Episode 143: Fungible Sandwich Technology
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Transcript
Time Crisis, back again. Jake returns to tell us about Pasadena Hospital food,
the birth of Subway, The Beatles, and so much more. We dip our toes into Tampa Bay,
discuss Herman's Hermits, and other great music. Reunited, together again, this is
Time Crisis, with Ezra Koenig.
Time Crisis, back again. Jake, welcome back to the show.
Great to be here, great to be here.
Really was missing you on the last step, really could have used you as we went toe-to-toe with Robert Rosenberg.
How was the interview?
It was solid, he's a great dude. He was down to talk about the whole Dunkin' Donuts story.
A lot of nuggets of wisdom, but of course you had bigger fish to fry, we understand.
Might have been weird for you to drop everything while you were at the hospital.
Although you did attempt to have me call in.
Right, we wondered if we could get you on the phone for like a tight 15.
And I was like, I can't do it guys. Yeah, because Hannah was literally in labor at that point,
because you guys were taping on a Wednesday.
Right.
You know, I think our daughter was born during the taping of TC.
Because she was born at 6.30, two Wednesdays ago, which we usually tape on a Wednesday.
Oh, so it's definitely possible.
I mean, that feels cosmic.
Yeah, deeply.
But yeah, I couldn't make it to the phone to weigh in on the minutiae of the Dunkin' book.
Can you guys keep it down? I'm on the phone with Robert Rosenberg.
Guys, chill out.
Well, we were talking before the show, and it wouldn't be too TC to get like super personal about the beautiful miracle of life type thing.
Absolutely not.
But the TC angle to your experience is not to talk about your child or the beautiful life affirming experience.
You and your partner shared the TC way in and say, you were roaming the halls of a hospital for five days.
What the hell were you eating? What's going on over there, man?
Well, first of all, I wasn't roaming the halls because of COVID.
We were stuck in our hospital room, and we went in on a Monday evening and left on a Saturday morning with our baby daughter.
So, we were in there for five nights.
Whoa.
We were in the hospital room. Ordinarily, I think you could probably leave the hospital, walk across the street, get a coffee, pick up some groceries, maybe get some
takeout, go back to the hospital.
But in this situation, no dice.
So, we were ordering off the Huntington Hospital cafeteria menu for those five days.
You couldn't even go to the cafeteria?
No, it was all, you would call in the order, and they would bring it to you.
Just getting that hospital room service?
I literally could not pace the halls. I couldn't be a 1950s guy smoking a cigarette in the hall.
"Oh, what's going on in there?"
Oh, man. I didn't realize it was that locked down.
Extremely locked down.
You were literally in one room for five days?
Well, two rooms, because the first two days, we were in the labor and delivery room.
And then after the baby was born, they put us in a maternity room, and we were there for a few days.
In addition to the food you're ordering, did you roll with like a go bag full of snacks?
Cliff bars.
Modellos?
Didn't bring any brew. I didn't think that would be tone appropriate.
Could you order a beer on -
No, there was no alcohol on the menu. I did look.
I was reading somewhere before the birth, like reading some of the blog about like what their go bag was in the hospital.
And someone was writing about like, "Oh, man, I brought some beer."
But then I was like, "Is it going to be a mini fridge in the hospital room?"
I'm not going to crack a lukewarm brew.
I mean, even if there was a mini fridge, it just would have been in poor taste, I think.
I'm sure there's people that do it. I'm sure there's people that roll in or like during normal times, not COVID times,
people like their buddy rolls in with like a 12 pack.
I'm sure that happens. That would have been triumphant.
Like people sneak in a bottle of champagne.
Right.
Actually, now that we're talking about it, doesn't that sound like a movie or something where like some dude gets shot
and then his like buddies go and hang out with him.
He's like having a laugh and he's like, "Oh!" You know?
And they're like, somebody pulls out like a bottle of whiskey at the hospital.
A little like a hospital party. That happens.
Never participated in one.
I feel like there's no context in which me sneaking booze into the hospital delivery room is going to work out well.
I just, it's not a good look for me.
Right.
It's just like...
You're banned from the hospital?
It's just not a good vibe.
I could be holding you tonight. I could quit doing wrong and start doing right.
You don't care about what I think. Think I'll just stay here and drink.
Hey, putting you down won't square the deal. At least you know the way I feel.
Hey, take all the money in the bank. Think I'll just stay here and drink.
Here's what I'll say off the top. The breakfast sandwich at Huntington Hospital, superb.
Really?
It's like a homemade egg McMuffin. Fluffy, well scrambled eggs, a little slice of Canadian bacon, slice of melted cheese on an English muffin. Great.
You're saying it's like as good as what you might expect at a kind of like artisanal cafe kind of vibe?
Oh, for sure. That is by far their standout item.
Oh, that's tight.
How late do they serve it to?
All day. Well, from like 6.30am to I think 7pm.
Oh, really? Did you ever hit it for like multiple meals in one day?
Thought about it. Really, really considered it.
I'm going to go wild, get the breakfast sandwich for lunch. Keep things interesting.
And dinner, why not?
That's the Huntington Hospital triple crown is when you have the breakfast sandwich for all three meals.
Yeah, like in the kitchen, they're just like, oh, yep, long stress, back in number three.
That's tight because I actually associate like eggs as being a very simple, good thing that gets absolutely destroyed by industrial catering.
I just have like memories of being someplace where they have like the giant metal tray of just like terrible, you know, scrambled eggs that they just make en masse.
Yeah, like the color is like this, like sulfuric, like neon yellow.
Yeah, or sometimes they get like gray. There's a kind of like gray scrambled eggs.
But it just makes me think of some like being on like a ferry.
I think those might be powdered eggs.
Ah, yeah. Tastes terrible.
OK, so at Bed Huntington, it sounds like some handmade crack the egg made to order.
All right. So that was far and away the best item. Anything else good?
Yeah. Personal pan pizza, not bad.
No, I don't think so, because each one was sort of irregular.
Maybe like Papa John's style where they're like the cafeteria is buying cold dough, you know, like pre-made dough and then their hands stretching and topping.
That's my guess. But when someone is going into labor at a certain point, the doctors restrict her food intake and she can only have like clear liquids, you know.
So Hannah had not eaten in a while. And so as we were getting deep into the labor process, I was like, oh, I better get a food order in.
I ordered a few pizzas that actually were delivered to the room during a pretty critical time in the delivery, which is also comical.
It must happen to all the time with like the food people at these hospitals just like coming in at the weirdest times.
But after our baby was born, we just like destroyed these personal pan pizzas.
In case you're wondering, Ezra, Aramark does not supply the food at Huntington Hospital.
Sounds like Huntington Hospital might be like an independent operation. Handmade breakfast sandwiches.
Yeah. Pizza to order.
Do you think people are just ever going there just for the food on its own, like treating it like a restaurant?
I mean, if I lived in the area, like I could see you like walking over there and getting that breakfast sandwich.
And I feel like the word is out on that because I talked to some other couples that had had babies at Huntington and they were like, food's not bad.
So we had that working for us.
Well, especially now. Now it's going to get the TC bump. Just people kind of some food shows. Stanley Tucci rolling up to Pasadena.
Is the Huntington Hospital cafeteria on Uber Eats by chance?
It's not a bad idea.
I'm currently looking at the menu.
Oh, nice.
Did you get any of their sort of main entree dinners?
Remind me what was there again?
Well, they have a spaghetti. They have a pesto, a marinade, a meat sauce, a rigatoni.
I got the pesto with like penne, a rigatoni or something. Pretty good.
Yeah. Roast turkey and gravy.
Didn't do that.
I did get the chicken pot pie, which was very disappointing.
Damn.
This feels like the next TC bootleg merch, like the Huntington Hospital restaurant.
Chicken pot pie at the Huntington Hospital.
Very disappointing.
So because you were confined to the room, you couldn't even do like a classic vending machine run?
I bet I could have if I was super stealth about it.
Go grab a quick baby Ruth.
Yeah, Snickers. Load up on some Snickers.
So it was easy enough to order food, so like it never got dire?
Just being in one room for that long or two rooms, it sounds so wild.
The first day was like, what is happening? And then you just get into like the rhythm.
What about coffee?
Terrible, inedible. What I did was I'd order a cup of coffee and then I'd order a hot chocolate.
And then I would just combine them.
Whoa.
It's actually drinkable because this just the coffee on its own was like 1972 like diner coffee.
It's actually Starbucks coffee.
At Huntington Hospital?
You know what? That didn't surprise me because as we've discussed in the program before,
just the black Starbucks coffee, just like the daily brew, inedible.
It's funny, Jake, because that was a big topic of conversation with Robert Rosenberg,
how in the era when Dunkin Donuts started to take off,
he confirmed to us that the average adult had never had a decent cup of coffee in their life.
Everybody was just drinking this brown sludge instant coffee.
He said the only place you could get a decent cup of coffee in most cities
was like an after-dinner special blend cup at a fancy hotel.
Oh, wow.
So this coffee that you're describing, it is worth pouring some out for the people from generations past
who probably drank nothing but that for their entire life.
Were you just hitting a hot chocolate coffee blend like 7 a.m. most days at the hospital?
Every day.
Wow.
I knew I could tell the coffee would be terrible, so I preemptively made that move day one.
I was like, "Let's get a coffee and a hot chocolate."
I feel like that was really like maybe the move that really preserved my sanity the most.
Interesting.
I mean, hot chocolate is a classic nice treat that people forget about
until one day it's like you're snowed in or it's like freezing or somebody offers it to you
or you had too much coffee and you're walking around in a cold place and it's the afternoon
and then suddenly you remember like hot chocolate.
Very special treat, so it's nice that you had an opportunity to hit that.
[Laughter]
They should add that to the menu.
The Jake.
Oh, the Jake. Yeah.
Actually, it should be the Jake Longstreth because it's like an Arnold Palmer
except it's half dog s*** hospital coffee and half hot chocolate.
That is the Jake Longstreth.
The Jake Longstreth.
This is unusual.
Matt just sent me a Yelp review, a five-star Yelp review of the bistro at Huntington Hospital.
It's just an interesting review.
Oh, cool.
Gosh, the food is great, but only on weekdays.
I've been there on the weekend and I've been so disappointed,
but I still have to give credit to the staff for a wonderful job on that delicious food.
I keep going back for more.
Whoa.
I keep going back for more.
There's just a neighborhood person that goes to the cafeteria, just walks in.
At the hospital.
I mean, yeah, during normal times, people can just roll into a hospital.
They're not like stopping you at the door.
That's funny though because like Huntington Hospital is located in like pretty centrally in Pasadena.
Like there's a Vons literally across the street and there's like a chicken shawarma place.
There's like a bunch of like restaurants and grocery stores within walking distance of the hospital.
So, it's funny to think about someone just being like, I'm in that hospital.
I love that ambiance.
Well, you never even got to experience what the bistro is actually like.
Maybe it is just a good vibe.
No, it could be.
Yeah.
I mean, the hospital itself is pretty beautiful.
Like the exterior and like the entryway, it feels like a hotel.
I mean, like the rooms don't.
It's like a nice old hospital.
Yeah, like once you're in the hospital like itself, it feels like a hospital.
But the actual like entryway is like very stately.
Interesting.
Surprising.
I'd never been before.
So.
Pasadena is such a major location for you in your life, Jake.
From Dead Knight and the Dina at the Old Town Pub to Uncle Ted.
Uncle Ted watching Van Halen play early days on somebody's tennis court.
Birth of your child.
It's the birth of my mom too.
That's wild.
Wow.
Oh, yeah.
I may have said this before on the show, but one of my earliest restaurant memories is
that the hospital where my sister was born when I was four years old had a McDonald's.
So.
Oh, man.
I remember very little about like the specifics of her birth other than that on the ground
floor there was a McDonald's at the hospital.
And just kind of like, I mean, I imagine I probably was like a little bit confused about
going to the hospital a few times.
Like I probably didn't at four probably didn't fully understand what was happening.
But I'm sure everybody was like, it's tight.
There's a McDonald's there.
I imagine that there are far fewer McDonald's in hospitals over the past 20, 30 years.
I think that's a good guess.
You know, it's funny.
There's actually a good transition.
I bet a lot of them were replaced by Subways.
Like you can totally picture just like.
Yeah.
Subway franchisees being like, you know what?
Subway is the fastest growing chain in the world.
It's healthy.
McDonald's is dominated in a lot of spaces and like go talk to like the president of
a hospital or the, you know, board of executives and being like, guys, it's 2003.
Are you really still having a McDonald's in a place where you're healing people?
You need a Subway.
People need to eat fresh in a hospital.
McDonald's is a bad vibe.
I bet there's way more Subways now.
I'm sure you're right.
I mean, it's fascinating to me that your four year old brain picked up on the McDonald's
being in this in the hospital.
Well, I'm sure that's all I was thinking about.
I think that there's legislation against it.
Right.
So there are 15 states that allow fast food in hospitals.
Florida and Texas earn the dishonorable mention, according to this HuffPost article I'm reading,
for being the states with the most fast food locations inside of hospitals.
People always beating up on Florida and Texas.
They can't catch a break.
Come on.
But it depends what it is.
I mean, like, are they including like Chipotle?
A lot of people would be psyched if there's a Chipotle at the hospital.
A Jamba Juice?
Yeah, Jamba Juice.
Very healthy.
I mean, is Chipotle going to be much more unhealthy than like just random cafeteria fare?
Probably not.
You know, it'd be pretty tight.
I always think of this.
I'm sure I've talked about it before, but I remember hitting the--
I think with you, Jake, on the early Dirty Projector story,
I remember hitting an IHOP in El Paso for breakfast as we made our way, you know,
to New Mexico or whatever.
An IHOP would actually be pretty tight to have in a hospital.
A bleary-eyed hospital morning, got no sleep, go down to the lobby,
get up in an IHOP, get some eggs, bacon, some nice pancakes.
That'd be like a really kind vibe energy at a hospital.
That would rule.
I don't know if "kind vibe" is the word I'm looking for, but yeah.
It doesn't really matter 'cause there ain't no one around.
Tiptoe through the alley and tiptoe through your life.
You still gotta come and be a gun, be a knife.
Next thing you know, you're eating hospital food.
Karaoke castration to the most polite.
He's gonna sting you anyway, tiptoe through the hive.
Yesterday was sucking and tomorrow's looking bad.
And today was the only thing I had.
Well, should we talk about "Subway"?
Oh, wait, Jake, as we transition into the "Subway" segment,
and I can't wait to hear everything you've learned from reading the "Subway" book,
it makes me wonder, all these hours in the hospital waiting,
and, you know, I'm sure Hannah probably had to rest a lot.
Are you just, like, scrolling your phone the whole time?
Are you, like, taking down some big books?
Are you rereading the "Subway" book?
I did not bring the "Subway" book.
I did bring a book that Nick recommended that I read most of,
"The Big Goodbye" is the name of it, right, Nick? Isn't that what it's called?
Yeah, "The Making of Chinatown," the movie.
I thought I recommended "To the Thread" as a TC Book Club companion to "Chaos,"
'cause I felt they sort of had a bit of a--
Oh, yeah, I want to check that out.
- No, it's a good book. - '70s film vibes.
Yeah, it's just about the making of that movie,
and the Polanski, Robert Evans, Robert Towne,
who's the other character, I'm forgetting, but, yeah, it's a cool book.
I took down most of that when I was there.
- Obviously looking at the phone, too. - Right.
I've just started a new book now that I'm a new dad.
- What's that? - "World War Z."
Oh, like the movie that they made a movie of?
Yeah, I loved the movie, and then I was reading--
I saw some blurb about the book recently,
and the blurb made the book sound like it was this highly detailed
oral history of this zombie pandemic.
It goes into insane logistics of the economics, the politics,
- obviously the military. - Whoa.
And just insane survivalist stuff
told by dozens of different people from around the world.
- I've read the first 50 pages today, loving it. - It's gripping.
I don't really ever read sci-fi stuff.
This is maybe the first sci-fi book I've ever read.
This also sounds like something we might have talked about on TC before,
but I've always been interested in the difference between hard and soft sci-fi.
You know, soft sci-fi can be kind of just like,
vibey takes place in the future, but it's still about emotions and relationships.
And hard sci-fi, as I understand it,
has a high degree of technical detail,
where people-- there's a lot of readers who don't want to just be like,
"Then he said goodbye and jumped on the hover jet."
They want to know how stuff works,
and some of which I imagine is logistical.
That's like, "How do the flying cars work?"
And it's like, "Well, they found a very specific mineral
in a mining colony in a distant solar system."
But I can also imagine kind of a middle ground.
We should make a compilation of this,
where it's kind of like in that movie Ad Astra,
how there's an Applebee's on the moon that we talked about.
It's not hard in terms of being technical,
but it's also not fully soft.
It's just very detailed in terms of business logistics and bureaucracy.
I think World War Z almost feels like hard poly-sci-fi.
Because it's more about how different countries react.
I like poly-sci-fi.
It's poly-sci-fi. Pretty hard, too.
Okay, so maybe we need to pioneer corporate food sci-fi.
That's just like, "Aliens come," or "It takes place 200 years in the future."
And it's just like a very...
That'd actually be a tight novel.
Just like Dunkin' Donuts 2150.
And it's just like an insanely dense, detailed story
of how Dunkin' Donuts survived to the year 2150,
and how things work in that era.
I wonder if it will.
Did you guys read Jurassic Park, the original Michael Crichton novel?
Didn't read it, no.
Well, he definitely would infuse his works with multiple pages of the science.
I remember being a kid and just being like, "Yo, where's the story?"
This is a lot of DNA, molecular sh*t.
And then I remember reading, "Oh, it's not even that accurate."
But I was 12 or something.
Just very descriptive.
Just like, "As the nucleotides fuse together in the mRNA."
It was exactly like that for multiple pages.
And then Disclosure, which was made--
The reverse-- The Demi Moore--
Do you remember that movie?
Vaguely.
He got into all sorts of business, org, tech stuff as well.
Anyway, he would have been great to write the Dunkin' Donuts thing,
but he's no longer with us.
Dunkin' 2150, definitely located in a hospital.
I feel like we have to go--
Some of us or all of us have to go try out that avocado toast.
Is that out?
Yes, it's out now.
I haven't tried it yet.
Okay, well, let's circle back.
Should we do the subway stuff?
Yeah, let's get in the subway.
I was inspired by Ezra after he picked up the Robert Rosenberg book.
I looked online and I found Start Small, Finish Big by Fred DeLuca,
who was the co-founder of Subway.
And it's similar to the Robert Rosenberg book,
I think in the sense that the bulk of it is like advice for would-be entrepreneurs.
But there is a very detailed chapter in here called My Story.
And I thought I would just do sort of more of like a reading series from Fred DeLuca's book.
Love it.
The chapter is actually called So I Hear You Make Sandwiches.
This story could have happened to almost anyone, anywhere.
Carmela Hombres and Salvatore DeLuca just so happened to live in Brooklyn in the 1940s.
One day they met and not long after, they were married.
In 1947, they had a son, and that was me.
For the first several years of my life, we lived in the basement apartment of a two-family house.
It was a humble, low-rent apartment, something that newlyweds could afford.
When I was five, we moved to the Bronx to a new development, which everyone called the Projects.
It was public housing, one of the many similar developments built after World War II.
For the DeLuca family, it was a setup.
When I was 10, my dad's employer, Empire Devices, moved his manufacturing facility to Bridgeport, Connecticut.
And that's where we met Pete Buck and his wife, Heidi, who soon became close friends.
One Sunday in July 1965, we were invited to visit the Bucks' home and enjoy a family barbecue.
That was the day Pete and I formed a business relationship that would eventually make a huge impact in the fast food industry.
I had just graduated from high school, and my only real concern was to figure out how to pay for college.
But in the summer of 1965, there wasn't much hope that I could get through college, because my family simply didn't have the money.
I worked at a local hardware store as a stock clerk, earning $1.25, the minimum wage.
The more I thought about college, the more I wondered about how I could find the money.
As we pulled into Pete's driveway, it occurred to me I might ask Pete for some advice.
The Bucks lived in a large white house, built on three quarters of an acre, which seemed to me like a sprawling property.
I was really impressed when I saw the two-car garage with two cars parked inside.
Pete must have landed himself a great job, one that paid a lot of money, I thought to myself.
It was late afternoon when I saw the opportunity to talk privately with Pete in the backyard.
As Pete and I stood in the middle of his green lawn, I said, "Pete, I want to go to college at the University of Bridgeport, but I don't have the money.
And I was wondering if you had any ideas how I might get the money to pay my way through school."
Pete looked at me, and without hesitation, he said, "I think you should open a submarine sandwich shop."
What?
Of all the possible answers, this was not what I expected.
What an odd thing to say to a 17-year-old kid, especially one who came from a modest home where no one ever owned any businesses.
Pete explained the submarine sandwich business very simply.
He said that all you had to do was rent a small store, build a counter, buy some food, and open it for business.
Customers would then come into the restaurant and put their money on the counter.
To Pete, it was just as simple as that, although Pete had never owned a business nor run a sandwich shop himself.
Thinking now about our conversation, it's almost unbelievable.
We were just two guys on a Sunday afternoon barbecue speculating, really, about something we knew very little to nothing about.
Which is very in keeping with the TC theme.
Guys hanging out on a Sunday, speculating about things they know nothing about.
Pete goes on to tell Fred about a small chain of sandwich shops in upstate New York called Mike's Submarine Sandwiches,
which had opened 32 restaurants in 10 years.
At that point, Peter Buck, also a great name...
Wait, is that the same as the R.E.M. guitarist?
Yeah, exactly.
Peter Buck and Fred DeLuca formed a business relationship that day in the summer of '65,
where their plan from the outset was to open 32 restaurants in 10 years.
And then the book goes into enormous detail about opening the first few restaurants, and it was definitely a struggle.
What you just read is unbelievable.
It's like, either he's leaving out part of the story because he doesn't want other entrepreneurs to know,
or I guess what maybe is more likely is just, that truly is how crazy the world is.
Like, every once in a while, somebody has a weird idea.
It's not even an original idea.
Also, the fact that it's a dude asking for advice on how to pay for college,
it's such a weird answer to the question, where he's like,
"You know, I was recently in upstate New York where I saw a chain of 32 submarine sandwich shops.
I think you should open a chain of 32 submarine sandwich shops."
Does he explain elsewhere what Pete saw in this chain that made him feel like it was a great business opportunity?
Well, I think it was, "If this guy can do it, we can do it."
Wait, hold on, I have...
There's literally nothing to learn from his story.
Oh, absolutely not.
When Pete finished reading the article, he looked up at us and wondered,
"If Mike Davis can do this..." Mike Davis is the guy that owned Mike's Submarine Sandwiches.
There was an article in the paper about him.
He started with almost nothing to create a mini empire in upstate New York of subway sandwich shops.
When Pete finished reading the article, he looked up at us and wondered,
"If Michael Davis can do this, why can't we?"
I now know that the question didn't come out by accident.
Pete wanted to set a long-term goal beyond the opening of one store.
When no one could think of a reason why we couldn't perform as well as Michael Davis,
we began discussing what we could accomplish.
That's how we set a goal to build 32 restaurants in 10 years, which they did not meet.
Oh, really?
They were at like 28 or something by 1975.
You never went to college? You just went full-time into the business?
Yeah, exactly.
So, I could read a little more.
Please.
Later years.
As we celebrated Subway's 10th anniversary in 1975,
the fact that we were several restaurants shy of our goal wasn't much of a disappointment.
We knew it was only a matter of time until we would surpass that goal and set a new one.
We opened our 32nd restaurant in 1976, and in two years we opened our 100th restaurant.
And by '82, we had doubled our network to 200 restaurants.
The rapid growth created numerous challenges that required the resolve of our talented home and office team.
So now, what do we do?
How were we doing?
Was 200 restaurants a lot or a little?
What else was possible?
If we set another goal, what would it be?
After conducting a market study of the fast food industry in 1982,
sizing up other chains and their growth, and considering Subway's growth,
I decided our new goal would be 5,000 restaurants by 1994.
It was an aggressive goal.
Most of our employees were stunned when I announced it,
and some of them thought I was absolutely crazy.
We have only 200 restaurants. How are we going to open 4,800 more?
From the perspective of many of our team members, it seemed impossible to grow Subway 25-fold.
But from my perspective, it looked like an extremely challenging objective.
But not much more challenging than opening 32 restaurants in 10 years.
Which I don't understand at all.
Obviously, these guys sound like they knew nothing
other than they somewhat looked down on Mike Davis.
If this f***ing Mike Davis character can do it, why can't we?
We can do it.
They have no original idea.
And also, they just arbitrarily look at what Mike Davis accomplished, 32 restaurants,
and they just say, "F*** it, we'll do 32 restaurants in 10 years."
It seems so arbitrary, and yet, based on what you just read,
32 was somehow the magic number.
When they finally got to 32, then the curve went crazy.
So I guess, if anybody, that is a big lesson for entrepreneurs,
is that the first 32 sub shops are the hardest.
And the second you get to 33, then you're printing money.
It's off to the races.
33 to 5,000 is actually pretty easy.
Zero to 32, that's the danger zone.
Because after that, they blow through all their goals.
They meet all their goals years early.
When we passed our 8,000th store mark,
we decided it was time to publish a different type of goal.
Now, rather than measuring how many restaurants we opened,
we decided to concentrate on cents per capita in North America.
Our goal was for every man, woman, and child to spend 50 cents per week at Subway by 2005.
Which...
Every...
They wanted every human in America to spend 50 cents?
They wanted every person to spend $26.50 annually at Subway.
Do you think you've spent $26.50 annually at Subway in your life, on average?
No. I haven't been to Subway in 15 years.
I could imagine a couple...
There was a period.
Yeah, me too.
There was a period.
There was a period I might have hit that.
Like early tours.
Like, we're hitting a truck stop in Twin Falls, Idaho.
Right.
I'm going to get the Veggie Delight footlong.
Yeah, classic.
From like the gas station, Flying J, Subway, you know.
I probably spent like between $15 and $100 those years.
Regular chips or baked?
Sun chips, yeah. The sun chips.
Oh, God. That's such a sh*tty meal.
I got like...
Yeah.
I like elements of Subway sandwiches, but at least at McDonald's,
the burger, the fries, and the Coke, it's like a balanced meal.
It works together.
It makes sense to me.
There's something about just like being at Subway.
I feel... Also, wait.
Am I tripping?
Does Subway have fountain soda?
Or do you usually get it from the cooler?
Old school definitely had fountain soda.
Like I said, I haven't been in the Subway in many years.
So I could see them.
Because I feel like a lot of Subways are small now,
where it's kind of mostly carry out.
But like the old school like...
Yeah, some of them must have.
But anyway, just when I picture like a Subway meal,
where it's like the sandwich, a bag of chips,
and like, you know, a Coke in a plastic bottle or something.
There's just no balance there.
That's like a terrible...
I mean, of course, what are they going to...
They're not going to start having like side salads or something.
But there's just something about like...
I always kind of felt like keep the chips.
I've always hated that.
I've always just hated sandwich and a bag of chips.
That's also a classic like institutional lunch.
I mean, I was doing the bag of chips at Huntington Hospital.
Let me tell you.
Oh, were they bringing a bag of chips with all your sandwiches?
What sort of chips? Doritos?
No, just a Lay's. No.
It's a classic regular?
It's like turkey sandwich with a bag of Lay's.
Just the yellow Lay's?
Yellow Lay's, straight up.
Subway water is Dasani.
Of course. Disgraceful.
A plastic bottle of Dasani, a Subway turkey sub,
and just a bag of plain Lay's.
Jesus Christ.
$7.89.
I feel like roasted tomato sun chips.
Oh, man.
Don't forget the cookies that taste like the bread
because they absorb the bread fumes.
That was always a treat.
Oh, yeah. The cookie.
That's even crazier.
What's that?
Sandwich chips and a cookie.
Oh.
I've always felt this way.
Even back in the '90s, the phrase, "All that and a bag of chips."
I was always just kind of like, "Ugh."
Sir, if you get the drink and the chips, it's actually less money
than just ordering the sandwich out of the cart.
It's fine.
It's fine.
Keep your sun chips.
Sun chips and Dasani are two of the biggest scams out there.
The sandwich is kind of like the purest part of what's happening,
but yeah, Dasani is brutal.
Sun chips, just like--
Because sun chips are so sad because they don't taste bad,
but it's like this vague gesture towards nature or something healthy.
But so like, ugh.
Nature.
That's funny.
It's like if you're going to do chips, just go nacho cheese Doritos.
Absolutely.
Stop jerking me around.
The last thing I will say from this book,
and this kind of circles back to your economic sci-fi fantasy
about Dunkin' 2150.
He feels very confident that by the year 2050,
a large fast food company will be able to operate
more than 100,000 outlets.
Whoa.
Well, how many are there right now?
Well, I think Subway, there's like 40,000 something.
I feel like Subway is the most prolific of the chains.
Yeah, it's 41,600 Subway locations worldwide,
down from 42,431 in 2019.
They've cut back a little bit.
I was going to say, I think they're leveling off.
Right, well, you know, COVID years, tough.
I'm very skeptical of that 100,000 outlets,
although 2050 is quite a long ways off.
It would make sense if they keep growing at the current rate.
But I think the curve is leveling.
Yeah, you'd have to imagine.
Are there a lot of Subways in China?
Because we know that that accounts for so much of Starbucks growth.
Yeah, there's got to be.
It seems like that's how it always is for these corporations.
It's always about new markets.
The US is a mature sub market.
They've kind of probably reached more or less full saturation.
Although, who knows?
Maybe over saturation.
Yeah, I guess what they might be hoping for is also their rivals to fall
because a big part of Dunkin's growth and part of the cathartic ending
of the donut wars for the Rosenberg and Winokur families
was when Dunkin Donuts ended up purchasing all the rest
of the North American Mr. Donuts and then turning them into Dunkin's.
So maybe that could be an end phase for Subway.
I don't know how Quiznos is doing these days.
Jersey Mike's seems to be thriving, actually.
But maybe one day, if their finances get messy,
Subway could buy up all the Jersey Mike's, convert them,
and that might put them over the top.
That could be another few thousand or something,
plus new and emerging sub markets.
I'm on Quora, the question and answer website.
There's an anecdote from two years ago from a civil engineer in China
who said, "About five years ago, Subway opened three restaurants
in my city in China.
My city is a third-tier city, by some reckoning,
perhaps a fourth-tier city."
Anyway, I won't bore you with the details,
but it seems like, from this person's perspective,
the Chinese interpretation of how a Subway sandwich is received in China
is that it's regarded as actually a hamburger.
Sandwiches are most commonly recognized as a triangular shape,
sort of like your classic, what your mom might prepare for you at lunch.
A slice of bread.
A slice of bread, right.
The hoagie is interpreted more as a burger,
and burgers are associated with unhealthy eating.
So there's like--and again, this is one person's testimony,
but it seems like it's sort of--
So they weren't thriving.
Yeah, it seems like, just anecdotally, kind of missing the mark
as far as what Subway is known for.
Right, well, especially when you consider that
a big part of Subway's explosive growth was the decline of McDonald's,
and Subway making this big push to be like,
"We're a healthy fast food. You're stuffing your face with burgers."
And maybe it's not a failure of marketing.
Maybe just the people in this third or fourth tier city in China,
they're not beholden to our bizarre cultural norms,
and they can see right through this bullsh*t.
And they're just like, "You're trying to present this as eating fresh?
This is just another disgusting American chain.
This is no different than McDonald's, and we're not falling for it."
I found this article from Reuters in 2010 that says,
"Subway eyes"--this is about 11 years ago--
"Subway eyes matching McDonald's in China in 10 years."
And they're really like, "We're going for it."
And they missed the mark.
What I think is interesting is how competitive they seem.
It's very like Michael Jordan, "Last Dance."
They're like, "We don't like Jersey Mike's.
We're going after Jersey Mike's. We're going to go after their numbers."
But yeah, clearly they miss it.
But there is something kind of interesting.
It's the opposite of Dunkin'.
It's not cool.
[laughs]
Yeah, Subway is not cool.
It's not kind at all. It's not cool.
They've had a rough run.
Let's not forget the rise and fall of Jared Fogle.
Of course.
That was rough.
And then recently there was the whole tuna or not tuna snafu,
which Subway pushed back on very hard.
Well, also, I think I talked about this on TC once.
I read an article that was--this is like a little more in the weeds,
but still important nonetheless.
There was an investigative article, I think in the New York Times,
that implied that Subway was kind of like being really sh*tty to their franchisees,
which is very much not the Dunkin' way, supposedly,
where they value their franchisees as part of the family.
It basically was like a story of how they could use the blood, sweat, and tears
of a franchisee who tries to build a Dunkin',
but then by hitting them, dinging them with arbitrary violations,
they could then take the restaurant back to the mothership, so to speak.
So, you know, imagine you dedicated your whole life to a Subway,
you sunk your life savings into it,
and then they send somebody from corporate a few times a year,
and they're just like, "That light bulb was not screwed in properly.
Two more violations, and we'll take your license away."
That's kind of what the article implied.
But I'm only half remembering it, so don't quote me on it.
Do your own research.
[singing]
[singing]
[singing]
[singing]
But yeah, it is funny to think, like, Subway...
Like, I'm not even kidding.
Subway just seems like a technology.
It's so little about, like, the customer experience or the food.
Like, even McDonald's feels more about, like, the food.
Subway really just feels like a technology,
a viral technology that's spreading across the globe.
There's just some-- It's like the food is so besides the point there.
-Yeah. -I don't picture Fred DeLuca--
Well, I don't want to get personal, but, you know, like, this idea of--
We talked-- One thing that Robert Rosenberg said,
which is kind of shocking, is that he doesn't have very strong taste buds.
-Mm. -So he's always relied on other people in the office
to, like, really decide if something tastes good
and if the consumers are going to like it.
There's something about Subway where it just feels like--
I know they're always-- They have special sandwiches,
but it just feels like, who gives a f---?
It's just like, open a Subway.
I feel like Subway gets most of their customers
just from people being like, "Well..."
-"I'm hungry." -"I'm hungry, and I probably shouldn't go to McDonald's."
"Fred DeLuca's tasting it, and someone's like,
'Mr. DeLuca, you don't have any taste buds.'"
And you're like, "Who gives a s---?"
"Who gives a s---?"
"Go f--- yourself."
RIP Fred DeLuca.
He left this earth in 2015.
-Actually, right before the taping-- -Okay, I don't want to speak ill of the dead.
Rest in peace, Mr. DeLuca.
-And honestly, at the end of the day, -Rest in power.
he accomplished something incredible.
Oh, absolutely.
We got a great email right before the taping
from a professional beer taster
who really gets into the process of tasting.
He's a sensory technician.
-It might be relevant to read this letter. -Whoa.
-A professional-- -To read this letter.
Let's check this out.
Let's go to the Time Crisis Mailbag.
This is from Trevor.
"Professional beer taster, episode 142 analysis."
"Hey, Crisis Crew, huge TC head here."
"Professionally, though, I'm a sensory scientist
at New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado."
"In typically TC fashion, I was listening to the most recent episode
with Robert Rosenberg about a week late,
and I thought I could try and weigh in on some questions
regarding professional tasters and how to find them."
"While obviously not on Duncan's level, not a food manufacturer,
I figured that a brief overview from inside Colorado's biggest craft brewery
might help clear a couple things up for yourselves and other listeners
about how tasters are usually created."
I'd never even heard of this as a job.
When I'm picturing the Dunkin' Donuts story,
it sounded like he just picked people with other jobs in the office
just to weigh in.
Okay, so here's where Trevor explains his job.
"I, along with a small team, among other things,
run a daily taste panel at the brewery,
which involves sample evaluation for approximately 20 trained tasters.
To put it bluntly, all of our panelists and technicians
drink beer each morning,
- Wow. - type,
from each batch of finished product to determine
if our beers contain any number of off flavors
and make sure they're true to brand.
In beer at any brewery, this could be anything from
slight amounts of onion or fruity aromas
that shouldn't be in a specific brand
to more serious fermentation issues that produce aromas
of DMS, creamed corn,
mercaptan, rotting garbage,
isovaleric, sweaty socks, among a million others."
- I guess he's saying-- - What the hell?
I guess he's naming the, um, chemical
and saying what it tastes like to a professional taster.
"This daily tasting allows us to put out world-class beer
in the hands of our customers each day with a clear conscience."
You know, I guess the same way that, like,
you see footage of somebody in a factory
where there's people just, like, checking every little thing all day.
You know, sometimes a robot can do that too,
just to, like, push out, you know,
like, any deformed M&M or something.
I guess it makes sense the only way just to
every day be testing these huge batches of beer
and make sure you're not about to go send,
you know, thousands of skunked brews out
would be to have human beings do it.
He says, "Hopefully I don't get too far in the weeds,
but what we do is find willing participants in the company,
literally anyone, to first go through a set of online trainings
in order to provide them with beer-specific knowledge
and then sense knowledge."
Okay, so it's almost like he's the full-time dude
and he's taking people from within the company
to kind of volunteer, I guess.
"We then take these individuals and give them hands-on trainings
in our sensory lab."
They're tasting beers, talking about their characteristics,
kind of learning what to look out for,
like the sweaty socks chemical.
"After trainings, they get to join our taste program
under a provisionary status as not validated
until they see a certain number of spiked beers
and call them out correctly a certain number of times."
Oh, so this is very serious.
They're like, "You can't bullsh*t your way through this."
"We also use tests similar to what Ezra was talking about
where we give them four glasses of two different beers
that have relatively similar attributes or spikes
and have them group them into two groups
of two known as a tetrad test."
Okay, this is serious.
"While I'm sure it varies from company to company,
regardless of food, beverage, manufacturer,
statistical analysis of tasting performance
is the main way you can validate tasters
in order to know you're putting high-quality products
in the market consistently.
Sorry for the rant, but I tend to geek out
on some of this stuff, which is why I love my job so much."
That is that type of job that is so specific
that it's like, you know, if you're the type of person
who cares about chemistry, beer, and customer satisfaction,
it truly is a dream job.
Plus, when you're at the bar on a Friday night
and someone's like, "What do you do, man?"
You're like, "I taste beer for a living, man."
Hanging out at the barbecue, talking to some random dude.
Like, you know, some guy who just kind of works
in mid-level management at an accounting firm.
What about you, man?
"I'm a sensory technician."
Bro, you're telling me you taste beer for a living?
It's like professional gamers or something.
Kind of.
I mean, that makes a lot of sense.
I would think there'd be...
Like, the flavors with a microbrewer would be so subtle and precise.
There'd be very little variation that would be acceptable.
Which, again, like you were saying about Subway,
it doesn't matter.
Like, there's the bread, which is the same...
has that same perfumey kind of sweetness every time.
But everything else is just sort of like,
yeah, you're getting some tomatoes and some turkey
and some mayo and mustard.
There's no variation there, really.
Or if there is, it's out of your hands anyway.
The Subway customer experience is like such a low bar.
I don't know if I'm just putting too much of my own personal experience
with Subway into it, but I just feel like the...
You go to Subway with no expectations
other than that it's not McDonald's.
It's like you just know it's not going to be a great sandwich
if you get one and that shredded lettuce is messy in the wrap.
It's like you don't even complain at Subway.
It's food, it's function.
Here's a tough question.
For the show.
If you had to eat at Subway or McDonald's
every day for the rest of your life,
you had to choose one.
Which one?
Let's say lunch every day.
Same meal?
Or you have diversity in...
Just lunch.
Just lunch, diversity of the menu.
McDonald's.
And some big up salads at McDonald's.
Yeah, I think actually McDonald's.
It's a broader menu.
I mean, of course there's a part of me
that still buys into this idea that Subway is healthier.
So I could punish myself with a veggie delight.
Lest I remind the whole crew what I sent in the group text,
which is they're being sued in Ireland
because their bread isn't technically bread.
And the tuna, there's a legal battle in the US
because the tuna isn't technically tuna.
I'm not sure about the tuna story.
I'm not sure I buy that.
But the bread has a ton of sugar in it for sure.
You know, I'm...
What does that mean that it's not?
I'm looking at the Subway website now with their menu.
I've got to say, it actually looks pretty good in the pictures.
I might go Subway in that hypothetical.
I mean, of course McDonald's would be more fun.
But, okay, looking at Subway,
I guess Subway does have salads.
Oh, and they got wraps.
I didn't know they...
Oh, they got protein bowls now?
Okay, maybe I got to go back to Subway.
I've been really harsh on it.
Oh, they have a...
Subway has a breakfast menu.
They have these like funny, like, kind of flatbread things.
Yeah.
Where you could get a bacon, egg and cheese,
a Black Forest egg and ham, egg and cheese,
egg and cheese, steak, egg and cheese.
You know what?
I feel like next episode,
we all have to get the Dunkin' Donuts avocado toast.
And we all have to get a Subway protein bowl.
Right.
And review them.
Hey, what's the difference between ham and Black Forest ham?
What makes it Black Forest?
That's a good question.
I mean, I picture Black Forest ham being dark on the edges.
I guess it, you know,
comes from the Black Forest region of Germany.
It sounds really cool.
It's a kind of Bavarian preparation of ham.
It's goth ham.
It's not honey ham.
It's not like a pink American ham.
It's like a dark Bavarian ham
from the deepest, darkest parts of the Black Forest.
I'm picturing that Subway protein bowl being very soggy.
Very soggy?
The idea that they're just cutting up the meat,
like chopping up the thin meat
to make that the part of the protein.
Do you know, it's so thin.
This is gross.
We gotta move on.
It's like approaching slurry levels.
Yeah, we gotta move on.
All right.
No more Subway bowls.
But it's making me think like,
I wonder if I've ever had a day in my life,
and I'm sure many people have,
where it was Dunkin' for breakfast,
Subway for lunch,
Mickey D's for dinner.
Oh, damn.
I have not.
You should probably have some fun with that.
That's a good challenge, though.
Maybe that's the TC challenge.
Dunkin' for lunch.
What is this?
This is a pathetic show.
(laughing)
The TC challenge.
We're basically just,
it's where,
I think sometimes we do hit a place with the show
where it's like,
the critical perspective
kind of runs into the kind vibe side,
and it just kind of like,
they fizzle out into just,
basically like a very straight ahead,
just like,
all right, gang,
if you love fast food as much as we do,
you should try the TC challenge.
We're doing Dunkin' for breakfast,
Subway for lunch,
Mickey D's for dinner.
Order what you want,
but you gotta hit all three.
(laughing)
That is so weak.
(laughing)
I hope,
I don't want any listeners to actually do that
on account of the show.
Yeah, please don't.
I'm not gonna do it.
There's no way I'm gonna do that.
Okay, how about,
Jake,
you can pick anyone you want,
but for one day,
each meal,
breakfast, lunch, and dinner
has to be a Subway protein bowl.
Wait, what?
I have to eat three Subway protein bowls?
Yeah, but they have a lot,
so you could do,
for instance,
you could do the Italian--
Is there a breakfast bowl?
Um, no,
but there's a,
you could do tuna bowl for breakfast,
meatball marinara for lunch,
chicken and bacon ranch.
Aw,
ranch is so nasty.
(laughing)
The TC challenge
is that you have to spend $20.14 annually
at Subway.
Yeah, exactly.
We don't care when you spend it,
but every year,
it's a 10-year challenge.
In honor of the late Fred DeLuca,
we're challenging all of our listeners
to hit Fred's financial goals.
Well, shout out to Subway,
shout out to Connecticut.
Connecticut pulling its weight.
Jake, I talked to,
I did an interview with Goose this morning.
Oh, wow.
For Relics.
Cool.
I guess they're profiling Goose,
and they want to have a little sidebar thing
where we talk to them.
The journalist from Relics asked, like,
"How'd Goose first got on my radar?"
So, of course, I explained, you know,
Stephen Hyden called him to the show.
And he's like,
"So what made you interested in them
in the first place?"
And I said, "Well, here's the thing.
My co-host Jake is from Connecticut,
and he often says
Connecticut's not pulling its weight.
So it was very exciting to hear about
a young band from Connecticut
making some waves."
Then they were talking about a lot of other bands
from the Connecticut band scene,
which we should probably go deeper on sometime.
Also, Goose is just a great band name.
I mean, that's such a catch.
Yes, I said the same thing.
I was like, first of all--
Wait, there's a band called Goose?
A jam band called Goose from Connecticut.
Like--
Oh, man.
That's already 90% of their--
and then the music's--
they're actually a great band.
Even better.
Stumble every time you do it
Ain't never gonna get used to it
Hanging on a garden rose
Untamed the way that my love grows
Oh Lord, I didn't see it coming
Arcadia's got me running
Just trying not to lose my breath
'Cause hell, I'm gonna take that step
And though my pride is going way down the line
I'm just fine
[instrumental break]
My luck is all that I have today
But it's no wonder that you found me
Buried underneath my weight
Well, I would still take little red pills
Maybe you're all that hold me up
But you pulled the blinds
In this room of mine
It's just a little bit brighter
Since you came
Oh, I stumble every time you do it
Ain't never gonna get used to it
Hanging on a garden rose
Untamed the way that my love grows
Oh Lord, I didn't see it coming
Arcadia's got me running
Just trying not to lose my breath
'Cause hell, I'm gonna take that step
Seep up all the light
From the bottom of the spine
Don't fret, don't hang your head
'Cause I'm just fine
So, we're hitting a lot of "this show sucks" moments.
That's TC, we kind of get into that just like deep.
Just kind of like dry fast food news.
Yeah.
That's a version of this show that we have to avoid
where it is just kind of like
"Wendy's announced a new spin on the Baconator."
Jake, you try it?
No, I haven't had the chance yet.
Let's say for the next episode we all try the new chicken Baconator.
What else, what else?
I went to Taco Bell the other day.
No, but there is legitimately some very TC news happening
with Taco Bell dropping what I believe are the first fast food NFTs.
So, who wants to explain what NFTs are?
I mean, Jake, do you already know?
They're nifty fun toys, right?
Jake spent five days in the hospital when he came out.
Taco Bell was making fricking NFTs.
You're Rip Van Winkle.
It's like you're in prison for 40 years.
Come out to a totally new world.
Wait a second, corporations are making art,
like discreet art objects that you can buy one of a kind?
Imagine that, like Taco Bell was sort of like,
"We're having a painting exhibition."
Why not?
Who did the paintings? Taco Bell did the paintings.
I mean, honestly, that is the next phase of like,
you know, we've been covering this for years now,
but of all like the kind of gimmicky, funny corporate sh*t.
Oh, like Kentucky Fried Chicken made a Lifetime movie.
And somebody else did a, you know, a street wear drop.
And, you know, McDonald's and Travis Scott did all this stuff.
Like maybe it is eventually just getting back to like
old school corporate kind of like classy sh*t.
Where it's like not some big kind of viral joke.
Where it is like, Taco Bell has like a serious art collection.
They exhibit it sometimes.
Like, what? You know, you think that's weird?
Oh, that I could see. I could see that.
You think JP Morgan doesn't own a lot of art
that they exhibit here and there.
And it's like, they kind of lose the millennial zany humor angle.
And just kind of becomes like, we're a major global corporation.
We consider part of our mission,
not just making money and serving great Mexican inspired cuisine.
We also consider part of our mission to like enrich people's lives.
And we're doing a dead-ass serious painting exhibition
where we're showing some of our collection.
We paid top dollar from some of the best artists around the world.
You know, like start acting with like the prestige of like investment banks.
LACMA is expanding.
And one of their things that we're excited about is the new Taco Bell wing.
Yeah, seriously.
At LACMA.
I could see that.
Taco Bell Stadium in Idaho. Why not?
I was making a weird joke of Taco Bell making...
Because Taco Bell released NFTs, right?
Like Taco Bell released art.
So first we should actually explain what NFTs are for...
Because this is something that two weeks ago,
very few people were talking about.
And now it's like everyone and their mothers dropping NFTs.
It's so dumb.
It screams like tulip bubble, if anything does.
I mean, it's so funny.
Seinfeld, do you want to jump in?
Because you had sent that article.
I mean...
Did I send that?
I don't think I sent that.
Seinfeld, do you feel you can explain?
I can do very high level.
I kind of consider you...
Seinfeld as our kind of social media person.
That kind of makes you also our lead science and technology reporter.
Yeah, I definitely consider myself a tech guru in the crew.
And I'll tell you also that I did put an NFT for Seinfeld 2008.
That's right.
Yeah, online or what I...
I don't even think it's online, but a couple of weeks ago.
And let me tell you, it didn't meet the minimum price.
So somebody bid one ether, which was the minimum reserve.
And then they withdrew their bid.
So I was like, oh, because then I was looking at the conversion rate.
And it was like $1,600.
And I was like, this is the dumbest thing ever.
Did I just make money out of thin air?
And then somebody probably came to their senses and withdrew it before the auction ended.
Anyway, I'm already going on a tangent here.
NFT on its most basic level is what?
It's a digital sort of virtual...
Token.
Token. There you go. Thank you.
That represents a piece of artwork.
And I believe if you purchase one, that sort of makes you the owner of said artwork,
even though it's not a physical, tangible art, right?
You own the rights to that art online.
Does that sound...
You don't own the rights.
No, you own the digital information.
I mean, it's like cryptocurrency, but this is a crypto art object, right?
In a way of my understanding, non-fungible token is what it obviously stands for,
meaning that you own...
It's basically verifiable.
You own the rights to it.
So while other people can kind of copy or cut and paste it,
just the way you could a painting, right?
Like you can sell prints of the painting, but you own the painting.
You own that.
When you buy it, you own it.
That's what an NFT is.
So if you were to buy Jake's Blockbuster NFT, you own that.
So yes, other people can screen share it, they can copy it,
but the fundamental verifiable ownership of that is to the person who has purchased it.
So theoretically, you could also make money by owning an NFT.
If you sold it.
No, you don't own the rights.
You don't own the rights.
Okay.
No, no, no.
You do.
Yeah, that's what I thought too.
No, you don't.
If you buy a painting.
If you buy a painting, you don't own the rights to the painting.
No, you own the physical object.
That's all you own.
And I think it's the same with NFT.
You own.
It truly is like.
It's not fungible.
It's all you're buying.
Oh, wait.
So, so Jake.
The tokens are not fungible, man.
What do you mean?
If I bought your painting, I have a painting in my house.
You can just take it back?
No, you have the object.
No, but you can't.
You don't own the image.
You can't start printing it.
Yeah.
You can't start printing up t-shirts.
I could.
Nick, you don't own the image.
Like, like.
I know.
Yes, you own the object.
That's sorry.
That is what I'm.
That is what I'm trying to say.
So you own that.
Yes, other people can reprint it.
They can cut, copy and paste it.
But the actual object itself, the digital object, you have the rights to.
And exactly.
A blockchain.
Well, you don't have the rights to you.
Yeah, you own that.
You own the digital information.
It's an oxymoron because you said the word digital object, which doesn't exist.
It makes no sense.
That's why NFTs, it truly is just bragging rights.
Now you could make make the argument that buying expensive art is similar.
But in that case, you actually have a physical object that you can hang on the wall or put
into storage or burn if you want.
But with the NFT, it's like you're literally just owning the bragging rights, being like
there's this clip of Michael Jordan dunking that the NBA sold that's on YouTube.
But they issued one token.
Right.
Which, and that's all it is.
It's just like, I guess, I mean, this is what I imagine sort of every clubhouse conversation
is like right now.
But I do think that I don't know the difference between then like having the Mona Lisa and
then having a print in your dorm room of the Mona Lisa.
It's just like, yes, there's you.
It is all bragging rights, I guess.
It's conceptual, too, because it's like if the artists themselves or the rights holder
creates one NFT, yeah, you kind of have the bragging rights of saying I bought the one
they made.
So like, friends, I guess to take it back in the day, if there were NFTs in the time
of Da Vinci and Da Vinci did create one digital version of the Mona Lisa that had a unique
place in the ether chain or whatever, you know, like I guess it might be meaningful
if somebody said, oh, yeah, the Louvre owns the actual Mona Lisa, but I own the one NFT
that Da Vinci created.
I guess that would probably be valuable today.
Right.
And then you could verify it, too.
Somebody say, are you sure you own the one and be like, check it out, man.
It's in the ledger.
It's in the ether ledger.
Yes, I do own it.
You can follow the chain from Da Vinci to me.
That could be meaningful to people.
And most importantly, man, it's non fungible.
Lot of tokens are fungible.
These are not.
Yeah, there's no funging it.
This is not your granddad's token, man.
It's not fungible.
You can't abscond with it, man.
You can't abscond with the token.
If they had NFTs back in the early 70s, man, Mickey Hart wouldn't have had to leave the
band for a couple of years.
Things would have worked out.
But, man, it's not fungible.
It's not fungible.
I've had people explain to me like how and why the technology behind Ethereum and other
cryptos could be incredibly useful and even form a whole new type of Internet, change
the world.
People have made convincing cases for that.
NFTs, that's up to the marketplace to decide if that's going to have value into the future.
It is interesting that it went so quickly from, it became a meme so quickly.
It's not like something that for like, you know, for five years, it was actually just
like really interesting artists were making these NFTs or whatever.
This is starting in like, you know, NBA, Taco Bell universe.
Kings of Leon are the first band to do it.
I kind of remember hearing about it a couple of weeks ago and thinking to myself, I wonder
if any like musicians will do it.
And it's like clockwork.
It's like, boom, Kings of Leon.
I wouldn't have guessed it was them, but you know, they did it.
It's a speculative store of value, basically.
It's like, which is kind of what some people say all currencies are.
You see a lot of times when people debate like Bitcoin, somebody and somebody be like,
it's not gold and somebody be like, gold has no inherent value either.
People can get in that.
But it is funny because things that tend to be very valuable in the art world, those prices
are determined by a very small group of people.
So could, I don't know.
So what are these Taco Bell NFTs anyway?
Their images?
They sold them for a dollar, which respect.
Dollar menu, non fungible tokens.
You know, actually there is a nice resonance with NFTs and Subway because it reminds me
it's like it doesn't it's not about the image or the aesthetic or the art.
It's sort of just like putting your money into this place and that that's going to do
the job.
Whereas like in Subway, it's the same thing.
I'm just like it's the food is not the point.
Right.
The art is not the point.
It's sort of just like a bubble right now.
Put your money in.
Well, yeah, then you got to wonder.
Eat lunch.
Right.
Are people reselling NFTs for big money?
Oh, yeah.
I think the Taco Bell ones, they sold for a dollar.
Then people started selling them for whatever, hundreds of dollars, thousands.
Maybe in a year we'll be looking back and being like, damn, should have bought some
of those Taco Bell NFTs.
So to me, the interesting part is a corporation issuing art, capital A art, which is much
different than when we were talking about like the Taco Bell wing of LACMA.
Right.
They're not sponsoring art.
They're not collecting art.
They're not buying.
Taco Bell made art.
Right.
That's new and weird and dumb.
It's a new, weird, dumb time to be alive.
Taco Bell.
Yeah, I got to bring an image of this up.
Yeah.
I mean, they're just kind of like ugly gifts.
Some people have already resold for over three thousand dollars.
So that's decent.
I mean, how many did they put out?
I wonder.
Not a lot.
I mean, people are spending money.
OK, so and by the way, Jake.
Oh, five copies.
This is important to note that Taco Bell says all profits will go towards its Live Moss
scholarship.
So we should probably check what that is.
Live Moss scholarship.
It's not based on your grades or how well you play sports.
It's about students passionate about creating a better future.
Grimes sold her digital collection for five point eight million dollars, which means she's
getting out at the right time.
Damn.
That's a whole collection.
Yeah, it really is.
Wow.
Has no one asked you to make an NFT, Ezra?
I've had some conversations with people like you heard about this and I was kind of like,
yeah, no, I think we probably missed the NFT boat.
I guess you could consider it.
Cryptocurrency is interesting.
I don't know if this is up my alley, but we'll see.
I got to do some more research.
I have a friend who trying to explain to me NFTs a couple of months ago told me that he
has bought all of the garbage pail kids in NFTs because that's where they exist now.
That helped me understand, you know, where it was trading cards for us.
Right now, NFT garbage pail kids.
And he reminds me a lot of of cards.
And that helped me understand it.
And it's also pretty silly is that he bought, I think, like a couple hundred dollars worth
of garbage pail NFTs and they're probably worth about seven thousand dollars now.
OK, he should sell now.
I wonder.
I bet they'll be worthless in six months, but I don't know anything.
I'm an idiot.
I'm painting, I'm painting again.
I'm painting again.
I'm painting again.
I'm painting again.
I'm painting again.
I'm painting again.
I'm painting again.
I'm painting again.
all right, we're going to have to figure out how to dramatize that.
Well, I love, I mean, I could picture like the cinematic grandeur though, because he's
coming from this working class background. They moved from the Bronx to Bridgeport.
And then Peter Buck's living in this sprawling White House with two car garage, huge green lawn.
I'm picturing like the beautiful crane shot like right over the house.
I like that element of it.
Expansive.
The working class Italian dude.
Lush Connecticut suburbia.
And then the all American 1965 Senator's son kind of Peter Buck guy.
Yeah. Yeah.
Also, maybe again, you know much more about these people from the book,
but I like the idea of like Fred DeLuca.
Maybe he's played by Michael Imperioli, kind of like passionate guy.
A little old, but yeah.
We'll de-age him like the Irishman.
But also I know nothing about...
60 million dollars in de-aging.
But let's have him be like a really emotive actor.
Yeah.
And then the Peter Buck character from the wealthier family.
I like the idea of him being like a Michael Shannon character,
just kind of like a weird, eerie dude.
Like stoic as hell.
Yeah. We're just kind of like a dead-eyed, kind of like creepy.
No disrespect to the Buck family.
This is pure conjecture, but just kind of like a creepy, like dead-eyed fella.
Yeah.
And that, you know, Fred DeLuca is like, "Pete, man, how am I going to pay for college?"
He just like looks straight past him.
And he's like, "You should open a chain of 32 submarine sandwich restaurants."
And then just like walks away.
Yeah, just walks away.
It's just...
Yeah. And then DeLuca is just standing there like, "What?"
And he's just like, "I'm leaving. See you later."
And he's like, "I couldn't stop thinking about it. Why the number 32?"
And then he like kind of comes back to him and he's like,
"Did I hallucinate this? Or did you just say to me that
to pay for college, I should open up 32 submarine sandwich restaurants?"
"Yes, that's what I said. It'll take about 10 years.
After that, once we make it to 33, the growth will be explosive.
I imagine that by 1994, we could get to 8,000."
He's like, "Pete, you're freaking me out, man."
He's like, "We can do this."
And then he peels off 10 crisp $100 bills.
I don't know anything about sandwiches.
Take this money.
This is your startup money.
Take this money.
Go to the...
Find us a location.
Go to the grocery store.
Buy some cold cuts, some bread, some tomatoes, and some lettuce.
It's very simple.
If you build it, they will come.
Maybe there is a sci-fi element.
Maybe Peter Buck was sent from the future.
He actually knew what was to come to pass.
And he took Fred DeLuca on this journey.
Maybe it's the Peter Buck from REM.
He goes back in time.
Peter Buck made so much money when REM was at their peak.
He built a time machine, went back to 1965.
And this is the reality that we're living in, actually.
Oh, yeah.
When REM first came up in the '80s and the '90s, Subway didn't exist.
And then in 1991, Peter Buck built a time machine, went back to 1965,
and started a tangent of reality in which Subway sandwich shops went global.
And that's the reality that we're in right now.
Because there's an alternate reality where Mike Davis and his upstate sandwich shops
were the Subway and took over.
Yes.
That's great.
It starts with an earthquake.
Birds and snakes and aeroplane.
And Lenny Bruce is not afraid.
I am a hurricane.
Listen to yourself, churn.
World serves its own needs.
Dummies serve your own needs.
Feed it off an ox feet grunt.
No strength.
The latter starts a clatter with fear.
Fight down high.
Fire and a fire represent a seven gauge.
And a government for hire and a combat sight.
Left and west are coming in a hurry with the furies beating down your neck.
Team by team reformers battle Trump, Tether, Croft.
Look at that.
No claims.
Fine.
Then.
Uh oh.
Overflow.
Population conifers.
But it'll do.
Save yourself.
Sub yourself.
World serves its own needs.
Listen to your heart.
Please dummy with the rapture and the reverence.
Right.
Right.
You patriotic, patriotic.
Slam.
Fight.
Right.
Right.
Feel it.
Pretty.
Sight.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
I feel fine.
I mean, that is like a classic premise.
And one I always think about is like, knowing everything you know now,
if you went back in time, what would you do?
There's been a million takes on this, but it is funny to think like, you know, obviously,
let's say you had a little money, you could probably make some good stock picks.
But frankly, a lot of people, if you went back in time, you wouldn't have,
it wouldn't be like that easy.
So it would about be how much like, I wonder how much like gumption it would take.
Like, for instance, knowing what we know now about Subway, let's say Jake, let's say you
and I were sent back to 1965.
Could we even do it?
We might not have the business acumen of a Fred DeLuca.
I guess you and I, if we just found ourselves like we woke up and it's 1965,
we could just rip over to Bridgeport and at the very least, just kind of like try to
cut ourselves in with those dudes.
Yeah, like, hey, listen, I'll invest $1,000 in and buy 5% of the company.
Right.
We probably couldn't compete with them, but we could probably maybe just go.
I mean, also, what a grim, what a grim vision of time travel.
Let's go back in time and then spend 30 years toiling, trading a Subway sandwich shop.
Let's not have fun.
Let's not go to concerts or like invest in stocks or bet on sports.
Let's go back and start a chain restaurant and really work hard at it.
Here's my hard sci-fi pitch.
My hard sci-fi pitch is it's Jersey Mike.
He's old.
He's dedicated his life to these Subway sandwiches.
He's unhappy.
His life didn't turn out how he wanted.
He goes back in time.
He pretends to be Buck.
He gives our guy the idea.
Fred DeLuca.
He gives Fred DeLuca the idea to open the sandwiches to take him out of business.
So he loses the Subway war, loses the sandwich war, and then spends time with his family.
So really our hero is Mike Davis.
And how does--
Right.
By the way, Mike Davis is not Jersey Mike.
He's upstate Mike.
Oh, he's upstate.
Yeah, even more so.
This whole time I've been thinking he's Jersey Mike.
No, no.
Mike Davis has been lost to history.
He's an obscure figure.
Although it's funny, there's also the Southern California-based writer Mike Davis.
Yes.
Maybe that's the same guy.
All these Mike Davises are the same guy.
He got run out of town in upstate New York, moved to LA, and started writing about urbanism.
As you do.
As one does.
Only one of them is non-fungible.
The non-fungible Mike Davis.
Mike Davis, yeah.
Someone gets sent back in time today, and they're just like--
They really got NFTs on their mind.
They get sent back to 1965, and all they can think about is,
"All right, I'm going to be early on NFTs."
But they know nothing about the 50 years of history that led up to it.
Just know nothing about actual computers.
Just rolling up to an IBM supercomputer where there's 30 employees putting giant punch cards in,
and just being like, "All right, guys.
I'm about to blow your mind."
Non-fungible tokens.
This is a million dollar idea.
Grimes just made six million bucks selling them.
With your guys' computer know-how and my vision of the future, we can make some serious cash.
Oh my god.
Just got to wait like 60 years.
You know what?
We've definitely done--
I guess I'll open a Subway sandwich.
We've definitely done a time travel bit on time crisis.
I feel like it was--
I think it was like we got sent back to San Francisco.
Yeah.
And we had to be really careful when we went to see The Grateful Dead at Winterland or some sh*t,
because we wanted to catch the show but not to have a butterfly effect.
I think we also wanted to--
Travis Scott, back to the future.
Wasn't there a whole Travis Scott--
There was also Travis Scott back to the future.
Yeah.
But I think we also wanted to somehow spy on Charles Manson.
Oh, maybe it was chaos related.
Yeah, it was like we wanted to go back and just follow him around the hate and see if
he was talking to weird CIA operatives.
But then while we're back there, we could also catch The Dead at the Fillmore.
Right.
I mean, if we're there, how could we not?
We get sent back to the mid-60s.
We're just doing all sorts of stuff.
We're investing early with Fred DeLuca and Subway.
We're catching the first Warlocks gig at the pizzeria.
In Palo Alto or whatever.
Oh, in Menlo Park.
We'd have to make an itinerary before we went back.
We'd have to write down all the dates.
Right.
So we'd be back in the East Coast dealing with Fred DeLuca.
Then we'd be like, "Dude, Warlocks gig is in Palo Alto in two days.
We got to get on a Pan Am flight pronto and get out there."
Forget about the butterfly effect for a second.
But we end up in the mid-60s and we're just putting our heads together just to remember
every historically significant thing.
And then one day, we look back 10 years later and we're super rich and just be like,
"Yeah, these two weird dudes, nobody knew where they came from, named Jake and Ezra.
These guys have a significant stake in Subway.
They own about 80 McDonald's in the Midwest.
They manage the Grateful Dead."
They invented non-fungible tokens.
Yeah.
And they invented non-fungible tokens.
I mean, you know, just a really interesting--
They started Apple computers.
[laughter]
Just a real interesting portfolio for these dudes.
They wrote some great songs too.
I mean--
Wrote a lot of great songs.
We could steal all the songs from the future.
Oh, classic.
They haven't written yet.
Yeah, like the Beatles movie.
Yeah.
They financed Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.
[laughter]
I wish there was more time travel movies that were fun, like Back to the Future.
Not like super serious like--
Right.
I think just--
--looper or whatever the hell.
I think part of it is--
Just like fun.
Back to the Future is just so good that it's like--
Yeah.
--it really sets the bar high.
Bill and Ted's.
Bill and Ted's fun.
Bill and Ted's is cool.
The part of Back to the Future when he's playing the Van Halen licks at the 1955 dance.
I mean, that's just one of the most amazing scenes.
And then like Chuck Berry's cousin is calling.
It's just like--
That's truly like the epitome of time travel movie right there.
That's it.
Yeah, no.
It's about as good as it gets.
All right.
Let's get in this top five.
Number five, 1965.
Herman's Hermits, Can't You Hear My Heartbeat.
Nice hand claps.
Baby, baby.
What's DeLuca doing during this?
[APPLAUSE]
Yeah, he's driving around in his 1959 Chevy going to various suppliers around Bridgeport.
He's got to go to the butcher, get the meat lined up, get the cheese lined up.
He's got to go to the produce salesman.
Ooh, yeah.
And then like after this, it's like 10 years earlier.
And then we'll see him sort of more destitute.
You know?
Or not destitute, but needing--
Yeah, this is definitely not in my neighborhood.
This is much more like industrious guy running errands on a Saturday.
Yeah, this is not like mischievous, like in my neighborhood.
[MUSIC - THE BATS, "CAN'T YOU HEAR MY HEARTBEAT"]
Herman's Hermans have some gems.
I mean, yeah, it's funny.
Like that 1963 music still was very in my neighborhood.
You listen to this '65, I mean, it's great.
I guess it also makes you realize why like the Beatles were just like blowing people's minds.
It's had a little more swagger.
No, just Herman's Hermans are great.
But like you can see--
It doesn't get more square than the Herman's Hermans, so that's for sure.
It has a little more like groove and rock than some of that '63 [BLEEP]
But you can tell-- you can see why like '66, '67 were just insanely transformative years for
rock and roll and pop music.
Number four.
Oh, this is a classic.
This is Roger Miller, King of the Road.
Country music.
You know this one, right?
All right.
Of course.
Yeah, picture going from that Herman's Hermans to like Jimi Hendrix two years later.
[MUSIC - ROGER MILLER, "KING OF THE ROAD"]
Great vocal tone.
Yeah, great singer.
[MUSIC - ROGER MILLER, "KING OF THE ROAD"]
[LAUGHTER]
Cool shout out.
[MUSIC - ROGER MILLER, "KING OF THE ROAD"]
So he's like a guy like hopping trains?
Yeah, actually now I'm confused about what the song is really about.
I've never listened to the lyrics before.
[MUSIC - ROGER MILLER, "KING OF THE ROAD"]
It's funny because in the chorus he says, "I'm a man of means, by no means, King of the Road."
So is he saying, "I'm not the King of the Road"?
No, I think he's saying, "I'm a man of means by no means."
Like he's not a man of means.
Right.
[MUSIC - ROGER MILLER, "KING OF THE ROAD"]
So he's just living on the road, making money here and there?
Yeah.
[MUSIC - ROGER MILLER, "KING OF THE ROAD"]
I think the first time I heard this song was in Swingers.
It's in Swingers?
Yeah, it's a pretty big moment in Swingers.
Maybe on the way to Vegas?
Really?
I can't remember exactly where it was, but...
Good song.
[MUSIC - ROGER MILLER, "KING OF THE ROAD"]
It's funny.
That song is objectively cooler than Herman's Hermits.
Maybe because this new type of rock was still finding its footing,
whereas country was in this mature, cool place.
Upright bass, the swagger.
Yeah, I guess it's about a guy riding the rails.
Also a perfect song for a montage of Fred DeLuca pounding the pavement.
Oh, yeah.
Not in--
"King of the Road," man.
Not in my neighborhood, though.
He's "King of the Road."
He's driving around Southern Connecticut, comparing prices from all these different suppliers.
He's getting quotes.
He's looking to buy a bunch of used kitchen equipment, a meat slicer, a few fridges.
He's got the want ads and is sitting in the front seat of the car.
He's working it.
The supplier montage.
Be a great time for some cameos.
OK, I've never heard of this one at number three.
Jewel Akins, "The Birds and the Bees."
[MUSIC - JEWEL AKINS, "THE BIRDS AND THE BEES"]
Strange sounds.
[MUSIC - JEWEL AKINS, "THE BIRDS AND THE BEES"]
So I think this is when he pulls up to the house to ask about the college loan.
Yes, yes.
Right, so it's a montage of the fancy Connecticut barbecue.
Right.
And he pulls in and he's just gotten the semester fees and he's like, "I can't afford to go to
college."
Yeah, yeah.
Peter Buck's wife is pulling out this beautifully sumptuous stack of corn on the cob.
You know, and there's the red and white checkered tablecloth on the picnic table.
Right.
Just the most lush vision of suburbia ever.
Beautiful mid-60s suburbia.
[MUSIC - JEWEL AKINS, "THE BIRDS AND THE BEES"]
You don't know this song?
I don't actually know this song, no.
[MUSIC - JEWEL AKINS, "THE BIRDS AND THE BEES"]
All right, so 1965 is still pretty square too.
Big time.
I would have guessed this is more like early 60s.
If you told me this was like '61, '62, I'd be like, "Sure."
[MUSIC - JEWEL AKINS, "THE BIRDS AND THE BEES"]
There's something about when you describe Michael Shannon,
and there's something I was thinking about how, like, Bill Murray in Royal Tenenbaums,
he's just throwing golf balls in the pool.
Oh, in Rushmore.
You know, just in Rushmore.
I mean, yeah, when he's just throwing golf balls in the pool and he's just talking to Buck and
Buck is just throwing golf balls in the pool.
Right, he's kind of like off, not at like, totally avoiding the rest of the party.
Fred DeLuca just kind of like spies him and he's like,
"Buck's always been kind of weird, but he's pretty smart."
Just like, doesn't even make eye contact.
Uh, "Hey Pete, any ideas how I could pay for college?"
He doesn't even look up, still throwing the golf balls in.
"You should open a chain of 32 submarine sandwich restaurants."
Uh...
I like how your Peter Buck imitation sounds like your Jim Morrison impression.
Oh, I mean, it is.
Jim Morrison is kind of a mystical guy.
Yeah, maybe the birds and the bees fades out and we just kind of open
with a little bit of like the end.
Mystical dawning.
The breakdown on Peace Frog.
The spoken word breakdown on Peace Frog.
Yeah, yeah.
Indians scattered on Don's highway bleeding.
Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind.
On Don's sacred highway, you should open a chain of 32 submarine sandwich restaurants.
Blood everywhere.
Visions of the...
Dark visions of the future.
Also, you know, like we've definitely talked on the show before about the...
I don't even know if you'd call it a meme, but it's like something people say a lot
when they're comparing the generations and people are
kind of getting into generational warfare and saying, "Oh, boomers, conservative boomers,
you guys don't know how easy you had it.
Back in the day, you could... college cost a few thousand bucks and you could get a more..."
All of which is true.
But like, so you see people use that in online debates a lot.
But I would say any... if we have any listeners who get into those types of debates, now you
could say, "Listen, guys, our generation is drowning in student debt.
Back in 1965, you could go to college by opening a chain of 32 submarine sandwich restaurants.
That's not on the table for millennials or Generation Z.
I'm sorry that it's not 1965 and I can just start Subway to pay for college.
I had to take out loans, but...
-Oh my God.
-Just say that to like some random boomer who had like a brutal job and they're like
drowning in debt and they're just like, "Kid, if you think every boomer's Fred DeLuca,
I don't know what to tell you, man.
It didn't pan out that way for me."
-Oh man.
-The number two song, okay, Stone Cold classic, The Supremes, "Stop In The Name Of Love."
-Oh, I love this one.
-Stop in the name of love.
-A classic Holland Dozier Holland jam.
Songwriter/producer Lamont Dozier explained that the title came while he was cheating
on his girlfriend at a no-tell motel.
When his girlfriend found out she attempted to confront Dozier at the hotel at 2 a.m.,
began banging on the door.
After helping the woman sneak out the bathroom window, he opened the door and attempted to
lie about the affair, explaining that he was working late at the studio and got the motel
room because he was tired.
His girlfriend stopped him and said, "Stop in the name of love."
I wonder if he gave her any publishing.
-Wow, man, you have to be really detached and in your own creative headspace to like
getting busted for cheating, getting screamed at by your girlfriend and being like, "Oh,
that's a good title."
I mean, this sounds more like a movie, actually.
I wonder if they ever did it.
They're very prolific, that Holland Dozier Holland team.
It's also funny that he reframed it as "Stop in the name of love before you break my heart."
I imagine in this situation, the damage may have already been done.
Just to make this story more interesting, maybe we incorporate this story into the DeLuca story.
Then Fred DeLuca is cheating on his girlfriend.
And writes "Stop in the name of love."
Because I feel like our DeLuca story is like about 25 minutes long or something.
It's a short film.
Generous, yes.
Sundance short.
Well, it would screen right after our Bob Marley short.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, damn.
We got to go deep on Bob Marley in Delaware.
We'll save that for the next step.
A lot of good stuff to talk about there.
We only barely scratched the surface.
I guess in this song, she's dating a guy who's maybe also dating
someone else or has his eye on someone else.
Yeah, let me see the actual lyrics.
Oh, you know what? Okay, I think she knows the dude's cheating.
She's just saying stop cheating.
Yeah.
I'm trying hard to be patient. Wish you'd stop this infatuation.
But each time I think of you together, I see myself losing you forever.
Okay, so she's like, she's willing to take him back.
Just stop.
Okay, that's reasonable.
Don't throw away some real love just for a motel fling.
That's definitely like a top three supreme song.
Absolutely.
Okay, we got a big one.
Number one.
This week in 1965, The Beatles with Eight Days a Week.
Oh, wow. This is 65. I would guess that's like 64.
I guess four. Yeah.
Yeah, 65 transitional year.
I guess it's early 65 too.
We're only in March.
Right.
I mean, yeah, the Beatles had only been in America for a year at this point, I guess.
So.
Right. Ed Sullivan was 64.
Yeah, I think like February of 64.
Check this out. This is like classic crazy Beatles.
This came out early 64. They released an album called Beatles 6 in June 65.
And then just to give you a sense of what 1965 was like for them.
So this is the first half of 1965.
August 65, they released the album Help, which, you know, was also the soundtrack to the film
of the same name. And that had other huge songs like Yesterday, Help, Ticket to Ride.
So that's August 65. And then December 3rd, 65 is Rubber Soul.
So it's like, in this year, they had at minimum three distinct,
like hugely impactful eras all within one year.
This part of the year, then the Help part of the year, and then just at the very end,
the Rubber Soul part of the year.
I thought that was the following year. That's nuts.
No, Revolver is the following year.
Right. So this is the year they stopped touring too. Like they played the Shea Stadium show in 65 too.
I think 66 is the last year they ever played Candlestick Park.
Oh, really? How did they have time to make Rubber Soul?
They banged that out. I don't know.
Girl, always on my mind One thing I can say
Girl, love you all the time Hold me, love me, hold me, love me
I ain't got nothin' but love, baby Hate days are weak, hate days are weak
Hate days are weak
Oh, yeah, the weird ending
Oh my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Yeah, the Beatles, I've been thinking more about the Beatles lately.
Yeah?
They got that Get Back documentary coming out.
Peter Jackson is making with, like, footage, I guess, that's never been used before from, like, the Let It Be era.
I watched the trailer. I'm very excited about it.
Just a very solid band, and influential.
Good band.
You know, the Beatles are, like, classic, like, you sometimes need to take a long time off from, like, thinking about them.
Let them kind of, like, fade into the background, but, like, it's always so fun to go deep.
But, yeah, the output, truly insane.
Hate days are weak, not, like...
Not my favorite.
Yeah, me neither.
Weird that that was a hit the same year that, like, In My Life came out.
Also, it's crazy they put out, like, Help and Rubber Soul the same year.
Like, yesterday, and some of their most, like, beautiful songs coming out, like, four months apart.
Right.
I'm looking through you.
Oh, yeah, that's... I'm Looking Through You is, like, that to me is, like, a major slept on Beatles song.
As far as, like, non-singles go.
Yeah.
Right, you love that one too, right?
Yeah.
Or I've Just Seen a Face.
That's a... I love that one too.
Those, like, McCartney acoustic numbers.
Right.
Things were changing very fast back then.
I'm looking through you.
Where did you go?
I thought I knew you.
What did I know?
You don't look different, but you have changed.
I'm looking through you.
You're not the same.
Your lips are moving.
I cannot hear.
Your voice is soothing.
But the words aren't clear.
You don't sound different.
I've learned the game.
I'm looking through you.
You're not the same.
Why tell me why?
You're right.
Love has a nasty habit.
You're feeling overnight.
You're thinking of me.
The same old way.
You were above me.
But not today.
The only difference is your down breath.
I'm looking through you.
And you're my way.
I mean, yeah, Beatles. What else is there to say?
I mean, that's dumb.
I was going to say, I mean, it's really...
This is such, like, dorm room, like...
Alright, dude, favorite Beatles, straight up.
Alright, let's do it.
I understand it changes.
Remember I was telling you about the game?
Just like, what's Time Crisis all about?
Well, like, they come up with, like, fun challenges.
Like, hit Dunkin Donuts, Subway, and McDonald's in the same day.
Protein Bowl.
Okay, what else?
Well, there's also, like, the music side of it.
They'll, like, list their top five favorite Beatles songs.
Be like, okay.
Um...
Man.
Top five Beatles.
I was telling you...
It's hard to do top five Beatles.
On one of these episodes, a very fun game that we did
as a band when we were traveling to Chicago to play with you.
Try to list the Beatles albums in order.
Or, like, track by track.
Like, track one of the White Albums.
Go.
And, like, try to list every track of the White Album in order.
In order.
That's very difficult.
That's a fun game.
That is a fun, dorky...
You're hanging out in a hotel room at one in the morning.
And, like, not ready to go to bed yet.
Dude, Abbey Road.
Go.
I think I'd be really bad at that, actually.
I think I'd be good at...
Just 'cause I tend...
I think I'd be okay at listing every song on the album.
The order would be very difficult.
Track one White Album, back in the USSR, right?
Yeah.
But then I get to track two, I'm already kind of lost.
Prudence, dude.
Is track two?
Uh-huh.
And then I feel like Glass Onion is, like, six or something.
No, Glass Onion's three.
Oh, Glass Onion's three.
I do it by, like, if I really get stuck, I try to, like, in my head, play the end of the song.
And then, because I listened to that stuff so much as a kid, I can maybe...
Like, you know when you have, like, a mixtape?
Yeah.
And you listen to it a million times, and then you're like, the song is fading out.
And then, like...
And you know it's about to come in.
Yeah.
This makes me want to go listen to more Beatles albums, like, front to back.
'Cause that's something I haven't done in decades.
I also want to re-watch the Beatles Anthology.
I remember really enjoying that.
Dude, that'd be, like, a fun hang.
Like, whatever, like, during COVID or not during COVID.
But just, like, hang out and just, like, throw in a Beatles record.
Just full 60s.
Like, that would be, like, legit fun.
Just, like, have a few drinks.
Just throw in the White Album.
We're listening to the entire White Album.
Ezra and Jake invite you to a 1965 party.
Dress appropriately.
We're gonna listen to Rubber Soul, front to back, and eat Subway.
[Laughter]
Why Subway?
Come on, guys.
1969!
We're doing Abbey Road and we're ordering Wendy's.
[Laughter]
What if we did, like, a whole series, like a Beatles listening series,
starting with the great albums that they released in 1965,
but then every year after, it's a new album, but it's still Subway?
It's just like, "Alright, Ezra and Jake invite you to the Sgt. Pepper's party, man.
Come through. We're gonna listen to it front to back.
You know, it's '67, so feel free to get a little more psychedelic with your clothing.
We will provide Subway."
Be like, "Why Subway again?"
Be like, "It was year two for Subway."
They opened their eighth location in '67.
We can have, like, a permanent poster up at the party space
that'll say, like, current number of Subways.
And it'll just be like, for the white album,
like, you know, like a baseball game, take it down,
it's just like, "Four."
[Laughter]
Picture this, everybody. 1968.
There are four Subways,
violence at the Democratic National Convention,
and the Beatles drop the white album.
♪ Flew in from Miami Beach, B-O-A-C ♪
♪ Didn't get to bed last night ♪
♪ On the way to paperback was on my knee ♪
♪ Man, I had a dreadful flight ♪
♪ I'm back in the U.S.S.R. ♪
♪ You don't know how lucky you are, boy ♪
♪ Back in the U.S.S.R. ♪
We listen to, like, an early '90s McCartney solo album,
also eating Subway,
but now there's 8,000, 4,000?
37,000.
What year did they open their 33rd location?
33rd?
That's when everything--
Oh, like '76.
Yeah.
That's when sh*t went crazy.
All right, well, I think
maybe we're getting a little bit back more into this show rules territory.
I think-- [Laughter]
The Duncan Subway McDonald's is a low point.
Being on the precipice of just naming our top five Beatles songs
was perhaps a low point, but--
This show's ending very strong.
But the Beatles Subway party,
I think that's something that we should legitimately do.
We should each invite our friends and family,
especially as more people get vaccinated,
maybe this summer,
Jake and I host it.
But also, that's something that TC heads can do as well.
And it's called the Subway Series.
It's called the Subway Series.
This is our Subway Series.
That's right.
This is our Mets Yankees.
And the Beatles famously played at Shea Stadium.
Yeah, this one's strong.
I feel like there's a lot of synergy happening right here.
But anyway, we're going to start with help
and just get a bunch of subs from Subway.
All right.
In two weeks--
I just want to say this on the show to hold ourselves to it.
I think we should finally talk about the Super Bowl.
Cool.
I think I'm finally ready to talk about them.
Jake, who won the Super Bowl this year?
Do you know?
[Sigh]
Whoever Tom Brady was playing for.
Florida something?
Okay, correct.
Tom Brady and the--
And the Florida--
Florida Gators.
And the Florida Gators took it.
The easy way to remember what team Tom Brady plays for now
is the phrase "Tompa Bay."
Because his name is Tom, and he lives in Tampa Bay.
So just remember, "Tompa Bay."
Wait, did you make that up, or is that a thing?
No, that's a thing.
Right?
That is so weak.
[Laughter]
That's not a thing!
"Tompa Bay."
Because Tom Brady moved to Tampa Bay.
"Tampa Bay."
Is that a thing, Seinfeld?
Yeah, it's a thing.
People call it "Tampa Bay"?
Yeah, I assume.
I don't know.
Do people call Tampa Bay "Tampa Bay,"
or is it more like a conceptual, psychological geography?
It's like calling the Kennedy administration "Camelot."
You know, I hadn't--
I'd never heard of it before,
but Tom Brady is actually seeking to trademark Tampa Bay
and Tampa Brady per ESPN.
Tampa Brady?
Tom Brady's agents are seeking to trademark Tampa Bay.
There's merch.
Yeah, this is a thing.
It's a phenomenon.
This is the new wave.
We've got to trademark the Beatles' subway parties.
Maybe that's the TC NFTs we're going to drop.
We get sued by the Beatles and subway?
A cool collage of the Beatles with subs in front of them.
Right.
We make $40 million in two days,
and then the lawsuits start.
Paul McCartney is not feeling it.
No peace and love from Ringo.
Just, "How dare you?"
Fred DeLuca Jr., just irate, coming after us.
All right, so in two weeks, though,
we're going to go deep into not only the Super Bowl ads,
but I also want to do some play-by-play analysis
of exactly what happened between Tampa Bay and Kansas City.
Correct? All right.
So Kansas City, KC Masterpiece.
Just freestyling here.
KC Masterpiece versus Tampa Bay.
We're going to get into granular detail
what went down on that fateful day,
and we will talk about the ads as well.
That would be funny if we spent so much time analyzing the game
that we still had to push the ads to the next show.
But also, definitely let's talk about Bob Marley in Delaware,
because we had a good thread about that,
and that goes deeper than we thought.
Bob Marley's year in Delaware made an impact on him, his music,
and of course on the people of the Wilmington area.
We should try to find out if Joe Biden ever commented on it.
Anyway, all that and more in two weeks.
Great to have you back, Jake.
See everybody soon.
Great to be back.
Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig.
(siren wailing)
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