
OpenAI’s First Device is a Speaker? & Permanent Daylight Saving Passes The House
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Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neal Freyman.
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And I'm Toby Howell.
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Today, is the US done with switching our clocks?
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Then OpenAI wants to put a smart speaker in your house. It's Thursday, July 16th. Let's ride.
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It is so great to be back with you all and huge thanks to Ray, Kayla and Kyle for filling in with Pure Class. Geez Toby, we've been in the UK for too long. Didn't know we were returning to Arrakis, but that appears to be the case. Three years after wildfire, smoke blanketed the Northeast in an apocalyptic orange haze. Deja vu all over again as the Midwest, Northeast and Mid Atlantic are suffering through smoky conditions expected to last throughout the week. The culprit this time? More than a dozen fires in Western Ontario and northern Minnesota are sending smoke eastward and could cause around 100 million people in the US to face unhealthy air quality. While officials suggest you take precautions, it's not going to be as bad as Last time in 2023, the Air Qual Index reached a record high of 465. In New York City yesterday it ranged between 101 and 150 still, combined with a brutal heat dome. Be careful out there and if you need tips, ask the Fremen.
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So I checked this morning. The three cities with the worst air quality in the world right now are Detroit, Minneapolis and Toronto, followed by kinshasa in the Dr. Congo and Delhi, India. New York is 12th, which is hard to believe because when we flew in yesterday it literally looked like we were descending into a Camp Fire smoke cloud. It was so hazy. We were also asked to play a soccer game yesterday for Morning Brew fc. Walked outside immediately, started coughing and sneezing. Just going to the subway. So we put the ixnay on that. But everyone stay safe out there, especially if you are in Canada or Minnesota or anywhere affected.
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And now a word from our sponsor, Ultra Running. Toby, what size shoe are you?
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We don't have to get into that. They're definitely not small or anything.
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Good to know and good for our listeners. Altra actually makes shoes shaped like feet and the Ultra Fit is designed to give you room for your toes for comfort, balance and strength.
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So most running shoes are narrow at the toe, but Altra has more room for your toes to feel so they can spread out and your feet can stay in a natural position no matter
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how petite your feet. And that's not mean, just rhymes.
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Sure use promo code Morning Brew 10 for 10% off your first pair of ultra running shoes at ultrarunning.com/morning brew that you that's a LTRA running.com Morning Brew IBM stands for International Business Machines, but it might as well stand for it is Bad man after the performance it had in the market this week. It started on Tuesday when the company preannounced disappointing Q2 results eight days before its normal earnings, an unusual move that ignited fears about AI spending cannibalizing its bread and butter software sales. The market reacted swiftly, with shares falling 25% their worst week one day slide since 1968. CEO Arvind Krishna said we did not anticipate the magnitude of the capex reprioritization. Basically IBM customers shifted their budgets towards AI servers, storage and memory chips and away from software consulting in the boring mainframe systems that IBM specializes in. It wasn't just IBM either. Software stocks in general have been getting dumped all week, including Salesforce, ServiceNow and Adobe, with consulting firms like Accenture and Cognizant getting caught up in the crossfire too. It's giving shades of the so called SaaS apocalypse from earlier this year when every anthropic feature drop caused the market to freak out that I would eventually replace specialized software. Neil this is a different version of the SaaS apocalypse that has to do with budget. Companies simply don't have enough money for everything and when push comes to shove, CFOs are saying see you to IBM software and hello to AI.
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IBM isn't building something that goes into a data center and that's the main problem. If you're any company that is building software or anything that just doesn't go into a data center, whether it's a chip or a server, then you are going to be vulnerable as IBM's 25% plunge plunge shows. And compounding the problem is that the things that are going into data centers, the thing that companies are actually buying right now and prioritizing with their budgets is getting insanely expensive. They memory servers, they're all going through the roof which is benefiting companies like Micron and Dell. But it's not benefiting companies like IBM because these these its customers like banks are a Huge customer of IBM. They're looking at their budgets right now and they're saying, okay, well we want to devote all of this stuff to AI data centers and our AI initiatives. But the problem is these things are getting even more expensive. We want to lock in prices now before they get even pricier. And that's coming at the expense of IBM.
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So IBM does make these giant, I call them boring but enormous enterprise computers, these mainframe computers that you see hackers hack in the movies, that banks and governments and insurance companies buy. And initially a lot of analysts thought that they would benefit from AI tailwinds. They were supposed to be, you know, more powerful now that they were enhanced by the power of AI. But actually sales started disappointing in this specific sector. Plus the other thing that IBM blamed in this kind of early earnings report was cyber security. A lot of AI releases have put cybersecurity at the forefront of a lot of companies minds. And cybersecurity stocks have been rallying while these software stocks have been plunging because IBM can't offer, you know, the cybersecurity that these companies want. So again, when we talk about that budget and the fact that you have to prioritize certain things, cybersecurity and AI are taking precedent above, you know, a new mainframe computer. Which is why we saw the stock reaction that we did.
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And it's just, it's a crazy stock reaction. We should say I am as a more than 100-year-old company. And for it to lose 25% of the day and behave more like a meme stock is quite unusual and shows the frothiness and volatility of the market this year. I mean, according to Bloomberg, this is just what IBM stock has done. This year alone it had its biggest one day decline since 2000, February. Then it had its biggest one day rally since 1968 in May, it set a new record high in June, and then this week it had its biggest one day plunge since 1968. So AI is causing so much havoc in the stock market, setting new records for some companies, but it's also sending others to the depths of decades ago.
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Yeah. Robert Burgess at Bloomberg Opinion noted that there are now more ETFs and publicly traded stocks. And a lot of those ETFs make it easy to enhance your returns. Like sometimes they're triple leverage, quadruple leverage. And so turning a 100-year-old blue chip company into a meme stock is something that, it's just the current reality of our market right now. Because you are right, like it is jarring to see IBM boring IP lose a quarter of its value in a single day. But that's just kind of the world that we're living in.
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And as earnings season gets going, it started this week, we'll see whether other companies, other software companies are saying very similar things to IBM and saying, look where our profits are down. We, we kind of misread the AI boom because a lot of companies that our customers are now prioritizing hardware stuff that goes into data centers instead of our products. Moving on. We might have seen the largest mass breakup event in human history yesterday. Call it anti Valentine's Day. That's because a Chinese government law went into effect that cracks down on AI virtual companions, which officials say is discouraging people from getting married to other humans and having kids to sustain the population. To comply with the law, leading tech companies like TikTok, Owner, ByteDance and Alibaba have removed features that allow users to customize AI companions and introduce features that periodically remind humans, hey, you know, I'm made up of ones and zeros, right? People with an AI girlfriend or boyfriend or situation, shit. Might seem like a niche community here, but it's pretty normalized in China, where one AI role playing service had 150 million users as of last September. As one woman told Bloomberg, this is like being told the date of my lover's death while leaving me completely powerless. The companion crackdown came on the same day that China reported its economy grew at its slowest pace in three years, expanding by just 4.3% in the second quarter.
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So I have a theory here that companies were actually a little relieved to get this direct mandate from the government because the AI companion business is not that profitable because people use them all the time, they're extremely popular. But it is expensive to moderate it. It has regulatory issues, there's legal issues that come from people talking to AI companions all day. And they just don't generate as much revenue as something like a coding tool. So if you tell Tencent, if you tell Alibaba, like, hey, get rid of these chat bots there, go. Okay, we'll pivot to a lot more profitable business lines. We will roll out more coding tools, we will focus more on productivity based AI. We will, you know, sell you enterprise software. So even though that a lot of consumers are extremely sad that their AI companions are going away, I do think some people in the boardroom are going to maybe this is for the best and we're getting out of the AI companion business.
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And that seems to be the Vibe among the population of China as well. They are blaming, seems like they're blaming more of the tech companies than the government. They think the tech companies are going a little more, a little more strict than they needed to to comply with the law. Perhaps because of the same reasons you were talking about. This happened in the United States as well. California, New New York also have AI companion laws. There's a three hour reminder that AI companions, these need to remind people that they aren't humans. For miners in California and for all users in New York, this one in China goes a lot further. And the tech companies there, Alibaba and ByteDance might be taking it even further.
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And you mentioned that we got some economic data out of China yesterday and it's kind of a bifurcating economy we're seeing right now with AI masking a lot of weakness maybe under the surface because if you look at exports right now, which is something China is very good at, they jumped 27% percent in June. Semiconductor exports in particular rose over 120%. So obviously that sector of the economy is cooking. But then you go a little further down and you look at retail sales basically flat up 1.3%. The real estate market is just a disaster. Real estate investment fell 18%. Fixed asset investment declined 5.7%. So they're still in the midst of a very big property crisis right now. So you have just two sides of the economy, a booming AI business and then a very weak housing and consumer sector, which is kind of indicative of a lot of economies.
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I was going to say the first two stories. The theme is AI is eating the world. If you're not making AI products, anything that goes into a data center, then you are suffering, whether it's IBM or the Chinese economy.
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Let's move on. When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, it was the device that changed everything. Communications, work, laser, you name it. Now, 20 years later, OpenAI is trying to create an iPhone a moment of its own with their first consumer device. According to a report from Bloomberg the chat, CBT makers foray into hardware is going to be a screen free smart speaker. Internally, the device is being described as a human like AI companion that lives in the home. And so even though I started it with the iPhone analogy, it's actually giving Amazon Alexa. It will be able to do normal smart speaker stuff like answer questions, send messages, control smart home devices and play music. But the key difference from your typical smart speaker is it's designed to learn about you over time and access parts of your digital life like email OpenAI believes that existing smart speakers are limited because they just take up space while sitting there waiting for commands. Their device will be proactive with its assistance instead of waiting for you to yell at it to set a kitchen timer. Which means understanding where you are inside the home, helping with cooking, servicing reminders, and generally becoming an expert on your habits. Neil, there's still a little time before you can add the physical embodiment of chat CBT into your house. The device will be unveiled later this year, but won't be released until 2027. But it looks like we're on the precipice of entering the device era of the AI race.
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What stood out to me is that this is designed to move around your house with you. It has a rechargeable battery so you're, they want you to take it, you know, into the kitchen when you're cooking, into the bedroom when you're folding laundry, into the bathroom when you have explosive diarrhea after eating lettuce. And it also, another thing that stood out was that it has quote unquote mechanical elements that can move on their own. And that's all Bloomberg gave us with this particular report. I mean, I think smart speakers now have various lights that tell you indicate what they're doing, whether they're thinking or they're sleeping or responding or things like that. So mechanical devices that move on their own, I don't know if that's an arm or legs or anything like that or lights or anything of that nature. I don't know what Jony I've is cooking up there. But it does seem like a, a hybrid between a phone because when, when something is designed to move around your house with you, I think that's exactly what my phone does. I take it to all the places in my house in my pocket. I don't know about a speaker. I don't know if it's meant to be a one to one replacement of a phone. So does seem to be a hybrid between a phone and Alexa.
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Yeah, a lot of people immediately said okay, so it's entering the speaker race, which Amazon obviously does well and Google does. And Apple also has a HomePod. And the reason I bring up Apple is because there is a lot of beef. I mean our colleagues covered it earlier this week where Apple is suing OpenAI for, you know, stealing trade secrets. So I really wonder if this is going to look or act like an Apple device at all because they are clearly needing to check their boxes and say we did not steal any hardware secrets. We did not steal any trade secrets from Apple. But that is going to be an interesting sub context throughout this whole thing. Is, is this going to derail the launch of their first device? Did they actually steal from Apple? Maybe other, you know, hardware companies are going to go after them as well because what if it just looks like and behaves like an Alexa? So that's kind of the underlying story to this is if it's going to be derailed by the fact that maybe they stole some secrets from Apple.
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And what do you think about no screen? So Peter, Peter Kafka at Insider laid out a case that having no screen is because that's not what people want right now. People watch video, they, they want a screen to see information. And he has a few data points to back this up. Mobile video now accounts for 75% of data transmission these days. Instagram video time spent on Instagram was up 30% last year alone. And even the New York Times, which you're supposed to read is, is making this huge investment into video because this is what people want to watch instead of read or listen to. So this is a bold bet. By going screen free.
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I'm actually less concerned about the screen because we're used to speakers not having screen. Like that's a normal form factor. What I am nervous about is that this device reportedly uses camera, environmental sensors and other stuff to create context awareness, which is basically like it follows you around your home, it knows what you're doing. And I think some people will be a little creeped out by that. There will be some privacy issues around that. Do you really want something watching you in your home at all moments? So beyond the screen thing, I do think being observed is something that people might take a while to get behind. That might be the thing that forces people to not immediately adopt this because they don't want to be watched.
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But all it has to do is just be more than a kitchen timer.
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Yeah.
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And it'll be Alexa.
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That's all I use Alexa for. And I, I'm so sorry, Alexa. I set a 15 minute timer for broccoli right now. So I will be hopefully nicer if this device does eventually make it into my own home. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Neil's numbers right after this.
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Hey Toby, how's your duck impression?
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It's not all it quacked up to be.
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I refuse to engage with a joke that hack.
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Okay, then I'll talk. Aflac pays employees claims fast, accurately and fairly. And their plans come at no direct cost to businesses. Plus they help save employers and employees tax dollars when payroll deductions are withheld pre tax.
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That's why nearly all businesses that offer Affleck say they're likely to continue to learn more, just head to aflac.com/morning brew daily. That's a f l a c.com/morning brew daily. Did you take notes at our last team meeting?
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Notes? Are you insane?
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I'm not going to ask you to elaborate, but the even G2 productivity smart glasses could have come handy for that. They're designed to keep real time support right in view with teleprompting, conversation support, real time translation, AI assistance, and more.
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Obviously, we are podcast hosts and the built in teleprompter feature makes it easy to deliver information without looking at a phone or laptop.
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I'm a huge traveler so I can't wait to try the Real Time translation feature on vacation. Learn more@even realities.com and use code morning brew for 10% off evening one and or even clip when you add them to your even G2 order. Toby, are you okay?
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No. This new thing is happening where if I drink two to six beers, I don't feel good.
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Congrats on being officially old like me. But luckily for you, there's ZBiotics Pre Alcohol Probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking.
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Head to ZBiotics.com/MBD and use the code MBD at checkout for 15% off. That's ZBiotics.com MBD welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats in the week's news that will lift the smoky haze clouding your mind. For my first number, imagine a world in which the sun rises in Louisville at 9am in Seattle at 8:58am and in Bismarck, North Dakota at 9:28am that could be a reality on some winter days, after the House passed a bill on Tuesday that would make Daylight Saving Time permanent, banishing those annoying clock switches twice a year that you actually don't have to think about anymore because your devices do it for you. Just so we're all in the same page, Daylight Saving Time is that period between spring and fall where we set our clocks one hour ahead of Standard Time in order to maximize daylight in the evenings. So this bill The Sunshine Protection act would prioritize more afternoon and evening sunlight year round. No more 4pm Sunsets. Proponents say it makes sense because A, switching clocks is deeply unpopular and B, if we had to choose between one of the options, we should pick the one that extends daylight. When Americans are free to engage in leisure activities, recreation and shopping. Opponents say permanent Daylight Savings Time is a bad idea because remember my opening sentence, in the winter, sunrise would be late for many people. 9:00am in certain places, meaning you'd be waking up and going to work or school in complete darkness. A dangerous situation, especially for kids. Either way, for this to become law, it need to be passed by the Senate, where it faces an uphill battle.
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I feel like we've had this discussion on the show before because every once in a while it does make a pass through the House or pass through the Senate, and usually it ends up being stonewalled. But I think I finally wrapped my head around this because it's taking me a long time to figure out which side I'm on. And I'm on Team Daylight Saving Time because I am a proponent of afternoon sunshine, mainly because our jobs, like, we arrive at the office when it's dark anyways. So if it's dark for a little longer, like it was already dark when we got here, some people might feel differently about that. But also, you mentioned it is good for businesses, it's good for retail. It's also good for public safety. One Brookings Institute study from 2015 found a 27% drop in robberies since there was an extra hour of sunlight in the evenings. A Stanford study showed there was a decrease in violent crime as well. So there's data points on either side. I think I'm team Daylight Savings because it also probably leaves a little bit more time for golf in the evening.
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Here's, here's my take. I think we should just leave it the way it is. What's the problem? I mean, I know there are some situations where you have pets and kids and it makes things a little more difficult around those particular days where you're switching the clocks. But I the system, I say if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I know it's very unpopular. Like 12% of Americans in polling say that they like the current situation. But either way, whether we go to permanent stuff standard time or permanent Daylight saving time, seems like there's issues on both sides. So I'd say keep the status quo. Stick to the stuff, you know, for my next number, try to guess the fastest growing restaurant brand in the United States. The answer, of course, is Wingstop, and it's not even close. Last year, the Chicken Slinger added 382 new stores on net, nearly 100 more than second place Chipotle, according to QSR magazine. Rounding out the top five, seven Brew, Jersey, Mike's and Dunkin. Rapidly opening new locations is a key marketing tactic for Wingstop, which aims to use stores as billboards to attract new customers. That had been working for decades with the chain riding the chicken Wave to post 21 straight years of same store sales growth that came to a screeching halt last year when the chain hit the doldrums. Yeah, things really got flats. Same as store sales cratered 8.7%, sparking a blame game, execs chalked it up to factors outside their control. The weather was bad, lower income, consumers were being squeezed by inflation, analysts said. Well, actually other chains didn't do nearly as bad as you. So maybe it's user error. They're wondering whether Wingstop's breakneck expansion pace is cannibalizing existing stores, diminishing quality and creating more supply than demand for Wings. Either way, Wingstop won't be deterred from its attempt at risk level map domination with plans to more than double its U.S. store footprint to 6,000 locations.
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Yeah, 98% of stores are franchise. So you can rip with this franchise, people can just open whatever they want and it is riding a chicken wave. I mean, it is so easy to just say, obviously this market needs one because every menu is now gearing towards chicken. We've seen it at McDonald's. Chicken sales are overpowering, burger sales a lot of different places. Chick Fil A obviously is crushing as well, so you might as well ride the chicken wave while it's hot. I also want to talk about 7 Brew because Yelp's 2025 consumer interest also named 7 Brew as the fastest growing brand in terms of consumer interest and it also appeared on your franchise list as well. So that is the other part of the economy that seems to do very well is like sugary coffees, not just like the Starbucks coffee. Seven Brew goes crazy in the amount of concoctions that you can do, the energy drinks that you can make there. So definitely two names to keep an eye on. If I had to pick one that will fare better, I do think it is seven Brew because how many Wingstops do we actually need in the world?
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Maybe we need, you know, the guy the CEO thinks we need to at least double the locations in the United States. I'm looking up where the closest seven bru is because there's not one near New York City. There's one down on the Jersey Turnpike in New York and be worth the trip. So I have I haven't been but you're right like Dutch bros and those sugary takeout coffees are absolutely blowing up right now for my final number Halftime at the upcoming World cup final could last up to 25, maybe 30 minutes as the super bowl ification of the soccer tournament reaches its climax. For context, that's about as long as the actual super bowl halftime show. The game, which pits Spain against Argentina in New Jersey on Sunday, will reportedly have an 11 minute halftime show plus the typical 15 minute analysis period. The show could be entertaining co headlined by Madonna, Shakira, BTS and Last minute edition J Biebs. But to many purist fans it reflects the over commercialization of this year's World cup, turning the beautiful game into the corporate game. FIFA already added in once a half hydration breaks that allow for 6 minutes of extra TV ads. Plus the extended edition halftime might even break the laws of soccer. According to soccer's global governing body, the International Football Association Board, athletes are entitled to a halftime break not exceeding 15 minutes. Look like FIFA boss Gianni Infantino is willing to flaunt the rules yet again to deliver a spectacle.
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This is not the first time that FIFA has done this. There was the 2025 Club World Cup Final that also had a 25 minute halftime. Clearly they want to go down the super bowl rabbit hole. And I do really think it depends on what you're looking for from a halftime show. If you want it to be part of the spectacle. I mean it's a World cup final, it should be a spectacle. That's what a lot of events people are saying. And that to not capitalize on the opportunity of so many eyeballs, to not deliver entertainment for so many people, then you're actually doing a disservice to a lot of people. Then you have purists of the game saying that literally by rule of the law you are violating your own rules. So how are you expecting us to embrace this I'm team it's going to be great. Like I do want a little bit of a performance. You want it to feel like a big event. So definitely a divisive issue. But who's going to be mad about seeing, you know, J. Biebs and some other great artists perform as Argentina cruises to victory?
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Well, okay, let's talk about the game itself. So it's the first time since 1930 that two countries who speak the same language played each other in the World cup final. That was. Do you know the, you know the World cup final in 1930?
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Uruguay.
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Uruguay against.
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Well, it's got to be a Spanish speaking country at that point. Spain.
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No, it was not Spain. It's Argentina. So you're going Argentina in 1980? 30. Yeah. Argentina beat England in heartbreaking fashion. The people in Scotland are probably so happy about that. They were rooting so hard against England, probably more so than they root for Scotland. So they are partying in Scotland and of course, no Scotland, no party. The other thing that people are pointing out about this particular matchup is crazy story. 19 years ago, Lionel Messi, the star of Argentina did a charity photo shoot with a five month old baby who was in a bathtub. And that baby is Lamine Yamal, who is now the star player for Spain. So these two were together 19 years ago in a random photo shoot and now they're going against each other in the World cup final.
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Invisible strings, whatever the Taylor Swift song is. But it is crazy that that can happen. Like you have got the universe has a sense of humor or something because what are the chances of that? So I hope. Actually you know what I just said I want Argentina. I just switched. Give me Spain. Argentina was so frustrating to watch against England.
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Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. The founder of Hinge is releasing a new AI dating app that many are calling dystopian, but also might be the future of how you meet your partner. One year after stepping down as CEO of Hinge, Justin McCloud announced he raised $18 million for a new dating company called Overtone, which uses AI to identify potential matches. Don't call it an app. McLeod said there's no profiles, photos, likes. Instead you'll get, quote, highly curated introductions from an algorithm based on what you tell the platform with your own voice. Toby could be pretty humbling to see how the AI evaluates your riz.
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Yes, but also I think where dating apps went wrong is that they tried to insert AI in all the wrong places. They would give you AI generated conversation props or they would assist you in building out your profile and creating your bio. And no one really wants to delegate more of that to AI. And no one wants to be on the other side of an AI written bio either. So the opposite is just using it to surface better matches. And everyone wants that. They don't actually even care what is behind the scenes. Like if it's machine learning, if it's random if it is AI, they just want to meet people that they think they might get along with. So I'm actually pretty bullish on this. Obviously it's going to go viral because you don't know what the other person looks like. And that's kind of a big portion of the modern dating scene. But I'm very curious to see how this pans out and I think it might do better than the other AI attempts dating companies have made. Finally, drivers in Florida are famously not the best. But one retiree is probably getting a lot more honks than normal when she hits the road. Nancy Dello streeto is a 76 year old from Pompano Beach, Florida, who is not too happy that her new license plate number is SQ Z A55, which reads, Yep, squeeze ass. I don't think a senior who's almost 77 will be driving around with a plate that has that to say. Della Streeto told CBS she initially said she quote, went ballistic when she discovered the plate's hidden message. But a sense resigned and even embraced her fate. I can handle it if I get a few honks here and there. Della Streeto said. Actually, being over 70, I might like a few honks now. Next time I'm in Florida, I am keeping my eyes peeled for SQ855.
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This is something my 8th grade self would have cooked up on a TI84. I mean, you can do some funny things on a calculator with eights and zeros, but it seems. Could it be possibly random? I mean, this is. Yeah, this is the question. So Florida standard license plate numbers, they're generated using a randomized alphanumeric sequence, typically four letters and two numbers, which is the case here. But I'm just thinking about all the possible permutations and it seems crazy that, you know, this actually happened. It was sent to this particular woman. I know that the retirement community must be completely abuzz because, I mean, there's a Seinfeld episode obviously where Jerry gets his parents a new Cadillac and it's the talk of the town for, you know, days and months and leads to all kind of shenanigans. So I can't imagine what the chatter is at 4pm dinner about this woman and her squeeze a 55 license plate that was somehow randomly generated for her. I am. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but this seems a little too weird to be random. All right, that is all the time we have. Thanks for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday to share your thoughts on the episode or anything else, send an email to Morning Brew daily at Morning Broadcom or DM us on Instagram at me. 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. Technical direction by Nina Miller. Hair and makeup. Like England's World cup prospects isn't coming home. Devin Emery is our president, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
C
Great show, Danielle. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Episode Title: OpenAI’s First Device is a Speaker? & Permanent Daylight Savings Passes The House
Date: July 16, 2026
Hosts: Neal Freyman (B) & Toby Howell (C)
Neal and Toby’s July 16 episode is packed with insight and wit as they tackle the biggest stories in business, tech, and the economy—with a special focus on AI’s growing impact. Major topics include wild market turbulence spurred by AI spending, seismic regulatory changes in China’s AI companion sector, OpenAI’s intriguing move into consumer hardware, and the debate over permanent Daylight Saving Time as it progresses through Congress. The show is peppered with banter, real-time stats, intriguing anecdotes from sport and pop culture, and concludes with lighter stories about a viral Florida license plate and the next big thing in AI-powered dating apps.
(00:50–02:19)
(02:48–07:25)
(07:25–11:09)
(11:20–15:59)
Neal’s Numbers Segment (17:59–20:30)
(20:30–23:24)
(23:24–26:48)
(27:07–29:23)
Neal and Toby maintain their trademark snappy, witty style—mixing accessible business explanations with pop-culture asides and personal anecdotes. The episode is energetic, accessible, and rooted in practical implications for listeners, offering both context and entertainment on the latest news.
This episode is your one-stop shop for the volatile state of AI in business, world economic trends, evolving consumer tech, sporting spectacle, and a dose of weird, wonderful headlines—all in under 30 minutes.