War Puts Dubai’s Dreams in Jeopardy & Billionaires Sour on The Giving Pledge

Summary

Morning Brew Daily – Episode Summary
Episode Title: War Puts Dubai’s Dreams in Jeopardy & Billionaires Sour on The Giving Pledge
Air Date: March 17, 2026
Hosts: Neal Freyman & Toby Howell

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Overview

In this lively St. Patrick's Day episode, hosts Neal and Toby dig into pressing global business news with their trademark wit and insight. They examine:

• The impact of regional war on Dubai’s meteoric rise as a global hub and what recent attacks could signal for its future.
• The falling out of favor of The Giving Pledge among billionaires, particularly the new tech elite, and what the shift might mean for philanthropy and political spending.
• How millions of Pokemon Go players unwittingly helped create the data backbone for delivery robots, and the broader implications for AI and robotics.
• Plus, a quirky trend among the powerful—embracing typos—as well as a look at an escalating meat plant labor strike, the emergence of professional car negotiators, and the odds (and billion-dollar prize) behind a perfect March Madness bracket.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. War Jeopardizes Dubai’s Global Aspirations

• Global Markets & Oil Dynamics

  • Markets rebounded in “solidly green” territory even as the Strait of Hormuz remained largely closed due to war, trapping about 20% of world oil output.
  • Oil fell to $93/barrel after President Trump’s coalition announcement, though enthusiasm tempered as major allies declined to join.
  • “Germany’s defense minister was the most blunt in his refusal, saying this is not our war, we did not start it.” (Neal, 03:22)

• Dubai Under Direct Attack

  • Iranian drones hit Dubai International Airport, one of the world’s busiest, causing severe disruptions.
  • As Neal noted, the Dubai “dream” is facing existential threats:

    “As drones strike five star hotels and gleaming office towers...an increasing number of analysts are wondering whether the Dubai dream has gone up in smoke.” (Neal, 04:47)

• Dubai’s Risky Value Proposition

  • Dubai’s “above the conflict” pitch is no longer viable due to its proximity to Iran (“80 miles away...imagine if Philly was doing stuff, like it’s right in New York’s backyard,” Toby, 04:53).
  • Population quadrupled since 2000, now nearly 4 million, fueled by its “glitzy hub” status.

• Demographics and Vulnerability

  • 90% of Dubai residents, and nearly as high a share in UAE, are non-nationals.
  • Citizenship is nearly impossible, and deportation is easily triggered.

    “It’s also very easy to take those roots away, because there’s nothing tying you to this country, to this city.” (Toby, 07:53)

• Economic Fallout Emerging

  • F1 and other global entertainment events are canceling Middle East appearances.
  • Oil prices and stock futures remain unpredictable, heavily influenced by the war and coalition dynamics.

2. The Giving Pledge: Billionaires Lose Interest

• Origins and Decline

  • Started 2010 with Gates & Buffett, pledged to give away majority of wealth.
  • Once “fashionable,” signups plummeted from 113 in the first five years to just 4 families in 2024.

    “In the first five years, 113 people signed up...dwindling down until just four families signed the pledge in the entirety of 2024...” (Toby, 09:26)

• Shift in Philanthropic Philosophy

  • New tech billionaires, led by Peter Thiel, are skeptical.
  • Thiel actively encourages others to leave the pledged ranks:

    "Peter Thiel has waged a decades long [campaign] against the pledge, saying he has privately encouraged at least a dozen signees to undo their signatures." (Toby, 09:57)

  • Elon Musk claims “his businesses are ‘philanthropy’,” even as a signee.

• Lack of Accountability

  • The pledge is “a moral pledge…there’s nothing binding you to this” (Buffett, paraphrased by Toby, 11:31).
  • No tracking of commitments or enforcement mechanisms.

    “If the Giving Pledge does not track whether its signers make any progress...obviously it’s not going to be something that has a lot of teeth.” (Toby, 11:31)

• Changing Use of Wealth

  • Billionaires increasingly donate through tailored philanthropic initiatives (“Michael and Susan Dell...$6 billion to seed Trump accounts...giving newborns $1,000 to put in the stock market,” Neal, 12:12), or funnel money into politics.
  • Billionaire contributions now account for 19% of all federal election donations, up from virtually nothing before 2010.

3. Pokemon Go Data—The Secret Fuel for Delivery Robots

• Massive Crowdsourced Data

  • Pokemon Go (since 2016) generated 30 billion urban images, crucial for building a “visual positioning system” used by delivery robots.

    “It is essentially a richly detailed digital copy of the physical world. And that’s incredibly valuable for delivery robots...” (Neal, 14:05)

• Critical for Urban Robotics

  • GPS often fails in urban environments; Pokemon Go imagery and metadata fill the gaps, allowing robots to navigate with human-like accuracy.

    “Why can't you just use GPS? Well...if the robot is five feet away at your neighbor’s door, that is a bad user experience.” (Toby, 14:30)

• Original Intent vs. Reality

  • Imagery was first envisioned for AR (“augmented reality”) use, but the AI/robotics “Cambrian explosion” pivoted the data to robotics.

    “Turns out that getting Pikachu to realistically run around and getting Coco’s robot to move...is actually the same problem.” (Neal, quoting John Hanke, 15:41)

• User Sentiment & Broader AI Moves

  • Most users weren’t shocked but “didn’t know it was for these tiny little delivery robots.” (Toby, 16:50)
  • Major AI researchers and founders are pivoting toward “world models” — using AI for tasks anchored in physical space (e.g., Fei-Fei Li, Jan LeCun, Jeff Bezos).

4. Toby’s Trends: Typos, Status & Email Etiquette [19:27]

• Typos as a Status Symbol

  • Poor spelling, grammar, and abrupt emails (like just a subject, no body) are now “hallmarks of the rich and powerful.”

    “Replying to emails immediately, often with just a few words, is a hallmark of emailing like a CEO.” (Toby, 19:27)

• Technology Changed Communication Norms

  • “Sent from my iPhone” gave people license to leave typos—no one expects perfect grammar in a mobile email.

    "When you’re sending an email from your iPhone, it’s essentially a text...a sea change in how technology has changed our communication." (Neal, 20:57)

• AI & The Human Touch

  • AI’s flawless writing style means human “errors” are now comforting, signaling authenticity.

    “Typos are seen as a way to show that you are human...it’s become a status signifier that I am a real person.” (Toby, 22:01)

  • Yet, expectations of professionalism still linger:

    “Don’t you dare send me an email with a typo...we’ve still got to hold some standards.” (Neal, 23:01)

5. Rapid Headlines Rundown [23:12+]

• JBS Meat Plant Strike

  • Largest US beef plant strike in decades started, affecting 5% of American processing capacity.
  • Causes: workers demand inflation-matching wages and protection gear; JBS countering with claims of fair offers.
  • US cattle herd at 75-year low; prices jumped 15% in a year.

    “Record prices, a supply crunch, and now a production shutdown at one of the country’s biggest plants.” (Toby, 23:30)

• Rise of Professional Car Negotiators

  • Tommy Mikula, for $1,000, negotiates car prices remotely, leveraging broad market data and livestreams to 600,000+ followers.
  • “You’re hiring a middleman to deal with the middleman, to make the middleman more efficient.” (Mikula, paraphrased by Toby, 25:25)
  • One in five buyers makes $1,000+ monthly car payments, highest on record.

• March Madness – Kalshi's $1 Billion Bracket

  • Prediction market Kalshi offers $1 billion for a perfect NCAA tournament bracket, $1 million to the top bracket and $1 million to charity.
  • Stat: Odds of a perfect bracket are 1 in 120 billion.
  • Optimism/Realism divide:

    “I think that someone can win this. We have more data...but if there was an era to do it, I feel like we are entering that era.” (Toby, 27:32)
    “The so-called odds is that this will never ever happen in our lifetimes…” (Neal, 28:07)

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Notable Quotes

• “Drones strike five star hotels and gleaming office towers, raining debris on the McLarens and Ferraris below—an increasing number of analysts are wondering whether the Dubai dream has gone up in smoke.” — Neal, 04:47

• “It’s also very easy to take those roots away, because there’s nothing tying you to this country, to this city.” — Toby, 07:53

• “Peter Thiel has waged a decades long [campaign] against the pledge, saying he has privately encouraged at least a dozen signees to undo their signatures.” — Toby, 09:57

• “If the Giving Pledge does not track whether its signers make any progress...obviously it’s not going to be something that has a lot of teeth.” — Toby, 11:31

• “Turns out that getting Pikachu to realistically run around and getting Coco’s robot to move...is actually the same problem.” — Neal, quoting John Hanke, 15:41

• “Typos are seen as a way to show that you are human...it’s become a status signifier that I am a real person.” — Toby, 22:01

• “Don’t you dare send me an email with a typo...we’ve still got to hold some standards.” — Neal, 23:01

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Dubai and the war’s impact: 03:22 – 08:39
• The Giving Pledge in decline: 08:39 – 12:50
• Pokemon Go & robot training: 12:50 – 17:32
• Toby’s Trends (typos & status): 19:27 – 23:12
• Rapid Headlines:
  • JBS Strike: 23:12 – 24:10
  • Car Negotiators: 24:10 – 26:47
  • March Madness Bracket: 26:47 – 28:47

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This episode encapsulates crucial shifts in geopolitics, wealth, technology, and quirky culture, all delivered with the energetic banter and data-driven takes that define Morning Brew Daily.

Transcript

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[Neal Freyman]

Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neal Freyman.

[Toby Howell]

And I'm Toby Howell.

[Neal Freyman]

Today, with war raging in its backyard, is the Dubai dream over?

[Toby Howell]

Then your Pokemon Go data is being used to train delivery robots. It's Tuesday, March 17th. Let's ride.

[Neal Freyman]

Good morning and happy St. Patrick Patrick's Day. Okay, Toby, I put together a little St Patty's Day quiz for you and everyone listening. I'm going to give you the first part of a popular Irish saying and you have to complete it. Ready?

[Toby Howell]

I am ready. This is completely off the cuff, by the way. Neil has not showed this to me, so go ahead.

[Neal Freyman]

Okay, ready? Number one is the older the fiddle, the sweeter the griddle. Not quite. The older the fiddle, the sweeter the tune.

[Toby Howell]

Oh, I thought I was going to rhyme. I just. I guess they don't have.

[Neal Freyman]

They don't have to rhyme. They just have to be.

[Toby Howell]

I mean.

[Neal Freyman]

There.

[Toby Howell]

Now go.

[Neal Freyman]

And. And deep. Okay, so question number two. Phrase number two. May your home always be too small to hold all your love, close friends.

[Toby Howell]

Dang it.

[Neal Freyman]

May your home always be too small to hold all your friends. Number three. You'll never plow a field by sitting on your arse. That is certainly true. The actual phrases. You'll never plow a field by turning it over in your mind. A call to action. Right there.

[Toby Howell]

I like.

[Neal Freyman]

And then finally, may misfortune follow you the rest of your life and never catch up. Yeah, Toby is catch up.

[Toby Howell]

Let's go.

[Neal Freyman]

Misfortune follow you the rest of your life and never catch up. Just some words of wisdom from our friends over in Ireland.

[Toby Howell]

By the way, we're. Neither of us are wearing green right now, so we are pinchable. If anyone finds us on the streets of New York, we are benchable.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Neal Freyman]

And now a word from our sponsor LinkedIn ads. Toby, what do you search for deeper

[Toby Howell]

meaning in my interpersonal relationships, a sense of belongingness I haven't experienced since childhood, and a really good pretzel bun.

[Neal Freyman]

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[Toby Howell]

I see. Well, in that case, it's worth mentioning LinkedIn Ads has a network of over 1 billion professionals and and 130 million decision makers.

[Neal Freyman]

Plus, LinkedIn Ads generates the highest B2B that's business to business roas of all online ad networks.

[Toby Howell]

Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Go just go to LinkedIn.com/MBD. That's LinkedIn.com/MBD. Terms and conditions may apply.

[Neal Freyman]

Wall street joined in on the St. Patrick's Day festivities. With all three indexes closing solidly green yesterday as investors parse every development coming out of the war, there was no real good news that sparked the rally. The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed to shipping, trapping in one fifth of the world's oil output in addition to numerous other key commodities. But oil prices fell to $93 a barrel, down from their Sunday highs of over 100, after President Trump signaled he was assembling an international coalition to open up the strait and alleviate an impending global energy crisis. But that effort doesn't seem to be going particularly well since officials in Japan, Australia and Italy declined to participate. While the UK And France are still in the we're think stage, Germany's defense minister was the most blunt in his refusal, saying this is not our war, we did not start it. Elsewhere in the region, and this is what I want to dive into with you, Toby. Dubai is still under attack. An Iranian drone set a fuel tank on fire at Dubai International Airport, causing even more flight disruptions at one of the world's busiest aviation hubs. For the past few weeks, Iran has been attacking Dubai, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations that have become international commercial powerhouses, branding themselves as a low tax, safe aid in for capital. Even in a conflict prone region like the Middle east, that Dubai brand, which took decades to build, has taken a big blow. As drones strike five star hotels and gleaming office towers, raining debris on the McLarens and Ferraris below, an increasing number of analysts are wondering whether the Dubai dream has gone up in smoke.

[Toby Howell]

Yeah, the entire pitch of Dubai was very simple. It was basically like, hey, I know we are situated in a very volatile region, but we're actually above that conflict. That has not been the case recently because if you look at just cold, hard geography, Iran is 80 miles away from Dubai. That is New York to Philly. Imagine if, you know, Philly was doing stuff. Like it's right in New York's backyard, essentially.

[Neal Freyman]

They are doing stuff.

[Toby Howell]

They are, I don't know, good. I don't know what, what is going on in Philly, but they're doing stuff. But Dubai has just been on a massive, you know, upward trajectory. We can't ignore that its population was less than a million back in 2000. It's nearly 4 million today. So that is a quadrupling in just 25 years based on this singular promise of, you know, this is going to be the glitzy hub in a region not necessarily known for that. So crazy how it had such a high run up, but now you're facing the realities of just geography itself.

[Neal Freyman]

Yeah. It doubled its millionaire population to more than 81,000 between 2014 and 2024. In 2025 alone, an estimated 9,800 millionaires were moving to the UAE. Dubai actually now sits ahead of global cities like Tokyo, Singapore, Zurich, Paris, Frankfurt, Los Angeles and Chicago. And just behind New York and London in its ability to attract global white collar talent. That's based on LinkedIn data, according to the urbanist Richard Florida, who wrote this long piece in the New York Times questioning whether the Dubai dream was over 1. So geography has been a curse recently, but it has been, had been for the past few decades a real blessing. And Dubai rose on the prominence and these other places like Qatar rose and Saudi Arabia rose on their geography because they really are the center of the world and they've established their airports to be these huge international travel hubs. And a lot of wealth has moved through Dubai and the Gulf because of that. About two thirds of the population lives of the global population lives within an eight hour flight of Dubai. Dubai carrier Gulf carriers carry about one in three people traveling from Europe to Asia and one in two people from Europe to Australia. So it was this global nexus and it still remains that way. But as long as you hear about drones setting fire to Dubai International airport terminals and Emirates, the main carrier there, is operating at such a low diminished capacity, they need to get this back on track or perhaps people will start leaving.

[Toby Howell]

Yeah, nearly nine in 10 Dubai residents are not from Dubai. They are non nationals. That is by far the highest percentage of any major city in the world. If you just zoom out across the Emirates itself, 10 million of 11.4 million residents are foreign nationals. But the weird thing about Dubai is that there's no real path to citizenship, or in the UAE in general, to citizenship is based entirely on dissent. They make it deliberately difficult to actually, you know, become naturalized in this country. That is a feature, not a bug. They want it to be kind of a transient city. They a traffic violation can trigger deportation. So it's very interesting. It's almost like city as a platform. This is the concept that they're going for. But the flip side of that is that even though it's very easy to put down routes there, that means it's also very easy to take those routes away because there's nothing tying you to this country, into this city.

[Neal Freyman]

And the economic hits are already coming. F1, which has multiple races in the region, including a few coming up, has already canceled their races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, which are coming up in the next month or so. So these big global entertainment properties which had flocked to the Gulf, like UFC and F1, are already backing out, at least this year because the war is still raging.

[Toby Howell]

And then just quick update. Even though we said that yesterday was a pretty green day for the market and oil mellowed out a little bit this morning, oil is ticking back up. It's up about 4% this morning, creeping back towards that $100 barrel margin. And then also stock futures are slightly down right now. It really is kind of tied around if Trump and these countries, NATO countries, can kind of get this coalition to escort ships through the strait, which is the big question mark right now. So a lot of what you're seeing happening in the markets is trading around this sentiment towards that coalition moving on. In 2010, billionaires led by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett signed a giving pledge promising to donate the majority of their wealth to charitable causes. But many who signed may have been crossing their fingers behind their back. Because the giving hasn't quite materialized, signups have slowed to a trickle, and some are backing out altogether. The New York Times did a deep dive into the origin of the pledge and its subsequent fall from grace. Times reporter Teddy Schleifer emphasizes how of the moment it was Signing the pledge was fashionable in the early days, bringing positive media coverage and helping those who gave back earned the label of, quote, good. Billionaire Aaron Horvath, a sociologist who has also studied the giving Pledge, called it a time capsule of that era. But now it feels old school. He continued, the Numbers tell the story. In the first five years, 113 people signed up. Over the next five, 72, then 43, dwindling down until just four families signed the pledge in the entirety of 2024, a steady decline that shows shifting attitudes towards wealth. The shift has been spearheaded by the tech ultra rich, who are a lot more dismissive of traditional philanthropy than billionaires of the past. Peter Thiel has waged a decades long against the pledge, saying he has privately encouraged at least a dozen signees to undo their signatures. As the Times notes, Thiel and others who share his worldview believe that the real way to give back is via business success. A claim echoed by Elon Musk, who says his businesses are quote, philanthropy. Though Musk is a signee of the Giving Pledge. Neil, we haven't seen a wave of people quitting quite yet, but it's certainly going out of style.

[Neal Freyman]

Yeah. This is an important conversation to be having. What billionaires do with their money matters a lot, because their slice of the pie is growing substantially. The top 1% of American households now hold about as much wealth as the bottom 90, 90% combined, which is the highest concentration since the Fed started tracking this in 1989. And around the world, billionaire wealth has grown 81% since 2020, up to $18.3 trillion. This is a lot of money that could be thrown around, whether to the Giving Pledge or back into product for for profit businesses or to other avenues of philanthropy or politics. So it's very interesting and important to see how billionaires and ultra billionaires are throwing around their money.

[Toby Howell]

And the issue with signing this pledge is that it doesn't really work. There's no mechanisms for enforcement. Requirements on participation aren't very high. Signings must assent to a news release and typically a letter posted publicly on the foundation website. They, you know, tend annual gatherings of their billionaires, usually held at a luxury resort. But it is very much a moral pledge. That's Buffett's own words. He's saying that there's nothing binding you to this. So if you have no mechanism of enforcement, if the Giving Pledge does not track whether its signers make any progress towards their commitments, then obviously it's not going to be something that has a lot of teeth and compels these very rich people to give away their money.

[Neal Freyman]

So if billionaires aren't signing up for the Giving Pledge that much anymore, what are they doing with their money? Well, you can look at Michael and Susan dell. They donated $6 billion to seed Trump accounts, which is giving newborns $1,000 to put in the stock market. So you can see that they're giving philanthropy, doing philanthropy, but perhaps in their own more private sector, stock market, free market focused way, or they're giving to politics and political races. A New York Times analysis found that 3, 300 billionaires and their immediate family family members donated $3 billion, which is 19% of all contributions to federal elections in 2024. You just go back five presidential elections ago, and the share of billionaire spending was basically 0.3%. So because of the Supreme Court's ruling in 2010 that lifted campaign finance restrictions, billionaire spending on federal elections went from basically 0% to almost 20% of all contributions. Moving on. We got any Pokemon Go players in the house? Well, you might want to know that your quest to catch them all is being used to train sidewalk robots. Last week, MIT Tech Review reported that Niantic Spatial, an AI company affiliated with Pokemon Go, has partnered with a last mile delivery robot company, Coco Robotics, to use crowdsourced Pokemon Go data to help its robots find their place in the world. Ever since Pokemon Go burst on the scene in 2016, hundreds of millions of users have taken pictures in urban environments where Pokemon could be found or do battle. At the same time, perhaps unwittingly, they were also giving then parent company Niantic an unprecedented database of real world imagery, its leverage to create a visual positioning system. The company has 30 billion images you've taken at its disposal, along with important metadata like time of day, weather conditions and camera angle. It is essentially a richly detailed digital copy of the physical world. And that's incredibly valuable for delivery robots, which, while they never need a bathroom, do need assistance understanding where they are spatially the way humans do, especially in downtown areas where GPS frequently doesn't work. As Niantic Spatial CEO John Hanke put it, it turns out that getting Pikachu to realistically run around and getting Coco's robot to safely and accurately move through the world is actually the same problem. Toby, when you're training Pokemon, you're also training robots.

[Toby Howell]

This is a industry where very fine margins matter a lot. Because you're saying, why can't you just use gps? Well, if you want a burrito delivered to your door and the robot is, you know, five feet away at your neighbor's door, like that is a bad user experience. You need extremely precise data, which is, you know, Coco is so ecstatic that they have this massive treasure trove of very high quality pictures and videos taken by Pokemon Go players. Because not only is it high quality, it's located in good parts of the city. It's often around, you know, very busy travel hubs that places where GPS does not perform very well. But also a lot of the data is tagged too, because robots are dumb. You see a sidewalk, curb, you know it's a sidewalk.

[Neal Freyman]

You shouldn't say that when they take over.

[Toby Howell]

I know, sorry, editors, delete that please, for the eventual uprising. But here's the thing. You do need to tell robots like what they are like. They don't necessarily know what the world around them is. So you need the data to be tagged, you need the metadata to be very rich. And according to reports, Niantic is very good at providing data like that, which is why, you know, it's selling your, your Pokemon data to robotics company.

[Neal Freyman]

What's interesting is they were gathering all this data in the first place because they thought they were, they were going to do augmented reality. Because when you would thought this data would plug into augmented real reality. And if you're going around in AR glasses and looking at the world, you need to know what you're looking at and gather information on that. That was the original use case. But then what? They found what they called a Cambrian explosion in robotics and pivoted the data set to work with these delivery companies like Coco Robotics. But we should talk about like world models in general because this is a direction that a lot of the leading AI researchers or I think thinkers are moving toward. They're moving away from large language models like chat, CBT and cloud and saying this is the real future of AI. AI to help robots or other industrial processes operate in physical space. So Fei Fei Li is one of the top of the AI game. She has a startup called World Labs. Former Metta AI chief Jan Lecan has a new company that builds world models. Jeff Bezos started another company called Project Prometheus, which is focused on bringing AI to physical tasks, including robotics, drug design and scientific scientific discovery. So this is maybe the canary in the coma.

[Toby Howell]

Most people were seeing this story and going, oh, did Pokemon Go players know that their data is going to be used for this? They didn't know it was going to be used to feed into robotics, but they did know that their data was going to be used for something. So a lot I was cruising through the Reddit forums. The general reaction was not like clutching their pearls and going, how could they? I think everyone was aware that it was going to be used for something where, you know, this headline kind of generated some response was I didn't know it was going to be for these tiny little delivery robots. It was kind of a mix of reception to that entire, you know, news cycle. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Toby's Trends. Neil, I know you don't take investing seriously.

[Neal Freyman]

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[Neal Freyman]

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[Toby Howell]

Learn [e-mail] morning brew that's tw I l I o.com morning brew next time you misspell your in a text, don't sweat it. In fact, your sloppy texting is bringing you closer to the global elite. A trend I want to talk about on today's edition of Toby's Trends. Poor spelling, uneven spacing, improper capitalization all are hallmarks of the rich and powerful, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article. Just look at Jack Dorsey's recent memo announcing huge layoffs at his company block. He wrote it in all lowercase, like a middle schooler texting his friends. David Ellison, who is working on becoming the next Hollywood baron, misspelled David when corresponding with Warner Brothers CEO David Zlaslav despite sharing a name with him. But the Journal's article mainly focused on the Epstein files, highlighting how nearly every correspondence in them was riddled with awful typing. Business Insider points out that replying to emails immediately, often with just a few words, is a hallmark of emailing like a CEO. Another telltale sign is emailing with just a subject line and no body. Both are meant to convey the idea that when you're the boss, pleasantries or formal email style need not apply. Neil Misspellings are very much a part of the era we live in. We send so many texts and DMS and emails back and forth to each other that casualness has invaded our online writing. Heck, even the president sends out social media posts that feature periodic misspellings. But it seems like it doesn't really matter anymore.

[Neal Freyman]

There are four words, in my opinion, that open Pandora's box when it comes to typos, and I think they are sent from my iPhone. And when you're sending an email from your iPhone, it's essentially a text. And that gave a lot of people license to make misspellings or grammatical errors or just basically send an email like you would a text. And it's just been a sea change in how technology has changed our communication. Just go back to CEO communication. In 1950s, a CEO would probably, if they wanted to issue a public memorandum or something, they would, they would do something like speak into a Dictaphone and then a secretary would come along, listen to that, and then transcribe it into this beautiful letter and make sure everything was was perfect. And if they made a mistake, they would go back and do it again. And our technology mediums have changed so much where we're basically just emailing back and forth. And it's very interesting to see the power dynamic because I think if you are a junior employee listening to this, you're saying what? I would never make a typo in an email. That would horrify me. But at the top upper echelon it's seen as as you've made it because you are allowed to to make a typo and no one can no can really call you out on it.

[Toby Howell]

But then in an odd twist of fate, the rise of AI and LLM algorithms have smoothed, overriding to such a degree that now typos are seen as a way to show that you are human. And I think a lot of people who get any inbound email requests from recruiters or from people trying to pitch their services, if they have. If it's clearly written by an LLM, I literally just ignore it because I don't want to talk to someone who, you know, can't take the time of day to write something themselves. If they have the hallmarks of human writing. Oftentimes it is a spelling error. Oftentimes it's a punctuation error. At least you know, it's a human on the other end. So in a weird way, it's become a status signifier that I am a real person. So everyone who, you know, struggle with spelling growing up are going, you kind of luck boxed into this. Either you're a CEO at this point, or you're just someone that can exemplify that you're a real human being. So it's just fascinating how spelling has gone from this big faux pas to something that is almost encouraged at this point.

[Neal Freyman]

I think a lot of people would be looking at this saying, don't you dare send me an email with a typo. Still, like, we still got to hold. We've got to still hold some standards here. But it's very interesting to see what AI is doing to language as well.

[Toby Howell]

All right, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. The burger wars are back, but not in the fun way, with CEOs filming videos of themselves. No, I'm talking about the largest meat plant strike in decades kicking off yesterday at a JBS facility in Greeley, Colorado. About 3,800 workers walked off the job at a plant that handles roughly 5% of American America's entire beef processing capacity. The union is asking for wages that keep pace with inflation and to stop making workers pay out of pocket for protective gear. JBS has countered, saying its offer is strong and fair. The timing couldn't be worse. The US cattle herd is the smallest it's been in 75 years, squeezing up prices. And consumers are feeling the pinch at the grocery store, with ground beef prices jumping 15% over the past year. So you've got record prices, a supply crunch, and now a production shutdown at one of the country's biggest plants. Neal, no more fun McDonald's big arch videos.

[Neal Freyman]

No labor fight is the opposite of what JBS wants right now, because the smallest. We have the smallest cattle herd in 75 years. That's driven up the cost of buying cows to slaughter at your slaughterhouse. So that's led to billions of dollars in losses for these meatpacking companies. JBS, through the first nine months of 2025, reported 566 million DOL operating losses, which is compared to just 64 million from the prior year. And now they're dealing with one of the biggest, perhaps the biggest, meat packing walkout in four decades. When it comes to the car buying process, how many middlemen is too many? Well, if you ask Tommy Mikula, there's at least room for one more. As the Wall Street Journal reports, Mikula has built a respectable business as a professional car negotiator. For a fee of 1000 bucks, he'll get on the phone with the dealership and try to talk them down on a vehicle sticker price so you don't have to to. He and his team of five bring in about $200,000 in revenue every month, negotiating dozens of deals on behalf of their clients. Mikula also has a robust livestream side hustle, where he broadcasts some of his conversations with dealerships to 600,000 followers across TikTok and YouTube. So why is this business taken off? Mikula told the General. You're hiring a middleman to deal with the middleman, to make the middleman more efficient.

[Toby Howell]

Yeah. His whole edge, he says, is refusing to actually set foot, foot in a dealership because as soon as you do that, you're investing hours, you're investing your time. You almost feel trapped when you're working the phone lines. It, it allows you to pit dealers against each other. He also just comes with a lot of data. None of this is accidental. If he can look at inventory around in a 50 mile radius and say, like, hey, this Jetta is going for a different price just 10 miles down the road, it gives you a lot of bargaining power and, and car buying has generally become a brutal process for a lot of Americans. So I totally understand why they are going to the, you know, the third middleman in this transaction in order to save them a couple of bucks.

[Neal Freyman]

Yeah. One in five car buyers committed to monthly payments of $1,000 or more at the end of last year, which is the highest share on record, according to Edmunds. And as far as Mikula is concerned, I think he's also in it for the love of the game. Like he just gets, he gets a lot of energy from this because, because this is how his business started. His business is called Delivered. He was just negotiating deals for free for strangers on Reddit. He closed about 50 deals before he said, okay, maybe I should start charging for this. But this is a guy who just loves negotiating.

[Toby Howell]

It's also very cathartic to watch because everyone would love to imagine that they're getting the best deal possible. So I can see why he's built a social media following on top of his actual business.

[Neal Freyman]

All right, finally, Warren Buffett probably hates everything about Kalshi, the prediction market that lets you wager on real world events events. But they do share one thing in common. They want to give you money for acing a March Madness bracket. For years now, Buffett's floated a $1 million prize to anyone who fills out a perfect bracket. But Kalshee is going even bigger. Yesterday it announced it would give away $1 billion to someone if they filled out a perfect bracket on its platform, as well as 1 million to the top scoring bracket and another million to charity. This is probably a good time to remind you that you will not fill out a perfect bracket even if you know ball. The odds of picking all 67 games in the tournament corre are 1 in 120 billion and no one in history has gotten remotely close. That's not going to stop you from trying, right, Toby?

[Toby Howell]

I am going to try and I think that someone can win this. We have more data than ever. There's Torvik scores and Ken Palm efficiency ratings and T rankings. All of these quantified teams better than we ever have in the past. Plus you add on this layer of LLMs. I've seen people joking like hey chatgpt, fill out a perfect bracket for me. Make no mistake stakes. But I do feel like we are, we are inching it towards a perfect bracket. I don't know if it's actually lies in the data because the whole name of the tournament is March Madness. But if there was an era to do it, I feel like we're entering that era.

[Neal Freyman]

Yeah, I think the longest that a tournament bracket has ever stayed perfect is 49 games. 49 out of 67. Maybe we're inching toward it, but I think if you just look at the stone cold, you're talking about data but when there's the so called odds is that this will never ever happen in our lifetimes are great, great.

[Toby Howell]

It's not stone cold odds though because you know, like if you actually were just picking 5050 gains, it's closer to like one in a couple quintillion. Right. But if you said, you said ball knowers bring that down to 1 in 120 billion. I do think that we are getting better ball knowing because of just all the data out there these days. All that being said, I'm going to tell you who's going to win the tournament. It's to going going to be Michigan.

[Neal Freyman]

All right. Go blue. That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday. If you'd like to reach us, 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 Lu is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham and our associate producer is Olivia Lake. Hair and makeup is already posted up at the Irish Bar. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew.

[Toby Howell]

Great show, Danielle. Let's run it back tomorrow.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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