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US Launches Tariff Refund Website & Robots Outrun Humans in Half-Marathon
00:27:04
Businesses want their money back & robots are running amok
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- [00:01]
A
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neal Freyman.
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And I'm Toby Howell.
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Today the robots are running half marathons faster than humans.
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Then businesses rejoice. You can get in line for a tariff refund starting today. It's Monday. 4:20.
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Let's ride. Good morning and welcome back to the week. I look forward to this day all year. Marathon Day in Boston. Later this morning, more than 30,000 people are set to embark on a hilly 26.2 mile journey from Hopkinton to Boylston Street. With 500,000 spectators cheering them on. This year's race hasn't been without a little brand controversy. Ahead of the marathon, Nike put up a sign at its Newberry street store that read, runners welcome. Walkers tolerated. That sentiment was criticized by some local runners and disability advocates for not being inclusive, and by Friday the sign was taken down.
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I see both sides of it. Neil Tolerated felt like too hard harsh of a word. But also stick to your guns at Nike. If this is your brand identity, if you want to highlight winning, just do it. Don't get scared and back down because now you just look bad to everyone involved. Still, it shouldn't overshadow marathon day, which is awesome. We're finally getting some cool weather and even a little bit of a tailwind, so we should see some fast times.
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This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, host Liz Ann Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab center for Financial Research, analyze economic developments and bring context to conversations around equities, fixed income, the economy and more.
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Join Colin, Liz and and their guests as they share insights into what might be moving the markets and why, as well as what indicators they are watching for signs of change. The they'll also answer investor questions on everything from how sectors are evolving to what the bond markets are telling us to where to look for opportunities and considerations for your portfolio.
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You can download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/on investing or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Refunds get your refunds Today is the start of the US Tariffs refunds process, where the government will work to get money back to importers after the Supreme Court declared Most of President Trump's tariffs unconstitutional. Institutional 2 months ago A tariff refund portal goes live today called CAPE for Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries, where businesses will be able to submit claims to snag a share of the estimated $166 billion owed in refunds. This is a big win for the business world, which has been in limbo ever since the Supreme Court ruled that the Emergency Powers act was not a suitable cover for issuing widespread tariffs. But. But then stop short of actually recommending how to process refunds. Finally, some clarity is here though. Business owners are not going to wake up with a chunk of change in their bank account. The refunds are not automatic. Businesses or customs brokers must manually opt in, then wait 60 to 90 days for approval. Still, if all goes to plan, companies will be able to recoup some of the tariffs that ate into their bottom line. Neil, is this the sort of thing that is going to trickle down to consumers? Are we going to see any of this money?
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I wouldn't hold your breath. Tariffs are paid by import and the only the importer of record is entitled to money back. So unless you actually imported a sneaker yourself from China or Vietnam to the United States, then you are not eligible. Wait, maybe, maybe companies could say, hey, we charge a little bit more to consumers for tariffs. We can perhaps share some of the spoils from the refunds with consumers. That doesn't seem likely to happen. Costco CEO last month told investors that the company would return shoppers money through quote, unquote, lower prices and better values. So that's sort of the tack that companies are going to take. And CNBC interviewed 25 CFOs about their plans. If they got tariff refunds, zero out of the 25 said they would directly reimburse customers.
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Yeah, a lot of them are saying that it's very difficult to actually find the exact cost of tariffs because it's been woven into so many different parts of the supply chain. So it's not just as easy as saying like, hey, I am going to give you X amount of money because this is how much the tariffs cost. All up and down the supply chain, manufacturers, suppliers, importers, they all are eating some of those costs. So it's just not as cut and dry as saying, hey, here's a check. There is some customer and consumer pushback here. There's a few lawsuits that are out there against some of the companies, even the ones that you mentioned, including Costco and FedEx. FedEx has said to they pledged to pass down any refunds it receives to. You're also seeing this dynamic play out between retailers and wholesalers. So a retailer, for instance, if you're a furniture retailer, you had to pay elevated prices to get your products because, you know, tariffs made everything a little bit more expensive. Expensive as A retailer, you ate those additional wholesale costs but you are not going to be able to apply for a tariff refund. So some of them are saying like, hey manufacturers, you mind sharing a little bit of the love with us? Because like, hey, we eight some of these costs alongside you. Who knows how it's going to play out between retailers and wholesalers.
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It also be very interesting to look at this website that the government spun up because that's always an adventure. Apparently applying, applying for one of these just to register your business. 56,000 have done this said. Well, actually we're pretty impressed that the government got this up and running in two months because that they had a very expedited timeline. But they also said filling it out was very tough in the sense that you couldn't make any mistakes. Like if you wrote company versus CEO, you just kind of had to get everything right. And they also make you put in your bank account information even though the government already has it for customs payments. A few businesses were irked a little bit that they just these refunds didn't come automatically and that they had to apply for them because the government has all this data in its systems already. So come 8:00am or 8:30 when this, when this website goes live, we'll see how well it holds up.
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One thing to look out for is an alternate alternative market of selling your claims to hedge funds, which has been kind of percolating over the past few months. The reason why you would do this, if I am a business owner and I can apply for a tariff refund claim, it takes a while, you know, 60 to 90 days. You can't make any mistakes. Or what I can do is say like, hey, this is my piece of the pie that I am owed. Do you want to buy this from me, hedge fund owner? Maybe for a little bit of a discount, but that puts money in my pocket immediately. I don't have to go through all the hoops, the rigmarole. And now hedge funds get to have, you know, income coming their way because they are willing to go through those hoops. So something to look out for is alternative markets of selling your tariff refund claims.
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It's always a big day when you get another.gov URL entered into the world. Okay. After a brief moment of hope, the Strait of Hormuz remains as close as a chick fil a on a Sunday. Dashing expectations that the worst energy crisis in history would begin to fade. It's been a dizzying 72 hours around the world's most important oil checkpoint on Friday Iran declared the strait completely open. Israel and Lebanon agreed to a cease fire. And several ships that were stuck on the other side made a break for the open seas. Oil prices tumbled about 10% to $90 a barrel while stocks surged to close at even more record highs. It seemed like oil and natural gas would finally be able to reach far flung markets starved for energy supplies. But as those ships neared Hormuz, they abruptly pulled a ue. Hours after declaring the strait open, Iran closed it up again, blaming the US for continuing to enforce its blockade of Iranian ports. And several ships attempting to transit the strait were fired upon by Iran's military. Even more escalation came last night when Trump said an American Navy destroyer fired on and disabled an Iranian flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman, showing that the US Blockade is real and being enforced. Yet President Trump is still seeking an end to the war. Yesterday morning, Trump said that US negotiators led by JD Vance will head to Pakistan today for negotiations, but once again threatened to blow up Iran's power plants and bridges should they not agree to a deal. Toby, so much confusion. But the bottom line is probably the strait remains closed. 20% of the world's oil and gas suppl supplies still not going where they need to go.
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Yeah, my neck has whiplash because of just everything that's happened over the past 72 hours or so. So does the oil market. I mean, it did look like everything was mellowing out. Oil finally dipped below that $90 a barrel price point. But now as of this morning, Brent crude futures are back up 6%. Oils trading above $96 a barrel because you just every, every tweet that is sent out, every truth that is sent out does have these knock on effects. And so now everything that seemed to happen over the weekend where oil stocks slumped, fertilizer stocks also slumped, cruise lines were jumping up because cheaper fuel, airline stocks were flying high because of cheaper fuel. All of that seems to be reversing just a few hours later. So it is looking like the market is just trading precisely on whether peace talks are happening. What truths are being posted? It really is just so sensitive right now.
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And I know I recommended Flight Radar 24 last Wednesday, which is a flight tracking app. But a lot more action is happening on Marinetraffic.com which is where you can track container ships. Actually any ship that is in a water right now you can track. And people are locked in to see how many ships are even making a break for the Strait of Hormuz, which are turning back and what was interesting was that on Friday and early Saturday, people identified four cruise ships going about trying to transit the Strait of Hormuz, just 45 minutes apart. These cruise ships were not actually in service. They did not have any people on board, but they've been stuck on the other side. And actually four did go through. So if you want to see if any cruise ships or tankers are moving through the Strait of Hormuz, that's your website.
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One thing to look out for, too, is mine sweeping. The US has been quietly deploying sea drones out there to try to clear some of the mines that the Iranian Navy left. Because when you have these dueling blockades going right now, you really need to know which, you know, available routes are safe for transit. So Iran is saying, like, hey, you have to hug the coast. You have to come near Cargill, and you got to go through these checkpoints. We are controlling the strait. The US Wants to enforce its own blockade. In order to do that, you need to be able to say, like, this is the safe passageway. You will be escorted by naval ships. But in order to do that, you have to make sure that the. The Strait is free of mine. So minesweeping is a big aspect to eventually determining who actually has control of the Strait of Hormuz.
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And meanwhile, the energy crisis continues apace because the strait is still closed. The European Commission is expected to meet this week and encourage energy companies to give their employees at least one day of remote work. And they're also going to give subsidies to public transport systems in order to discourage fossil fuel use. So that's happening in Europe, which is wild to think about. Also in Europe, the International Energy Agency, this happened last Friday, that European airports have maybe six weeks of jet fuel left. So come six weeks from now, there's going to be huge cuts in airline and airline transportation and airline services around Europe. So if you're thinking about going vacation or you're in Europe, you know this thing is about to get real in just six weeks. And then finally, Energy Secretary Chris Wright in the United States came on TV yesterday and said, look, gas prices, I don't see them necessarily coming down to below $3 until next year. So very. The whole global economy, especially Europe, is watching what happens with these talks in Pakistan on Tuesday.
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Yeah, you might be able to take your European vacation, but you might not be able to come back because there's no jet fuel. Welcome to Winners of the Weekend. The segment where Neil and I picked two stories that had a better weekend than someone who snagged A spot to MBD trivia tomorrow. I won the pre show game of hopscotch, so I'm up first and my winner of the weekend is tripping Because Trump is psyched for psychedelics. On Saturday, the President signed an executive order to accelerate research into the potential therapeutic benefits of drugs like lsd, mdma, psilocybin and ibogaine. The order peels away some of the red tape that has limited scientists ability to dig into substances that have shown promise in treating severe depression, anxiety and PTSD. Most psychedelics are classified as Schedule 1 drugs, defined as those with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. But the administration says factors like the rise of opioid deaths and veteran suicides show it's time to speed up research and potential approval processes. Joe Rogan, who was in attendance for the signing, likely played a factor too. Rogan has long advocated about the potential benefits of psychedelics, particularly the little known substance ibogaine, and texted the President asking about increasing access. Sometimes all you have to do is ask because apparently Trump responded saying, sounds great. Do you want FDA approval now? This order does not immediately shift any psychedelics out from the Schedule 1 drug category, nor does it grant any FDA approvals, but it does do things like pave the way for more tests and pilot programs. Neal, it appears Trump is pretty on board with this, specifically ibogaine, because at the signing he said, can I have some?
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Oh God, I don't know if he wants to. I mean, if he doesn't want to spend 24 hours in a very intense situation. So ibogaine, I hadn't heard about it until learning about this particular story. Is a psychedelic compound extracted from a Gabonese root bark that Gabon is a, is a country in West Africa. It's a trip that lasts sometimes up to 24 hours and is explained by many people who have done this as very intense, often distressing. But the thing is, you do it once, according to these people, and it completely eliminates drug withdrawal symptoms. It is a, is a reset of your brain in 24 hours. And so there's a thriving industry in countries outside of the United States, particularly Mexico, where a lot of veterans and people with PTSD in the United States, States or other mental health conditions will go to Mexico and pay up to $15,000 for this treatment of ibogaine, come back and say they're completely healed. And there's been a few promoters of it in the United States, including former Texas Governor Rick Perry. So that is maybe the all star of this particular class of Drugs that is being singled out for, for, you know, reducing red tape around research.
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Yeah. It also is getting a little money coming its way. This bill that Trump is signing provides 50 million for state level research into ibogaine. So Texas probably is the state that has gone the deepest on this particular substance. They've already committed 50 million to studying ibogaine as well. But again, all a lot of these research efforts run into a red tape because if you are a Schedule 1 drugs, it is very difficult to get any sort of federal funding to conduct clinical trials, to go through the hoops that you need to go through to obtain FDA approval. This is also a big win for something like MDMA, which has been inching towards FDA approval. They are currently undergoing additional phase 3 clinical trials there. So any time you can strip away red tape from this industry, people who have been researching for a long time say it is a good thing because it is mighty difficult to overcome that Schedule 1 classification.
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There's been pushback. Some in the public health industry say, look, there's reason there's red tape is because the these things are super intense, super dangerous, and there should be a lot of guidelines around experiments in this domain. And even in 2024, we were talking about MDMA, there was an MDA therapy up for approval at the FDA and the FDA rejected it after studies supporting the approval missed serious side effects. And the Wall Street Journal came out with this big report showing that study subjects said they felt pressured to report positive outcomes because it would be such a historic moment for an MDMA therapy to be approved. And they kind of said they had a much better experience than they actually had. So there is a contingent of people who say there's a reason we're very much slow walking this, this entrance into psychedelics for therapy because it is extremely dangerous. On the other side, you have a lot of proponents saying, we have a lot of veterans with ptsd, a lot of people in America with mental health problems. We got to try. We got to throw everything at the dartboard to see what sticks.
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All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Neil's winner of the weekend. Neil. It feels like everyone's trying to get more protein these days.
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Yeah, I've seen protein popcorn, protein cookies, and even a protein martini recently.
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I think I'll stick to Flav cities all in one. Protein smoothies. They've got delicious flavors like mint chocolate, banana bread, brownie batter and more that are as good as any dessert. No martini flavor yet.
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They're made with real whole food ingredients, 25 grams of protein, 10 grams of collagen and functional mushrooms.
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Head to shop flavcity.com to get your protein fix. That's shop flavcity.com marketing your brand these days probably feels harder than finding perfectly ripe strawberries at the start of spring.
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Lucky for you, the Instacart Ads Ecosystem is the largest grocery ad ecosystem in North America, connecting brands with high intent consumers across more than 2200 retail banners and nearly 100,000 store locations.
- [17:19]
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Toby have you ever flown a friend?
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I think you mean phone a friend.
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Nope, I mean flow n flown.
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Ah, like when the founders at Unfiltered Hospitality use the rewards to fly a new hired for onboarding?
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Exactly the rewards from Capital One's Venture X Business Card Redefine premium for small business owners like unlimited double miles on every purchase with no preset spending limit.
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It's straightforward and lets you earn travel bonuses.
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Spend more, earn more. Your rewards grow with your business. Enjoy big purchasing power that adapts to your business's needs. Terms apply. Head to capital1.com Morning Brew my winner is Robot runners, because if you had them line up in the Boston Marathon this morning, they might win. That's at least what happened in China on Sunday. In a half marathon in Beijing, a bipedal humanoid robot was victorious with a time of 50 minutes 26 seconds, not just beating all the other robots, but also all of the 12,000 human competitors that ran the race. In fact, 50 minutes 26 seconds shattered the half marathon world record set by Jacob Kiplomo, a human, in Lisbon last month. The event showed the huge progress Chinese robot developers have made in just the last year. Last April, robots ran this race for the first time and it was more goofy than impressive, with many crashing and requiring loads of help from their human handlers. The top robot time Last year was 2 hours and 40 minutes, far slower than many human runners. This year was a different story, with at least four robots clocking sub one hour times at about 40%, navigating the course completely autonomously, no remote control needed. Toby it's very entertaining to watch these humanoids run a half, but there's of course much more at stake than marathon medals China is all in on winning another race, the race to develop humanoid AI robots. And it might be sprinting way ahead.
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B
Yeah, this is all very intentional from China. If you go back to 2015, they named Robotics as a key sector that they wanted to invest in that would go towards rehabilitating its technological image on a global stage. This race absolutely does this because it overtakes social media every single time it's hosted. More people care about the robots and the actual human runners at this point. One, because it's very comedic to see the robots who have these like derpy falls and completely explode on impact with the ground. But also it is cool to see the massive amount of progress that has happened in just the past two years. I mean, I don't think anyone expected a 50 minute marathon to come. If you looked back at last year when it was well over two hours half marathon, that is. I want to shout out Honor too, because this is the manufacturer, they make smartphones. How did a smartphone manufacturer just jump to the lead of the robotics? Because they actually do a lot of stuff that contributes towards making a good robot as well. If you think about their experience in miniaturization of many technologies, lightweight design, thermal management is a big thing too when it comes to these robot races. So it makes sense that a smartphone manufacturer would excel at all these things that translate very well into creating a running robot.
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And that video of the honor robot winning. And then it didn't stop. They didn't program it to stop after the finish line. It just ran straight through and crashed into a wall after crushing the competition at the 13 mile mark.
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The funny thing too is that they did look at humans to inform design choices for their robot. The legs are 35 to 37 inches long, which is meant to mimic the world's top human runners. The gate is fascinating though, because it's very short strides. Like it's not big bounding things where you can get a little bit off balance, keep the feet close to the ground. It's almost this quick shuffle, but man, it is really jarring if you haven't seen the video to see just how fast these things are moving faster than humans, which is crazy.
- [21:21]
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And we should, we should point out that there's a completely separate course, that humans are running on one course and the robots are running on a separate course. But yeah, the growth has been massive. There were just 21 robots running this race last year and now there are over 100. And if you're looking at, to see how far China is ahead or at least their enthusiasm about robots compared to the United States. I was like, is there any robots running the Boston Marathon this morning? Apparently Tesla is going to put their Optimus humanoid robot at the Tesla showroom on Boylston street near the end of the Boston Marathon to just cheer on runner and have pose pose for photos with spectators. So they're not running yet. It's Monday, so here's what you need to know to stay ahead in the week ahead. Get ready to hear the name Kevin Wash over the next several days. No, it's not how your grandpa pronounces Wash. He's Trump's nominee to be the next Fed Chair and he'll appear before the Senate for his highly anticipated confirmation hearing on Tuesday. Even if lawmakers like what they hear from Marsh, his takeover of the role from Jerome Powell could be delayed past the scheduled date on May 15. A powerful Republican on the Senate Banking Committee has vowed to block Wash his confirmation until the DOJ ends its renovation investigation into Jay Powell.
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Yeah, many were wondering if Trump is going to choose a clean path for his nomination over this feud with Jerome Powell. It looks like no, he wants to keep the feud going. That's the big thing to look for. Do you eventually just acquiesce and say, hey, I want to get this nomination through or do you keep fighting this Powell probe? It looks like fighting is is the path that Trump is choosing on Wall Street.
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Investors hope a slew of earnings will build on last week's very strong start to the reporting season. Tesla, Boeing, Int, Procter and Gamble are among the dozens of companies sharing their quarterly results.
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Yeah, despite all the confusion around the peace talks with Iran, two out of three major indexes set new all time highs and three close out their third straight week of gains to end the week. I am also looking at Tesla stock too. They eked out a gain on Friday to finish the week higher which snapped an eight week losing streak. So earnings is all we got right now in the markets. That's the only thing that actually provides clarity as the strait of her moves situation continues to evolve in sports.
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Yes, Jamara, we are talking about playoffs. The first rounds of the NBA and NHL playoffs are underway with the Colorado Avalanche the betting favorite to win hockey Stanley cup and the Oklahoma City Thunder the favorite to repeat as basketball champs. But Victor Wembanyama and the spurs threatened to stand in their way.
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Hey, your 76ers looked great last night by the way. They only lost by I think under 30 so I think it's going to go well. I just missed the Masters. Honestly, as soon as we exit from that part of the sporting calendar, I got to like re lock in on other sports because I got really golf Sixers.
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I'm a Sabres fan now. The Buffalo Sabres won their first playoff game in 15 years and that city is going absolutely crazy for that team. And of course, football won't let those other sports hog the spotlight even in April. So it's staging the NFL Draft on Thursday in Pittsburgh, Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza is the projected number one pick to the Las Vegas Raiders.
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Also, Pittsburgh Public schools will be closed during the NFL draft. If you want to know where the priorities lie in this country, football or school. Yeah, football is going to win every time.
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That city just maybe isn't big enough to host the NFL draft.
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Truly is not.
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Yeah. All right, any lacks fans out there. The first lacrosse video game in eight years, Lacrosse 26, is arriving on Friday for PlayStation 5 and Xbox. As one X user said, I hope there's a story mode where you graduate college and have a career in investment banking.
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I mean, the jokes just write itself. I hope you can customize the hair. If you can't customize the lettuce that's under the lid, then it's not really a lacrosse video game. I am struggling to wonder how the physics of this game is going to work. We were speculating it's going to be a lot like NHL where the ball is kind of zipping around. But I hope they have a compelling story mode.
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A
Finally, a couple of miscellaneous things to look out for this week. Today is 420, the annual celebration of cannabis. Wednesday is Earth Day, the annual celebration of the earth. And to round out the earthy, crunchy vibes, Vermont folk icon Noah Khan releases his new album on Friday.
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B
Absolutely huge week for people wearing the TVAs. I might buy some Ativas myself just to get in the spirit of things.
- [25:32]
A
All right, that is all the time we have. Thanks for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful start to your week. If you'd like to reach us, send an email to Morning Broadaily at Morning Broadcom or DM us on Instagram at me Daily show let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our super bowl producer. Raymond Liu is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham and our associate producer is Olivia Lake. Hair makeup is cheering on the runners at the Boston Marathon. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Boarding Brew.
- [25:57]
B
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.