This is Nick, this is Chad.
It's Wednesday, so we chicked Wednesday, February 25th, and today's part is the best one you have this is a table.
“The top three pop business new stories you need to know today.”
Here that sound is that the bats is that the black card of white mole taco I had last night that was now my love line. Is somebody cracking into a shinner box? Yeah, come here. Because we just landed in Austin, baby, we got our live tea boys show later tonight. To the next three episodes of this show are going to be a little more voice trist than usual.
Yeah, they will, they will.
First, because I'm in the room with Nick right now, it's just great.
It's a beautiful thing. Tonight, Wednesday night, we're recording the show live Thursday morning, that live shows come into this podcast. And Friday morning, we have a guest here. And all of it's slathered with barbecue sauce and stets and hats, baby jack, three fantastic stories for today. Tea boy, what's going on?
For our first story. Mexican drug cartels have been all over the news this week. So why are drug lords so hard to stop? Well, it's because they've run their businesses. Like a Fortune 500 company for our second story.
The newest product from Crocs isn't a shoe. It's a shoe. True. A Crocs micro drama because there are toxic relationships. And then there's toxic competition.
And our third and final story is the sub-stack sell-off. A viral doomsday essay about AI destroying the economy. Besties. This wasn't fear mongering. This is action mongering.
And that is actually good. But yet it's before we hit that wonderful Mexican story. And what it makes a story is love. The mix it is bigger in Texas. Another humongous blizzard hit the northeast.
The second one of the year.
Jack Providence just got 30 inches apart. Broadway in New York had to cancel their shows for a second. Right. Okay, even the news stopped. Literally.
The Boston Globe didn't print for the first time in their 153 years history. Honestly, then aflact. That's pathetic. Now, the only one still working the last two days in the northeast was New York City food delivery bikers.
Jack heroes, they don't wear capes. They work loves built into the handlebars. But yet he's the biggest winner of the 2026 February blizzard. The only winner. A self-driving snowblower.
True story. It's a robo snowblower. It's a plowbock. It's a cyber cab for clear and snow robo snow waymo. This new hardware is made by a company called Yarbo.
It costs $5,000. And it's 230 pounds. I mean, this puppy can handle 12 inches of snow at a time. And then, here's the key. It recharges itself.
See, it turned it on. It blows the snow out of your driveway. And when the battery's low, it returns to its charging station in your garage. And it pops back out to finish the job a few hours later, while you're roast and marshmallow is by the fire.
So here's the deal. Yarbo's having its viral moment right now. Because one owner was sitting inside by the fire watching TV while the robot was eating up all the snow.
“Jack, can you without the whiteboard to do some snow math for us?”
I mean, it's expensive. Yeah, I paid to plow my driveway. Sorry, dad. I know you think I'm soft. I've had to pay for ten plus so far this year.
They're 50 bucks each. So that's $500 a year. You'd save. It take 10 winters to pay for itself. So add it all up.
And it would take 10 winters for this robo snow blower to pay for itself. In other words, you don't do this because it's economically viable. You do this for the neighborhood flex. And yes, Yarbo has a robo lawn mower and robo leaf blower and robo air air. But the fastest way to get your neighbors to hate your is to get a new $5,000 robo snow blower.
What's that going to sound like, Jack? When you're done, you want to come inside of you, sit by the fire. I got six floors waiting for you. Jack, let's get out three stores. 15 years before this song, two boys from the northeast met in the dark.
The hat and I get across the cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is an orange. Jack, yeah, that's it. I don't even think they need to practice. 50% that's a fat tip.
Team boys city on your atch list. If you know you know 'cause we're rich ago, we can't wait no more, so just start to show you. Start the show. Start the show.
First, a quick word from our sponsor.
For our first story, it's the sub-stack sell-off. A viral essay written from the future reveals how AI has decimated the economy in a fully science fictiony way. Because sometimes it takes science fiction to change real life. All right, Jack, we're going to tell this story.
“We're going to go like literary review style, right?”
So let's summarize all the efforts people have made to try to scare us into action on artificial intelligence. Okay, let's start three years ago, 2023. An open letter from 33,000 scientists, is demanding a pause on AI because AI is like a nuclear bomb.
Well, that didn't work. All right, so let's go back last year, 2025. Anthropics CEO said that half of all entry-level white collar jobs will be soon wiped out. Okay, so neither of those scarier alarm bells registered with policymakers.
How would you describe our government's AI policy jack to have no AI policy? Exactly.
To get out of the way of the tech company.
Which leads to 26 are new approach.
What is it? Scaring people into action. The painting of picture of complete economic doom. Yeah. Or the of a Jerry Brookheimer action.
Oh, boy. Which leads to Wall Street's serene research, the news of the week. It was an article published on Sunday, called the 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis.
Besties. This is a fictional article written after AI has destroyed the stock market. The economy and society two years from now. This viral article is all Wall Street is talking about. And it's all Wall Street is selling about two.
So Jack and I read all 4,000 and 40 words of this fiction that felt like nonfiction.
“It felt like Orson Wells is, what's it called, Nick?”
War of the world. Yeah. It's like, is this real? Because I'm paying my pay. I thought this was the plot of Avengers and game.
But applied to the economy. All right. So this blog post posted on Substack. It's written as if it's June 2028. Right.
The S&P 500 at the time of the writing is down 38% and the unemployment rate has spiked to 10%. But in the article, the downfall actually begins in the moment we are living in today, early 2026. The article describes Claude Code and Open AI's codex
making software that replaces software companies. Exactly. And that triggers a negative feedback loop of replacing jobs with AI. And there just is no bottom to this thing.
It actually describes big chunks of our economy as just being friction. Yeah. Like the AI is going to eliminate humans talking to other humans. You're ordered to the barista.
“That's apparently a problem that's going to go away with AI”
maristas. So the 4,000 word essay shows AI agents doing all of our commerce in this economy. And the result is that one industry of white collar workers after another is just decimated.
Now, we should point out this essay shows that some parts of AI are pretty good for the consumer. Yeah. In this article, everyone has their own AI agent who ruthlessly negotiate prices with the hotel
on your behalf. And AI agent who cancels the subscriptions
from your subscription that you never used.
And AI agent that knows you so well, they book your own honeymoon for you and save you like $5,000 on that cobbo trip. Hey, it's your activity. Thanks for the trip to cobbo.
Much appreciated. In the article, DoorDash and Uber Eats are specifically referenced. They get disrupted by AI because somebody vibe coded a food delivery clone. That's the same as Uber Eats.
But gives 95% of the revenue to the drivers. But then DoorDash and Uber Eats have to lay off all their workers
“and no one can afford food delivery anymore.”
A vibe coded AI app replaces a 20,000 person tickle. And that's not all. A GPU cluster in North Dakota replaces 10,000 kale colored workers on Madison Avenue. And then to save their master's money,
all the AI agents cut out the credit card companies completely by doing commerce through stablecoins. In this AI future, Visa, MX, Mastercard, boom, they're all gone. But these AI agents Nick, they might be doing great work for their masters, but they don't drink coffee.
They don't buy furniture. They don't go on vacations. They don't spend.
The sci-fi essay basically paints a picture
where AI is doing all the work. Humans have no income and the ripple effects. They're more like waves. The current crisis in 20, 28 in the article is the mortgage market. Oh, yeah.
That's the 20, 28 time frame they're talking about. Like white color workers are tapping their 401k's just to pay for the mortgages for their houses. It's that bad. It's a really scary article.
And it finishes with occupied silken valley being a thing. Yeah. Like workers blocking the entrance to anthropic, open AI headquarters because nobody's happy about the situation. It's a full-on national crisis cost by AI.
And it feels like it's actually happening when you read it. We said AI has a branding problem. This is that, but with Hollywood level special effects. We've known AI is going to hurt some software companies, but this shows AI hurting every company.
I mean, you can't even order a brewery. Well, helping them by boosting their profits, hurting them by wiping out their work. Again, a delivery burrito free world. So Jack, what's to take away for our buddies war? Wondering about this AI sci-fi essay.
This isn't fear-mongering. It's action-mongering. And that's a good thing. Yet, there's one sentence from this essay that's stuck with us. Here it is.
Each company's individual response was rational. The collective result, though, was catastrophic. That is the textbook definition of a market failure in econ 101. Classic. And what needs to happen is that the government needs to intervene.
You see, Republicans, Democrats, and independence all overwhelmingly fear AI, but the White House fears that China is beating the United States in AI. Yes, it would be bad if China wins the AI race. But this essay shows it would also be very bad, or it could be at least, if we win, but have no policy to control it.
So the essay describes some solutions, like a transition economy act, where your tax AI to pay the workers who were displaced by it. It also shares a proposed shared AI prosperity act, which treats AI like the Saudis treat oil, a source of our national income.
It ends with hope.
You know, right now it is not 2028. It is 2026. All these bad things haven't happened.
“Yeah, they have to be 500 dead at all time high.”
It's not down 38%. So what should we do?
First, agree on the problem, and then act while we're still in a position of strength.
As the sometimes it takes superhero Avengers level fiction to cause real-world change, not fear-mongering. It's action-mongering. Four-hour second story. A lot different than our first story by the way.
Crocs. Crocs has a new strategy to save their slow and shoe sales. It's a crocs. Micro-drama. Crocs that shoe company launched a mini-so-proper.
So we need to talk about toxic competition. All right, Jack. I'm checking the app store right now. Six of the top 200 apps. Oh, they are spicy, but they got nothing to do with food.
They're micro-drama apps. Yep. Six of the top 200 in the app store.
Basically, mini soap operas that make days of our lives look like they deserve an offer.
And then, Amy, we covered this innovative type of streaming network back in the fall. The micro-drama moment. It's an app you download. That's free. They're mostly Chinese owned.
And micro-drama is a short form vertical shows, but split up into 52 one-minute long episodes. It's basically airport fantasy novel meets TikTok algorithm. Unfortunately, Jack cut out four minutes of his day to watch one for us. What was it called again? I had a baby with you.
I had a baby with you to classic instant classic. What's the plot again? Basically, Wil the heroin's husband's brother have twins with their mom's step-uncle on this spring-bring vacation. But it turns out he's a trillion-air and she's a mermaid. And actually, they've both been sleeping with the same coworker.
The format? Yeah. It's predictable. Uh-huh. It's a replicable format.
Sealist actors deal with scripts, but here's the key. Their A level business model is making Hollywood jealous.
“Because to keep watching the micro-drama, you must make a micro payment.”
99 cents to watch that final episode and find out who the father is. Spoiler. It's not the mermaid. But there is big money as a result in the micro-drama. You're not going to believe this.
But revenues of micro-dramas, which are in six of the top 200 apps, rose 35% last year to $26 billion.
Jack, could you sprinkle on some context for us, please? We humans are spending more money on micro-dramas than we spend on Spotify. Sit down, stand up and wait. Who's the father again? This is a huge and booming media industry.
But besties used with Jack and I find fascinating. The biggest development in this micro-drama movement is that brands have now entered the Jack. Starting with Crocs. Yep.
The adorable $5 billion shoe business has created their own Racy micro-drama. I feel like we need a record scratch sound effect. It's called Charmed To Meet You. Yeah, great name. A micro-drama work clogs with a co-star.
Now this Crocs micro-drama is based on the true story of a Crocs employee. Lexi. She single and she sees her neighbors' Crocs shoes outside his door. But his Crocs have no gibbets. So one at a time, she mysteriously begins planting her gibbets into his shoes until he
finds out a flirty dialogue ensues over the next five episodes two minutes long. Each on real shorts the Chinese micro-drama app. Well, why is Crocs doing this lately? Their business has had more holes than their shoes. That's right.
Crocs revenue shrank in 2025 for the first time in 10 years. Maybe two minutes of sexual attention can revive sales crowd. But Besties Crocs is not the only one. Are they Jack? JC Penny launched a Spanish mini micro-drama with telomundo.
Dr. Engamble did a 55 episode rom-com micro-drama, starring their native deodorant. Ivan, how you do that, scriptjack. This is all part of a bigger trend that we saw after the success of the Barbie movie. Exactly, Doug.
We saw with Mattel. Brands are bringing Hollywood in-house. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies?
“Are you trying to get like, "Saltry and Steamie" right now?”
Over in the micro-drama. There are toxic relationships, but there's also toxic competition. Yet, you know about the toxic relationship. It's when you stay in the relationship.
Even though you know you should. Well, toxic competition is the same idea. Getting customers to stay with your product against their best interests. Like, do we really think micro-dramas are such good content? They deserve more willingness to pay than Spotify.
I certainly don't. They should be smarter than Spotify. It looks like they're simply designed in a way that you just can't stop watching. Now, Racy content every episode. Teas, but don't satisfy and have cliffhangers every minute that you got to pay for.
Now, just to explain this further, positive competition is what you're used to. It's when one car company tries to make the best car possible. In that case, consumers were one podcast trying to make a podcast better than the other podcast. That's positive competition.
Toxic competition isn't focusing on making the best product. It's focused on making the most addictive product. That maximizes your time to spend a lot like TikTok and Instagram. Oh, like, bestie is no judgment here.
Micro-dramas aren't bad,
but they can credit their success on what we call the toxic competition.
“Like, a toxic relationship, you stay in a micro-drama for way longer than you want to.”
You know who you are, you know who you're. And more than you know you should. Now, a quick word from our sponsor.
For our third and final story,
the killing of a Mexican cartel leader has engulfed parts of Mexico and violence. It also points the spotlight on the business of Narcos. Yes, it does. And we just read a book all about the subject.
So here's our book report. It's like the Fortune 500 of Narcos. But bestie is to sprinkle on some context. Just two weeks until spring break. But where to via the Mexico?
It's looking less like a party zone. More like a war zone. Americans are actually supposed to shelter in place right now. And the reason? Because an Amizio El Menteo Aseguada set of Antes
was killed on Sunday in a Mexican military operation. This man was both America's most wanted in Mexico. Because he was the head of the Halisco New Generation cartel. Basically, US intelligence helped Mexico with the attack. But gang members have staged six counterattacks since
killing at least 25 Mexican soldiers. That's the news. Now, how they tracked this guy down. They didn't follow money or drugs. They followed his lover.
Yeah, that's the wild plot twist. They found this drug lord by tracking his girlfriend to a hideout house. US had the intel Mexico made the attack. But besties.
What you're going to find fascinating is that this news makes this think of something we've been waiting to discuss for a while now. We're students of business. Yes, we are. And we've been curious about the business of elicit drug cartels.
Basically, cocaine and corporate.
So, over the holidays, I read a book written by former FBI undercover agent named Martin Suarez. Jack has been telling me about this, like, behind the scenes before the show starts. My new booklet.
Okay, the books called Inside the Cartel. How an undercover FBI agent smuggled cocaine, laundered cash, and dismantled a Colombian narco. Now, we should clarify. The Colombian cartel that this book is about is from the 80s 90s.
Not exactly the same as Mexico's cartels. However, what this undercover agent revealed was wild and still relevant today, because basically different countries different era, but same business model. The author is Martin Suarez.
He's, it's his memoir. He spent time in Puerto Rico and Miami working undercover for the FBI. And he lived a double life for years, Martin, the loving father husband and son. But he was also many, the opposite person.
A man working for the Medi in Cartel. He smuggled, sold, smurfed, and laundered. Now, those are the four verbs you got to keep in mind for running a drug business. And yes, I said, smurf.
And we're going to get into that in sex.
“So, Jack, could you please define each of these key terms?”
Well, everyone knows what smuggling is, but many. This is what he did one time. He brought a boat into the Caribbean Sea as an airplane dropped barrels of drugs into the water. And he had to go fetch all those barrels.
It was back breaking work. That's how the drugs got into the country. But what is smurfing? Because I thought you made up that term. Well, after the drugs get sold, and you have tons and tons of money,
you need to divide the cash into piles just under $10,000, and deposit them to different banks. So none of those deposits get reported. Yeah, the smuggling doesn't go anywhere unless you get the smurfing down. And all of it is very dangerous.
Smuggling and selling drugs requires evading the coast card. Yeah. The DEA sharks. You have to evade the real physical sharks that's smurfing. The other drug dealers know you have a lot of cash in the back of your trunk,
so they could attack you. But most dangerous of all is just being undercover in the first place. Reading this book, you see undercover agents are the epitome of bravery. Yep. Martin's work led to 50 drug members getting busted by the FBI.
But this led to Jackson Mike key questionnaire. Why is it so hard to crush the cartels? Well, they operate like corporations. Efficient ones with lawyers. Fortune 500 ones.
They are vertically integrated supply chains. They have a franchise model of local gangs. They have diversified portfolios of drugs gambling and farming. And instead of lobbying, they just get in the pockets of some local politicians. Yeah, they dish out free hamburgers.
Even branding. Like think about those drug gang tattoos you've seen. Brand equity. Exactly. The definition.
I thought for this business podcast, we were most interested in the laundering. We're not romanticizing it. We're just curious. How do you turn dirty money clean?
Out of the drug cartels do it for so long and get away with that.
“So, Jack, what's the day going for all our buddies named Marty Bird?”
The most important person in a drug cartel is the guy who went to business school and wears a suit.
Now, yeah, he's the reach of the US government. It is wide. The government can stop and seize international wires to cartels anytime. To prevent that. The Colombian cartel in this book got into the cigarette business.
Yeah, wild true story. The proceeds of the drug sales would be used to buy legitimate cigarettes sales from major tobacco companies. The tobacco company would send the cigarettes to Columbia to the cartel who would then sell them legitimately. And that's how they made money. So, the business model here.
The cartel sends illegal cocaine to the United States and eventually receives legal cigarettes in return to sell for cash. It's like a three-part business to evade law enforcement.
It's like throwing money in the laundry.
It gets clean, laundry is devised the scheme to ensure that three million-dollar wires don't get noticed by the US Treasury. They make what's starting to look clean. Drug cartels. Whether in Mexico, Colombia, or New Mexico, or in Canada, they must have a front. And that front is the money laundering.
It's critical to the drug business.
And surprisingly, they often wear suits. Jack, could you all whip up the takeaways for us for Saviche Wednesday? It was the sub-stack sell-off. A doomsday essay fictionalized how AI could decimate the economy. It wasn't fear-mongering, though, this was action-mongering. For our second story, Crox launched a micro-drama highlighting Hollywood's newest media format.
It's packaged for maximum engagement and time spent just like TikTok. This is toxic competition. And our third and final story is Martin Suarez. His memoir revealed the business of drug cartels. The most important part, the laundering, the guy, was wearing the suit.
But besties, this pot's not over yet.
“Here's what else you need to know today.”
First, a final winner of the Malon Olympics fashion, specifically Montclair. The Puffy Vest Bram sounds French, but it's based in Malon. And they just announced sales rose again and so did Montclair stock. It's part of the broader ski-style search. Yeah, despite global warming, everyone's into winterwear, especially Tom Wandskin.
Second, so much going on in AI, here's the run down. Oh, we got to get more. First, Zuckerberg announced a huge deal with AMD, sending AMD stock up about 11%. Yeah, Zucker's meta is using Nvidia's rival for AI chips,
signing a $100 billion deal and even buying AMD stock.
Also, anthropic is underheat from the Department of Defense. Major beef with the Pentagon. Yeah, the Defense Secretary says anthropic must drop all guard rails around how the army can use AI. Or else they'll use grock instead. And finally, the vintage tech trend that we told you about just hit a whole new level.
Google searches for iPods are booming and they're coming from Gen Z. Did you realize the iPod was made until 2022? I had no idea to be doing this.
“I thought they were done like a decade ago.”
Yeah, barely in a roundabout. So the second-hand iPods are becoming a hot item. Check your parents' attic because you probably have an iPod that's probably worth a lot of money. And you can resell that thing on eBay if like a grand quickly. Now time for the best fact yet.
This one's set in by legendary Yeti David Lees who shot us an email. So we created some controversy by accident and Monday show when we talked about ice cream. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we were disin' about rum-raising ice cream and how we said they shouldn't go together. Kind of like the ice cream business.
Yeah, David's a huge rum-raising fan. He's a Wegman's rum-raising fan. I should point out. And it turns out rum-raising isn't some arbitrary American abomination. He's not like pineapple on pizza.
Basically, rum-raising ice cream has its origins in Italian history. The first rum-raising combo was actually in Sicily. Where they soaked raisins in rum and then mixed that into vanilla gelada. Ben Liseimo, the first reference in the United States, it was in an Oklahoma newspaper.
“Rum-raising, a flavored ice cream entirely new.”
In 1932, oh, and according to recent Instacart data, the flavor rum-raising is way more popular than you realize. It's number one in Florida and Georgia when it comes to ice cream.
Just always doing the Florida thing.
Always doing the rum. Yeah, it is, you're looking fantastic right now. Jack, you are glowing. And we're not even in here and make up yet, man. So, yeah, it is. If you didn't get tickets to tonight's show, because we did sell out.
You could maybe meet us at the after party. That's right. We're doing our live show at the State Theatre in Austin, but the after party is right down the street. And Maggie Mays.
We'll be there around 10 o'clock. We'll hang out until Nick gets too tired and has to go to bed. So, besties, we will see you at the live show tonight. In the rest of ya. See you at the after night, I get to tuck Nick into bed.
And before we go, a happy birthday to legendary Eddie Athena Morris from Alexandria, Virginia. She turned her mom into a besties well. Happy birthday to now, deed suit, the golfer bears fan and psychiatrist to the stars in Grand Island New England.
Check that. Grand Island Nebraska. In other rounds in Nebraska, but I'll take a check. Morgan Steyer is a food scientist at Craft Hines, who just engineered the year 26, her birthday.
Do what you should get in Chicago. Happy 11th birthday to William Slade in Geneva, Illinois. And Hudson Harris gets some lobster for your ninth birthday up in Kenneth Bunk. And happy birthday to Derek Burlsky and Denver Colorado. And Jenny Cornell over at Austin is coming to our live show tonight
and celebrating the best birthday. And finally a big shout out to Ross Alexander and the crew latches for the epic Austin recommendation. Thank you guys. Went to Swartay last night.
Fantastic. This is Jack Owens, duck of Crocs. Nick and I both own stock of Spotify and Apple as well as ETFs at the S&P 500.
