Morning Brew Daily - July Set to be the Hottest Month Ever, Grimace Helps McDonald's Soar & What's a 'Lazy Girl Job'?

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

Episode 113: Neal and Kyle explain why this July is set to be the hottest month in Earth's history and what the economic fallout is from the sky high temperatures. Plus, McDonald's Grimace campaign sends the company to new heights, and what is the stock and dog of the week? Also why are adults in China being paid to be 'full-time' children and what is a 'lazy girl job?'? Finally the Paris Olympics are a year away and how one woman on TikTok is stopping pickpockets in Italy. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many employees can't afford a hefty medical bill that pops up out of the blue, but it happens. And employees who are financially stressed are, understandably, more likely to be distracted at work, costing their employers greatly in lost productivity. Luckily, AFLAQ plans help with out-of-pocket expenses not covered by health insurance and can be offered at no direct cost to businesses. Learn more at aflac.com slash morning brew daily. That's aflack.com slash morning brew daily. Good morning brew daily show. I'm Neil Freyman. And I'm not Toby.

On today's pod, how the weather has gone from small talk fodder to headline news this summer. And we'll chat about how the youth unemployment crisis in China has Chinese Gen Ziers working full time for their parents. I could not be more excited about today's show. We also are talking about why a big purple round mascot for McDonald's is getting a lot of attention. And the 2024 Olympics are headed to Paris and why you might want to bring a swimsuit to the games. Today is Friday, July 28th. Neil, that's right. All right, Kyle, our very own Manu Genoblee is hopping in because Toby is at another wedding out west in Park City, Utah.

That guy is hearing cake by the ocean more than anybody should this summer. We got to get Toby less friends. Like, he's going all these weddings. He's not dedicated to the pod. It's tough, man. How many weddings do you have this summer? I think just maybe one. So I'm focused on the podcast.

You are focused on the podcast. Okay, it's Friday, so I got to ask you, was it a fast week or a slow week? I was thinking about this early. It was a very fast week, but I feel like if you have a fast week, those are the weeks you do remember. Like you're doing a lot of stuff. So it's a fast week, but it's going to the long-term memory. Slow week's boring, but they don't really. I think you just exploded my brain.

What about you, Neil? For me, it was a fast week. We got to Friday. Look, I love doing this show so much. but I am on the verge of crying tears of happiness because it's Friday. I'm excited for the weekend. I'm excited for the weekend. All right, let's go to our first story.

Kyle, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but it is hot. It is really hot. So hot, in fact, that this month, July 2023 will be the hottest ever. And scientists are so sure about it that they made the declaration even before this month is over. The first 23 days of July averaged 62.51 degrees. degrees Fahrenheit around the world and only an asteroid hitting the Earth or an impromptu ice age would stop it from setting the monthly record, according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service and the World Meteorological Association. UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez declared the era of global boiling has arrived. All righty then.

Anyway, the ongoing heat wave has spread President Biden to take more measures to protect workers in industries like agriculture and construction where jobs can only be done outside. Yesterday, he asked the Department of Labor to issue a heat hazard alert, which would mandate heat-related protections under federal law. He also called for increased inspections of heat safety violations at farms and construction sites. Meanwhile, this weekend is going to be brutal. Dangerous extreme heat is currently covering more area than it has all summer, affecting more than half of the U.S. population as he moves to the East Coast and bears down on the I-95

corridor that we call home. I'm not looking forward to getting on the subway. after this. No, also, the heat is also affecting the studio. We're currently doing this podcast from what could be considered a sauna. The global boiling, I think, is almost good branding. Like, it really struck out to me, like, how intense this is. And it was interesting to learn, heat kills more Americans annually than any other natural disaster. It just isn't as, like, sexy as a hurricane, so to speak. But if you think that this doesn't affect you in some way, it is coming for us all.

Asphalt in Arizona has got so hot that people are falling over, making a little contact with the asphalt for a few seconds. They're having to go to burn center. So think of the heat coming off pickleball courts that are taken over is very dangerous. In the next half century, I'll give you some stats. In the next half century, it's rejected that there will be at least 4,000 new spillover events where viruses go from animal to animal or animal to human because animals have to change their migration patterns because of heat, not always.

All of those end up being bad, but we've seen what COVID did to everyone. This only increases the chances of more events like that. 40% of today's crop land is facing severe droughts. Less food production means bowls at Chipotle go up in cost. That's going to affect you. Increasing heat, increasing wildfires. We've seen from Canada, the air coming to New York, affecting air quality all over. And then the IPCC estimates than more than 3 billion people today live in places that are highly vulnerable to climate change.

The conservative estimate is there will be a 100 million climate refugees by 2050. We see how refugee crisis affect everyone. And then last one, Hurricane Sandy did about $50 billion in economic damage. They anticipate that there'll be a Hurricane Sandy-like event basically every five years. And this can affect the U.S. about over $100 billion annually going forward. So it hurts the economy as well. So not to bum everyone out, but I just bum the crap.

out of me, dude. Can I save it? Save it. Okay, this is my thing. No one's coming to save us, but we will find a way forward. I think if you're a smart, ambitious, and caring person, there's probably nothing more cool to do than go work in climate tech, climate policy, go find a way to make a change because one, you'll do amazing things for the world, but two, Chamath Balaapitia said the first trillionaire will actually work in climate technology. So even if you just want to get the bag, there is a bag to be gotten here. I think so. Kyle, you just inspired a new generation of climate change tech workers.

One thing I want to touch on here is like this urban heat island effect because we live in cities. And the fact that we really need to change our infrastructure to deal with these new heat waves. And a New York City lawmaker posted this map yesterday that was really striking to me that showed where in the city things were hotter and things got cooler. and it was very much correlated with the amount of tree cover. So in Central Park and Riverside Park and all of these parks, it was much cooler than average. And then in areas like Bushwick or Williamsburg, where I live, where there's materials that absorb the heat, it's much hotter than average. And this also disproportionately affects low-income neighborhoods. If you go to those areas in the city, you will often find that they have much less tree cover than, you know, the more wealthy areas, which are, you know, the typical way to describe it is the, you know, the leafy suburb.

Right. So that helps them out. It makes it much cooler and makes things a lot less dangerous. President Biden yesterday directed the US Forest Service to award more than $1 billion in grants to help cities plant trees. And while obviously that's not going to solve the entire problem, I do think like trees and vegetation and just changing our infrastructure. to deal with these increased heat waves will help out. It is funny how it's 2023, and the technology that's going to save us is just like, what if we planted more trees, which is awesome. I love it.

One final thing I want to talk about is how this is affecting kind of business and industry, and one particular industry that these heat waves is disrupting, and it did not need any more disrupting because it's already pretty chaotic, is aviation and the airline industry. People are working outside there, so they need more breaks. planes need to be lighter when the air is warmer. And so maybe it's not as intense as an ice storm for getting a plane out of the air, but it is causing all major disruptions.

And then Delta is under investigation. Did you hear this story last week? Because it's really hard to kind of keep a plane's temperature while it's idling on the tarmac and it's off of the cooling center at the gate. So in Las Vegas, where it was 110 degrees, there was a plane full of passengers. that was just sitting on the tarmac for three to four hours without AC and they did not take them off the plane and so this caused a huge uproar among regulators and Transportation Department saying what the hell just happened here you can't leave people on the plane so Delta right now is under investigation for kind of not you know doing enough for passengers and that comes from a long list of you know air passenger harm that has happened recently so yes it is affecting everyone now let's move on to maybe a lighter topic, and that is a pastel colored icon. And no, I'm not talking about Barbie. I'm talking about Grimmis, the McDonald's mascot, who, if you are unfamiliar, I did some research, according to

the official McDonald's fandom page, the species is grimace, the gender is male, the hair color is purple, and the body type is round. So that gives you a sense of who we're dealing with. If this is your first time hearing about grimace, you have successfully avoided the internet for the past month, because grimace has been everywhere. McDonald's ran a huge social Featring Grimmis they dropped a Grimmus meal a grimace shake and this went crazy viral and like Gen Z did what they did best They upped the absurdity on it you could see these videos playing where They would get a grimace shake and then like paranormal activity would happen or they would like just end up down on the street Their their their shake spilled so they really up to the absurdity and for people who think like McDonald's maybe like planted this

They had a really interesting breakdown where they were basically like we had no idea that the grimace shake is gonna end up in paranormal activity TikToks. This was truly a one-of-a-kind campaign. Billions in reach, millions in engagement, millions of mentions, a top trend at least eight different days on Twitter and the top three hashtags on TikTok and trend on Snapchat for multiple days. But it's much more than Grimm is popping off because McDonald's just had their earnings call. And they're doing quite well.

Call sales at stores open at least one year rose nearly 12% in the April to June period. That beat Wall Street's forecast. Revenue rose 14% to 6.5 billion, which beat expectations of 6.3 billion, and shares climbed more than 1.5% on Thursday. They're also gaining a share of higher income individuals who are trading down, and then customers with incomes of 45K or lower are going in more. They're spending a little less, but they're going in more. Neil, did you try the grimace shake? I did not try the grimace shake, but I was observing the phenomenon, and I agree with the CEO who said, this quarter, the theme is, well, if I'm being honest, the theme was grimace.

And they directly attributed grimace to driving a lot of the sales growth that you just mentioned. So it was a pretty ridiculous campaign that, you know, I don't think they knew what was going to happen. I think this is the gritty effect. The gritty effect. What is the gritty effect? The gritty, the filled up the flyers mascot. All you have to do is throw out this lovable monster and people kind of make it their own on social media. and McDonald's, you know, first of all, I want to say they have done such a good job of tapping into youth culture.

This isn't the only thing that they've done. They've done these partnership meals with Travis Scott, Cardi B, and Offset and BTS that have similarly contributed to sales growth over the past few years. And now they're leaning into nostalgia even more with this new store concept that they teased yesterday, the Cosmic Store, which is another old mascot. that they're bringing back and creating theme stores just around Cosmic, who's an alien that has visited Earth and seeks out McDonald's burgers. They're doing some nostalgia marketing. It's very interesting. I will say when Grimmis debuted, he had forearms.

And then when he came back, he had two. And I've never seen what McDonald's did to get him from forearms to two. So I would like to see an investigation on that front. I'm a little worried about our guy Grimmis, but he had a good run in the past month. Okay. It is time for our Friday tradition where Kyle and I pick one stock that floated like a butterfly and another that stung like a bee. That's right. It is stock of the week, dog of the week. As a disclaimer, Kyle and I are not financial advisors who do not take any of this as investment

advice. If you need any evidence of that, I bought Movie Pass stock back in the day, and Kyle just spent $100 worth of mega millions tickets. To start with our stock of the week, you know, lost in the big tech earnings shuffle this week was meta. And you can't blame us. Mark Zuckerberg is looking pretty spelt these days. But the company's stock rise is getting hard to ignore. Metashares jump more than 4% yesterday. after I posted a real solid Q2 and forecast an even better Q3. So what's working? Well, it's 11% revenue gain shows that digital advertising is rebounding after a big slump.

We also saw similar positive signs with Google search revenue jumping more than forecast this week. Also, Reels. The TikTok copycat is growing in popularity with users and advertisers and is really narrowing TikTok's lead in short form video. This has been a huge success for Zuck. What is not working the metaverse just yet? Meta's virtual and augmented reality unit reality labs lost $3.7 billion last quarter and has lost more than $21 billion in total since the beginning of last year. Kyle, are you focusing on the positive or the metaverse negative? I think I'm focusing on the positive here.

I actually think that for a large company, Facebook has been doing a lot of experimentation, which is really cool. I think Zuckerberg was talking about they have a very exciting roadmap. Lama 2, their LLM, threads. Reels, new AI products, and the launch of Quest 3 in the fall. So they are really trying a lot of different things. They're doubling down on the winners. I'm still bearish on the Metaverse, though, for the record. So let's go to the dog of the week.

Meadow was our stock of the week. The dog of the week is home of everyone's favorite $15 bowl, and that is Chipotle. Now, to be fair, the company's stock has climbed about 50% year to date, but it's fallen over 9% in extended trading as forecasts just weren't as rosy. as some hoped it would be. And there's some headwinds facing the company. There's some issues. Chipotle has said, you know, we're done raising prices,

but actually we might still have to. So there's always a fear that costs are going to go up for the consumer. The third quarter growth was in the low to mid-single-digit range for stores that have been open over a year. That was a little under forecast. They are worried that because of these menu price increases, there is this trade-down effect. We mentioned with McDonald's that Chappold's.

that Chipotle is maybe being viewed as like a middle option. People are trading down to fast food options like McDonald's. Tourist locations are overperforming, but these small town USA markets are slumping. And then unlike McDonald's, they have no purple mascots they can rely on. So I'm really worried about Chipotle long term. They don't have a mascot, and we're seeing how powerful that is. They do have an ace in the hole, though. I want to talk about their secret weapon.

That is a new species of avocado called Luna. And it is grown on a smaller tree and is easier to harvest than the dominant Haas avocado. I think of Tripoli kind of pivots to this Luna variety. They're going to bring down Guacost. They can still charge more because we don't know whether it's a Luna or a Haas when we're eating it. Right. I do as a guacamole connoisseur, I can tell. They're also rolling out a dual-sided grill, which can cook chicken three times faster

and steak four times faster. I need that at home. They have some aces in the hole, as you say. All right. We'll be back with more stories after this 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 the select Weber Spirit Grill and bring big flavor to your backyard.

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Details at yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. So the latest work buzzword that's taken off here in the U.S. is lazy girl job, which describes a woman who's rejected the lean-in, rise, and grind mindset that pervaded the pre-COVID years and just wants to work a chill nine to five from their home for a cool boss. Who wouldn't want that?

In China, though, this concept of being done with hustle culture is at another level. Facing bleak job prospects and burnt out by the ultra-competitive hiring process, tens of thousands of young Chinese people are becoming full-time children. That is, they're being paid a middle-class salary by their parents to do chores around the house, take care of grandma, and other tasks. This full-time children trend has blown up on Chinese social media recently, and it's a function of the broader youth unemployment crisis facing the country. The unemployment rate for people aged 16 to 24 there, hint, more than 21% last month,

a record high. And that could very well be an undercount, a professor at Peking University estimated that the real number was 46.5% youth unemployment. Yeah, this is a really interesting story. I do think that full-time children is better branding than lazy girl jobs. So I'll give them that. But what was so interesting to me is how intense it feels like the pressure is for not just Chinese young people, but kind of globally. One of the quotes from an article was the reason why I'm at home is because I can't bear the pressure of going to school to work. It's so intense to compete with my peers. I think there was all

these expectations and China had this growing middle class that there would be middle class jobs offered to them. And that just hasn't been the case. And so people are really struggling with what to do. Sociologists said also that COVID kind of made people reevaluate. Like what do I want to get out of life? And now they're they're kind of realizing that maybe the opportunities they thought would be afforded to them, aren't there? Especially in a very high growing economy like China over the past few years. But yeah, I think that the COVID crack down there was unlike anything we had here. I mean, they were forced to stay in their homes for months on end. So maybe the psychological trauma of, you know, we say we had lockdown here,

but we didn't really have lockdown. They actually had lockdown. And the fact is there are jobs in China, but there aren't high-skilled, high-paying jobs that highly educated people want. One girl talked to CNN, and she said that there were 30,000 applicants for three job vacancies at a particular local government. government can be like a high-paying job is an attractive job there. So it just seems like they're kind of over it.

And you see this generational divide generational warfare breaking out where the government and older people are like, get off your bombs, you know, like start working like I did. And then the kids are like, you have no idea the intense pressure and the lack of opportunities that we see in our current economy. So they've done this trend called lying flat. then where they basically are just being on list list all day. And that's also gone viral on Chinese social media over the past few years. Yeah, Xi Jinping literally said, quote, young people need to stiffen their spines and embrace hardships. And they are because they're lying flat. Exactly.

So let's stay on the international theme and let's move to everyone's favorite city, which is Paris, the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Remy, the Rat from Ratatouille. They have it all. The reason I'm bringing up Paris is the 2024 Olympic Games are headed there and the ambitions are super high after COVID severely disrupted the Tokyo Olympic Games. They're like really trying to make this Olympics a party. One of the themes is like inclusivity and getting viewers or spectators kind of more involved. So around 300,000 people are going to get free tickets to watch the opening ceremony as it moves three and a half miles along this San River. And then a lucky group of 20,000 and 24. or people are gonna get the chance to run the Olympic game,

Olympic marathon on the same course and on the same day as the world's best over 26.2 miles. I don't know how you can call those people lucky. If I got picked, I'd be like, I have to run 26 miles, like this sucks. They're also trying to show off the city. So in a significant shift in emphasis, 95% of the venues will be existing or kind of temporary.

They're not doing a lot of net new construction and they're working on making the river actually clean enough to swim in, whether people actually do it is another story. But this Olympic story actually has it all. There is also controversy around corruption. The French police raided the Paris 2024 headquarters last month.

The France's National Olympic Committee president actually resigned. And then obviously there's been strikes, domestic unrest stemming from pension reforms, racial injustice, and I think just being French, they love to strike. Neil, are you looking forward to the 2024 Olympic Games? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, Simone Biles is coming back. We got Katie Ledecki, the swimmer, is going for history. The basketball team is going to be very interesting because when Bonayama is going to be playing for France. And Embed might also play for France. So it's not going to be a walk in the park for the U.S. So this should be fun. I mean, I always love the Olympics. Surfing, I want to call out surfing because that's interesting.

They brought surfing into the Olympics the first time last time. But this is going to be not in France. They're going to be holding it in Tahiti in French Polynesia. And at 9,800 miles, it's the furthest away in Olympic medal competition. will be held from the host city. That is a very fun thing. Plus break dancing is coming back, or not coming back, is debuting.

They're gonna have a competition called breaking. So that's my question for you. If you're designing the Olympics, what sports are you adding? I'm gonna go a little off the beaten path here, and I think they need to do something that's like endurance plus cooking. I've been watching the bear,

and I think it's intense in that kitchen, it's teamwork, so I wanna set a timer. Every country picks like four or five chefs. They have a set amount of time to make a dish from their, culture from their country. And then you have judges eat the food and score it. That would be incredible.

And I just want to hear other people say, yes, chef, corner, behind. That sounds like that. All right. You're watching the bear way too much. What's your, what's your, what's your, I would just have Shohei Otani compete in all of the competitions. Did you see what he did yesterday? He pitched, there was a double header.

Yeah. He pitched a one hit complete game shut out in the first game. And then in the next game hit two home runs. It's possibly one of the most athletic achievements. I you know that anyone can remember I really like I want so I want him in every competition and I think he could medal and maybe like 15 of them if every country picks one person and they have to do every single event that would be an incredible spectacle Japan would win because this guy is insane all right to close out the week I want to head

to Venice where a woman named Monica Polly has become famous on TikTok for doing this I'm sorry, I should have warned everyone to turn down their volume before that. If you can't figure out what's going on, she is saying attention pickpocket to call out pickpocketers in busy areas frequented by tourists. In these videos, she's holding up her camera to people she suspects of being thieves, and you see them scrambling from the area or holding up objects to block their faces. These videos have gone viral, turned into a TikTok. TikTok sound and remixed into songs.

Turns out, Polly is not alone in her work. She's a part of a kind of neighborhood watch group of 50 local residents called the Citadini non distrati, the undistracted citizens. Nailed it, Neil. Who have been tipping off pickpocketers far before TikTok was around for 30 years, Polly estimates. And while Polly is as public as Batman is private, the two superheroes are equally successful at clearing the city streets of criminals.

An economist article from 2019 found that this pickpocket callout group was responsible for a third of all pickpocket arrests in Venice. This is like one of my favorite stories. And I do have to wonder, though, first, is getting pickpocketed less annoying than having someone just yelling pickpocket her all the time? I'm like, maybe I would just take, here's 20 bucks. The second is the greatest kind of turn of events in this story

would be if she was actually a pickpocket this whole time, right? She has this public identity. That would be incredible. And honestly, kudos to her if she's pulling that. off. Yeah, this is a this is a fun story. She the New York Times interviewed her and was like, do you ever, are you ever concerned that you're just, you know, surfacing people who aren't criminals, but that you suspect wrong? She's like, no, I'm 100% accurate. I have the six cents. I was born with it. I was born to do this. Yeah, if she called me a pickpocket, because she's so

confident, I'd be like, maybe I am. Like, maybe she just knows I'm destined for that. Like, she is an incredible story. Apparently there are pickpock callout groups in other, you know, majorly frequented tourist cities in Europe, like Barcelona, Milan, Rome, things like that. So we'll see if they come to New York. I think if this happened to New York, someone would punch her in the face. Yeah, you don't want to try this in New York. So quickly, she would not be very successful. All right, we have to wrap it up there.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. Stay cool out there. If you want to write in and let us know which sport you want to see included in the Olympics, our email is Morning Brew Daily at MorningBrew.com. Emily Milliron is our editor and producer, Samantha Velaus and Raymond Lou. associate producers. Isabel Wynne is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio, hair and makeup moved back home to work for their parents. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Stay cool, everyone. Have a great weekend. Wireless can feel like a world

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