Morning Brew Daily - California to cut ties with Walgreens, EV Bike Fires, Swiss Chocolate Drama

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

Episode 11: Neal and Toby discuss California cutting ties with Walgreens over the pharmacy's position on abortion pills. They also get into the implications of EV bike fires and why the Swiss are putting their foot down on what can be considered their native chocolate. And what is "body doubling" and why it could help people with ADHD work remotely. Oh, and if you could name a snowplow - what would that name be? Learn more about our sponsor, TaxAct: https://www.taxact.com Listen Here: https://www.mbdailyshow.com/ Watch Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Sources:  California “done” with Walgreens over abortion pill: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/06/abortion-pill-california-governor-newsom-says-state-wont-do-business-with-walgreens.html EV Bike Fires big deal in NYC: https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2023/03/06/e-bike-batteries-are-exploding-fire Toblerone dropping Swiss Mountains from packaging: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/business/toblerone-chocolate-switzerland-matterhorn.html Toby’s Trends, AI Voiceover: https://www.businessinsider.com/voice-ai-audio-joe-biden-donald-trump-tiktok-2023-3 Remote Work ‘body doubling’ or 2.5 hour Commute?: https://fortune.com/2023/03/05/body-doubling-parallel-working-tiktok-trend/ https://fortune.com/2023/03/05/nyc-workers-super-commuters-office/ Municipalities renaming snowplows: https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/snowplow-name-contest Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good morning brew daily show. I am Neil Pryman. and I'm Toby Howell. Toby, you are positively glowing today. What could possibly have happened? It's that viral glow that you only get if your tweets on Twitter go really viral. Yesterday, after Twitter kind of broke, actually Twitter really broke. API access was kind of rejected for a lot of the core parts of Twitter.

And I kind of broke down what was going on the situation, which was basically me saying, like, links are broken, photos are broken, everything's broken. and that became kind of the de facto news break that Twitter was broken. And so the tweet just kept going viral and viral and viral. How often were you refreshing your notifications? Honestly, Twitter kind of breaks at that stage of virality where your notifications are useless anymore. I know. You wouldn't understand. So you couldn't completely absorb your fame because Twitter was broken.

Exactly. It was only today when I woke up that I really saw the extent of it. All right. Well, I never go viral on Twitter. It's fine because I co-host a podcast. Speaking of the podcast, let's talk about what we're going to talk about today, which is a really interesting show. We're going to talk about the rise in e-bike-related fires, particularly in New York City.

Toblerone is rebranding to be less Swiss. I can't wait to talk about that. And then the concept of body doubling at work, which I know you have a lot of thoughts about, and I had never heard of. So it should be interesting. First, let's get into Walgreens and the abortion pill. A lot of drama going on over there. Walgreens is now public enemy number one in California.

Yesterday, California Governor Gavin Newsom said that the state is done doing business with Walgreens over his decision to not offer an abortion pill in 20 different states. Last week, Walgreens said it would not mail the pill to 20 states after Republican officials threatened legal action against it in other retail chains such as CVS, Walmart, and Costco, and Kroger. and notably, actually, some of those states' abortion is legal in the states that said it would not send the abortion pill to. Yeah, so this is definitely a tussle between California and Walgreens. And a few of the things we were kind of talking about as we were reading through this story is how much retail chains have become kind of the forefront, the battleground, if you will, for the abortion pill debate, especially Walgreens, is now on the front lines of it. Yeah, I mean, there's all these calls to boycott Walgreens on social media, and then from the left.

And then on the other side, they're also putting pressure on Walgreens. They had this annual meeting, which normally is extremely boring. They just talk about CEO executive pay, and no one pays much attention to it. But this year, in January, because of Walgreens' role in supplying abortion medication, there was huge protests. anti-abortion protesters came, descended on California, and protested Walgreens' decision to eventually supply abortion medication. Yeah, just rocking a hard place right now for Walgreens. And you can tell why it's such a hot-button issue. More than half of all abortions perform the U.S. actually use the Mithephton pill that is at the center of this debate. And so even in

states where surgical abortion is illegal or restricted, you can actually still use Miffrey Pristone to have an abortion. And so this is, again, why it's just such a hot-button issue, and, like, Walgreens is trying to navigate this fine line, and not doing anything. They're kind of going to piss off one side or the other, no matter what they do. Yeah, Democrats are saying that they're sort of bowing to legal threats that are sort of substantiated from the Republicans. And it's interesting, there's this law that the Republicans are citing that says that Walgreens and other retail chains would violate if they supplied abortion pills.

It's called the Comstock Act, and it's from 1873. Jeez. Okay. Makes it illegal to send contraceptives, substances that induce abortion, pornographic content, sex toys, and any written material around those items. 18? Yes. So I don't know what sex toys were in 1873. But the reason that retail chains have become on the forefront is because now they can, under

new FDA guidelines, they can potentially sell abortion medication. Previously, you could only get this in a health care setting. And slowly but surely, the FDA has loosened up guidelines, and now retail chains like Walmart, Kroger, Walgreens, Wright Aid can sell these. Notably, Walgreens does not sell this yet. They're applying for FDA certification, said they're in the process of doing so. But yeah, we should make it clear that they are not currently distributing it. And it's interesting because they said they've moved forward, but a bunch of the other chains like Walmart have not sort of moved in the direction of supplying abortion medication.

Yeah, definitely a situation to monitor kind of going forward. But I'm going to take us onto our next topic, which is e-bikes and some electrical fires that have been happening from lithium-ion batteries. So if you've ever walked around in New York City, you actually know that cars aren't the thing you have to walk out for. It's those e-bikes that come whizzing around the corner. I know I've stepped off the curb and almost been flattened by an e-bike. When I was biking to you this weekend over the Williamsburg Bridge, I was on a pedal assist bike, city bike. I got lapped by at least 15 e-bikes, and I was just like, those look incredible. Yeah, the reason why we're talking about kind of the rise in e-bikes is because it's also,

correlated to a rise in e-bike battery fires. So I'm going to give you some stats here, Neil. Lithium ion batteries caused the fourth most fire deaths last year in New York City, which is kind of crazy. And the number of lithium ion fires is rising. So in 2021, there were 104, but that number jumped to 220 last year. So we're seeing a rise in e-vikes. And so we're also seeing a rise in fires coming from those batteries. It's a little bit alarming to hear these stats. It is scary. If you look at read these articles about the fires, there was one as recently on Sunday that injured seven people and engulfed basically a grocery store. Yeah, officials say this is actually a huge deal. And it's not the really well-made ion batteries

that they're worried about. They're worried about the secondhand market, the ones that have and modified. Right. These things are expensive, so anytime there's an expensive, there's going to be a cheaper alternative. And yeah, that is, it's kind of like the fake Gucci handbags of the actual bite industry. And they're exposed to really weird conditions. Obviously, they're out in the weather a lot, and they can be easily damaged. And experts say that has contributed to the fires. And these fires are not just regular fires. They're chemical fires. So that makes them even more dangerous. They're really hard to put out. They spread really quickly. And it's been really devastating for a lot of buildings in New York, and it's really killed a lot of people.

Right. A Chief FI. Marshall in New York said they fail almost an explosive way. It's like a blowtorch. But one caveat that I do want to say just before we move on real quick is that these fires are not starting while people are riding bikes themselves. Like, you're not going to be riding down the road and have someone's seat blow up. It is when they're stored improperly or if they've been left on a charger and overheat over time. So, yeah, you're not going to see people popping up off their, of their, bikes as their batteries. No, yeah. But there are lithium ion batteries are not just in bikes. They're in EVs. They're in smartphones. They're in computers. And this reminded me of 2016 or 2017 when Samsung had to recall 22.5 million of their Galaxy Note 7s. I remember that. I think it was the largest smartphone recall all the time because the batteries were exploding. So this is not just a bike issue, though.

are saying bikes are way more prone to fires than anything else because they're exposed to the elements. Now, London, because of the fire risk, London banned all e-scooters in 2021. They left EV bikes. And I hope New York finds a solution that is not banning these because I think they're sort of a lifeline. They enable the delivery economy. For sure. They're an amazing way to commute. They're growing. I think, you know, there were more e-bikes sold than electric vehicles sold last year in the U.S. So this is an awesome trend. I'm a huge fan of Micrombo.

Mobility, obviously, the fires are something they need to get under control, but it feels like they may be able to do that. I really hope New York doesn't go the way of London and ban them. Okay. Really, let's head to Europe. Let's head to Europe for some chocolate drama. I love chocolate drama. This story blew up yesterday. The chocolate land Toblerone, which I haven't really eaten a while.

They have that very distinct triangle color, is removing the Matterhorn Mountain and Swiss flag. from its packaging because its chocolate now is not Swiss enough to show those images anymore. I'll explain a little bit. What makes something Swiss enough? Okay. Well, I guess if it's made in Switzerland, but Toblerone is shifting some of the Toblerone production, chocolate production, to Slovakia, which means it will be in violation of Swiss rules around what can be marketed as a Swiss product. Interesting.

Yeah, there is something called the Swissness Act of 2017 that aims to protect Swiss manufacturing, and the marketing around Swiss-made goods. So here's some rules around food products. At least four-fifths of the raw materials that go into the product have to come from Switzerland. And then I assume this is what Toblerone's about to violate. It's that processing that gives the product its essential characteristics must also be carried out in Switzerland. That's very interesting. First of all, this news hits close to home because my nickname at Summer Camp was Toblerone.

From one of my counselors, because my name's Toby. And your triangular stature. And I guess I'm delicious to eat. But there's also, this is interesting because this is not just a trend confined to Switzerland. This is a trend that's going on across the food industry. Just recently, the U.S. released new requirements that make it so that meat, poultry, and eggs that say product of the USA on them have to come from animals born or raised or slaughtered in the USA. So it is, as you see these labels on packages, they're kind of kind of. cracking down, like, you can't just use it as a marketing stunt or anything like that.

You've got to protect your brand. Swiss chocolate has a very elite brand. Right. I'm all aboard. This might be a little strict, but, you know, Apple doesn't let Android people use blue text. True. This is the same thing. This is the green tax of the food world. I do love the Cattlemen's Association when talking about that Made in the USA Cattle thing.

He goes, if it says made in the USA, then it should be from cattle that have only known USA's soil. I love that line. Yeah. And then also, another example of this just happening was Grouier, the cheese. Actually, a U.S. judge just ruled that it could be made from a region outside of Grouier. So it is, like, there is lines being drawn in the sand right now. Like, what can be called what? It might be a little too much red tape.

But, you know, if I ate something that said it came from somewhere and it didn't actually come from somewhere, I don't know. I'd be so annoyed. Is there a particular food product that if, you know, you know, it didn't come out from where the label said it would, would, like, piss you off? I mean, yeah, Philly. If I got a Philly cheese steak and it was made in, I don't know, in New York, I'd probably be a little, a little upset. In my new Ligon clam chatter, the clams have to come from the Connecticut coast.

Yeah, that's a great one, right. Or Vermont maple syrup. I think that. I'm like a maple syrup, Hardo, so it needs to come from Vermont. Okay, before we jump to the next story, where you're going to take a quick break. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill 3-burner gas grill. Or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor to your backyard.

Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together. Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th. Exclusion supplies to homedipo.com slash price match for details. All right, Neil, we're back with another edition of Toby's Tuesday Trends. The alliteration keeps growing. Today, we're going to talk about AI, but it's not the boring tech space AI we've been talking about kind of over the show for the past week. This is an AI voice trend. So basically what people have been doing is recreating the voices of famous figures, people like Joe Biden, Donald Trump, etc., using AI to put them in conversation with each other. This has been a hilarious trend going around on TikTok. And so essentially, it gives you the godlike power to make these people say whatever you want them to say. And as an example, we have a quick clip of Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan arguing about Ratatouille that we're going to play for you.

I just think I would love to get Ratatouied. Ratatouid? Like have a little guy up there making me cook delicious meals. No, I understand. I've seen the film. You wouldn't want that? A little guy pulling your hair making you cook? It's a ridiculous concept. You're telling me you wouldn't want that.

I just don't know why you're bringing it up as if it's something that could actually happen. I can see you giggling over there. Well, I've never heard of the term rat tattooed as a verb. That's my favorite. It is very, very funny. We got to use that. And I know you have some things to say, but I actually have one more clip that I want to play for you. This one is of President Joe Biden talking about the Matt Damon movie, we bought a zoo.

Good evening, my fellow Americans. I've made a huge mistake. Are you familiar with the 2011? film We Bought a Zoo, the Matt Damon picture. Scarjo is in it as well, although her performance isn't anything to shake a stick at, if I'm being honest. It was directed by Cameron Crow, the fellow who made Jerry McGuire. Show me the money. Anyway, so I was watching, we bought a zoo a few days ago because it came to. Just so good. I've never seen We Bought a zoo. I know either of it. So I don't, I can't tell whether Scarjo take is correct. Yeah, very, very funny. Just want to give a quick shout

out to the Twitter user who made those videos, Zach Silberberg. So thank you for that, Zach. But Neil, what do you think about this trend? It's a little scary, right? Well, I guess my question, I haven't heard of it, so I was going to ask you questions to sort of probe. But yeah, when these sort of AI defakes have come out in the past, there's been an immediate backlash saying that these are super dangerous.

They could be impersonations that lead to severely bad outcomes. But most of the time, people just seem to be laughing at this? Is that what I'm gathering? Or is there, what if you just have Biden saying, like, we're going to nuke China right now? I know. I think it is a little bit of a dark humor that people are laughing at these. Because you're totally right. These are extremely benign examples.

Obviously, the Internet is using their powers for good right now. But you can already see some of the dangers of that. One example is there is a Joe Rogan ad that's been going around TikTok of him. endorsing a product that is not actually Joe Rogan. It's both a deep fake video and a deep fake voice. So imagine you now have Joe Rogan promoting this like B-grade Amazon supplement on TikTok. And eventually TikTok did take the channel down and ban the user, but it's just kind of the tip of the iceberg of now, imagine if you could have celebrity endorsements of products that that celebrity doesn't know they're endorsing.

Or they say something, you know, offensive or something. I don't know. It seems a little freaky, and it seems like with ChatGBTGPT, they were talking about adding a watermark to ChatGPT answers that show that it was AI generated. Sounds like you're going to need to do this as well. But we're just losing the world of AI and AI generated stuff and reality are colliding. Yeah. Like, add a very, very fast clip. And I don't think we're going to be able to tell what is real and what is not anymore. And I know that sounds very boomer. No, I think you're totally right. But it's very clear that we're still in the very infant stages of this, and already people are getting fooled, and this technology only is going to get better. It already sounds like Biden and Rogan and Shapira. Today, before we move on from Toby's friends, our colleague Dan Toomey walked into the studio and said, I'm going to make a video of you guys using our voices because the software works by just uploading some audio clips and then it can extrapolate from there. So he's like, I'm just going to record a full

episode of Morning Brew Daily of you guys. At first I thought, great, less work for me. And then I thought, wait, what the hell am I going to say about, you know, if he did it about the abortion story at the top, like, what the hell would an AI-generated voice of me say and be accountable for it? It's definitely scary, for sure. Wow.

All right, deep breath, cold shower after that one. Okay, Toby. There were two Fortune articles that were dominating, conversation yesterday on the internet, and I'm going to present them to you. They're very out there, and I sort of want to get your take on which is more implausible to you. Okay, so first, this is a headline, and I quote, NYC super commuters travel up to five hours round trip to the office. They say it's worth it. So you can imagine why people reacted strongly, and they were like, who wrote this? You know, the automobile company or NJ Transit or Reworthy.

whatever, and it profiles a woman who travels two and a half hours each day, each way, from the Jersey Shore to Manhattan, and they say they enjoy it because it allows them to live a more affordable life down by the lovely Jersey Shore and still get the hustle bustle of Manhattan. And then here's the other story, and it says, remote workers are adopting a new practice called body doubling in which they watch strangers work online, which is pretty literal. they're live streaming each other. People go live stream on TikTok and Zoom and kind of just be with each other in virtual space.

Right. So which is more implausible to you? Okay. I'm going to start on the body doubling one first because I'm actually all aboard this trend. I'm someone who does work a lot better next to someone. They said that people with some like ADHD sometimes find it easier to stay, work alongside someone.

I don't know if I have ADHD. see, I just love having the accountability of the person next to me. So I totally get why people, especially remote workers, are logging on to kind of have that shared productivity boost. So that one makes sense to me. The super commuters makes literally no sense to me. That is the definition of coping with saying, like, no, I actually love riding a train for two and a half hours every day. We wrote a train yesterday for 20 minutes to New Jersey. I was already covered in.

And your vein was, like, popping out with you. And Dan Bousa, who works on a show, comes in from the Long Island Railroad every morning. And let's just say, he's not the happiest camper. I know. To me, the issue is, sure, on a perfect day, it's not horrible to take your train ride. But if one thing goes amiss, your entire day is ruined. And you're running that risk every single day. Like one stoppage would just totally send your day out of whack.

So yeah, I'm on board with the body doubling working remotely alongside someone. Have you actually done that? I did it early in the pandemic, actually. A friend and I jumped on Zoom and just sat in silence, basically. And every once in a while, you can check in and chat. What if you pick your nose or something? That's just like real life. I don't know what I do remote, like when I'm working at home by myself. Yeah.

I don't know if I want. Maybe just don't pick your nose, Neil. Okay. Let's go on to our final story. Super fun. I don't know the last time you thought about municipal services like snow plows, garbage trucks, sewer systems, but cities want you to start recognizing the work that they do. And it is important work.

So they are holding online naming contest to raise awareness, and people have replied to these contests with just the funniest names. So Madison, Wisconsin just wrapped up its snowplow naming contest, and we have new snowplows dubbed Saltimus Prime, Snowby-1 Canobi, Seymour pavement, and Dolly Plouton. What do you think of this trend? I love this trend. It's so wholesome on so many levels. One, it's wholesome because, yes, it is nice to give municipal workers the intention that they deserve for doing the work that they do. And then, two, it's so funny that this is, if you ask people on the internet to do anything, of course, it's going to devolve into something funny or something kind of poking fun at it.

So I love this wholesome trend. I also remember when Bodie McBoatface was a thing. That was when I think it was like the English science agency wanted to name a research ship. And they had some distinguished names like the SSS Intrepid. And instead the internet said, no, we want to call it the Booty McBoat face, which is just classic. And it's kind of lame because they didn't even take Botei, but still, that is just pure internet at its finest. So I have to ask you, if you could, so why stop at snowplows, right? Why stop at sewer grades?

Like, we should name other stuff. This is so fun. It brings a little levity to, you know, the world. Right. What, you know, if we could name anything, what else should we hold naming contest for? I was thinking about this. Obviously, we're recording this in New York City. So I think that the subway trains are probably a little boring.

Like, why call it the L? And I don't know, maybe you call it like the Kurt Co-Train or something like that. or the trainer sign. So you take the Kurtko train over the trainer sign, and then before taking the trainee McTrain face uptown, I think it could work. I'm a bore with that. You put a lot of thought to that.

That was just off the top of my head. I actually didn't come up with any of that. Yeah. Great. So we'll keep monitoring that. I assume that every town going forward is going to have snowplow names. Naming their stuff, yeah.

Very fun. Cool. That's all the show we got for you today. Let's have a great rest of the day. Just want to give an awesome shout out to our amazing crew. In the back, the show's producer and editor is Emily Milliron. Show's technical director is Justin Orlando. Supervising producer is Bryce Belloff.

Our audio engineer is Kelsey Jones. Hair and makeup got stuck on their super commute. Devin Emery is our chief content officer. Remember, we want to hear from you, so make sure you email us at Morningbrewdaily at Morningbrew.com. We are constantly in the inbox, and our show is a production of Morning. birth great show today Neil let's run it back tomorrow Yamava Resort and Casino at San 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

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