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CONVERSATION LESSON

UNUSUAL INHERITANCES

Dan: A.C. McGillicuddy.

Aaron: What’s going on Dan Douglas III?

Dan: How you doing?

Aaron: Pretty good.

Dan: You can’t take it with you, A.C.

Aaron: I know. I was planning on taking it all with me, Dan, butDan: What were you planning to take with you, just likeAaron: Just memories.

Dan: Just like King Tut. Build your tomb with all your tap dancing shoes and …

Aaron: Yeah. No.

Dan: Your pen collection.

Aaron: No. I realize now I just can’t do it. I’m gonna have to leave it all to, all to you, Dan. I’m going to leave it all to you.

Dan: That’s what the pharaohs thought. They thought they could take it with them.

Aaron: Apparently.

Dan: Chinese, too, right? Don’t they have all those tombs with the terra cotta soldiers?

Aaron: Yeah. But I don’t know what the significance of those were for the afterlife?

Dan: What’s the deal with the money that they burn in some parts of China? Do you know anything about that?

Aaron: No. Don’t know a whole lot about that. I think it has something to do with the ancestors and the spirits and of courseDan: I thought I read somewhereAaron: … the money represents some kind of value.

Dan: Yeah, that you can take with you on the other side.

Aaron: That I don’t know. That I don’t know. But what about you, Dan? What are you planning?

Dan: Well make something up.

Aaron: What are you gonna take with you?

Dan: What am I gonna take with me? I’m going to take you with me. If I go, you go.

Aaron: No. No.

Dan: We. We are a team. We’re a duo.

Aaron: That’s right. Maybe we should.

Dan: We’re tied together.

Aaron: That’s right.

Dan: Til death do us part.

Aaron: Deep English in heaven.

Dan: That’s how deep Deep English is.

Aaron: We run very deep.

Dan: Do you have a will?

Aaron: I should, but I don’t.

Dan: Don’t tell people that.

Aaron: I just told many people that.

Dan: Stop the recording.

Aaron: I think I’ll write one as soon as we finish recording this.

Dan: I’ll help you with that.

Aaron: Yeah. I bet you will.

Dan: Everyone should have a will. Interestingly, I’ve learned, you know one of our stories was about the Portuguese aristocrat, what was his name? Luis Carlos?

Aaron: He had a very long name. I do remember that.

Dan: I noticed his friend just called him Luis Carlos.

Aaron: Yeah. Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral da Camara.

Dan: Yeah. That’s ridiculous.

Aaron: Well I don’t know.

Dan: That’s why this guy had no friends.

Aaron: They didn’t know which name to call him. I think it’s kind of cool to have many names. I only have like three names. I’d love to have seven or eight names.

Dan: Aaron McGillicuddyAaron: McGillicuddy.

Dan: Jose. Don’t you have a Chinese nickname?

Aaron: No. Not really.

Dan: That they call you.

Aaron: Well they used to call me Tang Ai Luan. So Tang, it means soup because my last name is Campbell. I kind of made it up. Ai Luan is just, yes that’s just a phonetic version of my name, Aaron.

Dan: So for those people who don’t know, Campbell’s is a famous soup brand.

Aaron: Yeah. A famous soup brand. That’s right.

Dan: Which is why they called you soup-y.

Aaron: I would love to have a name from every culture that I’ve lived in. I think that would be really cool.

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: A Japanese name, a Chinese name, a Mexican-Spanish name, it’d be fun.

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: Actually, there’s nothing that stops me from doing that. I can legally change my name if I wanted to.

Dan: So anyhow, this article I was reading about Luis Carlos, his short name, is that apparently wills are not very common in Portugal.

Aaron: Really?

Dan: It’s a little bit odd. The article I read quoted some lawyer saying, “We don’t like to talk about death.” I think that normally your money just goes to your family. If you don’t have any family, the government takes it.

Aaron: I see.

Dan: So it’s a little bit unusual to have a will there. Apparently this guy had some bones to pick with the government. Maybe he felt he was overtaxed over his life.

I’m not sure what his problem with the government was, but he wanted to make sure the government didn’t get their hands on his money.

Aaron: Right. So this is the guy that gave totally random people money and other such things after he died, right?

Dan: Yeah. This was one of the more recent stories. A couple of the other strange stories about inheritances were from the 19th century.

Aaron: Oh I see.

Dan: This guy, I think he passed away in 2007.

Aaron: So yeah. That’s pretty recent.

Dan: Yeah. Some 13 years before, he decided he was going to do something crazy, and apparently the notary even asked himAaron: “Are you sure you wanna do that?”

Dan: Yes.

Aaron: The one for me that stood out that I thought was really interesting was this Canadian lawyer, Archibald MacArthur.

Dan: Oh yeah.

Aaron: After he bit the dust, he gave these inheritance gifts to people to put them in odd situations.

Dan: It’s just like he just wanted to mess with people.

Aaron: Yeah. I just thought that was really an interesting way to give money away.

Right?

Dan: The teetotalers, they were actually prominent Protestant ministers. He sounded like he just wanted to mess with them.

Aaron: How would youDan: He wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t benefit unless they were participating.

Aaron: Right. But how would you react to something like that if someone gave you, I don’t know, some kind of ownership orDan: Like maybe like $700,000 of stock in nuclear power.

Aaron: Yeah or some affiliation with some racist group or some hatred group of organization or company that does really bad things. What would you do with?

Just sell it? Give it away?

Dan: It’s kind of hard to think of any examples. It’s not like some racist group owns some major company.

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: But for the example of nuclear power, I think I would just sell it. It’s not like me refusing to sell that equity is changing anything.

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: What would you do?

Aaron: I don’t know. I guessDan: But if there wasAaron: … it totally depends on what it is then.

Dan: … a condition that to get that equity I had to for the next 20 years work for this nuclear power company, I think I would have to refuse it.

Aaron: Yeah. I think that’s what I would do as well. You just drop it.

Dan: But anyhow, it caused me to look up the origin of the word teetotaler.

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: Do you know what the origin is?

Aaron: No. I don’t. Teetotaler. Tee as in, it’s T-E-E, I think it’s spelled, not T-E-A, right? So I don’t know.

Dan: Golf or golfers.

Aaron: Really?

Dan: Golf tees. It’s actually in dispute but one of the more common origin stories is that sometime in the early 20th century when there was prohibition going on, I don’t know if that was just in the U.S. or in Canada, too. Certainly in the U.S. There was some prominent advocates for abstaining for alcohol or for prohibition and he said that moderation is not enough. We should t-t-totally abstain and people really took to the way he enunciated or stuttered over that T and they started calling themselves teetotalers, to the T, totally abstain.

Aaron: Wow.

Dan: I always thought it was tea, like T-E-A. I don’t think I’d ever written it before.

Aaron: Oh yeah. No. It’s T-E-E for sure. I just never thought about the origin of it.

So-

Dan: What’s the difference that he may live with each other? Yeah. That was pretty funny. The three friends may have disliked each other.

Aaron: Make them live together.

Dan: Yeah you’ve got some friends that I wouldn’t want to live with.

Aaron: I have some friends you wouldn’t want to live with?

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: Well you got some friends I wouldn’t want to live with either. But this idea, another interesting part of the lesson is, for me, is the idea of not passing on your wealth to your children, or at least large parts of it. Like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. They’re only giving a very tiny portion of their fortune to their children, or at least Bill Gates for that matter. The majority of it will go to Charity. The reason being that Gates, for example, believes that giving his children that money can weaken their character. They need to learn to be self-reliant. They’ve got to find their own way, and if that doesn’t happen, it could spoil the child.

Dan: Yeah. Certainly. I think it’s a curse having too much money at a young age.

We have a … Well I don’t want to name any names, but we know somebody in the town that we live in, or the town that I used to live in, that came into a lot of money when he was young, and I think he didn’t really have any ambition in life.

Aaron: Right.

Dan: Because he knew he could fall back on that.

Aaron: And I think it’s also a matter of perspective as well. Neither you nor I was born with a silver spoon in our mouth in terms of our perception on the world, but if you look at the world internationally, globally, some people would argue that we were born with a silver spoon in our mouth when you think about the fact that 80% of all humanity lives on less than $10 a day. We’re not part of that 80%. I think also it’s a matter of perspective as well. I wonder to what extent people who are in the developed world, middle class citizens, maybe we feel that in our day to day existence that we were not born with a silver spoon in our mouth and thereforeDan: I get what you’re saying. Certainly we’ve inherited huge advantages over the majority of the world who weren’t able toAaron: Have those privileges.

Dan: Afford a university education.

Aaron: Right.

Dan: Maybe many that weren’t even able to afford the nutrition necessary to give you the energy and to have the focus to get an education, to think beyond your daily needs.

Aaron: Right.

Dan: For sure, but I think a lot of these billionaires that are refusing to give their money to children are drawing important distinction. I’m sure they are giving them a lot of advantages like the best education but they don’t want to just give them a fortune.

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: That will stop their drive to create anything in life.

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: Thought actually, Warren Buffet is giving each of his children $2,000,000 which is quite a lot of money.

Aaron: Oh is he?

Dan: But he’s worth billions, so.

Aaron: He’s a character. He’s worth billions but I think he still lives in the same house that he started out in back in the late 50s or something.

Dan: Yeah. I once saw a picture of it and I bet it’s a house that cost just a few hundred thousand dollars.

Aaron: Yeah.

Dan: And he’s a billionaire. Though I don’t understand how that’s possible, being worth that much must put your security in danger. He must own all the property around him.

Aaron: Yeah. I wonder.

Dan: Have security houses set up. There must be something to stop people from kidnapping him.

Aaron: Yeah, because he would be a primary kidnapping target, would he not?

Dan: Yeah sure.

Aaron: Jeesh.

Dan: So yeah. I thought that was interesting that so many billionaires have signed on to at least give the majority if not all their money, the majority of their money away.

Aaron: Right.

Dan: They recognize that they have more than they can ever use and it will probably just handicap their children if they were to give it to them.

Aaron: It makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. I don’t see any point in keeping it unless you value some sort of family legacy, dynasty, hundreds of years into the future and you want to ensure that your progeny for many generations to come are well off.

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: Some people may value that.

Dan: Yeah. I liked what the former mayor of New York City, Bloomberg, said, also a business billionaire who said that he was not giving his money away to his children, who said that the best thing he felt he could do for his children was to make the world a better placeAaron: Right.

Dan: … through giving his money away to social causesAaron: Yeah. That makes sense.

Dan: … rather than give it to them.

Aaron: Yeah can you imagine being a teenager again and knowing that when you turned 18 or became an adult at the age of 18 or 20 that you would have these hundreds of millions of dollars at your disposal? It just … That would definitely change your perspective on how you spend your time.

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: And what kind of things you do to develop your mind and your skills. Jeez.

Dan: So, that story on epigenetics.

Aaron: Uh-huh.

Dan: With the starving Swedish adolescents, creating healthier children and grandchildren. That really blew my mind.

Aaron: Yeah. That’s something I think maybe a lot of the general public hasn’t really heard much about, is the epigenetics or the epigenome, because when people our age were educated about genetics in college or high school, we learned about DNA. That was it. That was the genetic code. That was what was passed on to your progeny. Now they’re seeing that throughout the course of an organism’s life that certain genes are tagged in a way that represents some sort of interaction with the environment and how those genes are expressed and translated into proteins. There’s this process of course in reproduction where that’s wiped clean. All those tags are removed. But they’re showing now that some of them actually do - I think it’s a very tiny percentage like maybe one percent or something like that - actually remain and they influence the expression of proteins in the child.

Aaron: That’s really, really interesting and it may show that how we live our life and the things that happen to use in our lives do have an imprint in future generations.

Dan: Yeah. I remember in school learning about nature versus nurture and how what shapes us is a mixture of our DNA, our genetic composition that we get from our parents, and from what we learn from the environment.

Aaron: Right.

Dan: This lens looking at epigenetics is showing how they’re all, one way of looking at it is that they’re all the same thing or possibly the same thing. That what we’re learning from the environment, our experiences, can cause a chemical reaction inside of us that can modify the way our DNA is expressed. It’s interesting to see that this is the crossroads of nature and nurture.

Aaron: Yeah. That’s a good way of looking at it.

Dan: Or what’s intrinsic and what we get from the outside come together.

Aaron: Right. It makes sense. It does make sense. But yeah, there was that one statistic that was quite shocking related to boys who ate a lot of food during this critical age in their adolescence, I think it was between the ages of nine and 10, passed down a 400% greater risk of diabetes and heart disease to their grandchildren. It’s like man. I certainly wasn’t starving when I was between the ages of nine and twelve. I wonder what my grandchildren are going to go through.

It’s like, “Oh my god.” Maybe we should be putting our young children through periods of fasting.

Dan: We have girls, but any listeners with young boys, put a lock on the refrigerator. Your great-grandchildren will thank you.

Aaron: Yes. Limit their caloric intake. Oh man.

Dan: Well.

Aaron: Well I guess that does it for this month.

Dan: Yeah.

Aaron: So we’llDan: So until next time.

Aaron: As soon as we finish our conversation here, Dan, I’m going to write my will.

Dan: Okay.

Aaron: Is there anything in particular you want me to put in there for you.

Dan: All I want is your loyalty.

Aaron: Loyalty. Okay. After my death, I will give you whatever remaining loyalty is present.

Dan: All I want you to do is to grow up to be a fine upstanding young man.

Aaron: Okay.

Dan: And I’ll be happy.

Aaron: Okay. Well thank you, Dan.

Dan: As a big brother figure to you, that’s all I’m asking for.

Aaron: I’ll make sure that’s at the very top of the will so that’s the first thing the lawyer reads.

Dan: Alright.

Aaron: Alright man. Okay. We’ll see you next time.

Dan: Yep.