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[Assistant] Yeah, that's the truth. But don't you ever, ever, ever get in their boat with a banana.


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[Assistant] Them boys are superstitious. I don't know what it is about bananas and boats, but there's some kind of bad luck. It may be something on the internet about that. I don't know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Something about, if you step on a banana in a boat, professional fisherman's boat with a banana, you're out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I got a couple of ponds, I think I want to put that banana on a boat deal to the test.


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[Assistant] See, I would feel better if you drove by and they were laying down cause I know at some point they gonna get up.


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[Assistant] Now you pass them, and they're already up here. Oh, we missed it.


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[Assistant] I love superstitions, don't you? Golly, they're fun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, there's a bunch of them. Step on a crack, break your mama's back. That's not fishing. We're just talking about superstitions in general. I mean, what else you got?


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[Assistant] I guess that means he's not all black. I guess he's gotta be jet black to some bad luck or something.


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[Assistant] Sy? Yep. Yeah. Oh. You're back, ain't you? Oh yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Feeling better? Yup. Nothing hurts on you anymore, right? Nope.


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[Assistant] Because what did you add to your repertoire about three weeks ago?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ah, I love it. It's pretty cool when this stuff works. We've had several listeners reach out to us and tell us their Omega XL story. If you have one, be sure to let us know. But look, right now,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can get two bottles of Omega XL. All you have to do is order now. You'll get a second one for free.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You visit OmegaXL.com slash Duck. That's OmegaXL.com slash Duck or call 1-800-844-4888. That's 800-844-4888. Quit masking the pain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And let's treat the inflammation. OmegaXL.com slash duck for not one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two bottles. And you can be like Uncle Si, back in action.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're gonna use the fans to help us get back on track. This is the part that we, we love, we look forward to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Look, we appreciate all of y'all taking the time to send us emails to hello at duckcallroom.com. That's hello at duckcallroom.com. If you have some interesting thought,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you want to wish Si well, which Si, look, the amount of emails in our inbox saying they were praying for you and thinking of you on the COVID deal is unbelievable. Our fan, our fans love you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think we are. Let's just make sure. Look, if you want to send us more of your awesome stories, you bunch of sci-kit cool people. Sci-kit cool people!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, we're, we're, we're, alright. Focus, focus, here we are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you want to reach out to us, hello, H-E-L-L-O at DuckCallRoom.com, send it to us, give us something enlightening or inspiring and you can be featured on next week.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Facebook, Instagram, all that kind of stuff. We see it, we look at it, and we appreciate it. And we're gonna send this out, John Deedid, so I give you the verse. He gave me the verse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I just always remember to go along with that when a coach in high school told me, he said, if you keep your mouth shut, nobody knows how stupid you are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I was like, noted. So that's why, you know, Dr. honesty, I...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is the best thing ever. We found this in the duck call room. We don't even know what it is. It's from a TV show that used to be on cable television that just makes, uh, sigh and jace noises.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's, that's the second piece of meat you said that about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They don't even have to like back a truck up and put it on there and wheel it off?


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[Assistant] You know what my wife's into lately? Uh oh. She ain't mean, well she's a little mean. She just cooks bread every day. I went on a diet and I can't do it because there's three loaves of bread at my house every day. Fresh baked, no less. Sourdough. Fresh baked sourdough bread. Sourdough.


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[Assistant] I forgot you're eating again. My wife has just become Susie Breadmaker and she's good looking so yeaah, I'll kick my coverage too.


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[Assistant] She has to feed it every night, I'm sorry. You feed the bread? Yeah, you gotta do stuff.


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[Assistant] But, I got to thinking of it, because for Valentine's, I think I'm going to cut my hair. Oh. Maybe. There you go. I haven't decided. You mean a real haircut?


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[Assistant] I don't know how people ever even settled there. Like at one point some guy looked up and was like, this'll do. This spot right here. And he named it Minneapolis and he froze to death. What are you eating?


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[Assistant] I figure I should at least get you some tea since I didn't make sure you took your medicine because all I did was ask you.


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[Assistant] You didn't know where you were? Oh yea, in the woods. Well what happened? You just said you've never been lost.


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[Assistant] Martin left out the bass though. Martin kind of been a bass fisherman.


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[Assistant] That's why we don't fish together, because I bring snacks. I'm very much into snacks.


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[Assistant] I'm reading one, boats carrying bananas don't catch fish from something back in the day of Caribbean trade of bananas. You can't catch fish if there's banana on the boat boys. You know what I bring? Gas station fried chicken. That's what I bring when I go fishing.


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[Assistant] I've only been told when you're going fishing, if you see cows standing up, the fish are biting, but if they're sitting down, you just turn around and go home.


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[Assistant] And then you never catch one on the first cast either. That's bad luck.


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[Assistant] Many times I've caught one on the first cast and never again.


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[Assistant] That's what I'm trying to do. I refuse to catch one on the first cast, I just throw it on the road. Oh lord. Just, it's like the banana thing. I love Super


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So when I ask about the 5%...


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[Assistant] They really get upset. And some people are upset that I wear shorts. That ain't changing, boys.


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[Assistant] So our, our, the duck, hello at DuckCallRoom.com has become quite an enigma of three things.


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[Assistant] Sigh, they gotta tell Sigh how much they love him, hope he gets better. They have to tell Sigh that they have seen a Black Panther. And, unfortunately, vasectomy stories are getting a whole lot of uncomfortable stories about that. Let's not talk about that. We're not talking about that today. But, Sigh, somebody sent you a gift. Hold on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whoops. Somebody sent me a gift. Yes, we had a gift just for Si. It is a t-shirt with a black panther. Hey, I love


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So one of my favorite comments from last episode that aired or, ah, beats me. Me and you weren't here. Uh, people asked, is Si driving everyone at the hospital crazy with a bell? Did you have a bell in the hospital?


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[Assistant] I've got a story. So, Ms. Susan, she says she's a single mom and she appreciates you, you guys, uh, for just, uh, being a good role model for her sons. He's a 15 year old kid. He's really gotten to duck hunting. All right.


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[Assistant] So he's duck huntin'. Well, he gets exposed and he can't go to school to coronavirus. So he's sittin' at home, but he's havin' to go to the Zoom classes online. Well, he's a duck hunter now, boys. He's done got his duck call out and he's practicin' in his room. They're in school cause he's got his computer on mute. He forgot to mute it.


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[Assistant] I don't know if they said that, but so then the teacher gets upset. He's disrupting class. Hey, don't blow the duck call in class. AKA, make sure you have mute on. So.


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[Assistant] So the kid now, he's talking to the principal about why he wasn't paying attention and he had a duck call in class. I got good news. Principal's a duck on her, boys. Uh oh.


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[Assistant] Off the hook. Principal says, and I quote, more of an art form and we should encourage art in any situation. Boys off the hook, don't do it again. So, Susan, keep raising a man who will blow a duck call in class and thank goodness for good principals. I was just going to say.


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[Assistant] Or put it in the comments on YouTube, put it somewhere else. Facebook, we have an Instagram.


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[Assistant] Oh no, this isn't uplifting. But it is. It's uplifting. And we were just talking about common sense. So Proverbs 18, 6. The mouths of fools are their undoing, and their lips are a snare to their very lives.


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[Assistant] Uh, you're grace, let's, why don't we take a walk around the block a little bit. I mean, a couple cups of coffee. What do you say?


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[Assistant] Welcome to the official Game of Thrones podcast, House of the Dragon. I'm Jason Concepcion, host of the podcast X-Ray Vision from Crooked Media.


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[Assistant] And just our luck, our young princess Raniera, played by the really amazing Millie Alcock, will be joining us for this episode.


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[Assistant] It's three years later, and on the stepstones, Daemon and Corlys's war is going poorly, despite their dragon advantage.


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[Assistant] In King's Landing, King Viserys and Queen Alysand order Rhaenyra, who's apparently peeved that her best friend married her dad, weird, to accompany them on the hunt celebrating Prince Aegon's second name day. The king is under pressure, like the worst episode of Shark


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[Assistant] Ever, people are pitching Viserys non-stop on marriage deals for Raniera.


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[Assistant] Becerra responds by getting really, really drunk. Raniera runs off to the woods. Christian Cole does his duty and follows her, and later that night they stab a pig to death.


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[Assistant] The hunt is on the lookout for a fabled white heart, a symbol of royalty from the time before the conquest, but they find a regular tan-colored one instead, and Viserys is too hungover to kill it cleanly. Later, Alicent convinces Viserys to send reinforcements to the Stepstones,


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[Assistant] But Damon and Corliss end up not needing them after Damon lures the crab feeders forces out of their crab holes for a surprise crab roast courtesy of Leonor Valerian's dragon sea smoke.


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[Assistant] You know, the allicent of it all is really interesting. Clearly she is feeling her authority and has a comfort level with it that I think


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[Assistant] I did too, you know that scene in the godswood was such a great call back to the scene from episode one where it's like you can really just mark how much things have changed.


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[Assistant] First of all, Raniera is, instead of ignoring her studies, just studying hard.


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[Assistant] And then there's this new pecking order where Allison is able to tell- She calls her rank. Yeah, she pulls her rank. She's able to tell the minstrel, hey, get out of here.


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[Assistant] Too much sulking, no? I mean, I get it. You would think after the incredible bloodless victory on Dragonstone where she


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[Assistant] Would have really bolstered and underlined her. Look at the people that were there that witnessed it, right? It was like Otto Hightower was there, he saw it. Damon was there, he saw it. All of Damon's City Watch soldiers were there. Harold Westerling, important and influential Kingsguard member was there, saw it.


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[Assistant] And yet, here she is having to prove herself again and again and again and is clearly frustrated by that.


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[Assistant] I think that maybe she thinks of it that way. I mean, very clearly, she decided not to wash up before walking into camp, had the idea that this probably looks pretty good, right? Covered in blood. At the same time, you know, looking at it, okay, you killed a pig, great.


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[Assistant] That the Dragonstone triumph would matter more with all those influential people there to see it and talk about it. I think a lot of what's frustrating to Runeira is that it's a process, right? She is fighting against the internalized misogyny of the realm and it's like,


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[Assistant] She can never slack. She can never miss. There's never gonna be the aha moment where they're like, okay, now we accept. She just has to keep proving it. And it's like, when can she stop proving it?


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[Assistant] It wasn't. There's a moment with Kira Redwine earlier than that, where Kira Redwine, you know, the ladies of the court are like, ooh, you know. Yes. God. Damon's really bogged down over there. What's happening? And then this looks like a terrible situation. And then Kira kind of snidely is like,


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[Assistant] Oh, Raniera, you know, what's going on with your uncle? And she has to be like, I haven't, first of all, I haven't talked to him. And second of all, like, what are you doing eating cake? That to me was a really interesting potential miscalculation from Raniera because


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[Assistant] Corlys Velaryon's fleet made up the bulk of the ships in the royal fleet. They're gone now. They're out there fighting on the stepstones. So the red wine fleet is actually one of the biggest


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[Assistant] Don't you want to add my strengths? Uh, because I'm not saying you're weak, but you're kind of weak.


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[Assistant] At which point it becomes like the House of the Dragon version of like that Goodfellas scene where Joe Pesci is like, I'm funny, I'm weak, how? You know, uh, you know, just the way you name the air, you know, I'm just saying, you're funny, you know, you're funny.


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[Assistant] You wanna talk about the most devastating version of a plan that has gone astray. Here's a person who had a dream that he believed in more than anything. Yeah.


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[Assistant] I had this prophetic dream, my son sitting on the iron throne with the crown on, that dream led his wife to her death, and now that he has achieved it, right, he's got the heir, Raniera, he's got the wife, he's got the son,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wanting things from him, asking things of him, Raniera refuses to even think about getting married, and he's turned to drink. It's a really sad,


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[Assistant] Where Lionel Strong steps to the king. Right. Multiple marriage pitches have hit the king now, the king is shit-faced, and immediately when Lionel's like, I have something, if you wanna hear it, and immediately the king gets back to your bitchy smile, he just goes, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, let me guess.


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[Assistant] Next day was so good. So that scene, Otto goes to see his daughter.


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[Assistant] They're back from the hunt, right? He goes to see Allison. He realizes that...


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[Assistant] Allison goes in there, King's hungover, and instead of getting that conversation, who's your heir, what happens is, she convinces the King to do the thing that Otto was like, no, no, no, don't do that, it'll make us look weak, which is send aid to Dragonstone.


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[Assistant] I think you're 100% right. It struck me that what she did in that moment was decide, why don't we do something that's actually good for the realm? Yes. You know, why don't, like I understand, like there's a lot of ego involved and it's not the best look to send help, but shouldn't we just do it


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[Assistant] Canundrum, because I think Alicent, Rhaenyra, the king, the primary people who can make some of these big decisions are top three, right?


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[Assistant] Otto is right in a certain way. Everybody is ignoring the reality that a significant portion of the realm is not going to support Renera. That's a fact. Right. If we can accept that that's a fact, then maybe we can do something about it, but we have to accept that as a fact and no one is, you know, our power players, our decision makers are not


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[Assistant] He's got these sores on his back. It's not going great.


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[Assistant] So, there is a reckoning coming and it's upsetting that no one who can really do the right thing about it can see it or is willing to accept even Ranira who like this directly pertains to her and her ability to rule and the potential for her to rule.


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[Assistant] So I don't know, like, I think a post Viserys reality is looking pretty scary right now.


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[Assistant] No easy wins for auto high tower and agon.


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[Assistant] The white heart, you know, as we heard the huntsman say, as we heard Otto say is a symbol of kingly power before the arrival of Aegon the Conqueror and for that animal to be killed and dragged into the royal camp.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On Aegon, Prince Aegon's birthday would be...


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[Assistant] A symbol that people would potentially rally around to say, hey, maybe Aegon, maybe Aegon should be king.


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[Assistant] But then, on the other hand, is it a statement on her lack of ruthlessness? Oh, interesting. You could also call that compassion, Jason. Well, that's what I mean. Like, again, it's a fucking deer, folks. Like...


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[Assistant] Exactly. You also have to accept the reality that people care about this stupid thing and that it would look pretty great if you walked into camp with it. Is it stupid? Yes, it's dumb.


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[Assistant] Cover up the, uh, the finger that fell off. Nobody can know about this. The look on his face when the hunts master is describing the lure of the heart, he is like, oh, your grace, we're gonna get it.


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[Assistant] In return for the hope of like a renewed relationship with his daughter who he loves and has supported to the detriment of his reign,


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[Assistant] Here he is offering her that very bit of generosity. Marry whoever you want. I'm not going to get involved. Fall in love with somebody and marry them.


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[Assistant] And he's like, you know what? You're right. So that was really, that was a huge moment for me. And I thought a really


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[Assistant] Important and honest moment to say, I support you. I support your ascension to the hilt. Yes, I questioned it. I did. But I swear on your mother's memory that I will support you. Now, what will that support mean when he has passed from this mortal coil?


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[Assistant] Alicent is really trying and she doesn't have to. Right. You know what I mean? Yes.


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[Assistant] Grab it. She could be like, yeah, this is my son, let's lock this thing down. Let's avoid war. She could do it, but she is fighting that. And I think that's really a credit to her.


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[Assistant] I wonder, you know, with so many time jumps, if people, you know, that big small council scene where, you know, Viseris orders the aid and you hear the big voiceover, I'm ordering you the aid.


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[Assistant] Oh absolutely. I think you're right, there is this perception that dragons are like the nukes of Westeros, that you have them and immediately you're probably gonna win. That said, as we've said in previous episodes,


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[Assistant] Dorn is not conquered yet, and Dorn is not conquered yet because they were able to hold out using very similar tactics to what the crab feeder is using, which is when the dragons show up, you hide.


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[Assistant] And then when the dragons fly away, you come back and you do stuff. And then you hide again and then you just keep doing that. And eventually the dragons get tired and you know, pretty effective strategy. And I think part of the reason why Corlys has been so alarmed, as we've said in the past, the stepstones are part of this shattered


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[Assistant] So, you know, if you're looking at the map, you're thinking what happens if this belligerent triarchy links up with this portion of Westeros that we have never conquered that has resisted the power of dragons for over a century, that is scary and concerning.


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[Assistant] The one thing that Daemon did while close to the king is keep all of the kind of people that are vying for power on edge because Daemon is a badass.


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[Assistant] This is a thing that, you know, Otto Hightower and the rest don't want around King's Landing because, oh shit, if that guy's protecting the king, then I gotta really watch my step. And I think King Viserys at this point, again, for all the trouble that Daemon brought, it's better to have him close, isn't it? I think it's better to have him around.


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[Assistant] One thing I wanted to note, you know, we talked about all these effed up plans, Leonor's crazy plan worked, and there's a guy having a good time, huh? On the back of a dragon? He's out there like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It does seem like one of those, why did nobody talk about this before? You know what I mean?


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[Assistant] A Lannister always pays his debts. Yeah. Always. And the Valerians, of course, as Corlys told us, became rich because Corlys sailed around and got a bunch of goods to bring back and sell.


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[Assistant] Of the Sunset Sea. Amazing. Beautiful. Yes, it's located right there on the coast, so you have access to all the kind of west coast trading routes. That's great. Here's the other thing. It's literally a gold mine.


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[Assistant] That I think speaks to the way, you know, legends play a role in the kind of lore of Westeros is Lann the Clever, who's like thought of as like the first Lannister.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Casterly Rock used to belong to the Casterlys. Sure, that would make sense. The way Land the Clever got it was basically to trick them out of it. Now there's a lot of different legends about how he did that.


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[Assistant] So one says that he snuck in through some secret way and then was like pretending to be a ghost and like, you know, whispering things into the casterly's ears and eventually they're like, oh, our entire gold mine house is so scary that we have to leave, you know, but essentially he tricked them out of it, which,


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[Assistant] It tells you a little something about the ethos of the Lannisters that continues to this day. Do not trust them. Watch out for them.


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[Assistant] Too many lions, too much gold, don't trust these guys.


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[Assistant] Another interesting thing I think worth taking note of, we see Laris Strong, who they call the clubfoot, not to his face.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, yes. He comes in saying, oh, you know, the hunt is too active for me. Obviously, I can't, in my state, I can't take part in this. Let me sit here where the very, very sensitive conversations are going on. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Keep an eye on that because I think that guy is playing weaker than he is. Interesting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I really enjoy that as well because it gives you an idea of like the political, cultural texture of the realm. And it also...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just really underlines the ongoing and increasing isolation of Viserys who sits there watching all this merriment. His wife holding his child pregnant with his second child and everybody's smiling and looking around and he's just on his throne just bottoms up.


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[Assistant] Big wine joke. Somebody's gotta stop the king at some point.


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[Assistant] It surely scores of, I mean, that first dragon blast wipes out like thirty eyes in a stroke.


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[Assistant] By the way, RIP to Kragas Drehar. He tried it and it didn't turn out great for him. In the end, he turned into half a guy. But a good run for Kragas Drehar through these first three episodes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We've seen Millie in Janet King, in Reckoning, in Upright, but now, of course, you know her as young Rhaenyra Targaryen in the HBO original House of the Dragon. Millie, welcome to the official Game of Thrones podcast.


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[Assistant] How does she wanna behave? What does she wanna do?


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[Assistant] As you began the, the audition process for this, how much did you know about what it was?


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[Assistant] So what was your reaction in that moment when you're like...


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[Assistant] Relationship like with her dad, King Viserys, like by this time, she's been named heir.


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[Assistant] That's seemingly great, but at the same time, no one is happy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] None of the supposed benefits of this have arisen. King Viserys is more miserable than ever. And it seems like they just don't talk. They never speak to one another.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, in addition to, uh, your accent, English accent for this role, you had to learn some Valerian. There's some Valerian dialogue. How, how was, what was that like?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do you ever get to the end of a Hivalerian dialogue chunk?


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[Assistant] And maybe, you know, lose the thread and just go. Every time it would be like.


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[Assistant] Do you remember what the, what the very first scene, uh, y'all shot was?


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[Assistant] First time in, in wardrobe. What was that like? You get the wigs, you get the wardrobe, you get the jewelry on. Did it feel real at that moment?


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[Assistant] This cast is huge, uh, many are so experienced. Are you picking up like...


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[Assistant] Acting stuff for your own process and what's your own process been like as you've gone through this?


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[Assistant] Do you remember the first thing that made you want to be an actor? You've been doing this now for five years, dropped out of high school to pursue acting, and clearly it's worked out. What was the thing that awakened that passion for acting?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Her first scene is that, uh, that huge conversation between Viserys and Rhaenyra in the, in the dragon crypt under Balerion's skull. That's a big, load-bearing, emotionally scene. Uh, and for that to be the first one is like, woof. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All thanks to Michael Gluckstadt, Allison Cohen, Kenya Reyes, and Becky Rowe from the HBO Podcast Team, and Ashley Morton, Dana Froome, and Liz Keating at HBO Creative Marketing.


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[Assistant] Expresso. It does all that, it puts all that foam on top, it's like your machine, you know, kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk


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[Assistant] I have some tail breast marinating in the refrigerator last night from last night. So they've been in there all night swimming in that goulash I got. In the goulash. What's in your goulash, government? It is lemon juice.


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[Assistant] Salt and pepper. Garlic. Worcestershire sauce. And a little bit of smoked paprika. And it's olive oil.


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[Assistant] Wow, I don't know, I, uh, uh, recent, I guess it's been.


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[Assistant] Uh, how much me and my woman's hunting together this year, that's, that's a positive. That's a positive. Oh yeah, cause uhm, we got through hunting, we was sitting there, you know how she's busybody, busybody. We was down at the camp, at Jeff's camp, and we was, she was wanting to clean up. He said, no, cause we was sitting in the,


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[Assistant] Lazy boy. Mhm. He said, getting that lazy boy over.


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[Assistant] And you know her, she can't be still. Well she finally got over her.


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[Assistant] And she kicked it back and she went to sleep. So I was like, alright.


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[Assistant] That's another story. But she woke up and she looked over at me and she said, okay, I get it.


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[Assistant] I know why you'd love it so. So I said alright, so that was a very positive thing. There is no nap quite like a hunting camp now. She said I could just disappear down here. She said that ain't very Christian we supposed to be. But she said I


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[Assistant] Do you notice all them families out there that you never used to see? Fishing? Yea.


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[Assistant] I just want to go get one. Beep beep! Nah. Okay. Go ahead. Miss Paula got all her energy out anyway.


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[Assistant] Mayo Clinic. Them people got it going on up there. They fixed everything.


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[Assistant] Thale says, Stone come out of the womb, looked around and said, I don't know about this. Yea, I don't know about this. So you didn't do that right.


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[Assistant] New Year's resolution. We got ten minutes. I think I might.


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[Assistant] That's what I'm talking about.


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[Assistant] That doesn't really blow my skirt up. I don't like chocolate. Just a solid chocolate something. No, I'm a cake eater.


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[Assistant] Well, I never, I used to never stay up, but uh,


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[Assistant] That's all good. I like it. So it's New Year's in Australia before it's New Year's here. Ain't it? Yea, yea. That's the way it works. Oh, I have more. That's real early. It's like 9am.


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[Assistant] I would ask only this, that rather than gelding me and having me tortured, you would sentence me mercifully to death.


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[Assistant] And this was probably seven years ago, six, seven years ago, and they both were documentaries. And after I made my second one, Meet the Patels, I finally got an agent. I was about 35 years old and we walked into the agency and


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[Assistant] That's great. Good luck with that. Good luck. Good luck. And literally my first gigs were comedies because my


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[Assistant] You know, I put this thing together and I finally got it.


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[Assistant] And then they moved Heaven and Earth to, I was supposed to do two episodes and then they changed everything around to make it possible for me to at least do one. So I'm super thankful.


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[Assistant] When I first read the scene, I saw Viserys going down that aisle.


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[Assistant] So as we started preparing for that moment where Viserys enters the throne room and walks down, everybody was freaking out because...


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[Assistant] That well, I saw it and Miguel saw it and Ryan saw it and all three of us were like, it has to be real. We have to embrace that walk.


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[Assistant] Because if we shorten it, it actually doesn't tell the story. So...


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[Assistant] I think the bar was raised to make sure that there was an impact, there was an emotional moment there that we could all feel and the question was, well, how do you do that? And so I had always, I guess when I read the script, envisioned, okay, he's walking to the throne and we started rehearsing it and


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[Assistant] Renira was standing there and she...


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[Assistant] I had finished, you know, giving her speech that she was standing in the middle, and I had a moment in rehearsal, like, stop, stop, stop. Viserys isn't walking to the throne. He's walking to his daughter.


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[Assistant] And that was emotional for me even as someone who loves her father and I know he would do anything for me and it just crystallized the visuals for that.


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[Assistant] And so we did the best we could in the moment, you know, just changing what we could, but still keeping our shooting schedule as it needed to be. And that's what made it to that scene. The fact that he, he's this man who loves his children and loves his job for lack of a better word.


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[Assistant] You know, loves his duties. As we all know, that's just hard to balance. It's kind of all or nothing for both a lot of times in life. And so it's a very relatable situation.


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[Assistant] Because what's good for one side of it is not necessarily great for the other side. To me, at least, that's what that scene...


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[Assistant] I actually know, yeaah, no, I, I, I don't think he was. You look at the dinner scene.


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[Assistant] And the kids, you realize in that dinner scene that he's passing, he and Ranira and


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[Assistant] Saw it thinking, Oh God, there's going to be a fight, you know, and sure enough there was. So.


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[Assistant] I don't think he realized how big it was because he was gone when all the kids started.


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[Assistant] Acting up and fighting and saying what they said. He was quite oblivious to it. What do you think?


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[Assistant] I mean, and they believe it. They totally believe it. They decide that this is, they build a whole story around it because it's their way of surviving.


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[Assistant] I would say my biggest philosophy is that everyone's kind and everyone's heard. You know, I was bullied when I was younger, first one born in America. I will never forget it. So going into any job, if I see


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[Assistant] Someone who's not being treated properly or isn't feeling included, I say something because I'm at a point in my career where I actually can.


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[Assistant] On some level, we're equals. You know, even though we have different jobs, we're...


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[Assistant] I actually feel like so many wonderful moments in the episode came from, not from me, you know, came from someone standing around me or...


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[Assistant] The editor saying, hey, I tried, I played with something. What do you think of this? You know.


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[Assistant] Element of surprise. Unsurprising, but also kind of unceremonious at the same time.


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[Assistant] So that was always what I storyboarded first, was that just the simplicity of it, that


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[Assistant] From where he was standing and you would see him go across and then he would come and chop off Feynman's head.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I mean, it still makes me smile. I love it. It's like this guy's just reacting to Viserys is yelling at him and the guy's head just like comes off. It's great. Like, and how many, how many jobs can you do that on? This is why I love Game of Thrones. It's like you can do stuff like that and it, it's Game of Thrones. It's House of the Dragon.


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[Assistant] That Viserys brought the two ladies together. And the imagery that I always thought of is when your father is in the hospital and the two daughters come and stay, you know, sit on either side of him. That feeling, I mean, you could feel it right now, you know?


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[Assistant] It sees two daughters who have not been talking to each other, who've been fighting, who've been hurting each other.


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[Assistant] And here is the father that they both love in a way. And so that's what we tried to build in this episode.


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[Assistant] That we had to somehow get to that feeling and if you look at their dialogue, there's not a lot before that dinner.


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[Assistant] That we had to, like, write on, it had to come from...


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[Assistant] Episodes before which actually even then they were


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[Assistant] And it's been six years, and so that was probably the thing that I lost the most sleep over. But I was the most excited by, is how do we do this non-verbally?


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[Assistant] And so the way we shot it, I started shooting things from their point of view. I started adding walk-ins, walk-outs. There's just a lot I did to try to bring point of view into this so that you feel, especially for Alicent,


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[Assistant] And then the other part was talking to the actors beforehand, getting everybody on the same page of, okay, if we have to somehow create this turn at the dinner.


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[Assistant] And we even thought about shooting extra. You know, we thought, oh maybe we need a scene. But we just didn't have time in the schedule and also time in the script. Like there were so many other essential parts of this story.


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[Assistant] We were rehearsing and the two of them were standing there. One was on a higher stair and one was on a lower stair and I was just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. And they both even read my mind. They're like, yes, yes, yes. You know, and then you're just like, get the camera, get the camera, you know, and, and.


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[Assistant] There's moments like that where you know, everybody knows what we're looking for and there is a effervescence and a improvisation to the filmmaking in that way where we all just trusted that we would find those moments and they would have to be looks.


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[Assistant] So anyway, I was, I was really excited about that's just one of them, but that, you know, it's just so exciting when you're all like, yes, we're going to make it that turn. We have to earn it.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I think part of it is that Ryan and Miguel, they've just been so great to work with. They're such partners, you know, I read the script and I called them and I think they spent


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[Assistant] Like two, three meetings with me over the course of a week.


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[Assistant] As I went page by page by page and I'm like, I don't understand this. Why is this? Okay. What can we do for this? What did you mean by this? And when we got to my biggest thing was this turn, I don't understand this turn. How are we going to do this turn? And they said, well, Geetha, this is what we said happened. And I was like, but where is this happening?


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[Assistant] And they were so supportive and collaborative and saying, well,


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[Assistant] It's gotta happen somewhere in here. Let's figure it out together. And that's what I'm saying is I think the reason this particular job was so


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[Assistant] Great for me, but also I feel really good about the art is that there was this sense of we're not done till we're done. The journey continues as we shoot. The journey continues as we edit and also we were so inclusive of the actors. Every single actor was involved in the storytelling from


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[Assistant] To have that type of experience where everybody was thinking and moving and nobody was saying, no, no, no, just shoot the script.


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[Assistant] You know, or it's fine, it'll work. Nobody felt that way. Everybody was like, yes, this is what, this is a story we have to tell. We have to set these stakes. So let's, let's get there together.


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[Assistant] It was the reason why I direct.


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[Assistant] The best part of the job is working with actors. Uh, Patty was magical. He would do every take differently, make me cry almost every take, and then we would call cut, and he would start cracking jokes.


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[Assistant] Sometimes singing and dancing. I mean, what a guy. He, the only word that comes to mind is magical. He's one of those people that knows his character.


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[Assistant] What Viseris believes is gonna happen when he dies. And so we talked about it. He talked more with Ryan and Miguel about it. But the point is that he, he became Viseris.


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[Assistant] Throughout the shoot, the more time I spent with him, the more I saw him just walking around like Viserys.


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[Assistant] So that was interesting. I think it's because he was so there mentally that there was no room for Patty at times.


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[Assistant] And then as we got to the end, I felt he was able to switch between more often. And that's when the singing and dancing happened and it was awesome.


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[Assistant] Yes, and she is another tricky character, at least for me in this episode. And like I said earlier, I, I read the episode and I didn't like her.


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[Assistant] And just before this episode, Miguel's episode ended with her...


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[Assistant] Speaking of Lars and making this, you know, not making a deal, but aligning with the bad guy.


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[Assistant] And so, I mean, that's, that's the thing. And I talked to Olivia about it, and I was, you know, I was like, Olivia, what are we gonna do? Like, we gotta figure this out. And man, we went into that scene where Olivia is with the girl who got raped by her son.


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[Assistant] I loved her. I loved Alison, even though she, everything she did was self-serving, selfish.


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[Assistant] On the page, it had not made sense to me.


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[Assistant] And she and I just, I think really worked well together in that way because we both had the same agenda. That turn.


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[Assistant] But she's the one that did it. She's a great actress.


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[Assistant] She didn't choose all this responsibility. She didn't choose it and she's not even sure she wants it. She's doing what has been handed to her.


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[Assistant] These actors know their characters better than any of us. So...


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[Assistant] She's the one that did the beautiful painting, you know?


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[Assistant] New actor, the kids particularly, new actors playing them. So, it's interesting because Ryan and Miguel didn't want to have a lot of exposition.


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[Assistant] Right. They took the West Wing approach where they just put you into it. So they just wanted the audience to...


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[Assistant] Sometimes you might watch a scene, and at the end of it, you figure out who the person was, at least. I think that's how it went sometimes. And that actually is a thrill in our mind.


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[Assistant] But instead allows them to feel the wind rushing through their hair.


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[Assistant] On this episode, and a lot of it was spent with these conversations, stealing each of them, saying, okay, let's go back to this. Why, why is this happening in this scene? How do we make sure that this comes across? And for example, uhm, Damon and Ranira, they're together at the beginning of my episode.


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[Assistant] Part of the thing that we felt was important was to believe that they were in love with each other.


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[Assistant] But feel the electricity of it. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I am very much in love with my husband and I have a crush on him. And when I see him, I still get chills. And I wanted to see that. I wanted to feel that from them because this was a delicate, fleeting moment, as you know, having, you know, seen the show.


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[Assistant] We needed to feel the realism of that and so the two of them


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[Assistant] Had a lot of conversations, probably even without me, where they were building their relationship and building the chemistry. And so I was really pleased when we got to shooting their first scene together where Raniera says, I need to go back home. Just the way he looked at her. I just loved that moment.


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[Assistant] I mean everything came from Ryan's writing and you know, Miguel working with us as well. I think...


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[Assistant] There was so much that I had read in the previous episodes. And by the time it got to the dinner, it was a crazy shoot because of that. Because we needed to get every single look that was the culmination of seven episodes.


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[Assistant] So, it wasn't just, oh, what's happening in episode 8, it was, oh, what happened in episode 7, 6, like, cause...


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[Assistant] As we all know, the things that happen to us throughout our lives are still there in some way to shape us and shape our relationships. That's again, what's so great about working with Ryan and Miguel is that they were most concerned about the realism of the story and


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[Assistant] It wasn't just what was on the page, it was what was in between the lines and the subtext and the history. And that's really fun when you're a director.


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[Assistant] Bringing the dimension and the history of these relationships to life with looks.


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[Assistant] You look at Raniera and she has a warm, great relationship with her kids. She does. And you look at Allison and


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[Assistant] It's funny because when I saw Olivia crafting that and playing that, I was in awe because I saw so many people, even myself and her. We've all done that. It's such a human grounded


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[Assistant] Feels like her father has pushed her to the place she's in and she can't hear her own voice. She can't feel her own heart beating. So when Raniera enters,


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[Assistant] It was a really interesting experience in working with Reese who plays Otto. Reese...


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[Assistant] Called me before we started shooting and said, you know, I'm a father who...


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[Assistant] Point of view of what Otto was thinking. And by the time he was done, I was, I was like, oh, you're just like my dad. You just care about your daughter.


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[Assistant] And so everything we did in that episode was about auto.


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[Assistant] Doing what he thought was right and being misunderstood. But if he could sit down with Alicent and have a couple drinks, loosen up, he would say, he would say, I love you.


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[Assistant] But it's interesting because Reese and I had a really good conversation about just fathers.


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[Assistant] And how they come across as strict or people who don't understand your point of view and they don't listen and


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[Assistant] That's not really the case. It's much more complicated than that. I think parents want for their children what they have and they want what they know is safe a lot of times. And what's safe is not always the only route you can take.


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[Assistant] In more ways than anybody other than the neighbors will know, just yes, a constant reminder. I'm almost positive that in the future it would be a constant reminder for those surviving victims. Uhm, we're proud to say because we maintain a beautiful relationship with the extended family, we have their blessing on this. It is the right thing to do. Uhm, it's time to turn the light on.


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[Assistant] Nope, I can't remember the last time I seen him.


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[Assistant] One way we're available to serve you is through our Team Clark Consumer Action Center. Team Clark Consumer Action Center has been with us since 1993, providing one-on-one free advice and guidance


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[Assistant] To learn how you can receive this, go to Clark.com slash CAC. In this episode, it seems like


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[Assistant] Every time you're in a store and you're at the register, you're being asked to round up for this charity, that charity, or the other charity. And,


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[Assistant] How do you decide if you're gonna do that? When you're gonna give? Or if they ask you, would you like to give a dollar to this, that, or the other? How do you make that decision?


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[Assistant] Also, I recently answered a question from someone about a facility fee being added to a doctor's appointment. This is actually a trend and let me tell you, it's not your friend. So I was on a charity board for years.


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[Assistant] That one of the board members, uh, was the CEO of a big retail company. And being the CEO,


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[Assistant] He said, okay, we're going to do roundup at the register for the charity.


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[Assistant] And we were all sitting around there and said, that sounds very nice, thank you. And then the millions poured in.


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[Assistant] I mean, man, it was amazing. It actually moved the needle of donations for this charity that I was on the board of. And you see this


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[Assistant] At retailers, supermarkets, a variety of stores.


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[Assistant] And you're paying your bill, it'll say would you like to round up, uh, you can go to, you'll see many times at fast food restaurants. They'll ask you if you want to round up to the next dollar for the money to go to this, that, or the other.


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[Assistant] And I had a question recently from somebody saying, what's going on? Are they just pocketing that money? The owners just taking that money.


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[Assistant] And there may have, there may be at some point some ugly scandal where the money is not paid to a charity but as a general rule the money is paid


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[Assistant] To whatever organization it is, that they're


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[Assistant] Collecting that money for and it is something where the company that does it, they're able to pound their chest and they get awards and all that for the money that they turn over and they seem like big heroes, the charity and they are, but even they're not putting their own money behind it. It's your money that is funding that.


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[Assistant] That uh, award that that company's getting, but who cares? Because if you believe in the cause, the purpose, you believe in the organization, that's fine. On the other hand,


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[Assistant] If they're saying the money's going to blah blah blah, and you don't know anything about that organization, you don't know if they handle that money efficiently, you don't know if they spend it well, you don't know if they're good at their mission, then I'd say you worked hard for your money,


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[Assistant] Then just don't round up. Or don't give an additional dollar or whatever. That you need to feel comfortable


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[Assistant] With who is asking for that money and what's actually going to happen with it. But it's kind of like the curse of the iPad.


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[Assistant] Where, no matter where you go now, they're popping it around and you're, you're being asked to give a tip at places that didn't used to have tips. It's the same thing at retailers and grocery stores where they're all asking you


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[Assistant] And I, and uh, if you're a long time listener, you know that my late mom, as her mental capabilities slipped, was being scammed by all these fake charities. And we had a lot of work to shut all that off because they were ripping her off for so much money.


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[Assistant] Like, Mom, why did you give to blah blah blah? She said, cause they asked, darling.


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[Assistant] I may need you to remind me of it. Cause those were a lot of numbers you threw out. So paying, if you're running a balance, you're paying a daily interest rate on credit cards. So let's forget the credit score for a minute. You're going to be able to pay that debt off quicker.


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[Assistant] Paying it in three one hundred dollar payments throughout a month rather than paying it all at one time in the three hundred late in that cycle because that hundred dollars once you paid it, there's no more daily interest on that hundred dollars. That's why, uh, people who


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[Assistant] Uh, and just keep paying enough to cover the minimum will end up out of debt in a fraction of the time of people who make one payment at the end of a month before the due date.


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[Assistant] And so that is really valuable. Will it ultimately help your credit score? It will do that too. But right now I'm really worried about the interest because you asked me.


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[Assistant] The f- the credit card debt carries a very high rate of interest. Average credit card in the country is now over 20% interest. You're not gonna earn 20% in investments, but at the same time it's great to start a habit. So I would say you open, uh,


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[Assistant] A Roth IRA if you don't have a Roth rather than a regular investment account, Katie.


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[Assistant] In the Roth, so you're building that habit, and the other 75% goes towards the credit card debt. Because the credit card debt impact is so great, but also building that habit


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[Assistant] Of doing that Roth IRA consistently every single month. And then once you pay off the credit card debt, having a lot more money to put towards the Roth will pay off for you so well over time.


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[Assistant] A thousand additional dollars a month, 12,000 a year to close the gap is fantastic. You have the pension and security in order to fund life's needs. So that means you need, hope you're sitting, you need around 300,000.


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[Assistant] In, uh, in investments for retirement in order to be able to fund that lifestyle. You've got less than 100,000 in the 401k. You're contributing, uh, sounds like 16,000 a year into Roth IRAs.


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[Assistant] You may need to work another year or 18 months beyond what you intended so you can, uh, continue to work on getting those student loans paid off. Those, those have got to be near zero six, seven years from now.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so I wasn't even gonna go there because that's, those are the choices he made.


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[Assistant] Uh, it's better for your kids to be on the hook for their college education than for you to have deprived yourself of saving for retirement. And I know the kids, they're going to say, gosh, it's just too bad dad didn't save more money over the years.


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[Assistant] You know, they say, they think stuff like that. Uh, so yeaah, so.


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[Assistant] Uh, John, I mean, the truth is I hope your kids are listening. They say, dad, let us take on that student loan debt. I mean, you, you do point something out, right? But John looks at this, this is a situation. He's got to live with it. So I would say for you not to be nervous in retirement either.


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[Assistant] Work part time and retirement to close that gap that you're going to have each month.


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[Assistant] And get those student loans paid off. The mortgage is being paid as a green.


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[Assistant] And, uh, but that $200,000 exists on student loan debt because of your big heart and what you did for your kids. So you're a great person who is carrying a big burden.


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[Assistant] So that your kids would not have any debt at all when they finish their college educations.


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[Assistant] So Deborah, there are lots of lists about this, uh, that you can find online and generally the best places are going to be in the Midwest where housing costs are usually a lot lower and access to good medical care and a lot of, uh,


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[Assistant] Mid-size and larger Midwest markets, the availability of good medical care is there. So,


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[Assistant] If you were to look around online, uh, best places to retire, most affordable places to retire, you'll find place after place after place in the Midwest. Now, we're talking money here.


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[Assistant] Because what do people in the Midwest do when they go to retire?


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[Assistant] They go to Florida, Arizona, uh, South Texas, and they go to the Carolinas. I mean that's, you know the great migration and retirement of people from the Midwest. The Midwest has really lost


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[Assistant] Where's the, uh, best place to retire? If you want to go to warmer climes and follow everybody else from the Midwest,


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[Assistant] And in Texas, that the big cities in the south and the west and also Texas have enormous housing costs. But the smaller towns don't. And that would be an alternative if the climate is really important to you. Healthcare might be more of an issue.


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[Assistant] But the warmer weather, if you want to follow that, you ask best place.


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[Assistant] It would be the smaller communities. And there is a movement that way.


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[Assistant] This is something I'm going to address in more detail at some point soon on the podcast.


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[Assistant] They got the bill for treating them and their health plan took care of most of that. They had a small copay. And then they had a junk fee for something called a facility fee. And this


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[Assistant] Is an ugly thing happening all over America.


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[Assistant] To the doctor's office, uh, in a medical building or in a shopping center or whatever it is. Or it could be a freestander, but usually it'll be a strip center or something like that.


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[Assistant] Go to the doctor's office. Routine doctor's office, not an urgent care.


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[Assistant] Not in a, you know, an offsite emergency place. Anything like that.


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[Assistant] Is the hospitals are gobbling up medical practices.


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[Assistant] So they've got feeders when somebody's sick.


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[Assistant] That the answer to every question is you go to something with that hospital system. So the hospitals are going to the doctors and they're buying their practices. And it looks exactly the same. It'll be doctor blah blah blah on the door. But then you get the bill.


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[Assistant] And the way the hospital, see the hospitals playing this game where their heads they win, tails they win. They're paying the doctor.


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[Assistant] Uh, usually millions to buy the practice.


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[Assistant] And then they make back that money two ways. One, by getting the doctor to funnel patients into the high cost hospital services and making up the millions they paid the doctor by charging you this junk fee


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[Assistant] That could be a hundred or two hundred dollars so often. And insurance is going to tell you we're not paying that.


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[Assistant] So when you're hiring a new doctor or when you're making an appointment with one you already have, just remember to ask the question.


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[Assistant] If the answer is yes, you need to go find a new doctor.


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[Assistant] The hospitals are playing a dirty game with your and my wallet. There is no excuse for this.


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[Assistant] Is most of these hospital systems that are playing this dirty pool are non-profits.


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[Assistant] And paying no tax, not contributing any tax dollars to the community.


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[Assistant] And they're not really non-profits. They are running profit engines tax free. And then they're turning around and cheating the customers, the patients with these junk fees. Know this is going on.


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[Assistant] And know that you are the one who's left before you receive service, before you receive service, to ask the question, do you charge a facilities fee? And if they do charge a facility fee,


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[Assistant] Then that's when you need to consider, is it worth it to you to pay an extra $100 or $200 out of pocket to visit that doctor?


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[Assistant] Or is it worth it more for you to go find another doctor who's not owned by one of the hospital systems? Something else you need to know


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[Assistant] That really became an issue in the last, uh, I'd say probably in 22 forward is the health insurance industry is playing games


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[Assistant] With you when you go out of network, you know how your plan will have.


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[Assistant] If you have health coverage, there will be in-network and you, it's pretty predictable, you have this copay other than this thing I just told you about with the ripoff facility fee. But, uhm,


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[Assistant] You'll see if you go in network, you've got the copay and you've got this deductible and all that. But then if you go out of network, the formula is completely different.


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[Assistant] Well the insurance companies are using outside software providers to beat down


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[Assistant] The amount that they'll cover under your plan when you go out of network so that you end up having to pay a lot more out of pocket than what you think based on what the plan says.


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[Assistant] Know that the incentives are becoming so strong for you to stay in network.


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[Assistant] And so brutal for you if you go out of network that the plan document saying this is the most you'll have to pay out of pocket and all that when you go out of network. It's really become somewhat of fiction and you need to know that your medical care


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[Assistant] Needs to be in network as much as absolutely possible.


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[Assistant] You know the insurance industry is, is a topic we talk about a lot more than we used to. Homeowners, auto, health. The insurance industry is really squeezing its customers, squeezing us.


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[Assistant] But Daniel, the problem is the first words out of your 15-week-old's mouth are going to be, Rothia Ray. Freeze your credit.


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[Assistant] Never, never, not ever. That dad or mom, it's gonna be, yeaah, financial stuff. Okay, so you bring up a really interesting question. So yes, a lot of times if you'll pay cash upfront,


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[Assistant] In the hospital, that if you go to a free standard independently owned, the prices might even be lower for cash pay. And, uh, there are these free standards popping up in shopping centers all over the country that are truly independently owned and they say no insurance. Everything is a published price list.


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[Assistant] And normally it will be a lot cheaper than what the hospital is offering. The hospital is probably offering these discounts to compete against an independently owned free standard nearby that hospital. The downside of it, you're not having money contributed, expenses contributed towards your deductible.


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[Assistant] I recently filled a prescription for a third the cost, paying cash, what it was through the pharmacy benefits manager I have.


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[Assistant] Not true. I get my, uh, because of the weird Medicare laws, uh, I am Medicare ineligible.


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[Assistant] And for, for esoteric reasons. And so I get my health coverage through a big company I also work for. Uh, my employees are on a different plan.


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[Assistant] Prescription benefit plan. And that's okay. The employer doesn't have to give one at all. So, better to have a crummy one, I guess, than not one at all.


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[Assistant] So Natalie, you're already so far on the right path with what you're thinking. This is easy. So the big investment houses all are used to this problem and they will reclassify


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[Assistant] Meaningful or significant, if you are routinely going to be on the cusp


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[Assistant] Being eligible or ineligible for a Roth because you have the good problem of you're earning a lot of money now.


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[Assistant] Remember with a Roth and traditional, you're able to fund it in the following year for the prior year up to when you file your return. So you want to wait each year


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[Assistant] To do funding of a Roth or whatever you're going to do backdoor aversion.


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[Assistant] Uh, being able to look back and see what you earned in a year and then contribute rather than contribute current year. It always for you until your income either gets so high you're not even trying to figure it out or you're around that bubble where you may or may not be eligible.


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[Assistant] Yeah, you know, this, I don't understand why this hasn't been a revolution, that In-N-Out Burger will not carry Coke Zero, they carry lame diet Coke. What's wrong with them?


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[Assistant] Okay, so I'm looking at this car edge right now. Never heard of it till just this second.


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[Assistant] How long the dealers, uh, having to for it. For it is where they're having to pay a daily interest charge for having that vehicle sit there and you were able to drill down way beyond an individual model


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[Assistant] And you were able to find that Mercedes EV that had been sitting for over five months. You had them over a barrel.


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[Assistant] They knew it and the discounts, as you said, started flying.


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[Assistant] I love this and so I'm going to check out CarEdge and it's something that if we need to add it to our car buying tools, we will do so because that is awesome you were able to do so.


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[Assistant] The automakers have a variety of vehicles piling up on their lots, but nothing more right now than electrics that went from being the hardest of all vehicles to get to now


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[Assistant] Uh, the ones that nobody wants.


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[Assistant] And so you're able to find so much information.


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[Assistant] Out in the marketplace, I'm going to see how this works drilling down to an individual fin. Thank you for suggesting that. It's absolutely great.


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[Assistant] So you can see used in new availability, but I'm going to play with this tool.


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[Assistant] And see how it works and, uh, this is again how we're all part of the team.


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[Assistant] And Jerry, you're now a member of Team Clark because here you are bringing additional information to the table that I didn't know.


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[Assistant] So the Nissan Leafs, those first generation Leafs, were uhm,


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[Assistant] Not the greatest cars in the world, but you both got 11 years out of them. And they were the first attempt.


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[Assistant] To have electric vehicles in the marketplace. Not a very good attempt, but a first attempt and that led to everything going on now. So I hope you enjoy your new Mercedes electric and I'm sure you're enjoying


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[Assistant] The great, great deal you got. And I don't know what to say about in and out. We gotta fix that.


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[Assistant] I'm gonna be having my 3x3 really soon. I'm gonna, I'm gonna break my heart healthy diet.


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[Assistant] Tap a 3x3 at In-N-Out. If you don't know what 3x3 is, go read the secret menus.


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[Assistant] Mediterranean diet. Nice. Had, uh, grilled fish, vegetables. Great. Eating broccoli all the time.


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[Assistant] Yeaah. It's been four, more than four months. That's great. Since I got my, uh, new Sapien X4 experimental heart valve.


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[Assistant] Be alive because it didn't look like I was gonna be and I'm still here kicking and I'm averaging.


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[Assistant] That's all for us today. Remember what we're about. That you learn ways to save more, spend less, especially on running shoes, and avoid getting ripped off.


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[Assistant] Happy to be here and you, you really got me started in the radio podcast business. So it's cool to be here. You were 20 years ago, 20 almost 20 years ago, you were the guy.


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[Assistant] So one of the secrets that doesn't get talked about a whole lot when it comes to Warren Buffett, and you look at his rates of return over time, he's compounded at about double the S&P 500, which is amazing, and his rate of return over time is really hard, it's almost unmatched.


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[Assistant] Perhaps the biggest secret of that, and really in the early days when Berkshire was a really small entity, he admittedly will say, back when we were really little,


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[Assistant] I could buy a couple of stocks and if I did well it really moved the meter.


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[Assistant] Today, they're a multi-hundred billion dollar company. So he, even he will say it's really hard to move the meter now at


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[Assistant] Is just the sheer fact that he has essentially three quarters of a century doing the same thing.


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[Assistant] So he's not just a marathon runner, he's an ultra marathon runner. And one thing that he is, he doesn't do, even though we talk about 150 billion in cash, that's actually not even all that much relative to the overall size of Berkshire Hathaway.


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[Assistant] So he didn't get here to where he is after, after over 75 years of investing by getting in and out of the market. And he will, he would, he would tell us that and to this question,


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[Assistant] What he's saying is sure, the market's done really well. Yes, you could say it's a little bit overvalued, but a lot of that overvaluation is because of a few.


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[Assistant] Big technology companies that rule the day. If you take out, let's call a handful of technology companies and look at the rest of the market, so take out 10 companies of the S&P 500 and look at the other 490, they're, they're trading in their price relative to what they're earning at a pretty, at a relatively historical normal level.


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[Assistant] So if, if we were to really follow what Warren Buffett does action-wise, not what he's saying, he's not someone that has gotten in and out of the market because he thinks it's a little bit overvalued. He stayed the course.


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[Assistant] And yes, he always has some cash, but remember relative to the size of Berkshire, it's not as though he's gone to cash and is worried that the market is overvalued. He hasn't gotten out. So his secret is long-term staying the course, which I think is the takeaway for investors here today.


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[Assistant] So he, this is the cool thing. Not many people have the 403B and the 457. So the cool thing about, and it's a pretty rare situation that he's in.


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[Assistant] But when you, when you're in that situation, you can max out two of, you can max out two of them. So you can do the 22,500 times two. So it's really, he could save $45,000 a year and do


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[Assistant] The 403B, and he can do the 457, but I don't think he can also do the 457 Roth. He hits a limit there, and his total limit is $45,000. Now, if those listening that are 60, or I'm sorry, 50 and older,


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[Assistant] They, the combined, because you get this catch-up provision at 50 plus, now it goes to 30 each, 30 times 2 would be 60. So it's an even higher limit if, what, what, in a couple years for Oscar.


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[Assistant] So it's, if it's really a time horizon question, meaning that one of the most important things, Clark, as you know, when you're, when you're investing money, you've got to understand when you're going to be able to use it.


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[Assistant] And if it's a, if it's for retirement over the next 10 and 20 and 30 years, then you can invest it in the stock market and you can withstand the gyrations of the market because we can go down 10, 20, 30, 40% in any given year at any time.


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[Assistant] And that's important because if you know you have a destination for this money or goal and you have a time specifically, let's call it a year, then you just don't want to risk it. You don't want to risk the volatility in, in the stock market really at all.


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[Assistant] And the good, the good news though here is that interest rates are high. Now that's a bad news for homeowners because mortgage rates are high. It's a good, it's good news for savers. So because rates are at 5%,


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[Assistant] You can find a money market for 5% or CDs at 5% and I would be looking for, I actually look at, I like treasury money markets.


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[Assistant] There are hundreds or thousands of different kinds of money market mutual funds.


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[Assistant] I like the treasury ones right now just because it's, there's, there's no funny business outside of government paper or government bonds. Some money markets can get a little cute and buy other assets outside of government bonds or treasuries.


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[Assistant] But the yields are good enough and if you can find 5 or a little over 5% in a good old fashioned treasury money market fund, totally liquid, I think that's a really good place to stash that money away.


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[Assistant] So he's gonna be working full time. Till 65. And so he needs that extra 30 to bridge the gap until he is 67. Right. To take his Mac, well his full, his FRA, his full retirement age.


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[Assistant] I think I like that. So if you were to do, think about the math here, Lee, it's $30,000 on $300,000 is 10% a year.


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[Assistant] We know that a safe withdrawal rate is in the four percent range. Call it, I call it four percent plus. Four, four and a half percent range. And if you do that over time, really, really high probability that you can keep up with inflation.


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[Assistant] And really not ever worry about running out in the long run, 20, 30, 40 years.


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[Assistant] So we want to get to that withdrawal rate point as soon as we can, but this happens all the time where someone's waiting a little bit for social security. We know we get a giant bump every year we wait. 8% is that what it is? Right, it's a 7 to 8% bump.


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[Assistant] And then that's for life. And that's for life. And if Lee's married, if he has a higher social security payment and something happens to him than his spouse, then she may be able to inherit that at a higher level. So that's important to not necessarily wait all the way to 70 for some people.


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[Assistant] Allowing social security to grow is really important. It sounds like that's what Lee's doing and only doing 10% a year for only two years.


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[Assistant] Yes, it's way, it's beyond the 4% rule, but it sounds like once social kicks in, he'll be able to go easily to that 4% rule, or maybe closer to that.


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[Assistant] And I think that's a good strategy, so sure, I think 10% a year, it's a lot, but as long as he's getting back to that 4% plus range in withdrawals once he stops working, that should last him for the longevity of his retirement.


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[Assistant] Right, if, if he gets down to let's call it 150,000, it feels that cushion in retirement, we don't, maybe he has some other non-IRA money, but that cushion starts to get really too small to last you a lifetime.


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[Assistant] So first of all, the great thing, Clark, as I know you've talked about many times over the years is that index funds are super low cost, ultra ultra low, so you almost have no friction with cost, and I think that's hugely important.


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[Assistant] So that's number one. Number two, there's this concept. There's a book that I've been talking about recently. It's a, it's a guy named Morgan Housel who wrote about the psychology of money. And one of the, one of the interesting points he makes about investing is something called tail risk.


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[Assistant] Meaning that there are, there are events that happen over time that really can carry the day. So if you look at the Russell 3000, which is a giant index of, call it large and small cap companies.


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[Assistant] If you look at over the last 20 years or 25 years or 30 years, you'll see that that index has done well. It's called 10, 11, 12% a year, which is wonderful. Remember our money doubles every 10 years at 7%. It doubles every 7.2 years at 10%. So that's a great return.


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[Assistant] But only 7% of the companies in the Russell are what drove all the performance. And it's so high. Think about trying to find that, that's 7 out of 3000. It's 7%, but still needle in a haystack.


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[Assistant] So it's still not a whole lot of companies, right? And that's the same thing.


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[Assistant] Out of three thousand. And the S&P 500, we've seen over the last couple of years, it's only been five or six companies that have driven most of the returns.


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[Assistant] So it's hard to ever know exactly what they're going to be. So you get this concept of tail risk. You usually hear, well, it's a one in a thousand event that's bad, but it's really, there's tail risk to the upside. So it's a couple of companies that really do well, that can carry the day. And that's why if I'm, if I were


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[Assistant] 50, 100, 500, 1000 companies in them so that we have the opportunity to catch the tail risk that's to the good side. So, not that I don't own some individual stocks, I do, and I've seen that work really well, but if I had to pick one, a broadly diversified


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[Assistant] List of ETFs or conglomerate of ETFs that are broad-based, I think that's most people's best bet.


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[Assistant] So they, they, they functionally should be totally the same, right? An index fund is a mutual fund and you can only buy it or sell it once a day. So it prevents you from any sort of shenanigans around day trading.


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[Assistant] And the, and the, the potential problem around ETFs is that they trade just like stocks. They're still just baskets of companies. It could be 20 companies. It could be a hundred. It could be a thousand. But they do trade second by second and there's this temptation to trade them at any given time. And I think that's why


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[Assistant] A pure index mutual fund person.


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[Assistant] I think they're totally fine. I really like using ETFs. They give you a little bit more flexibility if you want to buy something or liquidate something.


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[Assistant] We mitigate our single stock risk, which we, we certainly know about, but I'm, I'm complete. If I had to choose, if you're, if I'm not being a politician here, Clark, and give you an answer, I would still choose ETFs today just because of the


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[Assistant] The group that the massive list of what we can choose from.


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[Assistant] The, the, so target date funds I think are, were a great innovation, and a good innovation within investing.


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[Assistant] And even, and you can look at social security in the same way too, it is extraordinarily secure.


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[Assistant] Just like a bond would be. So if he's got $5,000 a month coming in and guaranteed income, pension, social security,


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[Assistant] Then that's worth an enormous amount in, if you were to translate that to bonds. So he's, I think he's right in thinking, I don't need to have a target date fund that's the year 2030.


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[Assistant] Which is gonna get to 30 or 40% or 50% in bonds depending on what target date fund.


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[Assistant] You're looking at because they're all different. That's the other thing about target date funds.


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[Assistant] T-Row price has a different target date fund than Vanguard, etc.


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[Assistant] So I like the idea of him recognizing that he already has lots of conservative investments because of the pensions, and that sure, if he, if his goal, investing is really all about identifying a goal and then investing towards it, yeaah, if he wants to maximize his savings, his retirement assets for his heirs and his legacy,


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[Assistant] But another really, this is, planning gets very individualized here, and to some extent, if he's doing a Roth version of the TSP, then he's to some extent paying a little bit of taxes today.


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[Assistant] Then I see families do this all the time. Hey, I'll pay the taxes today. The Roth is a wonderful vehicle to leave to someone. And so I would say, yeah, if that is truly his goal and he's okay to pay those taxes, then all day long, the Roth version is awesome.


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[Assistant] And let me just see, is this right, Clark? It's CSIFG. You know what I'm saying there? CSIFG.


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[Assistant] The C is the large cap fund, or kind of like the S&P 500. I always remember CSI as the crime show. Uh, the CSI, the common, the C is the large cap, S is small cap, I international, and then FG fixed income and government. And that's the, that's the simplicity of that is beautiful.


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[Assistant] But are, are, are they really, aren't they the options of just, uh, juggling those five with their life cycle?


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[Assistant] We've gone through a lot of years where rates were really low and bonds were terrible. Bonds didn't pay a lot and then even worse.


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[Assistant] Because they work like a seesaw. The way I look at this is that when rates go up, prices go down and rates went up a lot over the last couple of years. So not only did bonds weren't paying a whole lot, their prices also went down. So I think that right now the investors looking in retrospect think, oh, bonds have been terrible. They're, they're awful. I should never do them. However, we are in a,


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[Assistant] Meaning that wherever our yields are, wherever rates are, interest rates are today, you have a pretty good probability that that's what, that's similar to what you will receive year after year for the next several years and rates are high. So if you lock in a CD, you, you have a great guarantee for that one year. Maybe it's a two year or even three, but as you could, as we, as we, as we see, CD rates get lower as we go out right now.


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[Assistant] So, I actually think for longer term investment money, bonds are probably better today than they've been in a lot of years.


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[Assistant] As the prospect for making money on them over the next, let's call it many years, and they're a great ballast. And I think that because rates are back to a more quote normal level, they will come back to that counterbalancing


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[Assistant] Right, I think if somebody jumps out of the bond market today, it's a little bit like jumping out of the stock market at the bottom.


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[Assistant] Gives us a sense of freedom. And every human wants that. Number one. Number two.


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[Assistant] Is about money. And so we're always going to be worried about that. And I think that we all have to have a set of just simple fundamental checkpoints that we know we need to get to. And if we get to them, we're in pretty good shape and we can lower our worry.


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[Assistant] That's been my goal on the Retire Sooner podcast for many years and the research studies I've done really are comparing the habits of happy.


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[Assistant] And happy may be the wrong word. Maybe that group, even though they're reportedly happy, over the years, I think that what I've also learned about that group is they have just


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[Assistant] So I'm always trying to help folks get to the, what are those financial checkpoints? And there's, there's several of them. And then I think there's also.


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[Assistant] A really important handful of lifestyle checkpoints. And I won't go into all of them today, but just a couple of things on the financial side. One, we talked about this in the show today. One is to have your mortgage pay off with insight. It's tough to do it. It's the biggest bill we have.


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[Assistant] But if we can get rid of our mortgage, retirees are four times more likely to be in the happy retiree camp versus unhappy. So get rid of mortgage huge. Multiple streams of income. So that could be social security for me, social for my spouse.


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[Assistant] Pension. And then my retirement income that comes from my investments. And happy retirees have statistically more and different, not necessarily much more money, but different income streams. Again, lowers their financial worry.


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[Assistant] There's also some financial checkpoints to get to. And I know that this is a number that can be debated till the end of time, but at least from a research perspective, what I've seen is that we want to get the median happy retiree retirement balance that I've found. The median number, not the, not the mean is about 700,000.


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[Assistant] Alright, so originally when I first did my research, let's call it over 10 years ago, it was 500,000. Uh, updated for the massive inflation that we've all lived through, particularly the last couple of years, it's, it's 700,000. So I think the five, the five million dollar number is crazy talk.


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[Assistant] I've worked with so many families over the year. They're, they're ultra happy retirees. They're not at $5 million. So that, that is, that's the other part of this. And then maybe bringing back to another


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[Assistant] Thought around, and I know that you've got this, you've always had a really positive outlook on the world. Some people will say Pollyanna. I say you're just a, you're, you're realist about eventually things work out in America.


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[Assistant] And eventually things get better even though we know we have lots of potholes and sinkholes along the way.


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[Assistant] Happy retirees understand that and I think of them as tomorrow investors. They're not worried about today or this week or what's happening in the latest economic headline.


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[Assistant] And if we can teach ourselves to be longer term optimists, that doesn't necessarily mean that everything's great all the time. But think about tomorrow, meaning 5 years, 10 years, 20 years down the line.


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[Assistant] Then that goes a long way, A, in growing our money over time, giving us the patience to be able to do that, and then reducing our worries along the way. And those are some of the financial things that I see happy retirees, they own that. They own that list.


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[Assistant] The BMW is the terrible luxury car for happy retirees. The Lexus is the number one luxury car.


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[Assistant] A luxury car for that unhappy retiree group, BMW.


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[Assistant] Number one luxury car, the Lexus. Okay. I love that. Your podcast again? Retire Sooner. It's just the Retire Sooner podcast with Wes Moss. And, uh, we've been doing it for a couple of several years now and, uh, it's a lot of fun. Awesome. Thank you, Wes.


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[Assistant] But I don't think he's particularly knowledgeable in this specific area.


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[Assistant] Jody in Florida asks, is it beneficial to pay a reduced settlement on a credit card that's in collections? Are there any tax implications?


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[Assistant] Nancy in Florida says, I just heard you use the term dink on your show and would like to offer another, I prefer, thinker. Two high incomes, no kids, early retirement. Keep up the excellent work.


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[Assistant] So I have a question from someone about this. Teresa in Florida says, I'm looking for a reputable way to get out of my timeshare. It's fully paid for. I'm just paying the maintenance fees. Please help.


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[Assistant] And that article is at Clark.com slash timeshare and we've got how to sell it if you can, how to cancel it, give your timeshare back, list your timeshare for a dollar, give it away, or donate your timeshare to charity. Sounds like a great deal. It is, it is.


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[Assistant] There are no non-stop flights and we are looking at roughly 13 hour flight with our three kids, two teens and one pre-teen.


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[Assistant] I hate flying and thought it might make it a little easier if we break up the flight by spending the night in Houston going to an Astros baseball game and then continuing onto Hawaii the next day. Is there a way to book a stop with the airline so I don't have to book two separate itineraries?


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[Assistant] Okay, this came into the Clark Stinks inbox, so it's from Andrew, but I don't know what state.


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[Assistant] Clark, you stink because you've told us how to be alerted to great airfare deals and then figure out a reason to visit that city, but you haven't provided the same guidance for people who want to take road trips instead of plane rides. Is there a kayak explorer equivalent for hotels?


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[Assistant] It seems that most websites will only give us prices when we search for certain places on certain dates. But what if we can travel anytime, anywhere?


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[Assistant] And just want alerts for screaming hotel deals that will motivate us to load up the dogs in the car and go explore a new city.