The Best One Yet - 💰 “Geniuses are eccentric. So are frauds” — SBF’s trial begins. Mean Girls on TikTok. Millennials’ financial win.

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial just kicked off with some wild details ($55M for Tom Brady to work 20 hours?) — But we noticed some similarities between geniuses and frauds.You can now watch the entire “Mean Girls” movie… via 23 TikTok posts — It’s a prime example of how we prefer snacking on content.And everyone rips on Millennials for being financially behind previous generations — But Millennials are ahead on retirement savings, thanks to the “auto-401k”.$PARA $BTC $ETHSubscribe to our newsletter: tboypod.com/newsletterWant merch, a shoutout, or got TheBestFactYet? Go to: www.tboypod.comFollow The Best One Yet on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok: @tboypodAnd now watch us on Youtube Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. It's Wednesday, Savitay Wednesday, October 4th, and today's pod, it is the best one yet. It is a T-Boy Jack. First, Gettys, do you want to know how we create this pod every day? Or do you want to know who composed the musical jingle to this pod? We answered both those questions in today's newsletter, the best newsletter yet. And you can ask us almost anything, and we'll answer it almost every week in our newsletter.

Subscribe at T-boydpod.com slash newsletter to find out. Jack, I'll even tell you. the secret ingredient in his pineapple peanut butter smoothies. Yeah, the secret ingredient, no pineapple. I'm pretty sure you said pineapple on the pod, Jack. The mic was on. First story, what do we got for the show, man? The trial of crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried began just yesterday, and there are six juicy details we have to share.

Get this, SBF paid Tom Brady $55 million for 20 hours of work. For our second story, Paramount Pictures. They just did something unprecedented. with mean girls. They put mean girls on TikTok for free in 23 different clips. It's 107 minutes of swiping mean girls. She doesn't even go here. And our third and final story, millennials are behind on home ownership. They're behind on income and they're behind on family building. But there is one financial area where we're shockingly beating the boomers and what is it, Jack? We're beating the boomers in retirement. Retirement, millennials? Can't wait to hear more.

But that is before we had that fantastic mix. I love this mix, Jack. Great mix today. Italy just created the craziest new sport Nick and I have ever seen. The Italians just created a new sport. Here it is. Here it is. Here it is.

Trash lugging. Yeah. Haul and Garbage is now a competitive sport in Italy. A jean Noah is hosting what they call the World Plogging Championship. The World Plogging Championship is a competitive race where runners are also encouraged to pick up and carry trash with them. And now here's the key, Jack. You want to sprinkle on a little more context, please? The winner isn't the runner who finishes first.

No, who is the winner, Jack? It's the one who runs furthest while carrying the most amount of garbage. Ipso facto, it is the World Cup of Waste. 70 athletes compete in this six-hour competition. And here's why. Turns out Italy has a little bit of a rubbish problem. There's a bad trash collection system in Italy. From Naples to Milan.

You're tossing the bottles of Kianti and you got too much excess mozzarella. So this new sport solves one of society's problems over there through competition. Because scoring is based on weight, an environmental impact of that trash. The heavier and harder the trash you're hauling, the more points you're winning. For example, a tire, that's worth five points. A broken fridge, that's worth eight points. An unrecyclable battery and a computer hard drive with some weird wire sticking out of it. That's a 12-pointer.

By the way, if there's a canolae on the side of the road, someone littered, you could eat it. Bonus points. But Nick, who was the winner of this trick? Crash competition in Genoa this year. Jack, it wasn't an Italian, but it was a Spaniard. Signor Manuel Jesus Ortega Garcia. That Spanish plumber hauled a shocking 320 pounds of waste over 16 miles. He hauled an air conditioner, a shopping cart, and some random pipes 16 miles.

So the next time it's 11 o'clock and you're like, crap, I forgot to tick out the trash. Don't be upset. Just remember, your training for a big event. We'll see you at the World Trash Cup. 24. May the best junk win. Jack, let's in our three stories. life behind bars. The evidence will show that geniuses are eccentric, but so are frauds. And the details are juicy. But Yeti's yesterday, the trial began for Sam Bankman Fried. Ah, paging Judge Judy and Joe Brown. We're talking about the disgraced founder and former CEO of FTX, the crypto exchange. Nick, can you

sprinkle on some context to what this man allegedly did? I mean, I usually like to ask you, but what the heck, I'll do it, Jack. Yeti's crypto and investors deposited billions of their own money into FTX to invest in crypto. But instead of using that money to invest in Dogecoin for you, Sam Bankman-Fried stole your money if you invested in crypto. And he spent it lavishly on himself. Now it's up to the prosecutors to prove that he stole that money and spent it on himself. If they're successful, he faces up to 115 years in prison.

Probably much less because people don't live that long. Now yet he's perfect timing for this story Because we also just got the tell-all book About Sam Bankman-Fried On the same day Written by Mr. Michael Lewis Michael Lewis, by the way, is the Beethoven of business books

We're talking about the guy behind Moneyball The Big Short, the blind side, he did them all And funny coincidence, just like Walter Isaacson had close access to Elon Musk As Twitter's craziness happened Michael Lewis had close access to SBF as his FTX

downfall happened. Yeah, Michael Lewis spent months at FTX's headquarters in the Bahamas, at Sam Bankman Fried's mansion with the crypto Wunderkin. And he spills the details of those months they spent together in his new book, Going Infinite and the details, oh, Jack, they are juicy. According to this book, which came out yesterday, Sam Bankman Fried paid Larry David $10 million to do that infamous Super Bowl ad for FTX. Curbs that enthusiasm, Jack. He gave Steph Curry $35 million to do another ad campaign. But those aren't even the craziest. Jack, can you whip up the craziest number for us?

Sam Bankman-Fried paid his buddy Tom Brady $55 million for just 20 hours of consulting work. $55 million. Yet he's SBF paid Tom Brady $3 million an hour just to talk about crypto and be his friend occasionally. That's a pretty high hourly rate. Maybe he should have quit the football earlier. Oh, according to this book, he also ordered an architect to, to draw up plans for a new FTX headquarters in the shape of his afro. I just want to point out that pause was natural because Jack just like could not even get the words

out. He insisted the building be in the same shape as his unruly haircut. Now that's all page six kind of stuff. But on the financial side, Sam Bankman-Fried was also a pretty awful manager, wasn't he, Jack? At one point, SBF was asked to name the board of directors of his company. He only had three directors on his board and he couldn't name two or two. of them. He couldn't name two of the three people who are his boss. And he's the CEO. That led to our

funny observation. A lot of the things we just mentioned are the kind of things a con artist would do. But there are also things a genius might do. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies following SBF? Geniuses are eccentric, but so are frauds. There were so many red flags that this book reveals that SBF's rise should have been stopped way earlier. Instead, his investors confuse those red flags for brilliance. Case in point, his addiction to video games. Once, Sam Bankman Fried played League of Legends on his phone while he was on a panel on stage at an economics conference.

Yeah, the host, Sequoia, should have interpreted that as a red flag. But instead, they wanted him even more. They're like, this guy must be a genius. He's on stage playing video games. Another SBF red flag, his choice to headquarter the company in the Bahamas. The Bahamas is a good choice for a genius who likes running his company out of beach. True. But it's also a good choice if you're running a Ponzi scheme. Besties, this book even reveals that SBF considered paying Donald Trump $5 billion to not run for president.

Yet he's added all up and the things we just told you could be details in the biography of a genius. Or they're equally likely to be on the rap sheet of a convicted felon. Because geniuses are eccentric, but so are frauds. For our second story, Paramount, just did something. unprecedented in the movie industry. It put the entire movie on TikTok for free. You can now watch Mean Girls on TikTok for free in 23 posts. You have to watch it in 23 posts.

Get in loser. We're going shopping. Yet he's Mean Girl the movie. It turns 19 this year. And what does that mean, Jack? What does that mean? It means the movie is now older than the characters in the movie. We were very proud of that observation, by the way.

Yes, we were. It made a hundred and thirty-three-old. million dollars at the box office the year it came out in 2004. Jack, you want to sprinkle on a little surprise context? Yeah, 2004 is the same year the notebook came out. Huge year for Rachel McAdams. Rachel McAdams was in Mean Girls and The Notebook in the same year. Two iconic movies for the millennial generation.

And Mean Girls grossed more money than the notebook did. On Wednesday, we wear pink and we watch it. This movie made Fetch happen literally. Written by Tina Fey, she also starred in the movie. Mean Girls is a comedy about the drama. of high school life at the cool girls table. But yeties, there's a problem facing mean girls right now, and what is it, Jack? It's so popular, like other popular movies, it gets pirated.

People keep posting this movie online for free, and Parano's not making any money on that. Which leads to the surprising new initiative Paramount Pictures sprung on us this week. Paramount just put all of Mean Girls online for free. It's unusual for a company to give away one of its most popular products for free on the internet. It's unusuallyer for them to put it for free on TikTok. Yeah, because this movie studio had to slice Mean Girls into 23 different TikTok posts. Yeties, we repeat, you can't watch the whole Mean Girls movie on TikTok? Like, how do you watch the movie, Jack?

They have time limits. So the 107 minutes gets spread across 23 separate clips. Yet he's, this is the first time in cinematic history that a studio has sliced its entire movie onto TikTok into many videos. Because Paramount's not a regular studio, it's a cool studio. Yeah, exactly. Can you imagine if this happened to one of Quentin Tarantino's movies? He'd have a panic attack. Kubrick is like, oh my God, judging.

Picture watching The Godfather on TikTok. It's part one of 50. Orsasey. Can't even handle it right now, Jack. Paramount labeled each of the 23 clips, part one, part two, Part 3 up to part 23. And then they pressed upload on the Mean Girls TikTok account. It's still there.

You can watch it for free. And there's nothing Regina George can do about it. So, Jack, since I've got a 1 a.m. curfew, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Mean Girls? You don't want to consume content. You want to snack on it. Yet he's amazing quote Jack and I frown from Jeff Bezos. He refers to how we consume entertainment right now as information snacking. Just like the surge happening right now in literal snack food, there's a surge of snacking on media too.

Yeah, we're actually spending more time watching things, but we like to pick through quicker bites while we're watching everything all in one place. And that's what Paramount just did by putting Mean Girls on TikTok. You do have the attention span to sit and watch a whole movie on a daily basis. But you prefer doing it by snacking on scene seven, then flipping a couple TikTok videos, then snacking on scene eight. Because Yeties, the real trend in content right now isn't sure. It's about snacking. For our third and final story, millennials are actually doing one financial thing better than every other generation. We are behind the most things financial, but we're crushing it when it comes to retirement savings.

Yeah,dies, we're going to get right to it over here. Everyone rips on millennials. Jack, can you whip out that whiteboard of the list of things we killed? We killed beer. We killed bangs. We killed wearing suits to work. We've killed phone calls. We killed buzz cuts. We killed golf. We killed. killed cereal. And haters also love listing the ways that millennials are financially behind. And you know what? We are. There are two big areas our generation is behind. And what are they, Jack? Homes and salaries. Yeah. The first home ownership. You're living with your parents later and you're buying your home later. The starter home that boomers bought when they were in their 20s?

Lovely. No such thing anymore, by the way. Yeah, must be nice. The second thing we're behind on is salaries. We're still waiting for that promo to VP. Because wages have grown less than inflation. but student loans have grown way more than inflation. And those unpaid internships really didn't help, Jack. That's why millennials are behind on homeownership and salaries in this country. But here's the news, and it is shocking and it is bright, Jack. One financial category that millennials are winning on? Retirement savings.

A Fort Myers, millennial Millie has more retirement savings than Boomer Bob. According to Vanguard data, millennials are in better shape for retirement than, Boomers and Gen X. Now, besties, Jack and I jumped in T-Boy style, and here's what the numbers show. When millennials retire, we'll have enough savings to cover 60% of our pre-retirement income. Yeah, what's that mean? We have enough savings, Social Security payments, and retirement accounts on average to make up 60% of the salary we had before we retired.

Ifso facto, you can spend 60% as much in retirement as a millennial as you did in your prime working years. What about for Boomers and Gen X? How prepared are they for retirement? So glad you asked Jack because it's a slightly different situation. Boomers and Gen X have only saved enough to replace 50% of their pre-retirement income. Which means that millennials are best in class when it comes to preparing for retirement. That's right. I am going to order another avocado toast. And a third double-digit latte to top it off. And still buy a condo in that community in Florida, Linda.

As we discussed this story over a bottomless brunch. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are millennials? The reason millennials are ahead on retirement, it's not prudence, it's policy. Yeties, this all comes down to the 401k, the retirement account plan that takes a tiny bit of each year paychecks and invests it in stocks. Many companies match the 401k. So when we retire, we have even more retirement money we can withdraw. But here's the key.

Back in 2006, just as millennials hit the job market, a crucial policy change boosted enrollment in 401k programs. In 2006, Congress passed a bill encouraging companies to auto enroll their employees in 401ks. Instead of requiring a worker to opt into a 401k program, they were required to opt out because they were automatically enrolled. Workers were still free to do as they please. Congress just encouraged companies to change the default. And that default change on the 401k changed everything about our retirement. Millennials have more savings because they didn't have to actively decide to save. It was automatic. Yeti's the auto 401k. It just put millennials ahead in retirement. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for Sviche Wednesday? Sam Bankman

Fried is on trial for massive crypto fraud. The tricky thing for us to remember, Yetis, geniuses are eccentric, but so are frauds. For our second story, Paramount Studios, just put an entire movie, Mean Girls, on TikTok. Because we don't want shorter content, we just want to snack on it. And our third and final story is millennials. We're on pace to replace 60% of our income in retirement with savings. The reason millennials are beaten boomers and Gen X on retirement, it's all thanks to the auto 401k. Opt-in is better than opt out. You should definitely talk to your boss about this, by the way. But yeties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, for the first time in American history, the Speaker of the House has lost his job.

Congressman Kevin McCarthy was just ousted as Speaker of the House by his own Republican Party. And as of this recording, the Republican-controlled House is leaderless. And second, Chipotle just began testing its automated burritos and automated salads. Jack, remember that otocado that we covered on the pod? Yeah, the robot that slices avocado. Well, now your next bowl, Yeties could be made by a burrito bot. And third, after 13 years of resistance, the Federal Reserve has finally joined Instagram. Our nation central bank can now like your photos.

They're finally on Instagram. There you go. It's sliding to my DM too with my then-mo code. Now time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Dylan Steinfeld from lovely Atlanta, Georgia. Push and play. Here we go. Yeties and besties, I need to address the elephants in the room.

On Friday, Nick and Jack mentioned that humpback whale weighs the equivalent of 33 elephants. In fact, a blue whale, which is five times bigger than a humpback whale, is the equivalent of 33 elephants, but it's more complicated than that because they're both Asian and African elephants. The Blue Whales breach would be equivalent to 38 Asian elephants, 24 African elephants, or for good measure, 75 elephant seals. The San Diego Zoo needs to hire this man. And we need to be more precise with our marine mammals, man. Jack, that's the last time we mess with pachyderms and marine mammals in the same fact. Well, it's a pachyderm. It's a marine mammal on land, I believe. Dylan's going to submit another borderline correction, best fact.

Dylan's got a correction for us. That's fair. That's fair. Yetis, you look fantastic today. And remember, if you want to hear the answers to our Ask Us Almost Anything, check out our T-Boy newsletter every day. You can subscribe at t-boypod.com slash newsletter or just click the link in today's show description.

If you know, you know, Jack and I, we'll see you tomorrow. Before we go, a happy birthday to Yeti, Ellie, Ellie Howland, who's listening to us at Haskell. Half speed over in Chicago. And congratulations to Grace Mehta, who's celebrating a birthday and a pregnancy in Italy right now with Nico. And Craig Carey is taking care of the kids for his birthday, not too shabby, over in Clifton, Virginia. Happy 25th birthday to Trey in Columbus, Ohio. Oh, and a birthday correction for us.

It was Drew and Bob McDarmid, who are twins having a birthday, turn in 56, over in Spain. And happy eighth birthday to Dahlia Matthews in Gilbert. in Arizona. Dahlia, keep learning, keep reading, and make school today a T-boy. And congratulations to Nicholas Garcia. Super Mario's favorite buddy who just started pre-K down in Atlanta. And Morgan and Wiley Brasher are celebrating a seventh anniversary. Get this, with two weeks in Paris. Oh, and Rome. Oh, and Florence. Not too shabby. And a huge shout out to Kelsey Black, a hardcore Yeti who's on the way to a bookseller's convention in Denver wearing her pink T-boy hat. She got a full scholarship to a

10, congratulations, Kelsey. Best book owner in the T-Boy universe. And finally, congratulations to Bonita Chester and the whole Oclo team, who just signed a huge deal with the U.S. Air Force up in Alaska. And to anyone else celebrating something today, make it a T-boy. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. Nick and I both own stock of Chipotle. The secret ingredient is no pineapple.

That was a really funny response. That was a really funny response. You keep pushing this narrative. That's just not true. I mean, the mics were on. I'm pretty sure he said pineapple. No. I didn't.

Can we bring out the tapes? It's like a black and white footage of deck one. I love pine. Yeah, like a political hit ad. And then I put in the pineapple. Yeah, he's going to Logan Ryan. Right. Two cups of mango, six pineapple.

Like, what's my favorite smoothie? Pineapple! Yeah, your mouse going like banana. You're saying, pineapple.