Freedom goes down. And once government gets into in your business, good luck getting it out. It’s misguided at best and breathtakingly arrogant at worst.

We should expect much more of it in the future.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Leave a comment

• Why it's easier to buy heroin than hire a hitman,

• Iran's legal kidney market versus America's black market,

• Winners and losers of rent control in New York,

• Why I can’t get a horse meat hamburger in California, and

• What a real accounting of scarcity and trade-offs actually looks like.

  Want more great podcast episodes about prostitution and horse meat? Subscribe now ↓↓↓

Get tickets to see Paul in Sarasota, Florida here.

Follow Paul on Instagram here and on X (i.e. Twitter) here.

Rate and Review Reasonably Happy here.

Timestamps:

• 00:00:00 Trailer

• 00:01:07 Intro

• 00:03:48 What market design actually means

• 00:06:57 Markets are better at producing efficiency than equality

• 00:10:08 What makes a transaction “repugnant”

• 00:11:45 Same-sex marriage as the textbook repugnant transaction

• 00:15:45 Why it’s easy to buy drugs but nearly impossible to hire a hitman

• 00:17:32 Iran’s legal kidney market and America’s black-market problem

• 00:22:10 The case against price-gouging bans, from Sydney to snow shovels

• 00:27:07 The real winners and losers of rent control

• 00:28:12 California’s ban on horsemeat, and the loophole New York doesn’t have

• 00:35:59 How a PhD in operations research became a career in game theory

• 00:37:02 The 3 a.m. phone call that announced his Nobel Prize

• 00:40:40 The kidney transplant shortage and what it will take to fix it

• 00:41:51 Outro

In his new book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind—a New York Times #1 bestseller—Gad argues that empathy, while one of humanity’s greatest virtues, can become destructive when it’s untethered from reason and directed in ways that undermine the very people and institutions it’s meant to protect.

Whether he’s discussing evolutionary psychology, free speech, or consumer behavior, Gad has a talent for blending rigorous research with sharp wit, and for challenging conventional wisdom.

Those challenges have made him a controversial figure. Not coincidentally, the long-time professor of marketing at Montreal’s Concordia University is now a scholar at the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi. (Hotty Toddy!)

Today we’ll talk about the evolutionary roots of human behavior, the cultural forces re-shaping the modern West, and what it takes to think independently in an age of ideological conformity.

Follow Gad on X here.

Get tickets to Paul’s upcoming shows in San Francisco, Southhampton, and Sarasota here.

Leave a comment

Also Me: You mean the people who started Johnson & Johnson, makers of BAND-AID, hip replacements, and a thousand prescription drugs?

Me: No.

Also Me: Oh, you must mean the family behind SC Johnson, the Wisconsin-based consumer products like Ziploc and Windex?

Me: No.

Also Me: You mean like Howard Johnsons?

Me: God no, you big dummy. What are you, stuck in 1966?

Also Me: Sorry, I’m not smart. Who are you talking about and why are there so many rich families named ‘Johnson’?

Me: Well, ‘Johnson’ is one of America’s most common surnames, so it would follow that there’s a few that have crushed it. The specific family I’m referring to are the founders of financial services firm, Fidelity.

Also Me: Fidelity - they’re kind of a big deal, right? And why are you asking?

Me: I’m asking because my podcast guest this week is Justin Baer, award-winning journalist at the Wall Street Journal and author of the new book House of Fidelity: The Rise of the Johnson Dynasty and the Company that Changed American Investing. It’s going to blow you away how big they are.

Also Me: Okay, how big are they?

Me: Fidelity is one of the largest private companies in America and they administer over $18 trillion in assets—that’s greater than the GDPs of Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and France combined. (Or, it’s18 Elon Musks.) Last year, they earned almost $13 billion in profit, half of which goes to the family.

Also Me: You like italics a lot.

Me: I do. Anyway, in this conversation, Justin and I discuss:

• How this financial family dynasty was built

• Succession planning for a complex and massive family business

• The rise of Abigail “Abby” Johnson, Fidelity’s Chairman CEO and founder’s granddaughter, with estimated net worth of $35 billion (check out her LinkedIn profile below).

Also Me: Sounds great. I’m going to listen and check out Justin’s book here.

See Paul (aka, Me) Tell Jokes Live Near You!

• Los Angeles: The Venice West, 7/21

• New York: QED Astoria, 7/31

• San Francisco: Cobbs Comedy Club, 7/23

• Southampton, NY: Sticks and Stones Comedy Club, 8/1

In this honest, fun, and sometimes stark conversation, Francis and I discuss:

• Why teaching is a terrible job.

• How the United Kingdom is “fucked”

• The side benefits of making TRIGGERnometry

• His love for Buc-ees* (which are closer to 50,000 square feet than the 8,000 I mentioned)

• Why the Stone Roses won’t help incoming PM, Andy Burnham

Get his book, and watch the Francis Foster Show on YouTube.

Share

Some of my favorite clips

What’s going on in the U.K.? (00:10:23)

Francis: “We are totally and utterly fucked.”

Why traditional media should be scared (00:24:12)

Francis: I think the mainstream media realizes that the game is up. Their viewing numbers are going down. Their engagement is going down. Their advertising revenue is going down. Their relevance is going down. They can no longer shape the narrative. They can’t do it any more. They have not only a business model that is obsolete, but they have been exposed time and time again for lying to the audience. And you can’t do that. Because your audience will go ‘I don’t trust you, and if I don’t trust you, why am I going to get the news from you.’ And they leave.

How teaching and comedy are similar (00:05:28)

Francis: Actually, teaching and comedy are very similar

See Paul Live in July:

• Philadelphia: Next In Line Comedy, 7/3

• Los Angeles: The Venice West, 7/21

• New York: QED Astoria, 7/31

• San Francisco: Cobbs Comedy Club, 7/23

• Southampton, NY: Sticks and Stones Comedy Club, 8/1

Leave a comment

He is best known as the creator and host of CNN’s United Shades of America on which he spent seven seasons traveling the country exploring communities, subcultures, and perspectives that often go overlooked. The show demonstrated his unique skill of helping people conduct difficult conversations without losing their sense of humor.

Not that he’s afraid to mix things up. Kamau’s 2022 HBO docu-series, We Need to Talk About Cosby dove deep into numerous allegations of sexual assault against legendary comedian and television icon, Bill Cosby, a comedian whose work Kamau deeply admired.

Kamau has a new podcast called Who’s With Me? on which he has already talked to Ted Danson, Delroy Lindo, Daveed Diggs, and Kristen Kish.

He spoke to me from his home in Oakland, CA where he lives with his wife and their three daughters. In this occasionally-serious, but most enjoyable conversation, we discuss:

• The difference between craft and character

• His love of podcasting

• Comedy nerd-ship

• The best part about Father’s Day

• And—most importantly—

See clips and leave comments below. In the mean time, subscribe to Kamau’s ‘Who’s With Me?’ Substack here and to Paul’s ‘Reasonably Happy’ Substack here.

Share

Some of my favorite clips

On podcasting (00:02:31)

Paul: Let’s talk about that podcast. I listened to Ted Danson and Delroy Lindo—great conversations with two very interesting guys. What do you enjoy most about podcasting?

Kamau: It’s a way to have conversations with people I want to have that I probably wouldn’t have if I didn’t have a work-related reason to reach out.

Paul: Would you do it for free?

Kamau: I would. In fact, I’m currently losing money on it, so the answer is clearly yes. The podcast gives you a dedicated reason to have those conversations, and it makes it less weird that I’m asking very focused questions. Because if I went out to dinner with you and said, “Tell me about that time you did blackface, Ted Danson,” that’s going to be a pretty strange way to start a conversation.

On being an “only” child (00:07:23)

Kamau: Only children don’t just want to be alone sometimes—they need to be alone. It’s a requirement. It’s no different from needing to eat or sleep. Only children need to be left the hell alone once in a while, and it’s not weird; it’s simply how we grew up. If we don’t get that time to ourselves, we get depleted.

I think this ties into the idea of a “social battery.” Everyone has a different-sized social battery, meaning a different capacity for being around other people. Some people actually get energized by social interaction—their battery charges up when they’re with others. Only children, on the other hand, tend to get drained pretty quickly by being around too many people for too long. Our social battery runs down.

Mine is definitely like that, although I’ve trained myself to function with a low social battery because I’m in show business. My middle child is the same way, and it’s helpful to give kids language for it. Sometimes she’ll be out and say, “My social battery is low.” What she means is, “I’ve been around a lot of people today. I need to relax. I need to be home.”

On Bill Cosby (00:16:56)

Paul: When you called out Cosby—on We Need to Talk About Cosby…

Kamau: Man—I didn’t expect this conversation to go from Scooby-Doo to Bill Cosby, but here we are.

Paul: Did you ever feel like the guy at the end of a Scooby-Doo episode exposing the crook who’d been hiding in plain sight? Like, “It’s Dr. Huxtable!”

Kamau: I definitely felt that way to some extent. So much of the Cosby story was known behind closed doors. People talked about it privately, but it hadn’t really been discussed publicly. When he went to jail, I thought, “Okay, now we can finally talk about this openly.” I had no idea he would get out of jail in the middle of our production. At that point, I thought, “Huh, I may never be able to leave my house again,” because I knew this wasn’t going to be popular with a lot of people.

There was definitely a period afterward where I took a lot of heat. It’s probably the best work I’ve ever done, but it also caused me the most personal stress. Every time I started feeling overwhelmed by that, though, I thought about the women who had spoken out. If they could come forward and endure what they endured, I could certainly take a few hits.

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into the live video w/Kamau!

In this upbeat and friendly conversation, Bruce and I discuss:

• What came first, ritual or religion?

• Why SEC football tailgating fits the definition of ritual

• How Balinese tooth-filing ritual has much in common with modern Western dental customs

• Why so many New Yorkers are jumping on the Knicks bandwagon (including someone’s wife who shall remain nameless)

See clips and leave comments below. In the mean time, subscribe to Bruce’s ‘The Nonlinear Life’ Substack here and to Paul’s ‘Reasonably Happy’ Substack here.

Share

Some of my favorite clips

Paul asks Bruce about the sacred nature of college football tailgating (00:12:33)

“A ritual is a shared, unnecessary act, that makes us feel at home.”

Bruce on why New York has gone crazy for the Knicks (00:17:09)

“Ritual is essential and it can save us. Because, whatever the problem is—if it’s loneliness, ritual is the answer. If it’s polarization, ritual is the answer. If it’s de-civilization, ritual is the answer.”

The performative nature of life—both online and IRL (00:22:01)

“There is going to be a human response to the tech…but also, the internet can be a source of connection.”

LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK IN THE COMMENTS BELOW↓↓↓

Leave a comment

Even if you belong to Andy’s army of loyal readers, you might not know that he is also the co-creator of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and wrote on classic 80’s TV shows, The Facts of Life and Square Pegs, which helped to launch Sarah Jessica Parker’s career.

In this fast-paced conversation, Andy and I discuss:

• His career in and out of Hollywood

• How to write succinctly

• His grammatical pet peeve(s)

• Whether AI will ever be able to write comedy

• The best advice he got from Susie Essman (aka, the secret to a happy life)

Subscribe to The Borowitz Report here ↓↓↓↓

The Borowitz Report

Home of Truth

By Andy Borowitz

Some of my favorite quotes

Will Smith and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (00:05:12)

Andy: I realized pretty soon after Fresh Prince went on the air that it was really lightning in a bottle. It was a very fluky success. It was this kid, Will Smith, who had never acted before. Although now it’s very much in the mainstream of TV and it’s like the most wholesome, all-American show in the world, at the time it was really going against the grain because the networks and the media—the corporate media in general—were terrified by hip-hop. Hip-hop was, to them, gangster rap. It was, I would say, the inherent racism of corporate media really showing its true colors—no pun intended. They were very terrified by what they knew that Will Smith had. At NBC, they knew that he had a lot of charisma, but they were terrified by what he might have. So they were always trying to get me to take the edges off—not that I could ever find any discernible edges in Will Smith.

Chat GPT Knock-knock joke (00:16:47):

Paul: I went to ChatGPT and said, write a knock knock joke about Andy Borowitz. And here’s what ChatGPT came back with. Knock knock.

Andy: Who’s there?

Paul: Andy.

Andy: Andy who?

Paul: Andy Borowitz,I just published a story saying 83% of Americans think this joke is funnier than the Constitution.

Andy: That is absolutely horrible.

Andy on Life Choices (00:29:13):

Andy: I say this to my kids—I have three kids and this is maybe my only advice—I say “I do not have a big strong opinion about the choices you make other than I hope that when you make choices they will contribute to your being happy and healthy.” And when you make a choice if it’s going to make you happy for the moment like oh that drug looks kind of fun but it’s going to make you unhealthy, you should probably cross that off your list and just try to think about the choices you make are you going to be happy and healthy as a result of this choice. And even at my age I sort of feel like that’s kind of a good exercise.

See Paul tell jokes near you:

• June 19 and 20 - The Comedy Catch, Chattanooga

• June 25 - ❤️ Happy Couples Show, West Side Comedy Club, NYC ❤️

• July 21 - The Venice West, Los Angeles

• July 23 - Cobbs Comedy Club, San Francisco

• Aug 1 - Sticks and Stones Comedy Club, Southampton, NY

• Aug 8 - Atlanta Country Club (private show)

• Aug 13-16 - McCurdy’s Comedy Theatre, Sarasota, FL

That is all - have a wonderful day!

Subscribe now

In her new autobiography, Fully Baked: A Messy Memoir, Rosebud shares the story of being the grand-daughter of James Baker, the former Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury who also served as White House Chief of Staff for Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

She also relates unfiltered observations on her parents’ divorce, her addiction to drugs and alcohol, her multiple miscarriages, and the death of her younger sister, Graeme.

Her latest Netflix special is called The Mother Lode. She filmed half of it while eight months pregnant and the other half after giving birth. It was named one of the best comedy specials of 2025.

See Rosebud’s upcoming dates and get the book here.

Some of my favorite quotes

On her tenacious grandfather (

Rosebud: My granddad was just a powerful guy -

Paul: He’s still alive right?

Rosebud: Yeah, he is. He will never die. He won’t die. This man has fallen down the stairs twice in the last year. He’s like 96 or 98 and he’s fallen down the stairs and he won’t take the elevator in his home — like honestly believes it could turn him gay.

Paul: Like Luna bars!

Rosebud: Yeah. He’s like, I will take the stairs every god damn day rather than getting in that gay machine. And I’m like they installed it for you cause you fell down the stairs and broke your spine. But he won’t do it. He’s just that kind of guy. And so there’s a stubbornness and a just a refusal to listen to anyone that sort of is in my blood.

On growing up in an affluent home (00:23:34)

Paul: Do you have guilt for being raised in an affluent environment?

Rosebud: No. Not at all. It was awesome. I look at my life growing up and I’m like holy shit, she didn’t have any idea how good she had it. But I don’t have guilt about it because I wouldn’t have known. That was part of being raised like that— you don’t know anything about anything. So you just get to imagine yourself as whoever you want.

See Paul tell jokes near you:

• June 19 and 20 - The Comedy Catch, Chattanooga

• June 25 - Happy Couples Show, West Side Comedy Club, NYC

• July 21 - The Venice West, Los Angeles (on sale soon)

• July 23 - Cobbs Comedy Club, San Francisco

• Aug 1 - Sticks and Stones Comedy Club, Southampton, NY

• Aug 8 - Atlanta Country Club

• Aug 13-16 - McCurdy’s Comedy Theatre, Sarasota, FL

Over the past two decades, A.J. has built a remarkable career by asking questions most of us would never think to ask—and then answering them by turning himself into the experiment.

He’s read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, lived according to the Bible as literally as possible, pursued bodily perfection, traced his family tree to millions of relatives, thanked every person involved in making his morning cup of coffee, explored the world of puzzles, and most recently spent a year trying to live according to the original meaning of the U.S. Constitution.

See Paul’s comedy shows live in NYC, Chattanooga, LA (on sale soon) or San Francisco.

The result has been a string of New York Times bestsellers, including The Know-It-All, The Year of Living Biblically, Drop Dead Healthy, Thanks a Thousand, The Puzzler, and The Year of Living Constitutionally. Along the way, he’s become one of America’s most entertaining guides to the intersection of happiness, curiosity, gratitude, self-improvement, and human connection.

What I love about A.J.’s work is that beneath all the humor and outrageous experiments is a serious question: How should we live? And instead of lecturing, he goes out and tests ideas on himself—often with hilarious consequences.

Today we talk about:

• The USA’s 250th Birthday

• Geeking out on compound anniversary words like “semiquincentennial”

• Summer blockbuster movies

• What I should keep in mind while I help my kids search for colleges

Some of my favorite quotes

What Darwin taught A.J about romance (09:14):

A.J.: One of my romantic heroes is Charles Darwin who, before he got married, made a pros/cons list of whether he should get married to his wife. And so, that’s some good thinking.

PAUL: Do you ever break that out and discuss it with Julie (A.J.’s wife)?

A.J.: She does not like that…because on Valentine’s Day I write a card that says “the benefits of being married to you outweigh the costs.” And she does not appreciate that humor So then I’ve stopped doing that joke So yeah, people don’t like pro-con thinking when it comes to love.

What do you think about A.J.’s romantic moves?

Leave a comment

Reminder to be grateful (11:03):

PAUL: What about America are you grateful for?

A.J.: I am grateful for quite a bit, I have to say. Well, I talked about this in my book. I’m grateful for, first of all, for democracy, for balance of powers. But I’m also grateful for progress — things like elastic in my socks. Because during this constitutional year, I tried to dress the part, because I was trying to get into the mindset of the founders and I wore these socks, and they didn’t have elastic in them. They had these woolen, knitted socks and they would just fall down and puddle around the ankles. All those little things that we take for granted—there’s a lot of horrible stuff going in the world, but let’s be grateful for elastic socks and elastic underwear!

Subscribe to A.J.’s Substack, ↓↓↓↓