😇 “Inbox Zero Nirvana” — Gmail’s mass unsubscription. Matcha’s shortage drama. X’s Yaccarino exit. And Birkin Bag #1.

0:29This is Nick. This is Jack. I gave it away. I just gave it away. It's honey. It's honey. He lathers hands in honey. Jack, three stories for today's. Team boy, what do we got on the pod? For our first story, what if you could unsubscribe from every email you don't want in one click? Well, Gmail just invented a weapon of mass unsubscription. Because Inbox Zero is the ultimate millennial nirvana. Namaste, Jack. For our second story, X's CEO, Linda Yaccarino, is officially out after two years. She just tweeted that she's stepping down. So Jack and I will tell you why Elon's Everything app is really an everywhere app.

1:06And our third and final story is matcha. Matcha. Matcha is facing such an unprecedented shortage right now. It's causing coffee shop chaos. So if you can't get a matcha today, you need to thank a senior citizen in Japan. I think you blame a senior citizen in Japan. It's awkward. Yeah, you're going to have to blame him. But yet is before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. Fantastic mix of stories Wonderful job, Jack Love the mix The most expensive handbag in history What is it, Nick? Jack, that would be the Aramaze Birkin bag And the first Birkin bag ever made Is being sold at auction Today Today But besties, don't whip out your wallets quite yet, right Jack?

1:45If you have to ask, you can't afford it But we'll ask How expensive are these things, Nick? Jack, let's sprinkle on some context The cheapest Birkin bag on the market That is$10 ,000 But if you want it made of gator skin That's$40 ,000 I'm sorry, Jack. Croxskin, that'll be 50 grand. There's actually a diamond-encrusted Himalayan Birkin bag that sells for$400 ,000. True story. We found it. Jack, that's the average price of a new home. That's six Mercedes, Nick. For an 11-inch bag that can barely fit a MacBook Pro. What about an iPad? Now, the Birkin bag was invented because it was designed by the actress Jane Birkin, who actually sketched the original design on a vomit bag while flying on an airplane.

2:26And now, right now, today, the original Hermes prototype of the Birkin bag is on sale. We're talking the most expensive version of the most expensive bag. Now, there is no estimate for how high the bidding may go. Do I have$100 ,000? But whoever bids should also buy the first Game Boy and the first Ray-Bans, too. Do I have$500 ,000? And then stick them both inside the first Birkin bag. Do I have$1 million? Because that kind of thing is my bag, baby. sold to the man with two yachts and three houses on the yachts. Jack, let's hit our three stories. 15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm.

3:03They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is the norm. Jack Nick, that's it. I don't even think they need to practice. 50%, that's a fat tip. T-Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, cause we ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show.

3:24Start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor.

3:35Monarch. Yeah, it is. You know my first money lesson? It was where to put our lemonade stand. I was wondering, it was on the Upper East Side. Do we do it on Lexington Avenue or Park Avenue? Wait a second. New York City has lemonade stands on the sidewalk? They didn't. We were pioneers, Jack. Lexington Avenue is more commercial. Park is more residential. So what did we learn, Jack? Monarch, families are willing to pay more for lemonade. So you set it up on park. Yeah, we did it on park. Besties, no one gives you financial lessons in life. You end up figuring most of it out as you grow up. But we love Monarch because it's like a financial advisor in your pocket.

4:03Because every minute, it's tracking your savings, spending, investments, and more. For instance, Monarch's goal tracking feature shows if you're on track for that summer trip to Santa Fe. And it tells you what percent of your income is going somewhere that's a surprise. I open Monarch all the time because it takes the mental load off tracking my finances. And whether you're single, you're in a family, or you're dinking it up, Monarch's the way. Our personal fave, the AI Weekly Recap, a once per week gut check on what you did with your money. Hey, Nick, you've spent 96 bucks at kids' lemonade stands since July.

4:28Because we pioneered it for him, Jack. Resties, write your own story with Monarch. Use code TBOY at Monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just 50 bucks. It's 50 % off your first year at Monarch.com with code TBOY. Another nine. Yetis, we've all heard of side hustles. You find a way to make extra income on the side of your day job. But what if your side hustle was more of a side leisure? And what if it involved hitting golf balls every minute of the day? I think that's called a hobby. Actually, no, this is the real idea behind launching a franchise of Another Nine, the ultimate indoor golf experience.

5:04Another Nine is a network of golf simulators open 24-7. The business is built around private simulator suites that guest book by the hour. And it's powered by the same TrackMan technology used by the PGA Tour. Now, Besties, we're not talking about playing golf here. We're talking about a franchise opportunity to open up one of these things and run it. And it'd be semi-passive income. There's no staff needed on site. So there's some management required while the golfers are swinging woods, but not so much management that you'd need to commit to this fully. Actually, Another Nine was started by a couple of guys with young kids who just wanted to play more golf anytime they wanted.

5:35Now they've got 70 locations and want to add more. You could be number 71 by launching Another Nine franchise near you. So head to www.franchise.anothernine.com to run one of your own. That's www.franchise.another9.com. For our first story, Gmail just announced a WMU, a weapon of mass unsubscription. It's the most useful thing Google has ever launched because Inbox Zero is millennial nirvana. Oh, bold hot take there. I love it. Yetis, remember when Google launched their promotions tab in Gmail in 2013? Oh, it was incredible. It put all the junk email into one place that you never need to go into.

6:23Out of sight, out of mind. That promotions tab, it basically became a closet where you could store your unwanted emails. And it gave millennials temporarily psychological relief. We could open our laptops in peace. No more spring sale emails from Madewell just because he got a pair of jeans three years ago. But 12 years later, marketers have learned to outsmart the promotions tab and find their way into your primary inbox. Now you're reminded every morning that you bought a pair of Allbirds in 2018. We've got the perfect sneakers for your summer. Thanks, Allbirds. I didn't need that to be the first thing I read this morning.

6:59But Jack, we should also point out everything we just described is costly for Google. Just like physical things, emails need to be stored somewhere. And that's Google's cloud and it's costly. Yes, it is. But besties, here's the news. 12 years later, Google has finally added a new button to Gmail. It's called the subscription manager. This is news you can use because if you click it, it will show you all the emails that you're subscribed to ranked in order by who sends you the most emails. So what we're saying is that with one click, you could unsubscribe as you go down the list. Boom. In 30 minutes, you have purged your email of 300 recurring marketing emails that you never, ever open and don't want and never did want.

7:44I don't even think I bought anything from Gmail. Until now, you had to unsubscribe from emails one at a time. Now you can do it all at once. And the key is you do all this within Gmail. So like there's no hidden unsubscribe button with the confusing landing page with the like input your email to unsubscribe. You know what I'm talking about? I know. It's like, did I already unsubscribe or do I now have to push the unsubscribe button? I can't tell. Is it clicked on or clicked off? Is it green or is it red? I don't know which is good. It's so tricky and devious, Nick. I can't stand it. I mean, Jack, to use an extermination analogy here, we've now gone from killing ants one at a time to wiping them out with one vicious spray of ant poison.

8:23And Google's doing it thanks to AI. Actually, no, this is not an AI thing. This was like an easy move by Google. Which reveals something big, right, Jack? Jack, because on the one hand, this is a hugely powerful tool that saves both Google money and users time. On the other hand, it reveals how little Google has done with one of its greatest powerful tools, Gmail. Like 12 years, Google? It took you 12 years to launch this? By the way, it might take you two more weeks. It's still rolling out to iOS and Android and the web. In the meantime, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Google?

8:57Email is where business still lives. And our anxiety does too. Yeah, it is. According to a Harvard Business Review study, you spend on average 2.6 hours a day just on work email. And email is also where our personal life gets organized. That's why we all carry multiple email accounts and you're keeping them at bay. That's a borderline full-time job. Think about email inbox anxiety from a physical context. Okay, Jack, spell this out for us. Draw it out. If you got home and saw 50 packages at your door, you would feel sick knowing all the time you're going to have to spend cutting through that cardboard, breaking down the boxes, and sorting the stuff out.

9:35That's the perfect analogy, Jack, because it's like that for our digital inboxes, too, every moment of the day. The inability for the majority of Americans to lower their inbox and keep that thing under control, that's the digital equivalent. Right. It's a subtle life stress that's constantly lurking in our minds. Besties, that's why Jack and I believe millennial nirvana is getting to inbox zero. And this Gmail feature, it's a step to attain that. Because email is still where business lives, along with our anxiety.

10:10For our second story, Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, is now the X. CEO of X. But if we're being honest, she was never the real CEO. It was always Elon. So, Yetis, we are looking at X because X isn't an everything app right now, but it is the everywhere app. Linda Yaccarino. Straight out of Long Island, baby. Twitter's first full-time CEO after Elon acquired it. She's out just over two years into the job. I apologize, Jack. I said Long Island. I meant Strong Island. We don't want to get corrections. She might send her people after you. Can't make that mistake twice for a Long Island. Community note.

10:47Sorry. Community note. Yetis, Linda announced it on X, saying that she was grateful to Elon and proud of her accomplishments as CEO. And then Elon replied curtly with a five-worded tweet. Thank you for your contributions. No exclamation point. No emoji. That's it. Now, Linda did have a tough job at X, right, Jack? Like, two new competitors sprung out of nowhere on her tenure. I think on her first day at the job, Blue Sky was launched. And on her second day at the job, Threads was launched by Zuckerberg. But besties, this news gives us a moment to reflect on Linda's tenure and we'll assess X on three key criteria.

11:24Free speech, advertising, and is it an everything app? Now, Yetis, in hindsight, it is clear that on those three criteria, Linda tried but ultimately came up short. Let's kick it off with free speech. Let's hit it, Jack. While X hasn't banned accounts like Twitter used to, it certainly does shadow ban accounts. For example, yeah, these tweets with the word Ukraine in them get suppressed, along with tweets that have anti-Elon sentiments. So it's free speech on X, as long as that speech aligns with Elon's worldview. All right, Jack, let's look at criteria number two. Did Linda bring back advertising?

11:59Honestly, we can't say because X doesn't share financials anymore. A reminder, but X got acquired by Elon's AI company, XAI, so its financials are pretty much irrelevant. Twitter's just like a drop in the AI pale now. Although we will say that it is tough to get advertisers on X when their chatbot is, you know, praising Hitler. Yeah, here's the latest update. On Friday, Elon announced that he'd made some improvements to Grok, X's AI chatbot. But the same day, Grok started tweeting anti-Semitic tropes and praising Hitler. It's no coincidence that just a couple days later, Linda resigned as CEO.

12:32Now, Jack, can we just go back in time for a second, share that takeaway we did when Elon first hired Linda just two years ago? In May 2023, this was our takeaway on the news that Elon hired Linda. The question isn't whether she can do her job, it's whether Elon will let her. Well, when X got acquired by XAI earlier this year, Linda wasn't even mentioned in Elon's post about it. Just Elon was. And that kind of says it all. Hot take, Elon's going to promote Grok to be the next CEO of X. Oh, Jack, that's not just a hot take. That's going to burn your ears kind of a hot take. That's right, Yetis.

13:07We're calling it now. X will be the first company to deliver an earnings report from an AI CEO. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at X? X is not an everything app, but it is the everywhere app. Now, Yetis, we forgot to assess Linda's progress with that final criteria, turning X into an everything app. X did announce a payment partnership in January with Visa, but six months later, That has not launched. And Jack, X did launch a jobs platform, but honestly, we'd never heard of it, besties, until we started researching this story for today's show. If you think about it, X is still what Twitter used to be, but with paid check marks and more right-leaning content.

13:46However, besties, regardless of what you think of X personally, it still is the place where news breaks. Every brand, every politician, every personality still shares their updates on X first. So add it all up and the status of the old Twitter today, how would you put it, Jack? X is not an everything app, but X is still everywhere. Now, a quick word from our sponsor.

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15:44For our third and final story, the great matcha shortage. The big drama is going on right now, and it is green. Matcha green tea drinks are so popular right now, they're becoming a victim of their own success. Yetis, our story really begins 900 years ago When Buddhist monks first brought the matcha leaf to Japan And the samurai used it for focus Because matcha tea only has half the caffeine of coffee Which is why I'm willing to drink a quarter cup of one But today, Yetis, TikTok Tina adds oat milk To take a picture of her matcha that matches her cute green top Yeah, the matcha green, it is such a distinctive color It's a hot green Now, in the 2000s, matcha entered the United States Whole Foods was the first big buyer It was the free sample effect.

16:30In the 2010s, matcha got its goopification. Gwyneth was preaching the health gospel of the matcha. But in the recent 2020s, matcha has blown up thanks to social media. Social media acceleration, that unique shade of green that Jack described, it has caused a demand spike. According to Square payment data, orders of matcha teas are up 114 % in the last 12 months. We noticed that Starbucks name-dropped matcha in its last earnings. Jack, Darlene over at Dunkin', she's now whipping up matcha culottes. And this last bit is wild. Blank Street Coffee, a New York City coffee chain we've covered on this pod before, half of their business is now matcha drinks.

17:10Jack, when I was on the Upper East Side the other week, I saw 12 girls at Sacred Heart School sipping strawberry shortcake matchas. You counted all 12? It was a lot of great, Jack. But Besties Matcha now appears to be a victim of its own success. According to the Wall Street Journal, we are in the middle of a mega matcha shortage, and it's worldwide. It's causing some bad blood because people are accusing other people of matcha hoarding out there. It's true. There are people who are traveling to Japan, smuggling back hordes of their own matcha, which they plan to sell here stateside at a premium, like ticket scalpers.

17:44Like loading up your away luggage with the green stuff. But Jack, could you please sprinkle on some context for us? The matcha market in the United States is$5 billion a year. The market for coffee in the United States is$140 billion. That is 30 times more. So like for every matcha we drink, we drink 30 coffees. So matcha is still tiny overall. But while coffee consumption is a ritual at coffee shops, matcha production is literally a ritual in the farms of Japan. Get this. It takes 10 times longer to produce a matcha leaf than a coffee bean. We're talking seven years from seed to sip. It takes four years just for the tea leaf of matcha to mature.

18:22Yeah. And then they cover the plant in the fields, like with cloth, to slow down the photosynthesis. Growing the leaves in shade, Nick, magnifies the caffeine content. And then you got to pick the leaves and they can be ground, only ground in stone mills, where they're then stored for six months to get the umami flavor. And this leaf is super delicate. They must be picked and ground by hand. And the final fine powder that's super green, that's what you end up drinking. Although matcha is technically a tea, you don't steep the matcha, you mix the matcha in, which also takes longer than making a double-digit latte.

18:59So it's not just a spike in demand for matcha. It's the extremely slow process that prevents the supply from catching up. Plus, we got record heat in Japan right now that's hurting matcha leaves over in Kyoto, so supply is currently down 25%. Add it all up, and your coffee shop may not have matcha for you right now. But besties, before you freak out at that barista, we have one more surprise reason for the matcha shortage you didn't expect. Old people in Japan. Yeah, Japanese senior citizens. Get this. Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies sipping matcha? Matcha tea is only grown by Japanese farmers, and they're all retiring.

19:39Now, Yetis, you could blame Instagram for driving up matcha demand, or you could blame Starbucks and Dunkin' for buying up matcha supplies. You could blame climate change for the low supply, and you could blame global tourism for too much demand too. But the core bottleneck causing this matcha shortage? It's Japanese senior citizens. The average age of the Japanese farmer that grows matcha is 60, and the younger generations are not taking over the farms. The result? Commercial green tea farming in Japan is down 78 % in the last 25 years because the farmers are retiring. That's right. The main limit on matcha supply right now is that the tea farmers in Japan are too old.

20:19I mean, Jack, as we say this, this matcha shortage is like the perfect example of how globalized our world really is. Japan's birth crisis is now affecting a green tea loving TikToker on the Santa Monica Pier.

20:34Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for the new Friday? Google's subscription manager is a weapon of mass unsubscription. And it's widely useful. Because business still happens on email. And so does our anxiety. So we need Inbox Nirvana. For our second story, X's CEO, Linda Yaccarino, is done at X. She's the ex-CEO of X. X, it has not become an everything app yet, but it still is the everywhere app. And finally, the matcha shortage. Just as TikTok is falling in love with matcha, the world is suddenly running out of matcha. Because matcha tea is only grown by Japanese farmers, and all of them seem to be retiring.

21:15But yetis, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, NVIDIA just became the first company to hit a$4 trillion market cap. Market cap. If you add up the value of all the stock of NVIDIA, it's worth$4 trillion. Sprinkle on some historical context here. Apple was the first to hit$1 trillion back in 2018, but the tech AI-fueled rally has now exploded in the last couple years. NVIDIA has added the stock market value equivalent of Germany's entire stock market in just two years. And second, what is the latest deal with tariffs? Well, trade war whiplash is back, baby. Just this week, Trump extended the deadline for his reciprocal tariffs to August 1st, and he swears he won't delay them again.

22:00In the meantime, the president is tariffing copper by 50 % and pharmaceuticals by 200%, but pharmaceutical tariffs are not effective until next year. And he just announced a 50 % tariff on Brazil in retaliation for Bolsonaro being on trial right now. So what's happening with tariffs? Hard to keep track. And finally, Kellogg's cereal stock jumped 50 % in one day. Why? A potential acquisition by Ferrero for$3 billion. As in Ferrero, the owner of Nutella. Jack, who says millennials killed the Frosted Flake? If this merger goes through, we could finally be getting a Rice Krispie Nutella Raisin Bran.

22:42Yeah, the one we always wanted. Now time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by LJ Eve over in lovely San Diego. Yesterday, we covered a restaurant in London that uses a roll of dice at the end of the meal to potentially give you a free meal. But here's the question, is it die or is it dice, if it's one versus if it's many? Well, responding to our question about the plural die versus dice dilemma, technically dice is the plural of die, which refers to a single cube used in games. But there are other plural curveballs you should fully be aware of, like one criterion, but two criteria. One phenomenon, many phenomena.

23:20One data, many data. One die, many dice. One alumnus, plural alumni, which Jack hates, but I feel like I just got to say it, Jack. Wait, I think, no, no, no. Alumnus is either, is genderized. So you're kind of incomplete on that one. No, no, no. Alumnus is, alumnus is singular and alumna is plural women. Oh, shoot. Now I'm thinking. Dude, we're keeping it. This is in the show. So you better wrap up. Like we said, Latin is a dead language. It doesn't even really matter after all. True. That's a great call. Nobody can correct your pronunciation on Latin Because no one's alive Who knows how it was pronounced Yeah, come at us, Homer Come at us Yetis, you look fantastic today And if you want to bid And go, like, you know Split it three ways on this Birkin bag You know, Jack and I are down We could, you know, get a pot going What do you think?

24:12Actually, I'm not down I'm not spending my time Okay, okay Just send me that routing number And your social security, Jack Yetis, grab some tickets To our live show in Chicago If you haven't yet We got a link in the episode description. And tell a buddy today, H-Y-H-T-B-O-Y. And finally, hit us up at tboypod on Instagram and ask us anything. Have you heard the best one yet? That is how we grow the show. Nick and I, we'll see you tomorrow. Can't wait.

24:40And before we go, a happy 27th birthday to Yeti Patrick French over in lovely Encinitas, California. And happy birthday to Annwich Cuganti on a buddy's trip over in Denver. Have fun, guys. And Lucas and Livia Hernandez are a couple of twins turning 10. Congratulations, celebrating down in Miami. You two are the best ones yet. And Carmen and Robert, happy seven-year anniversary. You're both looking fantastic. Congratulations to H and their partner on getting hitched. Congrats, H and Jack, the best-dressed dude on Nantucket. Jack, I ran into him yesterday. His name is Jack as well. And he says hi over a couple of lobster rolls.

25:16Wait, didn't he walk up to you and say, are you Nick or Jack? Jack? Yeah, and then he was Jack. It was great. And happy anniversary to Cole and Leah in the Bay Area of California. And Luz Garcia in Guadalajara, Mexico has got a new job at Oracle. Congratulations, Luz. And a shout out to Brittany York, who wants to give a shout out to us. She wrote us a super nice note about how much she loves the shout outs. We appreciate you, Brittany. Brittany, thank you for the shout out. Enjoy your shout out. And to all the 60-year-old Yetis out there who are canceling us right now for calling them senior citizens, thank you for your patience.

25:52And to anyone else celebrating something today, make it a T-boy. Celebrate the wins.

26:02Yeah, if you're paying for it, or if you're not, in the cloud, which is their cloud, unless it's your cloud.

26:13Dude, you're like, Hanging on, hoping I was going to land. Yeah. You know where, like, you barely stuck the landing? Yeah. I was like, the physical equivalent. Oh, man. Like, it was like Sully in the Hudson. Like, technically you landed, but it wasn't on the runway. Gusto. Yetis, there's nothing more satisfying on a Friday evening than celebrating the wins of our company from that week. Like how we triumphantly completed payroll paperwork right before the tax deadline. Just kidding. That's not a word to solve, right? But it is an annoying thing that we did have to do. Yeah, we did. Because if you're an entrepreneur, you're the HR team, the benefits team, the payroll department, and you have to be all those things before your morning coffee.

26:57Double digit latte. But you could be doing it all with Gusto. Gusto is an online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one, remote, friendly, and incredibly easy to use so you can pay higher onboard and support your team from anywhere. So save time with built-in automated tools like offer letters, onboarding documents, direct deposit, and more. And it's super simple to switch to Gusto. You can just transfer your existing data to get up and running fast and don't even have to pay a penny until you run your first payroll. Because you're not toasting a Negroni on Friday to celebrate that paperwork.

27:24Nope. So besties, try Gusto today at gusto.com slash tboy and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash tboy. One more time, gusto.com slash tboy.