⚡ “The 3 Flavors” — Saudi’s nuclear menu. Chris Nolan’s Zeus law. Instant Ramen’s cold breakthru. +Miami’s Tan Tax

0:00Chris Nolan: This is Nick.

0:01Matt Damon: This is Jack.

0:02Chris Nolan: It's Thursday, the new Friday, July 23rd.

0:05Matt Damon: And today's pod is the best one you have. This is a T-Boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today.

0:13Chris Nolan: Barely survived, walked in at midnight last night. You talking about the movie theater we went to? Yeah, we got through the whole journey that is watching the Odyssey. It's its own Odyssey. It was epic. Agamemnon, he's got aura like Batman and Darth Vader had a baby raised by Achilles, Jack. How about that Cyclops? I felt so bad for it. I felt seen by him. Ironically, Jack.

0:34Matt Damon: Matt Damon's abs, he had like a 14-pack on them. That was impressive. But Nick, six of the last 10 movies I've seen in theaters were Christopher Nolan movies.

0:43Chris Nolan: Besties, we were so inspired, we turned it into a story for today. But Jack, three fantastic stories for today's team boy. What do we got on the pod? For our first story, Saudi Arabia just got the keys

0:52Matt Damon: to launch its very own nuclear program. And one American company from 1886 is building the reactor for it. For our second story, it's Christopher Nolan. He out-earned Matt Damon to do The Odyssey because directors are the new franchises.

1:05Chris Nolan: Not a new trend in Hollywood. It was foreshadowed by sports and restaurants.

1:08Matt Damon: And our third and final story is Instant Ramen. They just invented - And patented - The first noodles that cook in cold water. Because Besties' seasonality is just an excuse. But Besties, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories - Oh, what a mix. Love that, Cyclops. Since the pandemic, you probably had a couple buddies leave New York City to go down to Florida.

1:29Chris Nolan: Buddy Timmy was almost one of them. They say it's for the weather, but really it's for the taxes.

1:32Matt Damon: They took their talents to South Beach like the Bronx.

1:35Chris Nolan: To quote Will Smith, bienvenidos a Miami.

1:37Matt Damon: But here's the wild update. For the first time ever, Miami is now a more expensive place to live than New York City. We repeat, Miami costs more than Manhattan, baby. Here's the numbers. The cost of living in Miami has popped 39 % since the pandemic.

1:52Chris Nolan: Result, private school tuition is now 7 ,000 more in Miami than it is New York. The average home, it's now$180 more per square foot in Miami than New York. Average dinner, according to Open Table,$79 in New York City,$94 down in Miami.

2:06Matt Damon: Plus, in Miami, you need a car. Probably a convertible, actually. And car insurance. And a parking spot.

2:12Chris Nolan: Meanwhile, in Manhattan, all you're going to need is that metro card.

2:14Matt Damon: So Nick and I actually expanded this study to include some hidden costs of living in Miami, too.

2:19Chris Nolan: Not just the regular costs the economists do, the hidden costs, like alligator removal.

2:24Matt Damon: Oh, there's an alligator on your lanai? That's going to cost 50 bucks for the gaming patrol to come here.

2:30Chris Nolan: Jack, what about the swimsuit budget in Miami? You need at least two grand a year. Hurricane windows? $8 ,000. Okay, but most ironic of all, it's the tanning tax.

2:39Matt Damon: Because despite the sunny weather, Miami has more tanning salons than it has McDonald's. And besties, you got a spray on to fit in. No income tax. Yes to bronzing tax.

2:49Chris Nolan: Now we know what you're thinking. New York has its own hidden costs as well. The broker fee. The Canada Goose parka and the bean boots you need for the one blizzard that comes every couple of winter. But yet, once you add in the cost of Miami's iguana insurance. Real thing. Because the iguanas fall out of trees when it gets cold. Then it's even cheaper to live in Tribeca. Than tax-free, tan-full Miami. Which is why pit bulls moving to the Upper West Side. You hear that? For New York's sake, I hope that's not true. No, man. Jack, let's do that three stories. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm.

3:22Chris Nolan: 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, cause we ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show.

3:43Chris Nolan: Start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor.

3:54Chris Nolan: 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

4:02Matt Damon: right before the tax deadline.

4:04Chris Nolan: Hey, we're just kidding. That's not a win to celebrate. But it is an annoying thing that we did have to do.

4:08Matt Damon: 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. Double digit latte. But you could be doing it all with Gusto.

4:17Chris Nolan: 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.

4:26Matt Damon: So save time with built in automated tools like offer letters, onboarding documents, direct deposit and more.

4:31Chris Nolan: 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. Nope. 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 tboi. One more time, gusto.com slash tboy. Monarch. Happy wedding season to all those who celebrate.

4:59Matt Damon: Wedding season. That means you just liquidated your 401k to pay for that bridesmaid dress.

5:04Chris Nolan: Yeah, flights, hotel, and a gift. Your presents.

5:07Matt Damon: It was not the only present. Good timing though, because Monarch is the personal finance app that tracks everything. Your accounts, your investments, your savings goals, and your spending.

5:15Chris Nolan: We use Monarch to keep all our personal finances accounted for and in one place.

5:19Matt Damon: We're excited that listeners of this show can get your first year of Monarch Core for half off.

5:23Chris Nolan: That's just 50 bucks with promo code TBY. The weekly spending recap, it uses AI to categorize everything you spent organizing them into digestible buckets.

5:31Matt Damon: Weekly emails are perfect, by the way, because checking finances daily, that's too much.

5:35Chris Nolan: Monthly, that's probably not enough. So Monarch helps you make sure you're on track for seven different destination weddings this summer.

5:41Matt Damon: Because you don't want to go into debt if you don't even know the groom.

5:44Chris Nolan: Who's Henry? Besties, use code TBOI at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just 50 bucks. Nick, did you see Liquid IV teamed up with Ring Pop? I did, Jack. And honestly, it's one of those collabs where you immediately think, how has nobody done this before?

6:02Matt Damon: I mean, Ring Pop cherry is already iconic. My sons love Ring Pops, by the way. I give it to them at the beach. It occupies them for about an hour. But now it's a sugar-free liquid IV flavor too.

6:12Chris Nolan: Ah, it's not just a fun flavor. It's still the same liquid IV hydration formula that hydrates faster than water alone, has three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drink, plus eight vitamins and nutrients.

6:22Matt Damon: I've been throwing one of these in my water before the gym and before bed pretty much every night if I sweated that day. Way more fun

6:29Chris Nolan: than drinking plain water. Probably for workouts, travel days, hot days. Honestly, anytime you know you're probably just not drinking enough water. So if you're looking for an excuse to actually stay hydrated, this is a pretty good one. Check out the new Liquid IV sugar-free ring pop cherry at liquidivy.com. For our first story, Saudi Arabia will become a nuclear state and one 140-year-old American company out of Pittsburgh is going to build it for them.

6:56Matt Damon: Nuclear power is back with a whole new menu of investment opportunities.

7:02Chris Nolan: Ah, yetis in Game of Thrones. Jack, could you sprinkle on some context what those dragons stand for?

7:08Matt Damon: Really amazing and expensive CGI. They're also a metaphor for nuclear weapons. Whoever has the most dragons is probably going to win the war.

7:15Chris Nolan: But in the real world, nine countries possess real nuclear weapons. And Iran is threatened to become the 10th. So 31 countries have nuclear power, with Iran hoping to become the 32nd as part of any peace deal. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, an American ally, is sick of having neither while Iran is pursuing both. So here's the news. Saudis will become a nuclear power as part of a 30-year deal announced by the USA.

7:39Matt Damon: Now, Congress could block this Trump-negotiated deal with a two-thirds majority.

7:43Chris Nolan: They're worried about, you know, nuclear proliferation across the Middle East.

7:46Matt Damon: They also want proof that the Saudis can't use this civilian nuclear deal to build a nuclear weapon.

7:51Chris Nolan: But if Congress does not block this deal, then Saudi Arabia will become the 32nd nuclear country. But besties, here's what Jack and I find fascinating. When the U.S. and Saudis signed this agreement, one company pressed the cha-ching. button.

8:05Matt Damon: Because one product with a$10 billion price tag is central to the deal. What do we got, Jack? The Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactor. It rolls off the tongue. It's a working title. We're working on the branding. Westinghouse is an OG American business type. Founded in Pittsburgh 1886 before the pirates were a thing. 140 years ago, George Westinghouse was in a race with Thomas Edison to invent electricity. Now, Edison won the fame, but Westinghouse's company was in the Dow Jones

8:34Chris Nolan: industrial average for 81 straight years.

8:36Matt Damon: And 60 % of America's 90 or so nuclear power plants, they're Westinghouse made. Including all four that were built in the last 40 years. Basically, Westinghouse has a monopoly of fission. But Jack, can you sprinkle on some more context using, I don't know, The Simpsons? Well, nuclear technology is obviously sensitive, so we don't want the Saudis hiring Homer Simpson to run this nuclear plant. Okay, But we also don't want the Saudis hiring Mr. Burns to run the plant. Because Mr. Burns might turn this uranium we're giving them into a nuclear weapon.

9:05Chris Nolan: So that's why the U.S. is only supporting Saudi having nuclear if we build it. And by we, we mean Westinghouse. Basically, Westinghouse has become a home cooking stock. The U.S. wants Saudi Arabia only eating its home nuclear cooking. Our home cooking. So Westinghouse is going to build the reactor, which will produce enough juice to power one city with nukes. Or one data set. Oh, and it will be black box to keep all the technology in United States control. Not Saudi control. But the concern here, it remains uranium enrichment. In two years, according to this deal, the Saudis could begin doing that themselves.

9:41Chris Nolan: And that's the security risk that Congress is focusing on in their review. Because enriched uranium, it could be used to power a city or destroy a city. But what Jack and I are focused on is the investment opportunities of the boomingest part of the power boom.

9:54Matt Damon: And as a guy who grew up 11 miles from a nuclear power plant, Nick, I think I can hit this takeaway for us. I always wonder why you had that third arm. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in nuclear? The nuclear stock market is here again, but now with a menu of options.

10:11Chris Nolan: Yetis, after a 40-year pause of no nuclear power, the U.S. is going straight up ham again for two specific reasons. First, nuclear is carbon-free, so it's critical for the planet. Second, it's AI. The chatbots are power hungry, so big tech is literally paying to build its own nukes. So here's the stock market menu of these new nuclear options.

10:29Matt Damon: Okay, first, you got the conventional nucliers, of which there's only one company. Westinghouse. The rest of the industry went out of business after Three Mile Island, when we had a nuclear drought in this country.

10:40Chris Nolan: And Westinghouse, they're owned 51 % by Brookfield Asset Management and 49 % by Cameco. And you can invest in both of those in the stock market.

10:47Matt Damon: Then there's modular nuclear, which is the booming sector. You got NuScale, Oclo, X Energy, all those companies went public in the last four years. The goal with Modular is to make power plants 10 times faster, but at one-tenth of the cost.

11:00Chris Nolan: And the final item on our menu, it is Fusion Nuclear.

11:04Matt Damon: General Fusion just became the first fusion company to go public with a SPAC earlier this month.

11:09Chris Nolan: Although the joke, Jack, fusion is the energy of the future, and it always will be. Yeah, who knows if we'll ever have a fusion power plant. But besties with climate change and AI, nuclear is back, baby.

11:19Matt Damon: and it's safer than ever. This time, the nuclear stock market has a whole menu to pick from.

11:24Chris Nolan: We'll take three fissions and two modulars, hold the fries, extra Coke. For our second story, the top reason people are seeing The Odyssey, it's not the stars, it's the director. Because filmmakers are the new franchises.

11:40Matt Damon: And that demand for directors, it's connected to sports and restaurants. Oh, Yetis, like we told you,

11:47Chris Nolan: Jack and I have been growing out beards because we just returned from the Odyssey. It was such a long journey. It was truly epic. I mean, well, we had to take two bathroom breaks in the middle of the movie. Or was that just me? That was just you. Yeah, I wasn't leaving. Either way, Zeus's law, if you know, you know. One week ago, besties, we covered the business of the Odyssey.

12:04Matt Damon: And the big winner was IMAX because IMAX did 20 % of the Odyssey's opening weekend gross despite being just 1 % of all the movie theaters.

12:13Chris Nolan: But Jack, who's the new second winner of the Odyssey?

12:16Matt Damon: The book. Yeah. Sales of the epic poem are up 76 % since the movie came out.

12:20Chris Nolan: Even Homer is getting a check. And the newest new winner of the Odyssey? It's Universal Studios. Totally. They spent 250 mil to make the movie, and they're on track to make a billion bucks at the box office. But one stat stood out to us,

12:32Matt Damon: more than those sirens singing on that scary rock over there that I know I'm not supposed to look at and listen to. Stop listening.

12:37Chris Nolan: Stop listening.

12:37Matt Damon: The top reason that 53 % of Odyssey viewers cited for going into the theater and watching?

12:42Chris Nolan: It wasn't Agamemnon's helmet, it wasn't Matt Damon's beard, and it wasn't Tom Holland's non-bear. The number one draw of The Odyssey was the director, Christopher Nolan. Besties, this is what Jack and I find fascinating about this movie. In the 2000s and 20-teens, the film industry was dominated by the franchise. Sequels, prequels, spinoffs, offshoots. You got three Lord of the Rings, three Hobbits, five Toy Stories, eight Harry Potters, and 35 Marvel superhero movies.

13:07Matt Damon: Plus enough Star Wars direct-to-Disney-plus spinoffs

13:09Chris Nolan: to fill the galaxy. Fast and the Furious, what are we doing? 47 now? What's going on, Ben? But Nick, to quote Spider-Man 16, with great power comes great responsibility.

13:18Matt Damon: And the studios have that power. They don't have the responsibility though. So franchise fatigue has set in, which has ushered in a new era, the dawn of the director.

13:26Chris Nolan: Yeah, we're calling it the dawn of the director because the directors who also write their screenplays are the new franchises.

13:32Matt Damon: The filmmaker is the franchise. Oh, you want the receipts? Here's the data. Matt Damon got paid$15 million to be the lead star in The Odyssey. But director Christopher Nolan got paid$20 million. Obsession, the breakout horror film that got Gen Z's butts back in the movie theater. They didn't come for the no-name actors in the movie. They came for the YouTube-trained director, Curry Barker. And Sinners, that epic vampire movie that Ryan Coogler directed. He got the craziest deal in recent Hollywood history to do it.

14:00Chris Nolan: That director got the final creative cut, a percent of every ticket sale, and he gets to own the film after 25 years.

14:07Matt Damon: We're not done. Greta Gerwig of Barbie fame, she said she'd do Chronicles of Narnia for Netflix, but only if Netflix agreed to put it in theaters. And they caved because they want the director to be happy. And finally, Universal Studios, they gave Christopher Nolan near total autonomy in exchange for leaving Warner Brothers.

14:24Chris Nolan: Chris, you want to build a real 35-foot-tall Trojan horse instead of using computer graphics? Whatever you want, Chris. Whatever keeps you happy. Here's a blank check. Zeus is lost. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies? I don't think that's Zeus's loss. I think we may have been on one of your bathroom breaks when they were saying Zeus is law. Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in Hollywood? People follow pulses. Yetis, 20 years ago, an interesting trend emerged in the restaurant industry, the celebrity chef.

14:55Matt Damon: Bobby Flay, Dave Chang, Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa. Oh wait, those last two are the same. We started following celebrity chefs, not famous restaurant brands.

15:06Chris Nolan: 10 years ago, we saw the same trend emerge in sports, the rise of the star over the team. My son, Wilder, he loves Messi.

15:13Matt Damon: He doesn't care that he even plays on Inter Miami. Kids aren't fans of teams anymore if they're fans of the players. And now we're seeing the same trend in the movie industry. Filmmakers over franchises.

15:22Chris Nolan: More than the franchisor, the actors, it's the director who's the star.

15:26Matt Damon: Like I said, six of the last 10 movies I saw in theaters, they were Christopher Nolan.

15:31Chris Nolan: And we saw those together, Jack. Well, social media helps here. You know, for the first time, it broke the kitchen wall and the locker room wall.

15:36Matt Damon: And the wall of the trailer that the director gets to sit in on that Hollywood lot. Did you know Christopher Nolan actually loves Fast and the Furious?

15:42Chris Nolan: He's an artist, and Vin Diesel is an artist, Jack. It just makes me want to see the next one even more. Besties, you're choosing the chef over the restaurant, the player over the team, and the director over the franchise. The director is the franchise. Because people follow pulses. Now, a quick word from our sponsor. NetSuite. Yeah, it is. NetSuite is the corporate control panel for business. This has been since 1998. They probably use this on Star Wars.

16:12Matt Damon: This pre.com software suite, though, it remains the market leader. But Nick, what is next?

16:18Chris Nolan: I got no idea, Jack. You tell me what's next.

16:20Matt Damon: 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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16:56Matt Damon: If we needed this product at the best one yet, this is the one we'd use. So 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 slash tboi.

17:07Chris Nolan: Build for every industry, ready for every boardroom, netsuite.ai slash tboy.

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17:47Chris Nolan: For our third and final story, Nisen Foods invented hot instant ramen, but they just invented cold instant ramen. Because seasonality is just an excuse. Just a mindset, bruh. But besties, in order for us to tell the story, let's travel back to post-World War II Japan, devastated by Allied bombings.

18:10Matt Damon: The people in Japan needed food both for their belly and for their soul. And Jack, what ended up being the answer? Instant ramen noodles.

18:16Chris Nolan: And Momofuku Ando

18:18Matt Damon: was its creator. After 10 years of tinkering in his shed, he invented the flash-frying technique that makes ramen noodles cookable in just three minutes with hot water. Basically, this dude was the Edison of Eden. Instant hot ramen was the food and beverage industry's man on the moon moment. Ah, the instant ramen. That convenience breakthrough, it led to 100 billion bowls served every single year today. We repeat, 100 billion servings of instant ramen noodles are had every year. That's enough to fill every human tummy on earth 12 times a year. It was the first thing I learned to cook. I'm home from school.

18:52Matt Damon: Nobody's there. I cook chicken top ramen.

18:55Chris Nolan: 10 pack, one buck. And that price is why it's the unofficial food of every startup ever. Forget venture capital. Instant ramen fuels Silicon Valley. Which is why we did a whole episode on it for the best idea yet. This went viral. And the company that created it, Nisen Foods, still exists. Publicly traded, based in Osaka, Japan, worth 5 billion bucks. It's about one lift. But here's the news. They just had their second noodle epiphany. Get this, instant cold ramen.

19:21Matt Damon: That's right, cup of noodles cooked cold. No boiling water needed. No ice cube after cooking to cool it down. Just chilled ramen noodles.

19:32Chris Nolan: Besties like frozen hot chocolate or jumbo shrimp. This is a paradox of a profit puppy.

19:36Matt Damon: Now, what Nick and I find fascinating is that to develop cold noodles, Neeson Foods launched a secret project five years ago. And the fascinating part is that it was perfect timing for reasons totally out of their control. In those five years that they've been working on this, Japan suffered record numbers of heat strokes.

19:53Chris Nolan: Jack, can you share that wild stat you just found about Japan's meteorological agency? They had to create a new word this week to describe days in Japan

20:01Matt Damon: where the temperature is over 104 degrees.

20:03Chris Nolan: The translation of the new word, kokushobi? A cruelly hot day. Besties, it's so record-setting hot in Japan that the top app there right now just shows you where to find shade.

20:13Matt Damon: So, Neeson Foods just patented the cold rehydrate method, where you just pour cold water into a cup of top ramen, and those noodles are al dente in five minutes. And they're charging 15 % more for those cold noodles that quench your hot and angry summer. Neeson is only selling this in Japan right now, but we expect it'll scale to the rest of the world over time.

20:31Chris Nolan: Current flavors, Jack, what are we seeing out there?

20:33Matt Damon: Spicy kimchi and chicken salt lemon. When the broth is cold, you don't want beef broth. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over a cup of noodles? Seasonality only exists in the mind of the inept.

20:45Chris Nolan: It's a seasonal business. Yetis, that is an easy excuse to explain away why your sales have been dropping for a half of the year.

20:52Matt Damon: But Nick and I have covered countless stories on this pod of entrepreneurs who found a way to innovate away seasonality. Jack, coffee, that sells best in cold weather, right? No, actually. That's what they used to think. But today, ice drinks make a majority of Starbucks' sales. Oh, and last year, we covered Aperol, The bright orange aperitivo made famous for the summer. But now Aperol is marketing to ski resorts in the winter as an Apre drink for ski bunnies.

21:18Chris Nolan: Basties sometimes defying seasonality requires technology change like Nissen's cold ramen patterns.

21:24Matt Damon: Other times it requires just a marketing change, like with Aperol's Apre ski sprints.

21:28Chris Nolan: But either way, seasonality is just a mindset. It only exists in the mind of the inept. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for the new Friday?

21:40Matt Damon: Saudi Arabia is joining the Nuclear Club of Nations with Westinghouse due to build that reactor Nuclear's back, baby, with a whole new menu of investment opportunities For our second story, The Odyssey is going to hit a billion dollars at the box office because of the director, Christopher Nolan The filmmakers are the franchises because people follow pulses And our third and final story is Neeson Foods They just developed instant cold ramen It's cold

22:03Chris Nolan: which will sell well during Japan's heat waves. It defies seasonality, which only exists in the minds of the inept. But besties, this pod's not over yet.

22:12Matt Damon: Here's what else you need to know today.

22:14Chris Nolan: First, two companies worth$5 trillion announced earnings after hours. You got Tesla, you got Google.

22:20Matt Damon: Tesla stock fell 5 % on disappointing earnings in a delayed cyber cap timeline.

22:24Chris Nolan: While Google announced$99 billion in profit just in the gains on their Anthropik and SpaceX shares.

22:31Matt Damon: Happy earnings season. We'll dive into both and potentially cover them on tomorrow's pod.

22:35Chris Nolan: And second, Jack, what would happen if Chipotle and Peloton launched a new restaurant? They kind of are, Nick. Yeah, because the founder of Chipotle and the founder of Peloton are no longer with either of those companies.

22:46Matt Damon: But they just co-founded a new restaurant concept called Counter Service.

22:50Chris Nolan: Yeah, a fast casual sandwich chain. New chain, it's selling only five sandwich options. First location, New York City.

22:55Matt Damon: And finally, Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, but current CEO of Block just launched something completely unrelated to both. It's called Buzz. It's insane.

23:06Chris Nolan: It's like Slack for your office, but it's for humans and robots to work together.

23:11Matt Damon: It's something nobody asked for. And it's technically part of Block, the fintech company. And finally, it's just proof that Jack Dorsey can't focus.

23:18Chris Nolan: I mean, he like runs a dozen companies and eats one meal a day.

23:21Matt Damon: You know, he bought, um, what's it called? That's music streaming company.

23:25Chris Nolan: Yeah. Well, I bet they would be doing even better if he ate a pancake. Tidal is part of a fintech company. The only thing I'm worried about is do the robots have emojis? Because if they drop emojis, that's like half of what we humans do. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Juliana, but we can't say her hometown because that would reveal the answer.

23:42Matt Damon: One year ago, we covered the rise of Mahjong, the 200-year-old Chinese tile game that's going viral today. Nantucket, apparently a huge Mahjong island. We've seen it everywhere. They have Nantucket Mahjong merch. You got moms playing Mahjong in the streets, Jack. But what is the most popular Mahjong city in America? It's not Nantucket.

23:59Chris Nolan: And it's not a Brooklyn loft, and it's not a Chinatown hangout down in lovely Los Angeles. It's Lafayette, Louisiana. That's right. The highest density and growth of Mahjong players in America? It's in Lafayette, Louisiana.

24:11Matt Damon: Mahjong is big in the American South. Raleigh, North Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, Lexington, Kentucky, all Mahjong hotspots. Top four cities with the highest concentration

24:19Chris Nolan: of Mahjong players in America, all in the South.

24:23Matt Damon: If you know why, leave a comment, because I'm really curious as to why. Chicago does logistics. Memphis does mahjong.

24:32Chris Nolan: Yetis, you look fantastic today. Jack, you are glowing. And besties, if you've got a buddy who has burned their tongue on hot instant ramen. What do they got to do, Jack? Drop a link to this episode in the group chat.

24:44Matt Damon: Yeah. So they know cold instant ramen exists.

24:47Chris Nolan: We've all like, hot, hot, hot.

24:50Matt Damon: Well, it's funny. At Momofuku, the restaurant in the East Village, I used to get their chilled noodles and they were spicy. So they were hot in a different way. Oh, so they were hot and cold, but not hot, hot.

25:00Chris Nolan: Right. Spicy hot. Right. Drop a link to today's episode in your group chat. That's how you grow the show. If you know, you know. And Jack and I will see you manana.

25:13Chris Nolan: And before we go, a happy birthday to Chris Costello, the OG market snacker from Glasgow, Scotland. He and his wife, Becca, are going to Nantucket for vacay. I hope it crossed paths. And Harrison McCary, happy 30th birthday, living the new way van life down in sunny San Diego. Happy 23rd birthday to Nick Telma over in Chicago. And the Mad Dog of Ithaca, New York,

25:32Matt Damon: celebrating the birthday at a black-owned business. Happy 52nd birthday to Masood Makar in Plano, Texas.

25:38Chris Nolan: And Sai Pavan, we see your birthday celebrating in Pennsylvania.

25:41Matt Damon: And happy 11th birthday to Steve Hamilton of Yankee Distillers in New York.

25:45Chris Nolan: And Colin and Ashley Baker, congrats on the two-year anniversary over in Chicago doing logistics.

25:50Matt Damon: Happy 15th wedding anniversary to Sean and Brie Thompson in Bozeman, Montana, celebrating by relaxing and listening to the best one yet.

25:57Chris Nolan: And a shout out to Ryan from Nantucket originally. We saw him on the way to seeing The Odyssey last night. Thanks for saying hi. Hope you enjoyed the epic ship.

26:04Matt Damon: And remember we did a story on women acquiring companies. We mentioned Annika John buying a printing business from a story that we read in Fast Company.

26:11Chris Nolan: Well, it turns out Annika is a Yeti. Wait a second.

26:14Matt Damon: She heard us talking about her on the pod. So she was listening to the show and unbeknownst to her, we covered a story about her.

26:21Chris Nolan: Hey, Nick, what a cool story on women just buying up companies.

26:24Matt Damon: Congratulations on what you've done. And finally, Matt Pollan and Joseph Mendoza of Chicago, they created a T-Boy takeaway library. We've got to like open source this. This is a national resource.

26:39Matt Damon: This is Jack. I own stock of Netflix and Lyft. Nick and I both own stock of Chipotle and Peloton and Nick own stock in Block.

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