The Best One Yet - 🤑 “Get Rich Quiet” — Main Street Millionaires. AI’s nuclear pause. JonnyPops’ $175M popsicle. +Wellness Darties

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

All 3 leaders of AI agree: AI needs regulation… but we’ve seen this same thing before: Nuclear.Jonny Pops is selling $175M of popsicles thanks to one growth hack… wooden kindness sticks.3 million millionaires got rich on Main Street… and they’re looking for heirs to their fortune.Plus, the hot new trend at college is the Wellness Darty… 11am non-alc cold plunge at the Frat.$MSFT $MICC $SPYRSVP to The Best Run Yet: https://www.thebestrunyet.com/ Grab your Tickets to the IPO Tour: Our In-Person OfferingSan Francisco 9/23: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/1C0064AFB5F688BDBoston 10/14: https://tickets.citywinery.com/event/tboy-the-ipo-tour-in-person-offering-8cdhupSeattle 11/4 (21+): https://www.axs.com/events/1446394/the-best-one-yet-tickets Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thanks to Liquid Ivy for sponsoring this episode. The OG lemon lime combo. Our favorite. Gives you three times the electrolytes of the top sports drink plus eight vitamins and nutrients for ultimate hydration. So head to LiquidIV.com and use code 2026 T-Boy for 20% off your first order. This is Nick. This is Jack.

It's Tuesday, T-Boid, Tuesday, September 15th. That's hitting's pod is the best one yet. This is a T-boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. Stretch out those hammies like they are an invidia call option. Jack. Because one week from today, we have the best run yet. We are running a 5K in San Francisco with you. RCP using the link. We got it right here in the bio. And one week from tomorrow, the IPO tour continues. Our in-person offering in San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts,

get your tickets while you still can't. We still got some tickets, so snag him now. We'll see you next week. In the meantime, it is T-Boy Tuesday, and we got the best show in biz. Jack, what we got in today's show? For our first story, Anthropic just convinced everyone that we need regulation right now. It's the biggest moment in the industry since Chachy Pee. And we can connect it all back to one moment we've seen before. Nuclear. For our second story, the hottest dessert in the frozen aisle, it's the Johnny Pops Popsicle.

Johnny Pops is doing 175 million bucks in popsicle sales because they turn the stick into a growth hack. And our third and final story. Who wants to be a Main Street millionaire? There are three million of them, and they're the richest group in America. Because the best way to get rich quick is to get rich quiet. But besties, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. A lot of mixes stories. Love a mix today, Jack, perfect for the pot.

It's a Saturday at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. So you pick out your outfit, you fill up your mini fridge, and you call up your crew. After the pregame, you roll up in your finest tank top to a wellness dardy. A wellness dardy, a day party, but for health and wellness. The New York Times reports that the wellness dardy is the hot new trend on campus. You're not getting lit with the buddies. You're getting fit with them, Jack. Forget dimly lit dorm room drinking.

and mystery jungle juice mixers. Hey, what is in this thing? What is that? Today's co-eds are crushing cold plunges and doing group core breathing. Yeties, the frats are hosting events to get facials. And the sororities are serving kombucha cleansers. Wow, I mean, wow, Jack. The college campus, this is the capital of America's party scene. And yet it's had a full on a makeover.

What's going on, Jack? Co-eds are trading beer pong for Pilates parties. Trading kangers for kegles. D-floor makeouts are out. Yoga mat mantras are. in. In fact, the New York Times just traveled to the University of Florida for one fraternity's wellness darning. The Alpha Tauomegas hosted a 200-person cold plunge. We're talking 11 a.m., nine separate tubs sponsored by a local gym with free collagen supplements on tap for all.

And no to re-racks, yes to recovery. Nick, are we standing up till midnight to charge our crystals together? Besties, the expanse between Gen Z and millennial youths has never been wider. And no experience proves it quite like the college. wellness dardy. So our T-Boy question for you today, are today's students losing a formative college experience? Or are they winning it without the hangover? Comment, breathe or blackout to cast your boat now? Love two Red Bull Votkas, hold the vodka. Jack, let's hit our three stores. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea that caused a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is a norm. Jack Nick,

that's it. I don't even think they need to practice. 50% that's a fat. 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, the four most powerful men in AI agreed on one huge thing this weekend. AI should be regulated.

And we found the perfect precedent to justify it. Nuclear. Yeties on Saturday, Dario Amade published on his blog a new essay. we must pace the frontier. Now, Frontier AI is what Open AI and Anthropic are working on. It's the cutting edge smartest models in the world. Or Jack, if we could translate that into headlines that we've covered in this podcast for the last couple weeks, what would it be? Okay, Frontier AI is what hacked into hugging face and committed the first ever AI crime.

Frontier AI is what solved the Millennium Prize, a 90-year-old math problem. And Frontier AI is what might kill all humans by 2030 with a greater than 10% likelihood, according to Anthropic. And now the coolest four-letter word in Silicon Valley is the P-word, pace as a result of this frontier AI essay. Because back to Dario's essay, he wants to slow down the pace of AI development worldwide to prevent us homo sapiens from losing control of our creation. Okay, Jack, I'm sorry, pause the pod, but before we went out on Saturday night, did Sam Altman just agree to everything his rivals just wrote in that essay? Well, right after, yes, he did. He clarified, though, that pacing does not mean pausing. Waltman wants to slow AI, not stop AI. Okay, but then Google's Demis Asabas also said that Dario was directionally correct on this

AI pacing. This all happened on Twitter, by the way, and Elon simply replied, Dario is right. Add it all up yet, he's and Dario wants to, as he put it, let federal inspectors into the AI labs and he said that there's precedent here. The good old-fashioned precedent, Nick, is the finance industry. Ah, the finance industry brings me back to our banking days on Wall Street. What is he thinking, Jack? Big banks that are regulated by the Federal Reserve allow regulators inside the banks.

They have desks and offices so they can supervise the banks and ensure we have no banking crisis. Well, Dario, the leader of Anthropic wants that, but for AI. Sam Altman agrees, Elon Musk agrees, Demis Fasabas agrees. AI is too dangerous to be in a race right now. Kumbaya, everyone's getting together, beating the drums and hugging it out, Jack. This is beautiful. This was wild. It all happened over the weekend.

Boom. Like the four allies. powers of World War II deciding what we should do at the Alta conference, the AI guys were in sudden unison with each other. Or it's like LeBron, Dwayne Wade, and like a couple other basketball stars saying, hey, we're all going to go to Miami and we're just going to win a basketball championship for the heat. Kind of like that. But here's the problem. These four techies, they don't pass laws. They don't create regulation. That's right, they don't. And on Monday, President Trump slammed Dario's idea and said we don't need regulation in AI. Trump and his allies say that Dario is being self-serving here,

that he wants regulation because it would lock him in as a winner in AI. What Trump's allies would prefer is voluntary regulation, like agreeing to not use your phone when you're playing trivia at Tuesday trivia at the bar kind of regulation. Told Dario that if he wants to slow down, he should just slow down. You can just do it himself like Dario. Hit pause in the all-hands meetings next week. But that ignores the arms race nature of artificial intelligence. If Dario slows down, Sam won't slow down.

And if Sam does slow down because Dario slow down, then that could be considered illegal collusion from the two biggest leaders in AI. And what about China? Nick, regulation isn't the kind of thing you all pinky swear in the middle and say, okay, guys, let's do this. You do it because you have to.

Right, and what she wants, president she gets over in China. Dario's essay says that controlling AI to protect the future of humanity, it requires China's involvement and their agreement. What he's envisioning is like an international treaty. We've never seen something like that before, have we, Nick?

Wait, Jack, I'm feeling like I've seen it in our takeaway. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies looking at the biggest moment of AI since the launch at ChatChief. AI isn't social media. It isn't ride-hailing. AI is nuclear power. Now, yeties, we've called Sam Allman the new Marky Mark Zucky Zuckerberg because he moves fast and he breaks things. But that analogy fails because social media's impact is simply not in the same ballpark as artificial intelligence. According to the smartest people in the world, nuclear and AI are the two technologies capable of destroying everyone. media did have world-changing consequences. We are not arguing against that. But AI can cause human extinction. Instagram, not going to cause that. Well, at the dawn of the atomic age, we didn't let

nuclear power plants decide whether to be safe or not on their very own. And for the same reason, we shouldn't let the AI companies decide whether to be safe or not on their own. Now, we should point out, Jack and I think we've over-regulated on nuclear. Like, that's why nuclear's power has been shrinking for 40 years, a little too much red tape there. But the fix for over-regulation is not no regulation. It's better regulation where we learn from our past mistakes. Remember besties, Dario said we should let inspectors inspect AI labs just like we do with the banks. But the better analogy is nuclear. We can regulate AI like we regulate nuclear, which also uses inspectors in the plants. Now the harder part here is going to be China, right? Jack. China already responded on

Monday that they're opposed to Dario's proposal. But that is what diplomacy is for. The Soviets, Russians, they weren't eager to sign treaties with us until eventually they did on nuclear. We can do it, and we absolutely need to at least try to do it, because AI power is nuclear power. For our second story, the hottest dessert brand in America prints a kind deed on every stick. It's a memorial that accidentally became the best growth hack in the freezer aisle. Ah, he had his ice cream, you scream, we all scream. For popsicles? Popsicles are actually one of the great accidents.

accidental inventions of all time. It begins in 1905 in the San Francisco Bay Area. An 11-year-old boy named Frank Epperson leaves a cup of soda outside overnight with a stick that he was stirring in it. Well, when that cup freezes, he calls it the Epsicle. His last name plus Ixical. And when he had kids, they called him pop and called his product Popsicles. That's how the name came to be. Although I have a huge fact check here. It never freezes in San Francisco, like ever. Every founder knows. Never let a lie get in the way of a good founding story. Yeah, apparently. Well, anyway, today, Popsicle, with a capital P, is a trademark term, now owned by Magnum, the ice cream business that Unilever spun off last year. Yeah, we're not even sure if we can legally

say it on this show. Yes, we can, Nick. With the Popsicle, with a capital P, is now facing its biggest disruption in 121 years. Biggest disruption since the Ice Age, because Bessie's the hottest brand in the Frozen Isle right now is Johnny Pops. They're doing $175 million. a year in ice pop sales. $175 million for a startup popsicle company. They're catching up to some horse jack. If you went outside this summer, odds are you saw their seven colored Johnny Pop,

frozen popsicle on a stick. Now, Basties, this is an independent company not owned by Big Desert. Actually, it's owned by Eric Brost and Connor Wright. Now, to sprinkle on some context, Johnny Pops is a classic 10-year overnight success story. It was founded like a decade ago by these two college best friends

who actually made in a physics class. It started when they chipped in $2,000 each in a dorm room, started making their popsicles in a church kitchen, which I presume was free, and their big break was at the Minnesota State Fair. But we should point out, this is not simply a better-for-you, gluten-free, not-free millennial-coated smoothie on a stick. Although it is all those things. Yeah, it's hitting the trend words over there. The Johnny Pop's team uses a series of innovations to stand out from the competition. To name one example, picture your classic red, white, and blue bomb pock, aka the firecracker popsicle. The three colors, red, white, and blue is nice for patriotism,

but Johnny Pop said let's do eight colors, all the colors of the rainbow, for Instagram. Why not? Oh, another minivation from the Johnny Pops team. Oh, it's their accidental growth hat. They added a quote to each wooden popsicle stick. Like, say, please, or let someone go first, or call a friend. You know, like kind deeds on a stick, feel-goody stuff. The result wasn't just winning brownie points with parents. We're the real customer. These Johnny Poppopsicle sticks became an accidental collectible. Families tried to catch them all like Pokemon style. And then, kids began trading and wearing popsicle sticks. So Johnny Pops actually tapped into it. They now give away prizes. Whoever brings 10,000 sticks or mails them to us gets a free trip to our Minnesota

headquarters. Again, people are trading sticks that some rando stranger was licking 12 minutes ago. Johnny, can we have a trip to Cabo instead? Nope. You're coming to our Minnesota freezing called negative 14 headquarters. Now, yeah, he's the good deeds printed on the back of these sticks. They are a tribute to Johnny himself, the namesake of the Johnny Pops brand. Yeah, he was a friend of the founders who passed away following a struggle with addiction and wasn't able to launch the company with his two buddies. But what we find fascinating is that this kind tribute to their friend became their accidental growth hack and then they embraced it. We think it's inspiring because these simple innovations, these are why Johnny Pops is eating ice cream's lunch. Because Besties, we just finished

the summer. And a few months ago, Bloomberg did a whole story on the rise of the $8 cone. With dairy and sugar and eggs as the ingredients, ice cream has become an expensive luxury product in this economy. But Ice pops, Jack, their biggest ingredient is water. That is a profit puppy. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies over at Johnny Pops? The perfect consumer is an NTC, a new to category. Yetis, if you sell a product, any product, you need the retailer to love it. You depend on the retailer's shelf space.

But the retailer doesn't care if you get an existing popsicle buyer to buy your popsicle instead of the other ones. What they really care about is getting non-popsicle buyers to start buying. popsicles. That's net new revenue for the store if you convert someone who wasn't buying before to start buying. And that is the secret customer that matters most. And Johnny Pop's clean, collectible design,

it brought new customers to the frozen dessert category. Which is why this startup got prominent real estate in the freezer aisle. Besties added up and there is nothing hotter than an NTC. Newty category is big for business. Now a quick word from our sponsor. For our third

and final story, who is really rich in America? Huh. One quiet group of millionaires owns more wealth than any other group, but they live in your town. They're not tech oligarchs. They're everywhere millionaires. Everywhere millionaires. Yeties, inequality? It's worse today than any time in the last 100 years. The data shows it. They're calling today the second gilded age. Yeah, he called the double gilded age given the valuation numbers we're seeing right now. Because like the gilded age of the late 1800s, it feels like five people own the entire economy. Yeah, it kind of owned the politicians.

It's like you got Elon Musk, you got Mark Zuckerberg, you got Larry Ellison, you got big oil. But Nick, 12 years ago, three young do-gooder data nerds found data in the basement of a building that proves this whole theory wrong. They were working as glorified interns at the U.S. Treasury, and they found 11 million businesses earning $1 million or more in profit. Interesting. Now, these businesses were LLCs, but these brainiacs, these three glorified interns, they skipped the intern Appiah because they wanted to identify each of the. those LLCs, the limited liability corporation owners. And what they found was over 22 million business

owners, human beings. Americans with names and social security numbers, they owned these 11 million businesses. 11 million pass-through businesses. You want to sprinkle on disclosure, Jack? Yes. Full disclosure, Nick and Jack Studios, which is our company. It owns our show. That is a pass-through business. And Jack and I have split it down the middle. We own our holding company, Nick and Jack Studios, 50-50. Whatever the company makes in profits, that's Nick's and my income 50-50. Yeah, but we're not hiding it, right? We've literally put our names in the corporation name, we should point out. A lot of business owners do hide their sources of wealth, so they make money through a randomly named LLC. And their identification is stuck in some random IRS computers. Nobody

had ever connected the 11 million companies to the 22 million people. Until these three data nerds. And their data, it actually proves the second Gilded Age theory dead wrong. Yeah, what it actually proves is that the stealthy, wealthy are everywhere. Two of these three taxed ninjas, as these dudes called themselves. Great name. They just published a book called the Everywhere Millionaire. Eric Zwick of University of Chicago and Owen Zedar of Princeton University. It's the clearest X-ray yet of U.S. wealth that's ever been taken. These guys found at three million mainstreet millionaires in the U.S. are worth an average of $25 million each. And Jack, the biggest group of these mainstream millionaires where they actually work. They're lawyers, their wealth managers,

their doctors, their dentists, their accountants. Those are all no shocker. But the surprise categories of mainstream millionaires, what are those, Jack? Car dealers, restaurant owners, companies that make and sell physical things, like any physical things. Bessies, these are not media moguls, they are mundane, but they are moneymakers. One company cited in the book manufactures urinal cakes. A good industry to be in.

A good industry to pee in. Even if we have hydration recession, Jack, the dude still got to pee. I mean, with the wellness trend right now, I'm being clear like half the day. We don't have a urinal cake company as a sponsor. You can chill out for a second. Yet. But get this, besties. For every one name on the Forbes 400 list,

there are 4,000 people worth over 10 million bucks. 3 million people with an average of 25 million in net worth. That's a lot of zeros if you multiply them, Nick. Collectively, the Main Street millionaires own 13 times the wealth of the entire Forbes 400 richest people in the world. Besties, Jack and I should have wanted. Now, this is not purely a feel-good story of the American dream being fulfilled by three million-millionaire families, right, Jack? No, it's not. This book covers that a lot of these industries lobbied just as much as they labored.

Ah, for example, what about car dealerships, Jack? Ford must sell their cars through middlemen dealerships, thanks to state dealer laws. Or alcohol stars. What about alcohol stores, Jack? There's a legally mandated middleman to sell that Smiranov Ice, and we pay for that inefficiency of the middleman in the markup. That's why that Bacardi's costing you so much. But we think this is a net positive news for America. Because the 3 million stealthy, wealthy millionaires, they're all retiring and they're looking for errors.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies looking at the mainstream millionaires? There are 3 million silver millionaires and they're looking for a green air. Now, Yeties, some of these million-dollar businesses, they will be sold when their owner retires. Others will be passed down to the owner's children. This is known as the silver tsunami of wealth.

But overwhelmingly, the asset of these companies is the owner themselves, the person, their knowledge. The asset is their brain. So when the owner retires or dies, if without a successor, the business will lose all of its value. Jack, you've like spoken with a bunch of these stealthy wealthy, right? A bunch of mainstream millionaires. I just feel like every time I go to Florida, there's a boomer business owner who wishes they had a young person, they could teach everything they know to so that they could continue the business without them.

Yeah, you like walk around Naples, Florida. It's like, how'd you make your millions? I made a corkscrew. I had a corkscrew business. Nick and I think this is a case for mente-mentor relationships. Yes, it is. If you start young at a company, be a sponge, ask the owner questions, listen to their answers, learn as much as you possibly can.

From our experience, these business owners want to teach someone who can continue their business's legacy. There are three million silver millionaires looking for a green air. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for T-Boy Tuesday? All of the three AI leaders agree with Dario. Amadeh. They want regulation to slow the pace of AI. And the best way to think about AI power is nuclear power. For our second story, Johnny Pops is disrupting the ice pop. Our guess, Popsicle acquires them soon. For we're calling it now, Johnny Pops, their gains are with NTCs, new to categories,

lead to big business. And our third and final story, there are 11 million random businesses making $1 million a year in profit or more, and they're owned by 22 million Main Street millionaires. They are the stealthy wealthy and many are retiring soon and they're looking for heirs. But besties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, namestorming over here, Novo dropped the Nordisk and it's just going by Novo now. Looks like Justin Timberlake got to these guys, Jack. Novo Nordisk became Europe's most valuable company in 2023 thanks to Ozempic and Wagovi. And Novo Nordisk won the race to commercialize GLP1 weight loss drugs, but Eli Lilly won the marathon. So Novo is cutting the

weight of their name in half. It's just Novo now. And second, Costco is jacked up the price of motor oil. A 10-pack is now 58 bucks up from 35 bucks, although to be honest, Jack, I had no idea I've never actually changed oil. Why is Kirkland motor oil nearly doubling the price? Well, the answer is in the name. It's oil. You see, oil now in general is over a hundred bucks barrel, as the Red Sea has become a choke point along with the straight of Hormuz. So Costco is limiting the amount of motor oil each customer can buy. But unlimited hot dogs. And finally, remember we covered the surging business of Ube, like the purple yam that's in everything from lattes to pastries to every one of your buddy's photos? It's super viral. The majority of Ube comes from the Philippines, but the Philippines is banning them from being exported.

Yeah, they banned it. It's mainly because the Philippines needs young, fresh Ube to plant for future Ube harvest. So if you want a beautiful purple Ube snack or drink for your Instagram right now. Do it right now. And now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Jason Geiger from lovely Buffalo. New York. Guy from Buffalo with the best bag yet. What is the longest sentence that only uses one word? If you've heard me before, then you can guess what that word is. It's Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo. That's right, eight Buffalo. It sounds like nonsense, but it means Buffalo Bison. Who other Buffalo Bison bully also bully Buffalo Bison. That's a mouthful. Now you know why. You know why. It means Buffalo Bison.

That's a mouthful. Now you know why. we usually just say, go bills. I know shit, Claire by here. The term buffalo, right? Like, Buffalo, the word is not just a noun. It is also a proper noun and a verb. And therefore, it can be used to create a complete sentence with just Buffaloes. Yeties, you're looking fantastic.

Jack, you're glowing out there. And so is the Sig SIGF fraternity hosting the facial party tonight after the sauna session. We're charging our crystals tonight. It's a full moon. I put it on your calendar. I know you did, Jack. but my quartz doesn't need charging when Libra is behind Mercury. In the meantime, Yetis, if you haven't yet,

grab tickets to our live show in San Francisco one week from tomorrow or our run club the night before. We got links for both in the episode of description. Nick and I will see you there. Can't wait. And before we go, a happy birthday to legendary Yeti, Baba Salem, and Costa, California, turn in one. The parents are both Yetis, and they're having the best year yet.

Happy birthday to Easton Forsy. Turn in 15 years old, listening with his dad, Ian, on the way to baseball practice in London, England. And Orly Edelman, she's a Leo, not a Virgo, but she's celebrating in Jersey. Happy birthday to Letty Goldberg. In Seattle, we hope to see her at our live show. And Francisco Scanone in Alapeda, Florida, has got the best birthday yet. Happy birthday to Jennifer Criner in Walnut Grove.

And Derek Fong, happy birthday over in Brooklyn, buddy. Happy birthday to Sandeep Doveroo, a birthday in Austin, five years of Yettyhood, which is one lift. And to anyone else celebrating something today, make it a team boy. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. I own stock of Ford Motor Company.