Morning Brew Daily - AI Actor Sparks Outrage in Hollywood & McDonald’s Monopoly is Back

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

Episode 681: Neal and Toby discuss the impending government shutdown that causes concern for federal workers and programs…except for holders of gold. Then, Hollywood is heated over the first AI actor that got signed by a talent agency. Also, McDonald’s is bringing back its classic Monopoly game after a decade-long hiatus from the infamous scam. Meanwhile, Toby dives into the trend of the “996” work culture that began in China and is making its way through Silicon Valley.  00:00 - Microsoft’s “vibe working” 2:30 - Gold goin’ good 7:15 - AI actor’s rising conflict 11:00 - McDonald’s Monopoly is back 15:00 - Toby’s Trends: 996 work schedule 20:00 - Sprint Finish! Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Check out https://www.linkedIn.com/mbd for more. Get your MBD live show tickets here! https://www.tinyurl.com/MBD-HOLIDAY  Vote for MBD in the Signal Awards! http://bit.ly/3W4e5ik  Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note⁠⁠⁠  Watch Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good morning brew daily show. Ryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, a government shutdown is coming. So why are stocks going up? Ben, what's the 996 grind set work schedule that is sweeping the startup world? It's Tuesday, September 30th. Let's ride. Have you ever tried to create an Excel spreadsheet based solely on vibes? Probably didn't turn out great. But soon, it's going to get a lot easier because yesterday Microsoft said it was launching vibe working in its office suite, a play on vibe coding, which is when you generate code by typing in a text prompt to an AI program. Similar thing is coming to Microsoft programs where you type in plain language what you want to see and it'll generate a complex Excel

spreadsheet, Word document, or presentation ready PowerPoint. Essentially anyone can become a first-year consultant. I mean, what's next vibe? Cooking, vibe parenting. We're in a bit of a vibe bubble right now, Neil. That being said, this is a risky vibe for Microsoft because you do not want to mess too much with Excel. A few spreadsheets underpin the entire global economy, so you do not want that agent screwing up, which it still does a fair amount, by the way. It got a 57% on spreadsheet bench, this benchmark for judging an AI model's ability to edit spreadsheets. That places it first amongst most of its competitors, but behind the human accuracy of 71%. So first of your consultants, you're probably safe-ish for now.

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Trump and top congressional leaders failed to produce a breakthrough. You wouldn't know it from the action on Wall Street with all three indexes closing in the green yesterday, but one corner of the market did react significantly as it has all year. gold. Gold notched a new record topping $3,800 per ounce on Monday morning. The medal is on a historic run in 2025, up 47% already. It's on pace for its best year since the Iranian revolution upended the global economy in 1979. Gold is a classic safe haven play has been since the Kingdom of Lydia began cranking out coins in the 6th century BC. When times get hairy, investors flock to gold as a store of value. And that's been happening in a big way in 2025. A primary driver has been concerned over

U.S. debt levels, which something could spiral into a government funding crisis. Simmering geopolitical tensions, trade wars, and the Fed's interest rate cuts are also fueling a run on gold. It's led to a bonanza for gold investors, including the U.S. Treasury. The U.S. has the biggest gold hoard in the world totaling about 261.5 million ounces, and half of which sits below the Army base in Fort Knox, Kentucky yesterday after gold reached its new record, the value of all that gold hit $1 trillion. Toby, let's break down a couple things. A, what's behind this gold search and also B, why the government shutdown isn't spooking stocks. I mean, gold is essentially the big red panic button trade every time Washington is, you know, stumbling towards the shutdown investors kind of

turned to themselves and say, what can I own that won't get dragged down with the dollar, won't get dragged down with the stock market, or won't be affected by it. the feds, you know, confusion going forward. And historically, that answer has always been gold, which is why we're seeing it run up once again. But it is fascinating to look at, you know, the shutdown economy and how the economy actually reacts to government shutdowns. And historically, it's been very muted.

The economy basically shrugs them off. If you go back to the 2018, 2019 shutdown, that was the longest ever, 35 days. It had basically no impact on long-term GDP unemployment or markets in general. mainly because when we see a shutdown, workers are furloughed. They're not laid off. And furloughed workers behave much like workers with jobs because they still know they have a paycheck that's about to come.

So they continue to spend, which doesn't impact GDP that much. This time around could be different, though, because of what Trump has been floating, that the workers won't be furloughed. They'd actually be laid out. That's why people are a little bit more nervy this time around. Yeah. Typically, economists have likened shutdowns to, you know, natural disaster or a hurricane where there's a short-term economic hit, but all of that is reversed later when things get rebuilt

and the people who didn't spend during that storm start spending again. But the stock market just always shrugs these things off because of that lack of long-term hit to the economy. Since 1976, the S&P 500 has averaged zero change during government shutdowns. And even in late 2018, 2019, during that, the longest one we've ever had, the S&P actually went up by 10% during that. shutdown. So the stock market is kind of doing what it has been every single time there's been a shutdown, which is either stay the same or go up. Another unique risk this time around, though, is the fact that economic data might get delayed. This could delay releases like Friday's September

jobs report, inflation reading. So if the Fed is flying blind going into these all-important rate-cut decisions or rate decisions, then maybe that's why this could be a potentially more damaging shutdown long term because if you can't judge the labor market, you can't judge where inflation's at, how can you create, you know, monetary policy going forward? So the firing threat along with this flying bind threat, that's why potentially this could be a little bit more of a damaging one. But you're right, all the index hit all time highs, even though Paulymarket is showing an 85% chance of government shutdown. So maybe they think the layoff threat is just bluster and not actually a real threat. Or it's just they've looked at

historical data and said like, hey, typically things go pretty all right. We think they're going to go all right this time around as well. Yeah, yesterday I did the week ahead preview and I said the jobs report is coming on Friday, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics came out and said that, well, if the government is shut down, we can't produce this report. So there may not be a jobs report on Friday if this shutdown happens, which looks likely. And the longer it lasts, the longer these economic reports get delayed. We're looking ahead to this big inflation report that's going to determine the Fed's next interest rate decision, and that could also get delayed depending on how long this shutdown lasts. So a lot of implications here we will keep tabs on how negotiations go, but all signs point

to a shutdown right after midnight on Wednesday morning. Moving on, have you heard of this actress Tilly Norwood? She hasn't appeared in any movies yet, but she's reportedly getting swarmed by talent agents and expects to sign with one soon, which is going to set off an earthquake in Hollywood. And that's because Tilly Norwood isn't human. She's an AI. At a panel event in Zurich over the weekend, actor and technologist Aline Vanderveld and stunned the entertainment world by announcing that Tilly Norwood, a product of her new AI talent studio, was fielding offers from agents, and she'll be revealing which agency is going to represent Norwood in a few months. Actors fearful of AI replacing them

did not respond well to this, lighting up social media with outrage and scorn. Melissa Barrera of In The Heights and Scream wrote, Hope all actors rep by the agent that does this drop their ass, how gross read the room. Tony Collette posted a string of screaming emojis, and Lucas Gage added with a wink, she was a nightmare to work with. Vanderveld didn't respond to the backlash,

writing on social media that Tilly Norwood is not a sub for a human being. She added that, quote, I see AI not as a replacement for people, but as a new tool, a new paintbrush, just as animation puppetry or CGI open fresh possibilities, without taking away from live acting, AI offers another way to imagine and build stories. Toby, seems like Pandora's box has been open when it comes to AI in the movies.

If Norwood gets signed, she'll be one of the first AI-generated actresses to get representation with a talent agency who has historically work with human performers. Vandereldon has said that, hey, audiences don't actually care if actors or actresses have a pulse. They actually just care about good storytelling. So why would Tilly be any different? As long as we are telling good stories, audiences will come out and see it. we have seen a shift in industry attitudes towards AI. You remember when the SAG after strikes were happening in 2023,

a big sticking point was the use of AI in the industry. And it was basically taboo to ever admit that any of your movie productions or people were going to work with AI in any way. Now we have agents kind of under the table going like, all right, we're interested in this. We're interested in the economics of this because obviously AI actresses are a lot cheaper than real life human ones. So fascinating to see both the industry shift and obviously the industry pushed back from a lot of actors. Yeah, it is so much cheaper. So OpenAI is backing this movie

that's coming out next year called Critters with AZ. It's a feature film animation and most of this movie is going to be made using AI tools from OpenAI. And if you look at just the math here, they think it's going to take nine months to make this movie versus three years. And then the budget of Critters is going to be less than $30 million, far less than what animated films typically cost. And, you know, this is a huge test to see what the appetite is for mostly AI-generated filmmaking. We'll see whether Vander Velden is right in that audiences may not care if the actors had a pulse or the people making it or animating it had a pulse. or if they do care and the human touch, the human actors is still really important. It does feel like we are moving into the synthetic influencers celebrity phase of this world

because we're already seeing it on Instagram. Little McKella is a massive Instagram influencer who is completely AI generated. We also see hologram pop stars over in Japan. So it's happening in other aspects of the entertainment world. Why wouldn't it come to movie stars and the movie industry as well? So I don't know. I think it all comes down to if it's actually good or not because, again, animated movies, like you could say, like, oh, my God, they're replacing humans as well.

But people love those movies because they tell very human stories. Maybe if you're using AI as another tool to tell very human stories, then audiences will like it. Or it will just be very uncanny valley and people will hate it. I don't know, but I will probably try to watch. McDonald's is pulling out all the stops to get customers back through its stores, announcing the return of a fan favorite this week. I'll be at one with a shady pass. Seeing how excited its customers got for the humble McRib

and nostalgic characters like Grimmis, McDanks is dusting off its infamous Monopoly game after a 10-year hiatus to inspire some similar mania. Starting next Monday, when you order an item for the Monopoly menu at McDonald's, you'll get a Peel to Play sticker on your food, which you'll use to collect properties and redeem prizes within the McDonald's app.

Those prizes include anything from free food all the way up to an all-expenses vacation or even a $1 million cash prize. The fast food chain put out a statement saying this game is a core memory for so many customers and we're excited that those memories can now be shared across generations. But a lot of those core memories might also be tied to the so-called McMillian scandal where the person in charge of distributing the winning tickets across the country and ended up stealing them for himself and his family members. In total, over $24 million in prizes were taken, leading to the FBI getting involved,

eight arrests, and an HBO docu series released back in 2020. Neil, we know nostalgia plays with fast food customers. So this has a chance to become a cultural phenomenon once more. But do you remember the original scandal? How bad was it? It was pretty insane. So in 2001, the FBI received an anonymous tip that a bunch of these million-dollar winners from the original Monopoly game were actually related to each.

other. So they did this major sting operation and found that the ring leader of this massive scam was a guy named Uncle Jerry. Well, his name was actually Jerome Jacobson, but he was known as Uncle Jerry. He was the director of security for a company called Simon Marketing, which was the company that handled the distribution for these monopoly game pieces, specifically the high value ones. So instead of shipping those out to stores as he should have or as his job directed. He actually took those for himself, distributed them amongst a close group of people, his family, friends, and other people related to organized crime. And essentially what they did was they recruited fake winners to pose as these huge winners, go on TV, do a whole huge media

circuit, and then kind of split the winnings among them. And they built McDonald's out of $24 million. He was sentenced to three years in prison. And if you go watch that HBO documentary, It kind of explains this whole, very elaborate, very intricate scam. That was a huge egg on the face for McDonald's at the time. It was an egg on the face, but it was a sales driver. So it was kind of a bummer that they had to kind of sunset it for a decade because when they reintroduced it last in 2013, and they said the sales jumped 5% in the quarter that followed, and they attributed it directly to that.

And McDonald's has been trying to stage a comeback with some of these big promotions. they have this big Minecraft deal that drove sales. Finally, they had sales growth in the last quarter, two and a half percent after many quarters of flat or declining sales. So they are kind of rifling through the history books right now and going, all right other levers do we have to pull right now? Let's bring back Monopoly. They feel like they've gotten a little bit more buttoned up. There's no more Uncle Jerry figures anymore. And a lot of it is centered around the app as well. And I do think that's a huge motivator for bringing this back as well. As long as you can bring more people into the McDonald's app, build that loyalty program more. That is a huge priority

for McDonald's CEO right now. Loyalty members tend to visit a lot more than non-loyalty members. It accounts for 25% of their business at this point. So a lot of good things are happening because you can play on nostalgia and you can also get people in the app ecosystem. That is definitely a win-win for McDonald's. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Toby's Trends. Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th,

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Babbel's conversation-based techniques teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world, with lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers. Babel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babel today. Get up to 55% off your Babel subscription right now at babel.com slash Spotify. Spelled B-A-B-B-B-B-B-E-L-Sash Spotify. Rules and restrictions may apply. It's Tuesday, which means I'm back with another edition of Toby's trends. The segment where I take a deep dive into the business world to emerge with a trend that will help you go viral in your college group chat. And today's trend is all about the newest work schedule sweeping Silicon Valley called 9-96. Gone are the days of Dolly Parton's 9-5 work anthem because apparently that is no way to make a living anymore. Instead, if you want to get ahead, you have to be working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. 6 days a week.

hence 9-9-6. The work schedule from hell originally came to the U.S. by way of China, which has an equally demanding tech scene. It eventually led a Chinese court to ban employers from compelling their employees for grinding out 72-hour weeks. But these days, you can scroll X

and find planning a U.S. startup founder openly glorifying workaholism again. Some companies are even putting it in writing with job descriptions that spell out expectations of 70-plus-hour weeks. And it's not just talk. The expense management platform ramp noticed that corporate card use in San Francisco on Saturdays is up compared to past years, which they take as a sign that people are grinding through the weekends. Neil, are we 9-9-6ing?

How many hours did you log last week? So many. I mean, I don't actually want to count. But, yeah, there's something in the water here in San Francisco in the Bay Area. Napods are out and energy drinks are in. Last month, a startup founder, Doc Schupta, told the standard that the prevailing attitude in San Francisco. right now among the young techies is, quote, no drinking, no drugs, 9-96, lift heavy, run far, merry early, track, sleep, eat steak and eggs. And it's remarkable the turnaround that we've seen

from just five years ago during, you know, the height of the pandemic when the focus was on flexibility and work-life balance and not putting everything into your work. And now that has completely changed, at least in San Francisco. It may not be happening in other cities. But, you know, the reason is is probably AI and people see these young tech people see, you know, once in a generation opportunity to put your foot in the door and say, well, I built a massive company because there's this huge technological revolution going on. I think the question here, though, is does it work? It does it actually lead to better outcomes for company builders? And it is a little bit of a mixed metaphor because startups definitely get more done in the short term. If you're working

all the time, six days a week, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. of course you're going to get more work done, but you have to think long term as well. Studies suggest that working more than 55 hours a week can create health risk. They can diminish productivity. It basically is, do you want to sacrifice short-term gains for potentially the long-term health of yourself and your business? But I also think this idea of just never drinking, never doing anything fun just is no way to live. Maybe it is a way to live. It's how they're choosing to live.

But it is fascinating to see all the rest that comes with it is basically you have to just side, line your entire life in order to devote everything you have to this business. Maybe they see, you know, 10 billion dollar outcomes on the horizon, which is why they're doing it. But fascinating that it's got this label, it's got this moniker, and a lot of people are adopting it. I mean, it's a little personally for me. I know you joked about me working a lot, but in the early days of morning brew, and there were just three or four of us back in 2017, 2018, and this went on for five years. Like I was doing 9-9-6 or even 10-10 or 11-11-6. And from my perspective, to build a startup from the ground up, which we were doing,

that was the kind of only way to do it. You had to put in the hours. And the big key here that, you know, reflecting on this moment in our lives was that none of the people working in this early stage startup had sort of any other responsibilities. We didn't have kids. We didn't have partners. We didn't have other, you know, we weren't caring for anybody else. And because of that, we were allowed to pour everything into this.

So, end of one, just from my personal experience, but to build, you know, a lot of these VCs and tech people who say this, this is the only way you can build a startup that's actually worth any sort of money and won't fail. Like, in some sense, I do sympathize with that just from my personal experience. But it's only for such a select few people. And that's why I think a lot of the people, a lot of the folks doing 9-9-9. in San Francisco right now are just a very narrow group of people that can actually afford this particular lifestyle. I do think what you said is true. Some, if you are building a company and it's just a necessity to do 996, like that is just what you had to do.

Like the newsletter had to get out the next day, you had to finish it. And so you had to be working. That is one thing. But then the people who are cosplaying as 996 where they're sleeping in the office, you know, they're never doing anything social. but they're building, you know, an AI agent for, you know, Uber or whatever. I don't know. Something not necessarily that you need to be working that many hours. That's where you get pushback of the people who are kind of faking it because that's what they're supposed to do rather than actually having to use that time to build a company that they want to.

But either way, these young tech workers that have flocked to San Francisco because of AI are actually transforming the city and it looks nothing like it did two or three years ago. Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. its official electronic arts will become the biggest leveraged buyout in history. Yesterday morning, the maker of Madden and the Sims agreed to be taken private by a group of investors in a deal that values the gaming company at roughly $55 billion, topping the previous buyout record set by a power giant nearly two decades ago. Once the deal closes, potentially in 2027, it'll be up to the new owners,

which includes Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and Jared Kushner's investment firm to find new avenues for growth in an industry that stagnated, since the pandemic boom times. The good news is they've got a strong hand to play because EA has some of the best IP in the biz. The challenge will be figuring out a business model that works. I do think that they're looking at the fact that they probably need to shift a little bit more resources

towards mobile. Maybe they need to do some more free-to-play games, take some risks here. And the fact that they were a public company, you have to report to shareholders. We've talked about this about how quarterly reports make you have to basically be like maybe a little less risk taking. And so the fact that now they can plan these longer-term strategic shifts

if they're a private company without having to respond to shareholders on a quarterly basis could make sense. There's also a national security dimension to this as well because this buyout actually has to pass review by Sipheus, which is the U.S. body that screens foreign deals for national security risks. Saudi Arabia is involved here. So that's maybe one final question mark as well, especially because video game companies collect a lot of data on their users. So a couple of question marks, but right now we are, all signs are pointing to this being a really big old buyout. Next, OpenAI just announced instant checkout a new feature that lets chatGBT users buy products from Etsy sellers directly in chat without ever having to leave the app.

That means if you ask chat CBT what a good birthday gift is for your fiance, not only will it surface ideas for a necklace or a bracelet, it will also give you the option to purchase them within the chat. The launch quickly rippled through markets. Etsy shares jumped nearly 16% while Shopify climbed more than 6% on news that a million Shopify merchants, including scams and Glacier, were going to get integrated soon as well. Instant Checkout is free for users, but Open AI will collect a fee on each completed purchase. Introducing a potential new revenue stream at a time where the company is still burning cash faster than a Mr. Beast video. Neil, this is also a shot across the brow of Google and Amazon here because it's moving

chat GPT from a product discovery tool into a full e-com agent handling recommendations, payment, and order details. It feels like we're all going to be shopping with AI soon. Totally. And so what did it say for the birthday gift? Oh, it did not say either of those things. That was totally from personal experience. They asked so many questions like, what does she like?

I'm like, that's what I'm asking you. Yeah, OpenAI said that, quote, a huge portion of questions that people are already asking ChatGPT are related to shopping and commerce in some capacity. We've seen Facebook do this. We've seen TikTok do this. We've seen all these other social media companies get into the e-commerce game

to add a new revenue stream. And opening I really needs to do this because they are losing billions of dollars each quarter. So they're trying to streamline the process and yeah, I'm going to buy a lot of stuff on chat. GPT. That's kind of obvious. Okay, for our final headline, I'm just going to read a headline in the BBC

yesterday. Mr. Beast, trapping man and burning building for $500,000. Yep, sounds about right. Mr. Beast, the most popular YouTuber in the world, is defending himself from critics following his latest video in which he dares a professional stuntman to escape a blazing building while collecting money bags along the way.

In response to the outrage, which called the video humiliating and dystopian, Mr. Beast explained, I take safety more serious than you could ever imagine. Every challenge was tested by multiple stuntmen. We have a full rescue team on standby with firefighters, EMTs and divers equipped with an ambulance and fire truck. He added, we also had a pyro team controlling the fires and multiple fire suppression methods on every challenge

to ensure we could essentially turn off the fire if there ever was an issue. Toby, either he put this guy in serious danger or the whole thing was merely a trick for eyeballs. Either way, it worked, the video posted on Friday has over 51 million views. How do we keep falling for this? Of course he's tricking us into more views.

Of course the outrage just feeds even more views into the video. and every news outlet that runs these headlines is doing exactly what Mr. Bees wants. Including us. Including us right now. But listen, look at how self-aware we are because at least I'm bringing it up. I do think, too, that safety was a big issue here. The guy in the video was a former professional stuntman. He was a stuntman, so he knows how to deal around fire.

He knows these environments. They ventilated the smoke out of the building. There was a literal kill switch that would just turn off all the flames at any moment right now. So not only do I think that the actual risk of danger was very low, as Mr. B says, we are just playing exactly into his hands right now. So Mr. B's tip our cap to you. We're talking about it. Everyone's talking about it.

You got us again. That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday. If you have any feedback on today's show, send a note to Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lue is our producer.

Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake, Hair and makeup, pioneered vibe working. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.