Morning Brew Daily - Live Translation Turns Sci-Fi Into Reality & Workplace Dramas Win Emmys

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Episode 670: Neal and Toby discuss the EV market perhaps seeing an end of an era as carbuyers make their last ditch efforts to buy EVs before the tax credit goes away. Then, Big Tech is making a big push towards Live Translations in their latest slew of hardware. Also, workplace dramas dominate the Emmy Awards. And Discord has a major impact on Nepal’s election. Finally, what you need to know in the week ahead.  00:00 - Hire a porch decorator 2:45 - Is the EV boom short-lived? 7:50 - A step closer to universal language 11:45 - Discord elections in Nepal 16:45 - Workplace Emmys 21:00 - Week Ahead Check out https://www.indeed.com/brew for more 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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pwc.com slash U.S. slash brew AI. That's pwc.com slash us slash brew AI. Good Morning Brewers Show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the pit won big at the Emmys by taking an old

formula and making it new. Then electric vehicle sales are heating up just in time for a key tax credit to go away. It's Monday, September 15th. Let's ride. Good morning and happy Monday. A new side hustle just dropped Pumpkin concierge. This is a real thing. As Halloween approaches and people feel the need to flex on their neighbors with elaborate fall decorations, they're hiring pumpkin concierges to take their goer game to the next level. Axios reported that Porch Pumpkin arranging has become a big business across the country with some side hustlers charging over $1,000 for packages that include flourishes like hay bales and cornstalks. One Texas-based seasonal decor delivery company, Porch Pumpkins, is doing six, $6,000.

figures in revenue and is franchising if you want in. I was going to say I gave this trend two years before Martha Stewart comes along with a PE firm and just rolls this all up into some porch decorating conglomerate. But granted, I might be lashing out too because I don't have a porch to decorate. I do have a window sill though in my apartment. So if any sill decorators are out there, hit me up. And now a word from our sponsor, indeed. Neil, do you think you know who the industry leader is in helping people find a

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When the Biden administration passed a federal $7,500 tax credit, the idea was to spur a new wave of EV buying in the U.S., a wave that now looks to be cresting, with the tax credit due to end in two weeks on September 30th. The past two months have seen EVs fly off the lot as demand has been pulled forward. In July, dealers sold 130,000 EVs, the second highest total for a month ever. While August saw that number jump to 146,000, good for 9.9% of the entire auto market. And it's not just shiny new model-wise that are flying off the lots, it's also less shiny model-wise. Sales of used electric vehicles rose 40% in July from a year earlier, according to Cox Automotive. Part of that sales explosion is due to people looking to take

advantage of a $4,000 tax credit that can be applied to used EVs that are under $25,000. So we're in this odd spot in the EV market right now, coming off of two gangbuster months of sales in both the new and used markets, but staring at the future without any more tax incentives for buyers. And to put it in perspective, electric vehicle sales grew 25% worldwide in the first six months of the year, but just 6% in North America. So, Neil, as other countries see their EV adoption reaching a critical tipping point, the U.S. market looks to be running out of gas at a critical moment. Right, but EVs are getting a lot cheaper right now. So there's probably never been a better time to get an electric vehicle if you want it, and not just buying, but leasing. Typically,

when you buy a car, an EV is more expensive than a traditional combustion engine car, which is one reason why they've been a little slower on the uptake. But if you want to lease one, right now, the average EV lease works out to about $624 a month compared to $670 a month for internal combustion cars and trucks. And some car dealerships are basically giving these away. It's kind of like a, you know, take a liquidation sale for any retailer. Some leases you can get for under $100. So right now, it's not the con before the storm. It's the storm before the con. Right. It's fascinating to see the deals that are out there on the market. right now. The New York Times talked to a couple of EV virus and they found one in San Francisco

who bought a 2013 Nissan Leaf for $1,000 after rebates. You can't even get tickets to the Rider Cup for $1,000. Now you can get an entire car for that. But zooming out here, why people are kind of nervy right now with these EV tax credits expiring is that you do need to have a sort of tipping point when it comes to electric vehicle adoption. Usually it's around 10 to 15% of the market. those early adopters get in, you see them driving, suddenly you hear your friends driving, and then all of a sudden you see this adoption curve kind of ramp upwards almost exponentially,

and that's happening countries like China. It's happening in countries like Norway, a ton of the Nordic countries. It doesn't seem like it's happening in the U.S., and so as we're seeing all this demand pulled forward and, you know, a gangbuster months here in the summer, right before it seems like we're going to hit that tipping point, maybe those incentives are going to level out

and cause that curve itself to level out. It is absolutely going to do that. There are a bunch of projections out about how much demand is going to slow for buying electric vehicles without this $7,500 credit. A professor from UC Berkeley projected that EV demand could drop by as much as 27% without this credit. Auto Pacific projected last year that by 2029, 25% of all vehicles sold in the United States would be electric.

They adjusted that number down by more than half to just 12%. This is a big deal, not just for the audio industry, but also for the climate. About 30% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation. There's one analysis, estimating that these changes, the clawback in the EV tax credit, will lead to over 8 million more gas powered cars on the road instead of hybrids or electric vehicles. And you're seeing automakers walk back a ton of their electric vehicle production because of the slower uptake. and the clawback in this tax credit. Ford canceled.

It's planned three-row electric SUV that was meant to compete with the Tesla Model X. Stalantis stopped development completely of this RAM-1-500 EV pickup. GM is having all kinds of trouble with its GMC Hummer EV pickup. So the automakers back when the Biden administration was leaning into EVs also went on to EVs with new plants, new battery plants, and now they're clawing it back because people just still want their internal. combustion engines here in the United States, and there's going to be a less financially attractive scenario to switch over to EVs. And then finally, on the production side, it's also a less financially attractive scenario

because already, you know, there were razor-thin margins on EVs, toss-in tariffs, just making everything a little bit more expensive when it comes to the automaker supply chain. Now you have them saying it's just not worth it to make these anymore, especially as consumer demand looks like it's going to level off with the expiration of these tax rates. credits. All right, you got two weeks to get your EV if you want one. Imagine never learning another language, but being able to communicate seamlessly with every single person in the world, you can walk into a restaurant in Tokyo and explain you're a vegetarian, chat with your Uber driver in Argentina to learn the local hangouts. Sounds like science fiction, but not for long.

Universal translators popularized in fictional works like Star Trek and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are being rolled out by tech giants thanks to advances in generative AI. Last week, Apple became the latest to join the trend. Overshadowed by the iPhone 17 reveal, Apple launched its AirPods Pro 3 that come with live translation. Essentially, it seamlessly converts any language into English and vice versa, all in real time. You talk in English, the person you're talking to hears it in their native language, plus the reverse of that, nearly instantaneously.

Okay, not any language. The earbuds, which go on sale this week, will only work with French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish for now. But as more languages are made available, experts say it could be a game changer, not just for travel, but for more serious settings like the workplace or a hospital. That's why Apple isn't the only company working on this. Google, meta, and OpenAI all have released a form of live translation aiming to bring humanity one step closer to a universal language, all of them. Yeah, a lot of people figured out about this technology because Apple is one of the biggest tech companies in the world. But Google PixelBuds got a shout out them, their earbuds, have.

had translate conversation features since 2017, the Google Pixel 10, also has this voice translate feature on phone calls, which can mimic the speaker's voice and inflections. Jimmy Fallon kind of demoed this at an event where he told a joke in Spanish in his own voice, so that's pretty cool. And then meta, their Rayban smart glasses also are rumored to have this feature coming. They have an event this Wednesday saying that universal translation is suddenly going to become this very ubiquitous technology. It's almost like turning into another camera wars of the smartphone era where a bunch of companies

started just upgrading their camera because that's what consumers wanted. Maybe universal translation is that next hit tech feature that everyone is going to want to upgrade their phones for because it is pretty dang amazing. Well, Apple sure hopes so because it's trying to get everyone to get rid of their iPhone 13s and 14s and get 16s and 17s. And this is part of that Apple Intelligence AI software suite. and it wants people to buy these new phones and the voice translation only works

with the new phones that come equipped with the latest AI software. So it surely hopes that you look at somebody with AirPods Po 13 and an iPhone 16 traveling all over the world, not having to learn any other language and saying, wow, you know, you get jealous of them and saying, I want that. But it's pretty crazy to think about a world

in which people don't necessarily need to learn another language to travel or visit another place or to communicate with anyone. I know, and there are a lot. just a, you know, travel gimmick. It is something that has massive workplace implications because, remember, Microsoft releases paper telling about which jobs are most at risk of being replaced by AI. Translator was top of that list because their tasks overlap so seamlessly with what AI is so good at. And then also you just look at the other use cases of this, you know, doctors conferring with patients in a universal language,

classrooms being able to teach in a universal language. It really is science fiction. I mean, the babblefish from Hitchhiker's Guide of the Galaxy. If this is a real thing that is, you know, talking in your ear, it does bring massive societal change here. So fascinating technology and a fascinating next arms race for a lot of these tech companies. Now it's time for our winners of the weekend. The segment where Neil and I picked two stories that had a better weekend than Belly Conklin

on the summer I turned pretty. I won the pre-show game of Who Can Stand on One, leg longer, so I'm up first, and my winner of the weekend is poetic justice, because after a social media ban in Nepal led to widespread protests from the nation's youth, the very same technology was used to help elect a new leader. After the country's government collapsed last week, Nepal was in limbo with no real leader in place. So hundreds of thousands of citizens took to discord to figure out the country's future. In just four days, over 145,000 members, many of them, Gen Ziers, who are part of the protests, joined a specific server within the messaging app.

Over a series of voice calls, messages, and polls, an impromptu vote led to the election of the country's interim prime minister, a woman named Susheila Karki, Nepal's former chief justice. The country will still hold formal elections next March to choose its next full-time prime minister, but in the meantime, 73-year-old Karki will make history as the country's first woman to lead the government. But it's hard to overstate the role that Discord played in reshaping a country plagued by deep unrest. The parliament of Nepal right now is Discord, a content creator from Kathmandu told the New York Times. Neil, a social media ban was part of the match that lit a patter keg of protests. The fact that a social media site was so central to rebuilding the government,

that's a full circle moment right there. It's pretty remarkable. So they helped appoint this interim prime minister with the army who is kind of controlling things now in Nepal where things have really broken down. That's one thing to, you know, arrange a civil protest and talk things out on Discord or any other social media app. It's another thing to actually enact change and, you know, actually see those changes come to fruition. A bunch of people on this Discord set was a little disorganized. I mean, there's 145,000 people. So there's pros and cons because you're getting a ton of voices, but at the same time, maybe there are too many voices. I don't know anyone who's been, you know, in some sort of organization or leadership council where, you know, there needs to be

a unanimous selection for something and basically nothing gets done. So there's a little chaos going on, but at the same time, it's amazing to see people empowered through this particular technology. Yeah, it does reveal a future of what digital democracy could partially look like. And it also exposed the limits of that, too, because there's tons of trolls, tons of infighting a ton of disorganization, but literally the army chiefs that are in charge of the company right now, we're meeting with the Discord organizers because they were speaking for the people. So it's this really unprecedented case of online groups negotiating with the military of a country. So it is fascinating that people were saying like, hey, this is where it's all happening right now.

This is literally new parliament. It's happening on Discord. So just a fascinating look into what maybe digital democracy could look like going forward. And we're seeing this across the country, too, or across the world, too, not just in Nepal. Last week, Albania's prime minister hired an AI-generated minister to tackle corruption and promote transparency. And meanwhile, there's a little bit of chaos in the UK Parliament because labor parliamenticians have been accused by a conservative one of using chat GPT to write all of their speeches because they're saying, I rise to speak. I rise to speak nonstop. And the guys like, we don't say that.

Americans say that. So you're clearly using chatGBT to write your speeches. So we got AI and technology being infused in government all over the world. If any of you catch us saying, I rise to speak, just know that some shenanigans were going on here. Now let's take a quick break and come back with Neil's winner of the weekend. We're the Hartford, with decades of experience ensuring millions of unique small businesses. When it comes to your small business insurance. Thank you.

One size? Absolutely does not fit all. Get a quote or find an agent today at thehartford.com slash small business. My winner is The Pit because it took a well-worn TV formula and turned it into Emmy's gold. HBO Max's medical show, Sensation, dubbed the spiritual successor to ER, took home four awards at the Emmy Awards last night, including Best Drama and Best Actor in a Drama for Noah While, an actor who was last nominated for an Emmy 26 years ago for his role on ER. Another big winner was Adolescence, the Netflix limited series about social media radicalization

and school kids took home six awards. The show star Owen Cooper became the youngest ever male acting winner in Emmy history at age 15. But maybe more importantly, he gets to tell his friends he hugged Sidney Sweeney, who presented him with the trophy. The final big winner was the studio, Seth Rogen's navel-gazing satire of the movie industry on Apple, which won four awards. Rogan came up to the podium so many times, he said, this is getting embarrassing. But the biggest round of applause of the night probably went to Stephen Colbert,

whose late show won best talk show for the first time. The late show was controversially canceled this summer by CBS, the network that aired the Emmys. But Colbert didn't make it too awkward, giving an earnest speech and asking, is anyone hiring? And then there was Nate Bargatsy, the folksy stand-up comedian who hosted the show and tried to keep things moving as best he could. Yeah, he was probably a loser from last night. He and the producers of the enemies concocted this gag to try and keep the show and speeches on time. At the beginning of the show, he said he was donating $100,000 to the Boys and Girls Club.

But for every second a winner went over their allotted 45 seconds. He would subtract a dollar, kind of a funny concept. But then he religiously stuck to it, which led to these awkward, rust speeches, and also this confusing bit where kids from the Boys and Girls Club came up in us. you know, actors off stage. At the end, Bargatzi and CBS announced it was this gag and they'd be donating $350,000 anyways. But that aspect of the show was a bit of a flop, although it ended just three minutes over time. So maybe it wasn't in the flopped. It kind of worked. Well, I saw him do this at the beginning and I said, there's no way he's going to continue this

for three hours. But he dug himself into the hole and just kept going back to this particular gag and it got tired very quickly. Let's talk about the pit though, because every streaming service or network wants to get their own the pit. Kind of like Jeff Bezos said, hey, for Amazon Prime Video, get me my Game of Thrones. Everyone wants the pit now because here's why it's cheap. Severance cost $20 million per episode. The pit costs just $6 million. It's going back to those TV themes of the 90s and 2000s where there were just more

episodes than there are now. The pit had 15 episodes in its first season compared to more modern takes on TV. which is like six to ten episodes. Meanwhile, severance came, severance and other more prestige dramas come out like every two to three years because they're so expensive and they take so long to film.

So Severance first season came out in 2022, and then three years later, the second season came out. The guy who does the pit says, we're going to run these every single year because it's just a little easier to make. It's a little more formulaic, but it's just so good that people want it.

And then also, though, workplace dramas in general are kind of evolving. about what workplace shows used to be like. It used to be The Office. It used to be Cheers, which had this very predictable, a very cozy backbone and backdrop where you just knew they were going to see familiar characters in familiar places. Now workplace dramas are the most stressful shows on television. The Pit is a very stressful show about, you know, an ER drama. Severance is probably one of the most stressful shows on television right now. So these shows are no longer providing escapism. They're actually providing more stress than your work life, which some people

say is why they don't watch it. You know, people who work in ER say, I can't even watch the pit while other people say, actually, I'm really empathizing with the characters in the show. I do enjoy watching it. So it's just fascinating to see the arc of workplace dramas evolving into much more stressful version of, you know, what the tamer office and cheers used to be. And we haven't even talked about the bear. Okay, it's Monday. So here are the events you need to know to stay ahead in the week ahead. The previews are ending. The lights are dimming. And the feature movie is about to begin. This week, after months of anticipation, the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates raise for the first time in nearly a year. Jerome Powell and his central bank

posse have held rates steady since December 2024, worried that a cut will reignite inflation already under pressure from tariffs. However, the need to keep inflation at bay has been overshadowed by a rapidly deteriorating labor market, which the Fed will hope to save by lowering borrowing cost to kickstar economic growth. Toby, of course, nothing is guaranteed, but analysts think there's no way the Fed doesn't cut at its meeting on Wednesday. I really hope you didn't just jinx it right there. But there's definitely some dissent within the Fed as a whole. A couple of governors like Chris Waller,

who's been advocating for more and larger cuts because of the weak job market. They clearly want big cuts. Then there's some fears from regional Fed presidents who probably want to keep feds the same because of inflation fears. And then caught the middle as poor Jay Powell. The Fed has not been split three ways as it's called since 2019. So we're at a pretty rare fork in the road here right now, even though 99% of the possibilities are leading down the fork that points towards a rate cut. Right. So there's not just a rate cut, but it's also the size of the rate cut and also what Jerome Powell will say about rate cuts coming in October and through the end of the year.

It's going to be a juicy meeting for sure. The murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk is still reverberating across the country. The suspect in the fatal shooting, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, will face formal charge. this week after being taken into custody at his parents' house, 260 miles from the crime scene. Next Sunday, a huge memorial service will be held for Kirk at the Arizona Cardinals Football Stadium, which sheets more than 60,000 people. President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, a friend of Kirk's, will be in attendance. We also had Utah Governor Spencer Cox weigh in on what he thought the root cause of the assassination

was, and he blamed tech companies. He told NBC on Sunday, I can't emphasize enough the damage that social media and the internet is doing to all of us. He called social media leaders conflict entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of us. And he says that he thinks that social media has played a direct role. In every single assassination attempt we have seen over the last five or six years, Robinson was active in gamer culture, especially on Discord, where he was messaging friends even after the killing. So it looks like this is another ideological battleground in the wake of the murder, the social media, the role that social media plays and continues to play.

The U.S. and China have returned to the negotiating table for a crucial new round of talks in Madrid. Over copious plates of Homoan, officials led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bassett will talk about extending a trade truce with China and the fate of TikTok, which guess what? It is still supposed to be banned in the United States under a bipartisan law passed last year. After multiple extensions, this Wednesday is the new deadline for TikTok owner BiteDance to sell to an American buyer or else face a ban, but it just doesn't look like President Trump is going to enforce that.

Expect more punting. Yeah, and some other recent developments from the talks, NVIDIA is getting more antitrust scrutiny in China. Regulators said that they found that NVIDIA has violated the country's anti-competitive laws. And if you look at shares this morning, they're down about 3%. They haven't said if they'll actually levy any punishment. And then, yeah, Scott percent has said that the two are very close to resolving the TikTok issues. but it is funny how these talks have evolved from trade talks into everything it talks.

They've become a clearinghouse for every single major U.S. in China issue. So a lot of pressure on these talks going forwards. If you're craving some high stakes basketball, the WNBA playoffs began yesterday with games on TV every night this week. Perhaps the reason there's been a little less buzz this year compared to last is that Caitlin Clark played just 13 games this season because of an injury. Still, ESPN said that it had his most watched WMBA regularly. season in history, and it'll hope that powerhouse teams like the Lynx, Aces, and Liberty will deliver compelling basketball to bring in eyeballs. The team also watch is the Golden State Valkyries. They're in an expansion franchise who are having one of the more successful starts

through life as a franchise maybe ever. They led the league in attendance. They're already the league's most valuable team with an estimated worth of half a billion dollars. That's just above the New York Liberty. And they squeaked into the playoffs as an eight seed in their first year of existence, although they did get blown out by the links last night. So who knows how long their first playoff run will last, but pretty good start to life in the league. And the aaces are just a juggernaut. They've won 17 straight games now.

Good luck stopping them. Finally, time to start defrosting Mariah Carey, because Tuesday marks 100 days until Christmas. That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful start to the week. You have any thoughts or feedback on today's show. Send a note to Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.

Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lute is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Hair and makeup is dreading your happy Monday emails. Devine Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Pay off your home. Travel for life. Drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Bucks slot machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yamava's history. Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29th. Don't pass go and own it all. Only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? 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.