The Best One Yet
🥔 “Surge Potato Pricing” — Instacart’s personalized pricing. Utah’s for-profit football. Australia’s teen insta-ban. +In-N-Out’s 67.
11 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Nick. This is Jack. It's Thursday, the new Friday, December 11th, and today's pod is the best one yet. This is a T-Boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. Yetis, yesterday, Jerry Powell of the Fed gave us the interest rate cut we all asked for for Christmas. Although our central bank said it only plans one additional cut next year for all of 2026.
Come on, Jerry, we need a Hanukkah gift too, man. If you want mortgage rates to come down, it was mixed news yesterday. Well, stocks surprisingly went up and this pod is our best one yet. Jack, three stories for today's T-boy. What do we got on the show? For our first story, Instacart got caught doing personalized pricing. Real thing.
Different prices for different customers at the same grocery store. Basties, are you paying $1 for bananas, but your buddy is getting charged $2? We have an explanation for it. Mm-hmm. For our second story. For the first time ever, a big university sold a piece of its athletic department to Wall Street investors. The University of Utah Utes Athletics is officially a for-profit corporation.
College sports is the new pro sports. And our third and final story. Yesterday, Australia became the first country to ban social media for kids under 16. Is Instagram the new cigarette? We'll dive in T-Boy style. Speaking of banning, Nick, before we hit those wonderful three stories. What a mix of stories for the new Friday. In-N-Out Burger has banned the number 67 at all of its restaurants.
True story, Eddies. We'll explain. lane. Six, seven. Six, seven. Two consecutive numbers that Gen Z has turned into secret code. What's it mean?
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Chapter 2: What is personalized pricing and how does it work on Instacart?
We don't really know. And you know what? Neither do they either. And whatever Urban Dictionary says, that's not right either. Nobody really knows. But the new viral trend is to gather at an In-N-Out burger and wait for order number 67 to be announced. And when order number 67 is announced, the kids go crazy. Push and play. Let's hit the tape.
In-N-Out doesn't want their restaurants becoming mosh pits. Whatever that was. So now they're skipping order 67. 67 has been 86ed. But it's not the only business in history that has banned a particular number, is it, Nick? That's right, Jack. For years, Apple's weather app wouldn't show you the number 69. It was really bizarre. We covered it on this pod. True.
They would skip straight from 68 to 70. They'd never show 69. If you live down in Tampa, never turn 69 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, tech companies have also dropped the number nine in a case of roundup marketing. Yeah, there was never an iPhone 9 or a Windows 9 operating system, in fact. Apple and Microsoft skipped straight from version 8 to version 10 to signal faster innovation.
Sorry, besties, if you own an iPhone 9 Max Plus, that's not a real thing. It's basically a Folkley, but an iPhone. But Jack, we can't forget about the earliest number banned of all, the elevator. Your building skipped the 13th floor. Or just like airlines skip the 13th row. Except in East Asia, Nick, 13's not unlucky. The number four is unlucky.
So, besties, if you found another number that's banned in business, but we didn't mention here, drop it in the comments. Or don't drop it, because we don't want an unlucky result from, like, the Spotify algos. In the meantime, Jack, let's hit our six, seven stories.
Oh, my God! 15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in a dorm. They had an idea to cause 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 tip. T-Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, cause we ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show.
For our first story, Instacart just got caught using AI to charge different prices for different people, a.k.a. personalized pricing. How much does a dozen eggs cost on Instacart? Well, that depends on what their AI thinks of you. Are you an investment banker or an intern? You're going to pay different for those eggs. Yeah. Yetis, let's just kick it off.
T-boy style bombshell headline from Consumer Reports published this week. It's like Wall Street Journal meets page six of the New York Post. Here's the headline. Instacart's AI-enabled pricing experiments may be inflating your grocery bill. Get this, nine reporters at Consumer Reports and a nonprofit news organization and a think tank outed Instacart.
With this investigation, do grocery prices change depending on who's using the app? Am I getting charged $5 for Doritos, but my buddy Timmy's getting charged $6? Maybe, Nick. Maybe. Because in this investigation, Consumer Reports got 437 volunteers and asked them to buy the same 20 things on Instacart. at the same time from the same grocery store.
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Chapter 3: How is AI influencing pricing strategies in grocery shopping?
Yeti's luck. We're all guilty of it. We all use social media too much and nobody's debating that. Unless you have the impulse control of that toddler who passed the marshmallow test. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Then you wish you were on Instagram less. Still, this headline is going to shock you.
A Gallup poll published on Tuesday found that 20% of American teens are on social media, and I quote, almost constantly. Besties cigarettes are chemically addictive. Social media apps are psychologically addictive. Most countries ban cigarettes for kids, but only one country bans social media for kids. Australia. Here's the news.
Effective yesterday, Aussies under 16 years old are forbidden from using social media apps. Now, all Australia's schools already ban phones. True. But now those phones are banned from having social media apps on them. Besties, add it all up, and we're calling this the Kangaroo TikTok Kid Block. It's a good one. It rolls off the tongue.
And the news, but the news raises a bunch of questions you're probably asking. Mainly, Jack, how are the Aussies going to enforce this? With their eSafety Commission. A real thing in Australia that decides what apps are considered social media and therefore are banned for teens. So let's whip up the whiteboard here.
Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X, YouTube, and Kik. That's what's currently banned in Australia. But Roblox and YouTube Kids, those are not banned for teens, at least not now. The list will change in the future. Which leads to the next question, Jack. Who's checking the IDs to get into these apps? The law in Australia requires the apps themselves to verify IDs.
And they can verify in various ways, not just with a government ID. It basically zucks the bouncer here. Just like that bar in your hometown, the apps face big fines if they're caught allowing underage people inside. Now, can kids view tweets or watch videos on YouTube when they're not logged in? The answer, interestingly... Yes, they can. That's right.
The non-logged-in experiences are actually okay for kids in Australia. Because it's only once you log into a social media app that the algorithms begin to addict you. Exactly. After you input your username and password, that's when you're hit with the endless scrolling, the suggested videos, the push notifications, and the DMs from the creepy dudes.
So will other countries follow Australia's precedent? It depends. The whole world is watching Australia to see how this social media teen ban works out. Or as we call it, the kangaroo TikTok kid block. If you're a 12-year-old and you try getting on YouTube right now, you will get punched by a kangaroo. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies down under in Australia?
In America, we don't have regulation. We have whataboutism. Yetis, you know what critics of this law in Australia are asking? They're asking, what about the VPNs? Yeah, kids can get around a social media ban by tricking the apps into thinking that they're logged in from somewhere else. And Jack, what about the app stores?
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