🎷 “Sax Sells” — Saxophone’s viral comeback. RAV4’s goldilocks problem. Anthropic’s SpaceX rental. +Caliquila

0:28This is Nick. I'm so embarrassed. You're three quarters embarrassed. We've got three fantastic stories for today's T-Boy Jag. What do we got at the funnest place in finance? For our first story, the most viral instrument in music right now. After 20 years of stigma, the saxophone is back. The sax is surging again because Kendrick, Boys in the Hood, and Tech sax sells. For our second story, Ken Griffin is the biggest Wall Streeter yet to call AI a bubble. Because Ken Griffin read your boss's emails. And our third and final story. America's perfect car was actually created by Toyota. It's the RAV4.

1:02The RAV4. Demand is higher than ever. So why did they fall to number six? But besties, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. What a mix of stories. I love the mix for the new Friday check. Could the next liquor trend be Calaquila? Calaquila. That's California tequila. Because get this. California wineries are pivoting from growing grapes to growing agave. And it's the biggest drink bet in a generation. Now to pour on some context, we've told you about the great liquor lull of the past five years. From Gen Z Jenny to Boomer Bob, Americans are simply drinking less. And in this economy, wine's been hit the hardest.

1:38Plus, with the weather getting hotter, the water's drying up. California's climate is looking more like a Mexican desert. So, some Napa farmers are replacing the grapes with agave. They're trading Cab Franc for Blanco. They're trading Merlot for Mizcal. And while grapes cost$70 ,000 an acre to cultivate, agave costs one-seventh as much. Oh, and remember that story we did on Kendall Jenner's$500 million celebrity tequila? That's the only spirit whose sales are surging right now. Tequila. Plus, 90 % of tequila comes from one single Mexican state. Well, California wants to drink up some of Mezcal's market share.

2:14And 40 % of Californians are Hispanic. So this customer base is already caliente. Muy caliente, Jack. Jack, and honestly, look, there's nothing nicer than a wine tasting weekend through Sonoma County. But in 10 years, we could be doing tequila tastings in Temecula. Yeah, he's yesterday. The Led Zeppelin song was Stairway to Heaven. Today, it's going to California. I'll have a margarita San Francisco style. I'll have a Paloma Pack Heights style. I think that's just code for expensive style. Jack, let's have three stories. 15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dawn. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm.

2:52It'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.

3:11Start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor.

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3:50Oh, and that 100 % Mongolian cashmere, oh, it starts at 60 bucks. Quince is the craziest combination of luxury quality and low prices that we've ever seen. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80 % less than the similar brands out there. All while working with ethical factories. They do it by cutting out the middleman. So you get quality, not a brand markup. Well, now Jack's put his linens away for that cold weather. But Jack, what layers are you now layering up with? The layers are layering. The Quince layers. As besties find your next fall favorites at Quinz. Download the Quinz app for app-exclusive offers or go to quinz.com.

4:20Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quinz asks where you heard about them, you got to tell them Nick and Jack from T-Boy sent you. Look sharp and support the show. Monarch. Yetis, did you guys get that grandma check for your birthdays growing up? A white letter envelope stuffed inside a wonderful handwritten card. Great penmanship. Great penmanship. Oh, I just wish I'd had a way to add all those checks up or track them or store them in a piggy bank. If I had Monarch as a kid, I would have known my account balances and watched them grow in probably a savings account before splurging on something awesome to treat myself.

4:52Because Monarch is the money app that we'd always wish we'd had. And when I say something awesome, I mean like a bunch of free spots probably. Using Monarch today, we know how much our money was going to taxis or it could have gone to scooters and subways instead. With all your accounts securely linked to Monarch, it's like having a financial advisor in your pocket and on your computer. with weekly AI recaps to update you on your spending spikes that you definitely ignored. And while most apps tell you only what you've already spent, Monarch helps you set future spending goals. It's the kind of money app that your grandma would have loved with all her heart.

5:21Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code tboy at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch or half off at just 50 bucks. That's 50 % off your first year at monarch.com with code T-B-O-Y. For our first story, one musical instrument is having a moment. The saxophone. The sax surgeons is thanks to rap and tech, and one Japanese stock is benefiting from it all. Yetis, you know who America's greatest venture capitalist is? It's the military. The Pentagon is responsible for GPS, the internet, and the Jeep. We got one more to add to the list. The saxophone. Yep, Nick and I jumped in T-boy style.

6:00The sax was invented in 1840s by the Belgian Adolf, unfortunate name, sax. Yes, biggest customer of the first saxophone, get this, the French military. Mr. Sax basically took a clarinet, twisted the bottom, and made it brass. Wanted something way louder for the military to hear on the battlefield while they were jamming out. And the sax became the favorite instrument of the Roaring Twenties. The sax jumped from European marching bands to American jazz bands. John Coltrane rocked the sax in the 50s and the 60s. Then Clarence Clemens in the E Street Band in the 70s and 80s. And then the sax bridged from jazz to become rock and roll's lead instrument.

6:34But pause the pod because - Nick, my personal favorite sax solo? Hit me, Jack. City on Down by OAR. It's pretty legendary. Comment OAR if you know what I'm talking about. Comment no idea if you don't. But besties, Jack and I can actually pinpoint the very year when the sax bubble popped. Oh, and to be clear, I'm talking about City on Down live, obviously. 1992, that was the peak saxophone year when Bill Clinton was playing the sax on the Arsenio Hall show. Governor Bill Clinton, soon to be President Bill Clinton, thanks to that sax. Which was the same year that Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You hit number one with...

7:11A beautiful sax solo. Exactly, but then Kenny G made the sax cringe. The sax got a stigma for being too emotional. So thanks to that stigma, by the year 2000, sax solos had pretty much disappeared from the charts. In fact, the year 2000, it was the first year without a sax song in the top 100. But in the last 10 years, especially this year, we're witnessing a sax resurgence. And fascinatingly, it's driven by rap tech and... Spoiler! Anti-tech. In 2015, Kendrick Lamar brought the sax back with To Pimple Butterfly. There's saxophone sprinkled across the whole album, which then inspired Beyonce and Jay-Z, who added saxophonist to their music tracks.

7:51Spotify's algorithm got the message and started pushing more sax onto your feed. And then this year, the sax solo became a verifiable TikTok trend. Have you seen the meme, the saxophones keep getting louder? Yeah, you've seen it. Well, you've heard it. It's a sax solo from the 1991 movie, Boys in the Hood, about the most tragic scene in that movie. But today, influencers are clipping that sax solo for comically tragic TikTok videos. Like you ran out of cereal at breakfast, but you already poured the milk. Right. Or actually, no, you already poured the cereal, but you ran out of milk. Well, you film it, you play that Boys in the Hood sax song, and you're right on the video clip, the saxophone keeps getting louder.

8:31As a result of this virality, the biggest saxophone YouTube channel, Better Sax, grew 65 % in subscribers this year. Oh, and Kirk Wallen, the saxophonist for that Whitney Houston song and the Boys in the Hood score, he's selling out sax concerts again. And Nick and I found a stock market winner for this saxurgence, Yamaha Corp. That's right. Sax sells for this Japanese music company. Their stock was up 21 % in the last 12 months. Because Yamaha makes 27 % of all instruments worldwide, including 33 % of woodwinds. Of which the sax is one because the reed makes it the woodwind. Yeah, even though it's brass, according to Nick, this expert, sax expert over here.

9:11Add it all up, Yetis, and Yamaha is an electronics company. But ironically, the key driver of their sax surge is anti-tech. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies who love the sax? What is your inimitable advantage? Now, yet he's Jack's business school teacher, had a Spanish accent, and this was the first time Jack had heard that word, which is really hard to say. Inimitable. Inimitable. Inimitable. Every business needs to ask themselves, what can we do that others cannot imitate? Inimitable. It's so hard to say. Well, Bloomberg asked a musical composer what the saxophone's advantage was in this surprising moment.

9:48Here's what he said. The sax is the instrument whose sound most resembles a human voice. And the sax is the hardest musical sound to replicate electronically. So it's interesting to see the sax surge. It's arguably tied to the boom in technology and digital and AI everything. First, there's a desire for core human emotion, not robotic emotions. And second, there's an attraction from humans to sounds that computers can't imitate. So besties, what is your inimitable advantage? Inimitable.

10:19For our second story. When it comes to AI, SpaceX is the biggest landlord, Anthropic is the biggest renter, and Amazon is homeless. And the biggest shark on Wall Street says that AI is almost certainly a bubble. Oh, Yetis, we got the housing analogy here that's going to make Zillow pumped. Besties on Tuesday, Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla and SpaceX are investigating a merger. So stocks of both companies jumped. Also, Elon reported third quarter SpaceX earnings. AI revenues rose to$7.6 billion. That's an 830 % jump. Although Elon calls it superintelligence now, complying with Trump's desired rebrand of AI.

10:57But interestingly, 84 % of that AI revenue for SpaceX was actually rent. That's right. Airbnb for data centers. That kind of rent. Because SpaceX owns 1.7 gigawatts of data centers. Colossus 1 and 2 are huge data centers built eight miles apart from each other in Tennessee. When Jack says huge, we're talking Guinness record huge, Huge. Like biggest data centers in the world. Officially huge. Together, these two colossus data centers are two Yankee stadiums in square footage. But here's what we find fascinating. Only a tiny fraction of that compute is actually for Elon's AI companies. The rest of it he rents out.

11:33He calls them cloud services agreements in his financial reports, and it makes SpaceX the biggest landlord in artificial intelligence. And as Elon said in his earnings call, we could rent out our compute several times over if we said yes to everyone who needs it. So headline number one is that SpaceX is now profitable thanks to being an AI landlord. It's an AI landlord. But headline number two this week, what was it, Jack? The biggest AI renter is Anthropic. Because another draft of Anthropic's IPO S1 paperwork leaked to the Wall Street Journal. And when it comes to rent versus own, Anthropic is firmly in the rent department.

12:10And why is that, Jack? They own zero data centers. None. So every month, Anthropic writes a$1.25 billion rent check to Elon SpaceX. We're talking 15 billion bucks a year in AI rent going to Elon. Get this, a full 26 % of SpaceX's total revenues are rent payments from Anthropic to use the compute. All right, besties. So we've got an AI landlord. We've got an AI renter. Jack, what's the third AI headline we noticed? It comes from Business Insider. Amazon has billions of dollars worth of rentable data centers, but it can't turn them on. Because Yeti's Amazon Web Services is data centers. And with the AI boom, Amazon's been hyperscaling construction of more data centers.

12:51But Amazon has warehouses full of the top-of-the-line NVIDIA chips with no data centers to put them into yet. Partly because protests halted data center construction and partly because there's just not enough power to power. So SpaceX is the AI landlord, Anthropic is the AI renter, and Amazon is kind of AI homeless. And in all the besties, that's our Zillow-style housing analogy for all the big players in AI right now. I hope you find it fascinating, but that's all backward looking. Ken Griffin told us something yesterday about the future. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies over in AI?

13:27We're almost certainly in an AI bubble, according to Ken Griffin. Yetis. Ken Griffin made headlines last month for making the biggest higher ed donation ever. Three billion bucks that he gave to Carnegie Mellon University. Ken Griffin owns Citadel, which is both a high frequency trading firm and a hedge fund. He's the most Wall Street-y Wall Street guy, although he did abandon the financial hubs and moved down to Florida. And that is why it is notable that he said on Tuesday, we are almost certainly in an AI bubble. Ken Griffin has access to America's CEOs. And he says some of them are becoming AI skeptics.

14:01Here's what he said exactly. Corporate America has been very uneven in its ability to extract value from its AI models. Translation check. He said that CEOs are looking at their bills from OpenAI and Anthropic and asking, what's the return on all this expense? Basically, he's saying it's a productivity problem. Ken Griffin suggesting productivity boosts have been underwhelming with AI. He's basically looking at how much more work is the average American getting done by chatting with ChatGPT compared to the cost of that ChatGPT subscription. Had it all up, besties, and right now, CEOs are paying Anthropic.

14:31Anthropic is paying SpaceX, and Ken Griffin says that first link, it's wobbling right now. Elon Musk says there's tons of demand for AI. That's a bullish signal. Ken Griffin says that could soon change. That's a big bearish one. Now, a quick word from our sponsor. You know what's a fun habit? Getting to hang with you guys every day on this show. It's what we do. Another fun habit, listening to audiobooks about habits. Like Atomic Habits, the legendary piece about building habits that better your life, right? And the Atomic Habits audiobook is on Audible. We're excited to collab with Audible because it's how we find our road trip companion.

15:07The written word, spoken. So besties, you can create a habit of enjoying audiobooks while you multitask. Which I believe is chapter three of Atomic Habits. That's right, Jack. Wash pots and pans, awkwardly fold those fitted bed sheets, floss your teeth while you're winding down listening on Audible. If your hands are full while listening to Audible, then you're doing it right. So summer's not over. Replace doom scrolling by listening to an audiobook that a human put all their thought and effort into. Audible. It's stories that speak to you. And new members can start listening with a 30-day free trial at audible.com slash tboy.

15:36That's a 30-day free trial at audible.com slash tboy. Take it from a couple guys with a lot of habits who have become your habit. NetSuite. Yetis, remember we told you Warren Buffett reads 500 pages a day? Well, the world's greatest investor, he's not reading Moby Dick for the 15th time. No, we've got Warren's reading the latest report from NetSuite Next. NetSuite Next is the next generation business management suite trusted by over 44 ,000 companies. And if you're curious how AI can open up new business opportunities, then you got to download their latest piece. It's NetSuite Next's new expert-created business guide with a ridiculously relevant title.

16:10Here it is, Aligning for the Agentic Era, How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's absolutely free to you. Warren Buffett loves a story with a good subtitle. He does, Jack. So after you finish that 83rd chapter of Herman Melville's White Whale Classic, pick up some lighter material on the modern day economy and see how AI could really reshape work across your company in this guide and how you can prosper from it with NetSuite. If we needed this product, it's what we would use. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsuite.com slash tboy. Get your free guide at netsuite.com slash tboy.

16:40netsuite.com slash tboy. Netsuite.com slash tboy. for our third and final story it's the rav4 nation america's best-selling suv for eight years just fell to number three and it's toyota's own fault but we can't fault them for it okay all right thursday night trivia here's what we got what is the top selling car in america who is it check hint number one and number two have been the same for most of the last 40 years all right All right, pencils down, pencils down. The answer is number one is the Ford F-Series pickup, and number two is the Chevy Silverado pickup. America runs on trucking. But the usual suspect for number three, the Toyota RAV4, has fallen to number six this year.

17:24The Toyota RAV4. Now, before we explain why the surprise drop, here's why the RAV4 is so historically popular. Goldilocks. Goldilocks. Toyota pioneered the crossover SUV with this car. Basically, a car big enough for two car seats, a dog, and a Costco run. but small enough to park into even the tiniest parallel parking situation. Still works on Madison Avenue, Manhattan. Born in 1994, it's America's top-selling SUV and top-selling non-pickup car until now. RAV4 sales are down 29 % this year. The Dodge Ram, the Honda CR-V, and the Tesla Model Y are all outselling it. Now, here's what we find fascinating, Yetis.

18:00RAV4's decline, it's not for lack of demand. In fact, demand's at all-time highs, Jack. Waitlist! Wait list. You see Jack's aunt, Jack's ex-girlfriend, Jack's childhood best friend. They all had RAV4s, don't they, Jack? It's the new Subaru. Let's just put it that way. There is a group chat right now called the RAV4 group chat with all of your exes and your grandmas and your cousins. Pretty much everyone except my present. But every five to seven years, we get an all new RAV4 that's slightly bigger, slightly sportier, and a little more rugged looking. But last year, something unusual happened. In the final year of the fifth generation RAV4, everyone wanted it.

18:37Usually, when people know there's an all-new version coming next year, you wait to buy the all-new one next year. Like you do with iPhones. But Americans want the RAV4 so bad, they bought 480 ,000 of that final batch of fifth generation RAV4s. The demand is so insane that Toyota decided, let's keep our factories chugging out these old RAV4s instead of pausing production to retool for the new generation. And that factory retooling finally happened this year. and first time the RAV4 would only offer it as a hybrid. So for those two months of retooling when no RAV4s were coming out, that caused a huge pent-up demand situation.

19:11So any RAV4 at your local dealership, it's almost certainly spoken for. Waitlist! RAV4, it's like the iPhone duo, gotta order in advance. Again, waitlist. This production snafu, by the way, it's a rare logistical speed bump for Toyota, the most profitable car company in the world. But it's a snafu caused by the car being so darn valuable. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies driving the RAV4? It's always the right time for a value meal. Yeah, there's an old expression in business that no one ever got fired for buying IBM. A lot of IBM sales back in the day came from executives just choosing the safe bet they wouldn't get in trouble for.

19:51And it's similar with the Toyota RAV4. Yeah, the brand's reputation for value and reliability makes it the choice that your husband or wife won't fire you for. Now, what we find fascinating is that 2025 was the best year for RAV4 sales ever, and that was before the war in Iran. The RAV4 gets 41 to 43 miles per gallon. That's 65 % better than your typical new car. So like with Walmart, Costco, or TJ Maxx, Toyota, it does well in good economic times and in bad. RAV4 sales, they've eclipsed 400 ,000 per year every year since 2017. Sales were high in good years, and sales were high in COVID and inflation years too.

20:25Rich people buy it because it's reliable. Everyone else buys it because it's affordable. And that's the case with all value products. Yeah, the value meal of cars. It's always the right time for a value meal. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for that new Friday? The saxophone is the sound of the year, thanks to Kendrick, a TikTok trend, and computers. What is your inimitable advantage? Second, Anthropic is a renter, SpaceX is a landlord, and Amazon's chips? They're data center homeless. While Ken Griffin says AI is almost certainly a bubble. And finally, Toyota's RAV4 has fallen three spots in America's car rankings to number six.

21:01Not because there's too little demand, because there's too much demand. Waitlist! But besties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, definition of spoiling the party. Meta announced earnings yesterday, and then a judge announced a record fine. Meta's revenues rose 26 % in the third quarter, and profits reached$10 billion. But remember Cambridge Analytica, that 2016 presidential election privacy scandal? A New Mexico judge just ordered Meta to pay$25 billion. That's a huge fine. But Zuck shrugged it off, Wall Street didn't mind, and the stock was up 7 % after hours.

21:37Second, Elon Musk had his second straight earnings call. SpaceX on Tuesday, Tesla on Wednesday. Tesla's revenue and profit were both down. Tesla's automotive peak, it was actually a few years ago. But Tesla's an automotive and robotics company, Nick. What is wrong with you? Who cares about cars? Right, and so Tesla's stock rose after hours as investors peppered Elon with more questions about Elon, Inc. The seemingly inevitable merger of SpaceX and Tesla. Spex law. And finally, anyone seen our super valuable Pokemon cards? Because$963 million of them have just been stolen. A FedEx truck in California with 200 packages of trading cards was parked outside a trading card store where the cards were actually being authenticated.

22:20But they left the door unlocked with$963 ,000 of cards inside. Why did you rob the Pokemon truck, Willie Sutton? Because that's where the money is. And Pokemon cards are now money. Now time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Quinton Brown emailed to us this week. Earlier this week, we covered Kendall Jenner, I mean Kylie Jenner, who was wearing a$50 million diamond bra at the Victoria's Secret fashion show. But what we didn't mention was that that bra was the most expensive bra in human history. It was made by the famed jeweler Jacob & Co. And it beats the$15 million Victoria's Secret fantasy bra worn by Gisele Bundchen in the year 2000.

22:59Because this bra had 4 ,410 natural diamonds on it, including a 75-carat yellow diamond worth$22 million itself. Took 15 people and 1 ,000 human hours to make it. But interestingly, the company they collabed with to make the bra, Jacob & Co., they got a wild history. Jacob Araba was born in Uzbekistan and moved to Queens as a teenager. And he's the guy who became the go-to hip-hop jeweler of the 2000s, selling diamonds to Nas, Kanye, 50 Cent, and Jay-Z. And now, Kendall, I mean Kylie. Yetis, you look fantastic today. And Jack, you are glowing over there, and I think I know why. Well, I've been working out.

23:36And do you know why I've been working out? I didn't know why, but I was wrong, actually, when I said I know why. Free bear hugs. You know a ticket to the Seattle show entitles you to one free bear hug from me. It's true. And at our Boston show, Jack was giving out free bear hugs. And there was a wait list. So grab your tickets now to see us live at our final live show of the year in Seattle. Where can you get the tickets, Jack? Bull markets, bear hugs. Grab the tickets. Link in the episode description. November 4th. Or go to tboypod.com. Jack and I will see you in Seattle in two weeks.

24:12And before we go, a happy birthday to legendary Yeti Vanessa Clark, a five-year Yeti celebrating down in Orlando. Congratulations to Michelle Kim Cullen for five years of birthday shout-outs on this show, celebrating today in Redmond, Washington. And Janelle Coles, we see your birthday in Greeley, Colorado. Happy 12th birthday to Nicholas Fetzner in Boca Raton, Florida. And Adolfo Yadid, happy Bar Mitzvah Day down in Mexico City. And Justin and Riau, happy four-year anniversary in New Jersey. And a special shout out to legendary Yeti, J.D. Schramm, who I ran into on the street. J.D. is the author of Communicate with Mastery.

24:47He is a master of communication himself. And J.D., we love having you with us. And to anyone else celebrating something today, make it a team one. Celebrate the wins.

24:59This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon. Nick owns stock of Zillow and Airbnb. And we both own stock of SpaceX. Me one, Nick many. And my 10-year sacks was a Selmer. Yetis, this holiday season, don't miss your chance to turn just looking into just bought it. Make it easy for your customers to say yes on the spot. PayPal Checkout is a trusted conversion engine fueled by 400 million active PayPal and Venmo accounts. And when you add Pay Later, you can turn holiday shoppers into regulars. 96 % of Pay Later shoppers are repeat users. So if you give them Pay Later flexibility now, it could help earn their loyalty all year long.

25:35PayPal is built for all business. Get started at paypal.com slash business. PayPal data, eight markets, March 2025 to February 2026. Repeat users defined as more than one pay later purchase in the past year.