💄 “The Carrie Bradshaw Index” — Where to Live Solo. Amazon’s Prime Day retirement. Pizza by the Slice. +Jack’s Nvidia Poem.

0:00This is Nick. This is Jack. It's Friday, the real Friday, October 10th and today's pod is the best one yet. And this is a T-boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. Oh, you know what's tonight? You know what's tonight, Jack? What? It's the datchelor party. Jack, it's the datchelor party. Here we go. So, yeah, Nick has a datchelor party tradition, which is wonderful. It's right before the baby's born. The dad gets to go out with his buddies right before a new baby comes into the house and loads responsibility onto his plate. Oh, we're having a wild steak dinner at Catonia until 10 p.m., Jack.

0:37Jack, and then I got to be right home. Now, to be clear, Nick had to delay his dadchler party because he got sick right before the baby got born, remember? But Jack, you know what they say? The dadchler party must go on. So it's happening tonight. I'll give you the update on Monday. Can't wait, can't wait. But Jack, three stories for today's show. What do we got on the pod? For our first story, Amazon Prime Day came and went this week. Did you even notice it? Because if you did, the deals you got were hot air, according to a new class action lawsuit. Which is why Amazon needs to pull a Michael Jordan on Prime Day.

1:07Yeah. And retire this thing. It's time, guys. You're at the top of your game. For our second story, it's the best economic model in the restaurant industry right now. Pizza by the slice. Fancy restaurants are opening pizza slice shops nationwide because there is dough in the dough. And a third and final story. There's a new financial metric we want to talk about. The Carrie Bradshaw Index. What's the cost of living solo like the gals and sex in the city? Well, Jack and I will break it down for you. City by city. But yetis, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. Fantastic mix to go into the weekend with.

1:42Honestly, best mix we've ever done, Jack. Last week, we celebrated the start of the fiscal fourth quarter. And we did it T-boy style by reciting a publicly traded poem. Yeah, I wrote an ode to Ford and I was very proud of it. But I still owe my publicly traded poem and I'm finally ready to reveal it. Yeah. It's called NVIDIA, I'm Not Kidding Ya. You had me at the title, but go on. NVIDIA, I'm not kidding you. You power our economy's heart. Your GPUs are our IOUs. Jensen said it from the start. From video games to Hall of Fames, the rise came prompt by prompt. Your artificial is judicial. Those trillions, oh, they've chomped.

2:23Analyst beats, government sheets, Jim Cramer named his dog after you. Google, Microsoft, Altman Zuck, they would give their dog to you. So please, oh please keep selling chips, because it powers our economy's heart. Your calculus is our stimulus. Now put it in the cart. Jensen, oh Jensen, your leather jacket slaps. If this is not a bubble, all you'll get from us is claps. Oh my God. Oh my God. Bobby Frost over here with the Iambic Pentameter. Not too shabby, Jack. Besties, thank you for enjoying the publicly traded poetry. We'll whip up some more for Q1 of next year. But in the meantime, Jack, what do you say we hear our three stories?

3:10Let's do it.

3:22I 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.

3:36Start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor.

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5:18For our first story, Amazon Prime Day. It came and went this week. Did you even notice, Yetis? If you did notice, you saw fake deals, fakeflation, and a real lawsuit. True story. That's why we think it's time to retire Amazon Prime Day. Like a young Michael Jordan. Well, a pre-Washington Wizards. A prime. Yeah. A prime Michael Jordan. Now, besties, it's Amazon Prime Day. Again, I'm sorry, Prime Day-z, plural. Or is it Amazon Prime Week? What are we going with on this one? What just happened this week was actually called Prime Big Deal Days. And it happened on October 7th and 8th this year. Oh, also, Amazon already did a Prime Day back in July.

5:59Basically, if Mercury's in retrograde, Amazon's doing a Prime Day. And in July, it was actually called Prime Day, but it was four days. It's all very confusing. And shocker, Amazon's probably going to announce record sales for this Prime Big Deals Day. but that's probably just driven by inflation, not by sales volumes. And don't forget, Walmart, Target, and Best Buy, whatever Amazon does, they do too. They just zuck their Prime Days with their own version. But besties, if you did happen to buy a cute top or a thing you won't use on Amazon Prime Day, lured in by that 33 % off deal, Jack and I, we got some rough news for you.

6:36Because Prime Day is full of fake sales. Real thing. Or fakeflation, as we referred to it back in July. And Amazon, you can't sue us for that because all of this is according to a new class action lawsuit filed last month in Washington state. Here's the issue. We mentioned in our July coverage of Prime Day that the higher price you see on Amazon that's crossed out, it was never the real price. It was a fake price. Let's jump in T-boy style. For example, the Dyson V11 cordless vacuum, advertised on Prime Day this year as 37 % off a$630 original price. But Nick, the internet doesn't forget. No, it doesn't.

7:18The website Camel Camel Camel tracks the price history of everything sold on Amazon, including that Dyson V11 cordless vacuum. And I'm sorry, Jack, but that vacuum apparently has never been priced$630 until this September, a month ago. So here's what Dyson did. They jacked up the price, but only right before Prime Day, so that technically on Prime Day, they did drop the price by 37%. It's a fake deal. In fact, the Washington Post found out that the deals on Prime Day can actually be the opposite of deals. The lower price that you see, it's actually higher than it's traditionally sold on regular days.

7:55But Amazon and Dyson know that you only peruse for vacuums on Prime Day. So they actually increased the prices on Prime Day, but advertise the discount by using a fake reference point. Yetis, today, the T-Boy podcast is a bajillion percent off the million dollar normal price that we charge you for a download. And it all up, besties, and it appears prices on Amazon are getting manipulated more than pics of that jack dude with a puppy and his mom on a dating app. It's fake-flation, when the higher price on the price tag was never the actual price at all. So, Jagga, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Amazon Prime?

8:34Amazon should retire Prime Day and quit while they're still on top. Let's pause for a sec, though, Jack. Why did Amazon invent Prime Day in the first place? To drive signups of Amazon Prime. Mission accomplished. Capital One reported recently that in America, there are 180 million Prime users. That's nearly every American household. So it's done. Plus, Prime Day is not even differentiated anymore. Every big box store copies it, and it's just a margin destroyer. Now look, Yetis, it's not Amazon who deceived us with the fake discount on that vacuum. It was Dyson who did that. But it hurts Amazon's cred, and the existence of Prime Day is why Dyson did it in the first place.

9:14So Amazon, quit while you're kind of ish on top. Yeah. It's time to kill Prime Day. Retire like Jordan when he turned 30, basically. Retire like Jordan after he made that incredible shot against the Utah Jazz. Put out a press release with the quadrillions of dollars saved and just say, mission accomplished, off to retirement. For our second story, amid a struggling restaurant industry, one format is shining profitably, and that format is premium pizza by the slice. Fancy, award-winning chefs are launching pizza joints because of unit economics. Oh, yeah, it is. There is no food that economists love more than pizza.

9:57Not because of the taste, by the way. It's actually just because of the numbers, right, Jack? Well, at every university, you can always find free pizza somewhere. That's a fair point. Some department has a talk and there's free pizza you can go find. And on this pod, we have talked to you about pizza trends like delivery pizza, how it's tariff-proof. And frozen pizza, which is recession-proof. Also, we've covered the pizza paradox on this podcast as well. During the pandemic, pizza sales surged. Post-pandemic, pizza pulled back. Now, Jack, it's been a while since I've been in an economics 101 classroom, but I'm pretty sure economists love a pie chart or two.

10:31Which is shaped like a pizza. Besties, here's the news. One famous chef just told the Wall Street Journal that the economics of traditional restaurants simply don't work anymore. And that was the founder of the meatball shop in New York City who said that. But here's what Jack and I find fascinating. The savior for the restaurant industry in this age of inflation is actually pizza. Slices of pizza, to be precise. You see, Yetis, the new food trend in cities is famous restaurants opening pizza shops as a side hustle. In New York, the Michelin star chef Wiley Dufresne is famous for$400, I'm sorry, am I reading this right?

11:11Foam-covered prefix meals? Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, Jack. Foam-covered. You pay extra to eat less at his restaurants. but his newest restaurant concept, Jack, is called Stretch Pizza. And what is that? It's three different 10 foot by 10 foot holes in the wall across the city that just sell pizza by the slice. Also down the street in San Francisco, Flower and Water, a restaurant famous for serving$300 bottles of imported Italian wine. What's their newest restaurant concept, Jack? A pizza chain that serves late night slices with arcade games that you can play there. Jack, I did my birthday party there this year, and it was hilariously also like the cheapest birthday I've ever done.

11:50Fine dining chefs are launching slice shops like they're little kids, like Kevin McAllister saying, extra cheese, please. More cheese, please. But besties, Jack and I should point out the key here. We ain't talking$1 slices from St. Mark's Pizza that you vomit up at 2 a.m., are we, man? We're talking premium slices of pie, selling for five bucks a slice. Let's look at the menu at Prime Pizza over in Los Angeles. Their sausage kale pizza is made with fermented dough and a special super secret grandma sauce for five bucks a slice. At Stretch Pizza in New York, it's six bucks a slice for an everything bagel piece of pizza.

12:28So besties add it all up and believe it or not, those pizzas by the slice can be more profitable than the award-winning restaurant that they were born out of. Because of inflation and because of our takeaway. Yeah, there's dough in the dough. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at the premium slice of pizza? Pizza by the slice is the rare consumer and business win-win. Now, yeah, here's the deal. The restaurant industry, it is super low margin, but premium pizza slice shops can be a profit puppy. Fewer workers, smaller kitchens, and just a handful of simple ingredients, yep, it's lower costs.

13:03So from the supply side, a slice shop, yeah, they can produce a more profitable product than a restaurant can. But on the demand side, people are preferring pizza by the slice, especially in this economy. I mean, Jack, let's look at lunch. Let's say you get two slices of that$5 premium pizza slice. Boom. The consumer gets a$10 lunch, which is less than like a sandwich or a salad at most places. Or what if the pizza place sells eight slices for$5 each? That's 40 bucks for one pizza. That's more than you'd probably sell a full pizza compared to the slices. So the premium pizza, it's combining three economic forces.

13:39First, the cost savings of a small pizza shop. Second, the value of a two-slice lunch or dinner. And third, the revenue of eight slices being bigger than the revenue of one pizza. Primo Pizza by the Slice. It's the rare consumer business win-win. Now, a quick word from our sponsor. Walmart Business. Yetis, we cover business trends on our show, and they move faster than you can spell GPU. One minute it's vibe coding, the next it's agentic. Tomorrow it's probably gonna be in-person old school again. Yeah, well, while you're managing this to stay ahead, the last thing you need to worry about is supplies for your company.

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14:52It's Walmart built for your business. Sign up for a free Walmart Business account today at business.walmart.com. Bureau Premium Non-Alcoholic Beer. All right, Yeti, it's a little behind the scenes here. Before our New York City live show back in April, Jack and I went sober for two weeks. True story. Couldn't risk getting sick. I didn't want to be groggy. I couldn't afford a hangover. It was New York, baby. Okay, but Jack, celebrating the wins is what we do. And so for our live shows, we crack open something special. So we drank Bureau, the premium non-alcoholic beer brand co-founded by Tom Holland.

15:26Yeah, I actually first saw it at my grocery store, delicious taste like a celebration, feels fantastic, and looks legit. More on the looks in a sec. And if it's good enough for the actor who played Spider-Man, it's good enough for us. You see, it pairs well with a pickleball game, a profitable earnings report, or with the best podcast. So, Yetis, if you want to celebrate the wins with all the taste of a premium lager or IPA, but none of the alcohol, there's no better choice than Bureau. Okay, pause the pod. Did we mention the can is straight up gold? This thing will stand out at every one of your next parties.

15:57Trust us, we've done it. Only beer we know that actually upgrades the scene like a promotion. So, Basties, if there's a win you're celebrating every day, Bureau is the non-alcoholic brew brand you gotta bring. So, use code T-Boy for 20 % off your first order at BureauBrewing.com. For our third and final story before the weekend, we're looking at the newest financial measurement out there, and it's called the Cary Bradshaw Index. City by city, the Cary Bradshaw Index tells you if your income is high enough to live solo and still live your best life. Now, Yetis, come on a journey with us. You're strolling down Bleecker Street in the West Village, and one block past Magnolia Cupcakes, you're going to hang a right, and you're going to see the coolest apartment we'd ever seen in the city.

16:44We only saw it on TV, though. It was for Carrie Bradshaw's apartment from Sex and the City. Someone else lives in that townhouse now, but everyone is still on the stoop taking pics. And The Economist magazine agrees, because they've turned that Sex and the City character's apartment into an economic term. It's called the Carrie Bradshaw Index. Now, Basties, Jack, and I should point out as the Economist subscribers, their magazine is famous for doing this kind of a thing, right? Like they invented the Big Mac Index too. The Big Mac Index, taught in every economics department, shows you the purchasing power across the world with the local currency pegged to a universal item like a Big Mac.

17:21The Big Mac hamburger. So this Cary Bradshaw index, well, it measures the price of apartments in top cities based on wages and rents in those cities. It compares the mean income in a city with the mean rent of a studio apartment in that city. Where Cary first conquered Mr. Big, if I'm correct, which I'm actually not 100 % certain on, Jack. Let's get back to the Cary Bradshaw index from The Economist. Please, Jack, what was the result in the Cary Bradshaw index? It looked at the top 100 U.S. metro areas, and 41 of them are considered unaffordable, up from 38 of them last year. Cancel my Jimmy Choo order!

17:58Yeti's Wichita, Kansas is the most affordable of America's top 100 metro areas. True, you only need to make$35 ,000 a year in order to afford a studio apartment there. The least affordable city is New York. Now, that was not shocking, but what is shocking is the amount of money you do need to make to live solo in New York City. You need an income of$151 ,000 a year to live in a studio apartment alone in New York City. Now, full disclosure, besties, I have never lived alone in New York. Jack's never lived alone in New York. We've done the whole bunk beds. I actually have never lived alone in my whole life.

18:35I've lived to you for like half your life. I had four years of bunk bedding with Tuck, four years of bunk bedding with my brother, Teddy, after that, then two years of bunk bedding with you, and then more roommates through college and then roommates after college and then my girlfriend who became wife. But I think like half of it was with me, Jack. You see, having the roommates, it spreads out the fun and it spreads out the cost. Yeah, finding roommates is a rite of passage for young people in all the desirable cities. But in New York City, the median wage is$60 ,000. So you would need to make two and a half times more than that to afford living alone.

19:09Let me say that again. You need to make two and a half times more than the median wage in New York to afford to live alone. Oh, and that doesn't even include the late night cosmos with Miranda over at Baltazar, Jack. And if you zoom out from New York City, 41 top cities in America have unaffordable rent on average, according to the Carrie Bradshaw Index. Which leads us to two conclusions. The first of which is that either rents have to fall or wages have to rise. Or second, the definition of what is affordable is outdated. Well put, Jack. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies living solo in the city.

19:44Pour out one for the single people because it's simply unaffordable to live alone, period. Now, Yetis, on this show, we've talked to you about dinks and dinkwads and dinkwadasses and the high cost of being a parent as well. But what about the single ladies and the single guys? This story shines a light on their economic plight too. You see, the truth is that living single in the city requires way more than 30 % of your income. The 30 % number that financial advisors have used, it's simply outdated with today's painfully expensive real estate realities. A more realistic number today is 50 % of your income, which stinks.

20:18Which also reminds us of that old adage in Baseball Jack, like, if you could pitch 95 miles per hour, that was fast. But now, every team has like five random pitchers who can throw 98. It's like statistical inflation. So Basties, the 30 % affordable housing ratio, it might make sense for couples with combined incomes. But it's the wrong percentage if we're talking about the realities for single people. Yet he's poor one out for the single people because it's simply unaffordable to live alone in the city, period. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for the real Friday? Amazon Prime Day.

20:54I mean, Prime Days. I mean, Prime Big Deals Day. It was full of fake deals and fake-flection, according to a class action lawsuit. Amazon, you got to retire Prime Day. Quit while you're still on top. Retire like a young Michael Jordan. For our second story, high-end restaurants are opening pizza slice shops that are actually more profitable than the restaurants. Premium pizza by The Slice. It is the rare consumer business win-win. And our third and final story. It's the Carrie Bradshaw Index. It shows that for 41 cities in America, you cannot affordably live like a gal from the sex in the city.

21:31So pour one out for the single people. it's simply unaffordable to live alone in American cities. But besties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, Ferrari just had its worst day on the stock market ever. Fast and furiously, the stock dropped 16 % yesterday. The reason? Electric Ferraris. The CEO announced that they expect to sell less than half as many as they expected before. Because apparently here's the problem. If you buy a Ferrari for the engine, what if you don't get the roar of the engine with the EV, right? Like that's the issue here, I think, right?

22:05I mean, I think it was a stretch to think that anyone would pay 300 grand for an electric Ferrari. Hey, Ferrari, we got an idea. Launch a$6 ,000 baby stroller instead. And second, Lay's Potato Chips just got a rebrand to embrace their real potato era. Were you made with fake potatoes before? Yeah, it's one of those announcements where we would like to jump in T-boy style and find out about the old potatoes, please. It's one of those announcements that didn't clarify. Confused. And finally, according to a new study, you are most likely to listen to podcasts at lunch. Edison Research surveyed Americans over the age of 13, and 29 % of American podcast listening happened between 10 a.m.

22:44and 2 p.m. their local time, which is a higher percentage than who's who listen in the morning, which is 24 % of people. So odds are, you're listening to this pod at lunchtime, a$5 slice of fancy pizza. If time for the best fact yet. This one is an audio fact sent in by legendary Yeti, David Pitluck. Nick and Jack, Dave Pitluck from Baltimore here to follow up your story about the last call for EVs. You guys said there's like just as many chargers as gas stations. Sounds like a guess to me. Let's follow that up with the best fact yet. According to the California Energy Commission, last month, they announced that there are now 68 % more charging connectors than gas pump nozzles in California.

23:29That's a little over 200 ,000 plugs in total, plus an estimated 800 ,000 installed in single-family homes. 800 ,000? I mean, Jack, you could basically in San Francisco pull up to a blue bottle of coffee and charge your car if you wanted to. There are sources of anxiety living in California. Range anxiety is not one of them. Yetis, you look fantastic all week. And if you want to know the best way to help T-Boy, it's to help grow the show and tell a buddy, H-Y-H-T-B-O-Y. It stands for NVIDIA. I'm not kidding you. The poem of the century. All right, Jack, I'm going to get showered up for this datchelor party.

24:05Do you think you get presents at a datchelor party? Do you receive presents? No, I think the presents and fun from your buddies. Lame. Okay, well, I'm expecting presents. In the meantime, besties, you did look fantastic. Celebrate the wins, and Jack and I will see you Monday.

24:22And before we go, a shout out to legendary Yeti's Josh Sui. and Callie Mora in Millville, New Jersey, who are listening to this T-boy on the way to the best wedding yet, their wedding. And happy birthday to Sidney Jones, who's turning 29 in Philadelphia, PA. And Cody Rose has got a birthday and just had a baby, lovely Elena, born in fantastic Germany. And happy 10th birthday to Ahmad Al-Ishmael, who's turning 10 in Katy, Texas, with his cat Oreo. And to the puppy, Cristiano Nasreddin, is aka the chicken in Savannah, Georgia, celebrating the birthday. Happy 26th birthday to Alyssa Reza in West Hills, California.

25:02And Caleb in Fayetteville, Arkansas has got the best birthday yet. And happy 24th birthday to Kate Casey, just outside Boston. They're starting a new adventure cross country. And Jack, I'm hungry for Tamano Yamanaka's cooking. Traditional Japanese food, she's serving it at her first farmer's market in Dallas, Texas. Happy first anniversary to Dan and Nuvia Kepley in Dayton, Ohio. And Alexandra and Ronald Rosales in New Jersey are celebrating their 10th anniversary and the best birthday yet. And Sydney Brown, congratulations for getting on the Kent State Homecoming Court. And Michael and Caitlin Brown in Fredericksburg, Virginia, have got their fifth and fantasticest anniversary.

25:49Walmart business. Yeah, it is. We cover business trends on our show and they move faster than you can spell GPU. One minute it's vibe coding, the next it's agentic. Tomorrow it's probably going to be in-person old school again. Yeah, well, while you're managing this to stay ahead, the last thing you need to worry about is supplies for your company. Carol, do we have the cogs needed to meet our Q1 sales commitments? It's Carol outsource that mental load instead to Walmart business. Walmart business lets you buy the bulk supplies your business needs. AI tools are there for your digital work. Walmart business is there for your physical work.

26:21Like restock your office inventory with low prices, reliable shipping, and fulfillment. Walmart business helps simplify your operations so you can focus on building and selling your product. You see Carol in accounting? She'll be relieved that Walmart business is all over it. Eligible organizations can take advantage of tax-free shopping, both in-store and online with Walmart Business, saving you more while getting you everything you need. It's Walmart built for your business. Sign up for a free Walmart business account today at business.walmart.com.