The Best One Yet - ⚡ “Buzz Lightyear deserves a raise” — Disney’s junior varsity. Vitro’s lab leather. Airbnb’s Emily-In-Paris.

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

Everyone’s talking about Disney’s Varsity-level blockbusters — But they announced they’re working on 500 junior varsity flicks (cue the Buzz Lightyear schmovies). Vitro just raised $46M to grow your leather handbag in a lab. And Airbnb’s redesign is the biggest development in travel: Not Emily-In-Paris, Anywhere-But-Paris.$DIS $ABNBFollow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok: @tboypodAnd now watch us on YoutubeWant a Shoutout on the pod? Fill out this formGot the Best Fact Yet? We got a form for that tooLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. It's Friday, the Real Friday, May 13th. And today's pod is the best one yet. Today's pod, it's also the last day of voting for our podcast audience nickname. Hey, Wolf Blitzer, can you whip up the results for us over on YouTube? And there's also one more write-in candidate. There is.

Yes-Dies. For those who can't decide. It's coming from the 18th District of Instagram. We saw the comments on this thing. Yes-Dies. Not Bettys. Not Yetis. No. Yes-Dies.

But Jack, what's our first story? Disney just announced X million new subscribers to Disney Plus. Now, Jack and I aren't talking about that. What we're talking about is there 500 Disney Shmovies. For our second story, there's leather, there's pleather. And now there's leather, as in lab-grown leather. Yeah, that's what Vitro is working. And for our third and final story, we're looking at Airbnb.

They're bringing back the travel agent. Yeah, not Debbie, that lovely lady in town who booked your parents honeymoon 30 years ago. No, Airbnb's travel agent. is the I'm flexible button on their app. I'm flexible new thing. But before we hit that wonderful mix. Perfect mix to end the week on, Jack. I love this mix.

This weekend, we recommend you catch up on some sleep. Jack, you're going to pop a melatonin or you're going to hide your alarm or both. Forget brunch. Wake me up for lunch or lupor. Good morning, 1126 a.m. Well, according to new research, the direction you sleep

can determine the fate and the quality of your sleep. Yeah. Now, Jack and I aren't talking about right to left. We're not talking about lying on your stomach or lying on your back.

We're talking about lion north or lion south. Yeah, research shows that animals typically rest with their bodies facing north south. Fascinating. It's like a crop circle.

Yeah. Those llamas want to align with the north-south magnetic field. Well, it's not just animals. Recent studies show that sleeping north-south also helps humans

sleep better. Yeah, what we're saying is north-south more snooze east-west, west, rest. If you think about it, our north pole of our bodies is our head. So it makes sense that you should point south. Because opposites attract if so facto. So what about a compass before you toss on the night zero? Find the north star and then turn 180 degrees. If you're sleeping in this weekend, go for the longitude. Ignore the latitude. Check the coordinates as you hit the head. Let's do our three stories. Buzz Lightyear. Oh, more to come on that.

In the meantime, Jack, can I interest you in a giant turkey leg? You know what I'm talking about. Disney just announced that their theme park sales last quarter doubled from the year before. Which basically means there are more people waiting in line to spin a teacup for three hours. Spin in a teacup, not spin a teacup. It's a, you're going to spin with your back. Oh, yeah, I forgot. You do spin it yourself, don't you?

A lot of parents herniating discs on that thing. Let me tell you, Jack. Now, also, Disney announced they had a giant. jump in Disney Plus subscribers, right, Jack? They get 138 million people playing for Disney Plus. But there was one underreported number. No one was talking about that Jack and I were shocked by. Disney executives mentioned casually that they have 500 movies and shows in production right now.

Oh, we repeat. Disney's working on 500 movies before the end of this year. Jack, what's going on? We all hear about Dr. Strange and Encanto. There are 498 more that we haven't. seen yet that are coming. And no, we don't know if one of them is Mighty Dux D6. Revenge of Coach Beggs. Revenge of the geese. You know what we're talking about. But in the meantime, besties, yetis, yesdies, Disney's secret power, it isn't varsity movies. Jack and I think Disney's

secret power is the junior varsity movies. Well, Disney does varsity movies great. It's just not a secret. Exactly. So right now, don't think of Disney as like creative entertainment. Disney is a content factory. They have hundreds of movies they're working on for outside the U.S. in a language that's not English. And those movies are based on characters that you might have kind of heard of. Yeah, like Nemo. Not the little goldfish that gets lost. No, great movie. And I know it's not a goldfish. I'm going to get a bunch of corrections tomorrow. This is Nemo, a film in India, Disney's working on based on the captain from 20,000 leagues under the sea. Captain Nemo, Jules Verne. Here in the U.S., Disney's working on hundreds of origin story and spin-off movies. Right.

And in these origin story and spin-off JV movies, they take a supporting character from a movie we've seen, and they make that supporting character, the leading character. Disney's like, hey, Buzz Lightyear, we got to talk to you and your agent. Are you sick of being in Woody's shadow for the last decade? Oh, you got a snake in your boots, Woody? Let me show you a boom. They're like, boom, Buzz Lightyear.

You get your own origin story. And that's happening. It's called Light Year. It comes out later this year. Disney's whipping up a two-hour flick on Teenage Buzz finding himself on Planet Morph. And let's look at Star Wars. One random bounty hunter from the original movies. One dude.

One bounty hunter. One dude. Already has three seasons of Shmovie Gold on Disney Plus. What Jack and I are trying to tell you, JV movie characters are getting promoted to varsity over at Disney. So Jack, what is the takeaway for our buddies over at Disney? Name recognition matters. 500 JV movies are in production at Disney. That's a lot.

But you know what? Netflix has a lot of movies in production, too. True. But here's the difference. Disney's obscure spinoffs, they're actually not that obscure. Like, you already know who Buzz is, so it's easy for Disney to convert you to watch a light year smoot. Netflix, on the other hand, what is Ozarks? Netflix had to, like, educate you and sell you, and that took a lot of energy. So Netflix, they can't tug at your nostalgia, but Disney, they can. And they're whipping up 500 movies right now to do just that. Here's the way we see this. In a ballot box, you may just vote for the county commissioner who's

name you know. On Friday night, you might just start the shmovie whose name you know. Because name recognition matters. For our second story, pull update. Jack, pull update. Any updates? We're not giving any updates until Monday. The regulators are getting tough. Vitro labs, our second story, they just raised $46 million for fake leather. Not pleather. No. Not mushroom leather. No. Lab grown rawhide. Jack, if you're a cow and you're enjoying the pastures out, There are two things you're really into right now. One of them is Oatley Oat Milk. The other one is what we're about to talk about. Vitro Labs, we went to the website and this is what they say. A single biopsy from this cow and then there's a happy looking cow can make millions of leather

handbags. All while she remains grazing happily right where we left. Real cow leather, but no cow has been harmed because the leather is grown in a lab. What in Vitro Labs is creating is the biggest development for leather chaps since the cowboy. Now, there's actually been a billion dollars of venture capital investments into startups like this, making alternative materials that replicate animal materials. And just for us to sprinkle on a little more T-boy context on this, that's a billion dollars into all leather startups in just the last year. Not just leather, also fur and like ivory and other animal parts that we want to wear on our bodies for some reason. Now, Jack and I jumped in T-boy style. And here's the interesting thing we noticed.

Alt-leather as a market, it's actually becoming split in two different. directions. You have the fully fake stuff, like the straight up, this is artificial. Classics. And then you have the intensely natural knockoff. Okay, on the fully fake end, you have pleather. Plastic leather. Pleather, institutional. This thing is classic. It goes back 100 years and it solves the animal cruelty issue, but it doesn't solve the climate issue. That's the problem. Pleather still uses plastic, which is made from petroleum. And then on the intensely natural end, you have mushroom leather. based leather. But then here is the problem with plant-based leather, right, Jack? It solves the sustainability issue, but you're wearing fungi? And like, that's...

Yeah, people are like, you like my handbag? It's my Ataki. Is your handbag growing? Yeah, I think it's still growing. Yes, you can eat my handbag. Yeah, if I leave it in a dark moist place, it does keep growing. That's kind of a problem. So what Jack and I found fascinating about Vitro Labs is within this broad spectrum, it's trying to like thread a needle on a very... new thing. Real leather, but grown in a lab. Exactly. If it sounds like Vitro Labs is growing skin, it's because they are literally growing cow skin. That is what they're doing. Yeah, we saw this in food with lab grown beef and lab grown fish and other actual fish and beef products, just no animals harm. So Vitro is the same lab concept, but it's applied to materials, not to food. So Jack,

what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Vitro Lab? Sometimes partnerships make the product. Okay, the most interesting part of this leather startup, we think, is not the leather, it's who's investing in. Vitro's biggest investor is also a future customer, the parent company of Gucci. Yeah, Vitro knows that not everyone may be into a leather handbag that is grown in a beaker. But their new concept gets validation because of who is investing in the company and who's going to sell the product. Yeah, if Gucci's pumping out a thousand dollar boots in Vitro's fake leather, then that validates this lab grown leather. Probably don't like it that you call it fake, by the way. Because technically, it's not fake love it.

In this case, the partnership with Gucci could make the product. And now word about our sponsor, Robin Hood. Nick and I got to know Vladin Bejou, the co-founders of Robin Hood when we worked there for three years. And there's this one business principle we heard from them. And we just, we honestly loved it. A, B, L. Always be launching. Always be launching.

That's what keeps customers engaged. It keeps investors happy. And it keeps competitors kind of concerned. Always be launching. is also consistent with Robin Hood's mission to democratize finance for all. Yeah, not just stock trading, also options, crypto, spending, wallets, and more. They launched a lot of stuff. And that's something we heard, we saw, and we adopted it. Yeah, this week, we relaunched the podcast as the best one yet, and launched a video pod right here. More to come. If you're not on Robin Hood yet, want to get

started. Go to Robinhood.com slash T-boy and choose your free stock. That's Robinhood.com slash T-B-O-Y. Certain limitations apply. All investments involve risk. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member IPC. By the way, Robin Hood is no longer affiliated with us or this podcast. For our third and final story before the weekend, Airbnb just announced the biggest change to Airbnb in a decade. When you say, I'm flexible, Airbnb becomes your travel agent. Jack, last time we discussed Airbnb a couple weeks ago, uh, the work from anywhere policy. New thing. We said it wasn't an HR move. Their work from anywhere policy? That was a PR move. Well, we just got some data in, and it was.

Yeah, since announcing work from anywhere, a million people have visited Airbnb's career page. This was some good PR for Airbnb. And that's a company of only 6,000 jobs for. Yeah, that announcement was for the outside world to hear. It wasn't just for inside Airbnb. Well, Airbnb just up to their own ante by announcing what they called the biggest change to Airbnb in a decade. Their PR team is like, piaw, piaw, it's firing on all cylinders right now. Here's what the CEO Brian Chesky said he did past few months.

He watched Emily and Paris like we all did. Will she find love? I don't know. Stay tuned until season three. Well, Brian said that everyone who watched that show, grabbed their phone, opened up the Airbnb app, and searched for a place in Paris to visit.

Like, I want to stay wherever Gabriel is staying on the fifth floor. If you know, you know. Here's the problem. Tens of millions of people watch that show. And if they all try to find a place in Paris, there simply aren't enough baguettes for Emily and Mee and Paris fans. Good thing is Gabriel also is a chef, so maybe one of Gabriel's

croissants. Now, Brian Chesky believes people don't want Paris. They just want the Frenchness of that show. Exactly. And Airbnb knows that there are not enough flats in Paris on Airbnb, but there are enough flats across the country of France.

So this latest redesign of the app, it's to redistribute travel, Brian Chesky said. Key word to redistribute travel because Airbnb has unique ability. Their redesign will get people away from just Paris, but into other similarly French experiences. So, Jack, instead of searching for Paris, you're going to put in that you're searching for a romantic European city. Exactly.

So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Airbnb? Airbnb is using tech to become a travel agent. Besties, Yetis, booking platforms. They are endless. They are focused on execution. We're talking kayak, Expedia, Marriott, execute. But Airbnb's new redesign, it makes it not just a tool to. execute the trip that you've told them you want to have. Exactly. It's not execution. It's discovery.

Airbnb shows you a trip. You didn't even know existed like that townhouse in Toulouse. And the key to this redesign is the I'm flexible button. Yes. Airbnb wants you to push I'm flexible. I'm flexible doesn't just mean any time in August. It means anywhere in August. Right. With this redesign, you're going to tell Airbnb what type of place you're looking for, not where or when. It's going to be based on their 56 categories. So you're searching for amazing views or iconic cities or vineyards or surfing and then Airbnb, they show you the options. And Airbnb has data on all six million listings using machine learning to categorize the places.

So when you combine that data with your flexibility, Airbnb just became a techified travel agent. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for our yesties over there? Disney is working on 500 movies, most of them starring JV characters. But you've heard Buzz Lightyear's name and name recognition matters. For our second story, Vitro Labs found a formula for lab grown leather. It's all about the partnership with Gucci that makes the product. For our third and final story, Airbnb's new redesign will redistribute travel, not just to the top tourist towns. Airbnb, it just became a techified travel agent.

Now, time for the best fact yet. This one DM to us from Ryan Carter over in lovely Anchorage, Alaska. Last week, we were talking about Qantas Airlines and their 20-hour flight. The longest commercial airline flight in like history from Qantas Airlines. It's such a long flight. They have a wellness center in the plane. Well, Jack and I were curious, why is there no U in the name Qantas Airlines? After every cue, there's got to be a U.

You're pretty sure we learned that one a while ago. Because Qantas is actually an acronym. Yeah, Qantas Airlines actually stands for Queensland. and Northern Territory aerial services. Again, this is an Australian airline. So there is a U. It just got abbreviated out. Speaking of yous, Jack,

you and I have got a lot of counting to do this weekend. The ballots. Saturday and Sunday, we have to manually count up the comments you've made on our Instagram post, voting for Yetis or Besties. We're going to announce on Monday, is it Bettys or is it Yeses?

Actually, I'm sorry. Is it Besties or is it Yettys? I'm probably going to get a paper. Cut, counting up all these ballots. Jack, we got to get those lemons, you know, you touch the lemon and then you can separate the pallets. Let's hope there's no hanging chads. Speaking of hanging chads, we're going to see on Monday.

Announcement Monday. See you, Monday. And before we go, congratulations to Lindsay because you promoted to major in the U.S. Army, Jack, one of the highest ranking women in all the field artillery. I think that means you can order your husband to give you a foot rub, and he must, bed. Get your six. And congrats to A.R. Dada Boy, who just graduated from Wharton. And Kristen Royster's graduating with an MBA down in Chapel Hill. Congrats to Stefan Morgan for the new gig in Washington, D.C. Jennifer Stoddard, enjoy that new MBA over in Kansas.

Congrats to Leah Martin, who just got in to medical school. And Bryce, Macy, Tau, Alex, and Sarah just finished their Amazon Savvy Capstone Project altogether. Get an A. Happy ninth birthday to Anthony Sormento in West Lake, Ohio. Happy birthday to Luna Goodale, who's T-boying with her mom in San Francisco. And happy birthday to Marie Kate Mandel in Austin, Texas. And Mark Wee is turning 40 in Vancouver. Happy birthday to Xander Atienza in Chesapeake, Virginia. And happy birthday to Ezekiel Mustache Snoozy in Ithaca, New York.

Happy birthday to Merwan Topcarra in Westchester, New York. And Will Tran in Davis, California. And to Mique Suarez in Chicago. And Yassani is turning 27 in Rancho Cucamungo, California. And to anyone else, celebrate. something today, make it a T-Boy. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack.

I own stock of Disney and Netflix, and we both on stock of Robin Hood and Airbnb. And now a word about our sponsor, Robin Hood. Funny little thing about the Robin Hood logo. Okay, go look at it right now. Most people, you just see a feather. Robin Hood's feather and a cap, pretty classic. But it also looks like something else.

If you look closer, closelyer, you may see an arrow pointing up to the right. Yeah, the Robin Hood logo. Nice little Easter egg in there. It's not just a feather. It also symbolizes bullishness. There's a little arrow in there. If markets are up or down, it's nice to be optimistic.

We always love that little detail in the Robin Hood logo. Honestly, it's all about the little things in life. If you're not on Robin Hood yet, want to get started, go to robinood.com slash T-boy and choose your free stock. That's Robinhood.com slash T-B-O-Y. Certain limitations apply. All investments involve risk. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member S-I-P-C. By the way, Robin Hood is no longer affiliated with us or this podcast.

great work dude great work oh that was really he's not a goldfish Nemo no that was really funny you're like I'm going to get a lot of you for this he's not a goldfish

I know like some kind of exotic clownish right yeah yeah that's right I think it's like an angel clownfish or something someone's getting it right to us and be like actually I don't know.