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Toby Howell
Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Toby Howell.
Ann Barry
And I'm Ann Barry.
Toby Howell
Today the government shutdown is over, but the economic effects are lit, lingering like a bad hangover and fraudulent text.
Ann Barry
How Google is taking on the bad guys.
Toby Howell
It's Thursday, November 13th. Let's ride.
Ann Barry
Good morning and happy Thursday everyone. Well, I encourage everybody to go get a neck massage this morning because I foresee some upward gazing in your future. That's because we're in the middle of a crazy northern lights display. Aurora Borealis has been spotted in a huge sway the states recently, including a as far south as Florida and Alabama. Now this particular storm comes as a result of a phenomenon called a coronal mass ejection where the sun blasts charged particles at Earth leading to this crazy light show. Well, this particular show has reached G4 levels, Toby, the second highest on the NOAA's five step scale. Now, the storm likely peaked the past evening, but some lights will still be on display tonight. So Toby, if I lived in one of these states that rarely gets a chance to see something like the northern lights, how do I go about capturing that moment?
Toby Howell
As far south as Florida, my own home state. I'm so glad you asked. And three things you need. You need darkness, exposure and your iPhone. Get away from all the light pollution near civilization if possible. You're not going to see them in Times Square. And then change your iPhone settings to use a longer exposure time so the sensor lets in more light than usual. Keep a steady hand here because I've done this, it comes out really blurry if you're moving around all the time, so. So if you want a crisp and cool picture, have a steady hand. But you'd be shocked at what a smartphone can pick up these days. I pointed it at what I thought was a pretty normal night sky one night and let that puppy keep its shutter open for 10 seconds and bam. Northern lights just appeared. So it's cool, it's fun. If you are in a state as far south as, you know, my home state of Florida, it's a pretty rare occurrence. So try to get out there and see them. Now. A word from our sponsor US Bank Here in New York, there's no shortage of musicals and shows to catch year round, so whether you're heading into town as a tourist or entertaining visiting loved ones, there's always something to see and.
Ann Barry
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Ann Barry
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Toby Howell
Learn more at us bank.com/split card that's usbank.com/split card After 44 long days, the government shutdown is officially over. The House passed a bill last night to fund the government through January 30, and President Trump signed it for reopening the federal government, which had been hanging a closed sign on its door since October 1st. The deal came to fruition after eight Democratic senators and six Democratic House reps broke ranks to pass the funding bill without extending the enhanced health care subsidies they were originally fighting for. The package also includes the reinstatement of federal workers who were laid off during the shutdown. Now that the deal has been reached, some things will quickly resume. With the government back up and running. About 800,000 federal employees who have been furloughed or working without pay will start to receive their paycheck again, including back pay and snap. Benefits will also be restored, likely within 24 hours in most states, with funding secured through next September. But it could be a minute until everything is back to normal. For instance, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Nick Daniels said earlier this week that it took over two months to for staffing levels to rebound after the last shutdown ended in 2019. As for the official government data that makes our jobs as podcasters easier. There will be delays, and the White House said that inflation in jobs data from October may never be released, and the sheer length of this thing caused all sorts of economic fallout. Who's emerging from this as a winner and who's emerging as a loser?
Ann Barry
Well, I'm really struggling to think, Toby, of someone who is a winner coming out of all this, to be perfectly honest, but definitely in terms of the losers. Let's take a look at some of the numbers. You know, every week that went by with the shutdown, the economy probably suffered between 10 to 30 billion dollars in terms of lost productivity or lost GDP. If you take a look at sort of specific sectors to your point, you just talked about air traffic control, by the way. I traveled through this shutdown and I got every delay you can imagine. But I got to hand it to the air traffic controllers who kept working through this. It's stressful at the best of times and they were sort of amazing. But look, the airlines obviously lost a bunch of flights. We saw 2000 scrapped on Monday. We saw 900 scrapped even yesterday. And it looked like this was going to get better. Small businesses, how many times have you and I talked about sweet greens and the carbons of the world. All of those locations near, you know, federal offices certainly saw traffic dry up. So I think lots of people were struggling. I think there's a lot of happiness that it's over.
Toby Howell
I'll find some winners. Always look on the bright side. And the winners were actually probably one Wall street and investors throughout this because the market has performed pretty well throughout the entire shutdown overall. If you look at the past 13 shutdowns, S&P 500 was flat or positive in 10 of them. So really the market tends to shrug off these things for the most part. And I do think that if you look over the past, you know, September and October, it, it doesn't. It wasn't the strongest that we've ever seen, but also it wasn't the weakest. We saw about a 2% gain during the shutdown from October 1 to now. So the market did perform a little bit better than maybe you would expect considering all the economic turmoil that was happening under the service. Another sector of the economy that probably did pretty well during the shutdown was private credit and gig platforms. Because when you are going without paychecks for a while, like a lot of government workers have, you know, these buy now, pay later plans, these paycheck advance apps, they step in and, you know, bridge the gap for these missed paychecks.
Ann Barry
They.
Toby Howell
This happened during the pandemic era as well where, you know, cash app and then things like doordash also started to become more ubiquitous. So a short term burst for sure. I don't know if it's going to be a long term boost, but these sort of bridge the gap moments are big for companies like that as well.
Ann Barry
Well, I think everyone super, super excited to be getting back to work. Also, just one thing that's sort of interesting Here, Toby, it's looking ahead now. We're getting into that sort of holiday season where consumers are thinking about what their holiday spend is going to look like. So folks thinking about, you know, what mean for the retail sector, again, it's some of this back pay. Folks will get paid. There may be some catch up spending, but some of it may be lost in the meantime.
Toby Howell
Yeah. In the housing market as well. Definitely slowed down during this because, you know, mortgage applications were delayed or slowed down by a lot of missing income verification. You can't go get a house if you don't have any income to pledge. So the housing market is probably going to slowly emerge from this, especially in areas around D.C. as well. But you're right, the loss of the overall economy is this is lost productivity that you can't easily recapture or regain after it happens. So there's going to be some lingering, you know, productivity loss. There's going to be some lingering effects on hiring all the way up to 2026. So the overall impact, you know, that $14 billion a week number that you mentioned, I think that is potentially just scratching the surface on how long this thing, I called it a hangover at the beginning of the show because it's going to, there's going to be an economic hangover even though the, you know, the closed sign has turned to open on the government.
Ann Barry
The good news though does mean that everyone who is worried about their Thanksgiving travel, I don't know if you, Toby, were worried about getting on a plane a couple of weeks from now. At least there is this sort of end in sight and folks are actually getting a little bit more confident about being able to see friends and loved ones over that Thanksgiving period. Let's move on, Toby, and talk about something that I'm very curious as to whether you've experienced this. Have you ever received a text message saying you're overdue on a toll payment or that you need to authorize a delivery of something you frankly didn't you'd ordered?
Toby Howell
Yes, all the time.
Ann Barry
All the time. Okay, well that means that like you and I've had this too, you've been experiencing together with victims from all over the world. You've been plagued with millions of scam text messages and these have allegedly made over a billion dollars for the instigators of these schemes. But now someone is finally standing up to these scammers and it's someone who might actually have the mighty to do it. So the unexpected Batman in this, the defender of those text recipients is Google suing the Cyber criminal group behind these text phishing scams, claiming 25 unnamed individuals are part of an operation known as quote, Lighthouse. Now in the lawsuit, they're saying the public was preyed upon by using Google's logos and trademarks on fraudulent websites to dupe unsuspecting victims stealing their personal information such as credit card numbers and bank accounts. Millions of dollars as a result, being swindled from people. Now Google cited research by the CSIS Security group in its legal filings claiming that somewhere between just under 13 million to 115 million, this is a big range US credit or banking card details have been stolen. Now, Google believes that these individuals are in China, which means they're outside the reach of US courts. But they're spending a lot of time and resources on this, hoping that this suit acts as a deterrent. So, Toby, phishing has been growing in scale and sophistication. Does Google have an actual shot at putting all of this to an end?
Toby Howell
I mean, I certainly hope so because I think every single person listening has gone through that moment where they get a new text. You look at it, you're like, why do I have an unpaid toll in Florida? You see some, you know, sketchy looking URL and I think a lot of people have been trained at this point to just ignore it. But still, this is a massive global scam of operation. So Lighthouse is phishing as a service, you know, their software as a service. Lighthouse is this thing that you can sell to criminals that has subscriptions and weekly monthly annual payment tiers. It's just like any other software plan. But what it does is it gives you ready made phishing templates, it allows you to set up fake websites, it has back end dashboards for stolen data. So it really is this sophisticated operation. So Google is saying like, hey, this is not just a couple of people, you know, firing these out themselves. This is a legitimate company that is, you know, making money and it's selling subscriptions to these things and it's preying off people using usps, using Easy Pass, these institutions that people are familiar with. And yeah, they're playing off the trust that is associated with those names and they're going after, you know, unsuspecting people. So I was just shocked to see the sophistication of this Lighthouse enterprise.
Ann Barry
I'm going to be really curious to see how this legal case actually unfolds and whether it's even possible to get a result here. So think about this. Google is filing suit, but it doesn't actually know the real identities of the scammers, the scammers are listed as anonymous. So they've got handles on Telegram, for example. So I guess the question is if this is supposed to be preventative, right? If this is supposed to be Google saying, anyone who's thinking about going there, don't, because you're going to have the four might and power of one of the biggest companies on planet earth coming after you. It sounds scary, but is anyone going to be intimidated by it?
Toby Howell
It's going to be tough because they are outside of US Borders. So the legal basis here is, you know, a little tougher to find. But you, we have seen that, you know, injunctions can be shown to hosting providers or other tech firms that are based within the United States that could act as a deterrent, as you will. So you have to kind of go through these legal pathways in order to say, like, hey, you are hosting these, the software in the US we can go after you, even though we can't necessarily get to these 25 unnamed defendants as easily. So, yeah, I think that there is some illegal leverage here that you get by, you know, pursuing this lawsuit, even though it's going to be tough to actually track down the individuals responsible for it.
Ann Barry
I do also wonder how much they're depending on getting some collaboration with Chinese authorities if this is where this business is based, to try and ultimately get this shut down. Just as a side note, you know, here it is. Google is the one filing suit. But it would be tough for us to ignore the fact that Google faces intense legal scrutiny itself right now. It does have recent antitrust rulings over at search and advertising dominance. So, Toby, I'm curious how much of this is an attempt to try and reclaim some reputational high ground again if you're Google.
Toby Howell
Yeah, it's trying to be the white knight here, Batman, as you said. So because you are right, everyone has experienced these and so they say. All right, Google, thanks for having our back here again. Who knows how effective they're going to be because this is such a sophisticated and widespread operation. But I do think you're right. There probably is a little bit of goodwill that they're trying to garner here as well. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with a celebrity Neil's numbers segment right after this. The crypto landscape changes daily. Keep up with some of the best launches in new tech all in one place on your commute.
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Make your e commerce business yours truly. Visit woo.com/go custom to learn more. That's woo.com/go custom welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I do my best celebrity Neil impression and bring you three stats from the week's news that will help you dominate Thanksgiving small talk. And my first number is 60, which is the percent of grades handed out at Harvard last year that were A's. That's according to an internal report from the school, where by its own admission, it concluded that it's failing to perform the key functions of grading properly. Sending out report cards that would make it onto every fridge back home is a recent phenomenon. Back in the 2005 school year, only 25% of grades were A's, a number that has been steadily rising since. Along the way, the median GPA has risen to 3.83 from 3.29 back in 1985. While you say, maybe kids are just smarter these days, potentially. But time spent studying has hardly changed in the past two decades, hovering around six hours a week. So workload hasn't actually grown, just the grades. Part of the gradeflation trend comes from professors who fear tougher grading will drive students away from their courses. Too much stress, they argue, is actually bad for academic rigor. But 60% as I couldn't even muster that in first grade and I was a star pupil.
Ann Barry
Of course, you are a star people and star athlete and all these kinds of things. Well, is that because you're at a school where basically your teachers are being intellectually honest and they weren't inflating your grades at that time?
Toby Howell
That's the big question here. Because a lot of people feel like, well, students are actually kind of mad about this report coming out because they're like, you're moving the goalposts here. You admitted us because we were straight A students. Now we're getting A's at school. And you're saying there's way too much grade inflation going on. They are basically saying, like, hey, we're pretty dang smart here. But then you have some other students that say the problem is the fact that you can get A's in courses that you don't do work on. If you do the work and get an A, that's fine. But a lot of these courses are easier and just handing out A's like candy, which devalues, you know, the A's that people are working harder from. So I can see both sides of this argument here, for sure.
Ann Barry
Particularly these are students who are innately competitive. Actually, they want to see some differentiation in performance.
Toby Howell
And what happened, too, is that this has not been a battle that is too modern Times. Back in 2004, Princeton also tried capping its A's a little bit, but they dropped that, actually, because they found it was causing more stress in their student body and also made their students look worse next to peers from other schools. Because if you're coming out with Princeton and you have a 3.2 GPA and you're trying to get into law school against someone from Harvard who's got a 3.8Gpa, that is not going to, you know, you can't square the circle there. So there's. There's a long history of schools trying to crack down on A's. Or one solution that Harvard actually put forth is bringing back the A plus as like a carrot on the top. So it's not just straight A's anymore. Now, if you bring back, you know, that highest upper, upper echelon of grading, maybe it will cause people to, like, work harder there. So lots of different angles to this. But it is fascinating that, you know, the A's are just so plentiful at Harvard these days that everyone is getting them. They're handing them out like. Like candy.
Ann Barry
I'm so skeptical. That just means you get great inflation to more A pluses. Right. Over time. You know, one of the things here, Toby, that struck me when I was reading about this. There's a lot of conversation around how the students are pushing back. They're saying they already face extreme workloads and stress. What about the professors? Right. If you take a look at this from their perspective, one of the reasons this has happened is because professors have been stressed that if they don't have a course that's perceived as being at least accessible for getting grades that are within reach, then they might see enrollment fall and there's this kind of race to the bottom in some sense in terms of it being a popularity contest.
Toby Howell
Yeah, that is a great point because yeah, if you read like oh, easy A or hard A, you're probably gonna maybe opt for the. Well, I don't know how. I don't wanna put words in the mouth of Harvard that you're absolutely right that professors are facing this as well. My next number has to do with how people use chatbots. The Washington Post analyzed 47,000 publicly shared conversations and found that 1 in 10 users mainly use the tool for social interaction, not work or productivity. That supports what Open Air's internal data drop from September shows to most queries are for personal use, not professional. Within that personal use subset, the Post found that despite OpenAI largely promoting ChatGPT as a productivity tool, about 10% of users were engaging in abstract discussions with the chat bot, ranging from obscure medical treatment explorations to musing on the nature of reality. So a lot of people are treating the chat, but less as a grammar checker or email writer and more as an all knowing oracle they can use to probe the depths of themselves and existence. One thing that also stands out about this particular data set is how users never thought their chats would see the light of day. Opening I removed discoverability of chats via Google in July after realizing users were unintentionally sharing private info. But the Post was able to scrape 93,000 share chats preserved by the Internet Archive to build their own analysis. And big takeaway here is that chat CBT is used frequently as a companion and a confidant, in addition to practical use cases like writing, researching, or explaining things.
Ann Barry
To repeat a sentence, you literally just said to me, you literally just said that chatbots is used by people to probe the depths of themselves and their existence. That was poetic in terms of your voice over there. So I'm writing that down. You know, one of the things too that was interesting. Here is there is this risk of something called AI sycophancy, which is where we type something into chat GPT and it has a tendency to agree with you more than to actually push back, which just shows the importance of the prompts that you use if you really want something objective coming back.
Toby Howell
And the data supports that. So the post found that chatbot begins responses with variants of yes or correct 17,500 times. That's nearly 10 times more often than no or wrong. So you're absolutely right. This has been the number one complaint people have had about especially recent AI models is that they just agree with you. They say yes, you're the smartest person in the world or yes, that idea is great rather than pushing back. And many people have tried to manually say no, I want you to disagree with with me more. So the language patterns, the yes effect are absolutely there in this dataset data set as well.
Ann Barry
You know, it's a little bit like improvisation training. You know, it's always yes every sentence you have. The other thing that was interesting here is just thinking about where these chat bot conversations end up. So one place that folks have been posting their chatbot conversations is on Reddit. And here's why this caught my eye, Toby. People like Reddit and other forums are literally selling this data to guess who OpenAI to try to train these models. So now we're getting AI generated conversations, potentially training AI models.
Toby Howell
It's AI all the way to the.
Ann Barry
Bottom, I think in a totally different form.
Toby Howell
Actually. My final number shows just how much a beef can cost you. As Disney's fight with YouTube TV over a new content distribution contract drags on. The blackout is turning into a financial nightmare. According to estimates, the feud is costing Disney an estimated $4.3 million per day in lost revenue. That figure comes by way of a Morgan Stanley analysts who project a 60 million total hit to Disney's upcoming quarter. If the blackout lasts 14 days, of course, the impact on viewers might be even more intense. YouTube TV's 10 million plus subscribers have now missed two Monday Night Football games, including the Eagles versus the packers on November 10th. Which, if we're being honest, you didn't miss much. As well as two full Saturdays of college football due to the ESPN blackout, leaving millions of NFL and college football fans in the dark. The single most valuable audience Disney holds is a code red for the company. But there's two sides to this money losing coin. Disney is losing $30 million a week, but YouTube TV risks subscriber churn. According to a recent survey, 24% of YouTube TV subscribers say they've already canceled or planned to because of the blackout. Those stats sent YouTube parent Google into damage control. It offered users a one time $20 account credit to discourage cancellations. And there's no winners here. Maybe the financial toll will determine who blinks first though.
Ann Barry
This is like the government shutdown of the media world, right? That's what we're in. And just to put into context, Toby, some of those numbers that you laid out, that $30 million per week that Disney's losing in revenue, that was the Morgan Stanley analyst you referenced. Just to put it in context, Disney's full year revenue last year was $91 billion. YouTube's full year revenue last year, $54 billion. So as annoying as this is for everybody and there is lost money here, both of these guys can afford to sort of take the hit for a while. Waiting to see who blinks first.
Toby Howell
It really is just this disagreement with how they're seeing the situation. Abc, Disney owns ABC and ESPN as well. And ABC has increasingly showing some of these sports broadcasts that were once exclusive to espn. So Disney stance is like, hey, the increase of availability of our live sports makes our product more valuable, so it justifies a higher cost. But then the distributor, YouTube TV says that we're already paying for the same content that people can watch on espn. Why are we paying for the same content again on abc? So you're not seeing a lot of eye to eye here. Disney does report earnings this morning, actually. So maybe we'll see some clarity on when we feel like this conflict will eventually end. Because right now it's untenable for a lot of watchers.
Ann Barry
Going to have to run out of here and take a look at those earnings for sure. Well now a sprint to the finish with our final headlines, starting with our first headline, which is it is truly the end of an era. At 238 years of issuance, the US has finally officially minted its very last penny in Philadelphia. Well, just a brief history of how we got here. President Trump wanted to stop the minting of US Pennies due to its cost of productions because the irony is it costs about 4 cents to make 1 cent. Now, there was a time when pennies were valuable enough to buy penny candy like gumballs or feed parking meters and toll booths. Now they're found mostly at the bottom of water fountains, coin jars, which is lost underneath car seats. Well, even though we've stopped making pennies, they are still legal tender, but the removal from circulation is Causing a headache for some retailers on figuring out what to do if they actually have to give exact change. Lots of things, by the way, are priced at like 4.99 just to be below that dollar mark. So do they round to the nearest nickel? Do they ask customers to pay with a credit card? In any case, the government's phasing out of the penny has been a bit chaotic. That's Mark Weller, executive director of Americans for Common Sense. Great name, by the way. Toby, will you be missing our little.
Toby Howell
Copper plated friend Rip to the penny? It feel like it snuck up on us. I mean, we've done a couple of stories now about how the penny was getting phased out, but the fact that the last one was minted, it is kind of a monumental day. My favorite penny fact is that Abraham Lincoln is the most reproduced artwork in all of human history because we've minted so many pennies and he's on the back of the penny. So it is just one of those things that was so ubiquitous with America for so long. Now it's just phasing out. Retailers are obviously a little bit annoyed here. They're having some headaches because when you round down to the nearest nickel, quick trip said it's going to a convenience store chain, said it's going to cost it a couple of million dollars annually doing that. So a lot of these trade groups and retail groups are saying we just want federal legislation that standardizes a rounding rules for cash transactions because we don't want to be shaving off these millions of dollars every single year.
Ann Barry
I do wonder when is the moment when these pennies become collectibles? Right, because they're. So start collecting, hoarding, literally. Before I talk to our producer, before we started filming, he said there's going to be a day where people are diving into fountains to get to these.
Toby Howell
There's literally billions out there though, so just check under your seat cushions. No need to get wet in the fountains. Finally, next time you fly Ryanair, I hope you have your phone charged because as of yesterday, passengers are no longer able to print boarding passes. They must check in online and access their documents through the Ryanair app. CEO Michael O' Leary said that this change was inevitable. Almost 100% of passengers, he said, have smartphones. So we want to move everyone into that technology. Some destinations, including airports in Albania and Morocco, still require printed passes due to local rules. In those cases, Ryanair will provide one. But everywhere else, should you forget to check in before the airport, you'll be slapped with a around $72 airport check in fee. Hefty. But again, O' Leary says that anyone who fails to check in ahead of time is, quote, either stupid or they ignored our email instructions. Still, and this shift shouldn't be too drastic as almost 80% of Ryanair's 206 million passengers already use digital boarding passes. Either way, definitely a great way to get people to download their app, that's for sure.
Ann Barry
Yeah, I actually thought this had happened already that I think and I miss it. I will say that my grandmother in the uk, she flies and Ryanair and I worry for her because there is absolutely no way she's going to be downloading her mobile boarding.
Toby Howell
You're totally right. I mean, obviously the people who fly Ryanair consistently probably know this will have the Ryanair app, but the people who are flying it for the first time, a tourist or maybe someone like your grandma, they aren't up to date on these rules and so they might be, you know, it's. They're going to get hit with this fee going forward. Obviously a lot of people are going to be able to do this. But it is interesting that, like, we're just completely done with boarding passes, just a different way of flying. I remember, I mean, I'm not that old, but I still remember, like, you had paper boarding passes. That was the only way to get on the plane. Now they're completely doing away with it. It makes sense over time when you think about it. But, yeah, I hope your grandma has smooth sailing going forward. All right, that is all the time we have today. If you have thoughts on the show, want to eulogize the penny or get mad at Ryanair, shoot us a message on Instagram @MB Daily Show. Toss us a follow there as well. Let's roll these credits. Emily Millarn is our executive producer. Raven Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Hair and makeup is hoarding pennies just in case. Devin Emery is our president in our show's production of Morning Brew.
Ann Barry
Come back again tomorrow morning, same time. We'll catch you here.
Hosts: Toby Howell & Ann Barry
Date: November 13, 2025
This episode recaps the end of the protracted U.S. government shutdown, examining who came out ahead (and who didn’t), the economic aftereffects, and direct impacts on various sectors. The hosts also dive into Google’s bold lawsuit against a major cyber-scam syndicate, explore the final minting of the U.S. penny, and touch on topics ranging from the Harvard grade inflation debate to AI chatbot usage and a heated Disney/YouTube TV standoff. The show balances sharp business insight with their signature witty banter.
Ann Barry:
Challenges Google Faces:
Toby on Legal Leverage:
The tone throughout is lively, frank, and peppered with wry asides—balancing serious news with light-hearted, relatable commentary. The hosts don’t shy away from skepticism or airing frustrations (whether about scam texts, grade inflation, or boarding pass fees), while still uncovering nuggets of humor and insight in every topic.
This summary provides a full roadmap for anyone looking to catch up on the news and quirks of November 13, 2025, and serves as an effective stand-in for listening to the episode.