This is Nick. This is Jack. The Olive Garden’s iconic cheese graters are for sale—so you can pulverize your Gruyère at home like a 12/10 OG waiter. Olive Garden’s salt shakers, pepper grinders, and bowls are on the market, too. No need to steal the tableware—just be cool and ask to add a new kitchen setup to your bill after your fourth basket of breadsticks. Full disclosure: Jack used to work at Olive Garden (3x regional wine salesman of the month).

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1) Kim's Skims for the...Hims

Kim Kardashian’s shapewear company, Skims, expanded this week into menswear. Throw out those Fruit of the Looms from high school and let’s get down to business—because Skims could be onto something.

• First some context: Skims sales are expected to spike 50% in 2023, and the company (which launched in 2019) reached a $4B valuation earlier this year.

• After doing to women’s underwear what Keeping Up with the Kardashians did to reality TV, Kim is bringing her undergarments to the men’s aisle…because it’s ripe for disruption. Have you seen all those discount packs and bundles?

But guys present a challenge (probably more than one, but follow us here). Lots of dudes have conversion friction. 🛍️ They’re harder to convince to try a new product than women are.

• Stat: Men are nearly 2x more likely than women to look for their specific brand when shopping online, as opposed to being open to new brands. Because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. #TeamOldSpice since middle school over here. 🙋🏼

So Kim’s game plan: bring in a string of recognizable studs like the NFL’s Nick Bosa and NBA’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Because if they’re winning ’ships while wearing Skims? Fantasy League fellas might want to do the same.

The Takeaway →

Some of the greatest growth hacks are the simplest growth hacks. 

• ✌️ Pantene and other haircare brands bumped up shampoo sales by adding the word “repeat” in the instructions (it requires 2x the amount of shampoo per use and gives us extra reading material #IYKYK).

• ✌️ Lululemon went from a women’s only brand to a co-ed one in 2014, and now men make up ⅓ of sales.

So Skims’ expansion strategy is relatively simple: Get the #girlgang to make the Skims case for their boo thangs—why only sell undies to 50% of the market?

2) 41 States Sue Instagram for FOMO

Yesterday, 41 states (plus D.C.) sued Instagram parent Meta in a bombshell lawsuit alleging the company harms young people’s mental health—by using FOMO.

Where it started: 2 years ago, whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked “The Facebook Files,” which showed damning internal research from The Social Network →

• Key finding: Back then, about 22M teens logged onto Instagram in the US each day—and the company knew its platform was actively harming many of them (especially teen girls).

• “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said one slide from a 2019 internal Facebook presentation.

What’s new: This week’s lawsuit accuses Meta of harming children by building addictive features into Instagram and Facebook.

Specifically, the states participating in the lawsuit say Zuck & Co. used FOMO-inducing features to addict teens to their products (the attorneys general suing Meta actually used the term “FOMO” 9x in the 233-page complaint). Some of those FOMO-inducing features?

• 🙅🏼‍♂️ Feeds show what’s most popular instead of what was posted in chronological order.

• 🙅🏼‍♂️🙅‍♀️ The “infinite scroll” strategically shows part of a post so you have to keep scrolling until your thumbs are numb. And the more you scroll, the more Meta profits.

So states are saying Facebook intentionally used FOMO to hook teens on IG, but what Meta’s saying? A company spokesperson wishes attorneys general would have just “worked productively” with the company to develop ground rules in the first place.

The Takeaway →

This lawsuit could be Zuck’s Big Tobacco Moment. Big Tobacco lied for decades about the impact of cigarettes on physical health—until the American Cancer Society sued tobacco companies in 2006. The Meta lawsuit is the same, but for mental health. And the key zinger: It’s about the health of kids. 🙅🏼‍♂️🙅‍♀️🙅🏿

On the pod today 

👶 Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard's diaper startup just declared bankruptcy. Why? Because direct-to-consumer brands have a dirty diaper secret.

🗣️ We have now gone 3 weeks without a Speaker of the House of Representatives. The latest Republican candidate, Rep. Tom Emmer, dropped out of the running.

 🙏 2 hostages were released by Hamas after Egypt and Qatar negotiated an agreement. No word yet on why they were chosen or what Hamas received in return.

🧑‍🎤 Spotify stock jumped 10% yesterday on word that CEO Daniel Ek & his band pumped out their first quarterly profit in a year.

💻 Today in cloud computing: Microsoft stock gained yesterday after the company reported strong growth in its cloud computing biz. Shares of Google parent Alphabet fell yesterday after it reported the opposite—weak cloud growth.

🪙 Bitcoin surged past $35K this week. Word is, the Bitcoin ETF is getting close to approval.

🍄 Pilot twist: The off-duty pilot who tried to shut down the engines on an Alaska Airlines flight claims he had eaten psychedelic mushrooms.

🚖 California’s DMV suspended Cruise’s license to operate self-driving cars. The regulator cited “an unreasonable risk to public safety” after recent incidents.

🫣 An employee at Tsingtao brewery in China just went viral for peeing in a vat of beer. Probably safe to say he is no longer with the company.

YOUR QUESTION →

What is the best thing your parents did in raising you that you hope to do with your podkids?

OUR ANSWER →

Jack: My parents rewarded me for doing my homework with ice cream. That got me excited about education (and ice cream).

Nick: They surrounded the apartment with books. Name a topic and there was a book on it ready to grab. Even if you didn’t read it, the creativity seeped into your head like osmosis. (FYI, Jack also loved seeing these books whenever he visited.)

YOUR QUESTION →

If you two were stranded on an island together for three months and could only listen to one artist’s catalog of music, who would it be? 

OUR ANSWER →

Jack: Mumford & Sons.

Nick: Bossa Nova playlists on repeat.

Do you have The Best Question Yet? Submit yours here.

And one more thing. What Olive Garden secrets do you want to hear from our in-house former 5-star OG waiter?

—Nick & Jack