The Best One Yet - 🐭 “WaltGPT” — Disney’s OpenAI deal. SpaceX’s $1 Trillion IPO. Savannah Bananas Interview. +Waymo backseat baby

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is Nick. This is Jack. It is Friday, the real Friday. December 12th, and today's pot is the best one yet this. Oh, this is a T-boy. The top three pop-business news stories you need to know today. But first, Yetis, a fun update on our live tour. Jack, you want to share the honors? All ages are welcome. A lot of you have asked if you can bring kids. The answer is yes. Yeah, we double-checked with the venues, and they just request that if you're under 18, you bring a parent with you. So Austin, Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles. We'd love to see you whether you're one-year-old or 100-year-old. But if you're one-year-old, you've got to bring that 100-year-old with you. Jack, three stories for today's team boy. What do we got on the show? For our first story, Disney just booked a $1 billion deal with Open AI. Open AI strikes back. Take that, Gemini.

Starting point is 00:00:47 Sam Altman is heading to the Magic Kingdom. We'll tell you all about the trip. Second story, what do we got, Jack? Elon Musk confirmed this week that SpaceX is IPOing next year. It would be the biggest IPO in history. But besties, this SpaceX IPO, in about rocket ships, it's really about t-shirts. And our third and

Starting point is 00:01:04 final story. The Savannah bananas have disrupted live sports with a new sport, banana ball. The co-founders are Jesse and Emily, and they're married, so we brought them both on today's pod. But yet he's, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. Whoa, what a mix of stories to go into the weekend with. Love the mix, Jack.

Starting point is 00:01:22 Waymo, the self-driving car company, published a blog post this week titled Delivering More for our riders. Jack, delivering was a very clever word choice, wasn't it, my friend? Yes, it was because it was about a woman who on Monday delivered a baby in the backseat of a Waymo. They named the baby Surge. Good do it, guys. Run with it. A nine-month pregnant woman in San Francisco went into labor on Monday. No Uber, no lift, so she hailed a Waymo Robo taxi instead. But Waymo's remote rider support team noticed, and I quote,

Starting point is 00:01:54 unusual activity in the backseat. And Jack, that unusual activity wasn't contraction. That was a kid. True story. Yes. The baby was delivered inside the Waymo between traffic lights. It's self-driving taxi with a self-delivering baby. Not hands-free driving. Hands-free delivery. Literally.

Starting point is 00:02:11 Now, a quick update on the mother and the baby, they're both healthy, they're both safe, but they're not taking interviews right now. Apparently, the robo cabs still can't cut an umbilical cord. They needed the hospital. And the car? Yeah, they've taken it out of service to give it a good, deep clean. But you know, Basties,

Starting point is 00:02:25 Jack and I once did a viral recording podcast about robotaxies inside. of a robo-taxie. I think this Robotaxie baby being born beats that stunt we did, Nick. It does beat us. So, Jack, what's going to be on the birth certificate for this little guy? I don't know. At the corner of California and golf? Get this kid his social security number

Starting point is 00:02:43 and a driver's license. Jack, let's sit on three stories. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the North East 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, I don't even think they need to practice. 50%. That's a

Starting point is 00:03:01 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, Disney just struck a $1 billion deal with Open AI. Disney gets stock. Open AI gets 200 Disney characters for three years. Call it Mickey GPT. The deal actually looks really risky for Disney, but Disney is avoiding the Napster trap. Yeti is Hollywood. Seeing more action these days than a Fast and the Furious 14 movie. Fresh after the Warner Brothers Netflix Paramountry. Bob Eager and Sam Alton just shook hands in a blockbuster three-part deal. It's AI in Hollywood, L.A. and San Francisco, Mini, and Sammy.

Starting point is 00:04:00 Part one of the deal is that Disney is licensing its intellectual property to be used for pictures and videos on Chatchip-T and the video app, SORA. I mean, Jack, I just tried to make a video of you and me interviewing Yoda for the pod. And it got blocked, just got blocked. But starting early next year, it won't get blocked. Because 200 characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, and Avatar, they can star in your AI-generated SOAR videos. But it ain't just the little mermaid besties, is it, Jack? It's also the IP protected Disney props.

Starting point is 00:04:33 Lightsabers, Infinity Stones, Jack Sparrow's Compass, they can all be props in your AI-generated fake videos. Finally! Oh, plus, SORA is getting a feed in the Disney Plus app for the best SORA videos featuring Disney characters. Okay, so that's all part one of the deal. Part two of the deal is that Disney is getting $1 billion worth of Open AI stock, plus the chance to buy more stock in Open AI later. That's right, Yeti's goofy is now a VC.

Starting point is 00:05:00 And part three of the deal, all Disney employees are getting chat GPT to improve their productivity. Okay, hi, it's like the most boring part of the entire deal. It's like, I'm reading that one, G. Yeah, it's an HR email update. Weh, wah, wah. But here's the shocker, Yetis. Disney is the FBI of IP, is it not, Jack? Disney protects its characters more than Liam Neeson protects his daughter.

Starting point is 00:05:25 If you put an unauthorized Lightning McQueen on a backpack, Disney is going to sue you into a galaxy far, far away. Disney's particular set of skills is suing the hell out of you. But Besties, now you can generate a Lightning McQueen axe murder video, and Disney, they're going to authorize it. Actually, I don't know about that. Open AI and Disney are creating a committee to decide what type of content is acceptable

Starting point is 00:05:48 to have Disney characters in and what content is not. Hercules holding hands with Jasmine, probably okay. Hercules hooking up with Jasmine? Probably not, but we'll see starting in early 2026. I'm sorry, Aladdin. I didn't do it. So, Jack, before we get to our happily ever after, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Disney?

Starting point is 00:06:09 You can win the legal battle, but still lose the market war. Yeties, AI is out of the bottle. As we also learned from Aladdin, you can't just put the genie back in the bottle. No matter how many lawyers Disney hires, you cannot control how AI companies and AI users will depict Disney characters. So, instead of never-ending number of lawsuits and cease-and-assist letters, Disney is making a deal. Disney is trying to not do what the music labels did with Napster 25 years ago. Yeah, that's the analogy we want to use here. Music labels sued Napster into bankruptcy back then,

Starting point is 00:06:45 but they missed the chance to control music streaming from the ground floor. 25 years ago, music labels should have partnered with Napster. So that's what Disney is trying to do today by partnering with OpenAI. Because besties, you can win the legal battle, but still lose the market war. For our second story, Elon Musk just confirmed that SpaceX will IPO soon in the biggest public offering in history, one and a half a trillion bucks. But the SpaceX IPO isn't about rocket ships, actually.

Starting point is 00:07:16 It's really about t-shirts. Now, yaddies, our first pod in January, traditionally, is one of our favorite podcasts. Jack and I will do our predictions pod. Our three big business wishes for 2026, we're actually working on them right now. In the meantime, here's a little spoiler, sneak peek. First prediction, 2026 is going to be IPO, Paloza, an initial public outburst. It will be the biggest IPO year since there was an actual wall on Wall Street. And here's why we're thinking it.

Starting point is 00:07:45 The Wall Street Journal, the information in Bloomberg reported, and Elon Musk just confirmed that SpaceX is going public. SpaceX plans an IPO as soon as mid to late 2026 and plans to raise $30 billion at a $1.5 trillion valuation. Jack, can you sprinkle on some historical context, please? That would be the biggest IPO fundraise ever and make SpaceX the 10th most valuable company on it. Besties, SpaceX sells to governments, to businesses, to consumers. The ticker symbol we're hoping, M-A-R-S-M-A-R-S-Mars. And with Elon owning 42% of SpaceX, that would make his wealth over a trillion dollars.

Starting point is 00:08:21 Elon Musk could be the world's first trillionaire. Forget Rolex. That's enough money to buy the GDP of Switzerland. But the surprise here isn't the size of a SpaceX IPO. Good point, Jack. It's the change of heart in Elon Musk. That's right, because Elon Musk hates being a public company CEO. Being a public company CEO is like Ferris Bueller being forced to sit down and take an SAT exam. Yeah, why is that, Jack? Going public comes with rules

Starting point is 00:08:48 and regulations, and you just can't say certain things as a CEO. As CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk has been sued by the SEC. Lawyers have to literally approve his tweets before he can push tweet. Life moves at you pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around,

Starting point is 00:09:03 you may wish you didn't go public. That's why when we saw these reports last week, we didn't believe them. We didn't think Elon would ever take another company public. So why did Elon change his mind Jack? Because of AI. That's right. Elon is obsessed with winning the AI race. You see, Elon Musk's SpaceX now wants Starlink satellites to have data centers bolted to them in space. And building data centers to launch into space and then to orbit planet Earth, that requires a lot of money and you need that money quickly. So if Elon wants to go to Mars and spank Sam Altman and AI, he's going to need IPO money. Plus, on October 16th, SpaceX filed a trademark application for something

Starting point is 00:09:45 called Starlink Mobile. And what are the details of that trademark, Jack? It looks like they're trying to build a wireless phone service at SpaceX. Basties, what if Jack and I told you that instead of AT&T or Verizon, your phone ran on SpaceX? Now, right now, you need a satellite dish to reliably receive Starlink's internet service beam down from those satellites. But, in the the future, you could get five bars of service on your phone from Starlink satellites. Rockets and Mars landings, those are risky businesses. But your monthly phone bill? Yeah, it's a profit puppy for SpaceX. Wall Street would want a piece of that cash flow. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at SpaceX? It's the T-shirt test. If people will wear your logo on a T-shirt,

Starting point is 00:10:31 that means you've got a great brand. Yeties, Jack and I did a deep dive episode of the best idea yet about Harley Davidson motorcycles. Get this. 700,000 people have a Harley Davidson tattoo. The tattoo test is one measure of brand loyalty. The ultimate test. A less permanent one? Will they wear your logo on their t-shirt? Well, get this. SpaceX has an entire merch store selling hoodies, spaceships, posters, and graphic t-shirts. And we've actually seen people walking around in SpaceX merch. They're not employees. They're not customers. They're just fans of the brand. On the other hand, Verizon doesn't have a merch store. AT&T doesn't have a merch store. T-Mobile does have a merch store, but I've still yet to see anyone wearing a T-Mobile T-shirt, Jack. So how do we know that people would switch their phone service to SpaceX wireless if it existed?

Starting point is 00:11:20 Because they love the brand so much they're wearing the t-shirts. That fashion choice reveals SpaceX is a legit early threat to the established wireless carriers. Not scientific. We don't have data to back this up, but it's one way to study the competitive landscape. Yeties, the T-shirt test shows that SpaceX has the brand loyalty to take over the phone industry. Now a quick word from our sponsor. Yeties, for our third and final story, we got a surprise. Earlier this week, Jack and I got to interview the Savannah Bananas co-founders. Jesse and Emily, they're not just co-founders.

Starting point is 00:11:55 They're also married, a husband and wife co-founding team, and they are incredible entrepreneurs. There are a couple of co-founders. Well, we're going to publish that one full hour interview episode for you next week right here. But in the meantime, there's one clip that we want to do. to share early. It's an incredibly successful business, the Savannah Bananas, but we asked them about their failures and their answer was awesome. Here are the wild ways that Savannah Bananas, the disruptors of sports, failed in business and what they learned. In addition to all these incredibly successful disruptions and ideas you've had, what are some that you did that didn't

Starting point is 00:12:29 work? What are some failures that you tried where you realized it was a problem and you had to end it? We have failures all the time. I mean, I think that's one thing that people see, you know, they look at and they're like, oh, overnight success. Or they look at it and they see the big shiny headlines now, but it's only because we've had hundreds and hundreds of failures that have led us to the things that do work. Some of my favorite ones, well, slash a one spun night, I mentioned earlier,

Starting point is 00:12:49 but that was a failure, I will say, because it was a very appropriate night. But we don't we have whoopi cushioned you away, and we had a Fiburiating contest just in the water. Yeah, so he spins it and makes it positive. But we had the human pinata, where we dressed somebody up in a pinata costume, and we had little kids hit them with plastic bats,

Starting point is 00:13:06 and they had to throw candy. that one. HR disaster. Human caniata. We had the horse head race where we put kids in force head costumes and they were supposed to like trot around the bases, but the horse heads were so big that they couldn't see. So they ended up at the outfield. We were like hurting these children, horses off the field, the lay of gate.

Starting point is 00:13:23 The crowd must love that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, you know, to the crowd, they're laughing at us. But to us, you know, we're looking at clocks and we're looking at HR disasters and we have these things that are going wrong. I would say one of the things that I have continued to say no to you that Jesse is adamant is going to happen is he wants all of our players to skydive to their positions.

Starting point is 00:13:42 And I'm, you know, I'm worried about, frankly, yeah, a lot of things. Yeah, a lot of things. Insurance. There are failures that I try to anticipate that we steal back and don't do. But for the most part, Jesse gets to push those things forward and we try. I mean, again, like, trying to players to ride a bowl in from the bullpen. So it'd be a bullpen, you're going to have a live hole in the bullpen. But I want to jump on one. on a big event that we did.

Starting point is 00:14:09 Tap in the morning beer festival because you can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning. And so we said, whatever is normal, do the exact opposite. And so a beer festival, normally was at night and we're like, we're going to have one starting at 9 a.m. And I think 27 people showed up.

Starting point is 00:14:24 They had the time in their life. I mean, it was the best day they'd ever had. But it did connect with people as much as I thought it would. But again, like, you learn by doing. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:14:35 We do 10 to 15 new promotions. every single night with each one of our teams. We have six teams. So when you think about it in a given weekend, we're doing 150 brand new things this year with six teams. That is crazy. But I guarantee we are going to learn faster than any other sports organization. Most sports teams say, hey, we're going to do fireworks every Friday night.

Starting point is 00:14:52 Here's a bobble. Here's our getaway. Here's our 90s night. Here's our 80s night. And I'm not taking away. I learned a lot from that industry when I started. But it's so easy to do the same things over and over again. It's so hard to do something that might fail.

Starting point is 00:15:02 And we are willing to fail every single night by putting ourselves out there because we know we're going to learn fast. to get better for our fans after that. Well, Jesse and Emily, you know, when you add all this up, the failures and the successes, Jack and I like to think about business like chefs sometimes, like if there are recipes for success, would you say there is a formula for fun? There's a formula for fandom you can follow? There's a formula for fandom, and I mean, she had it in the book.

Starting point is 00:15:26 I think fun is a little bit more complex, but for fandom, what we realize, and again, what did Steve Jobs say? You don't, you connect the dots looking backwards. It's hard to connect the dots moving forwards. Like, we didn't notice when we started, but when we started looking back on how we were able to create fans, we realized the starting point of all innovation in creating fans is to eliminate the friction. And if you look at any company, you know, you look at what Netflix did into Blockbuster, what Uber did to the Cavs, any company that really creates fans in the beginning, they look at all

Starting point is 00:15:54 the friction from a customer point of view, put themselves in their shoes and eliminate it. And so for us, the friction was baseball too long, too slow, too boring. You get nickel and dimes. You know, there's ads everywhere, and we eliminated all that. So that's where it started. So first step, eliminated friction. The second one, entertain always. You know, we look at mapping the perfect experience.

Starting point is 00:16:13 So reverse engineer, what is a five-star experience? Or Airbnb, Brian Chesky said, what would it be an 11-star experience be? Right. Then you experiment constantly. The only way you can get better for your fans is if you're constantly trying new things and learning from doing. Engage deeply, do for one, what you wish you could do for many. And then finally empower action.

Starting point is 00:16:31 You empower your team to try things to get out there, get out of their comfort zone, to let loose, to have fun, and experiment. And so if you put all those together and it's constant, you're doing it every single day, I believe that's how you can create fans. Even if you do one of them, if one company just eliminates the friction of the process, like of the DMV said, all right, we're going to make the waiting room, not the worst waiting experience ever. They would probably get some fans. Yeah, so that's a start going.

Starting point is 00:16:55 I don't know if you've ever thought about that, but, you know, we think of things that, like, are fun for us. I think the greatest creators create things that they would love. And if you're trying to do something or get people to buy into it, something and you're not having fun, good luck. Fun is contagious. Yeah. And it starts without players and ourselves trying to make the game the most fun, I think. Yeah, I would just say that a lot of that comes up in our referrals. So people don't know this, but we have an entire rehearsal day before each show.

Starting point is 00:17:21 And that's exactly what happens is our cast and our staff and our players. We jump in and we do these promotions or we act out the choreography or we practice the trend that's going on. And if we have fun, if we're, you know, filming each other and having a good time doing it, we're like, okay, this is going to resonate with people tomorrow night. So let's write that into the script. So it's just a lot of testing things out and trying things ourselves and not taking ourselves too seriously. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for the real Friday? Disney and Open AI are business partners. They traded Open AI stock for Disney's characters. Why is Disney doing this? Well, you can win the legal battle, but you can still lose the

Starting point is 00:17:58 market war. For our second story, SpaceX is planning the biggest IPO in history next year to finance its AI and Martian ambitions. And Elon's looking at the wall. wireless biz, which they can succeed at based on the T-shirt test. And our third and final story, the Savannah bananas have disrupted baseball. They sold out Yankee Stadium twice and Fenway Park. They have their flatulence Fridays baseball games. A whole lot of successes, but also a bunch of failures. But besties, this pod's not over yet.

Starting point is 00:18:28 Here's what else you need to know today. First, we just got the Time magazine Person of the Year, but it's not a person, it's persons. It's the architects of AI. Those are the Time magazine 2025 persons of the year. Or as Time put it, this year, no one had a greater impact than the individuals who imagined, designed, and built AI. The cover of the magazine shows the CEOs of Meta, OpenAI, Invidia, Anthropic, Tesla, AMD,

Starting point is 00:18:53 and then two others who, honestly, Nick and I don't recognize. Either way, a whole lot of market cap than that photo shoot, Jack. And second, Lulu Lemon just announced that the CEO, Calvin McDonald, is stepping down. Remember last week we did a story on Lulu Lemon's founder, trolling the current CEO as not cool enough to run Lulu Lemon? Awkward. Well, founder Chip Wilson said Lulu needs a fashion guide, not a finance guy to run the biz. So Calvin McDonald is departing next month and two interim co-CEOs are taking over. Jack, we started a trend co-CES. And finally, JetBlue is going full MX. The budget airline is opening up its first ever airport lounge.

Starting point is 00:19:31 JFK is getting 9,000 square feet of Blue House. A lounge designed to look and feel like a New York City apartment. Yeah, this JetBlue Lounge is actually going to serve bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches, and please don't tell, cocktails straight out of the East Village. And it's part of the lounge obsession. Everyone's got lounges. Even Southwest is reportedly working on a lounge. Which is time for us to announce.

Starting point is 00:19:53 The best lounge yet. The best lounge yet. Here we go. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one, a correction sent in by an anonymous service member. It's from our Top Gun Crypto store we did last. week. Turns out not all active duty military members are called soldiers. Soldiers is a specific term that only applies to the army. Each branch of the armed forces actually has a different word to describe the

Starting point is 00:20:16 enlisted people. Get this. In the army, they're called soldiers, but in the Marine Corps, you're called a Marine. In the Navy, they're called sailors, and in the Air Force, they're called Airmen. In the Space Force, they're called Guardians, and in the Coast Guard, they're called Coast Guardsmen. Agents in the CIA are called, well, you're not supposed to call them anything. And all of these people are called Braver than Nick and me. Thanks so much for your service, and thanks for sending in the correction. Yetis, you look fantastic today. And we just want to have a special shout out to a few Yetis who have DMed us to say they and their whole families are traveling down to one of our live shows next year.

Starting point is 00:20:51 Amanda Lyons, we see you. We do see you. Legendary 30th birthday gift from your family for you. Laura, we are calling row 12 of the New York City show The Lions Den because the whole Lion's Family is going to be there. We're so excited to see you there. And to all the besties who bought tickets on the live tour, we can't wait to meet you in person. So grab a ticket now.

Starting point is 00:21:10 Links are in the episode description. Celebrate the wins, if you know. Yes. And before we go, congratulations to Stephanie and Mickey in Park Ridge, Illinois, who just had a new baby named Gracie. Great name may or may not have been in a Waymo. We don't know. We don't know, but congratulations, guys. Happy birthday to Mark Lenniville, who's turned in 74 in Lampy, Missouri.

Starting point is 00:21:37 bestie since the beginning. And happy 10th birthday to Open AI. I guess your 10th birthday present was a deal with Disney. Happy birthday to Dan Katz, who ironically also has two cats, so Katz plural is the appropriate name. And to Loredana Pepe from lovely San Mateo, California, happy birthday and good luck on the pickleball. And happy 24th birthday to Jack Diskin in Woodinville, Washington, who also just got a new job at Charles Schwab. And a happy birthday to Harvin Valbanani turning 32 years old down in Atlanta, Georgia. to Tuck Williamson in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, who's graduating with a master's degree in computer science and has been a remarkable stay-home dad of 17 years.

Starting point is 00:22:20 This is Jack, I own stock of Disney and Nick on stock of Lulamon. Dude, we've Aladdin saw Jasmine hooking up with Hercules. I mean, that'd be brutal. Hercules is huge, too. Like, what are you going to do about that?

The Best One Yet - 🐭 “WaltGPT” — Disney’s OpenAI deal. SpaceX’s $1 Trillion IPO. Savannah Bananas Interview. +Waymo backseat baby

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