The Best One Yet - 💍 “The Ring Price Plummet” — Diamonds’ lab-grown disruption. YouTube’s Millennials vs Gen Z. Polestar’s electric car smartphone.

Episode Date: September 7, 2023

Diamond prices have plummeted by 40% this year — Because there’s a 30% chance your engagement ring was grown in a lab.YouTube is going through an existential crisis right now as YouTube Shorts surges — Gen Z YouTube is killing Millennial YouTube.And Polestar, the electric car co, is launching a phone — Because the smartphone is the Holy Grail of Tech, but it’s littered with failures.$GOOG $PSNYW $TSLASubscribe 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 Thursday, the new Friday, September 7th. And today's pod is the best one yet. It is a T-Boy, Jack. Nick, do you see what pose I'm doing over here? Oh, I'm sorry, I got to interrupt you, Jack. Is this the T-Boy Studio or Studio 54?

If you're watching on YouTube or Spotify, you may see some new fancy T-boy swag in the background. Jack's got a neon sign, and what does it say, Jack? That's beautiful. Celebrate the wins. It's in Slam and Siammon. Jack, I feel like I'm podcasting with. Eliza Manelli. You finish every pod by saying Celebrate the Wins. It's a fun on it.

I wanted some Celebrate the Wins too, so I threw it up on the studio. I'm glad we could share the Wins Jack. First story, what do we got for the show, Jack? The diamond industry faces its biggest threat since the movie Blood Diamond. Because Yetis, there is a 30% chance. Your engagement ring was grown in a

lab. For our second story, YouTube is going through an existential crisis right now. Gen Z. YouTube is killing millennial YouTube. And our third and The final story is Polestar. Polestar, the electric car company is launching a smartphone. Uh, come again, Jack?

Car company from Sweden, smartphone. Because an electric car is an iPhone on wheels. But Yeties, before we hit that fantastic mix of stories. Hey, wonderful mix of stories. I love this mix, Jack. Are you hearing what I'm hearing? Oh, I'm sorry, Jack. That smells like Aaron Rogers.

That sounds like a two-point conversion. Because Yeties, the NFL season kicks off. tonight. But we don't want to talk about football in this pie. Oh, we don't. Yadies, we want to talk about the ball. We want to talk about the football. Yeah, like the football. Because since 1941, the NFL has used the exact same specific official football for all their football balls. That football, which I'm spiraling in my hands right now, is known as the Duke. And this ball has a wild business model. Somebody worked at the Olive Garden over there. Yeties, first of all, the official NFL pigskin isn't actually a pigskin.

skin, it's actually a cow skin. More specifically, it's a steer skin. A steer, a Sere, a.k.a.a. A steer, a cow with huge horns. Because the NFL is a thing for testosterone. Yeah, they do. And the shape of that football, it isn't actually football shaped, is it a jam? No, the shape of a football is geometrically a prolate spheroid. Hey, want to play some touch prolate spheroid in the backyard? Anytime. It is 11 inches in length, 22 inches in circumference.

This football is a geometric marvel. It is made by one company. Wilson. And they make it in one place. Ohio. Get this. Nearly every NFL football is made on one farm in Ohio. That's right.

For 77 straight years, the same farm, the same process, produces the same football. It is first, this cowhide is dipped into acid. Because the sweat coming off those players is toxic. And then it is hand stitched by three local Ohioans. And then that leather is graded by hand by human. beings for quality. Some of that leather becomes handbags. The nice leather. Some of that leather becomes footballs. The crappy leather. Each hide can produce 10 adorable little footballs. And the four panels of leather on each ball neck, they always come from the same hide.

So, Yeties, at kickoff tonight, they're not just kicking off some football on the football fields. They're kicking a ball that is a fashion icon. They are kicking a ball that is an agricultural legend. They're kicking an art and a craft. Besties, are you ready for some T-boy? T-boy, on two, on-two. Ready? Omaha! Omaha! Three stories. Pike!

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 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. For our first story, diamond prices just had their biggest drop in years. The prices are plummeting. Because 30% of diamonds are not natural gemstones anymore. 30% of diamonds are grown in a lab. Jack, if we are going to talk diamonds, we both have gotten married, we both have gotten to know diamonds. We got to talk about the five seas of diamonds.

We got to know diamonds once. And the five Cs are cut, color, clarity, carrot, and can I afford? this thing. Everyone forgets about that fifth scene, but it gets you every time, Jack. But yet he's nearly every diamond on earth is sold by one mysterious, opaque powerhouse of a company. And who is that company, Jack?

De Beers. This is the diamond monot. I just thought of that. Da Beers. Da Beers. Da Beers has a diamond monopoly. Yeah, De Beers. They have controlled the diamond industry for a whopping 150 years now.

But this diamond diva just had its worst sales month and its worst sales development in years. Yes, it did. Yeti's diamonds for engagement rings have fallen in price by, get this, 40% in the wholesale market. A 40% drop in diamond prices. Now, Yetis, don't go proposing to your boo on this news. Yeah, you don't want to just buy the dip on this situation. Because the wholesale price drop for diamonds hasn't trickled down to retail jewelry stores yet. But eventually, that's solitaire. It's going to end up on the sales rack. And that's when you buy the dip on this thing. That cushion cut, you're going to buy that dip. She's a long-term

hold. Literally. We know you're wondering, yetis, what is the reason for the 40% drop in diamond prices happening right now? What is the reason? Is it because you're not buying material things? You're heading to the Amofi Coast for a month. What is it, Jack? Lab-grown

diamonds. Lab-grown diamonds. Lucy in the sky with lab-grown diamonds. We're not talking about fake diamonds, because a lab-grown diamond is physically identical to the natural diamonds we've had for years. But lab-grown diamonds, yeties, they are not natural. They're actually developed in a lab, even though they're chemically equivalent. According to our buddies at National Geographic, planet Earth forms diamonds naturally,

with pressure and heat over the course of billions of years. On the other hand, a lab run by Dr. Whatever forms diamonds synthetically over weeks in a microwave oven. Synthetic diamonds have been around for a decade or two, but according to Bloomberg, they're finally catching on with consumers. We had to sit down, stand up, and check our bifocals again on this number. 30% of diamonds sold today were grown in a lab. We repeat, one out of three diamonds sold today is a lab-grown diamond. Case in point, Pandora, the world's largest jewelry company, isn't selling natural diamonds anymore. Pandora, the ones with like the charms that do the advertisements every December 1st,

First, they're only selling lab-grown diamonds as of this year. Now, naturally, Dabir's hates this new trend of lab-grown diamonds. Because lab-grown diamonds are cracking down on their monopoly. De Beers claims that people care about the romance of Mother Earth naturally crafting each stone into something beautiful. You love the essence and the eternity of having that diamond that was around at the same time as the dinosaurs. On the other hand, the lab-grown industry says that people like avoiding the ethical and environmental downsides of diamond binding.

And the data shows that people are down with live-grown diamonds. Because 30% of diamonds today are nuked in an oven. Diamonds are apparently everyone's best friend. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the diamond industry? Disruption doesn't have to be loud. It can be quiet. Yet he's, over the last decade, disruption has been associated with loudness. Sync Uber.

Big brash tech company. breaking things moving fast and splitting an industry in half. But what Jack and I have noticed is that disruption can also be quieter and subtler and more elegant, if you will. Like the lab-grown diamond industry. Exactly. The lab-grown diamond industry could have campaigned loudly against the big De Beers monopoly. Instead, the lab-grown industry subtly focused on itself, promoting its sustainability

and its lower price. The shocking surge in lab-grown diamonds proves that disruption can also be quiet. For our second story, there is an existential crisis going on inside of YouTube. YouTube's fate is being tugged by millennials on one side and by Gen Z on the other. Jack, remember when TikTok was taken over the world? It's still kind of taken over the world right now. It's like happening in real time.

Back in 2019, the tech industry noticed. And so every tech company started copying TikTok's core products. Everyone was copying TikTok. TikTok was getting sucked six ways to Sunday, Jack. And YouTube's TikTok copycat was called Shorts. Yeah, Shorts. That was what YouTube launched to copy Tick-Tac. It is just like TikTok.

We still have YouTube Shorts today. It's short form vertical video. You swipe up and down for the next video on your head. And you just keep swiping and keep swiping and keep swiping. And according to the numbers, Shorts is crushing. We just got the numbers, Yetis. And these numbers are real. Two billion people have watched shorts from their phones.

That's like a third of Planet Earth. The only people not watching YouTube shorts is basically your mother and a friend of hers. I think it's like five USA's. In fact, yet, he's shorts is doing so well for YouTube that some top YouTubers have stopped making regular YouTube videos. Yeah, some YouTube creators are just doing shorts because the app is pushing so many viewers to shorts in the first place. And that is why, according to the Financial Times,

there's some drama going on inside YouTube. Some senior staff at YouTube are afraid that Shorts is doing too well. They're afraid that Shorts is crushing the rest of YouTube. Now, Heddy's Jack and I were wondering here, why is it that this would be a problem for YouTube? Like, one of their businesses is doing great. Isn't that a great thing for YouTube? The problem is that Shorts, one of YouTube's businesses, doesn't make money. Shorts gets views.

It does not get cash. To sprinkle on some context, Yetis, YouTube's core business, horizontally formatted long-form videos, that is a fabulously profitable business. It is a profit puppy. That business brings in $30 billion in revenue a year for YouTube. Because top brands like Verizon, State Farm, Toyota, they buy commercials and put them into YouTube as ads that you have to watch before your thing. And you don't mind watching those ads.

In fact, you tend to click on those ads in traditional long-form YouTube videos pretty frequently. But for YouTube shorts, people hate when ads interrupt their swiping. Yeah, because if you get a 10-second ad in a 10-second video, you get a 10-second video, That is not a fun situation, Jack. So the concern among Summit YouTube is that an unprofitable new product, YouTube Shorts, is cannibalizing the profitable product. YouTube long-form videos.

And the evidence, just look at the last four earnings reports. Get this, Yeties. In three of the last four quarters, YouTube's revenue has actually fallen. At the same time that Shorts' popularity is soaring. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at YouTube? Millennial YouTube is at war with Gen Z YouTube. Yeti's Google YouTube's parent company just celebrated its 25th birthday. It's been around for a whopping 25 years now.

And that's important context for this next part. The business dilemma that's happening at YouTube reveals a generational divide. It's millennial YouTube versus Gen Z YouTube. The senior staff we mentioned earlier, the ones that are concerned about the rise of shorts? Yes, Jack? Those are the millennials working at YouTube. They're the generation that created YouTube and they have a patience for. the long-form traditional YouTube videos.

But the new users who are loving YouTube shorts? They're the Gen Ziers. And they're not watching horizontal videos on a computer. They are watching vertically on their phones. They probably don't even use a computer. And that has created an existential crisis. The soul of YouTube is facing an internal tug of war. Millennial YouTube versus Gen Z YouTube.

For our third and final story, this one's wild. Polestar, the electric car company, is launching a new product and it's not a car. It's a smartphone. A Swedish car company thinks it can do phones better than Silicon Valley. Jack, you're driving an electric car. I'm driving an electric car. We're used to electric cars, but there's like one electric car that doesn't get a lot of love these days. One of the most overlooked but top-selling electric car brands on the road today is Polestar.

Polestar. If you're in a Polestar right now, hit us up. We want to see what the interior looks like. You've probably seen a Polestar on the road and been like, what car is that? I don't recognize the logo. Well, that car was a Polestar electric car. Polestar, it's based in Sweden. It used to be owned by Volvo, but Volvo spun off Polestar into its own publicly traded company.

Jack, can we sprinkle on some more context here on the size of Polestar? Ball Star is not that small. It's on pace to sell 70,000 cars this year. Now, that is way less than Tesla, but it's actually more than Rivian. And you probably know Rivian. There are more Polestar on the road than there are rivians. But here's what Jack and I found fascinating about this story. Polestar's newest product is a mobile phone.

Yep. Polestar, electric car company making a smartphone this year in China. Yet is this Christmas you could trade in your iPhone 14 for a Polestar 1? No power train warranty on that thing. No, there is not, Jack. Now, yeties, for years we've heard rumors about the Apple car and we've all wanted to see it. Everyone was talking about the Apple car, weren't they, Jack? This is the opposite. Right.

It's first they made the car and now this company is making the phone. Now, on the face of it, this makes no sense. But besties, Jack and I thought more about it. And in a way, it also makes a lot of sense. Because electric cars are basically smartphones on wheels. Electric car is basically an iPhone with a chassis. Electric cars and phones are technological cousins. They both have batteries.

They both have screens. Yeah, there's similar parts, symbiotic. uses. And Polestar CEO told CNBC on Tuesday that seamless connectivity between the phone and the car is crucial. So they're making the phone and the car. Can you imagine Ford trying to make a phone? This story is like giving Ford executives a panic attack right now, Jack. Now, in theory, Polestar making both the car and the phone, okay, we understand the rationale. But in practice, yeah. Because of our takeaway. Because of our takeaway. So Jack, what's the takeover? Takeaway for our buddies over at Pullstar.

The smartphone is the holy grail of technology, and it's littered with failures. Yeties, here's the reality. The smartphone is the most important invention of the 21st century. The iPhone is the most profitable product that has ever been made. And in the United States, only three companies have had any success selling smartphones. Samsung, Google, and Apple. That's it. That's the whole market. The most important and profitable product is,

controlled by three companies in the U.S. But besties, here's what Jack and I find even more shocking. The number of tech companies who have tried and failed to create a smartphone. Remember Amazon launched a fire phone that they shortly had to shut down? Microsoft and Sony, both of them

have tried to make smartphones and both of them have kind of failed at it. Even Facebook secretly tried to launch a smartphone and that fell apart too. Yes, it did. Yeties ironically, crazically, comically, it may take a car company to pull off the next smart phone. A Swedish car company in China. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us for the new Friday?

Lab-grown diamonds make up 30% of diamonds sold today, and that new supply is lowering the price. Disruption isn't always loud. Disruption can also be quiet. For our second story, YouTube short success can be a bad thing for YouTube because it's hurting the profitable part of the company. Millennial YouTube is at war with Gen Z YouTube. And our third and final story, is Pull Star. It's making 70,000 cars this year and some smartphones too. Because the smartphone, it's the holy grail of tech, and it is littered with failure. Yeah, smartphone. That's the product you should do as your side hustle. Eddie, let's do a smartphone, Q2. But yet is this pod's not over yet? Here's what else you need to know today. First, the price of oil just climbed over 90 bucks a barrel to its

highest seasonal level in a decade. Why? Because Saudi Arabia wants to raise the price of oil, so they're cutting production. And second, the biggest new investor in Budweiser, it's Bill Gates. That's right. The Gates Foundation bought the dip. They bought $95 million of Anheiser-Busch stock. And finally, China just banned the use of iPhones among government employees. What America has done to TikTok, China is now doing to iPhone. What she wants, she gets.

And she won't be FaceTiming with us anymore. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Patrick Meehan from lovely Bradenton, Florida. In every NFL game, including the one tonight between the Chiefs and the Lions, 48 NFL footballs are available for the game. Each team gets 24 footballs that they can use in the game when they play. But before that ball can be hiked in the game, it must be signed by the head official. That's right. The head referee of every football game must sign the ball before it goes into play.

It's the autograph nobody cares about. It's the John Hancock on the peekkin. I mean, steerskin. Yiddies, you look fantastic for the new Friday, Jack. You are glowing over there. What is the best way if you want to get a shout out on the pod, Jack? How do you do it? We got a link to a Google form in this episode description.

Fill it out. You'll make your way into the pod. Or go to t-boypod.com. Jack and I will see you there. And before we go, a happy birthday to legendary Yeti, Steve, the Trojan Yap down at the University of Southern California. And happy birthday to Bestie Alexandra, Alexandra in Mesa, Arizona. And Reagan Park, happy birthday celebrating at the Chiefs game right now.

Happy anniversary to Rima Nake and Sean Thomas, who are celebrating one year of being married together with a long run. And a happy four-year wedding anniversary to Brandy and Michael Lunos enjoying it down in Ashburn, Virginia. Congratulations to Indigo Amandi, who's going to preschool for the first day in East Hampton, Mass. First day at preschool, you got this Indigo. You go Indigo.

Sharpen that pencil, buckle that backpack. And get wicked smart just outside Boston. This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon and Ford, and Nick and I both own stock of Apple. Am I the only one you know who has a spare NFL football in their car? Yeah, I know.

It comes like you had that in Nick. Just in case. Just in case someone needs a post route thrown to them. That mid-highway post route. Oh, man.