Ted Audio Collective Hi everyone!
You're listening to After Hours!
I'm Yang Mi and I'm here with Felix Miheor.
Hi guys! Hey! So we are taping this a little bit in advance because as you listen to this we're presumably on vacation.
We're way ahead of the curve.
Given the time of year, I thought I'd start out by asking if you guys are going to make any New Year's resolutions.
No. Is this because you're not motivated?
He's a fully finishing firm human being so he doesn't need to do it.
And you two Miheor, I guess you're completely polished are you?
I'm so imperfect that I know that I'm hopeless.
And so I've come to appreciate how hopeless the entire endeavor is.
And he's modest also, how touching.
There you go. Well if it gives you any consolation I too don't know nothing.
So this is our crystal ball edition.
I feel like there should be some spooky music in the background.
So we're just going to spend the whole time making random predictions about the New Year.
Indeed. Emphasis on random.
Emphasis on random.
Alright. Okay Felix, you go first.
I think Apple is going to buy Netflix.
Interesting. We talked about this before.
I think we talked about this before.
I wasn't sure, should I say they're going to buy Tesla, they're going to buy Netflix.
I think I would love to see Apple buy.
And what is the logic?
So the logic is you're a hardware manufacturer.
Points of differentiation in that business slimmer and slimmer as we speak and so you need a compliment.
And what's the compliment?
The compliment is media content.
You can play that game better than anyone else.
And they are playing it, but not with that part.
You think Netflix is going to do it better.
And then you're always worried about leverage at Netflix and that problem will go away.
So Felix, when we talked about it, I found it to be intriguing and I continue to feel intriguing.
It feels to me like I would look at 2020, 2021 for something like that.
Wait, you're really going out.
You're going out a couple years with your predictions down.
I will give you my Apple prediction, though, because I do have an Apple prediction.
So my Apple prediction for this year is that they will launch a loyalty program, a membership program.
It'll be their version of Amazon Prime.
Here's my logic. Right now, their iPhones are not enough of a pull, and so they need recurring revenue.
So I think that they will fold a lot of things into this loyalty program, including Apple Care, including their music, including their new video offering.
I think they're going to include all of this.
They need recurring revenue, but also it's a new metric for them to begin to show the street.
We have this many people enrolled in our program, this much recurring revenue.
The big problem I see with Apple right now is that their investors are addicted to profitability.
And so unlike Amazon's investors, for example, who are used to the ups and downs.
And now Apple's looking at this horizon where they're going to have to just spend loads of money on entertainment and other things.
You can see the margin erosion, and so they need some kind of counter narrative to begin to...
So I'm just curious about this.
How do you think about loyalty programs?
Because I mean, I usually think of them as kind of like crack, or you know, they get addicted and then it gets expensive.
Do you think that's actually a powerful way?
I think that it's powerful if you can come up with a bundle of things that is very difficult for others to compete with.
So Amazon Prime is a great example.
It's such a comprehensive membership program.
So Apple would have to come up with something, but I'd be very surprised if they're not thinking really hard about what is their version of this.
Because it seems like they need to do it.
So I have kind of a big picture prediction and then has several pieces to it.
I mean, I think the next year will be defined by rising interest rates and all the consequences thereof.
Here's the underlying idea.
For the last 25, 27 years, interest rates have been following and the 30 -year treasury has been following.
And that was reversing itself slightly now.
People are already doing a little freak out.
But in the next year, it I think can go up 100 basis points, which one percentage point, which is still not a lot by historical standards.
But we talked previously about online savings accounts and how much that makes sense.
I think that's going to drive a whole lot more people in that direction.
And so once you get that, I think banks are going to feel pain in a way they have never felt pain before.
The second thing is, I think we have been building up a lot of corporate debt.
People talk about student debt.
That's not the real risk.
The real risk is in the economy is corporate debt.
And in particular, the rising share of triple B or near junk debt.
And once interest rates start rising, and that unwinds a little bit even, wow, we're going to see some ugliness.
So you're basically predicting an economic slowdown that's bigger than a lot of people are anticipating.
Well, I would definitely say, for sure, a slowdown.
But I think there are all these things that are interest rate related that are going to happen that are really quite dangerous.
And of course, the final one is in emerging markets and people reaching for yield, as they have been doing, when that gets undone.
I think there's a lot of things in the next 12 months as interest rates renormalize that have collateral consequences to business models for banks.
In some ways they make money with higher interest rates, but they're going to have all these competitions that they haven't had before.
So I think that's like a thematic prediction.
What about you, Felix?
I predict in 2019, we will witness the death of the plastic straw.
No way. So, by the way, it's a testament to that.
You mean it'll be so frowned on if you're caught in public?
Yeah, I think you will be, oh, my God, who are you using a plastic straw?
Part of it is just a testament to the power of YouTube.
So there is this one video where you see how plastic straws end up in the ocean and how just, you know, all the terrible things that happen.
That alone has already led to a 5 ,000 percent increase for the demand of paper straws.
From 1 to 50? Or from...
How do you measure that?
So I think it's one of these things that is just was thoughtless, right?
There's no real benefit to having plastic straws.
And we just got used to it.
And we didn't really think about the consequences.
And then all this silliness leads to really serious environmental consequences.
There's one person that points it out and then you shoot the fabulous video and you create.
So there's massive entry in this space.
I thought the whole plastic straw debate was a little weird in the sense that there's no significant long -run effects.
You know, it's like, it makes people feel better, but in terms of actually the reality of our pollution and our...
So plastic in the ocean is a general issue and plastic straws is like a small...
With the twist that because plastic straws are really small, they're much more likely to be ingested, to be tangled...
Even if you're a species swimming in the ocean, it's hard to have a really unpleasant interaction with a pet bottle.
It's much more likely that you get in trouble because of a plastic straw.
So we're all going to be using paper straws?
Yes. If you think about it, what a weird species we are that we need straws.
Like, it's too much for us to actually lift and hold a cup and tick it.
Which is actually interesting that we don't go from plastic straws to no straws.
To no straws. That we go from plastic straws to paper straws.
Okay, here's one. So, 2019, this will be the year when Instagram becomes polluted.
And by polluted... Now, right now, Instagram is still relatively pristine, relative to Facebook.
But this is the year when the big monetization effort happens.
Oh, yeah. So Facebook is under so much pressure right now.
And there is a ceiling with respect to display advertising on Facebook.
So here's what I predict.
I predict that you're going to see so many more sophisticated tools for social influencers to be connected to advertisers.
And then on top of that, you're going to see a lot more, quote, unquote, innovation at Instagram designed to create more engagement.
And you already see this happening.
So they've launched stories and they've launched live.
But they have now launched what they call close friends.
Where if you have a lot of friends, you can actually create an inner circle called close friends.
So what do big influencers do?
The first thing they did is they went offline and they started charging people to be a close friend.
So I predict all of that monetization will come back onto the platform.
They're doing more with their direct messaging.
So now you can send voice files.
It's just going to become more expansive.
It's going to become more polluted.
I think they're going to turn a lot of attention to monetizing Instagram as well as WhatsApp.
Yeah. And will it work?
I guess what I would say is enjoy Instagram now.
I understand. I have an Instagram prediction since we're on Instagram.
I think 2019 is the year in which acne will make a big comeback on Instagram.
Acne? Yes. You mean facial acne?
Yes. And the reason why I'm horrified about it.
I don't even want to ask a follow up.
This is a different version of pollution, I think.
So my sense is we are completely tired of the manufactured, manicured lives and personalities that we see.
All these filters. It's like all the sunrises, all the sunsets, all the clouds, all the beautiful people, everything looks pristine.
It's totally nauseous.
And it's a life that no one actually leads.
And so what you see now, and actually it's literally true for acne.
I just thought it's like the strangest part of the movement is that all of a sudden you see people, this is actually what my breakfast look like.
And guess what? It's not beautiful.
It's a mess. This is what I look like without makeup.
This is actually, you know, the side where you see that I'm 25 pounds overweight and so on and so on.
So I think there is a demand for authenticity that I think is just beginning to show.
And I think it's going to be really big in 2019.
Oh, it's an interesting one.
Okay. Well, I'll make a quick Instagram prediction, which is I'll finally sign up.
Well, now it's for you because you don't have to filter.
Exactly. This is your true breakfast.
Yeah, and I can make sure that prediction comes true.
So I have a quick prediction.
The cloud bursts, which is a way of saying, not true for the big ones, but the valuations for a whole bunch of cloud computing companies are so out of control.
So I think Azure, AWS, the big folks just continue to dominate.
The valuations that have underpinned lots of cloud computing companies that are basically being thought of as takeover candidates is going to pop.
Oh, interesting. So we saw this year, we saw so many acquisitions with GitHub and with Red Hat and Qualtrics.
I think that's over, and it's not going to be as easy as it was.
So I think there's a whole piece of the cloud computing world, especially the valuation piece, which bursts, as an AWS just continue to rock it and just push things even harder and harder and harder.
That's a good one. I also really just wanted to say the cloud bursts.
I have one now. Imagine a chart with two lines on it, one the slope going up and one the slope going down.
Slope going down, baseball, slope going up, esports.
Oh, I like that. So esports is when...
I would love to hear you try to explain what esports is.
No, this was the perfect invitation for you to show your expertise.
So, okay, for our listeners, I should disclose that I have a vested interest in many players in the esports industry, so I am not without interest in this particular case.
But esports is competitive gaming, video gaming.
And by every metric, the sport has grown.
But there's two lines, right?
So baseball, if you look at the metrics, viewership is steadily declined.
The audience has gotten older.
But more importantly, the games have become unwatchable, really.
They're like four hours long now.
I was thinking about this recently.
If baseball didn't exist and someone invented the game today, what are the odds that any young child, like even one, would find it to be interesting in any way?
On the other hand, if you look at esports, every metric is going up.
And importantly, what's happened in esports is that now what you have is you have lots and lots of players that have begun to invest in the industry.
So you have sponsors coming in, you have advertisers, you have much heftier ownership coming in.
And as a result, there's an ecosystem now that's becoming much more robust.
The teams have become much more professionalized.
They're beginning to see broadcasting rights and all the rest.
And one of the things I think we've learned across all professional sports is that when you develop an ecosystem like that, it becomes harder and harder to kill, which is why baseball refuses to die.
Little side prediction, Team Liquid will once again win NA LCS.
Wow. Can I ask you a follow -up prediction?
Which is in your chart, there are two downward sloping lines.
One is football and one is baseball.
No, no, no. Which is steeper?
I mean, football is in a weird place where the metrics continue to be strong, but there's so much cultural momentum against the sport.
And you don't think that matters?
No, I think it matters.
I think it makes it so hard to be a fan.
There's so many things about football that make it really hard to be a fan.
But yet the sport itself is really robust.
And as a fan, I got to tell you, you live with the internal contradiction all the time.
Because you love watching the sport and then you see the NFL do something and you're so filled with shame.
And you don't think that's untenable?
Well... So I would say that I think the baseball slope is negative and going down, but I kind of feel like football has the potential to just fall apart.
Yeah, they really seem to be doing everything in their power to make sure that happens, which is really incredible.
But having said that, one final note about esports.
One of the classic esports is a game called League of Legends.
And their world's finals this year, their viewership was equivalent to the Super Bowl.
Wow. Okay, let's take a break and we'll be right back.
Okay, we're back. Another prediction.
2019 will be the year we see our first autonomous driving lanes.
And by that I mean, one of the big problems with autonomous vehicles is that they have to mix with non -autonomous vehicles.
And I think people are afraid to put them on the road because they're afraid of the accidents.
And so one way to get around that is if you just create a lane for autonomous vehicles.
And so imagine, for example, if the 101 corridor between San Francisco and San Jose, just that 101 strip, there was one lane dedicated to just autonomous vehicles.
Or some city decided there's just one strip that we're going to allow autonomous vehicles to go back and forth.
I think that's one way that you'll start to see possibly the mainstreaming of autonomous vehicles.
Yeah, interesting. I think it's similar to the idea of forming these platoons where you have the first truck is driven by, you know, it's a traditional truck.
And then all the other trucks right behind it are autonomous vehicles.
And all they really need to do is with some minimal distance drive.
Essentially like driving the super long truck.
Right. Because how else are you going to begin to mainstream these vehicles?
It's a really interesting idea.
Okay, Felix, you got one?
Yes, so I think in 2019, maybe a little longer, we'll see a really serious decline in the number of emergency room visits.
Why? And I did not know and I was really surprised to read it.
70 percent of emergency room visits are, I always thought you go to the emergency room if you have an accident.
70 percent of them are the result of people visiting the ER.
They have chronic diseases.
And so now that we can monitor chronic diseases externally where we can measure your blood sugar every minute, where we can actually bring you in way before you're in bad shape, the number of people who need to see the ER is going to decline precipitously.
So that's like an interesting side story to something that I think has to do with wearable technology.
So I got one, a little bit of a Hollywood one, which is this will be the year of the death of the sequel.
So the sequel has just been a massive engine for Hollywood and it's become maybe the most important part of their whole equation.
And there are so many sequels coming out this coming year and I think they're going to turn out to be duds and it's going to put a huge hole in the economic model.
Interesting, like which ones are coming out?
So there are so many.
So there's Avengers, there's Star Wars, there's Frozen, there's Lego, there's Wonder Woman, there's Toy Story.
They're all coming out of Spider -Man and so I think a lot of them could end up going bust because now the mileage on them, we've already started to see this with Star Wars, right?
The mileage on them is getting a little bit too old.
And so once that pops and that sequel engine falls apart in combination with what we know is going on with television, the rebirth of television and streaming, I think there's some real issues for them.
Because that has been so important to their economic engine.
But can we really live without Toy Story 18?
I know, it's going to be crushing.
So large. Well, we do.
I have a Hollywood prediction, less sophisticated than yours.
I think this is in forever the first year when Meryl Streep is not going to be nominated for an Oscar.
Wow, shocking. You're going out way out of Hollywood.
Wait, but is she in something?
Yes, she is. Mary Poppins.
Yes, Mary Poppins. I think the one that might be...
It would be her 22nd nomination.
So it was just amazing.
You don't think so?
You're going against Meryl.
I know, I know. So I have two Amazon predictions.
My first Amazon prediction is that this is the year that the growth of Amazon's advertising business freaks everyone out.
So right now, Google has about 37 % of digital advertising revenue.
Facebook is sitting back at 20%.
So together they're almost 60%, and Amazon is sitting at 4%.
This is the year where Amazon experiences not only dramatic, dramatic growth, but you're going to see them begin to steal, share away from Google and Facebook.
So there are two types of data that Amazon has that neither one of these groups have.
So Amazon has purchased data.
They know what you buy.
And they also know your price sensitivities on everything.
So they know what you browsed, and that you looked at these two items, and then you chose this item.
This information is so, so valuable to advertisers that I predict they're going to be able to ramp up that advertising engine.
I like that. Become the clear number three.
You know, we were talking a few episodes ago about who's going to be the number three.
It's going to be Amazon.
And then interesting to watch the reaction from Facebook and from Google.
Google's interesting because they have a lot of under -monetized assets.
So they have some really interesting degrees of freedom.
Facebook, on the other hand, they're not diversified.
So you're not going to buy the portal?
No, but that's why I think, back to my earlier prediction, you're going to see Facebook put a lot of energy into Instagram.
Instagram, yeah, fair enough.
What's that? Oh, that's good.
Did you have another Amazon prediction?
Oh, yeah. So everybody's talking about Amazon and pharmaceuticals and thinking about, oh, are they going to buy health insurance?
I actually think it's interesting to consider a different route for Amazon.
And that is, it would not surprise me if they purchased one of the big generic drug manufacturers.
The generic industry is a really tough industry because there's price pressure.
You got, yeah. Even in markets where generic drug manufacturers could charge a high price, there's a lot of public pressure to lower the price.
So it's becoming a, it's a tough industry.
It's a tough industry.
There aren't that many great players.
Amazon could come in.
Interesting. And buy somebody?
Yeah. And they can subsidize the business.
They could keep prices low.
They could make it really convenient for consumers, really user -friendly.
They purchased a Boston -based startup recently called PillPack, which delivers prescription drugs.
But also it's a fabulous business for Amazon.
Because to your point about these maintenance diseases, chronic diseases, so you're basically getting people habitually getting their generic drugs from Amazon.
It's a beautiful, beautiful model for Amazon.
I have a slight Amazon prediction, which is I think bricks and mortar turns out to be way more complicated than they think.
And so their efforts in bricks and mortar.
Oh, Amazon Go? Are you talking about Amazon Go?
Amazon Go and even Whole Foods and their other retail ideas.
I think it's going to turn out to be really harder than they thought.
And it's not what they necessarily know.
And they're going to question that entire bricks and mortar piece of it.
So that's my Amazon prediction.
I have a longer -term prediction.
So I don't know exactly when it will happen.
But you know how over the last maybe two, three years, skepticism with regards to immigration has just grown every year.
So I think part of to do with the crisis in Europe and immigration out of the Middle East.
But also in the U .S., I think the immigration conversation is shockingly different from what it used to be historically.
And my prediction is that this will completely reverse as a function of demographics and labor force participation.
So we completely underestimate what it means for so many people to retire.
So if you look at just the age distribution in most mature economies, the labor force will shrink dramatically.
And I'll give you one number.
If we wanted to keep same labor force participation that we have today, we wanted to maintain that even in 2050, 2060, that means we're missing 30 million people.
Where do the 30 million people come from?
Immigration. And I think the moment the question is, what do you want, social security or immigration?
That will change everything.
Well over what time frame do you think this will happen?
I think the hardest part to know is how this interacts with the business cycle.
Because if we have a downturn in the business cycle, the way my good friend Meir predicted, then of course the labor force participation issues are very different because there's not enough jobs for people.
But if you have an economy that is doing well, you will see just like the situation today where literally tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of jobs that cannot be filled.
And at some point we will see the toughest competition you can imagine for talented young people out of Africa, out of Latin America.
That one's really interesting.
Okay, so I have a little bit of a political prediction which I gave at a dinner party recently and I was laughed at.
So I feel it's all the more important for me to say it again so that when it happens, I can listen, you can laugh but you will not hear it as much but the dude will hear.
No, we can laugh. You can laugh.
My political prediction is that Trump announces in 2019 he's not running again.
Thank you. So common wisdom is he loves it so much, everything is great and he's going to want to be in office because he loves the trappings.
I think it's exactly wrong.
I think he's going to find the entire situation untenable and he's going to make a calculation which is the right calculation which is do I want to run again and do I want to expose myself and do I want to live with this junk for the next 18 months or longer and the answer is no and he's going to not run
again in 2020 and he'll announce it in 2019.
So laugh as you will.
We will meet again in a year and you can laugh at me again.
It strikes me as, I hadn't thought about it but strikes me as positive.
I've always thought he wouldn't finish the first term and now I really feel like it and I think with the house moving over, I mean his life is going to get so much worse than it was and he's going to think to himself do I need this?
Anyway, that's my political prediction.
Interesting. Okay, I have a prediction and a different about food.
Nice. I think 2019 is the year that you're going to start seeing delivery only restaurant brands.
If you think about the economics of so many of these restaurants, it turns out that more and more of their business is devoted to delivery and the economics of maintaining a brick and mortar presence for people to come and sit down and eat is less and less compelling for many restaurants.
Not for all but for lots of them, right?
And then if you think about what the next step of that is, I think you're going to start to see these delivery marketplaces like Grubhub and Seamless and Uber Eats begin to offer cloud kitchens where we're going to open a bunch of kitchens.
You can actually come in, create your restaurant brand, optimize for delivery, and we will feature you on our platform.
And so you're going to see cloud kitchens, you're going to see delivery only restaurant brands opening up in these cloud kitchens, and it's going to be a way for these delivery marketplaces to begin to create more efficiency but also to monetize more their platform.
And so on this, how do you create a restaurant brand?
I think this is so interesting, right?
How do you create a restaurant brand without a physical presence?
So let me ask it slightly different way.
When you open up Seamless or you open up Uber Eats, and let's say you want pizza, you essentially get a choice between hundreds and hundreds of different restaurants selling pizza.
If one day you open it up and the app was featuring a really slick -looking new pizza place and there was a discounted price, a lot of people...
You would never even know.
You would never even know.
So you would do this, right?
If you look at the evolution of most platforms that we've seen so far, there's always this stage where they open up their platform to everyone and it's super democratic and they get traction that way.
And then the second step is when they start to monetize by creating favoritism on the platform, right?
Sponsored products, sponsored placement, things like that.
And then the third stage is always where they try to create more and more dependence on their platform.
And so I'm sure that if you're Uber Eats, you're Grubhub, all of these places, they've got to be thinking about, wow, how can we make people reliant on our platform?
Can we create a kitchen platform?
But also, it will create so much more efficiency in the delivery if it's all coming from one place.
You could have 20 different restaurants in one warehouse, just pumping out food.
The interesting thing to me about this is that the restaurant industry is kind of characterized by excessive entry, meaning everybody wants to start a new restaurant and they think they can do it.
And this is going to lower the barrier to doing that.
So there's going to be even more inefficient entry.
I'm going to convince myself I should set up a Dosa stand.
But in the same way that Amazon's Marketplace made it easier and easier for anyone to start selling something online, this will make it easier and easier for anyone to start selling food online.
Interesting. I like that.
So I can have a macro technology kind of thing.
It's a little bit of a prediction, but it is that artificial intelligence has been driving the conversation at a high level for so long.
And I think we're going to see the bloom come off that rose.
And I think genetics and health sciences are going to become the vanguard of technology.
Again, there are so many interesting things happening there that people are not paying attention to, from small molecule stuff to the gene editing stuff, to the CRISPR stuff.
And I think people are going to realize that the really, really exciting stuff is life sciences stuff.
So it's like a super macro technology thing, but I think it's the return of genetics and the return of life sciences as a really exciting technology space.
Huh, okay. So we're almost out of time, but let's do just a couple more, but let's do them fast.
I'll go first. 2019, we will see our first cannabis breakout product.
Everybody in cannabis is creating cannabis drinks and cannabis this and cannabis that, but they'll be the first one that sort of catches hold and everybody will be gravitating toward this one cannabis product.
Felix. Dramatic increase in a Google search term, Khaleesi.
Very nice. Yes, okay.
So it's a tough one to follow up.
So I will just say the fissures in the EU become more and more clear, and they look strong right now relative to the UK, but you're going to see the wheels come off on the basic underlying links inside the EU.
The spread of face recognition technology is going to shock us all.
It's already amazing how quickly the technology is disseminating and how accurate it is.
And I think we're just more and more going to be able to walk through a door or something like that as opposed to showing IDs, Felix.
The British pound will trade at parody with the dollar when Jeremy Corbyn becomes Prime Minister of the UK.
Wow, wow. Okay, so this is going to be the year of the bank merger.
As their economic models get squeezed, we have not seen the consolidation we should see in the US, and we're going to start to see big bank mergers as well as medium -sized bank mergers, and there's going to be a lot of them, and we're going to finally get some of the consolidation we should have been
getting for a long time.
That was actually going to be mined in a more general sense that this era of consolidation is going to even accelerate more, and you're going to see it across industry after industry in cars, in financial services, media, et cetera, et cetera.
We'll see a dramatic increase in gender agnostic names, girls' names, Max, Tyler, Ryan.
So in the future, you will look at someone's first name.
You will not be able to tell about gender.
Oh, my goodness, okay.
I think this is going to be the year of the regulatory crackdown on big tech.
We're going to see something big happen, and it will be significant, and it will affect their economic models, a la kind of characterizing Facebook as a publisher.
I think there's also going to be a lot of other interesting things regulatory.
I could actually see some progress in the US on climate control.
Okay, last one. Boston wins everything.
The Celtics win, the Patriots win, and the Red Sox repeat.
Wow. Okay. Okay, guys, before we say goodnight, let's do pecs.
And given that this is the holiday season, and we've been on respite, I want a pick that's a good way to waste time, a good time -wasting pick.
Oh, yeah. What do you guys think?
Do you have a good one?
So I love to run and bike, and then obviously...
At the same time? At the same time.
It's very impressive.
It is. Yes, yeah, and swim and...
Two days ago, I went just on an early morning ride, and I thought, oh, my God, it's going to be freezing.
And then this experience of being outside, when you spent so much of your life inside because of temperature, it was just not only refreshing in a temperature sense, but also really refreshing.
It's just a good experience.
So a recommendation to everyone, spend a little bit of time outside.
Oh, that's a nice one.
That's a lovely one.
I'm not going to do it.
It's freezing out there.
It's so cold. I'll wait till spring and then I'll go.
It's a recommendation.
It's so cold. I'll give you the opposite of that, which is when you're curling up under your blanket in the cold.
So I'm a huge crossword fan.
In general, I recommend crosswords and specifically the New York Times crossword continues to just be amazing.
But Sudoku's big, but Kenken is spectacular.
So Kenken is another in the series of games that have come out, but it layers on, on top of a Sudoku -like format, it layers on things like multiplication and addition and subtraction.
And it is spectacular.
So Kenken is my pick.
It's just a great mental workout, but while you're relaxing, you know, no pressure.
So both of you gave such high -minded recommendations that I just feel— You'll bring the balance.
Yes, we go high -low, go low, go low.
All right, so you went high, so I'm going low.
So over the Thanksgiving break, back in the Thanksgiving break, my husband, he purchased Red Dead Redemption 2.
Okay, since then I have occasionally walked in when he's playing this game on a huge television.
And it is so gorgeous.
I'm not kidding, like in the most cinematic way.
So there are times where I found myself getting sucked into it, and what's amazing about this—I don't know anything about the game.
But I was stunned by how sort of slow -moving and patient the game was.
And so he can walk into a saloon and play poker for a while.
So I would play poker with him for a while, and then he'd go cook his food.
And I found it utterly relaxing to just kind of sit with him, and we would kind of wander around this universe of Red Dead Redemption.
So my recommendation, if you have a bias against this entire genre of entertainment and you think it's all violence and guns and all that— Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, it is, but it's also more expansive than that.
And there are other sub -genres within it which are really quite beautiful and cinematic.
And so you should just open your mind to it and maybe explore it a little bit.
That's my recommendation.
That sounds great. Okay, all right.
So that's it. We're not going to actually hold ourselves to account for all these predictions, are we?
No, no, no, no. Hopefully we won't forget that we ever did them.
We should have a show seriously at the end of next year.
When we go back— Yeah, when we go back.
Because no one ever goes back to predictions.
Yeah, but there's a reason for that.
We should like to hold ourselves.
No, there's a reason for that.
Sure enough. Okay, so I think we're off next week, but then we will be back in mid -January.
So thanks everyone for listening.
This is After Hours.
Thank you.
