The Best One Yet - 👠 “Dude of Wall Street” — Steve Madden’s podcast pop. Costco’s gas biz. Ukraine’s Spider Web attack.

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

Steve Madden’s controversial founder boosted the stock 25% last week… because of a podcast interview.Costco’s biggest selling product? Gasoline (by far)... We think gas is like diapers, but for adults.Ukraine’s crazy self-thinking drone attack on Russia changes warfare forever… It’s tech Pearl Harbor.Plus, the untold origin story of the Tommy Bahama Beach Chair… which sells 3 outta 4 chairs.$SHOO $COST $META $PLTRWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: The untold origin story of… Tommy Bahama’s Beach Chair 🏖️Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.TBOY Live Show Tickets to Chicago on sale NOW: https://www.axs.com/events/949346/the-best-one-yet-podcast-ticketsAbout Us: The daily pop-biz news show making today’s top stories your business. Formerly known as Robinhood Snacks, TBOY Lite is hosted by Jack Crivici-Kramer & Nick Martell.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts NEWSLETTER:https://tboypod.com/newsletter SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Our 2nd show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. It is Tuesday, T-Boy, Tuesday, June 3rd. And today's pod is the best one yet. This is a T-boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. Yeah, it is. Let's get a slow clap over there. The stock market just had its best month of May since 1990. 1990. Spring on some context, please, Jack. That's back when Beanie babies were born. Yes. VCRs were hot. True. The Super Bowl was basically like a high school intra-squad scrimmage. I think we all played in the Super Bowl at that age. These stocks had fallen 20% from their all-time highs. Now they're down just 3.4% from their all-time highs. It has been a wild 2025.

But Jack, three stories for today's T-Boy. What do we got on the show? For our first story, Costco just set a record for most weekly sales of any single product in company history. Gasoline. So we're looking at Costco's wild gas business, which might be their secret to loyalty. For our second story,

Ukraine just staged a Pearl Harbor-esque attack on Russia. but not a single person was killed. Operation Spider-Wab. It is the future of warfare, and it's driven by self-thinking drones. And our third and final story is Steve Madden. The shoe brand just saw its stock jump 20% last month. Because Steve Madden spoke to The Girls on one podcast. But yeties, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories.

Whoa, what a mix of stories. No one else is doing that mix of stories, Jack. Happy T-boy Tuesday. Yesterday, we asked you some T-boy trivia. Which of the following fashion icons is not actually a real person? Is it A, Ralph Lauren, B, Liz Claiborne, C, Kenneth Cole, or D, Tommy Bahama? Well, Jack, Ralph, Liz, and Kenneth are all still kicking. They're not just real, they're all still alive right now.

But Tommy Bahama? Yeah, he's a fake dude. That's right, Tommy Bahama does not exist. Tommy Bahama is not real, never was not an actual true person. So how did Tommy Bahama become a $2 billion beachwear brand? Well, Jack, was it the shirts or the sandals? The pants or the polos. It was actually the beach chairs. That's right. Tommy Bahama is a fake dude, but he's got a real monopoly on those beach chairs. Get this, Tommy Bahama controls 75% of the premium beach chair market in the U.S.

Besties, if your butt is sitting on a beach chair this summer worth more than 30 bucks, there's a three out of four chance. It's got a built-in Tommy Bahama cooler. And the story of Tommy Bahama is incredibly endearing. It is lovely. What is it again, Jack? Two buddies wished that their whole lives could be vacation. I mean, don't we all. So they invented someone for whom that is true, an imaginary friend named Tommy Bahama. So we did an entire episode about the Tommy Bahama Beach Chair on our weekly show, The Best Idea Yet. And we dropped the link in this episode description because the Tommy Bahama Beach Chair is simply the best idea yet.

But in the meantime, this episode's a T-Boy. Let's hit our three stories. Let's hit Jack. 15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is an norm. That's it. 50%.

That's a fat tip. Tea boy city on your at list. If you know, you know, because we're ready to go. We can't wait no more. So just start the show. Start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor. For our first story, Costco just announced earnings.

But the brightest part of the company is actually. Actually, it's darkest product. Because Costco has quietly become America's favorite gas station. One second here. Jack, I happen to get the receipt from your latest Costco run. Are you ready for this? Yeah. All right, $1.50 cent hot dog and soda combo. The chicken bake.

The double-stuffed chocolate chip cookies. And it looks like three rotissory chickens. Seriously, man? What is a chicken bake? If you have to ask, you can't digest it. Well, forget the food court yeties. because Costco's most popular product is actually gasoline. Yeah, the one thing I didn't buy because I pulled up in an EV.

Jack, could you please sprinkle on? I'm sorry, could you please pour on some more context for us? Exxon Mobil is number one in America with, get this, 12,000 gas stations. Yeah, there's a mobile 0.4 miles away from every interstate exit in the United States. Every single one. But the trend among big box stores is to start selling good old-fashioned petrol. That's right, Dollar General. They got 40 gas stations.

Walmart has 400. gas stations. Kroger has a thousand gas stations next to their Kroger grocery stores. But they all stole the playbook from Costco. Yes, they did. Which has 719 beloved gas stations. Although we should point out, Jack, Costco is the only gas station with a bouncer. That's true. It's members only. Show your physical card before you touch that fuel. One second, I'm Jack's plus one. I'm cool. Trust me. I'm on the list. I'm on the list. Do you want to be my plus one? I'm allowed to give a plus one. I would love to be. Dude, if you're my plus one, we can expense it to the company. Okay, it's right off.

But Yeties, this is what Jack and I found fascinating. We actually have a term for this business model, and we call it the gas guzzle side hustle. And it turns out Costco was the pioneer. That's right. Costco opened their first gas station back in 1995, and they've consistently added 24 new stations every year since then. For the last 30 years, Costco has added two gas stations per month.

They are as consistent as a clock with that pace. And Jack, what is the wild stat we just discovered in Costco's earnings report? Today, 12% of their sales are Kirkland regular unleaded gasoline. That's right. The biggest product by far sold at Costco is their gasoline. $30 billion a year of gasoline sales. Okay, let's sprinkle on even more context, because that is a wild number, 30 billion bucks. It's bigger than all of MasterCard, all of Southwest Airlines, and all of Adidas. Sit down, stand up and keep on pumping, baby.

The latest news is that they're expanding the open hours of their 719 gas stations by an hour a day. Now, even though ExxonMobil has 16 times more gas stations than Costco does, we bet Costco is right up there in actual gas sales, right, man? Because people trust that Costco is offering the best possible price. They don't feel that way about their local ExxonMobil station. Something in some way, I feel like I'm paying high price. I'm looking over at the Sonoco and the Texaco and finding whoever's offering the cheapest. The result?

Costco's 70 million SUV driving members only fuel up at their weekly Costco trip. Now, all the attention in this economy is on electric car this, autonomous vehicle that. But Costco is just doubling down on gas. That's right. The way things are going too, Petro, kind of looks pretty permanent, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it does. One sec. Honey, just grab a liter of gas.

It's next to the tube socks in aisle 6. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Costco? Gas is like diapers, but for adults, we'll explain. We'll explain. Yet is a few years ago, Jack and I did a story on this show about tar. The chain realized that the number one purchased by new parents, what is it, Jack? Diapers. If they came in for diapers, they'd also leave with a bunch of other stuff, too. So, instead of pitching parents on a variety of baby products, Target just advertised their diapers.

And in this economy, we think a similar strategy will work for Costco when it comes to gasoline. Yeah, like diapers are the most corneed of a new parent. Well, gas is the most corneed of a adult. And in a world where everyone's pushing loyalty programs like Walmart Plus, Starbucks, Club, Amazon Prime. Gas, low-priced gas, is Costco's differentiator. And if Costco draws you in for gas, you're doing your whole Costco grocery run on that trip, plus a hoagie, plus a $5 rotisserie chicken, plus a second $5 rotisserie chicken for Jack. That's why Costco gasoline is like diapers. They dry you in with the regular unleaded.

For our second story, Russia just suffered what's being described as their Pearl Harbor, except nobody was killed. Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb is an attack that tells us so much about the future. Now, Yetis, for most of the past three-plus years of war in Ukraine, the Ukrainians have been defending themselves against Russia's full-scale invasion. But on Sunday, Ukraine went on the offense like we've never seen before. Operation Spider-Web. Their attack was wildly successful, but it didn't injure a single Russian person.

Honestly, Jack and I were looking at the numbers here. This was the most efficient, highest ROI attack we've ever seen. The Economist magazine says that this attack rewrites the rules of war. The BBC says it was, at the very least, a spectacular propaganda coup. The attack very much changes the idea, by the way, of who is winning and losing between Ukraine and Russia. But here's what was fascinating to Jack and I. It also changes the leading industries in the United States right now. Operation Spider-Web.

Okay, this thing took a year and a half. to plan. And the details sound like the plot from a Tom Cruise movie. Yeah, like crossed with a fast and the furious movie. Because here's what Ukraine did. This is wild. They smuggled drones across the border into Russia. We don't know how exactly. No, we don't. Maybe Ukraine had agents on the ground in Russia. But those drones were actually inside specially built trucks that had roofs that could just pop open at a moment's notice. The trucks were driven to four different Russian military bases, and one of those bases was 3,000 miles away from another one of those bases. And what's important about these Russian bases, Jack?

There are where 120 strategic bombers were parked, bombers that were capable of long-range missile attacks on Ukraine. And then here's what happened on June 1st. All at once in perfect synchrony. Ukraine pushed go on an attack that destroyed 40 of those Russian bomber planes. In five minutes, one third of Russia's most strategic military air force. aircraft had been destroyed. By the way, the drones we're talking about here are like simple quadcopter drones, like basically gopros, right, Jack? They were basically gopros that popped

out of these trucks, flew over the airplanes, and dropped heavy payloads that could destroy them. And because those drones were guided by AI and LiDAR, they knew their target and were able to avoid human collateral damage along the way. AI and LiDAR, the same technology as your self-driving Waymo Robotaxi guided these drones to the targets in Russia. So Jack, let's look at the numbers again, the estimated value of the Russian planes destroyed in this attack? $7 billion. But the estimated cost of each of those drones that did the attacking? Just $300. And again, pause the pod, the AI targeting was so good, it destroyed just the 40 intended military targets. No people were killed or injured. These autonomous drones found the targets,

and they even recorded it all on video, which the Ukraine government posted publicly yesterday. So not only wasn't a military win, it was a publicity win for the Ukrainian government. This attack may change the assumptions in America that Ukraine has already lost the war. Turns out, Ukraine does have some cards, after all. They're already calling Vladimir Zelenskyy the king of the drones. Innovation is the mother of necessity, and with diminishing resources, Ukraine innovated warfare. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies in defense? With the rules of war rewritten, industries of war are changing too.

Yeti's first centuries, the biggest indicator of military strength was the number of soldiers. Then it became about materials. How many tanks, ships, or aircraft do you have? And eventually it became about nukes. It was the number of all those things. But Ukraine's attack on Russia shows that today the top military metric is technology. The top number is your compute. Specifically, artificial intelligence. Right.

Because remember, with one push of a button in Ukraine, Ukraine launched 117 drone, that steered themselves to hit Russian bombers with perfect accuracy. We're talking non-human weapons, low-cost, that were basically both the front lines and the generals in this attack. And guess who is the leader of equipping the U.S. military with artificial intelligence? Well, Jack, that would be Palantir. At the start of 2023, stock in Palantir was $6 per share. You want to know where it is today?

$131 per share. In fact, last week, META also announced that they're pivoting the metaverse to military. They're going to be building headsets for American soldiers. Big tech and artificial intelligence is the next grad at West Point. Now a quick word from our sponsor. For our third and final story, Steve Madden, the high-heeled shoe entrepreneur, just saw his company stock jump 25% because of a podcast interview. This story shows the difference between podcasts and TV. But in order to explain podcasts and TV, Jack, Let's talk about a movie, The Wolf of Wall Street.

The Wolf of Wall Street is the tale of Leonardo DiCaprio. I mean, Jordan Belfort, who defrauded investors out of $100 million with like a pump and dump, the worst of Wall Street. Oh, well, one particular crime of the Wolf of Wall Street was manipulating the stock of a shoe brand that went public back in 1993. You saw it in the movie. That shoe brand was Steve Madden. Jonah Hill's character was actually the childhood friend of Steve's. And in real life, Steve Madden's.

And in real life, Steve Madden, the man, went to prison for three years because of the IPO fraud we saw in the movie The Wolf of Wall Street. Well, 30 years later, Steve Madden is still a publicly traded shoe company with maybe the best ticker symbol we've ever seen, Jack. S-H-O-O, which obviously spells shoe. And as a consumer, you probably know Steve Madden as the shoe that has launched a thousand mall dates. It's basically the Zara of Feet. They offer stuff that's on trend, but affordable. Well, today, Steve Madden is no longer the sea. CEO of Steve Madden. Yeah, the law forbids him from ever being a CEO again.

Because he's a convicted felon. But he is the chief creative officer at the company who he's named after. And Steve Madden the Man, Steve Madden the brand and Steve Madden the stock all just had their biggest week since the ballet flat. Here's the news. Steve Madden the Man was a guest on the fashion podcast, The Cutting Room Floor. And like many podcasts interviews do, it was the short clips of this podcast that went viral on social. media to a degree Steve never imagined. Clips of this interview got 25 million views on TikTok. People loved it. There were 600 news articles written about those clips about the podcast.

And did it translate to better business for Steve Madden? Oh, yes, it did, Jack. Google searches for Steve Madden, the brand were up 60% in the last week and the stock jumped 20%. Now, Nick, why did this one podcast interview drive more positive attention to Steve Madden than a Super Bowl commercial could? Well, Jack, I guess if you look at it in like a shoe form, it was like the heels, the soul, and the laces. There were kind of three parts of this thing, if you think about it, right? Yeah, yeah. The first was the charm, right? Steve Madden didn't call his buyer's customers in this interview.

He referred to them as his girls, which we found in Derek, not creepy. My girls buy this, my girls buy that. It was kind of a cool way to talk about your customers. Second was humor. Steve talked about parenting with regards to like an entrepreneur. Yeah, he actually said, you know, you can't fire your kids, and that's unfortunate. He lamented that you can't fire your kids. Yeah, we got to chuckle out of that.

But the third key that laced up this wild story about Steve Madden was the authenticity. She asked him about his white-collar crime, and he admitted to it. He said I was too greedy. In fact, Steve Madden went so far as to admit that his entire business model is based on dupes. He's not hiding the fact that he copies price your shoe brands and simply lowers the price. In fact, Jack, Steve Madden went so far as to defend that dupe practice of his. He asked on the podcast, The Beatles cheats because they're influenced by Elvis Motown.

In fact, on the same day as that podcast dropped, Steve Madden sued Adidas for not letting him use their stripes on his shoes. I mean, copy their stripes on his shoes. People loved everything about Steve Madden. You kind of wanted to hug him by the end of it. Now, the reason people like this convicted white collar criminal shoe executive is that he was authentic. Which actually sounds kind of familiar.

And reminds us of a takeaway. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddy, Steve? over at Steve Madden. Showing your personality is both the risk and the reward of a podcast interview. Yet he's forever.

Companies have communicated to the public by putting their CEOs on TV. But the problem with the TV interview is that you've only got three minutes, so you stick to the talking points.

Jack and I've done a bunch of live TV interviews and you're kind of, you just say what you got to say. That's it. You can tell the things the CEO says on TV are the things

the PR team told them to say. But a podcast interview, Jack, a podcast interview, interview, that's not three minutes, that's an hour. It's not even possible to stick to talking points because the interview is so long. Maybe five minutes of the one hour interview is PR talking points, but the rest is a human being a human. So you have to show your personality, which is both the risk you could screw up and the reward. You could say something delightful. And that risk reward, Jack's talked about. That's where the good stuff is. That's the stuff that's off script. And that's

what's most relatable. That's what goes viral and reaches people in the way a Super Bowl commercial Good. Unlike the coach talking points that rarely go viral. Nobody cares about the coach talking points. So best, he's added all up, and Steve Madden's shoe business gained 400 million bucks in stock market value because of this podcast episode. We saw a podcast blow up last year in politics. Now they're hitting the corporate C-suite. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for T-Boy Tuesday? Costco's 719 gas stations sell their biggest single product. 12% of their sales are. gas. It's like diapers, but for adults. If you hook them with gas, you can book them with everything

else. For our second story, Ukraine's low-cost drone attack on Russia changes the rules of war. Big guns and big budgets are being replaced by big technology. And our third and final story, Steve Madden's doc jumped 25% because of a viral podcast with Steve Madden. Because Steve showed the personality of Steve, which is both the risk and the reward of a podcast interview. But Yeties, this pod's not over. yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, a happy Q1 earning season to all those who celebrated. It's all but wrapped up and the earnings were stellar. Now, we should remind you that Q1 was January through March, so it did not include the tariff craziness that began on April 2nd. But profits of the

S&P 500 companies rose 12.7% in the first quarter from the year before. That is stellar. And it's proof that the economy is doing way better than the vibes. And second, Gen Z's new size. Ad Hustle, it's selling your personal data. 88% of Gen Z is open to sharing their personal info with social media companies, which is 20 points higher than older generations. I mean, if Zuck's going to track you, you may as well charge them for it, Jack. Basically, Gen Z's been on the internet since their babies. Yeah.

They don't worry about privacy because it's a lost cost. Might as well make some money off it. And finally, non-alcoholic beer is projected to pass ale as the world's number two beer this year. Now, what's number one? You're all asking? Lager. Lager classic. Non-alcoholic is a category of its own, and that's going to be number two this year. Now, interestingly, Guinness, Budweiser, Heineken, all the big guys, they've all rolled out their own non-alcoholic beers in the last couple of years years. But the biggest non-alcoholic brand is still the startup, athletic brewing, which has 17% of the non-out market in the U.S.

That's right, 17% tummy share. And we interviewed the founder a couple years ago on this pod. Yes, we did. He showed his personality, Jack. He took a risk, and he got a reward. Now time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Austin Johnson. Jack, what do we got? President John Tyler left the White House in 1845, but he had a living grandson until last week. How is that possible? Well, we got the receipts.

Here's the deal yet. He's President John Tyler born 1790, had his final son in 1853 when he was 63 years old. That son had his last son when he was in his 70s. Yeah. So that son was born in 1928. Basically a case of old dude still kicking. And Nick, that man, the grandson of a president born in 1790, just passed away in 2025. What we're saying is imagine if your grandparent was alive in 1790.

My grandparent was alive in 1927. 150 years after this guy. 1790, the same year that George Washington gave his first state of the union. Yeties, you look fantastic. And if you got your booty in a Tommy Bahama beach chair, first of all, that's a fake dude. Second of all, that's a good beach chair. The best beach chair. Dude, during the pandemic, I couldn't find him.

I had to, like, steal one from my neighbor. I paid my neighbor. We could not believe this yet. He's three out of four top beach chairs sold is a Tommy Bahama beach chair. So we did an entire episode explaining how Tommy Bahama came to be. How this fake man put a real built-in cooler to all of his beach chairs. So before the government breaks up the Tommy Bahama Beach Chair monopoly, check out our episode of The Best Idea Yet. We dropped a link in this episode description.

And Nick and I, we'll see it tomorrow. Can't wait. And before we go, a happy birthday to Yeti Navan Gupta turning 10 years old, celebrating in Milpitas, California. Happy five years of working at the Home Depot to Nick Alves down in Atlanta. The stock's up 50% since he joined the company. We're just saying correlation and causation. And Charlie over in Chicago is doing logistics, T-Boy style and jumping up because he is going to see us at the live show. We'll see you there, Charlie. And a shout out to Brian Robert, who heard our story about Haribu accidentally putting cannabis in their gummies, went to the store, bought some.

I think he's shipping us a pack. And a shout out to Alex Malcker, who is wearing a T-boy shirt proudly on a trip to Prague. Hope you had fun, Alex. And finally, also travel related. Kelly and NYC suggested a coffee shop for Nick and France. It was right near the one you suggested Jack, and they were both closed on Sundays. This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon and Disney.

Nick and I both own stock of Apple and ETFs of the S&P 500.