Toby Howell (2:06)

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Neal Freyman (2:10)

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Toby Howell (2:17)

Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com MBD that's LinkedIn.com MBD terms and conditions may apply. Social media companies are under the same scrutiny the tobacco industry went through and they're racking up Ls in the courtroom. Yesterday, a jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in a landmark social media trial for running platforms that harmed adolescents and failing to warn the public about the danger. The two were ordered to pay 4.2 million and 1.8 million respectively in damages to a plaintiff, a 20 year old woman who said her addiction to social media caused her mental health crisis. The the case took a novel legal approach, arguing that social media can cause personal injury. And after nine days of deliberations, the jury agreed. The case brought out heavy hitters to the L A courtroom. The five week trial included testimonials from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram. Both execs rejected claims that Instagram could be described as clinically addictive, with Meta mounting a defense that the plaintiff, who goes by Kelly, suffered from mental health issues, from familial abuse and turmoil, not social media. YouTube's defense was we're not a social media company at all and our features are not designed to be addictive. But pointing to features like Infinite scroll, algorithmic recommendations and autoplay videos, the plaintiff argued the platforms were designed to entice and hook young people into compulsive use. The verdict was handed down a day after a New Mexico jury in a separate case found Meta liable for failing to safeguard users from child predators. Neil the jury is still hearing arguments around whether to impose punitive damages on the companies to go along with the compensation they are sending Kelly's way. But the bigger question is, does this open the floodgates as the companies face down similar cases scheduled to go to trial later this year?

Neal Freyman (4:03)

Yes, the answer is yes, it absolutely opens the floodgates. Big tech critics have been hammering, hammering away at these companies for years with very little success. They finally pierce the armor and now they're going to go in for the kill. And this shield was section 230, the shield that they could not penetrate. This was this law from the 90s that said social media companies can't be liable for the content that's posted on their platform. And it provided a very important shield for social media companies throughout the past few decades, and it's called the bedrock of the modern Internet. So the plaintiff in this case and many other cases that are about to be coming down the pipeline are not going to focus on the content on the platform because that's protected by section 230. And instead focus on the design choices, on the literal product of social media platforms like Autoplay, like Infinite Scroll. And it seems like they've had. Had success here in Los Angeles and they're going to have perhaps more success down the road.

Toby Howell (4:56)

Yeah, I think the best way to look at this dichotomy is that it's. No, it's not a speech case anymore. That's what Section 230 rested on. It's like, can people say whatever they want on our platforms and are we liable for that? That was a shield for a long time. But you are correct that now that we're looking into the specific design choices, that's what makes it addictive as a cigarette or addictive as tobacco. That's why we keep kind of comparing it to the tobacco industry. I mentioned that a punitive damages phase is what's up in the trial and that the. The plaintiff's lawyer is kind of going for the jugular. At one point in the courtroom, Mark Lanier, who is the lawyer who represented Caylee, held up a jar of Eminem, saying each piece of Candy represented $1 billion of the company's value. And then he took off one bit of the shell of a single blue Eminem and said, this is $200 million. They do not want to feel the pain for what they did. So basically, he's arguing for much larger, you know, damages to. To come out of this trial, not just the compensatory payment made to Kaylee.

Neal Freyman (5:55)

So what happens next? The answer is probably that Instagram and YouTube, Metta and all these social media companies get sued into oblivion. There's more than 1,000 cases already waiting in the wings. We got two big federal trials coming later this year. But because that these plaintiffs have had success going after the product themselves, this might continue until MeTa, YouTube. These social media companies actually change their products or they talk or they get into this big settlement. This is where you're talking about big Tobacco. So last century, in the 90s, he had Philip Morris and R.J. reynolds also getting sued into oblivion like this in terms of personal injury. So they got together with more than 40 states, and they reached a 206 billion master settlement. And after that, they, these companies contracted in a big way. Decline in smoking followed. So there's either going to be a lot of regulation coming out of this, or there's going to be a massive settlement. Perhaps, perhaps on the, on the level of big tobacco in the 90s, that's

Toby Howell (6:52)

a couple more blue M and Ms, which is what, you know, these lawyers are after moving on, the price of a brick is going up. This week, Dow Chemicals told customers it will double a planned price hike for certain plastic resins as the shutdown at the Strait of Hormuz continues to choke off critical raw materials. Dow's original 15 cent per pound price hike of polyethylene, a lightweight, durable thermoplastic that is the world's most produced plastic, is now 30 cents, meaning that everything from shopping bags to plastic bottles is going to get more expensive. It's a reminder that as the war with Iran drives up oil prices, it's not just the gas you put in your tank that gets pricier, but everything that uses plastic too. Plastic is a hidden inflation driver. Between 4 and 8% of total global oil production is used to make the stuff that encapsulates our stuff. The Odd Lots team at Bloomberg highlighted the example of a bag of carrots. To bring a bag to grocery shelves, there's four farming, transport and store costs. All of those require energy of some sort. But the overlooked part of the equation is a little plastic baggie. Your carrots come in. If polyethylene prices go up, that bag becomes more expensive. And since your carrots only cost around $2 to begin with, any incremental height in input costs is going to cause price hikes. Neil Tracy Alloway from Bloomberg put it well, there's something kind of remarkable or perhaps dystopian, that in today's economy, even when you're buying carrots, you're really buying crude oil.

Neal Freyman (8:15)

Yeah. Think about when you go into a grocery store. I mean, besides the produce aisle with the loose avocados and oranges and apples, pretty much everything else is wrapped up in plastic packaging. And that plastic packaging is made from oil. And that plastic packaging is also made from oil and inputs that come from the Middle east, which is now being blockaded. If you want to take one word away from this particular story, its feedstocks now feed stocks is the very strange word that the industry uses for the inputs that go into making polyethylene. And this plastic packaging problem is that the Middle east supplies about 30% of one of those feedstocks, which is liquefied petroleum gas, as well as 24% of a global seaborne NAFTA, which is another one of those feedstocks. So basically those are not getting to market, which is raising prices for everyone else.

Toby Howell (9:06)

And it's been good for Dow's business. Again, they had this price hike already planned. Prices of these feedstocks inputs were already going up before the war now that the war has exacerbated that. Dow shares rose more than 6% on Tuesday after they announced that they're up 25% since the start of the war. An interesting thing too is that how much does this actually going to affect CPI readings and inflation readings like as we look ahead to the next inflation number that shows up, it's going to show up in food prices. Energy as a whole when it comes to the index is not a massive weighting. It's just 6.3% of the index. But food prices accounts for 15% of the index. And again, as we said, you need fertilizer to grow food that comes through the strait. You need fuel to transport the food that is going up in costs. And then you have to package the food in plastic, which is also going up. Which is why we could see a chunky inflation rating in the next few months.

Neal Freyman (10:01)

And it might be worse here than the rest of the world because if you're looking at which type of populations consume plastic, it's American number one and everyone else is way down the line. The average US resident this was, and this is in 2019 study used 255kg of new plastics versus a world average of 60.1kg. So we are a plastic loving nation which is going to bite us in the butt right now. Get in. Losers. We are building a moon base. In our major presentation on Tuesday, NASA laid out concrete plans to build a long term base on the moon. And it's not kidding. Around this time, administrator Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur, promised quote, there will be an evolutionary path to building humanity's first permanent surface outpost beyond Earth. Since Isaac man took the top job at NASA in December, he's been going full Coach Carter to rejuvenate a struggling agency that's done a whole lot of talking and a whole lot of nothing over the past few decades. He's also someone who's intimately familiar with space, having been in low Earth orbit twice on missions he's financed himself. Okay, about that moon base. It's going to be built in three phases over the next decade with each phase costing about $10 billion if all goes according to plan. And that's a big if when it comes to space. The habitat will contain the basic elements of civilization, like power sources, complex communications, scientific labs on site, manufact manufacturing, and of course, permanent habitats for astronauts to live in. There is a long way to go and 150,000kg of payload to be delivered to the lunar surface in the interim. But this is a big Deal. Instead of treading water, NASA finally has a detailed 10 year plan with deadlines, reasonable budgets and buy in from indispensable private sector partners. Sounds like they received a visit from McKinsey.

Toby Howell (11:39)

Let's go through these three phases that were maybe laid out in the McKinsey PowerPoint presentation. Phase one goes through 2028. They want to basically just send up a relentless barrage of private robotic landers. No humans are going to be involved in any of that. 21 landings total. They want to bring 4 metric tons of payload to the moon. These will include things like rovers that can explore the surface and look for key Resources. Phase two goes from 2028 through 2032 or so. That is when you're going to start to build semi habitable infrastructure that comes with 27 landings with the total mass of 60 metric tons. So you're bringing a lot more stuff to the moon in that phase. And then phase three, 2029 through 2036 or so, that is establishing infrastructure to support a continued human presence. That is when people are on the moon itself. So again we are stretching way out into the future. But there is a plan which is more than we could have said, you know, a few months ago.

Neal Freyman (12:38)

I'll go in phase four when they put in TVs with red zone and I can watch then. No. So I think the big reaction to this was this is kind of che, right? $10 billion to establish a moon base. Well, each of the three phases that, you know, there's a lot of projects on earth that cost a lot more. And this has been a big mission of Jared Isaac, man, to bring down costs at NASA. He thinks there's not a revenue problem but an expense problem. During the presentation he said billions of dollars wasted. He's talking about his predecessors years lost hardware that never launched fewer flagship science missions. And he framed this as an existential crisis for NASA and the space industry in general that people weren't getting excited about space. Because he went on to say fewer astronauts in space means fewer kids dressing up as astronauts for Halloween. I don't like it.

Toby Howell (13:24)

We have to say that the moon base is replacing a prior plan that was essentially build a orbiting space station above the lune the lunar surface and use that as kind of a jumping off point to make these missions that is no longer a thing anymore. And that has caused a lot of rifts between the US and international partners. Europe is extremely mad right now because they're feeling whiplash around. They had actually delivered a massive metallic cylinder that was going to be this big critical habitation module for NASA back in April. So they were all in on this plan to build basically a mini international space station. That plan is dead. Now it's all about moon base, which some people within NASA are saying, hey, this is a good idea. For so long we've just been pulled in so many different directions. At least we know we can wrap our heads around moon base. It's all about moon base over the next decade or so. But it came with some, some European.

Neal Freyman (14:19)

They'll get over it. Now that's the biggest date to look for. Now is actually April 1, which is in less than a week. And this is not April Fools. NASA is planning to launch four astronauts around the moon and back to Earth on the Artemis 2 mission, which will be the first time we visit the moon since 1972.

Toby Howell (14:38)

I'm pumped. Let's go. I'm dressing up as an astronaut for Halloween. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Neil's numbers right after this. This episode is brought to you by Apple. Neil, there's nothing like your first Mac. I remember my first Mac like it was yesterday. I got mine right as my sister started to get recruited to play soccer in college. I was given the very important task of making her a highlight tape. And Imovie was my best friend. She ended up playing at Georgetown. So I'd say it was all worth it.

Neal Freyman (15:07)

When I got my first Mac, I was heading into freshman year at the University of Maryland. A lot was uncertain that fall, but I knew I had a dependable sidekick for homework, connecting with other students and devouring blogs about our basketball recruiting class.

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Neal Freyman (16:48)

Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will give you lots of conversation material to bring up with the strangers you're waiting in a TSA line with. For my first number, Americans are feeling really bad about their jobs. Like, historically bad. In a new Gallup poll, more U.S. workers said they're struggling in life than thriving the first time this has happened on record. It is a sharp departure from historical trends. Between 2009 and 2019, the thriving rate among workers was as high as 60%, and even during the pandemic year of 2020, it was 55%. Now it's collapsed alongside a bunch of other indicators of confidence in the job market. In the fourth quarter of 2025, just 28% of U.S. employees said now is a good time to find a quality job, with 72% calling it a bad time. Just four years ago, this was flipped 70% of workers were optimistic and 30% weren't a collapse of 42 percentage points. Even among the broader doom and gloom, a few groups stand out for being the biggest Debbie Downers American workers with higher levels of formal education were far less optimistic about the job market than those who spent less time in school last year. Meanwhile, younger workers were less hopeful about the labor market than older workers, with just one in five workers age 18 to 34 saying now is a good time to find a quality job. Job Toby these aren't just vibes. The reality on the ground is miserable too. As the New York Times reported, this is the worst hiring spring for young degree holders since the depths of the pandemic.

Toby Howell (18:12)

Debbie Downer But I'm just going to continue piling on. A recent Zip recruiter survey also found that over a quarter of new hires are taking pay cuts when starting new roles. So even if you can find a job, it's usually for less than what you were being paid at your previous job. And then one more data point to throw into the mix, too, is that this survey was conducted during the final few months of 2025, that is before the Iran War broke out before oil and gas prices started soaring. So maybe it's even worse out there than this survey actually painted the picture.

Neal Freyman (18:46)

For my next number, let's do something more fun. An AI version of Love island starring fruit has taken the Internet by storm, and it's become more popular than the show itself. This is real. A TikTok series called Fruit Love island has surpassed the real Love island, which is the US's top reality show in terms of followers on the platform, and it's racking up more viewers per episode than the non AI version, according to tech investor Olivia Moore. Yes, 15 million people are tuning into bite sized made for mobile AI Fruit Love island episodes to see whether Bonanito, an AI generated banana, will find his match. AI kitchen slop has been percolating on social media for months when people began posting benign educational videos of objects sharing life hacks like how to remove a wine stainless steel. If that was weird, things got only weirder from there with an entire ecosystem emerging of talking AI fruits finding themselves in emotionally fraught, sexually charged situations. In one video, which received 1.8 million views on Instagram, a homophobic Clementine kicks his gay son, also a clementine, out of the house when he caught him messing around with a strawberry. Into this AI fruit milieu, the Love island knockoff was born and has absolutely exploded. Toby, it might be time to log off.

Toby Howell (19:59)

No, I'm logging on. I need to know what Passiona and Razzalina are getting up to. And the Fruit Love Island. This is not the only genre that's been fruitified either. There's basically spinoffs of most popular culture at this point in the fruit realm. The summer I turned pretty became the summer I turned fruity. So I think the larger takeaway, other than just how weird, you know, and like sexually charged a lot of these videos are, is that every piece of popular entertainment is now just going to be have a kind of a weird mirror image in the fruit world and that we can't create anything new anymore. I do have to just stress how bad these videos are too. I mean, the dialog is sometimes nonsensical. Their outfits are changing from frame to frame. It is not a highly produced series at all. It is slop in every, you know, aspect of the world and yet so

Neal Freyman (20:50)

many people are watching it, which is a little hard to explain, but also not hard to explain at all. The reaction online has mostly been scorn. One very viral tweet by one person said, this may sound extreme, but I am fundamentally superior to those who watch

Toby Howell (21:06)

this I think you can have that adopted mentality. But one, people are tuning in because they want to tune out of everything else that's going in the world. They literally do want to turn their brains off. And then two, the emotions that are being portrayed in these fruit videos are, you know, very intense emotions, like you're getting kicked out of your house. Like sometimes it's, you know, unexpected pregnancies. Like people tune into and are attracted to drama regardless of what the people or the fruit on screen actually look like.

Neal Freyman (21:34)

Okay, back to the real world for my final number. The NBA is in an all out tank a thon. And by that I mean the worst teams are losing and enjoying every minute of it. Coming into this week, the three worst teams in the league, the Pacers, Wizards, Nets, lost a combined 39 games in a row. There have been three separate 16 game losing streaks this season alone. And at one point earlier this month, the bottom 10 NBA teams were on a collective 40 game losing streak. These losing streaks are a feature, not a bug, of the NBA's misaligned incentives when it comes to draft order. If you're already a bad team, you actually should lose even more because the lower you finish in the standings, the better odds you'll have of securing a higher draft pick and landing a future superstar the following season. Tanking has been a strategy for decades with NBA teams unashamed to out star players in games to put themselves at a willing disadvantage. But this year it's turned into a downright epidemic, presenting an existential crisis for the league and its promise to offer a competitive product to fans. Speaking at the NBA's board of governors meeting yesterday, Commissioner Adam Silver vowed to take action on the tanking issue. He said it has business implications, it has basketball implications, it has integrity implications for the league. So it's one that we take very seriously and we are going to fix it full stop up. And I want to say that directly to our fans.

Toby Howell (22:51)

It feels like the NBA is in a precarious position right now because you have the tanking problem. You've had these gambling issues that have affected the league this year. You've had, you know, the Clippers kind of doing this weird cap circum navigate circumvention. All these controversies are hitting the league at the same time, while it seems like other sports are ascending. We talked about how baseball is kind of back in, you know, the public's good graces at this point. But the tanking issue is just something that, that Adam Silver has thrown everything at and it hasn't been able to solve it yet. I mean, there was supposed to be a lottery reform where it didn't reward the worst finishers as much as years prior. That hasn't really changed things. They added a play in game to give more playoff spots to people so they had something to play for. That hasn't changed it that much. The issue is, is that if Victor Wembanyama is out there, you should do everything in your power to get him on your roster because that, that completely alters the trajectory of your franchise, which means losing. Yeah. So you have to lose as much as possible to get the best chances. It's just like one player can, can absolutely alter your fate so much that it's going to be difficult to ever stamp this fully.

Neal Freyman (24:00)

It'll be, it'll be interesting to see, you know, the kind of reforms that they make and they might get creative. But into all of these challenges, the NBA is only expanding. At this NBA Board of Governors meeting yesterday, the owners voted to explore adding teams in Las Vegas and Seattle, which means it probably is going to happen. These would be the first new franchises in over 20 years. So it looks like the Supersonics are coming back to Seattle. And then in terms of Las Vegas, they might have. It's going to be a completely new franchise. So they're going to have to figure out a name. And one of the best names that I've seen this is by the Athletic is the Las Vegas Jokers.

Toby Howell (24:34)

That's really good. Until you start losing and then you're the Jokers and it just doesn't look so hot.

Neal Freyman (24:39)

Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. The boy who lives, lives again. Yesterday, HBO released the first trailer for its upcoming Harry Potter series, which will have its season one premiere during Christmas this year. And people have a lot of thoughts, at least from the trailer. The show seems awfully similar to the movies, like to the Shot, except without the iconic John Williams score and with a darker, bluish tint that HBO prestige dramas are known for. It stars Dominic McLaughlin as Harry Potter, Alistair Stout as Ron Weasley, and Arabella Stanton as Hermione Granger, alongside established adult actors like John Lithgow as Dumbledore. So I think the main vibe to this trailer was why do we need this when we have the movies? And I think that'll be answered by the massive amounts of people who watch it. This winter.

Toby Howell (25:22)

I can't tell if I'm into this either because I'm seeing all, you know, the same characters that I grew up with, but I don't know their faces anymore. I'm like, am I over this? Have I outgrown it? Either way, HBO has sunk a lot of time and resources into this. There is a rumor going around that they were spending $100 million an episode on this, which would be the most expensive TV show of all time. It looks like that is overstated, but it is similar to, you know, the Game of Thrones treatment in the last few seasons. So 15 to $20 million an episode, so it's a big swing for them. Do people still care this much about Harry Potter? I'm not sure, but you're right, we are going to find out.

Neal Freyman (25:59)

Speaking of fantasy franchises getting a reboot, a new Lord of the Rings movie is in the works and you'll never guess who is writing the screenplay. Stephen Colbert. The film, tentatively called the Lord of the Rings Shadow of the Past, will be co written by Colbert and his son and follows Hobbit, Sam, Mary and Pippin, retracing their initial adventure 14 years after the passing of Frodo. Colbert actually was the one who pitched the idea to director Peter Jackson, saying he had reread chapters three to eight that were not included in the Fellowship of the Ring and thought there should be a film about him. Plus, Colbert is going to have a lot more time on his hands when his late show goes off the air in May after CBS canceled it. Colbert is a self described Tolkien addict, so you know he's going to be bringing a lot of passion to the project. Though many skeptics were dubious about his

Toby Howell (26:42)

screenwriting cred, my mind immediately went to if I was kind of let go of the podcast and I had a lot of free time on my hands, what fantasy book series would I want to adapt? What fantasy series would I want to bring to the big screen? And the two obvious answers in my mind were Aragon, which was just like

Neal Freyman (27:02)

the book series Howlini.

Toby Howell (27:03)

Yeah, I absolutely grew up on Defined My youth, or Red Rising, which is a little bit more of a modern series that has kind of been adopted by every reading bro on Instagram at this point, but those two would definitely slap. Aragon has been adapted, but someone needs to give another chance on it.

Neal Freyman (27:18)

Yeah, that's all dragons, right?

Toby Howell (27:19)

Right. I've been stalling for you too, because I know you have an answer.

Neal Freyman (27:22)

No. Well, I've been thinking about it and I'm happy to step in for George R.R. martin. If finishing Game of Thrones is becoming too much, which seems like it is because we haven't seen a book in a very, very long time. Another book that I love growing up that would be really fun into a movie. And I don't know if it has been Artemis Fowl. Yeah, I think it has been. But I love that world as well. So that'd be fun to bring to the screen.

Toby Howell (27:43)

That is a great one. And now I'm going down memory lane. I'm thinking about Rangers Apprentice at this point. There's so many good books out there. Let's make some movies.

Neal Freyman (27:50)

Maybe you'll be let go. Who knows? Okay, that is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. Toby, you're headed to the airport. Best of luck with the TSA lines. Just drop some Neil's numbers on him and maybe you can do a little chat. And cut. If you'd like to reach us, send an email to Morning Brew daily at morning broadcom or DM us on Instagram @mv daily show. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milian is our supervising producer. Raymond Liu is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham and our associate producer is Olivia Lake. Hair makeup is tanking. Devin Emery is our president and our shows are production of Morning Brew.

Toby Howell (28:22)

Ready show today meal. Let's run it back tomorrow.