The Best One Yet
☂️ “Make it Rainnn” — Rainmaker’s rain startup. Dick’s Foot Locker palace. UnitedHealth’s worst month ever.
Fri, 16 May 2025
TBOY Live Show Tickets to Chicago on sale NOW: https://www.axs.com/events/949346/the-best-one-yet-podcast-ticketsFoot Locker surged 80% on deal with Dick’s… but the wilder story is Dick’s sports palaces.Rainmaker got $30M to play God and make it rain (literally)... We got the history of human-made rain.UnitedHealth just had its worst month ever… And now it’s made every health stock sick.Plus, why did Rihanna put caviar on chicken?... Because caviar is cheaper than ever.$FL $DKS $UNHWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: The untold origin story of… Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.About Us: The daily pop-biz news show making today’s top stories your business. Formerly known as Robinhood Snacks, TBOY Lite is hosted by Jack Crivici-Kramer & Nick Martell.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts NEWSLETTER:https://tboypod.com/newsletter SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Our 2nd show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly.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 are today's top business news stories?
This is Jack. It's Friday, the real Friday, May 16th. 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.
Hey, you know what's not a T-Boy? Someone at the T-Boy studio spilled lasagna on my pants. That tomato sauce doesn't come out easy, dude. No, it does not. And it may have been me. Jack, three stories for today's show. What do we got on the pod?
For our first story, Dick's Sporting Goods is acquiring Foot Locker for over $2 billion. But the real story here is the Palace of Sports. For our second story, UnitedHealthcare is the biggest health insurer company. Check. The biggest employer of doctors. Double check. And the biggest healthcare stock in America. And yet, in the last month, it's fallen 50% on a wild investigation.
And our third and final story, we're going to make it rain. Make it rain! Rainmakers actually doing that, both literally and figuratively. So we are looking at this cloud seeding startup because a cloud is a terrible thing to waste. But Yetis, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. What a mix of stories before the weekend. It's Friday, the real Friday.
So Jack and I want to tell you about a new trend you may see this weekend. Caveat. Caveat. Now, first of all, Who decided I'm going to eat fish eggs? Well, Jack, that person would be proud because caviar is now being served on everything. That's the news. The new trend Nick and I are seeing is what we're calling caviar contrast.
Caviar, the most expensive topping there is, is being served on the cheapest food there is. We're talking fish eggs on fast food. We're talking salmon roe on Snickers bars. That's why Rihanna posted a video of her eating caviar on her chicken nuggets. Hailey Bieber put caviar on her In-N-Out burger. Jack, there's a restaurant down the street called Sorrel. They're putting caviar on cheesecake.
That last one makes sense, actually. Yeah, that one actually kind of works. Why is caviar popping off? Because caviar is actually cheaper than it's ever been. Fish eggs are defying inflation. And it all began back Caviar companies couldn't sell to restaurants because of the lockdown. So they dropped their prices and sold to people directly, no restaurant markup. Plus, now China's selling caviar.
Shocker, made in China caviar is half the price. Which is why your buddy Timmy is now bumping caviar over at brunch. So yetis, look out for the caviar contrast craze. Jack, is that a caviar on your Kit Kat bar? No, but caviar is now served at Costco for 50 bucks an ounce.
Costco caviar deal over in aisle six. That's Kirkland Caviar.
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Chapter 2: Why is Foot Locker's stock surging?
Like we said, this isn't a house of sport. This is a palace of sports. But they're also expensive. The cost to build one of these house of sport megastores is $15 million more than a typical dick sporting goods.
You know how much fuel those Zambonis use, by the way?
So yet he's added it all up, and Jack and I got to ask, is splurging on these sports cathedrals a good investment? My instinct is probably not.
But our takeaway is so yes.
Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Dick's? To quote Floyd Mayweather, scared money don't make money. Scared money don't make money. Yeti's Lauren Hobart is the Dick's CEO. And honestly, we think she deserves a gold medal. Because in the age of online shopping... Who would build a physical store three times bigger than all your other physical stores? Not just that, Jack.
She built 21 of these stores. There are enough soccer fields now to host the World Cup at Dick's. And in this economy, who's spending a total of $315 million on souped-up sports stores? But get this, besties. Despite costing $15 million more to build each one of them, these stores pay for themselves. In fact, they pay for themselves in the first year.
According to the Wall Street Journal, these Dick's House of Sports bring in $21 million in extra revenue, leaving $6 million in extra profits per store. That's right. Each House of Sports brings in double the revenue of a regular Dick's, making them positive ROI in one year. Lauren and the Dick's team took a huge risk building out these Olympic-sized venues.
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Chapter 3: What makes Dick's House of Sport unique?
Well, Dick's got an ROI because scared money don't make money. For our second story, the biggest health insurer in America is dealing with a murder, a resignation, and now an investigation for fraud. It's not just UnitedHealthcare. No, it's not. All healthcare stocks are sick right now. Jack, I got a disease, and the only prescription is less cowbell? I think so. Is that how that goes?
We have never seen a blue chip company fall so hard so fast as UnitedHealthcare. First, their insurance CEO was murdered by 27-year-old Luigi Mangione. Then last month, the stock fell 22% in one day after it said it will not grow this year. Okay, and then this week, their CEO resigned, citing vague, awkward personal reasons. And then yesterday, the stock fell another 11% on the worst headline yet.
This is bad. A criminal investigation. Hey, Hulu, when are we getting the six-part series on the fall of UnitedHealth? Seriously, because according to the Wall Street Journal, the Department of Justice is investigating UnitedHealthcare for alleged Medicare fraud. Rip it off the U.S. taxpayers. Yeti, here's the allegation which UnitedHealthcare denies.
When UnitedHealthcare bills Medicare for treatments it provides to seniors, it exaggerates. Yeah, like United would say the patient had the flu when they really had a cold in order to get more money off that patient. If you twisted your ankle, UnitedHealthcare would probably say you broke your ankle. Yeah, what's that thing on your thigh? Ah!
United Healthcare thinks that's a pretty big thing on your thigh. Now, if this translates to criminal fraud charges because they like systemically over-diagnose, that could mean billions of losses or settlements for United Healthcare. Also, Jack, on top of that, isn't Congress trying to cut spending on Medicaid? The latest draft of the bill suggests it is, Nick.
Which would trickle down to United Healthcare's revenues. So what we're saying is it's a crisis at United Healthcare. Two top executives are gone from those awful headlines we mentioned above. And I'm sorry, Dr. Jack, can we please pause the pod for a second and just look at how huge UnitedHealthcare is? It's the biggest health insurance company in America with 49 million insured patients.
United treats one out of six adults in America. It's also the biggest employer of doctors. They got 130,000 doctors and clinicians on the payroll. Including Dr. Doolittle, who, yeah, can talk to animals. Besties, the value of UnitedHealthcare has fallen in half in one month. It used to be the most valuable company in all of healthcare. Now, they're probably getting kicked out of the Dow.
Forget Hulu making a documentary. We're definitely getting a podcast series on this, Jack.
And if it does well, it'll get greenlit to a Hulu documentary. Exactly. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at UnitedHealth? Hope you've stayed away from healthcare stocks because everyone's sick. Yetis, the S&P 500 has doubled in the past five years, but healthcare stocks, they're only up a quarter as much.
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Chapter 4: What is the current state of UnitedHealth's stock?
Literally. Literally.
Because business models are like water. You got to let them flow. Now, yetis, Jack and I would like to introduce you to a young man named Augustus Dorico. This guy's definitely going to heaven. Because he may be the most religiously trained human being we have ever heard of. He studied under a Catholic priest, a Jewish Orthodox rabbi, a Sunni imam, and a Buddhist monk.
This guy isn't just close to God. He may think he is God because his startup controls the weather. It's called Rainmaker. Rainmaker. They use cloud seeding technology that sounds very exciting because they fly a drone up into a cloud and cause that cloud to rain. Yeah, and Jack and I should sprinkle on some context here. Some clouds don't rain. And that's a shame if you really need it to rain.
Because also clouds, they get in the way of the sun. So if you're going to be there, you may as well rain a little bit. Agreed. So cloud seeding basically sprinkles chemicals right up in those clouds to condense the moisture. And that causes water in the cloud to become so heavy that it falls out of the cloud as rain or snow. And this founder, Augustus Dorico, he was actually a Thiel fellow.
So he was paid a hundred grand by the billionaire, Peter Thiel, to drop out of college and get into entrepreneurship. And this is the news. Rainmaker has now raised over $30 million. So they're making it rain constantly. Both ways. This is a deluge on-demand startup. But get this, Yetis. Rainmaking, like kind of playing God, is actually one of the oldest technologies we cover on the show.
And this is what Jack and I find fascinating. Despite being one of the oldest technologies, it still is not fully commercialized. Rainmaking was invented in 1946, after World War II in Schenectady, New York. Lovely Schenectady, where my dad is from. And the inventor of cloud seeding, which is what it's technically called... is the brother of Kurt Vonnegut, the incredible author.
So add it all up, and we humans have had the ability, the technology to control the rain longer than we've had the technologies of the internet, the personal computer, or the Pop-Tart. The New York Times wrote about cloud seeding 53 years ago with this headline, the US is using rainmaking as a weapon.
That's right, Jack, the Vietnam War, apparently we were secretly seeding clouds over North Vietnam to try to give our soldiers the advantage, although I think that backfired. Well, today, China's government happens to be the largest cloud seeding operation on planet Earth. And it's actually controlled by the government. It's like a government service. It's the people's rain clouds over there.
So it's wild. This technology is basically unchanged for 80 years. And yet you don't hear of many cloud seeding businesses around. That's right. Rainmaker is basically using the same chemical to make the clouds rain. They're using silver iodide. The big difference with this startup is that they use drones.
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Chapter 5: Why is caviar becoming a trendy topping?
Chapter 6: How does healthcare stock performance compare to the S&P 500?
So you can now see the speed, the AC, the heat, even the tire pressure through your phone. Through your car. Through the car. Yeah, through the car. CarPlay. It's the only example Jack and I can find where Apple offers its software without controlling the hardware. The car. Next up, Hyundais. They're all turning over their tech to Apple.
And finally, Disney Plus is going to license movies from DreamWorks Animation Studios. That means Shrek can finally stream alongside Buzz and Woody. And that means Madagascar can finally stream alongside Moana. Peacock's not doing too well, so they're licensing out some of their best movies to their rival, Disney+. Side note, DreamWorks started as an anti-Disney company.
Jeffrey Katzenberg was pissed he wasn't named CEO of Disney, so he made Shrek to kind of ridicule Disney, actually. And that is a story for another pod. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by legendary Yeti, Jason Geiger from over in Buffalo. Push and play.
Hi, Guy from Buffalo here with the physiest fact yet. Root beer or birch beer? Root beer is an old-fashioned soda popular nationwide. It's brewed from a blend of roots, barks like sassafras, birch trees, wintergreen, licorice. Birch beer, on the other hand, is mostly found in the northeast and strictly made from parts of the birch tree.
Technically, birch beers are root beers, but not all root beers are birch beers. Do not Get me started on sarsaparilla.
Oh, sarsaparilla. No one should be able to spell sarsaparilla. That's an illegal word right there. Oh, wait. Jack, are you going to reveal to us now about how you've probably never had any of these sodas?
Dude, I've never had any of these sodas.
Although he had me at Sassafras.
I think that still doesn't answer our question.
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