Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:20 Hey everybody, welcome to Chuck Yates needs a job, the podcast, ultimate treat, DRW is in the house - What's up Chuck? I still laugh every time I hear the title of the podcast, it's so good -

0:33 Yeah, you know, I've actually heard out in circles that it's getting tired. It's like, that's so overplayed, the Chuck Yates needs a job, fuck it, I double down on it - I like it, it was, you

0:44 know, you and I think I've talked about this, but the book I wrote called What the Fuck is Wrong with Everybody Else, What They Didn't Teach You in Business School, I probably would change the

0:53 title today, but it's like so familiar and part of like stories and stuff that I never did. So I think the Chuck Yates needs a podcast is kind of similar in that way - Yeah, exactly. All right,

1:05 we're gonna do the menu. You choose what we're gonna chat about today - Okay - Do we wanna talk DRW

1:14 is greatest hits on hot takes and you just fire them at me and I'll argue back. Do we want to talk mental health type stuff? 'Cause you had an interesting post on LinkedIn the other day. Or do we

1:16 want to talk what we just talked about at lunch in terms of energy advocacy and trying to figure it out? I'm gonna leave it to you - Yeah, you know, I

1:38 think we take mental health. I do think that that's such an important topic. So I would say let's talk mental health, but I think what ties in there is themes of energy because like part of the

1:48 mental health challenge, I think was society right now, is feeling lied to by politicians, feeling lied to by the media, not understanding where your energy comes from. Again, not to like

1:59 directly tie the two, but it's hard not to wake up some days and be massively frustrated at the hypocrisy. So I think we kind of start with mental health and see if we see - Yeah, 'cause I mean,

2:09 we got kicked in the nuts. I mean, as tough as an industry as - 2020 was brutal.

2:15 Yeah, exactly. No, because I mean, at the end of the day, my running joke, people are like, Why did you get fired? And I'm like, Oh, I caused minus 37 oil. It was all me, and that's what

2:28 did it. But yeah, now I think going down into that, and then you throw COVID on top of it, and it was just a dark time. I am a pretty happy-go-lucky person There were some dark days down in

2:45 Richmond, because my ex-wife had asthma. And so early days of COVID, you're like, I got to be good, because the kids are going back and forth, and

2:56 definitely didn't want something bad to happen to the kids' mom. So I had dark days during that time. It was, and I grew with you, and for me in a different way, so I'm a data guy.

3:12 I was looking at the data and amazingly, because I got kicked off LinkedIn permanently most recently. So I'd been kicked off at the end of 2020, and I tried to appeal it. And then when the January

3:24 6th insurrection happened, they realized what true censorship was. And I think they kind of went through their list of people that they probably shouldn't have banned and put me back on. And then I

3:32 got banned again, you know, roundabout Thanksgiving. And you know, there was there and Roger stuff going on But I was a data guy and I have all my posts back from for every single one that I

3:45 didn't post on my website, but that was just like my LinkedIn sort of because I used LinkedIn as Twitter. And so it was like sometimes paragraphs, but, but all the data was there to show the

3:55 fatality rates and the mortality rates. And I mean, I have articles and links and talks from back then. And I was so frustrated and the more that I wasn't being heard, not because I was

4:07 particularly important, but the more that I would try and explain the numbers. the more they would reject them, the angrier I would get, the more hostile I would get, the louder I would speak,

4:15 the more negative. And all of that just was such a negative snowball through 2020 - And was that, and was part of that being in effect cooped up in your house, having those time discussions online?

4:29 Was that, was that where it was - I think so, but I was also like, so at the time, I will tell you the biggest thing I was wrong about with COVID is I didn't actually think that the Federal

4:40 Reserve or the government would print 10 trillion. Right? So I was sort of like, okay, so we're shutting the economy down. That there's no, I mean, so now we lock it down, we flatten the curve,

4:52 now what? We have to wait till vaccines, 'cause the second you reopen the economy, if everyone goes back to what they're doing, like, so how, what is the out here? That was driving me crazy.

5:04 And number two, I was like, so, but then unemployment's gonna go to 10 It's never coming back. Jobs are going away, families are going away, businesses are going away. And all the things that

5:13 you would project if you didn't know that they would have just pumped unlimited stimulus. But then now we're seeing the consequences of it. So even if I had known that they would pump 10 trillion,

5:24 I'd be like, well inflation's going to 7. We broke supply chain. So I felt like it was my job, which it clearly wasn't. So like, warn the world to try and prevent us from going into this

5:36 catastrophe of our own making And the more I would write about it, and then I would get people DMing me and death threats on Twitter. And you're just trying to kill my grandma and stay in your lane

5:46 and you're a horrible person. And that really put me in a dark place 'cause I felt very isolated from virtually everyone - 'Cause you weren't working then in terms of a job - I retired, resigned,

6:00 fired. They're all kind of the same word, right? But when - I prefer fire. I mean, I like so. I like, I like, I like fired too. And I've been fired a lot in my career, but, but so I left,

6:13 I left Franklin Mountain in October of 2019. And I'm cutting. I sold one energy. Yeah. I'm cutting you off from. No, you're good. Big, one of the biggest disappointments is the Wall Street

6:24 Journal article about me says Chuck Yates has left the firm. And I was like, no, I got fired. I wanted fired in the Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal, I demand a retraction on that and

6:37 replace with fire. Well, I definitely got fired before I wrote the book and I've been fired multiple times ever since then. I mean, and like you, I mean, what I find about our friendship and the

6:47 chats we have, like you and I are kind of similar. Like we're, we're both different characters. I think is probably the polite way to say it. When we have, we have our strengths, but we also

6:57 have our weaknesses. And when, when it comes to rubbing people the wrong way eventually, which inevitably is going to happen. It ends up going the different way. But no, so we I left in October

7:08 19, and then as you may remember, I had not a very large portion of what we did at One Energy, but like a small portion I put in some oil and gas stocks.

7:20 And so I called it, I affectionately called it the family office. And the thesis at the time was oil and gas has peaked, the US production peaked, and that happened November 2019. I don't think

7:31 we'll ever get back to that. And so I was like, oil is going to be 60 to 65, and the world is expecting the US to grow a million barrels a day. It won't. We're going to grow demand to 101 million

7:40 barrels a day. So any undervalued company in the 63 world, like this is a double or triple. And now if I'd been in a coma from about March 1st of 2020 to March 1st of February 1st of 2022, I mean,

7:54 the thesis was right. I owned PDC, I owned Calin, and I owned CEDEV. And all of them are well above double what I paid for them. And I went on Bloomberg in January and talked about those three

8:04 stocks And then of course COVID happened. So that contributed a lot too, because like a lot of people, I mean, you lose A, you're wrong, B, you can't avoid it. C, you've lost a lot of money.

8:16 D, the world's acting crazy. E, we're locked in our homes, and you can't do the things you love. Like it was horrible. And I think we're gonna see the effects of mental health issues and anxiety

8:30 and anger and divisiveness for years to come if we don't really do something about it as a country 'Cause the thing that became clear to me kind of during my summer of quarantine, if you will, was I

8:46 had an appreciation that a lot of the stuff that was quote unquote bad, wrong, I was fired for performance, you know. You look back and it literally was all beta stuff that I couldn't control.

9:01 And quite frankly gonna are do prices, oil what out figure really can anybody if,

9:07 Go trade oil prices. We have a NIMEX, you can do that every day. And so, in

9:13 a weird sort of way, while it was horrible being by yourself and all, there was, and the other thing I did that was really good during that quarantine period is I stopped drinking. 'Cause I was

9:23 just like, I'm not gonna drink by myself so, I'm gonna end well. But that was the one good thing I did is, hey, this is a bunch of beta, I'm not an idiot Oil went to minus 37, I didn't have

9:37 anything to do with it. If anyone else could have called that, any of our LPs, any of my partners at Caine, why didn't you tell me? You would be, and then be rich, right? Yeah. You'd be

9:47 totally rich. Yeah. You know, it's funny, the firing thing, and I think that this will resonate maybe with listeners, and it doesn't matter if you've been laid off or fired or downsized or, a

9:57 lot of people have had their changes. And I think that when you left Caine, when you were fired from Caine, it was your first firing, right? And so when I got fired from Interplause, that was my

10:07 first firing. And what I found was it took, I was so wrapped up in my career and the ego of, like your career was your person, it was your purpose, it was your everything. You identified

10:21 yourself by what you were doing. You know, you'd get 300 emails, 50 phone calls, you're running rigs, you know, and then I remember, I mean, this is NAEP Week and I remember very, very

10:30 clearly in 2012 NAEP And it was, after, you know, I came down and I have like this piece of paper being like, looking to raise 500 million and buy 500 million with assets and I partnered with a

10:42 guy, we're gonna do this. And like no one wanted, all the people I thought were my friends, that they were friends because they were selling me services and rigs and all that. And so like I was

10:52 important to their career and it's not like they didn't like me, but all of a sudden you go like from, they have time for you because of your role to you have, they have no time for you because you

11:02 don't have a role. Right - And so I laugh, like I give this advice all the time. Networking is not showing up at happy hours. It's answering emails to people who like send you a note because the

11:14 number of completion engineers that would not answer service company calls for years. And then that completion engineer would get laid off and they would call the four salesmen, they would call him

11:24 every two weeks and he would never respond. He's like, Hey, do you know of a job? And you're like, I wasn't calling you 'cause I like you. I was calling you because you have business for me

11:32 Whereas if you can build a relationship with people, I think it's just so, so different. But yeah, understanding the narrative, it took me a long time to own the story of being fired. And like

11:44 you, I owned it, I wrote a book about it, I published a book about it. And, but when you're trying to figure out what happened and was it performance and was it politics and, Oh my God, am I

11:54 bad? Am I ever gonna work again? I mean, that was awful. It was really, really hard - Yeah, no, the My kind of moment on why I moved out of Houston and back home to Richmond, Texas, which is

12:06 kind of 25 miles from here is I was at dinner with a friend and a banker, consultant lawyer type walks up and I leaned over to my friend and said, 37. Anyway, banker comes over, blah, blah,

12:24 blah, blah, and hey, want to bring my high yield group buyer, hey, we want to talk to your company about representing them on the PSA or whatever the case may be is and I said, Okay, great.

12:34 Give me a shout and we'll do this. And walks off and I go, It didn't even take 37 seconds And. here I was in the middle of separation, going through a divorce and you kind of feel like everybody

12:47 knows that even though they probably don't, but you kind of feel like it and you expect, Hey, how you doing? You know, and it's not. I want to bring my team by and so that's why I moved back out

12:59 to Richmond. you know, 'cause back there, I'm just the 18 year old shit that you survived my bike across somebody's yard, you know - Yeah, no, I mean, it totally, relationships are very

13:12 interesting. And, you know, the saying I said, and I think I've told you this story, but I say nobody cares at your birthday. And really where it was born was accidental. I was walking into a

13:23 restaurant when my son was 11. He was my younger son. He was holding my hand and swinging in. It was like February 2nd and his birthday is March 28th I think it was dad, are you excited about my

13:32 birthday? And I looked at him, I got that off my knee and I said, Andrew, no one gives a fuck it's your birthday. And the second that we're done in this conversation, I'm gonna go back to doing

13:41 what I was doing before you started talking, which was thinking about myself, just like the rest of the world. So no, I don't care it's your birthday - And yeah, I

13:53 do - And it's a cynical view, but I, so that's the story to it. But at the end of the day, everyone's to your point on your divorce, right? The people really, really care about you and like can

14:03 see, like they can hear in your voice that something's wrong and they actually ask about you. They're different, but most people are busy, you know, paying their mortgage and thinking about what

14:13 cars they're going to buy and where they're going to go on vacation and like they're kind of in their own little headspace. And I think if you accept that and know it, A, it differentiates the

14:22 friends that care. And I mean, I say this to you and Thomas and Brandon for sure last January where I was like, I was in pretty dark spot. You know, at the end of 2020, just with the way the

14:33 world was so frustrating. And you guys all reached out and we're like, we're going to hang out. And it was really, it was really impactful for me. And you guys knew and you could tell and you

14:44 could see in my mannerisms. And, you know, I was, I was writing more and more out of control, I think, and like a lot of anger and the friends are the ones that reach out And so I've always

14:55 appreciated you and Thomas and Brandon in particular for that. Well, 'cause the scary part of what happened in that, in your writing is you became very kind of matter of fact about things. And

15:09 that was weird, 'cause that's not you. You're matter of fact, but with fucking flair, right - Right, like the shoes - Yeah, like the shoes - The fucking, yeah, there you go, we can, yeah -

15:20 But the fucking flair was gone, and that's actually what worried me was, and the reason I kind of got with Thomas, and I didn't know Brandon, but Thomas knew Brandon was just, there's no flair

15:33 here, something's potentially wrong - Well, and it's interesting, like again, we talked about mental health and where this came from, and it was really easy for me, and it's easy for me to give

15:43 advice on people's careers, and so a lot of people reach out, and when you're on the outside and you're not emotionally involved, it's so much easier to be like, Well, your boss is thinking this,

15:51 so you need to do this, and you should give this advice, and then don't say this, and there you go, you're done And so I was, you know, I'd given out my cell phone number a lot for people who

15:60 had, if they

16:02 needed to talk to someone. And it was always easier for me to talk to other people, especially strangers, than it was for me to really like focus on my own level of like frustration with the world.

16:12 And yeah, the flare, the flare definitely went away. And, you know, I mean, I think like a lot of people, I was just like, what is, what is the point of all this? Like you work your entire

16:21 life to, you know, whether it's retirement and, and I was at a funeral this week, I golf buddy known him for 10 years, you know, in the last couple of years, we didn't play as much together,

16:32 but used to play a lot. And 67, he just, he'd put off retirement, he liked to work, didn't want to go, wonderful family person, hung out, and then didn't feel good on February 1st. Kind of

16:44 his wife was out visiting his new grandbaby in Kansas City. And he kind of called in sick for work, and then they all stay home, and then the next day she called and they didn't answer. And so she

16:54 sent a neighbor over and they found him. almost fully dressed for work, lying beside the bed, he's had a massive heart attack and died. And, you know, so like on the depression thing, it's like,

17:04 that's how it ends. We all end up in a box - Right - We only have so many days and we have no control over the timing. And so, it just, you know, you have to figure out the good. And in 2020,

17:17 blockdowns and all this other craziness and government policies and hatred of Democrats and Republicans, it was just so much. And I was like, what is the point - I'm sure a lot of people felt that.

17:27 And,

17:29 you know, you were certainly part of it. Some friends were part of it. I have a couple of really good friends that were part of pulling me out. And I feel a lot better now. And I'm very, very

17:38 aware of mental health stuff now more so than I used to be - Yeah, so how did you get out of that? 'Cause you're kind of in the font, we're texting some. I am ill-prepared to help on that front -

17:50 Right - I mean, a lot of effort there, but I'm not sure, you know, I'm qualified to do it. check in, I was making sure I wrote Den Brandon and Thomas to be checking in on you. Yeah. But what

18:00 were you doing inside your head? Well, so I was very frustrated and you can definitely see it in my writing, which to me, like I write the hot take like a journal and what I like about it. And I

18:12 think what people what resonates is, I'm not, I don't monetize it. I don't sell ads. I don't, I mean, I just write what I feel. So I don't care what people think. I don't care what topics they

18:21 want me to write about So I journal and I can see it in my writing. And so I went down to our place in Arizona and I had three friends and everyone was into their own kind of a dark place. I called

18:33 it the four D's trip. One guy, his wife had been diagnosed with brain cancer 11 months before a geo geoplastoma is that was a blast. Yeah, that one. So she got that and then had just died. She

18:43 was 47 and two kids. It's a death center. It's not a question of if it's only a question of when. Yeah. So he was the death. Then a friend was a pilot with United in the course had just been

18:54 promoted to be pilot. and then coronavirus hits and they ramp everything down and he gets demoted. So we had the demoted. We had the, I was covering off for the depressed category and one guy had

19:09 just got divorced. And so it was kind of like the four D's trip. And I remember arriving and I wasn't even really excited to be hanging out with them. And one of my buddies, I won't say which one,

19:20 had brought some gummies from Denver and he's like, Take this. I'm like, I don't do that And he's like, Take it. And for whatever reason, so we went for dinner. I had a half, like five

19:29 milligrams, got to dinner. And then the check arrived and I was like, Guys, we can't pay yet. We haven't eaten. And they looked at me and they're like, You just had the biggest pasta chicken

19:41 dish I've ever seen in my life. You remember that? And so then my buddy, let's smile, they handed me the other half and we went to a bar and I laughed for three hours consecutively,

19:52 uncontrollably It was really the first time I ever - on marijuana. And I've never laughed so hard. They had to put me in a cab. And in the cab, I was lagging the backseat, crying. I was laughing

20:04 so hard. And that feeling of euphoria, actually, interestingly, is what kind of snapped me back to like remembering a time when I was less serious and less angry and less whatever. And so as

20:17 weird as it is, like, it was a kick in the ass. And so for those in states where it is legal, you know, if you're having a hard one, I don't not recommend that

20:29 because it really helped for me. And then because I then had a better perspective and I

20:35 had laughed, it made everything better, you know. You know what? I think it was. I'm going to disagree with that. I love that.

20:44 I think the two most powerful words in English language are me too. Because everybody, I mean, Brene Brown writes about it. Ultimately at the core she says when you don't feel worthy of love,

20:57 that leads to all the bad behavior, depression, all that sort of stuff - I agree with that - And the, you know, and then you kind of morph her writings. The only way to get out of there is shame

21:09 hates words. So you got to talk and the reason people are so scared to talk and share and all that is they think they're gonna be judged or whatever. And when you hear me too, that's the moment of,

21:23 okay, I've been accepted I've said this horrible thing about myself. I'm depressed, I just got divorced, I got demoted. You hear me too and you're able to share. And if marijuana helps

21:35 facilitate that, but I think at its core, it's actually the me too that did it for you that night - It's really an interesting point. And you wanna talk about like where society is right now.

21:47 Think me too ties to that because me too has morphed into this movement. BLM has morphed into this movement. Critical race theory has morphed into this movement. But like what you just described,

21:60 I had totally delanked what actually me too meant, which was I was feeling a thing and you were feeling a thing and me too. And it's amazing how weaponized that phrase has become and I do definitely

22:13 agree. And I think it's the same as being fired until you find your voice and find other people who've been through that and can share the pain and the suffering, it's really hard to rationalize

22:24 what happened and then me too. You're right, I would not disagree with you on that - Yeah, and I always say that about my priest Patrick. And he's, the reason I dealt with getting fired

22:35 relatively well and the reason I dealt with quarantine relatively well despite the dark periods is I'd kind of gone through it a few years before with the divorce and Patrick Miller, my priest,

22:50 every time we got together and I would feel a horrific amount of shame because I just yelled at Kim or I yelled at one of the kids or, you know, whatever the thing was and it fells up to it,

23:01 Patrick would always tell me something he did that was worse and be like, dude, you're a priest, you can't do that. And he goes, I know it's really bad. But yeah, now when you figure out that

23:10 we're all here trying to do our best and the like, I think that's really important. And that's always my number one advice is when somebody's in a dark place, go find someone you can talk to and

23:24 just talk to them - Yeah - You know, and just say it all because it actually doesn't sound that bad when you talk about it, when you hear yourself saying it out loud. I got fired, dude, it was in

23:35 the Wall Street Journal. It's fucking cool, you know - Right, it is, yeah, I mean, it is very, it's interesting and the mental health thing, I certainly think that isolation and we have, We

23:48 have seemed to have lost some of the humanity, maybe. over the last two years, I'd be curious on your take on that. But it's always been divisive and it's been getting more divisive. I think

24:01 Trump really galvanized and people who felt punished for four years, that he was their president. And then when he lost the election, we're not going to go into that topic. I think that they

24:13 wanted retribution. And so then there was a punishment for anyone who was on that side. And so some of these mask mandates and some of these super overbearing things were like almost punishments.

24:24 And so we've gone back and forth and then we locked people away and we covered their smiles. And one of the topics I'm very passionate about, I know you've seen me write about it, but last summer

24:35 at Napa, friend of mine was GHB by someone that she knows. Yeah. And it was very fortunate that through like, it's fortunate that she wasn't there. And as I would tell that story, the number of

24:49 women who would tell me that happens to them recently. including a woman who told me about it this weekend, where, and again, the humanity has been lost, it's like people forgot how to date or

24:58 something, and they're like, they're doing horrible things to each other, and I worry about that as the effect on mental health for people, 'cause we're not connecting, we're not talking, we're

25:09 not reaching out, we're treating people like animals. If you're on that side of the debate, you're horrible, and if you're on this side, no one's talking in the middle, and we need that, I

25:19 think Yeah, no,

25:22 and we were kind of talking about this at lunch that I think part of the polarization is, literally just take it back to money, to in effect monetize a newscast, you need a passionate audience,

25:34 maybe not the biggest audience, particularly in a world where distribution happens on TV, on your phone, on your radio, computer, wherever you want, we've got so many different channels that,

25:46 So what you want about the big three, but when you have the big three.

25:52 they broadcast to the middle, right - Yeah - And then when we have all these distribution paths, you're creating that intensity of an audience so you can monetize 'cause I mean, this shocking, you

26:02 know, Cronkite used to get, what, 30 million viewers, 50 million viewers a night - Right - And now Gutfeld, I think, is number one on news and he's getting 23 million viewers - Right, well yeah,

26:12 it's three million - Yeah, and I think they talked about that they were down to like 600, 000 viewers per hour, which, you know, Rogan pulls 11 million - Right - You're totally right. And

26:22 everyone forgets the business of news and the business of Google, Facebook, Twitter, is selling ads. And so they target you, they plan you, they plant the stories, they plant the clicks, they

26:35 want all the traffic with clickbait so that they can show their numbers because the advertiser says, Show me your numbers - Right - So then you send the numbers and then lo and behold, they

26:44 advertise, you know, every segment, this segment brought to you by Pfizer And then Anderson Cooper comes on and says. You know, we think vaccines are super important and everyone should get them.

26:54 This segment brought to you by Moderna. Like, okay, like, come on. So I agree, the business of media has moved away from a news telling and sharing to a opinion driving, content driving,

27:09 eyeball winning formula - Yeah, and now you've even got the technology such that you can track, we ran this ad and that person bought And I think what happens is, it's kind of like the primaries in

27:25 government, the more extremes vote in the primaries. So that's why you generally wind up with a more extreme candidate as opposed to a centrist. I think probably if I had to guess, advertising

27:37 that is more extreme in its nature can demonstrate the sales to smaller audiences as opposed to land down the middle type advertising. Right. Well, I mean, it's, I mean, and there was that,

27:51 that hidden video of the CNN producer, and let's be clear, every media station did it. But when they realized, when they put the numbers up on the screen of the number of coronavirus deaths and

28:02 cases, and, you know, they got better ratings. And so they were, you know, they were pumping an entertainment story. And it was being perpetuated by, you know, did, did Google benefit from

28:15 you being home. Yeah. Because their business is advertising. If you're online twice as much looking for stuff locked in your house that you have to buy online, Amazon benefit, Google's benefit,

28:26 Twitter benefited, Facebook benefited. And so then they're also the ones policing the narrative that when someone has like a reasonable thing to say, they quell it, quash it, censor it. Because

28:38 it's actually good for their business. And you know, that ties all the way back to mental health is when you feel that level of cynicism and distrust for those. for the organizations, both the

28:47 institution of government, but then the institution of these corporations who control them, it becomes really hard not to be frustrated. And then you add drinking, which is a depressant. I do

29:01 sober January, I lost 16 pounds, basically working out and not drinking, which that probably is what the president should have said when coronavirus hit. He said, okay, we're gonna shut down.

29:12 It's 30 days to flatten the curve. We're all gonna stop drinking We're closing all the McDonald's. We're opening all the gyms. Everyone's gonna lose 10 pounds. We're gonna walk together at noon,

29:20 hang out with your neighbors outside. Like whatever it is, we're gonna get healthy. It's gonna be a great experiment. And then in 30 days, we'll all be healthier and happier. And off we go. You

29:31 know, again, we can't go back and do it, but that's what I hope we do the next time - Yeah - 'Cause we'd be so much mentally happier.

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30:16 navigator for free and get a 10 Amazon gift card for every friend you send us. Don't get lost, get well site navigator. Yeah, no question. And you know the thing I worry about is you know when

30:31 you see a chart and you see up, up a boom, you know, whether that's the recession of '08, '09 or whatever, they always have a box, right? And the box points down and says that's what it was. I

30:45 have been sitting here during the pandemic and quarantine going, I really hope this is a box for my kids. I hope this is 10, 15 years from now. Hey, remember that time we missed our flight for

30:57 Christmas and we had to eat Christmas dinner at Denny's? I don't think it's gonna be that. I think it's bigger. I have seen fundamental change in my children, I believe I agree. And I hope it's

31:08 not permanent, but I'm scared it is. Well, I mean, the education system, I mean, and the fact that we were talking about this at lunch, right, so we know the kids were just statistically, of

31:19 course some died, but just over 830 died out of 74 million people who are under 18. And 95 of the CDC's own numbers, 95 of deaths were with four comorbidities. And so you say, okay, so the 830

31:35 scale the same ratios, like we're talking four kids, sorry, 40 kids out of 74 million died. And we're masking them up and we're socially distanced. We're not letting them play in their friends.

31:47 They're not doing their sports - Scaring them - Scaring them. And so like my son is a golfer and he's been talking to colleges. He's a junior, gonna be a senior. And most of the people who are on

31:57 sports teams actually deferred for a year. And so we have this backlog of kids who basically took an entire year off because they realized like they were in college to play sports. And then your

32:07 last year high school, you're not allowed to do this. And like all my happy men, I mean, I have a lot of happy memories, but like I remember college. College was amazing. And of two of the four

32:15 years that I was there, I wasn't allowed to work with my friends and hang out at their houses and go to the bars and you know, hand in assignments late. Like it really screwed people up. And so

32:27 we're gonna have a generation of kids who are between 15 and 24. with two years of their life, 10 of their life stolen. And that will be a very interesting one, 'cause I agree, it's not a

32:38 checkbox. When the recession happened in 2008, I didn't really, in a kind of new, but I didn't have any wealth. And like, other than thinking the world economy was coming to an end, like I

32:47 didn't like feel it. And certainly the 2000 tech bubble, I was a still kid, I don't know, this dog market goes up and down, but this one, it impacted everybody - Yeah, and you know, I've got a

32:57 daughter Sarah that's a sophomore in high school, and she and I've had some pretty blunt talks just about, hey dad, it really sucks to go to a new school, a high school, and have to virtually

33:08 learn and not be able to build a friend group. And you know, the good news is we were talking a couple of weeks ago and she's like, yeah, I think I've now got my group of friends and all that,

33:19 but you're right. I mean, some of my best friends still today are people I met in my freshman year in high school - Can you know what - And ironically, can you imagine if Facebook and Twitter.

33:31 were not a thing. If we were all locked in our house and we had no communication with anyone in the outside world, many of us had virtual friendships with people we've never met, never seen their

33:42 face. In fact, I could probably, I mean, someone I've chatted with 100 times online, I could be standing right beside them at a nape at the bar and I wouldn't have any idea who they were. And

33:52 that level of depersonalization of friendships where you're living in the metaverse and it's just not, it's not real And yeah, I mean, one of my best friends in the world, we played squash

34:03 together from the time we were 12, 11. And we hung out and traveled and like, he's still my, I was best man in both his weddings -

34:12 That's always my favorite thing at the second wedding, the best man gets up and says, something to the effect of, as we were saying before we were so rudely interrupted - Right, right - Welcome

34:23 back everyone - Exactly - But yeah, I mean, that's what the world is So I think it's going to be really hard for kids. And I also think like, I mean, I was thinking about this. My perspective on

34:34 coronavirus was so much from my own lens to the nobody cares as your birthday. I was under 50, I'm broadly healthy, I broadly have no comorbidities. I have two sons who are in the same boat. And

34:46 so I was like, you know, we're just not at risk, like let us be. And the politicians who are in Washington are

34:54 65, 70, 75, 80, you know, they are definitively at risk They're really the only old people who are in the workforce. And they're setting policy for everyone to protect themselves. And then they

35:08 realize if the economy shuts down their retirement goes away and they can't work. So then they pump 10 trillion in the economy, which inflates assets at the same time as we're pushing social justice.

35:18 So the hypocrisy again to a mental health, you're like, on the one hand this and then on the other hand this, but these are not like, there's no consistency in the intellectual element of that And

35:28 for me personally, that's just - incredibly frustrating and I don't know where we go - Because that's the question I was just gonna ask, where do we go, what do we do? The somewhat, I feel our

35:40 industry is somewhat healing. I mean, nothing like 90 to do that - At the four seasons last night, it looked very healed to me. Let me tell you, it was you standing packed - Yeah, I saw an Uber,

35:55 I think it was an Ford Explorer but it literally had neon lights everywhere and it was flashing and I was going, Man, 90 oil, look at that, we're back - Totally - I will say this, it feels like

36:07 if you really need a job, you can get a job again in our industry, although there's still people out of work. I will say there are some deflated people coming out of this. I've got a handful of

36:22 friends that are like, that guy still has a job and I don't. Not that they need to work, but so I don't think we're back. at least 90 oil is helping and helping some of that. But I think even

36:35 before the crash, we had bad issues. We did. Yeah, as an industry. I mean, I had Michael Patrick Smith, the good hand on the podcast. And unfortunately, the whole discussion about mental

36:50 health that he brings to the table in his book got derailed by Twitter, unfortunately. But one of the points he makes is the Marines actually go and look for people that have been traumatized as

37:06 children. Because if you're a Marine and you're going to go storm the beaches of Normandy, you need to be used to running on adrenaline and all that. And if you've been traumatized your life when

37:18 you're a kid, you're just used to that. That's your natural state. And he believes the oil field is similar in that that it's high stakes you can get killed at any moment. It's tough work and all.

37:30 And at least the people he met out in the field shared those similar attributes of having issues with their fathers, et cetera, growing up. And so I think we had this problem before quarantine and

37:45 quarantine and COVID even made it worse. And so you see the rest of corporate America really starting to take this serious mental health type stuff I don't know that we're doing that as an industry -

37:59 Yeah, and I mean, for sure in our industry because it's your point, if you could guess the price of oil, you'd be doing well and we can't. But the price of oil and gas is what drives success,

38:11 right? So we sold in 2018 and in 2020 we looked like geniuses. In 2022 we don't look so genius anymore because the buyers, everyone who bought anything in 2020 looks like the smartest people ever.

38:24 So we live and die by the sort of commodity prices volatility for any reason, including 2014 when the Saudis opened the taps, 2008 with the financial crisis, 2000 with the bubble, the 90s with the

38:36 Gulf War, like all of these, we have PTSD and through no fault of our own, you could be the best run company with the best rock in the world. And if commodity goes from 90 to 50, your stock's

38:47 going to basically perform at the same as the worst run company with the worst rock. And so yeah, we have a fundamental issue And then it is a high stress, high stakes, very active, very data

38:58 driven industry. So it will be interesting to see like the guys like a zoom, right, that benefited from the pandemic. How do they survive? Peloton, we saw that this week. Their stock was up 600

39:12 over their IPO or whatever. And turns out the people don't actually exercise all the time if they're not locked in their home And the bike with the TV on it is still a great closed rack as was the

39:24 one that you bought. in 1980 that has the chain, the Schwinn chain - Right -

39:31 So even more so to make the analogy to oil and gas is when sales are going through the roof because people think they're gonna exercise during the pandemic, you don't actually have to manufacture the

39:43 low cost high quality product, right - Totally, we saw that in 2012. I know with you it came and me and the Bakken. I mean, you're spending, you have 100 trucks lined up on the highway,

39:56 spending 150 bucks an hour just to try and get frack water at 150 barrels of truck. Like it was crazy, the amount of money that was spent on, you know, we need coil tubing on standby. We'll pay

40:06 25, 000 just in case - Yeah - Like money was just going out the door and the business was not very well run - We're losing 125 a barrel if you don't get it online - 100 - Yeah, which is just crazy -

40:19 Crazy - Yeah, now I think we are having to change on that front and we can get into this whole debate and this could probably be a whole different podcast, but I still don't think we get external

40:31 calf, but all outside our cash flow in a meaningful way. I don't either. Until you are materially underperforming an index, some sort, CIO has no reason to own energy. I agree. And we've seen

40:44 it that saying you were wrong is very hard, as we've seen again. And a friend I went out for dinner with, and he's like, Why does COVID permeate everywhere? I mean, because A was our life for

40:55 the last two years, but B, there's so many great analogies. Like,

41:02 for example, yesterday, the CNN, I think Leah Wen is her name, said, Well, the science has changed. Okay, well, what about the climate? So could the climate change, science change? Because

41:13 if so, we're spending four to nine trillion dollars a year to address a thing. And if the science is going to change, even though you said, you can't challenge the science, consensus is the

41:22 science. Like don't challenge, the science is the science, and then all of a sudden the science change because the narrative change, it would be very hard for the people in Europe, the green

41:30 funds, the green text, the Larry Finks to come out and say, actually, what we wrong. Fossil fields are actually extraordinarily important. And even though statistically they're 90 plus of the

41:40 energies world supply. And we told you that they were really awful and horrible and carbon was bad, but we've actually decided that the trade off of energy versus poverty and lifestyle is worth it

41:51 So sorry guys, we're going to now just give excellent whole bunch of money to go get some more oil. I agree. I don't, they're not going to do it. And so you're going to see continued

42:01 consolidation staying within cash flow. The Saudis really continuing to dominate prices because they control 30 of the market and we're all going to be price takers and well, and what's so scary

42:13 about that is I'll get the stat wrong. You probably have it right five out of last seven months, six out of last eight. OPEC hadn't hit their targets - Haven't hit their targets - And they're not

42:25 doing that because they're nice guys. And, oh, you know what, we'll just, we'll be extra good actors here come in a little under budget. I don't think they have it - So, there's two questions

42:37 about that and I don't know the answer. Number one, do they have it? Maybe. But number two, the world has told, so Saudi Arabia, when I went on Bloomberg and it was November of '19, Saudi

42:49 Ramco was about to go public So, I read their entire perspective cover to cover so I could be intelligent in the two and a half minutes that I had on Bloomberg. And they have a 53 year reserve life

42:60 index at 10 million barrels a day. And by comparison, Exxon has around a 15 to 17 year reserve life index. So, if Saudi was a company, they would triple their production to get their reserve life

43:11 index down to 17. So, that would make them go from 10 million barrels a day to 30. And I understand there's water floods and there's like, there's some characteristics as to why they wouldn't do

43:21 that. But the world has also told them they are not interested in the oil that they produce and that they want to go away from it. And so if it's going to take you 53 years to get out all your oil

43:33 at 10 million barrels a day and the world is saying, I don't want to use your stuff. Are you super inclined to produce a whole bunch more at 50 barrel? Or are you super inclined to just let prices

43:43 be 90 barrel, 100 barrel, 110 barrel and like choke the world of energy because it's good for your economy? I mean, I tend to go that way. So why would they produce everything that they could if

43:55 they can make oil 120 bucks a barrel? Well, you know, you take the flipside Brad Olson came on and did the BDE show with me this week. Yeah. Because Colin was out getting fitted for platform

44:06 shoes. Nothing like nothing like a Colin Shortjoke. But anyway, we talked about how do you think about demand destruction today because half of me sits there and goes Inflation adjusted oil at 90.

44:22 actually isn't as bad as it's been historically. I mean, incomes are up whatever, 50, 60. It's a smaller piece of your paycheck. It's been flat for gasoline price, it's been flat for 15 years.

44:37 Okay, the world can deal with 90, can it deal with 100, can it deal with 110? The other half of me says though, just runaway inflation, you got less money for everything. Does that kind of lead

44:48 into the recession that kills demand? And so one of the things Brad said that I don't think I'd ever thought of before, as he said, we really don't have a good data point. It's all a guesstimate.

45:01 Well, we haven't had inflation like this really since, I mean, you'd argue the 80s. Not your career. Not, certainly not my career. I would say I was seven in the 80s. You know, early 80s when

45:11 Volcker came on as the chairman of the Fed, where you know, your parents always tell the story of when they had the mortgage that was like a 12 or 13 or 14 interest rate.

45:23 So, I think it's interesting, 'cause we're coming out of two years of coronavirus, where we've kind of been shut in, and you're kind of at work, and then you're not, and then people are gonna go

45:30 back to work, and then they're kind of not. So we have like this weird height, like the world feels weird. And then, so I don't think anyone's made behavioral changes on what they

45:41 buy. So I don't think people have felt inflation. They're like, Wow, maybe it is transitory, like they say, but you're still stuck in the same car you had two years ago, 'cause you can't buy a

45:49 new one You're still stuck, and I mean, so I don't know. Can the world handle it? It's fairly inelastic, right? For most people, I mean, I went to fill out my car the other day, and it cost

46:04 what it costs. I needed 20 gallons, it was four bucks a gallon, it was 80 bucks. Am I really gonna drive less? Maybe, but I don't know that people have made those changes because they're still

46:13 maybe working from home, or their kids aren't in sports, or their kids are learning remotely. especially in the New York's and the California's where there's a huge population base. It's gonna be

46:24 really interesting - Yeah, no, it is. The only thing I really remember, 'cause I'm older than you are, but the only thing I remember about inflation from the Carter administration is my dad

46:35 actually had a gasoline tank and fuel pump put in our backyard - Right - Yeah, just 'cause he, you had to wait in line. I mean, prices were through the roof and he was able to buy it wholesale

46:47 instead of retail - Right - But it was, don't have to wait in line and all that. And so it was a real thing. And I think that is the interesting dynamic that there's not an investor on the planet

47:00 today younger than call it 5055 that's really dealt with inflation in a model - Well, and what I find with energy, right? So I'm not totally bought into the world doesn't have enough oil. I mean,

47:13 clearly it doesn't in their short term, but like 90 feels to me 90 feels a bit rich. And, but you can always back up your bull case, right? Like you have the thesis, the thesis is energy's good.

47:28 So you cherry pick all the data points that support, well, you know, OPEC hasn't been producing enough. So therefore they must not be able to produce enough. Therefore it's bullish.

47:38 Pardon me. So, but when I look at the world, I go, okay, so the only way to temper inflation is to raise interest rates If you raise interest rates, houses become less affordable. Houses need

47:49 to fall. And there's so much liquidity in the market because bonds are so free that everyone's going equity. If you play that out just as a rational human, even if we've never done it in our career,

48:00 if interest rates are 3 where they should be, the market should be down 30, 40, which is basically where it was before coronavirus happened. And you can't say the last two years was good for the

48:11 economy. So why are we trading when we are versus where it should be.

48:18 No, it really is.

48:21 All right, to come back to mental health and kind of close this thing on, I know we said we don't know where we're going on that. But let's spitball on maybe where we should go. One, I think oil

48:36 and gas companies need to take it really seriously and start spending money on curriculums because at least what I've seen from younger people is, and it may just be they grew up on Facebook and

48:50 Instagram and so they have no concept of private versus public - Right - We used to, you had your work life and then your home life. That's all blurred for younger people. And so the sense of

49:06 emotional wellbeing, there's not a line between work and personal life anymore. Work is at least gonna have to be able to address that in some way, shape, or form. And exactly what that looks

49:20 like, I don't know, but you look at other industries where you can log on and talk to a therapist through, you know, the computer, the intranet at work, et cetera. I think we have to take that

49:33 really seriously because at the end of the day, if we don't get any more kids in this industry, we're gone. So that's my one, you give me one -

49:42 Well, I mean, I think both for our industry, but also go forward, we need to do a better job of taking responsibility for when we were wrong and when the things changed, right? And I said this a

49:54 lot in 2020. Obviously, the hot take, I've been talking a lot about mergers and the mergers needed to happen. We have too many CEOs per barrel in the industry - That's a great step - Is it a

50:07 huge step - It's so good - And so we need to shrink that, but they didn't do it when the sun was shining. They waited until it was pouring and Noah's Ark was coming to take people two by two. And

50:18 so you had no money to pay salaries, no money to pay severances, no. So people would get fired in the middle of 2020 when you couldn't get a job and got nothing. And so I look at it now with 90

50:28 oil, knowing where the industry is going to go. I think our industry has to do a better job of transitioning people fairly and be like, Thank you for your service. Here's six month salary. Here's

50:38 eight, like whatever But take care of people since they survived and money is important to help transition. I think you would leave a whole bunch of people with bad taste in their mouth. So that's

50:52 an oil and gas specific. What should we do? When the layoffs happen, we should be paying people really, really well and saying, Thank you for your service. For the world, I think we need to

51:02 have more conversations about the fact that we were wrong. And it's very hard to say the coronavirus response was wrong and no one wants to say I was wrong, they were wrong, there was a middle

51:12 ground. So let's talk about it and let's legislate it and let's stop running the country by executive orders. And let's have a president who's trustworthy senators, Congress people, corporate

51:23 leaders and actually talk about the issues again instead of this rhetoric and clickbaits and yelling from both sides. That's what I'd like to see. And that has to start with people like us where

51:36 we're conversing - Right - So - You know, I had a couple of democratic candidates for state rep on the podcast about two or three months ago and we were talking about suggestions for reform. And my

51:54 suggestion was candidates running against each other, the Republican and the Democrat, every two weeks, they have to take their families and go eat dinner together. No cameras, no nothing -

52:05 That'd be amazing - You gotta spend two hours eating dinner together is it? I think. It's a really good idea. I agree with it totally. Part of why I think we've gotten, we've gotten nastier

52:18 towards each other is you can hide behind emails, texts, social media. It's a lot harder to call somebody a bastard when you're sitting there face to face. And when you can find like commonalities,

52:31 and it's funny, I'm sure most of America didn't even know what the filibuster was. I would include myself in that, really. And I never thought about it And the more I think about things like the

52:41 filibuster is if you can't get 60 out of 100 people to vote on a thing with approval, it's too extreme. And so to that same point on, like if you can't find moderate common ground over dinner with

52:55 your opponent, and be like, you know what we can both agree to is,

53:00 you know, teachers should be better paid. How we pay for it might be different, but let's like orchestrate a true bipartisan solution. then 60 of the

53:12 Congress or Senator or whatever can vote for. I think that's a great idea. I always made the joke that I think everyone who watches nothing but Fox News should have to watch CNN for 10 days and vice

53:23 versa. But quite frankly, the news is so bad. I actually think that anyone who watches CNN or Fox should just turn it off and only read like a once a week publication or local news or something

53:35 because it's just too, it just gets you all rallied up. Yeah. The one other thing I'll throw out there is you really need to watch after your friends during this day and age. And one of the great

53:52 things about moving back to Richmond, at least for me, is I'm dealing with people that knew me before I was 18. And we really don't change our stripes that much during our lives. And so when you

54:06 have people that have known you for a long time. they can just tell when something's off - Yeah - And so if you're sitting out there and you feel disconnected from the world and all, if you can go

54:18 reconnect with people that knew you and you were younger and conversely people that maybe you're not talking to that you see on Facebook and you go, Ah, something's wrong. You really gotta watch

54:30 out for your friends these days - I agree. And find something that you love, right? Like I taught myself to play guitar badly when I was 18 and I really put it away and a friend that we both know

54:44 when we were in Arizona and about November two years ago, he's like, Dude, you have time. Why don't you pick up guitar again? And it's been awesome. And then I really gave up squash for the most

54:54 part for the better part of the last 15 or 18 years. And I used to play on the national team and World caliber, world championships, Pan American game stuff. And I just started playing again in

55:04 the last couple of months and I forgot how much I love it. And so doing something that you truly love that has, it's only for you, you sweat, it's creative, it's music, it's whatever. I think

55:15 that that will also help a lot of people on the mental health, like get off center. And for me, I've just been so happy that the squash is back in my life and that I'm trying to play my guitar

55:26 better - Well, the last public service announcement I'll do is, if you're going through a dark time, definitely reach out, talk to someone, as I said earlier, shame doesn't survive words,

55:39 'cause what you will find is the person you choose to open up to 999 of the time, they're gonna be receptive to it and be helpful, 'cause that's why you chose them - Absolutely - You know? So - I

55:52 agree. And call, Chuck's very good, so you can call Chuck anytime and you can certainly call me and I've got my cell phone out there. I'm very easy to find if you need something Yeah, my cell

56:02 phone's on LinkedIn as well. calling after midnight, but I'll take the midnight call if maybe DRW you were cool to come on - Oh, I appreciate this - I appreciate it. I'm a huge fan of what you're

56:13 doing. And I think you kind of have a job. This podcast is a job. And I think it's a very, you know, it's good that our industry has the characters and the personalities to be able to advance the

56:24 issues that are important. We've talked about orphan wells. We've talked about ESG. We've talked about, you know, the world needs energy and we need people to be open to discuss them. So I

56:34 appreciate what you're doing - Yeah, the hot tick of the day, you do a great job of making people think. And the second thing you do that's really useful, even if you're antagonizing someone, a

56:47 database of facts that other people can use. And I think that's underappreciated and very important as well - Well, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.