🌝 “Post-Swift Era” — Ticketmaster’s Google moment. Calvin Klein’s JFK Jr miss. Trump’s Iran TACO? +Beyond Meat’s rename

0:29This is Nick. This is Jack. description. Yeah, you want to tell them why, Jack? This is a good surprise. We want to bring you up on stage to deliver it yourself. Mic check, mic check. You are going to give the best fact yet to the live show. Do we have any more tickets available, Nick? We got like a few more tickets available, so this is like last chances, baby. Okay, it's a total last chance situation. In the meantime, though, Jack and I whipped up three fantastic pop biz stories for today's pod. Jack, what do we got on the show? For our first story, Live Nation and Ticketmaster just settled the most controversial case in music since Beethoven's 9th, which means Live Nation could become the next Google.

1:04For our second story, JFK Jr., so hot right now. So hot right now. So is Calvin Klein, the brand he and his wife loved. Caroline Bissette Kennedy is giving Calvin Klein a gift that their marketing team could only dream for. And our third and final story, it's The Crude Awakening, part two. Oil prices popped up to$117 a barrel yesterday before plummeting to$85. Meanwhile, one freaky word from the 1970s just entered the economic chat, and what is it, Jack? Stagflation. I thought it was Bill Bonham. All right, we'll go with stagflation. But yet he's before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. Oh, love the mix of stories for the T-Boy Tuesday, Jack.

1:42Shakespeare once asked, what's in a name? Well, one stock just asked, what's in my name? Because Beyond Meat, the very struggling plant-based meat business, just changed its name officially. And Jack and I would like to speak to a manager, please. Because Beyond Meat is now Beyond, the plant protein company. I'm sorry, Jack, that's not a name, that's a sentence. We literally had to put a comma in there for it to make sense. Besties, the only company we could find with a longer name was, what was it, Jack? Michael Scott Paper Company. Beyond Meat. They just went from two words to five. It's not a sentence, it's actually a paragraph.

2:17Beyond Meat, you went to Beyond. Might want to stay within next time. Now in the branding, we should point out that Beyond Meat is just going to call themselves Beyond. So marketing-wise, they're pulling a Justin Timberlake and dropping the the. But on Wall Street, they dropped the meat and then added the plant-based protein company to the name. No, just Plant Protein Company. So basically, they're trying to capitalize on the protein maxing trend. Which their product was already doing, but now they're making it super duper clear. Yeah, full disclosure, still a shareholder here, so whatever, guys.

2:45If it works, roll with it. But if you could rename Beyond Meat, if you were in charge, what would you call it? Oh, that's our question for T-Boy Tuesday. What would you name Beyond Meat if you named it from scratch? Again, extra bonus points if you use the word within. Drop it in the comments. Jack and I might have three stories. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in a dorm. They 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 because we ready to go we can't wait no more so just start the show start the show first a quick word from our sponsor

3:36top hats baseball hats von dutch hats we have so many hats on this podcast honestly we're not great at all of them no we've been avoiding hiring someone to wear those hats instead of us, especially the Von Dutch one, because hiring and training can take forever. Well, proud to say that we are hiring right now at T-Boy, and this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Because sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95 % more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. So besties spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes, less stress, less time, more results.

4:07When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of the show will get a$75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com slash podcast. So just go to indeed.com slash podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. So yeah, he's Jack's instituted a new business model for his Airbnb hosting. And Jack, what is it? Here it is. Host equals guest.

4:41Yes. I funnel all my revenue from being a host on Airbnb into one bank account and use that same bank account to book travel for myself. And basically it's Jack's host guest bank account for when he hosts and when he's a guest somewhere else. When I lived in the city, Nick, every time my apartment was available on Airbnb, it would get booked like that. I mean, think about how often are you away from home? You got the bridesmaid, you got the shower, you got the bachelorette, you got the wedding. That's three weekends away just for one wedding right there. Plus, you got to visit your mother. Naturally.

5:10Well, that's a lot of potential hosting that you could be doing on Airbnb. Let someone else stay at your place while you're away. Take that host money and spend it when you're a guest somewhere else. Have a business model like me. If you want to travel more, hosting more is a great way to make it happen. Financially. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host.

5:32For our first story, Live Nation and Ticketmaster, They just survived the wrath of the Swifties and settled their antitrust lawsuit. And the last time the government let a monopoly off the hook was Google. And Google stock has surged 60 % since. Master of the new Google. But besties, we all remember the$26 ,000 Taylor Swift Errors Tour ticket. Jack and I covered it back in 2024. Well, in May of that year, a bipartisan lawsuit was filed against the owner of Ticketmaster, Live Nation. It's the only thing our politicians agree on. 40 states united to sue Live Nation saying its ticket service, Ticketmaster is, and I quote, Jack, what is the exact quote here?

6:11The absolute worst, Nick. Exactly. And then the Attorney General of the United States said at a press conference, it is time to break it up. The only thing bringing together Swifties, Deadheads, and Backstreet Boys fans was Ticketmaster fee trauma. Yes, it was. So break it up like the Beatles, they wanted to. Pretty clear in hindsight, back in 2010, the government should not have let Live Nation acquire Ticketmaster. But yesterday, that 21-month-long lawsuit came to an end. And the verdict, Jack? Guilty? No. Nope. There was no verdict because the case was settled outside of court. Kind of like in a really long fish song, there was no climax.

6:50How dare you? You know, it's like a two-hour song, Jack. There's got to be a climax to the song. Well, the anti-climax was actually great news for Live Nation shareholders, although there were some penalties we should sprinkle some context onto. Here's the fine print. In exchange for dropping the lawsuit, the government demanded some concessions from Live Nation, or as they called them, remedies. Yeah, this is a classic case of, to quote the 1997 song by the notorious B.I.G., Mo' monies, Mo' problems. Now, we have to say this next part or Live Nation will sue us. Yeah, we did. Live Nation admitted no wrongdoing in this case.

7:21Yes, they did, and we don't want to be sued against. But still, Ticketmaster's monopoly in outdoor amphitheaters is particularly egregious. Because Ticketmaster owns 78 % of the Roman-style outdoor theaters across America. Like the Hollywood Bowl, the Gorge Amphitheater, Xfinity Center just outside Boston, they're all live nations. Well, as part of this new lawsuit settlement, Ticketmaster must open up to competition 13 of them. The lawsuit also requires a cap on service fees on Ticketmaster to 15 % of the ticket price. So that$100 ticket you bought for next weekend, it's going to have a maximum fee of$15.

7:57Ticketmaster also must act like a platform now and allow third-party ticketing apps to appear in Ticketmaster ticket searches. If you're searching for the Wu-Tang tickets for their concert tour this summer on Ticketmaster, you're also going to see options from SeatGeek and Eventbrite. And finally, Ticketmaster must pay$280 million in damages to the Swifties, but only from the states participating in this settlement. To quote Rihanna, better have my money. But it is unclear if consumers are actually going to get any of that money. No, we're probably going to get an email from like, Ticketmaster Settlement email official.

8:28And you have to register to maybe get like 11 bucks, but also cross your fingers and hope this isn't a scam. Then you have to cross over a bridge, talk to an old man, he'll ask you a riddle, and maybe, just maybe, you can get your money back. But we should point out, not all the states settled. The state of New York is continuing to sue Live Nation, so it's not case closed yet. But still, Wall Street is calling this settlement benign for Live Nation. The stock jumped 6 % on Monday, close to an all-time high. Although, besties, Jack and I would not call this Ticketmaster situation benign. We would call it opportunity.

9:00So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Ticketmaster? After a very similar outcome happened to Google, the stock rose by 60%. Basically, is Ticketmaster the new Google? Because Yetis, besides Live Nation, the other big antitrust case of the past year, it was Google. But Nick, with Google, the judge actually declared them an illegal monopoly, but then declined to make any required changes, like make them sell Chrome or YouTube. And guess what happened? On September 3rd of last year, when the judge let Google off the hook, Google stock surged 9%, similar to the 6 % surge that Live Nation had yesterday.

9:37Okay, but then Jack, Google's rally kept on going. Investors realized that the monopoly discount they'd been giving to Google, the risk of it getting broken up, was now gone. Google stock rose 60 % over the next five months, and you know what? A similar monopoly discount could go away now for Live Nation. Live Nation is punished enough to satisfy the government, but it's still intact enough to keep dominating their industry. That is the key balance. And with demand for live events at an all-time high, Live Nation stock could have a run like Google's did. Analysts are calling Live Nation's government settlement benign.

10:10We call it an opportunity. For our second story, love story, the show on FX about JFK Jr. is driving a surge in interest for Calvin Klein. But Calvin's stock is not benefiting. Nope. Because the company was totally unprepared for this. Now, yeah, he's a star with a little bit of context. The number one social icebreaker when you get to a party as a millennial. What is it, Jack? What are you streaming? Yeah. Any good shows lately? Well, the top trending show everyone's talking about over the weekends, already has 25 million hours streamed. Side note, check justwatch.com to see if the show you want to watch is available on one of the streamers you already pay for.

10:49But back to the main note, love story is the FX series. It's about JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bissette, the tragedy of two super hot, super interesting people. Now, in case your mom doesn't love the Kennedys like mine does, I should inform you that these two died in a plane accident in 1999 because the Kennedy family has a history of tragedy. But the core plot, the story, it is universal. The son of a president meets a fashion publicist. There's a lot of eating, there's a lot of biking, and there was one very public argument over in Central Park. Sorry, did you say the story of the son of a president meeting a fashion publicist is universal?

11:22It's an Upper East Side tale as old as time, Jack. But while JFK Jr. and his hair were famous, CBK is the one causing a fashion revolution right now. That's right. Carolyn Bessett Kennedy was America's Princess Diana during the same time as Princess Di. And right now, this show and her style are creating a CBK core trend. In episode one, she wore a$38 tortoise shell headband. Those headbands are now sold out across the city. Jack, the casual Indian restaurant where these two went on their first date, Panatou Garden, the one with the lights, they've seen a 40 % surge in reservations over the last week.

11:57Here's the biggest evidence, though. Google searches for Calvin Klein are up 850 % since the show premiered. Because JFK Jr.'s wife, CBK, worked there and is shown working there basically the entire show. Calvin Klein hasn't been this hot a topic at brunch since Marky Mark wore those white boxer briefs. If you don't know what you're talking about, you're going to find out in about a minute. Nick, this show is taking the whole world back to Calvin Klein's 1990s golden era. In fact, besties, as Jack and I dove in T-boy style, we would argue that Calvin Klein is the most influential fashion brand of the 20th century.

12:32Well, at least of the 1990s. Because Calvin Klein didn't just change clothes, Calvin Klein changed entire other industries, including advertising. Fun fact, during World War II, Calvin Klein was born in the same Bronx neighborhood as Ralph Lauren was. Now that is a dinner party fact, but his key style insight many years later when he grew up was that after the excess of the 1980s, we should pioneer minimalism. Calvin Klein invented the luxury t-shirt. It was him. He elevated basics like t-shirts, bras, and underwear to make them the focus. And then follow us in this one. Because those basics exposed a lot of skin, he became the first designer to show tattoos in his ads.

13:08Which previously was taboo, I guess. So like in 1980, you had Brooke Shields doing a TV commercial where she said, nothing comes between me and my Calvins. Because she was wearing just jeans. And then in 1992, Calvin Klein paid Mark Wahlberg a hundred grand just to wear Calvins on a giant billboard. His ads got so racy and so young and so barely clothed, it actually caused a federal investigation of Calvin Klein's advertising. Literally. But then in 2003, Calvin Klein sold to PVH for 700 million bucks. That's the fashion stock that also owns Tommy Hilfiger. Now, besties Calvin Klein, they've been low-key for a while now.

13:42But as Jack and I have always told you, nostalgia runs in 20-year cycles. So 23 years after that acquisition, Calvin is in vogue again thanks to his supporting role in the show, Love Story. Actually, Jack, after a couple episodes, I can tell you, it's more of a leading role. Because half of the show takes place in Calvin Klein conference rooms. Carolyn is like mood boarding for the next product of Calvin Klein in a Calvin Klein skirt. Jack, the hookup scenes? Well, Carolyn's wearing Calvin Klein underwear as they both take off their clothes. Marketing is what you pay for. Publicity is what you pray for.

14:11Exactly. And Calvin Klein's prayers have been answered by the show. Okay, but one little problem we should point out, Jack. Calvin Klein forgot the robes. Yeah. Also, literally. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies coming between us and Calvin Klein? Calvin Klein is a reminder to put virality on your calendar. Yetis, this is fascinating. Bloomberg interviewed New Yorkers who were shopping at the Calvin Klein store in New York, but they were leaving the store empty-handed. Sad and empty-handed. They went in to find the 90s styles, like from the show, but they left with nothing because Calvin didn't have them in stock.

14:45But on the other hand, resale websites were ready. The RealReal was prepared with 90s minimalist time capsules on their site. And the RealReal has seen sales of vintage 1990s Calvin Klein stuff triple since the show premiered. Besties, what we're saying is that Calvin Klein should have seen this coming. The Love Story show was announced back in 2021. They had five years to prepare a whole wardrobe and a whole fashion line of the stuff that Carolyn Bessett Kennedy was wearing in the show. But instead, they let them secondary market steal their lunch. PVH stock, which owns Calvin Klein, it's actually down since the show came out that made them viral again.

15:20Yetis, Calvin Klein is a reminder to put virality on your calendar. In fact, if you work for a consumer brand, you should ask AI right now, is there a movie or show coming out that might feature my brand? If so, email that to your boss and put it on the calendar. Now, a quick word from our sponsor. Monarch. When I had student debt, I tracked my progress on an Excel spreadsheet I manually updated each month. Oh, I was Jack a spreadsheet jockey because when he was paying off his student debt, Monarch didn't exist yet. Well, one year ago, I proudly killed that spreadsheet I'd been building for 12 years.

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16:58If your AI tool doesn't know anything about your biz, then it's not going to be the best one yet. That's why we're pumped to promote NetSuite by Oracle. It's helping over 43 ,000 businesses figure out how AI can work for them. NetSuite is actually the number one cloud ERP connected to your entire enterprise. It has your data on financials, HR, inventory, commerce, and CRM. To be honest, it's probably going to have to sprinkle on context about your business to you. It's that intelligent. That connected data is what makes your AI smarter. So it doesn't just guess, it knows. This isn't another bolted on tool.

17:28It's AI built into the system that runs your business. So whether your company earns millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you stay ahead. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get your free business guide, demystifying AI at netsuite.com slash tboy. The guide is free to use at netsuite.com slash tboy. NetSuite.com slash TBOI. For our third and final story, oil prices skyrocket a record amount for the second straight day. The crude awakening continued. Stagflation entered the economic chat. But all of that changed after the president tweeted. We'll explain. He may have tweeted a taco, but besties, oil markets, they are on fire right now and not in a good way.

18:12Yesterday, we covered that oil had risen by 35 % in five days. Wow. The biggest five-day increase for oil since dinosaurs. Sunday night, the traders in Asia got back to their desks and said, you know what? Hold my regular unleaded. Because weekend escalation of the war in Iran shot oil prices up by another 20%. It was a petrol pop to start the week. The panic in oil markets actually caused an emergency announcement by the G7 countries to release their oil reserves to bring the price of oil down a bit. Besties, the thinking here, a longer, more expensive, more drawn out Middle East war is getting priced into Wall Street.

18:50But then, President Trump responded to the panic on Monday. He calmed the markets, which actually ended up for the day. The exact quote from the tweet, the war is very complete, comma, pretty much. Which, Jack, could you sprinkle on some calendar context for us, please? He said the war in Iran is way ahead of his four to five week timeline that he gave us just a couple weeks ago. So besties, on this news, oil went from a peak of 117 bucks a barrel all the way down to just 85 bucks a barrel. A 30 % swing downward after a 20 % swing upward all in 24 hours. We've never seen anything like this before.

19:26I'm sorry, ExxonMobil, you've been hanging out with Ben the Bitcoin lately. What's going on over there? All right, the crude awakening in the oil market, that's an ongoing story. We'll see what we cover about it tomorrow. Let's save that in our back pocket for now. But the new story is the word stagflation. Jack, why don't you sprinkle in even more context for us? Friday's job report showed a clear AI-powered job shrinkage in our economy. Jack, high oil prices? That's only going to accelerate all that sad, frustrating job shrinkage. High oil prices drive up the price of everything because everything needs oil to be made.

19:58Yeah, basically oil seaps into everything. So the job market is getting worse and prices are popping. Whoa, you know what that means. That is an economist's worst nightmare called stagflation. Oh, that is one freaky dream. Stagflation. It's when unemployment and inflation are both rising at the same time. Or as we like to put it, stagflation. It's like when your house is flooded and on fire at the same time. Not a good thing. And the last time Jack and I covered stagflation was like almost a year ago. Here's what we said exactly. Let's roll the tapes. As students of economics, Jack and I know that stagflation is caused by something external, something like politics.

20:35In the 1970s, the political external event was the Middle East oil crisis. Okay, but today, the political external event causing stagflation would be the global trade war. Now, present day besties, the tariffs we were referring to back then, they were mostly canceled. So there was no stagflation a year ago. But the Middle East oil crisis that we referenced from the 1970s. Yeah, Jack, grab your bell bottoms and fleek with Mac vinyls. Because that sounds a lot like what's happening right now. Yes, it does. Because yesterday we saw stagflation in the headlines for the first time since we covered it last year.

21:10Because an oil crisis in the Middle East is causing the price of oil to jack up really high. But besties, funny thing about that, just like last year, everything we just said could all be canceled. Based on a tweet. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our butter? He's wondering what comes next. Did President Trump just taco the war in Iran? Ah, the taco, T-A-C-O. Yeti's, that's the nickname on Wall Street for when President Trump reverses a policy because stocks are falling. Trump always chickens out. The non-political, non-partisan way to make money on Wall Street in the past 18 months is to sell Trump's threat and buy Trump's reversal.

21:45And the absolutely enormous drop in oil prices after Trump's tweet that the war was, quote, very complete pretty much, it is similar to the enormous move from when Trump canceled last year's biggest tariffs. We said it last week, if oil prices kept rising, that could be what ends the war. What we meant was President Trump's pain point in this war. His scoreboard is measured by the price of oil and the S &P 500. We'll follow the headlines as they come tomorrow, but the markets might have forced the war to end. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for T-Boy Tuesday? day. First, Live Nation has settled with most states and the federal government, and it can keep Ticketmaster.

22:22So the big question, is Live Nation the new Google? For our second story, JFK Jr. and his wife CBK are fueling demand for classic 1990s Calvin Klein. But Calvin wasn't ready for it. The lesson, if you're a brand, you gotta put potentially viral moments on that calendar. And our third and final story, oil prices freaked out on more evidence that the worn Iran could be long and drawn out. But then all that in the middle of our recording got reversed on what might be a classic Trump taco trade. But besties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First up, Pixar just delivered their best opening weekend for an original movie in a decade, and the movie is Hopper.

23:01It's not a prequel, it's not a sequel, it's an original film that won the box office this weekend. Sagan, Anthropic, published a report last week showing how vulnerable every industry is to AI. You can check it yourself. Spoiler, if your job requires a computer, you're at risk. And finally, the record cold winter you've all survived through has already claimed a surprise victim for this summer, the lobster roll. That's right. Prices for your lobster roll this summer are expected to be jacked up by the cold. Yeah, to sprinkle on some context, apparently lobsters hate the cold too, so they swim 20 miles offshore to bury in the sand if it gets too cold out there.

23:36Which sounds like the plot of the next original Pixar movie. So fewer lobster supplies this summer means lobsters already expected to hit 38 bucks a wholesale pound. Now time for the best fact yet, which because Jack and I like to hold ourselves accountable in a way that AI can't, we've got some corrections to make from a couple errors we made. Kathy said on Spotify, Nestle is not based in the Netherlands. It's based in Switzerland. Yeah. Yesterday we did a whole story on Blue Bottle and Nestle. Accidentally, we said that it's based in Holland. We were thinking of Unilever, which is based in Holland.

24:11Nestle is based in Switzerland. And then Richard G. from New Jersey is a stickler for grammar. I'll tell you that. He said it's daylight saving time, not daylight savings time. Jack and I pluralized it like, you know, everyone does, but that is incorrect. It is actually daylight saving time. Time is never plural. Well, that's just like a philosophical statement right there, Jack. I mean, now you're just getting deep on us. Yetis, you're looking fantastic over there. Even if you're in minute 42 of the latest fish song. But Jack, you're also looking fantastic over there. And if you are coming to our live show in DC, we've got one request for you.

24:49Send us the best fact yet about our nation's capital, so you can come up on stage and deliver IRL. We got a link in this episode description. Just fill it out, drop that fact, and Jack and I can't wait to see you live. This show is Wednesday night, doors open at 6, showtime's at 7. Now, Jack, we got to hit the flights.

25:09And before we head to our flights down to lovely Washington, D.C., a happy birthday to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, the book that's the basis for capitalism, just turned 250 years old yesterday. Happy birthday to Joy Neumann, turning 41 in Pennsylvania. And Mustafa Hassani, we see you in that birthday down in Dallas. Happy birthday to Sushan Basak, turning 32 in New Brunswick, Canada. And Kristen Cruz, enjoy that fourth quarter birthday we got you every year. Big shout out to Lisa on Spotify. She says we missed her birthday. Belated shout out, Lisa, we love you. Yeah, Lisa, we're celebrating twice for you.

25:42And Raquel Antarin and Louis Nagy have a nine-year anniversary of dating. Raquel gave Louis a Yeti doll down in Maryland for the celebration. Guys, we love having couples that t-boy together. And congratulations to Gabby Tanwatko, who finished her first High Rocks race in Atlanta. And to anyone else celebrating something today, make it a T-boy. Celebrate the win. This is Jack, Nick on stock of Beyond Meat. Sorry, Beyond Protein Plant Supermaxing. Awesome company. Did you remember that? And he also owns stock in The RealReal. And we both own ETFs of the S &P 500. And a Bitcoin named Ben. this is robert mace from the athletic football show men's warehouse is here to make you look and feel good no matter the occasion from formal to casual dressed down to dressed up their in-store experts will help you find the right outfit for that thing you got on the calendar and their on-site tailors will make sure the fit is perfect for your body suits tuxes sport coats jeans shorts chinos, t-shirts, polos, loafers, sneakers, sandals, underwear.

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