🪩 “Austin Powers Effect” — The End of Trends. Louis Vuitton’s insane ship. Aluminum’s LaCroix crush. +Stolen KitKat Picassos

0:28This is Nick. Fox? Because he's the maestro of marketing, sultan is selling region of real estate. Who is it, Jack? Ryan Serhant, the CEO, TV host, and real estate titan of New York. That's right. That's the guest for our New York City live show. And yes, he's charging us a 6 % non-negotiable fee. Grab your final tickets while they last today. And Jack, what do you say we hit the show? For our first story, it's wild. The same amount of time has passed between Austin Powers and the 1960s as Austin Powers and today. And yet, in the last 30 years since the Austin Powers movie, things don't look that different.

1:05So we'll explain what we're calling the innovation plateau. Uh-huh. And we're doing it through Mike Myers quotes. Yeah, baby. For our second story, put oil on the back burner because the war in Iran is now messing with aluminum. Masties, hold on to your La Croix because aluminum is actually America's favorite metal. And our third and final story. Louis Vuitton just parked a 100-foot-tall cruise ship in downtown Shanghai on land because it's a store. It's a store. Experiential retail is out. Landmark retail is in. But yetis, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. Shall we shag the stories now, Jake?

1:40We're going to shag them later. What's going on, man? Call up George Clooney and Matt Damon. Stat. Yeah, because we got a plot for the next Ocean's Eleven sequel sequel. Because the two wildest heists of the year just happened within 24 hours of each other. We're talking 400 ,000 Kit Kat bars stolen. And a half dozen impressionist paintings stolen. All stolen just three minutes without a single trace. Was it the same guys? Different guys? Don't know. Gotta wait till the Hulu documentary. But in the meantime, Jack, let's dive in D-Boy style. Let's start with the dessert, please. Kit Kat just confirmed that 413 ,000 Kit Kat bars were stolen from a truck in Europe.

2:16Yet he said it's 12 tons of cocoa. That is MIA right now. Police are waiting for the thieves to have a sugar crash. Don't call the cops, by the way. Call Willy Wonka if you see them. And yet, hours later, another heist in the same country happened. In Italy. Italy,$10 million of Impressionist paintings were taken from an Italian museum. These still lives are actually on the go right now. Heck, it's like that Louvre heist from last year, but the robbers have better taste now. So, Yetis, if you see an original Monet on eBay today, make a buy now offer. Oh, because that Matisse, it is timeless. It seems we're in the middle of a stealing surge.

2:50Yes, we are, Yetis. inflation? It's causing some sticky fingers out there. Last week,$50 ,000 of walnuts were stolen in the Bronx. $18 million of maple syrup was stolen out of Canada. $100 million of precious crown jewels were stolen in Paris last year. Jack added all up Kit Kats, Monets, walnuts, maple syrup, crown jewels? Somewhere out there, one guy's living his best life. Besties, in this economy, theftflation, it is real. Hot as trade of 2026. It's a truck, a museum, and a five-minute window with the security cameras pointing in the wrong direction. Officer, I was confused. Jack, let's do that three stories.

3:52Start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor.

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6:17For our first story, the same amount of time has passed between Austin Powers in the 1960s as Austin Powers and today, believe it or not. But business, technology, and fashion haven't changed nearly as much in the last 30 years as the previous 30. Yeti's the moon landing. Y2K, Beyonce albums Beychella? Who could forget Beychella? If you were alive, you remember where you were for those big moments in history Including the debut of Austin Powers in movie theaters nearly 30 years ago That's right, spring of 1997, Austin Powers, the comedy of the decade Mike Myers is a British spy who gets cryogenically frozen in the 1960s and then wakes up in the 1990s It's a 30-year time warp and it is our bag, baby His suit is plush velvet His Jaguar has shag carpeting.

7:07His phone? It's a rotary phone, besties. You look at all this stuff when you were 1997 seeing the movie, and it's like alien artifacts from another planet. And alien attitudes, too. Yeah, Jack, because it wasn't just the bell bottoms. Austin Power, he's trying to shag everyone he sees. Even the English language that Austin uses sounds foreign. Groovy. Fall out, baby. He puts the grr in swinger, baby. Yeah. I mean, it's a swinger language that needs a translator if you're watching the movie as a 10-year-old like we were. From the Free Love to the Bad Teeth to the Burke-Bacharac album. The visual gap between the 1960s and the 1990s is huge, and that's the comedic core of the movie.

7:43The differences between the 60s and the 90s. In Austin Powers, the clear 30-year contrast is the comedy. But pause the pod. Yes, Jack. Because the time gap between Austin Powers and the 1960s is the same time gap of today and Austin Powers. 30 years. 30 years. In fact, Jack and I happen to have the perfect point of comparison right now to understand this concept. It's the show Love Story about JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. Exactly. The hit Hulu show that just dropped its final episode a few days ago. It takes place in the 1990s. So when we watched Austin Powers back in the 90s, we said, wow, 30 years ago was a crazy time.

8:22But when we watch Love Story today, 30 years ago, doesn't seem so crazy, does it, Jack? No, in Love Story, Caroline is wearing black dresses. There's Calvin Klein underwear billboards. There's that tortoiseshell headband that she's bringing back. Yeah, all that stuff looks pretty similar to today. JFK wears t-shirts. He rides his bike to work. He has a sofa in his Tribeca loft. And you could like buy all that stuff at West Elm if you walk out the door right now. Love Story is a docudrama from the 90s, but it feels like it could take place today. I mean, check the popular jeans that are on the show.

8:51There's like the same jean cuts that are popular right now over at Reformation. JFK Jr. says cool, just like you still say cool. He just says it cooler because his hair is way better. Linguistically, it's the same otherwise. Other than the look and appearance of the cars on the road, the only big difference between 1990s as seen in Love Story and today, it's the phones. It's the phones. No one's staring at a screen when they're on the subway. No one's walking with their head down because they're stuck in an app. When JFK Jr. is running late to his date, he can't text Caroline. He had to call a restaurant from a payphone.

9:22Yetis, this is the hero statement. Add it all up. And the difference between the 1960s and the 1990s is way bigger than the 90s to today. Same time gap, 30 years, but very different culture gap. And we think that speaks to something even bigger about business and technology. So Jack, if you'd like to live dangerously, what's the takeaway for our buddies? Look at this Austin Powers effect. It's the stagnation hypothesis. Has human innovation plateaued? Yeti's technology to fashion to how we speak less has changed in the last 30 years than in the previous 30 years. And there's a few reasons to explain this.

10:00The main one is that where the money goes, innovation goes. Oh yeah, because the internet has brought more people together, but the sharing of all these ideas has kind of blended them. So culture, language, fashion styles, they've merged globally thanks to the internet. And they've also blended thanks to the internet. It's like blanding. It's like the end of trends. In technology, more money is now focused on squeezing ad dollars out of an app. And less money is invested in what could be world-changing advancements for mankind. You may have noticed this talk about this on the pod. We've seen a rise in shitification of apps that look like late-stage capitalism.

10:32Now, economists and techies have studied this atrophy of innovation. From Tyler Cohen to Peter Thiel. Yeah, our Austin Powers love story example is just a unique way to illustrate it, T-boy style. But has human innovation plateaued? Doesn't have to be. The next 30 years could restart innovation. We hope it does. I mean, Jack, you got the start of AI. Space travel, self-driving, maybe self-flying cars. Things are getting exciting again. Fusion energy? That could be the key to solving climate change. But in the meantime, besties, it is worth recognizing the contrast in two mirrors to our culture.

11:06Austin Powers and love story. Yeah, baby! For our second story, hold on to your La Croix's because war in Iran has popped aluminum prices up to four-year highs. Aluminum, America's favorite metal, is the little smelter that could. And it's raising prices across the economy right now. Jack, could you whip out a copy of the periodic table of elements for us over there, please? I do see aluminum. It's got the number 13 up there. But I do not see aluminum naturally on planet Earth. No, and why is that, Jack? We can only get aluminum by mining some rock called bocite, refining it, and then heating it to molten lava temperatures.

11:46Ah, smelting. That is the smelting process. and boom, then we get aluminum. It's incredibly light, it's incredibly strong, and it's low cost. That's right, pro tip, you wanna win those lacrosse face-offs, you don't go with titanium, you go with aluminum. It's like the Nimbus 2001 of metals. But besties, the price of aluminum spiked on Monday to its highest level since Russia invaded Ukraine. Because smelters in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates were attacked by Iranian drones and missiles over the weekend. Iran's goal? Continue to make this war as expensive as possible for the West. because 9 % of the world's aluminum is smelted in the Gulf countries.

12:20And with the Strait of Hormuz closed, none of that is being exported. It's basically a whoever smelt it, dealt it situation right now. Because if you can smelt aluminum, you can deal it for$3 ,400 a ton. And for all our British Yetis out there, yes, we're talking about aluminum. But Yetis, this is a problem because aluminum is America's favorite metal. More on that in a minute. Aluminum prices are up 17 % since one month ago when the war in Iran began. but they're up 50 % in the last year. I'm sorry, pause the pod, Jack. Can you sprinkle on some periodic table of element context, please? Before the warn Iran, since June, the United States has been taxing foreign aluminum at 50%.

12:58Those Trump tariffs were aimed to jumpstart domestic aluminum production, you know, to get more American schmelters out there. But that hasn't happened. Instead, US aluminum companies have simply raised their prices because they could. Plus, Jack, to make matters worse, we had that huge fire last September in upstate New York with that big aluminum rolling mill. That's the plant that turns raw aluminum into Ford F-150 panels and Diet Coke cans. Yeah, it's like we said, hold on to your La Croix's. America, we now just have four aluminum smelters out there. So we need international imported aluminum more than ever right now.

13:30So tariffs have increased the price of aluminum 35%, and the Warn Iran just raised them another 15%. And Alcoa, the pure play aluminum stock, they're loving every minute of it. Oh yeah, they are. Their stock has doubled in the past 12 months because prices are$3 ,400 per ton. But yet, interesting thing, Jack, and I noticed, back in the 1800s, aluminum was worth more than gold. Shortly after aluminum was discovered by man, Napoleon was obsessed with this stuff. It was like decking out the house in aluminum and having it worked into millions. Well, unfortunately, history is rhyming because aluminum has become a luxury again.

14:05If you're proposing to your girlfriend anytime soon, maybe skip the platinum and get her an aluminum ring. That is the least romantic thing anyone's ever heard. Honey, I smelted your spin drift into our wedding ring. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in aluminum? The Iran war is disrupting our invisible everywhere ingredients. Yetis, the three key markets disrupted by this war, it's oil, fertilizer, and aluminum. Those are the ingredients in everything. Aluminum is in your LaCroix can. It's in your F-150. It's in your iPhone. We're talking cars, cans, and computers. life, work, and infrastructure.

14:41Aluminum is the most touched metal in America, from Chef Boyer decans to Teslas. It's everywhere, baby. Oil? That's required in every supply chain for heating and transportation. Fertilizer? It's in everything we eat. Even cows need fertilizer because they eat fertilized grain. And these three disrupted supplies? They're all invisible, and yet they are all everywhere. For five years, the cost of living crisis has wreaked havoc in all Western economies. Jack, make it six because the Iran war is disrupting our invisible everywhere ingredients. Now a quick word from our sponsor.

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16:53For our third and final story, Louis Vuitton's newest store is actually a ship, but it's not on water, it's on land. Louis Vuitton has pioneered a new form of physical retail. We call it landmarking. But yetis, let's start by sprinkling on some context. Luxury stocks out there, they've been a lull the last couple years. TikTok videos with a warner on, doesn't spark your order for a$15 ,000 handbag. Just since the war started, luxury stocks have lost$100 billion in value. Wall Street is putting Hermes and Gucci on the sale rack. And Dubai, they're right in the middle of the conflict. Ferrari actually shut down their theme park in nearby Abu Dhabi.

17:30The stock's down because big Middle East money is not buying luxury products right now. But fanciest of all is Louis Vuitton, Jack. What's happening to that stock? Their stock is down 20 % since the first bombs were dropped. $50 billion of market value has disappeared in one month. Louis Vuitton is now down 47 % off its 2023 all-time high. It is trading like a dupe on Canal Street. But perfect timing because Louis Vuitton just opened up the craziest store we have ever seen. Wait, this is a ship on land. It's a boat on Broadway. In Shanghai. They built a 100-foot tall Titanic-sized vessel and then boom, plopped that thing on a street corner in the shopping district.

18:13It's a vessel on the vestibule. It's actually wild to look at. It's like an enormous, like regal, looks like something Queen Elizabeth would sail on. Feels like Poseidon is going to walk out of nowhere and pick up a handbag from this thing. It truly looks like a gigantic boat. and it's got a real chrome anchor dangling from like 100 feet up and it rests on the sidewalk. Like QE2 washed up on the shore and then got taken over by a bunch of Christian Dior pirates. It makes a splash in the retail scene. Figuratively, not literally. Inside is where you see the strategy emerge. Ah, and what is the Louis Vuitton strategy, Jack, with this, I don't know, a cruise ship on land?

18:49The inside of this vessel looks kind of like the inside of a vessel, but each cabin is a different Louis Vuitton store. Basically, they turned a ship into a mall and then put that mall on land. There's a bookstore on the starboard and a perfume room on the port side. Oh, the engine room? What's in the engine room, Jack? A team of leather artisans sewing up bags right in front of you for you to see. Now, Basties, this ship is called the Louis, but it's actually part of Louis Vuitton's retailtainment theme. Because two years ago, Louis Vuitton turned their entire New York City flagship location into what looked like an enormous suitcase.

19:23I mean, every time I walked by, I took a photo. While renovating, they turned their entire exterior of the 57th Street store into a 16-story Louis Vuitton luggage. They replicated a 19th century canvas suitcase, which they're famous for, into the architectural blueprints. One of the handles on the building weighed 5 ,000 pounds. New Yorkers hated this, though, because it caused all the tourists to stop in the sidewalk. Get out of the way! I'm walking here! But besties, they didn't stop there, did they, Jack? In Osaka, Japan, the exterior of the Louis Vuitton flagship looks like it's cloaked in massive sails from a sailboat.

19:58Over in Paris, the Louis Vuitton is an actual museum. I went there last year. We went there for a whole day, basically. Because the building is as big and as magnificent as the Sydney Opera House. Which leads to our takeaway, which is possible. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Louis Vuitton? There's retailing, and then there's landmarking. You see, Yetis, over the last decade, we've talked to you about retail attainment, the rise of the experiential store. It all came because of e-commerce. Totally. With e-commerce in the room, retail's not dead. Only bad retail is dead. Bad retail's dead.

20:33But a new chapter is emerging here. A store that you don't just go to for an experience, but for the photo. You travel out of your way just to take a selfie there. It's a destination. So Jack, I gotta ask, why would a brand drop tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars to create tourist attractions of a store? Because the visitors do the marketing for you. They're posting pictures of this insane architecture. And the fact that people will fly to Paris to see one of them lifts the brand's mystique like nothing else could. This Louis Vuitton ship, it's one of the eight wonders of the retail world.

21:03It's like the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty. I don't know if it's like the Statue of Liberty. You're right, right. It's like the Empire State Building, Jack. I'm not buying that either. But it is an eight wonder of the retail world. And Jack, in the age of AI, where it's so cheap and easy to make massive, crazy-looking things, we assign extra value to what we actually do create in the real world. So Louis Vuitton now has five of these crazy architectural retail trophies. Besties, that's not just experiential. That is landmarking. Jack, could you whip us up the takeaways for the best pod yet for T-Boy Tuesday?

21:36The 30 years of change before the 1990s seems way more advanced than the 30 years after. Call it the innovation plateau or the Austin Powers effect. As Peter Thiel put it, we were promised flying cars, but what we got was 140 characters. For our second story, aluminum prices are at four-year highs thanks to tariffs in the war in Iran. And America loves aluminum, oil, fertilizer, and aluminum, the three everywhere invisible ingredients disrupted by this war. And our third and final story is Louis Vuitton. They have a store in Shanghai that looks like a regal yacht docked on the street corner. It's a new level of experiential retail.

22:11Landmarking. is happening. But besties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. Okay, this one goes to TSA. They just announced that workers are now receiving paychecks for their back pay. That's thanks to an executive order from President Trump over the weekend. The U.S. Senate had passed a bill to pay TSA, but the House Republicans had voted it down. Politics aside, we hope TSA workers forgive D.C. and return to keeping our skies safe. And second, happy last day of Q1 to all those who celebrate. March is capping it all off with the biggest monthly jump in oil prices ever.

22:44The American benchmark for crude oil was$65 a barrel. Now it's 105. That's a 61 % increase in one month. Gas prices aren't up as so much because they lag behind the oil market. The national average for regular unleaded hit$3.99 Monday morning, up from$2.98 one month ago. Or in California,$10 ,000 a gallon. I don't know why California is so crazy expensive. It's like the dinosaurs are making the oil in here. And finally, college basketball, March Madness has been wild setting records like a young Christian Laettner. The first round was the most watched first round of the March Madness ever with 11 million average viewers.

23:20Second round, second most watched ever with 10 million viewers. The Elite Eight round that just ended with UConn beating Duke. It's got to be a new viewership record, although we don't have the numbers yet. Like we said, don't pick Duke. We had your backs. Condolences to all the Duke Laettner fans out there. Now time for the best fact yet. This one, an answer to our T-Boy trivia. Jack, what do we got? Yesterday's question was based on the TSA drama, specifically about peanut butter. Like what form of matter is peanut butter? Where on the periodic scale does Skippy's fall? Is it solid, liquid, gas, or I remember the fourth one, plasma?

23:56On our Spotify poll, 55 % of you said peanut butter is a solid. Most of the rest of you said it was a liquid. It's neither though. Yes, peanut butter exhibits both solid and fluid behaviors at times. And this is known as a viscoelastic food. But technically, peanut butter is a non-Newtonian fluid, aka a liquid. And the TSA agrees. If it's more than 3.4 ounces, the peanut butter, it's going to be checked. You either need to check it, throw it away, or eat it right now. Although I swear, Jack, Justin's vanilla flavored peanut butter, I get through with that every time. Are you confessing a federal crime.

24:29No, I'm confessing a delicious crime, Jack. Yeah, it is. You're looking fantastic today. If someone hands you a free KitKat, you should be alarmed. That's contraband right there. Yeah, yeah. Jack, you're looking fantastic too. And remember, we just dropped the guest for our live show. Jack, who is it? Brian Serhant, the king of New York real estate. He's got a ton of insights and lessons for all of us to learn. Very entertaining and handsome guy. We got a link in the episode description. A few more tickets left on Ticketmaster. Maestro of Marketing, come see him live, grab those tickets, and Jack and I, we'll see you there.

25:05And before we go, a happy birthday to our buddy Griffin Schwed on the Upper West Side, making the best LeVan cookies out there. Happy 23rd birthday to Sydney LePie in Monterey, California. And Ian the Plant Man Ramsunder from Watermelons to Strawberries in Toronto has got the best birthday yet. Happy birthday to Katerina Anbia, delivering her third baby this week in San Diego. And Ia Cardenas, we see your birthday down in Columbia. Happy birthday to Agni Otrey, just outside Chicago. And Emily and Rebecca are a couple of twins turning 24 in Orlando, double the cake. He'll be on a live show in New York City with his wife and mid-panther, Mia.

25:41And congratulations, Tom Whalen, on the IBO, the initial baby offering. Brooklyn Olivia King is looking fantastic and the parents, Casey and Ryan, are crushing it. And a big shout out to Sophie von Hasselberg, a high school buddy of Nick's who was in the show Love Story in the final episode. She was the mean woman who works at Calvin Klein, and she just, she nailed it. She nailed it. Polite in real life. Congratulations to Ellen Flood from the Upper West Side, who just got accepted to Harvard Business School. And admissions? They're letting the dog, Mango, come too. But the real win here is her partner, Andrew, who's taking her to our live show in New York City next week.

26:16Ellen, congratulations. We can't wait to see you there. And to anyone else celebrating something today, make it a T-boy. Celebrate the wins.

26:25This is Jack on Stock of Netflix.

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