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- [00:00]
Toby Howell
Hey, Fidelity.
- [00:02]
Neal Freyman
How can I remember to invest every month?
- [00:05]
Fidelity App Narrator
With the Fidelity app, you can choose a schedule and set up recurring investments in stocks and ETFs.
- [00:12]
Toby Howell
Huh, that sounds easier than I thought.
- [00:14]
Fidelity App Narrator
You got this?
- [00:15]
Neal Freyman
Yeah, I do. Now, where did I put my keys?
- [00:19]
Fidelity App Narrator
You will find them where you left them.
- [00:23]
Toby Howell
Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, llc.
- [00:27]
Neal Freyman
Member NYSE SIPC Good morning, Brew Daily Show I'm Neal Freyman.
- [00:35]
Toby Howell
And I'm Toby Howell.
- [00:36]
Neal Freyman
Today, why every college student is double.
- [00:39]
Toby Howell
Majoring, Then Google has a plan for AI data centers that is out of this world. It's Thursday, November 6th. Let's ride.
- [00:52]
Neal Freyman
It's all happening. Mariah Carey has been fully thought out. Gift guides are taking over the Internet and today the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree will begin its journey from a farm near Albany to New York City. The holidays are on their way, and there's no better way to celebrate than by coming to our live holiday show in Brooklyn on December 4th. We're going to send off 2025 in style with interviews, games and an extremely embarrassing blooper reel. Most of the tickets have been gobbled up already, but there are still some available and we'd love to see you all there.
- [01:20]
Toby Howell
If you've enjoyed the POD over the last few years, this is your chance to meet Neil, myself and fellow listeners. If you haven't enjoyed the pod, all the more reason to come so you can voice your displeasure directly to our faces. By the way, this makes for a great early holiday present too. So if you want to cross some people off the list, buy you and your MBD obsessed friend or coworker some tickets by heading to the link in our show description. You can also DM us on Instagram @MB Daily show and we'll send you a sign up link there. And now a word from our sponsor, U.S. bank. With the holiday shopping season just around the corner, we're all keeping a close watch on our budgets. The last thing you want is an unexpected bill or expense to catch you by surprise.
- [02:01]
Neal Freyman
That's where the US Bank Split Card comes in. Introducing the US Bank Split World MasterCard, a new type of card that lets you pay later on every purchase.
- [02:10]
Toby Howell
With the Split card, all purchases are automatically divided into three payments and place into a payment plan to be paid back over three months. If you're looking for additional flexibility, any purchase over $100 can be extended to 6 or 12 months with equal monthly payments for a low monthly fee.
- [02:26]
Neal Freyman
So whether you're paying for an unexpected vet bill, splurging on concert tickets or replacing a broken laptop. You can pay later on every purchase with the U.S. bank split card. Learn more at us bank.com/split card that's usbank.com/splitcard with the government shutdown now entering.
- [02:42]
Toby Howell
A record 37th day, the aviation industry is starting to show signs of strain. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy decided to institute a bend, don't break approach to air travel, preemptively ordering traffic to be reduced by 10% at 40 major airports to, quote, alleviate the pressure on the air traffic controllers. If the shutdown isn't resolved by Friday, cuts will begin gradually 4% starting on Friday, 5% on Saturday and reaching 10% by next week. But the plan could still change depending on staffing and safety data. Brian Bedford, the head of the faa, stressed that getting ahead of any issues with was the right thing to do. We're not going to wait for a safety problem to truly manifest itself when the early indicators tell us we can take action today, he said. On Tuesday, Bedford said that 20% to 40% of controllers at the 30 largest airports in the country were failing to show up for work as they've gone without pay for over a month. Neal, this is the shutdown effect we've most spoken about. Things start to get really real when the government shutdowns disrupt air traffic. We're entering that stage in full force.
- [03:45]
Neal Freyman
Now and we're entering an unprecedented era too, because Bedford said he's not aware in his 35 year history in aviation where we've had a situation where we're taking these kinds of measures. We're in new territory in terms of government shutdowns. If you're an air traffic controller, you can understand why you might be calling out because right now, according to Duffy, most are working mandatory overtime six days a week. He said some controllers are even struggling to pay for transportation to work. We've seen a lot of government employees who've been furloughed get side gigs working for uber doordash, things like that. But when you're working six days a week with overtime, you don't have time to get those part time jobs. So they've been missed. Not they've missed not just one, but multiple paychecks. At this point they don't have enough money to get to work, duffy said. So that's why they're taking these measures, because there's just not enough air traffic controllers. They're trying to preempt this and it looks like air travel is going to get snarled. So beginning this weekend, should the government stay closed.
- [04:42]
Toby Howell
Yeah. And if you are flying, you're probably thinking, how does this affect me? It does look like this is going to affect the 40 highest volume domestic market. So if you're flying within the US this is definitely something you should keep an eye on. International routes will not be affected. Duffy has said so far if 10% cut is fully implemented across these 40 major markets, it could cancel or delay around 1800 flights. So again, it's not a gigantic number right now, but the fact that this is preemptively happening shows that it is a serious lack of air traffic controllers that we are facing right now. So I don't know, maybe think about a road trip or something because it's going to get a little dicey over the weekend. The other big story from yesterday was Trump's tariff agenda getting its day in court. The vibe as the Supreme Court justices heard the administration's argument is best described as somewhere between skepticism and outright doubt. As a reminder, the justices are looking at whether an emergency powered law gives the president unilateral authority to impose billions of dollars in tariffs without Congress's approval. And across ideological lines, it seemed like the justices were balking at the administration's arguments. Chief Justice Roberts invoked the major questions doctrine, the same principle used to strike down Biden's student loan forgiveness plan. This seems to be a misfit, roberts said, suggesting the law's vague wording doesn't, doesn't justify such sweeping economic authority. Justice Gorsuch floated a hypothetical Could a future president impose a 50% tariff on gas cars under the same logic? Trump's lawyer admitted, yes, they could. The tone of the justices was reflected by prediction markets, with positions tied to the court ruling in favor of Trump slipping to around 30% from nearly 50% before the hearing kicked off. Neil still a long way to go in this case. But the justice initial lines of questioning did not bode well for Trump.
- [06:30]
Neal Freyman
It was a rough day for your boy, Solicitor General John Sauer. He was in charge of defending Trump's tariffs and it was kind of like defending your high school party rager to your parents the day after when the kitchen is a complete mess. He had a rough go of it. And that's because across ideological lines, these judges seem to make the conclusion that tariffs were taxes. And who has the power to levy taxes in this country dating back to the Constitution? It's Congress, the famous power of the purse. And they're saying that Trump cannot do this under. Well, they are suggesting that Trump may not be able to do this under the 1977 Emergency Powers Act. And speaking of emergencies, there was a healthy discussion about what constitute an emergency, because Trump, in invoking this law to levy all these tariffs, is saying, yeah, we have a huge emergency here in the United States because of persistent trade deficits. And then Justice Sotomayor said the president threatened to impose a 10% tax on Canada for an ad it ran on tariffs during the World Series. And he also imposed a 40% attacks on Brazil because its Supreme Court permitted the prosecution of one of its former presidents for criminal activity. So this question of whether we're actually in an emergency that the Trump administration, administration declared was also came under attack. By the end of this day, by the end of oral arguments, the question seemed to be not whether he had the power to do this. A lot of justices seem very skeptical of that. It's like, what do we do now? Because as the Trump administration weren't going into this, they you're going to cause a huge mess if we have to refund all these companies $90 billion that we took from them for tariffs. And that was the main question is how do we cause, you know, not economic chaos if we were to rule against the Trump administration's tariffs?
- [08:11]
Toby Howell
Yeah, I think the conversation quickly shifted from court observers saying, I would be going back to the drawing board if I was Trump, because clearly this line of questioning did not necessarily support your tariffs. Also, start looking at other alternative options like section 122, like section 301, that have little bit more grounding within, you know, the laws of the land right now. Because right now it doesn't seem like this one is going to hold up.
- [08:35]
Neal Freyman
All right. Since Amazon bought Whole Foods eight years ago, it's mostly kept a barricade between church and state. No longer to spur growth in a grocery division that's failed to take off. As expected, Amazon and Whole Foods are about to start blurring the lines between them. Amazon has rolled out two experiments at Whole Foods stores in Chicago and suburban Philadelphia. The that aims to marry the quality Whole Foods is known for with the convenience of Amazon's online marketplace. Enter a Whole Foods with a warehouse full of junk food in the back. That's what's being tested in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, where a Whole Foods has been combined with a small warehouse tended to by employees and robots who will fulfill online orders. Here's the way it works. You head into the Whole Foods, say, go birds to everyone you see, and buy your organic produce and wild caught seafood in the store. But that's not totally doing it for you. You Also want to pick up Goldfish or Kraft Mac and Cheese products Whole Foods doesn't carry because it doesn't align with the brand's healthy ethos. That's where the warehouse comes in. You scan a code with your phone that takes you to a portal where you can order stuff you'd see on Amazon but not at Whole Foods. The robots will go fetch it for you from the warehouse and you can pick it up within minutes. Okay, so that's test A in Pennsylvania. What are they trying and test B in Chicago.
- [09:46]
Toby Howell
Well, first of all, test A sounds like, you know, my dream as a teenager. A warehouse full of junk food that where robots go and fetch for me. Like, come on. That is my dream growing up. But in Chicago, they're actually going a little bit more direct. They're moving, they're removing some seating area and replacing it with a 3,800 square foot Amazon grocery kiosk, which is filled with your normal supermarket fare. You know, the bright in shiny Kraft Mac and cheese, the chips Ahoys of the world. So the idea is they want you to buy your cabbage upstairs, they want you to buy your kale upstairs, but then descend downstairs into Doritos land so you can pick up that stuff as well. So that is a more direct test on if these two brands can coexist. Can we have our health conscious shoppers be upstairs while maybe the less health conscious food items are downstairs rather than staffing it in the back of a warehouse? This is trying to smush them together.
- [10:42]
Neal Freyman
Clearly, Amazon thinks they need to shake up their grocery division because eight years ago, 2017, you know, they just were thought of disrupting the entire grocery industry when they paid $13.7 billion for Whole Foods. Every single stock. Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons, they all cratered that day. I remember it very well because, oh, here's Amazon getting it to grocery. It's all over for us. But since then, Grow. Amazon's grocery division has not gained market share above 4%. Whole Foods has grown. Whole Foods has grown its sales 40% since Amazon's takeover. That works out to about 5% a year on average. That's far cry from what they were growing before this acquisition. Amazon's really not had a good time integrating Whole Foods into its broader ecosystem. And sales at Whole Foods has declined as there's been or has grown more slowly as there's been increased competition from Walmart, Costco, Kroger, etc. So this is one way that Amazon thinks it's going to use its convenience, its fulfillment capabilities to bring more sales to Whole Foods because it's struggling right now.
- [11:43]
Toby Howell
It just feels like it's, it's a culture mismatch. This is something that has been said ever since Amazon bought Whole Foods a long time ago, where it was, you know, this local place where you had in store healthy foods like artisans coming by. And it just felt like a very, you know, forward looking human touch company. And now Amazon is probably not known for a lot of those things. So it's just been a little bit of an awkward marriage. And now potentially this is an even more awkward marriage. Like what do you mean you're going to scan something on my phone? A robot's going to get it from the warehouse. Like isn't groceries shopping already easy enough? Like just go pick something off shelves? So they're definitely trying stuff here. We'll see how it succeeds.
- [12:21]
Neal Freyman
I'm more bullish on the Chicago experiment than The Plymouth meeting 1.
- [12:25]
Toby Howell
Moving on. Google thinks it has an idea to solve the growing demand for AI data centers that are devouring both land and energy at an alarming rate. Toss those puppies up into space. Data centers are power hungry and heat intensive and already use 1 to 2% of the world's electricity, a number Goldman Sachs thinks could double by 2030. That's why some engineers are asking, what if we just moved data centers off Earth? Yesterday, Google unveiled its latest moonshot proposal called Project Suncatcher. The vision is to put a network of orbiting processors in space to powered entirely by solar energy. You can see the logic. Putting chips on satellites allows you to harvest continuous sunlight with greater efficiency than anything on Earth. There's also no zoning battles or NIMBYs who don't want ugly, noisy and energy hungry buildouts in their backyards. Now of course there are some complications with this idea. Namely space is a really unforgiving place for anything, let alone sensitive high performance AI accelerators. Now this is why Google calls these things moonshots. They there's a long road ahead and lots of engineering challenges to solve. But the payoff is clear.
- [13:32]
Neal Freyman
It sounds crazy, but at the same time there's this little company within Google 15 years ago that was one of their moonshots. It's called Waymo. And then now we have Waymo self driving cars driving around a bunch of cities. It's growing like a weed and we're all going to be in self driving cars one day. This seems almost as far fetched as that did. And you're right, there are pros and cons to this. The pros are that we're running into a lot of problems here on Earth with data centers. There's not enough energy to go around. They take in so much water, you're fighting with local planning boards. So space seems pretty attractive. At the same time, there are a lot of complications in space as well. The biggest challenge they've identified is having the AI chips communicate in data centers, terrestrial data centers. It's a lot easier. You can just hook them up with a cable and they need these, you know, they need to be able to communicate very fast. But in space you basically need to build the most powerful WI fi ever created and at the same time put these satellites more closely together than they've ever been before, which could lead to all sorts of complications. So this is going to take a lot of work and decades of work, but there are a lot of folks betting on this happening because, you know, they think that the best way to scale data centers and AI is in space, because there are just fewer limitations.
- [14:46]
Toby Howell
Yeah, imagine these satellites, you have to stay within a kilometer of each other to provide that optimal arrangement, to provide that optimal power. But also you have to think about radiation from the sun because, you know, super good for Superman, but it's not so good for anything out in space. So what Google has been doing to test this out is just bombarding these chips with radiation and seeing how they react. And like they actually do pretty okay. They have about a five year lifespan under intense radiation, which is not bad. And then the other thing that they need to figure out essentially is what do you do with the repair aspect of this? Like do these things depreciate so fast? What is the launch costs associated with as well? You got to get these things up there. So again, once you start really thinking about it, maybe it becomes less and less feasible. But that's why you toss a name out there like Project Suncatcher. You get people excited because the logic seems like it makes a lot of sense because it's really easy to get power up there. And it's a lot. It provides a relief from some of these power grids that are being strained on Earth.
- [15:47]
Neal Freyman
You're not going to see a data center in space anytime soon though. And that's because of the prohibitive launch costs. As you mentioned, today it costs about 1500 dollars per kilogram on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. To take something up space, they need that to drop to around $200 by 2035, which could happen because NASA's space shuttle cost more than $54,000 per kilogram to take something up to space. It's down to fifteen hundred dollars now. So in the next decade it goes down to 200. That is possible. So Google is going to launch two satellites, pilot tests in 2027 to see whether this is even feasible. And then maybe in the 2030s and 2040s when we're sitting here, we'll talk about this thing going online for real.
- [16:27]
Toby Howell
All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Neil's numbers.
- [16:33]
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- [17:13]
Toby Howell
Neil, have you ever had a call dropped?
- [17:15]
Neal Freyman
Oh, my God, yes. Phone went straight through that subway grate and now I'll never know what's going on with my car's extended warranty.
- [17:22]
Toby Howell
That's not what a dropped call is and you don't have a car. But if you're anything like me, you hate dropped calls, bad service, and overpaying for cell service that doesn't even work.
- [17:31]
Neal Freyman
And that is why there's Mint Mobile. All their plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network starting at just $15 a month.
- [17:41]
Toby Howell
Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. I couldn't imagine plugging all my contacts back in. That could take days.
- [17:50]
Neal Freyman
Make the switch@mint mobile.com Morning Brew. That's Mint Mobile.com Morning Brew. Upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month limited time. New customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan taxes and fees. Extra seat Mint Mobile for details. Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will make you want to tap the stranger you're next to right now and tell them what you just learned. For my first number, double majoring is booming at US Colleges because while getting two degrees used to indicate you're an overachiever, now it just means you want a job. At the University of Wisconsin Madison, nearly one in three Badgers have taken on a second major, a 25% increase over the last decade, according to the Washington Post. And this is happening across the country at large public and small private universities alike. In the 2023, 2024 academic year, nearly 4.8 million college and university graduates earned almost 5.4 million credentials, which means 12% earned more than one credential upon grad double the 6% share from 10 years ago. Higher ed analysts say students are tacking on a second major to hedge their bets in a rapidly evolving job market that seems to value different skills by the day. Oh, you majored in computer science, but Claude just took your coding job. All good. You have that sports management degree to fall back on. You also can't overlook just how grim the labor market is for young grads, forcing applicants to stand out any way they can. The unemployment rate for new bachelor degree recipients is higher than the nationwide average and. And at its highest point since 2014. Outside of the pandemic, when applying to a job, the double major on your resume could give you a slight edge against the slacker who only completed one degree in four years.
- [19:32]
Toby Howell
Yeah, I think the big thing that you have to think about here is control, because when you look at the labor market right now, it just seems like it's spiraling out of control for a lot of young grads because jobs are getting replaced left and right, if there are even jobs available. So what do you have control of in college is you can start to hedge your bets. You can provide a little optionality for yourself by double majoring. And also, it doesn't cost more to double major. It almost makes me think back to my time in college. I'm like, what was I doing here? I probably should have double majored. That's two for the price of one right here. So I do think that that is a big reason is it's more bang for your buck. It's more optionality, and it gives you some outs in an increasingly evolving labor market.
- [20:12]
Neal Freyman
Yeah. And research shows that people with double majors actually fare better on the job market, especially during economic downturns. Researchers at Ohio State and four other universities found that graduates who had two major are 56% less likely to be laid off, have their pay cut, or suffer other negative effects when things go in the tank in the economy.
- [20:31]
Toby Howell
What would you pair? What would be your double probably some.
- [20:33]
Neal Freyman
This is a boring answer, but probably some humanities one with some more technical one. I just did history. I actually did minor in GIS Geographic Information Sciences, but I didn't bump that up to a major because, you know, who wants to work that hard in college?
- [20:45]
Toby Howell
I did not know those. You would think my college roommate Seth did CS and philosophy, which I think was that's like the best combo possible. Although he was thinking way too deeply about computer systems. And then also there's just too much thinking involved in that.
- [20:58]
Neal Freyman
I think those two are actually not as disparate as all right, for my next number, the sun is setting much earlier now, which means more driving at night and getting blasted by an oncoming car's bright headlights. And virtually all of you think that's distracting or even downright dangerous. A new study from Britain's Department of Transport found that 97% of drivers said they were regularly or sometimes distracted by oncoming cars, and 96% said that most or some headlights were too bright. Even more strikingly, 33% said they had stopped driving at night or driving less in the darkness because of the headlight issue. It's not just you. Headlights have gotten brighter recently as LEDs have replaced traditional bulbs. That's a big win for the environment because LEDs save a ton of energy over older lights. But there are downsides to LEDs are bluer and generate eight times more light for each unit of power compared to halogen, according to the College of Optometrists, which may be helpful for drivers of the car, but as this survey showed, creates dangerous conditions for other drivers. Change could be coming. The UK government is commissioning more studies to learn more about the headlight problem and is planning to propose regulations that take care of the glare.
- [22:05]
Toby Howell
Yeah, it's not only that they're getting brighter, it's the colors as well. As you mentioned, this shift from halogen bulbs to LEDs, that means you're seeing a lot of bluer and wider light, which is actually your brain perceives it differently, even if it's the same intensity light. Blue and white light makes it harder to see in our peripheral vision. Everyone has experienced this before. You see a car coming down and you're just holy Toledo. You just can't see anything at all. And that part of it is the fact that the color of the light affects you're seeing as well. But a lot of this is tied back to safety ratings as cars makers and automobile manufacturers have tried to pursue these safety ratings. One of the easiest ways to get that checkbox off is to say, hey, it's better when driving at night and it is usually safer for the person inside the vehicle, much like cars have gotten a lot bigger. Of course that makes it safer for people inside the vehicle, but everyone outside of it is more at risk. I think the cars getting bigger and the lights getting brighter are two sides of the same coin here. That yes, it makes the occupants safer, but it makes it more dangerous for people outside of it.
- [23:06]
Neal Freyman
It's a negative externality, which I learned about when I briefly majored in economics for my final number. Maybe killing your houseplants isn' such a character flaw after all. A new study out of Stanford found that having too much greenery in your indoor surroundings could add stress to your life. I wasn't expecting this at all, said the study's lead author, Eva Bianchi. No kidding. It's well established that a dose of nature, whether a walk in the woods or a potted plant in your living room, can increase your well being. But as this research shows, it really matters how big of a dose that is. To study this, Stanford engineers designed 11 digital conference rooms with differing levels of greenery, wood and natural landscapes outside of the window. They then randomly assigned participants to the rooms and gave them a bunch of tasks to complete, all while adding stressors to see how well their environment eased or added tension. The result, a 20% greenery dose was the sweet spot, which means you're seeing plants 20% of the time you look around a room. That's when you get the strongest hit of restoration and a sense of belonging. But things changed dramatically when the greenery dose got up to 60% and the place started to look like a rainforest cafe. At this saturation of indoor nature, participants reported they felt overwhelmed and their stress levels appeared to jump. Toby now I know why I can't get any work done. I'm just too good at keeping my plants alive.
- [24:23]
Toby Howell
You got to say this to all the plant moms and dads out there, maybe they're going a little overboard. This was very surprising until you start to think about what it would feel like to work in a jungle. It's just inherently a stressful idea. And this was study was particularly applied to the workplace. But also I looked at another study that came out of a university over in Italy and it talked about how too much greenery can be bad for your brain as well. They were looking at dementia payments. Too little green space, higher risk of dementia because your brain does appreciate nature. Moderate green space, that is the lowest risk of dementia. But if there's too much green space again, that risk starts to rise again. And this is basically saying if you live in the middle of the woods, you're less access to medical care and then also a little bit of loneliness as well. So you start to see this in most things in life as well. It's a U shaped curve where at either extreme it's not necessarily good, but there is a Goldilocks zone in the middle. All right, let's split to the finish with some final headlines. Did you have a friend that text you about watching baseball this year? Someone who previously didn't know a pickoff from a balk? Well, you're not alone because the 2025 World Series between the Dodgers and the Blue Jays was extremely popular. 26 million Americans tuned in to watch the Dodgers Crazy game 7 win the most watched World Series game dating back to 2017. At the game's peak, over 31 million Americans were glued to their TV set. Even more impressive given it was on Halloween weekend. That's not even counting the 45% of Canadians that watched at least part of the game, or the millions of Japanese viewers that tuned in to root for hometown heroes Shohei Ohtani and MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto. In total, the 2025 World Series generated the largest international audience ever, showing that baseball is no longer just America, but the world's pastime too. It also blew away rival leagues like the NBA. Game 7 of the Thunder Pacers Finals averaged just 16.4 million viewers, about 10 million less than the World Series. Neil, my resident baseball fan, is this the beginning of a new era for the game?
- [26:23]
Neal Freyman
You sure hope so. It did feel like brace baseball broke containment, especially in this World Series, and it's truly a global game now. As these viewership stats showed, there is potential trouble on the horizon with the labor agreement that they need to come to. And a lot of people are looking at baseball and care a lot about baseball. Say you have so much momentum. Don't let this labor dispute get in the way of what's going on here. We have a lot of young stars who are playing so well and we have people from all over the world watching. So let's not mess it up. Finally, tennis is getting another battle of the sexes. More than 50 years after Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in a monumental match watched by 90 million people. This one may not be as consequential, but it still sparked plenty of debate. On December 28 in Dubai, top ranked women's player Arena Zabalenka will face Nick Kyrgios, a former top men's player who's been sidelined due to injury and is now ranked 652nd. The exhibition was organized by Evolve, the agency that represents both players, and will include modifications that attempt to level the playing field. Sabalinka's side of the court will be 9% smaller, and each player will only have one serve instead of two, an attempt to curb Kyrgios's advantage in that respect of the game. Toby this stunt has divided the tennis community. Some say it's a harmless publicity thing and will get more eyeballs on the game. Others say there's little upside for Zabalenka and women's tennis, given she's the top dog and Kyrgios is far from the peak of his powers.
- [27:46]
Toby Howell
Yeah, if you go back to Billie Jean king in the 70s, that was a big fight for legitimacy, and it did pave the pathway to women's tennis becoming one of the most equal sportsmen in terms of prize money and viewership. When it comes to men's tennis, I think this is more just built for the social media age. It's no longer a fight for legitimacy anymore. It's just a fight for attention. It's compelling. You know, Kyrgyz was this great player at one time, but he hasn't really played as much. He stepped into the announcer booth. Sabalenka hits as hard as the men in some aspects. So a lot of people, of all the players to play, I think Sabine is the most compelling here. So I do think they're just looking at the potential attention and eyeballs it will draw and saying, let's give it a shot here. There's a few, you know, things that make it harder for Kyrgyz, but not much. I mean, 9% is not that big of an advantage. And the single serve thing, so I do think it's just a little bit different from the original battle of the sexes.
- [28:38]
Neal Freyman
I think the Kyrgyz pick is what is raising people's eyebrows, because he has actually a history of disparaging women's tennis, and he's said all the right things on this particular press tour, but he does have that history. And, you know, Catherine Whitaker, who's co host of the tennis podcast, just says, I don't see anything to be gained. I see absolutely nothing to be gained for women's tennis. I see only bleakness. Like women's tennis has, you know, risen to the top. It's the most popular women's sport in the entire world. What do you have to gain here? You have only things to lose because if Kyrgyz wins, then that opens this up to a lot of criticism. But we'll see. I mean, I'll probably watch on December 28th goes up. Blanca, that is all the time we have. Thanks for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. For any feedback on the show, send a note to Morning Brute Daily at Morning Bukom or DM us on Instagram @MB. Daily show be sure to get your tickets for a holiday show coming up on December 4th. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milian is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Hair makeup Double majored in hair and makeup. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
- [29:42]
Toby Howell
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Sam.