This is the last of our Memorial Day celebrations, and I hope you keep all of the great people who served our country in mind. This is episode number 999. Next Monday will be episode 1,000, and today I want to wrap up the final piece of the great things that are building America and making America so great. I'll share that with you right after this.

Memorial Day is about remembering that stability is very expensive. Every peaceful morning, every functioning airport, every open highway, and every ordinary family cookout exists because previous generations sacrificed something to protect it. We must express our gratitude for this and realize how incredibly lucky we are. America is a very unique, fragile place, and as bad as it is some days, it's still a lot better than everywhere else. Thank God for America.

This is Memorial Day weekend. We want to honor those who served overseas and here in our country, the people who were in the services, and also the teachers, the farmers, the workers, and all of the people who have contributed to our great country. This is episode number 998, and we're talking about the great things that made America this week. I want to focus on something today that is very dear to my heart, millions and millions of them, and I'll tell you what that is right after this.

Small businesses built America. It's the family restaurants, the local contractors, the independent shops, the regional manufacturers, small accounting firms, auto repair shops, and the landscaping crews. These businesses sponsor the Little League teams, hire the local workers, support the neighborhoods, and keep towns alive, and they operate without headlines, attention, or public celebration. I celebrate them today.

It is Memorial Day week, and this is episode number 997. We're almost at 1,000. This week, we are talking about the things that have quietly made America great, and we've enjoyed talking about the hard workers of America, the people who go to work at four in the morning and make it so that our breakfast is ready at seven. All of the great people who contribute very quietly. I'll give you another example right after this.

One of America's great advantages is our ability to reinvent ourselves. Countries survive by adapting, and America has repeatedly reinvented itself during difficult times, like industrial revolutions, economic collapses, wars, and technological shifts. Every generation eventually faces a moment where old systems stop working and new systems must develop slowly over time. It's painful, and we complain, and we panic a little, but it works.

This is Memorial Day weekend, so I want to spend the entire week focusing on America and its greatness, and I really want to focus on the quiet things that made America so great. I've already talked about how the hard workers, the people who worked in the factories, and the teachers are so critical to America's success, and that, of course, is you, but there are other things I want to focus on as well. I'll be back with one of those right after this.

America works because hundreds of millions of people quietly do their jobs every day. Electricity turns on because someone maintains the grid. Food arrives because the truck drivers keep moving. Flights operate because mechanics inspect the aircraft at two in the morning. The freedoms that we depend on, enjoy, and often take for granted are protected by people whom we will never know personally. That's very humbling.

This is Memorial Day weekend, so I thought I would focus on some things that have made America great, some things that have quietly made all the difference so that our country is amazing. We are so lucky to live here, and we don't say that enough. I'll be right back with my first example, right after this.

America had its share of amazing, extraordinary people, but in reality, you, the ordinary people of America, built the greatness here: the teachers, the farmers, the mechanics, the small business owners, the factory workers, truck drivers, immigrants who arrived here with nothing, and families working multiple jobs with absolutely no recognition. America did not become powerful because life was easy. It became powerful because generations of people kept moving forward despite setbacks, hardship, and uncertainty. You are great, America.

This week, we've been having fun talking about the things that adults just pretend to understand. We've had some good examples, like wine, thermostats, and taxes, but I want to end with one more thing that sort of encompasses the entire phenomenon. I will do that right after this.

Adults pretend to know what they're doing. One of the strangest moments in adulthood is realizing that most people are improvising and making it up as they go. They are faking it until they make it, you know. As kids, adults seem so certain. The teachers, executives, parents, business owners, and preachers all appear like they understand exactly how the world works. And then you grow up and realize most people are making decisions with incomplete information and hoping that they're approximately right. All of us do it, and we need to stop. Quit pretending.

You know, people like to pretend that they're smart and they understand all of the things in the world, but so many of us are lying. We don't get it. We don't understand why a $400 bottle of wine is better than a $12 bottle of Two Buck Chuck. It just doesn't make any sense to me. I can't taste the difference, and I have no idea how our tax system works. And literally, I'm not teasing; I'm not making this up. My accountant just got out of jail this week. We need to understand these things better, and we don't. I'll give you another example right after this.

Artificial intelligence: they say it's going to change absolutely everything, but I have a guest on my radio show this week who has proven that 96% of AI initiatives fail. We don't understand it. We don't understand how they came up with it, and I don't even think the programmers know how it works. Be cautious of AI.

I will be honest with you: there are a lot of things that I just don't understand, and I very sadly anticipate that I will never understand them. My brain just doesn't seem to be wired to understand them, or even worse, they're not designed to be understood in the first place. Can you convince me that a $1,000 bottle of wine is really better than a $12 bottle? I'm not going to buy it. There are lots of things like this where we pay extra simply because of the perception, and many times, those are simply lies or marketing BS. I'm going to give you another thing that adults don't understand that we need to, right after this.

Half of the people are freezing, and half are sweating. It's these thermostats: you make a one-degree change, and they go up 10 degrees in the Nest. These new ones that think for you are even worse. I will be freezing in my own house, and they won't let me change the temperature.

This week, we are talking about the things that adults really just don't understand. We pretend that we do; we make out that we do with our friends and family, but we have no idea what we're talking about. I already mentioned this week that wine—a good bottle of wine, is one of the things that we all pretend to understand, but most of us couldn't tell the difference between a $10 bottle and a $1,000 bottle. Right after this, I'm going to introduce another thing that adults just don't understand.

This is one of the ones that really bothers me because we should be able to understand this. Our taxes—we all know that they make absolutely no sense. There are hundreds of thousands of pages of law that even your accountant can't keep up with, but they expect us normal people to be able to fill out these forms when they change the laws every year. Absolute craziness. We should be able to understand our taxes in one page.

Let's be honest, adults: there are a lot of things that we just pretend to understand. We don't really know what we're talking about, but maybe we've taken a weekend class, or we've gone to a seminar, or we've read a little bit about it, and we pretend to be experts. There are even people who are licensed experts who sometimes don't understand what we're talking about and what we're really getting at when we talk about some of these things. I want to start our exploration of these things we pretend to understand with wine, and I'll be right back to do that.

I love a good bottle of wine, but I will be honest: I have a hard time telling the difference between a $10 bottle of wine and a $400 bottle of wine. As a matter of fact, I think that's the situation with almost all of us. No one wants to say, "Hey, this tastes exactly like the cheaper one," and ruin the party. We just all go along with it and pretend, but we don't really know what we're talking about.