The Best One Yet
💨 “Fart-coin” — Crypto’s Silk Road pardon. Neko’s $2B body-scanner. Video Games’ Spiderman mistake.
Fri, 24 Jan 2025
Trump pardoned the crypto founder of Silk Road… after launching his own Fartcoin. We’ll explain.Spotify’s CEO co-founded a body-scanning startup to save your life… and it just hit $2B.EA’s video game stock had its worst day in 17 years… because of 1 huge graphics mistake.Plus, the hot new Dry January trend is Cannabis Cocktails (replace ABV with THC).$EA $SPOT $BTCWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: The untold origin story of… 🎸 The Fender Stratocater: The Guitar That Invented Rock ‘N’ Roll.Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.“The Best Idea Yet”: The untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with — From the McDonald’s Happy Meal to Birkenstock’s sandal to Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers to Sriracha. New 45-minute episodes drop weekly.—-----------------------------------------------------Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the significance of Trump pardoning Silk Road's founder?
Chapter 2: How are 'fart coins' influencing the crypto market?
Then wellness and mental health took the stage in the 2000s and in the 20 aughts. But since the pandemic a couple of years ago, the health innovators are now shifting the focus to life extension. So NECO's preventative care, it's not about losing weight or finding psychological nirvana. No, it's really about extending life by finding issues as early as possible.
Because the new health trend is to try to live forever.
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For our third and final story before the weekend, shares of Electronic Arts, the video game company, just had their worst day in 17 years. EA's decline reveals a big mistake across the whole video game industry. Here it is. We don't care about your fancy 4K graphics. We don't care about Spider-Man spandex.
EA Sports.
Not in the game, apparently, Jack. No, it's not. No, it's not. The iconic video game developer behind Madden, The Sims, and Medal of Honor just had its worst day on the stock market since 2008. EA Sports, their stock fell 17% on Thursday. And Jack, what was the reason? They simply didn't sell as many games as they hoped in the fourth quarter.
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Chapter 3: What innovative technology does NECO offer for health?
It's like a series of huge blue and red squares that form something that kind of looks like a human being. It's pixelated. But today, the latest Spider-Man video game has insanely lifelike Spider-Man figures jumping around an insanely lifelike-looking New York City. The new Spider-Man video game looks like a high def 4K movie. It looks real.
And the reason is because studios like Electronic Arts have spent a ton of money upping the graphic fidelity of their games. But here's the plot twist, Yetis. It turns out gamers don't care about lifelike figures and they're not willing to pay for them. And the reason you don't care about Spider-Man's fancy spandex is our takeaway. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies in video games?
Kids don't want high definition. They just want to hang out. Yetis, the Times found also that 40 to 50 year old video game players really do care about real life graphics. And that small subset of video gamers are willing to pay 80 bucks a game to Electronic Arts to get it. But the majority of gamers, young gamers, the future of the industry...
They prefer playing games like Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, games that don't look realistic. Because less important than the graphics is that you can play online with friends. Video games are a virtual hangout. So EA Sports, they want you paying 80 bucks for lifelike graphics of FIFA football. Or you can play old school looking Fortnite with friends for free.
So the way Jack and I see it, EA should shift their investment from better graphics into better interactive gameplay. Or maybe they should have done a customer survey before investing so much money in fancy graphics. Feels like a survey could have saved them a lot of cash, Jack. Hello there, kids. Do you care about HD spandex? Because besties, kids, they don't want Hollywood graphics.
Kids just want to hang out. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us before the weekend? Trump's first crypto moves were to release the Silk Road criminal from prison and to launch the official Trump coin. Going forward, we hope he can choose smart coins over fart coins. For our second story, it's Neko. It's now a $1 billion company that scans your body to measure 38 different things.
Boomers did diets, millennials do wellness, but Gen Z... They want to live forever. And our third and final story. Electronic arts invested tons of money in high-graphic video games, but kids aren't paying for them. And we see it in Spider-Man's spandex. In video games, we don't want Hollywood graphics. We just want to hang out. But Yetis, this pod's not over yet.
Here's what else you need to know today. First, President Trump's executive order ended federal DEI programs, as well as a 1965 rule against discrimination in federal contractor hiring. But Costco and JPMorgan Chase are standing firm on their DEI initiatives. In fact, of the DEI pushback, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan said, bring them on.
And second, we just got the Oscar nominations and leading the pack, Amelia Perez, my mom's favorite from this year, with 13 numbs. Not leading the pack was Gladiator 2. I really wish I had gone that day to see Wicked instead.
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Chapter 4: How does NECO's body scanner differ from traditional health checks?
Yeah, it was way more popular. Oh, and Conan O'Brien, he's going to host the Oscars on March 2nd in LA.
It's going to be emotional given all the fire. It's just, it's probably going to be an incredible night. And finally, Target had a shockingly good fourth quarter. Way more foot traffic than analysts expected. Well, why did the beleaguered big box chain at Target do so well? Taylor Swift. Yeah. The T-Swift concert tour coffee table book could only be bought this holiday season at Target.
It was exclusive to Target. So Swifties targeted Target stores. Target benefited. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Yeti Cinziana Ursu from lovely Austin, Texas, who happens to have a fantastic birthday. Cinziana and Nick both have a January 22nd birthday. Yeah, we had the same birthday this week. Cinziana got curious.
How common is it that you have a birthday with that person right there? Well, I actually looked into it, Jack, because it led to the birthday paradox, a real probability theory that describes the likelihood of two people sharing a birthday within the same group. All right, so the likelihood that you and that random person have the same birthday is one out of 365.
But if there's 23 people in the room with you, chances are two of you have the same birthday. That's right. It only takes 23 people in a room to likely have the same birthday between two of them. That's wild. Wouldn't you think it needs more people in the room? You think it's counterintuitive.
I mean, basically, Jack, what you're saying is the next time you go to a big dinner, just ask everybody what their birthday is. What a convo starter. There's a good chance two of you have the same birthday. Yetis, that is the birthday paradox. And it also shows how bad humans are at intuitive probability. Happy birthday, Cinziana. Yeah, it is. You look fantastic today.
Jack, thank you for that epic Instagram story of all those incredible pictures together from a birthday. That was really, really cool.
The ones on the dock, they're doing the yoga, running across the street now.
Yeah, I posted like eight pics on my Instagram, tagging Nick in each one. It was really fun to look through the photos we have.
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Chapter 6: How is the gaming industry reacting to Electronic Arts' stock drop?
For our third and final story before the weekend, shares of Electronic Arts, the video game company, just had their worst day in 17 years. EA's decline reveals a big mistake across the whole video game industry. Here it is. We don't care about your fancy 4K graphics. We don't care about Spider-Man spandex.
EA Sports.
Not in the game, apparently, Jack. No, it's not. No, it's not. The iconic video game developer behind Madden, The Sims, and Medal of Honor just had its worst day on the stock market since 2008. EA Sports, their stock fell 17% on Thursday. And Jack, what was the reason? They simply didn't sell as many games as they hoped in the fourth quarter.
For example, EA's latest soccer game, which used to be called FIFA, missed expectations. Even worse was the role-playing game Dragon Age, which came up 50% short of sales this past holiday season. Not to drop the F word again, but electronic farts. The stock fell to a seven-year low on the news of the bad quarter.
But Yetis, Jack and I were fascinated about this story because electronic arts doing poorly presents a paradox. Because aren't we living in the golden age of video games? Yeah, Jack, what was that wild hero stat we shared with the Yetis about the video game industry?
The amount of time Americans spend playing video games is more than the amount of time we spend watching movies, watching TV, and listening to music, Combined. So you would think that the leading video game studio like Electronic Arts would be at an all-time high right now. But it's not. No. And the reason might be found in a recent New York Times article about the video game industry.
And here's how the Times described it. To understand the video game industry's current crisis, look closely at Spider-Man's spandex. Look closely, because every year, graphics in video games have gotten more and more lifelike. Yeah, they have. The New York Times showed a picture of the first Spider-Man game that came out on Atari in 1982. Jack, I'm looking at it now.
It's like a series of huge blue and red squares that form something that kind of looks like a human being. It's pixelated. But today, the latest Spider-Man video game has insanely lifelike Spider-Man figures jumping around an insanely lifelike-looking New York City. The new Spider-Man video game looks like a high def 4K movie. It looks real.
And the reason is because studios like Electronic Arts have spent a ton of money upping the graphic fidelity of their games. But here's the plot twist, Yetis. It turns out gamers don't care about lifelike figures and they're not willing to pay for them. And the reason you don't care about Spider-Man's fancy spandex is our takeaway. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies in video games?
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