← Morning Brew Daily
Morning Brew Daily
Seasonal Jobseekers in Trouble? & Waymo Will DoorDash Your Burrito
00:31:21
There may not be enough seasonal jobs to go around & meals on wheels
Loading summary
Transcript56 lines
- [00:02]
Ann Berry
You could create the best advertisement known to man. But if you're not getting it in front of the right audiences or tapping into meaningful scale, it'll sort of be a tree falls in a forest situation. Enter Disney Campaign Manager. It has simplified streaming TV ad buying, allowing you to set up, launch and optimize campaigns all from a single easy to use platform. Your ads can then appear alongside iconic content on Disney, ESPN and Hulu streaming platforms. So so in translation, massive reach, all with one partner. Learn more and get started at Disney CampaignManager.com that's Disney CampaignManager.com.
- [00:42]
Neal Freyman
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neal Freyman.
- [00:45]
Toby Howell
And I'm Toby Howell.
- [00:46]
Neal Freyman
Today, holiday retail jobs are drying up just as everyone is clamoring for one.
- [00:51]
Toby Howell
Then prepare to get your pad Thai sans human. Or Waymo is getting into the food delivery game. It's Friday, October 17th. Let's ride.
- [01:04]
Neal Freyman
Good morning and happy Friday. Did you hear about the governor of Illinois cleaning up at the blackjack table? Yesterday, Illinois Governor J.B. pritzker released his tax returns which showed $1.4 million in gambling winnings. Pritzker, a billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotel's fortune, said the windfall came from a single trip to Vegas while playing blackjack, calling it incredibly lucky. Pritzker didn't divulge any juicy details, like whether it happened in a single run, how much he wagered, or whether it took place at a special high roller table. His spokesperson said the money would be donated to charity. But, Mr. Governor, I got to ask, who do you like in the Red Wings Lightning game tonight?
- [01:43]
Toby Howell
I mean, that is a heater of all heaters. But he's worth $3.9 billion, so 1.4 million. Kind of like you or me winning 100 bucks at the table. Entirely plausible, especially at a high roller table where you can bet, you know, 25, $100,000 a hand. But the New York Times talked to a pro gambler to see what his take was on the whole situation. He said, I quote, oh, my God, someone actually declared their gambling winnings. Because most people do not do that. They just say, I probably lost more than I won in the past year or so. They just leave him off entirely. But maybe Pritzker wanted to disclose it so someone would ask him the question about his heater of all heaters at the blackjack table. 5D chess. But congrats to him, I guess. Didn't even know government officials were allowed to gamble. So you learn something new every day. And now a word from our Sponsor Remarkable Neil when did you last feel like you had a truly productive workday?
- [02:36]
Neal Freyman
Hard to say. What was your start date here?
- [02:39]
Toby Howell
Very funny. But if you want to be productive, you should get the Remarkable Paper Pro when there's nothing to distract you. When you're organized, it's just easier to get ahead at work. Remarkable Paper Pro helps users to slow down and achieve more by being productive with their time spent working.
- [02:54]
Neal Freyman
This thin, minimalist tablet is designed to feel and sound just like writing on actual paper, but you can also turn your handwriting into type text, use the reading light to work anytime, and structure your work with dozens of built in templates.
- [03:06]
Toby Howell
And most importantly, Remarkable's mission is about helping you think better. That means no apps, social media or any other distractions. Just you and your thoughts. Whether you're in a meeting or deep in a creative session, this paper tablet helps you think better.
- [03:19]
Neal Freyman
You can try Remarkable paper Pro for 100 days for free. If it's not what you're looking for, get your Money back. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and get your paper tablet today. That's remarkable.com this holiday season could see a lot of job seekers being left out in the cold. While interest in seasonal positions is spiking, fewer employers are looking to bring them on board, leading to potentially the worst Christmas hiring environment since 2009. A new report from Indeed laid out the glaring imbalance in holiday job interest and holiday job availability. Searches for seasonal jobs rose 27% at the end of September compared to last year, and were 50% higher than in 2023. On the other hand, seasonal job postings were up just 2.7%. Indeed, senior economist told Bloomberg, it's a microcosm of an American job market that's frozen over. What we're seeing in the seasonal hiring market is what we're seeing in the broader market, he said. People are going out and looking for jobs and just finding of them going around. A separate report from Challenger Gray and Christmas adds to the worries. They found that retailers intend to add fewer than 500,000 seasonal jobs this winter, which would be the lowest number in 16 years. Of the companies that announced seasonal hiring plans, Bath and Body Works is looking for 32,000 workers, 700 fewer than last year. Michaels wants an extra 10,000 employees, 5,000 fewer than in 2022. And Santa is hiring 800 elves, half of last year's total. So bottom line, if you're looking for a holiday retail position, as so many of us have done, start your search now because the competition is going to Be fierce.
- [04:55]
Toby Howell
I'm aiming for that ELF job up in the North Pole. But this is indicative of the broader job market as well, the low, higher, low fire environment that we currently find ourselves in. Because inflation has constrained margins a little bit, it's pushed down discretionary spending. You are seeing these things filter through the, the job market at this point. I think back to our conversation with Fed President Austan Goolsbee yesterday. Great interview. You should listen to that if you haven't. It was on yesterday's show, but he basically said that we are at this equilibrium point where these businesses do not feel comfortable laying off workers, but they don't feel comfortable hiring workers either. They kind of just want to stick with the people that they got. So when it comes to the seasonal workers, the Christmas period, the holiday period, we seeing that exact same dynamic play out. It didn't change that. There's not suddenly this massive rush of need for workers because everyone just kind of wants to stay put, stay where they're at, stay in that equilibrium zone.
- [05:50]
Neal Freyman
So the Forecast is for 500,000 seasonal jobs to be added this winter, which would be the worst since 2009. But where are those jobs coming from? That's a decent amount of jobs. Well, half of them, 250,000, is coming from Amazon itself. Amazon said it was going to hire 250,000 seasonal workers this holiday season, as it does every year. It hires hundreds of thousands of people to come to the warehouses so they can package all the gifts that you got for your family. So half of all seasonal hiring is coming from Amazon specifically. And that's not any growth from the past few years. That's the same as they've done in 2023 and 2024.
- [06:28]
Toby Howell
Yeah, Amazon is essentially the seasonal job market at this point. It is a monoculture when it comes to it because they're just so much bigger. I mean, you're talking about Bath and body works hiring 700 less people. Amazon is 250,000 people. So this was not always the case. During the 2000s, no single employer represented more than, you know, 15 or 20% of the total holiday hiring. Now, one company basically drives the entire seasonal workforce at this point. The one thing, a data point I'm also looking at is the lack of data point coming out of companies like Target, ups, Macy's, Kohl's. They haven't disclosed seasonal hiring targets yet, which is a big difference because last year around this time, they had already done so. So they are being a lot less transparent this time around. So sometimes no Data is, is worse than some data because how bad must it be is if you want to read between the lines, if they're not saying anything at all, are they not going to hire any workers or do they just not want to disclose lower amounts in the previous years to set off alarm bells?
- [07:28]
Neal Freyman
They're definitely going to hire workers. But yeah, I think the fact that they're not saying anything is indicative that they're certainly not going to hire more workers than in years past. So it's going to be a tough seasonal job market out there.
- [07:38]
Toby Howell
Moving on, Uber wants its gig workers to pick up more gigs in between trips. Later this fall, the ride sharing company is introducing a new job category called digital tasks that will allow U.S. drivers to earn money for completing small online assignments. No, they're not handing out math homework. Instead these mini assignments are things like uploading restaurant menus, recording audio samples in different languages, or other data related micro tasks that, that take just a few minutes to complete and yield small payouts. What's the method behind the madness? All roads lead back to AI. As AI companies run low on material to train their models, Uber is marketing their AI solutions arm as a way to get high quality data and model training tasks, all completed by Uber's vast network of independent contractors. Now you can almost see the boardroom meeting where this program came to be for Uber. It gets to monetize its workforce during downtime. So for AI companies, they get more high quality data and gig workers are the ones left doing the actual work for a little extra dough.
- [08:38]
Neal Freyman
Yeah, maybe your first thought as mine was, was are these drivers going to be fidgeting with their phones, filling out all of this, you know, data labeling stuff while they're driving or while they're waiting. But no, Uber says that it will be away from their cars. This is just another way that they're trying to leverage their army of freelancers. Drivers wouldn't say they're freelancers, but in order to make some more money and also help Uber in the data label labeling business, which has absolutely boomed in the past few years because AI large language models need a lot of data. And they don't just need a lot of data, they need a lot of data that is labeled and cleaned up. They can't, you can't just force feed it, you know, some raw huge data sets because it won't exactly know what to do with it. Thinking back to Metta, which bought Scale AI, which is probably the biggest data labeling company out there, paid $14 billion to bring scale AI on board now that's valued at $29 billion. And it's not just related to large language models, but also ro. They're these robot AI startups that are paying up to $150 an hour for you to do physical tasks in the world like folding laundry, loading dishwashers, or making an espresso. Because they need to learn, the robots need to learn from humans if they want to make humanoid robots. So it's not just happening. Uber, they're probably not paying them anywhere close to $150 an hour. But this data labeling business is absolutely booming. It's going to come to maybe you or I, if we want to make a couple extra bucks, we could start folding laundry.
- [10:04]
Toby Howell
But you are correct, it is buck is actually probably a better term than bucks at this point because the example that Uber gave when they rolled out this new program was uploading a menu yields you a single dollar. So again, it's not life changing money. But again, Uber's sort of messaging around this is. It is another way for our freelance workers, for our contract employees to make money during their downtime. And they're not the only ones doing this. You can go on upwork and find data labeling jobs right now on other freelance platforms. And then also this is not the first time that Uber has experimented with extra gig work for its gig workers. Remember two years ago it wanted it tested out this program where you could hire an Uber driver to come do a household task for you, sample furniture or something like that. So that is, they're always looking for ways to utilize this workforce and give them more opportunities to earn. The big question mark here too is our drivers actually training their replacements right now. Because whenever you talk about AI, it leads to autonomous driving, which leads to a world without any Uber drivers anymore. And Uber said that no, this is separate from it. They say that the data obtained from Driver Task will not be used to develop driverless vehicles. So that's just a little bit of a PR landmine that they're trying to skirt around saying, we're not making you train your own replacements right now. Which would obviously be a bad look for them. Uber isn't the only one shaking up the gig economy. Waymo is also trying to deliver more than your drunk self home after a night out. Yesterday, it announced a new partnership with DoorDash to test out an autonomous food delivery service across the Phoenix area. Customers will be able to choose a Waymo option in the DoorDash app to get their grocery or meal delivered by car. Just car. That Means no tip either, unless you want to tip car. Wayo's spokesperson said the program is meant to boost fleet utilization because the same autonomous cars can serve both passengers and deliveries. That is also looking to capture a portion of the nascent robot food delivery market, which is already seeing tests in the so called last mile delivery segment. Serve Robotics has rolled out sidewalk robots to deliver burritos for uber eats in L. A. While DoorDash is also debuting a tiny electric delivery robot in Phoenix that's 110 the size of a car. Neil the trend here is one, blurring the line between moving people and moving goods. And two, the Last mile is starting to go driverless. Personally, I like my food delivered the old fashioned way via fork because I made it myself at home.
- [12:31]
Neal Freyman
This is going to be a key test of Americans laziness because already they're going to be ordering delivery to their home. But if you live here in an apartment in New York City, you know that delivery drivers sometimes come up to your apartment, or if you live in suburbia, they get out of the car and bring it to your porch. I mean, is our American consumers going to balk at that? Because you are, in this case, what DoorDash and Waymo are doing is you have to go out to the trunk of the car, open it and then get your meal and then bring it back into your home. And I know it sounds so silly that we would be so inconvenienced to leave our house to get a meal that we ordered delivery from, but it will be interesting to see, at least in this Phenix test case, whether consumers say, well, I'd rather do that than maybe add three or four dollars tip for a driver. And maybe this whole thing is, I mean, this whole thing is intended to bring costs down across the board because you don't have to pay humans. But we'll see whether, how people respond to that.
- [13:25]
Toby Howell
I was also thinking the other side because the restaurant workers themselves are now going to have to come out and put them in the car before, you know, someone would come in, pick up the restaurant. So there is just some logistical. I mean, we're talking about last mile delivery, but we're now Talking about last 30ft delivery. When you don't have a human in the mist, what does that look like? Which I think is a very valid question. Waymo has also aspired to have a delivery business in the past. Early on in the company, which is this is a subsidiary of Google, they made deals with ups, Wayfair, JB Hunt and Uber. They wanted to apply their autonomous driving technology to last minute delivering to long haul trucking. This has always been, you know, the other pipe dream. As long as moving humans, let's move other stuff around. And they kind of slowly sunsetted that program to focus on robo taxis. Now they feel Robotaxis are in a good spot. Let's dive back into this world again, see if people will, you know, exit their homes to pick up their burritos that were already delivered in a self driving chariot directly to their front door. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Neil's numbers.
- [14:29]
Neal Freyman
What's the key to tapping into your ideal audience?
- [14:32]
Toby Howell
First, it's knowing that with Disney Campaign Manager, your audience isn't just a segment, it's a fandom. Then it's about sending that fandom the right message at the right time.
- [14:42]
Neal Freyman
Actually, yes, that's exactly it. Reaching high value audiences at scale.
- [14:47]
Toby Howell
And if you want to couple that with a massive reach, Disney Campaign Manager delivers advanced multilayered audience reach by leveraging Disney select segments to reach fans and markets by geography, device interest, content, genres and more. The platform blends automation with proactive human assistance. Yep, a real person will be helping you on the platform because human touch is important.
- [15:09]
Neal Freyman
With over 106 million monthly passionate and engaged viewers, this balance of huge reach and digital level precision is uniquely ownable. Brands don't just reach more people, they reach the right people at the right moments.
- [15:22]
Toby Howell
Catch the early risers with content like Good Morning America or the Crime Sleuths with content like Only Murders in the Building and combine your reach with iconic content. Whatever you choose, the fandom world is your oyster.
- [15:35]
Neal Freyman
Get started at disney campaign manager.com that's disney campaign manager.com Toby, do you know my favorite word?
- [15:44]
Toby Howell
Free.
- [15:45]
Neal Freyman
No.
- [15:45]
Toby Howell
Vengeance?
- [15:46]
Neal Freyman
No.
- [15:46]
Toby Howell
Capacious?
- [15:47]
Neal Freyman
No. Stop guessing. It's no. My favorite word is no. And Mint Mobile loves that word as much as I do. No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees, no bs. It's why so many people say yes to making the switch and getting Premium Wireless for $15 a month.
- [16:04]
Toby Howell
All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. If you've never had to move all your contacts over, trust me, you don't want to. Worst way to spend Easter ever.
- [16:21]
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. See Mint Mobile for details. Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the news. That's typically on a Thursday, but we pushed it to Friday because this week's been a little chaotic scheduling wise for my first number. The US Passport used to be the envy of the world. Now it's about as good as our soccer team and the latest Henley passport index. The US dropped out of the world's top 10 most powerful passports for the first time in two decades. We're currently in 12th, tied with Malaysia compared to seventh last year and number one 10 years ago. What does it even mean to have a powerful passport? The rankings reflect how many countries a traveler can visit without needing a visa, a number that's been dropping for US Nationals as America increasingly isolates itself from the world. The creator of the index, Christian Kahlen, said the steep decline of US Passport strength was a sign of its waning superpower status. It's quote, more than just a reshuffle in rankings, it signals a fundamental shift in global mobility and soft power dynamics. He said. Nations that embrace openness and cooperation are surging ahead while those resting on past privilege are being left behind. That's because reciprocity has a lot of influence in passport rankings, as in we let people in from your country visa free and you do the same with US. But the US doesn't have a lot of that going on. Currently, US passport holders can access 180 destinations without a visa, but the US itself only allows 46 other nationalities to come here without one. As recently as April, Brazil ended visa free access for US Nationals because of a lack of reciprocity.
- [18:11]
Toby Howell
First of all, got to clarify, you're talking about our men's soccer team because our women are still doing just fine there. We are still the top of the heap, but also Americans. How would you react if you started to see your mobility start to fall a little bit? You used to be number one, but now you are seeing yourself not having as much access as you once in the past. So what would you do? A lot of people are seeking alternative residence or alternative citizenship because they want to have that additional freedom that that allows. So 67% surge, Henley's data found, are looking for those alternative residence programs. That also looks like you are hedging against declining U.S. mobility. Like, hey, my passport doesn't get me into this place, maybe I'll go see if I can snag one from Belgium or a European one. Who's my grandma, who's my grandpa? Try to get that dual citizen going. So that's just kind of another trickle down effect from this statistic of the US falling from its once high perch.
- [19:06]
Neal Freyman
Let's look at the leaderboard just. Overall, Asian countries dominate the upper ranks. Singapore is number one. They have visa free access to 193 destinations, followed by South Korea with 190 and the third place, Japan with 189. In last place at the other end is Afghanistan. They can get into 24 destinations visa free, but the US is in freefall. So I wouldn't be surprised if we, you know, fell down the leaderboard even more. Okay, for my next number, if you're headed to London, hold on to your phone till your knuckles bleed. The city has become the European capital for phone thefts, clocking a record 80,000 stolen phones last year, a big increase from 64,000 the year before. As the New York Times reports, this is no Oliver Twist level pickpocketing, but a sprawling global crime network. New phones nabbed in London sell for big bucks in China, sometimes up to $5,000, fueling a multilayered industrial scale enterprise that has a bedeviled police. And it would help if they actually tried to stop it. Law enforcement has been slow to respond to the phone thefts in part because they didn't put in much effort. British police budgets were slashed in the 2010s and whatever resources were available were directed away from low level offenses and toward more serious violence and sexual crimes. And the phone robbers got away with it. About 106,000 phones were reported stolen in London from March 2024 to February 2025. But fewer than 500 people were charged or admitted to an offense. Now the police have decided to crack down, conducting raids to root out the middlemen who fuel the black market for phones. Recently they arrested two men who are accused of sending stolen phones to China. They were seen in Costco buying 1.5 miles worth of aluminum foil to wrap around phones so they wouldn't transmit a tracking signal.
- [20:50]
Toby Howell
There are so many little things that kind of all culminated in this epidemic of phone thefts. One of is the fact that they figured out that tin foil and aluminum foil was an integral part of this entire system. So one and a half miles, you could literally buy anything at Costco. But the other part that definitely enabled this is e bikes. Actually lime bikes were introduced into London in 2018, and they've turned out to be the perfect getaway vehicle for phone fest. They're very easy to ditch. They're very easy to pick up. They're quiet, you know, they're fast, actually. And please say we don't even try to chase these people because one, it's just too dangerous for us going through crowds, and two, we couldn't track them down even if we did set after them. So e bikes have been a massive enabler for this as well. And then also, humans are an enabler too, because you forget that the thing you're carrying around your hand all day, this tool that's always in your pocket, is worth $1,000 on the black market. A thousand quid. Excuse me, we're talking about London here. So you're not necessarily paying attention when you're just looking at your Twitter feed or you're looking at Instagram, and you make an easy target when you're not paying attention. So it is fascinating that you forget that they've just become so ubiquitous, but they still are a very valuable thing. Some people say you wouldn't count $1,000 in cash right on the sidewalk in front of people. And yet we look at our phones without a care in the world. So there are different parts of this, from our literal intention spans to E bikes that create this, you know, massive epidemic.
- [22:15]
Neal Freyman
All right, for my final number, Americans tend to think they're a pretty handy bunch expressing high confidence they can accomplish a variety of practical tasks. In a new survey from the Pew Research Center. So Pew asked American adults whether they could accomplish each of 12 different practical activities, and many replied, oh, easy, 95% they could definitely or probably remove a stain from their clothes. 94% said the same about cleaning and caring for a wound, and 76% said they could probably or definitely understand which chemicals not to mix in household cleaning. Confidence scores were particularly high for tasks related to health and food. 88% said they could make sense of nutrition labels, 83% could explain what yeast does in baking bread, and 83% also said they could grow a vegetable garden. So what are the tasks that people need to call in a little help for the more technical ones? Unsurprisingly, 39% said they could explain a high pressure system on a weather map, and just 29% said they could fix a problem with the car's engine. Toby, I'm surprised at the broad confidence on display here. I wonder if most people who responded thought, sure, I could do this after watching a couple of YouTube videos.
- [23:24]
Toby Howell
Of course, that is the data point that is missing from this entire data set is do I have my phone available? Can I look it up on YouTube? Because I would feel confident about fixing an edge and if, you know, I can look up up the exact problem in front of me. Were there any of these, you know, practical tasks that you thought were a big delta from your own experience or did you think you fell pretty much in line with what most people responded to this.
- [23:46]
Neal Freyman
I feel like I fall in line. But, you know, remove a stain from your clothes. 95% of people said they could do that. I don't know if I could do that.
- [23:55]
Toby Howell
I think the same thing. I mean, I know how to use.
- [23:56]
Neal Freyman
I'm 34 years old. I don't know if I could do that.
- [23:58]
Toby Howell
But there are, yes, there's different materials, there's different substances. Like do I know how to get blood out of linen? I'm not sure. Can I get coffee out of my sof? Maybe water? Damn, my mom is rolling her eyes right now. Maybe I should know this better. But yeah, it's just fascinating to. Also fascinating to see the generational differences as well. Where it. The biggest shift is that older generations feel very confident calculating a tip without using their calculator or their phone. Younger generations feel a little less confident. This is feeds directly into the conversation of people saying, oh, the youth these days, they don't know how to do anything. They have to check their phones for everything. But there is an actual gap. 90 plus percent of older adults feel like they can do it. Only 77% of under 30s feel like they can do it. Just move the decimal, people. Move the decimal in, double it. You got this. You should feel more confident about that.
- [24:48]
Neal Freyman
And I'm not sure that Explain. A high pressure system on a weather map is a practical task that people need to know. So I'm not surprised it's low at 39%. No, it's high.
- [24:57]
Toby Howell
It's high pressure system.
- [24:59]
Neal Freyman
All right. But I do think that maybe is that's one thing where I could do that that people can't. I mean, all I know is a high pressure system means good weather. Oh, so that's good enough, right?
- [25:09]
Toby Howell
I absolutely cannot do that. So the more you learn.
- [25:11]
Neal Freyman
Yeah. All right, let's sprint to the finish this Friday with some final headlines. It's not Silicon Valley bank all over again yet, but regional lenders took a beating on the market yesterday after two banks warned they were exposed to alleged fraud by borrowers. Adding to the growing worries there might Be some rotten loans hidden across Wall Street. Zion's bank lost 13% and Western Alliance bank tumbled 11% after making the disclosures, while investment bank Jefferies dropped more than 10%. Safe haven assets like gold, silver and bonds jumped as investors started to bite their nails. All of a sudden, it's become a nervy time for the banking sector. Remember, two auto industry companies, First Brands and Tricolor, collapsed in spectacular fashion over the past month, leading JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon to warn, quote, when you see one cockroach, there are probably more. Maybe they're starting to find the colony.
- [26:02]
Toby Howell
Yeah, we woke up this morning and sure enough, the European stocks, their bank index fell nearly 3% in early training. And it honestly feels like not this again. Remember, we go back to the regional banking crisis that was set off by Silicon Valley bank collapsing a few years ago. That trickled into the world economy, the global economy, where European banks also were affected by that. So to see them start to react to this news as well, you start to think about Jamie Dimon's cockroach comment. And now we are wondering, are we going to start to see a couple more of those pop up? We are going to see this today because a lot of US Regional banks are reporting earnings. Truist Financial, Huntington, Fifth Third Bank, Regions and Comerica are all set to report. So suddenly these regional bank earnings, while big bank earnings came in pretty stellar. We're going to look a lot more closely at these smaller banks to see if some of that contagion is spreading. Moving on. Poor one out for TiVo. The iconic Baboop sounding commercial fast forwarding little magic box quietly ended sales of its device and accessories this month, bringing to end one of the most iconic runs in TV history. When TiVo launched in 1999, it totally redefined how people watch Law and Order reruns. It allowed viewers to pause, rewind and record live tv, rendering commercials a thing of the past. If you were patient enough to prerecord it became a verb unto itself. Regardless of what DVR you had. I distinctly remember tivoing episodes of American Idol growing up, even though we didn't even have TiVo. But all good things must come to an end. And TiVo wasn't built for the streaming era we now find ourselves in. TiVo and other DVRs were built for cable, recording live from channels, but the rise of Netflix and others rendered that model increasingly obsolete. Neil, I just caught the tail end of TiVo's cultural zenith. Do you have any memories from using this fantastic piece of Tech.
- [27:55]
Neal Freyman
Yeah. As I was reflecting on TiVo, I think the one thing that my family used it for that I clearly remember was when the Summer Olympics were overseas, I think it was either Sydney in 2000 or Athens in 2004. There's so much awesome stuff going on while you're sleeping. So I think we pretty much just recorded every single competition on TiVo and then we woke up in the morning, rip through it, because a lot of stuff in the Olympics can be a little boring or drag out or have a lot of commercials. So we just used TiVo, recorded everything, and then watched it all later. And it was absolutely revolutionary for that, but also for just TV watching in general. And now you can do all of the same things that TiVo pioneered with streaming services. And a bunch of the cable providers also rolled out more first party tools TiVo still lives on. They're trying to become an operating system platform, and they're diving more into software and automotive entertainment. So you might start seeing them in the backseat of your cars on those screens. But absolutely. What a run. Change the way people watch TV. I'll be forever grateful for TiVo because I watched so many fewer commercials than I was initially expecting to. Okay, finally, prepare for your world to be turned upside down. Chicago's infamous rat hole was not made by a rat, according to Science. If you haven't heard of the rat hole or plat tattooie, it's a viral attraction in Chi Town, where people make pilgrimages to an imprint on a sidewalk that looks like a giant rat got stuck there. And why wouldn't it be a rat? Chicago was named the rattiest city for the 10th year in a row last year. But then the Buzz Killingtons got involved. Postdoctoral researchers, they studied the rat hole like it was a law and order crime scene and published a study in a real scientific journal this week that concludes the rat hole was made not by a rat, but by a larger rodent. They said with 99% certainty it was left by either an eastern gray squirrel or a fox squirrel. A mal shook up Toby. What else is Chicago lying about? Are you about to tell me the bean isn't actually a bean or there's.
- [29:49]
Toby Howell
Not a person trapped inside the bean. That's another Chicago lore. But the squirrel does make a lot more sense. Unfortunately, those pesky doctoral researchers make a good point. One they call out that squirrels are active during the day when concrete is most likely to be poured. So that is one check in the squirrels box. Also, the absence of footprints around this rat hole suggests that it fell from above rather than scurried across again. Makes sense. Squirrels are probably in trees. Rats not so much. And then the proportions of it. It looks like the reason why they call it a rat is because it looks like there's a little rat tail. But squirrels bushy tail just probably didn't leave a mark and so that explains the tail as well. So unfortunately they make a lot of good points. I don't think anyone cares. They're not going to start calling it the squirrel hole. I think it's still, you know, the rat hole and it's going to be part of Chicago law firm here until.
- [30:37]
Neal Freyman
This is a thing Chicago people do, they call things by their own names. I mean the Sears Tower switched to the Willis Tower in 2009 and I don't hear anyone ever call it the Willis Tower. They just say the Sears Tower. So people are absolutely going to still call it the rat Hole, as they should. All right, that's all the time we have. Thanks for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend. Give any feedback on today's episode. Send a note to Morning Brew daily at Morning Broadcom. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milian is our executive producer. Raymond Lu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Hair and makeup is learning how to identify a high pressure system. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
- [31:15]
Toby Howell
Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well.
- [31:26]
Ann Berry
Are you looking for a daily dose of market news without the jargon and the noise? I decided to go take a look and see what those analysts are saying and who those non institutional investors might be. I'm Ann Berry, investor, CEO and board member. And my show Brew Markets dives deep beyond the headlines to break down the stories of stocks with insider insights. So a really powerful chart there. You see just massive deviation. Well, it's the lifeblood of trade. There's just one chapter in there which really struck me because, you know, I've been a CEO business. You'll come away from each episode of Brew Markets able to ask the questions that help you strengthen your market knowledge. New episodes drop every weekday afternoon, so tune in to Brew Markets wherever you get your podcasts.