Morning Brew Daily - Disney Drops $1B FL Project, Working with Weed & Best US Beaches

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

Episode 63: Neal and Toby get you ready for the weekend as they dive into the latest rift between Disney & DeSantis and why this one is costing the state nearly 2,000 jobs. Plus if ESPN moves to streaming does that mean cable is officially dead? Meanwhile more people than ever are smoking weed while they work and why does Congress care so much about AM Radio? Finally the guys break down the best beaches in America and even read some amazing listener emails. Learn more about our sponsor, Fidelity: https://fidelity.com/stocksbytheslice Listen Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch 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. I am Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. I said that weird. On today's show, we're talking about Disney's, whose relationship with Florida is hitting rock bottom, and pot use at work has reached a record high. Then we'll give you an AI update,

because there's always an AI update to give, before taking you to Capitol Hill, where politicians are fighting over a nostalgic part of your car, the radio. Neil, it's Friday, May 19th. Let's ride. All right, Toby, it is Friday, which means we have to reminisce about the week and whether it was a fast one or a slow one. So give it to me.

Easy one for me this week. Because believe it or not, I started this week in Spain. And so the rest of the week kind of flew by after that. This podcast this week, Monday, I think Not Toby was here. Right. And now we're in full Toby mode. Full Toby mode. And we are ripping.

The week was fast. What about you? Always a fast week. I think I'm a 99%. I'm the most predictable person ever. You do a lot every day and every week, so the week does fly by for you. It's always fast. We're going to keep this show nice and fast as well.

Let's start over in Disney, which has canceled two major investments in Florida, where it's locked in this raging fight against Governor Rondesantis. The company is halting plans for a new corporate campus in Orlando that would have invested nearly $1 billion into the local economy and relocated more than 2,000 employees from California to Florida. and apparently some had already moved, and they're just being told yesterday. You can move back if you want, yeah.

So we'll see if they do. I kind of want to talk to them. Disney also said is closing its Star Wars Galactic Star Cruiser Luxury Hotel, which gives you this immersive Star Wars experience for two days for the starting price of $2,400 a night. What a bargain. Yeah, I wonder why they're canceling that.

But they did give some justification for this. Park's chief Josh DeMorrow cited, changing business conditions for pulling both of these projects. Of course, that's pretty vague. So we're going to connect the dots here. And obviously, the first thing you think of is this feud with Ron DeSantis, the governor. Disney did not explicitly mention his name and his decision, but this investment pause is probably related to its battle with the Florida governor.

After Disney criticized DeSantis's don't say gay law last year, the governor has been on this mission to make Disney's life as miserable as possible by trying to revoke Disney's power to operate its own tax district around Disney World and even floated that he would build a jail near Disney World. Disney sued him for illegally retaliating and CEO Bob Iger has threatened to withhold investment from the state because of DeSantis. Disney has earmarked $17 billion for further expansion in Florida. So this could be the first investment pullback of many that Disney's about to pull off.

Neil, that was like a lasagna right there. My mom's lasagna because of how much. layers there was to that story. So well done, putting it all together for our listeners. I think there's two ways you can kind of look at this pulling of the investment. One, it's a continuation of the feud with Ron DeSantis, or two, it is a continuation of Bob Iger's feud against Bob Chapic, which was the CEO that he came out of retirement to replace, because this $1 billion development was a pet project of Bob Chappick. And Bob Eiger never understood

why they were moving their entire California division to Florida in the first place. So even though we're trying to read between the lines and say like, oh, this potentially is a continuation of the feud with DeSantis, I think it's just... Iger rolling back. Everything that Chavik did.

That Chappick touched. And then especially the hotel, the spaceship hotel, Star Wars Hotel. That was another Bob Chappick thing to do. So you see Bob Iger like dropping his fist down saying, like, God, dang. Like, that was a bad decision.

Freaking Bob. You have to blame Iger for choosing Chappick in the first place because he was his handpicked successor. Right. And he came on in 2020. Iger left. And then last year, Iger was like, this is, I do not like the way this is going. Yeah.

God. I was going to say about the next thing, the next Disney news that we have. Oh, yeah. So let's move on. The Wall Street Journal reported fresh details about Disney's move to offer ESPN as a direct-to-consumer streaming service, which is important. because it could basically put the nail in the coffin of cable. This is the worst kept secret in all of television that ESPN is eventually going to offer its programming as a subscription service.

It's just a matter of when, not if ESPN chair, Jimmy Petaro has said. So there's just rampant speculation about whether this is going to happen. It looks like the move is heating up because they're already talking about deals. ESPN already has streaming. So we should talk about how this would be different. ESPN Plus, it's just a more limited service. I looked at what was going on ESPN Plus last night, and I was like, Alabama, Southern versus Arkansas State Baseball.

Can't wait to watch this. I will say that any parent who's had a child play college sports knows ESPN Plus because they cover all the like the random college games. Like my soccer games are on there. And so parents actually love ESPN Plus. So I wonder, it has 25.3 million subscribers. I wonder how many of those are just parents that want to watch their kids play small collegiate sports.

Yes. Well, we're thinking of all the college parents out there. But the point is that ESPN proper had the Lakers Nuggets NBA playoff game. So if ESPN decides to move its network offerings to streaming, ESPN is the only thing kind of keeping cable alive right now. So if that happens and people can just say, oh, I'd rather not pay for all of those other channels that I click through just to get to ESPN, then cable's kind of done so. Yeah. I mean, and we still see live sports is the crown jewel of not. only cable but also streaming now we saw YouTube sell out a two billion dollars for the NFL

Sunday ticket package and then we also just saw Peacock pay 110 million dollars for the rights to broadcast one game on it exclusively on a streaming service so you see we've always had live sports has always propped up cable now is live sports also propping up like the streaming industry it's the only thing people actually tune in to watch so well and uh the senior bachelor coming up. I'm excited for that. Okay, Neil, as I mentioned at the top of show, it's been a minute since we did a little AI roundup and our AI overlords have been getting a little antsy. So let's dive back in. Two big stories recently emerged in the world of AI that we want to talk about. First off, OpenAI launched its chat GPT app on iOS. So sorry, green texters. I'm looking at you, Neil. You'll have to sit in the corner and want you. I don't need it. I'm all that's me playing with it. I am my own chat GPT. There you go. That's a classic Android thing to say. So obviously this is a pretty big step forward towards chatGBT becoming even more mainstream. I actually saw lots of people on social media on Twitter kind of doing this symbolic thing where they were moving Chrome off their iPhone dock and replacing it with chat CBT. So it kind of is hitting like the mainstream person pretty significantly. And then you also know that Siri is shaking in her boots because, the chatGBT app has a voice to text option so you can talk to the app and have it feed something back to you. And I looked at the app store this morning. It is sitting atop the free charts. So

it looks like the launch has gone pretty well. It's created a bunch of buzz. Yeah. Yeah, you took all of my talk about it. I think it's very clearly the mainstreaming of this technology just to get it on iPhones. It was a little tough to get to it on desktop or through the browser and just putting this that little square app on your phone is super symbolic and and we'll just it chat gbt was already the fastest growing consumer app in history growing to 100 million users within two months and it was it was kind of inaccessible it's kind of hard to get to you didn't the ui wasn't super great so uh the fact that it's now going to be on iPhones and hopefully android soon i know i know i talked a big game but i would love for it to come to i know i know it is kind of kind of funny that

of course it's iOS and it's just in America only so to our listeners outside of the U.S. you'll have to wait as well. Okay, that was our first AI story. Our second one is kind of two stories and one coming out of meta. First off, meta revealed yesterday that it has been secretly developing its own semiconductor chips in order to power its AI ambitions as well as some of its video processing needs. This kind of comes on the heels of Apple fully taking their chip production in-house and it's a little bit of a superfluous. And it's a little bit of a because no one really knew that meta was doing this. And so it's kind of been meta's approach to AI in the sense that, and this kind of

parlayes us into our second talking point about meta, is that we're seeing this like renewed debate around meta open sourcing. It's like AI ambitions. It's saying like, yeah, we're telling people we're building these chips because we think people should know that we're like developing these things for that. And they also open source its, it's very AI code back in February, which is something that open AI, ironically, doesn't do. Google the same thing have kept theirs very tightly walled.

And so it's this huge debate around whether AI technology should be open source or not. Do you have thoughts? Like, where do you lie on that debate? It's two different approaches, and we'll see who wins out. It's kind of like what happened with the operating systems. You have Apple, which is a very much, it's the definition of a closed system with iOS. And then recently Google, which is not outsourcing its AI, outsourcing. outsourced its Android operating software.

So it's just two completely different approaches to software that I've been battling it out for decades now. And I think meta's approach is like the soft power approach where it's just kind of extending its influence by letting itself roam free across the AI world and letting people build applications on top of its code while OpenAI is kind of like, this is our baby. It may reflect just the business segments that these companies are doing. dwelling in like meta makes most of its money the vast majority from advertisements and AI is not its bread and butter so maybe it can afford to release its AI meanwhile open AI is like this is

its code is is is the company right there is no other thing so it's like if we release this then who are we yeah so it may just reflect their different compositions right and I mean in Google and opening I say like it's almost like a safety risk when you open source this because bad actors can use it to do whatever they want with it and this is been like a classic software debate going back to like the advent of the internet like how much should be in a walled garden how much should be open source so i also think it's kind of something that someone who's losing the a i race does where they're like that's how you can quickly make up ground is by having a ton of people building using your code and competing against the big guys

right competing against the big guys so i am interested to see who ends up kind of winning in the long run all right uh let's move on to uh this story more people are using drugs at work than ever before. The share of workers testing positive for marijuana on the job hit a record high last year of the 6 million workers screened for pot after an on-the-job accident. 4.3% of tests came back positive up from 3.9% the year before. Quest Diagnostics is the big lab giant that conducted these tests. It said the higher positive rate is directly related to marijuana legalization across the country. now that more than two-thirds of U.S. states have legalized recreational or medical pot. But I have this theory. It's also about the vapes.

Because before when you smoke pot, you either had to do a joint or a bowl. I'm not speaking from experience or anything. But there was a little more of a cumbersome thing to, you know, ingest pot. And now you can either do it via gummies or these little very discreet vapes. So I think it's more than just the medical legalization. It's the vehicle by which you... Right. Well, and then also,

The huge elephant in the room is remote and hybrid work as well because how much easier is it to smoke weed on the job, on the job in quotation marks when you're just sitting in front of your computer, which there was a massive, massive boom in like substance abuse during like kind of the pandemic. Just because one, you're isolated, you're home alone. And then two, there's no one kind of looking over your shoulder and you don't have to go to work every morning. So of course, substance abuse rise. I think everyone has this story of seeing someone like hit a. babe during their virtual meeting. Yeah, it's crazy. Like, and this is a real study, though.

So the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta estimates that working age Americans, substance disorders grew by 23% since pre-pandemic time. So we are seeing like a rise. And that's the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta conducting this. So they're taking like an economic approach, not necessarily like a medical or substance abuse approach. And yeah, we see it's a 23% rise because it's just so much easier. too. Like, you're just sometimes in your bed, like, of course you can hit like a weed pen while you're, while you're technically on the clock. So it's remote work. We're seeing like the second order of facts play out for sure. Totally. I think there's definitely be, you said there's definitely a big rise in substance abuse. This study said that, you know, you're taking from a downward spiral into drugs from that would have occurred over five to 10 years. It's collapsing that into months because one of the biggest things that prevents you from getting addicted to things is talking.

to people, staying around healthy people. And the fact that if you're just kind of home by yourself, you're just like, well, I'm just sitting here and I see all these drugs near me. Yeah. No, it's definitely one of those pandemic trends that once we're like a year kind of removed from like the heart of it. And now we're seeing like the effects of what that addictions picked up during the pandemic might actually look like.

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Neil, there is this big bipartisan effort going down on Capitol Hill right now. It's not an effort to raise the debt ceiling. It's far more important. Politicians want to save AM radio. So, Neil, give us your best AM radio sound to set this off. Let's just, I'm going to set the background for this entire story. I think it's like, that was pretty good. It brings me back.

It brings back memories. So the news is a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill yesterday that would require all new cars to include AM radio. This comes on the heels of reports from manufacturers like BMW, Mazda, and Tesla are removing AM radios from their vehicles because, and this is a very interesting angle, electric engines interfere with AM radio station sounds. And so you're kind of seeing these two different technologies crossing pass on a really interesting way. On the way down and on the way. Exactly. And so one is kind of taking precedent over the other. But so the politicians want to save AM radio because they actually think it's like a very

important part of a functioning democracy even because it gives you free access to emergency alerts, news, weather, sports and entertainment. And so when you put it that way, I can kind of see their point. It is very funny, though. They are coming at it from completely different angles. The Democrats want it because of emergency lifeline. So if you're not in a place with internet, can give you weather. and extreme weather updates.

And then Republicans, I think they're talking about the fact that so much of AM radio is conservative talk radio like Rush Limbaugh was on there, Sean Hannity. So I don't think they're kind of in agreement about why, but, you know, sometimes they will make strange bedfellows over AM radio. I know. They are both. So Ted Cruz called it a critical bulwark for democracy, but you're right. He came from it from their perspective of it's giving alternative opinions that you wouldn't hear.

And then, yeah, Ed Markey, a Democratic senator, says that we need to ensure AM radio doesn't become a relic of the past because of the emergency alerts. So AM radio has, if you're talking about AM versus FM, AM has a lot more talk and FM has a lot more music. That's because, as most people know, the sound quality is so much better on FM because it can transmit 15 times as much information than an AM station because of the bandwidth on which it operates. It has a much higher frequency than AM. but AM has a much broader reach because I remember listening to AM radio from New York when I was growing up in Western Massachusetts. My dad and I would turn on the AM station for WFAN to listen to the Yankees with the explicit purpose of listening to their announcers when they lose. We just love listening to them lose. So we tune into 660 AM.

This is why I love the podcast, though, is because I did not know the difference between like FM and AM. I knew generally, like, yes, FM had more kind of music, but it's because, yeah, it has such a more robust bandwidth. It's got 15 times the bandwidth. So I think that. But you lose FM when you go through a tunnel or in mountainous area and AM just chugs along. I think this is kind of doomed to fail because this is, this to me, is like crazy regulatory overreach. Like, Ford is nixing AM from all of its vehicles, not even the electric vehicle ones, because they're like 5% of people listen to AM radio. Although 5% is still not a small amount.

Apparently 50 million people listened to AM radio last year. So it's still like one of those things that even though you have Spotify, you have XM radio at this point, like it's still kind of a staple of jumping in the car. I love listening to radio. I will not put on a podcast or music. When I'm driving, I listen to radio. Well, one podcast you'll listen. I will listen to one podcast.

All right, let's move on. Summer is basically here. and many of us are figuring out which beaches to hit up. I know I'm thinking about that. This is where Dr. Beach comes in. Okay, Dr. Beach is the nickname of an environmental professor at Florida Atlantic University

who's become legendary in the beach community for his annual rankings of the 650 best public beaches in the country, which he's published annually for the last 33 years ahead of Memorial Day. He rates beaches across 50 criteria like sand type, wave action, presence of wildlife,

and whether there's a ban on cigarette smoking and level of development and crowding and level of stargazing. So where are the best beaches? Number one this year is the state park in St. George Island on the Florida panhandle. It has fishing, it has camping. There's not a lot of people. It is beautiful. And rounding out the top five are this one in Oahu, Cooper's Beach in Hamptons,

Caledesi Island State Park in Clearwater, Florida, which is known for its great beaches and Lighthouse Beach on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. All right, what do you think of Dr. Beach's rankings? Well, first of all, I think what a great branding this man has done. Labeling yourself, Dr. Beach is fantastic. I do have a bone to pick with some of his rankings, though, because I went through the pictures, obviously. Like, I want to see what are the top beaches in the world. And I'm from Florida, so I feel like I know good beaches.

And the biggest bone to pick I have is that St. George Island State Park in Florida, even though he said the sand quality was really good, it's not that, like, pure white, like snow white sand, which I think is what truly makes a beach a beach. And so it's like kind of that darker brown, which just doesn't like scream beach to me. And you have such a narrow conception. I know. I do because a fluffy white sand beach, that's what a beach should be. Nothing. None of this, I don't even like going over to like Venice Beach in California because that's sand darker. It just doesn't feel the same. And your concept of what a beach is. It doesn't, it's not just like white sand. You can have cool black,

volcanic black sand. You can have rocks like in Maine. You can have I know I don't like the rock scenic stuff in Cape Cod. If you by your definition it would just all be in Hawaii like every single one of Florida is would be in Hawaii. You're the west coast of Florida. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. I want our listeners to weigh in especially comment on the on a YouTube video. Am I right when I say like fluffy white sand is the best type of beach? You don't want that dense brown. Maybe it's just good to have variety. I don't know. Sometimes you, I don't know. I don't, I don't, I think you're very narrow. And then the last thing is... You don't trust Dr. Beach.

You don't trust the science. He placed a big emphasis on stargazing, too, which I don't think you should include in your beach rankings at all, because you go to the beach to get a little sun. You get a little tan, so you're not going at night. Tell us whether you're on Dr. Beach's side or Toby. All right, let's move on to our final segment. We typically do Stock of the Week and Dog of the Week on Fridays,

but honestly, there weren't particularly dramatic stock moves in any direction, so we're not going to waste your time with that. Instead, we're going to pluck out. some of the most interesting responses and comments we got to the new stories we've covered from you are listeners and watchers on youtube let's start with the craft hines remix condiment machine because we discussed that on thursday's episode and a lot of people sounded in on that that condominion which can turn out more than 200 sauce combinations is definitely reminiscent of the futuristic Coca-Cola freestyle machine and a listener named jack wrote into us

to remind us that the freestyle machine was invented by dean kaman and And who is Dean Kamen? Why is he important? He's the legendary inventor who created the segue, and has patents on more than 150 devices, including the insulin pump. So it was his expertise in the finely calibrated delivery of liquids, which the drug infusion pump is designed to do,

could also be used for delivering soda into your cup. So Dean Kamen, legend. Another reason I love our listeners, because I don't, I mean, we do a lot of research, but that's the next level stuff right there. And it makes so much sense when you think about, yeah, like his pedigree and his background, even though the segue kind of do so hot. It's not do so hot.

Legend. There were a bunch of other comments about the condom machine. Many people were wondering why mayo wasn't one of the sauce bases. And we think it's probably because of the egg content of mayo, and you're not really supposed to leave it out at room temperature or cross-contaminated with other substances. Yeah. So this was a big thing on TikTok because the TikTok video of us, kind of explaining that segment went pretty viral. And by far, the top comment was like,

where's the mayo? I love mayo. I completely understand. Maybe it's not something that you want into a condiment dispenser sending out at room temperature. Plus, other people talked about how nasty the nozzle would get with all of those different things coming out. You just know it's going to be crusty as heck right there. So also, this is just a quick plug to follow us on TikTok to at MB Daily show because God, our TikTok section lights up whenever they get, oh, yeah, there's. this Mayo thing. Like, who knew so many people cared about it? And just to finish off the show, I also want to give a shout out to a very, very nice

email we got from McKenzie. So McKenzie sent us an email this week saying that her husband wasn't much of a reader, and she would always forward him the edition of Morning Brew, the email. So sorry, Neil, but McKenzie's husband just, I don't know, some people don't like reading that much. And so she wanted to discuss current events with her husband, though. And so she started watching us on her TV every morning. She'd put the YouTube video on.

And every so often he would start to linger, like look over his shoulder, see what she was watching, and started to listen to some of the inside jokes. And now it's gotten to the point where they watch every single day together and they talk about the news together, which honestly, like, I'm being very genuine right now. That kind of warms my heart because just the fact that you found something to connect over and that something is our show. like that really means a lot to us. And just the fact that you feel like you can talk more about the world because you feel informed about the world. That's literally what our job is to do. So thank you, McKenzie.

And I am so happy that you and your husband are enjoying the show every morning. That is our show. Please write in with any of your comments and questions and whether you have any, you know, conspiracy theories about Mayo or whether Toby's better than Dr. Beach. Howie for life. Morning Brew Daily at MorningBrew.com or on any of our social media handles. Big thanks to our entire crew who is responsible for this wonderfully produced show you here every day. Bryce Belloff is our producer. Samantha Velas and Raymond Loo are the associate producers.

Yuchena Wa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio, hair and makeup, tested positive for pot. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well. It's back. It's back. 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, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th,

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