🎩 “Boardwalk McEmpire” — McDonald’s Monopoly psychology. Friend AI’s viral subway ad. EA’s Saudi Sale. +The Best Idea Yet nomination.

0:28This is Nick. It involves the FBI. And 50 criminal convictions of conspiracy. True story, and we got it for you. For our second story, Electronic Arts, the video game maker, is being acquired for$55 billion by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It's the biggest leveraged buyout of all time, so Jack and I will channel our inner former finance bros and tell you what that really means. For our third and final story, we covered Friend one year ago. Friend was creating a wearable AI device, a wearable AI friend, and the product is now for sale. So Friend just launched the biggest and most controversial New York City subway ad campaign of all time.

1:12We'll tell you the drama. But yetis, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. Whoa! That is a mix of stories. Love the mix. Nick and I have been doing this show daily since the spring of 2018. We are close to 2 ,000 episodes of T-Boy. But here's the key yetis. Two years ago, we wanted to create a legacy, a version of our show for our kids to listen to 20 years from now and still enjoy. It would be a new show that wasn't news-based. Instead, it would be evergreen stories with timeless value. Well, we walked into a Hollywood studio down in LA and pitched that idea two years ago, and it became the best idea yet.

1:49The untold origin stories of the most viral products of all time, the ones you're obsessed with. Well, here's the news. Season one just wrapped up. 50 episodes, 45 minutes each. Season one was epic. It started with the McDonald's Happy Meal, which was actually invented by a mother down in Guatemala. Then we did the Birkenstock sandals, the Patagonia fleece, Legos, Reese's peanut butter cups, Hamilton, even the New York Yankees, baby. We also covered Pokemon because so many people asked every episode, will you do an episode on Pokemon? But besties, here's the bigger news because we're capping off season one with an award nomination.

2:26We just received our third nomination for Best Business Podcast. At first, this show, The Best One Yet, got a Webby Award for Best Business Podcast. Then, The Best Idea Yet got nominated for Best Business Podcast by the Ambies. Well, now, for the third and final podcast award, The Signals, we've been nominated for The Best Idea Yet to win Best Business Podcast. So pause the pod and vote now. We got a link in the episode description. Yetis, for the last year, launching a weekly show on top of this daily show has been a labor of love from Nick and me. Jack, you want to sprinkle on some behind-the-scenes context?

3:02Every weekend, we reviewed a script. Every Monday morning, we reviewed another script. Every Tuesday night, we recorded that script after already recording this daily news show. And then we would spend three extra hours in the studio late night until 9 p.m. every Tuesday recording the best idea yet. We called Tuesday double sessions. Big Tuesday. So season one was a marathon and we hope to come back with a season two. We'll keep you updated if and when we do a season two. But in the meantime, if you've given the best idea yet a listen, thank you very much. And an extra thank you to the epic 10-person team that co-produced the whole show with us.

3:40A go vote to get us that award so we finish season one really in style. Amazing. This all began two years ago, Jack, with a pitch in Hollywood about a Happy Meal. Someday we're going to do a Best Idea Yet episode on the Best Idea Yet. Full circle. But in the meantime, we got three fantastic stories for you. Jack, let's hit the T-point.

4:27First,

4:31a quick word from our sponsor.

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7:52For our first story, after 10 years, McDonald's is bringing back the thrill of the peel with McDonald's Monopoly. But the reason it's been gone so long is a massive conspiracy and a black market of McDonald's Monopoly pieces. But Jack, in order for us to tell this story, could you please sprinkle on some context to the current McDrama going on right now? The$20 price tag of a Big Mac value meal is like an inflation scar on all of our minds. It's no longer considered an affordable place to eat. So Ronald McD's is desperate to bring back any sense of I'm loving it. Yeah, well, first, Jack, they tried to do that by bringing back Grimace.

8:32They also tried an adult Happy Meal, new value meals, extra value meals. But after two consecutive quarters of shrinking U.S. sales at McDonald's, they are going for the nuclear option. Here's the news. Monopoly is back. Ten years after retiring their most famous marketing game, McDonald's says Monopoly is here again. So you can go to your local McDonald's, order some French fries, and then peel off a McDonald's sticker. If it's Pennsylvania Avenue, you're one step closer to a free Jeep Cherokee. But the McDonald's Monopoly combo is one of the most underappreciated collabs of all time. Not underappreciated by us.

9:09We recognize the wild success of this campaign, but also the wild controversy. Which you may not know. Here's the deal, besties. This game was first introduced back in 1987, and immediately it was a force for national unity on par with the American Revolution. I took a lot of road trips as a kid. We only stopped at McDonald's. I mean, Jack, when the McDonald's came out with Monopoly, my dad would like strategically send us to different boroughs to go to different McDonald's to optimize our chances of winning. I don't know how strategic that was, but... I was like going to school in the Bronx and stopping at McDonald's.

9:42We'd send Katie, my sister, on playdates in Brooklyn just so she could go to a Brooklyn McDonald's and bring back some stickers. But Yetis, in the year 2001, the FBI got an anonymous phone call with the tip of a potential scam. Yeah, a scam that had been going on for 12 years. The suspect was a Georgia man named Jerome Jacobson. Yeah. And according to the FBI files, a.k.a. Uncle Jerry. Which sounds like a character in like a Wes Anderson movie. Not a good guy. Jerry worked for a business called Simon Marketing, the same marketing company McDonald's hired to launch their monopoly campaign. Well, it turns out Uncle Jerry, as he was known, had a little monopoly on something else too.

10:22something called embezzlement. He used the company's resources for his own personal gain by secretly selling the most rare Monopoly pieces. Okay, Yetis, remember when Jack said, like, you would need two extra pieces in order to win that free Jeep playing the Monopoly game? Uncle Jerry found those pieces at McDonald's because he worked for them and sold the most rare pieces on a black market. Uncle Jerry was charging$50 ,000 in cash to get the winning sticker pieces you'd need to accomplish that$1 million jackpot prize. He was a real life version of the hamburger, like an actual burglar tied to real McDonald's.

10:58And the result, more than 50 people in all were convicted of mail fraud and conspiracy to steal$24 million from McDonald's. Hence the 10-year delay on them bringing it back. Yeah. But Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies pass and go for the McDonald's Monopoly promotion. The McDonald's Monopoly campaign is psychonomics at work. Yetis, any quarter when McDonald's ran their Monopoly game, they would cite it in their following earnings report as a massive revenue success. Monopoly always boosted sales for McDonald's for a bunch of behavioral reasons. Even though the game never really changed.

11:37Of course, there was the nostalgia element to this, but also there was the clever manipulation of scarcity, which created an illusion of progress. Here's the manipulation of scarcity. You needed three stickers to win most of the prizes. Right, Jack. And McDonald's made a bunch of two of those stickers, but only a few of the third. Another strategy, Jack, the Zagernick effect. The motivation of unfinished tasks. By having two of the three stickers we need for that Jeep, we're more motivated to keep trying and buy another McFlurry. So yet he's had it all up. and for a variety of behavioral strategies, Monopoly is a consistent sales booster profit puppy for McDonald's.

12:16It's a case study in psychonomics, psychological economics, even if the past is stained by a$24 million fraud. For our second story, Electronic Arts, the video game studio known for The Sims, Madden, and Battlefield, just sold in the biggest leveraged buyout ever. What is a leveraged buyout? it's house flipping, but for companies. But the buyer in this case is Saudi Arabia. But besties, yeah, just to chat a little nostalgia here too. When Jack and I were kids, we played video games made by EA Sports. It's in the game. But besties, when Jack and I became finance guys, we learned that adults don't play with EA Sports, they play with EA Stock.

13:00This company founded in 1982 by Apple employees, Electronic Arts is now going private in a$55 billion record-breaking acquisition. It's the biggest LBO ever, and among the new owners are the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. It appears that Saudi Arabia is the biggest investor by far. The Saudis will now own America's second biggest video game company. But for them to make this acquisition, they need the government's approval, which is probably why the president's son-in-law is in the deal. Yeah, there's another private equity firm involved as well, and they all want the same thing.

13:36Flip electronic arts in five to seven years for a profit. Let's sprinkle on some more context. Let's sprinkle on an analogy to understand what a leverage buyout is. So besties, imagine that the sale of electronic arts video games is like the sale of a house. A house bought with a mortgage. You see, the buyers are those three private investors we mentioned who think electronic arts has a ton of unrealized value. It's like a fixer-upper, right Jack? It needs to be gutted, and we're going to put up some knotty pine on the interior. Shellac, shellac that thing. So these three investors paid 210 bucks for every single share of electronic arts, which is 25 % above asking price.

14:12The asking price being the stock price before the news broke of this deal and investors bought it up. And it's called a leveraged buyout because the buyers took out a loan. A record$20 billion loan from JP Morgan. Just like you would get a mortgage loan to buy a house, they took out a loan to buy a giant video game. But Nick, the new owners aren't kids who played EA college football 2021 through 2027 in their parents' basement and dream to own a video game company someday. Actually, Jack, I'm sorry. Pause the pod. That is exactly what is happening right now. True. Because the crown prince of Saudi Arabia is a self-described avid gamer who once played video games with Jensen Huang of NVIDIA.

14:54It's kind of a netbookquisition, if you will. He's using his parents' money to buy the biggest video games out there. But they're also financiers. So they're looking to cut costs of this company they just bought, find some new revenues, and sell EA Sports back onto the stock market someday for a profit that would make John Madden say, pow, tough acting today. And besties, that is how a typical LBO leveraged buyout deal actually happens. But based on the buyers in this deal, maybe that's not what's happening. Oh, Jack, let's go further inside. what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Electronic Arts Video Games?

15:32This isn't a regular PE leveraged buyout financial deal. This is a cultural power play. This is all about clout. Yetis, we almost did a takeaway today about the video game industry getting decentralized by companies like Fortnite and Roblox and disruption of video games. But then we realized the most important thing about this acquisition is the buyers, not the sellers. Exactly. Because acquisitions are increasingly happening for power and influence, especially media acquisitions. And video games are a media with underappreciated influence. Okay, Jack, can you please share that wild hero stat that we love?

16:09The amount of time Americans spend playing video games is more than the time we spend watching movies, watching TV, and listening to music combined. Mind. Twitter, Paramount, TikTok, and now EA, all historical acquisitions bought by people with geopolitical agendas. Saudi Arabia isn't doing this for the money or for the financial returns. They're doing it to diversify their oil economy, get closer to the West, and gain some cultural cachet and power. It's the clout. So, besties, this could be a classic private equity house flipping situation, and we'll see if EA hits the stock market again in five years.

16:45Or it could be a power play. Another influential American media asset with powerful new owners. Now, a quick word from our sponsor. NetSuite. Yeah, it is. NetSuite is the corporate control panel for business. Has been since 1998. They probably use this on Star Wars. This pre.com software suite, though, it remains the market leader. But Nick, what is next? I got no idea, Jack. You tell me what's next. Well, they say every day your business is late for AI, you fall two days behind. I didn't know they said that. Now I'm stressed, Jack. That's an incredibly stressful thing. We're all anxiety maxing.

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17:52So for the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in seven figures, go to netsuite.ai. TBOI. Built for every industry, ready for every boardroom, netsuite.ai.dboy. Walmart business. Yetis, we cover business trends on our show and they move faster than you can spell GPU. One minute it's vibe coding, the next it's agentic. Tomorrow, it's probably going to be in-person old school again. Yeah, well, while you're managing this to stay ahead, the last thing you need to worry about is supplies for your company. Carol, do we have the cogs needed to meet our Q1 sales commitments?

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18:57It's Walmart built for your business. Sign up for a free Walmart Business account today at business.walmart.com. For our third and final story, every New Yorker over the weekend was talking to their friends about Friend. Friend, the AI Friend wearable device. Friend launched the biggest New York City subway ad campaign ever, and the reaction is getting even more attention. Now, as daily yetis and besties listening to this podcast, you may remember a story we did last July about a promo video that got more attention than a Kardashian. It was a video of a woman doing a solo outdoor hike talking to herself.

19:39I'm so out of breath, she said as she held up a necklace to her face at the end of the hike. And then she got a text message that said, but we made it outside, didn't we? But here's the key, besties. That text did not come from a friend. It came from friend. Friend, the AI buddy device that you wear around your neck. It's basically an eavesdropping necklace with empathy because this thing listens and responds to you with text messages. That's an $129 AI Tamagotchi. It's a roommate around your neck, but it's not AI for productivity or creativity. It's AI for companionship. And since we did that story, Friend bought the website www.friend.com for$1.8 million, which is now looking like a steal because one year later, Friend just got into the zeitgeist again.

20:28Friend got more attention than ChatGPT could ask for. The founder of Friend tweeted their numbers, and so far, 464 of these Friend necklaces are out there in the wild. And the average human is sending their AI friend 238 messages per day. Which is more than what we would send to our buddy Timmy back in the day when he was our roommate. More messages than I send my real friends. But here's the even bigger news, Yetis. Friend launched the hugest subway advertising campaign of all time. Friend gave the New York City MTA$1 million for 11 ,000 signs within New York City subway trains, 1 ,000 posters within New York City subway stations across all five boroughs of the city.

21:11And most strategically, Friend did an entire subway takeover of the West 4th Street station, which is right by NYU, right, Jack? You cannot meet a gal pal for your double-digit latte at Bleecker Street without seeing a friend sign up at the subway stand. But Jack and I dove in T-boy style and we discovered other wild details about the record-setting friend ad campaign on the subways. It was designed by the founder himself, Avi Schiffman, who whipped it up on Figma DIY style. And there's something kind of deeply ironic, Jack, and I think about this friend subway ad campaign, right? I mean, Friends product is a cutting edge AI artificial companion.

21:50And yet they're spending their ad budget on the most basic old school technology of all, a billboard on a subway. But an even bigger story than this ad campaign is the reaction to it, because the ads are getting covered in graffiti. Now we should point out, Jack, that like pretty much every subway ad gets vandalized at some point if it's left up for so long. But this time, New Yorkers had an especially loud amount of fun with their Sharpies. because they cross out like the marketing message and they just wrote, get real friends instead. Literally the day the ad campaign went up, people were writing, AI sucks, surveillance capitalism, befriend a senior citizen instead on all of these friend ads.

22:28Although it's possible, that's exactly what the founder wanted because the ads have a lot of white space. It's like they were begging to be graffitied. And all of our buddies were talking about this campaign in New York. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our friends over at Friend? Is Friend the most efficient tech launch in history? Yet is no companies getting better ROI on their moves right now than Friend. You see, with just$3 million, they have enormous name recognition with all of these financial trick shots. That launch video from last summer cost next to nothing, but went viral and got millions of views.

23:03The website, friend.com, is valuable digital real estate. And now their$1 million Subway billboard campaign is getting double the attention because of all that graffiti. And yet Friend has only raised$8 million. It's the tiniest startup that's achieved massive buzz. What about the product? Are they neglecting product development to get all of this buzz? AI hardware? That's like hard to do and takes a lot of money. And yet Friend only has a few extra million dollars left over after this marketing splurge. Well, they probably didn't build their own AI. It probably does run off of ChatGPT or Claude, but you still got to pay for that stuff.

23:36Friend just started shipping the product. We'll be curious if it actually works. But in the meantime, if Renn can pull this off, it might just be the most efficient marketing moves we've ever seen. A true financial trick shot. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for T-Boy Tuesday? McDonald's announced Monday that McDonald's Monopoly is back after 10 years, starting next week. With manipulated scarcity and behavioral hacks, McDonald's Monopoly is psychonomics at work. For our second story, Electronic Arts is selling for$55 billion in the biggest private equity leveraged buyout ever. Saudi Arabia now owns EA.

24:15Another influential US media asset is being bought not for profit, but for power. And our third and final story is Friend, an AI necklace that listens like a good friend. And it's taken over the New York subway with the biggest campaign ever. If Friend works, then this will be one of the most efficient marketing launches we've ever seen. true financial trick shot. But besties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, a federal government shutdown is expected to happen tonight unless an agreement is reached. In other government policy news, Tuesday is the final day of the electric vehicle tax credit.

24:53For the first time in 20 years, there will be no financial incentive to buy an electric vehicle. Which means we're about to discover natural EV demand. And second, And Robinhood announced that 2 billion predictions contracts were executed in just the last quarter on the stock trading platform. That is such a big number that Robinhood stocks soared 13 % to a new all-time high on Monday. Because as we said in August, Robinhood found a backdoor entrance to the booming sports betting market, or as they call it, the prediction market. And finally, the singer of the Super Bowl halftime show in San Francisco this year is going to be Bad Bunny.

25:32But it's causing grumblings from the political right since Bad Bunny endorsed Kamala Harris and raps mostly in Spanish. But the Super Bowl halftime show has always been about expanding the NFL's audience beyond football fans. It's about the NFL's money at the end of the day. And Bad Bunny is an international powerhouse who's going to bring millions of eyeballs from overseas to Santa Clara. He's single-handedly already boosted the entire Puerto Rican economy. Now time for the best fact yet. This one was actually a couple of comments left on yesterday's Spotify episode by Alan and Warren. We did a bit yesterday on a new concept in China, ad-supported toilet paper.

26:12So Alan and Warren told us it's actually common in China. You're expected to bring your own toilet paper with you when you go out in public. Basically, it is common to have the toilet paper in your bag or your backpack just in case of an emergency. Anyway, if you do find yourself in a pinch, apparently China's like instant real-time delivery market is so good. You can tell an app, I need toilet paper and someone will be there in like five minutes. Add it all up, besties. And in China, ad-supported toilet paper, not so surprising since you probably got the toilet paper with you. Yetis, you look fantastic.

26:46And thank you for that entire season one of The Best Idea Yet. We loved whipping it up for you every week. We want to win best business podcast. We do. But we depend on your votes for it. So get out the vote. We got a link in the episode description. Vote, share your vote, tell us you did your vote and we'll get back to you because we appreciate you so much. Thank you. Nick and I, we'll see you tomorrow.

27:10And before we go, a congratulations to Yetis Chuck and Lindsey who got married in lovely Hagerstown, Maryland. Congratulations, guys. Congratulations to Anthony and Lainey Whitlow, who are getting married in the Adirondacks of New York today. Beautiful. And Robert and Tammy Reza from West Hills, California just had their 30th anniversary by taking a trip to Austria. That's how you celebrate, Jack. And happy birthday to David Fish, the chiropractor in Wheeling, Illinois. But also happy birthday to Jeanette Stein-Beldring, who's a Slytherin turning 39 in Norway. And a big thank you to Will Birdsey for sending Nick the ultimate guide to hiking at Yosemite National Park.

27:47And Quaid Dodson from Albuquerque, New Mexico just launched a fintech company. Check out thethirdai.org. Congrats on the launch, Quaid. And happy work anniversary to Cheryl Haggard from Frederick, Colorado, who's also leaving for a mission trip to Kenya. And Claire Bataraco, the future tennis pro dominating the circuit in the Bay Area, barely missed making the U.S. Open this year, Jack, but we have got our eyes out to see you at Roland Garros next year. This is Jack, Nick, and I both on stock in Robinhood and Apple. Bureau Premium Non-Alcoholic Beer. All right, yeah, he's a little behind the scenes here.

28:24Before our New York City live show back in April, Jack and I went sober for two weeks. True story. Couldn't risk getting sick. I didn't want to be groggy. I couldn't afford a hangover. It was New York, baby. Okay, but Jack, celebrating the wins is what we do. And so for our live shows, we crack open something special. So we drank Bureau. the premium non-alcoholic beer brand co-founded by Tom Holland. Yeah, I actually first saw it at my grocery store. Delicious tastes like a celebration, feels fantastic, and looks legit. More on the looks in a sec. And if it's good enough for the actor who played Spider-Man, it's good enough for us.

28:59You see, it pairs well with a pickleball game, a profitable earnings report, or with the best podcast. So, Yetis, if you want to celebrate the wins with all the taste of a premium lager or IPA, but none of the alcohol, there's no better choice than Bureau. Okay, pause the pod. Did we mention the can is straight up gold? This thing will stand out at every one of your next parties. Trust us, we've done it. Only beer we know that actually upgrades the scene like a promotion. So, Basties, if there's a win you're celebrating every day, Bureau is the non-alcoholic brew brand you gotta bring. So use code T-Boy for 20 % off your first order at BureauBrewing.com.