Guess how much a monkey costs.
Almost. 20,000. One monkey is 20 grand.
Before we start, can I get a wellness check on my hair? Dude, I just feel like I might have hit the point where I got to start taking something. You know, when I'm getting the hat on every day, I feel like that's — I'm literally waving the white flag with this hat that maybe we're getting a little thin on top.
What's the thing that you would take? It starts with an R. Like is it the R word?
Neutrafall. Oh, yeah. Well, there's like a generic name for them and then there's all the branded ones, but like medoxifil something something. Does that sound right? That sounds like something.
One of the downsides on one of them, I think, is limpy.
Right? Well, that might be two for one. I'm done having kids. So, you know, I was thinking about the vasectomy. Maybe we don't need to do that.
It's so funny, dude. Ben, as you know, you'll never catch Ben without a hat, you know, for similar reasons. And he met a guy and he was like, 'Oh, I'm on a hair protocol from this guy.' And I'm like, 'What? Like, what you got? Turkish guy? Who you got?' He's like, 'No, no, no. It's my friend. He's got me on this protocol.' And you know, protocols just became the fancy thing since Huberman and Brian Johnson. It's like, 'What do you mean they gave you a pill? Is that a protocol?' And he was like, 'No, no, I got to like red light therapy, do this, put this serum, blah, blah, blah.' Okay. So, I was like, 'How's it going?' And he's like, 'Uh, I don't know, man. You tell me when you see me.' So, I just saw him yesterday. He's got a beard now. Oh, thick beard.
He's got a beard, but his hair looks the same. So, something's kind of working, which is hilarious. Beard looks great. I got to give him that.
Have you seen — there's this app out, and I've been targeted by it like crazy. It's qvs.com. I've been getting targeted like crazy by this app and I bought it. It's $150. Um, the ad worked. Improve your looks without surgery. And then there's a woman posing. Uh, life-changing transformations. We're looks maxing. Is that what's going on here?
It's not even an app really. Uh, and I don't even know if it's AI or if it's some like Filipino who's going to criticize me because when you sign up, it takes three weeks for me to get my results. So, I feel like there's going to be like, you know, a bunch of guys in the background like making fun of me. Um, I'm like, 'No, I just signed up for — I got the ad while I was in San Francisco.'
Instant conversion. Did you just stop in the middle of the street, sit down and download this?
Well, they had an Instagram that has a million followers and it basically like tells you what people can do to improve their looks and it was a beautiful Instagram and a lot of my hot friends also follow them. So, I figure let's give it a shot. But I don't know if you ever heard of this.
Who are your hot friends? All right, I think we need to let the comments predict before your results come in where you're going to score. So, here's some of the things. Cheek activation, 0 to 100, facial femininity.
That's going to be a tough one. Yeah.
Homogeneity, averageness.
Is that good or bad? That's good, right?
The categories themselves are cutting.
Wait, do I want to be more homogeneous?
I think you want to be more homogeneous.
Okay. Well, dude, I got called ugly when I was in the second grade by this girl I liked. I liked this girl and she was sitting in the front of the class and my friend who I think really knew what he was doing. He was stirring the pot here. He's like, 'Dude, you should let me go tell her you like her and then maybe she'll...' And then he goes up to her, he tells her I like her, and I see them both smile, and then he comes back to me and I'm like, 'And?' And he goes, 'She thinks you're ugly.' And I was like, 'Oh.' Like, wasn't even a yes or no. Just she thinks you're ugly. That was the end of it. I was like, 'So, no then?' And he's like, 'I think no.'
Still recovering from that.
I think that was my earliest memory. Millie was her name.
Millie, you... Who's remembering?
All right. I'd like to talk to you about the wild world of lab testing on monkeys.
So, I didn't realize — I never really thought about it, you know, like when you hear about a drug, oh, it's in phase one clinical trials, phase two clinical, what does this all mean? And what's actually happening along the way of like a medicine, a cure, a vaccine, whatever it is coming to market. I didn't really realize how much medicine gets tested on monkeys and how big of a business that is and also how big of a kind of like weird ethical thing that is. So, can I just tell you a little bit about this?
Yeah. And what's the scale? I have no idea.
All right. So, basically more than 20% of all drugs are tested on monkeys.
And what's a monkey like? Is it the same breed? Is it all like — are all...
There's like a couple that they use specifically for this. So like the long-tailed, uh, you know, I don't know how you say it, like they call it like a cyno, c-y-n-o, um, like the syino whatever, it's like the long species name is the ideal monkey to test on. And it's kind of sad because it's like the ideal monkey because it's smarter and more close to a human. And so like if you look at these monkeys like in the wild they're known for like they'll steal your phone and take a selfie with you. It's like, you know, they'll like grab your hat and won't give it back till you give them food. You know, they kind of know how to play the game. And so this crazy business where look, I get it. Like, you know, you don't want a medicine to go and be tested on humans right away. You'd want it to start with mice and rats and but like eventually the closest proxy is monkeys. And so what happens is every year, you know, tens of thousands of monkeys around the world get imported. So the US will import, let's say, 20,000 monkeys. And each monkey costs, guess how much a monkey costs?
Almost. 20,000. One monkey is 20 grand.
They used to be 2 grand a monkey. When COVID happened, prices shot up because they needed to test for medicines, vaccines, whatnot. So it got to 20,000, 50,000 per monkey. And then what happened was at the time China supplied like 60% of the world's what they call NHPs, non-human primates.
They do everything. China does everything. They breed them. They were supplying them.
China just went cold turkey. They just went cold monkey. They just stopped exporting. They were like, 'Well, we're going to keep them all for ourselves.'
And so there was this huge supply shock. Prices shoot up to 50,000 per monkey. And Cambodia steps in and Vietnam steps in and the Mauritius, whatever that is, islands step in and they start providing these monkeys. So the US kind of needs it. And there's these big businesses in the US. So there's one business called Charles River Labs. Have you ever heard of this business? Charles River Labs. It sounds like a venture capital firm.
Well, there is Charles River Ventures. So, not to be confused with them.
So, Charles River Labs is like in Boston or something like this. They do this as like research testing as a service for all the biotech companies. So, they don't have to do it themselves.
So, they basically have all the mice and the rats and the dogs and the monkeys all there and they do this testing. They work with like 80% of biotech companies. Like it's crazy. Like the scale is pretty crazy. Even crazy. I think it's like 80% of drugs that go to market get tested with them. Like they just have this absolute monopoly. They do 4 billion a year in revenue.
Yeah. It's a publicly traded company.
They bought a monkey breeding business, like a supply, like part of the monkey supply chain because they were so dependent on these wild swings. They bought one for $500 million just to control the supply better, to make sure that they were not going to lack the supply of these NHPs.
What's a monkey breeding business?
Hey, I want to tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So, hundreds of episodes the team at HubSpot went through. They pulled out all the simple, relatable, interesting, profitable ideas that we have brainstormed, and they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys. Back to the show.
So, it'll be like in Cambodia or it'll be in Vietnam. And basically they certify that they breed these for testing. They don't take them out of the wild and then they like kind of tag them. They track them, whatever. But they've gone wrong. So there's this story in Fortune magazine of this guy. See this guy in the blue shirt here with the glasses. So he's like the director of wildlife in Cambodia. And these are like monkeys in a cage right here coming out of this pickup truck and they're being transported. And so this guy goes into the US for like, you know, a business trip and just gets detained, you know, they have a warrant for his arrest because they feel like the monkeys from wildlife were being passed off as like lab testing monkeys, bred monkeys, and were being renamed, retagged and being sold. And so he got jailed for like a year. He was like in house arrest for like, you know, a year awaiting trial.
In America. Yeah. And the DOJ kind of impounded him which is pretty crazy. So there's this wild world. Have you ever even thought about this? And so...
No, but impounding — is that your new term?
I said that, they didn't say that. That wasn't in Fortune magazine.
They should have put him in a monkey cage.
