Morning Brew Daily - Neuralink Approved for Human Trials, A Game of Shaq & Mouse, & Starbucks' Cold War

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

Episode 68: Neal & Toby chat about Elon Musk’s brain implant company receiving FDA approval for human trials. Would you volunteer to go under the knife for Neuralink? Then, after eluding process servers for months, Shaq gets served during an NBA game at the former FTX arena...ironic isn’t it? Next, Starbucks switches its ice cubes and stirs up a debate online. Finally, Memorial Day weekend is here! Neal & Toby have some interesting stats that might help your wallet for the upcoming weekend. Learn more about our sponsor, Brex: brex.com/brewdaily 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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pwc.wc.com slash US slash brew AI. That's pwc.com slash us slash brew AI. Good morning brew daily show. I am Neil Fryman. And I am Toby Howell. On today's show, Elon Musk's dream of putting a wire in your brain is getting even closer. And we will review Catch Me If You Can the sequel, Shack Edition. Then we'll talk about how El Niño is going to be L not good for the economy before Neil and I will no doubt get into a spirited debate about the new Starbucks.

ice cubes that aren't actually cubes anymore. Neil, it's Friday, May 26th. Let's ride. Neil, today is the Friday before our long weekend. I wonder how much work is getting done across the city right now. Negative. Yeah, negative work. I'm going to venture to say not a lot. It's a long weekend because Memorial Day is on Monday, which means you and I will not be jumping in the studio. But luckily for you all, we did plan ahead. We recorded a special holiday episode for you all. Should we spoil the surprise, Neil? Yeah. Let's spoil it.

I can't. I'm always a person who gives people their birthday presents early. Okay, so we're almost 70 episodes into the show now, and a lot of you guys have no doubt spent a lot of time with us in your ears. It feels like we're all friends now, but we want to let you guys get to know us a little better. And so we actually sat down, Neil and I, sat down and interviewed each other, kind of like a newlywed game meets interview podcast, just so you understand.

understand who Neil and Toby are, your hosts. And so we could understand ourselves. I know. It was a very very therapeutic. I'm still a mystery to myself. So if you're missing your morning brew daily fix on Monday, tune in because we will have an episode for you guys. So it will pop up in your feet. And yeah, let's let's get in the show. Definitely, definitely give it a listen. We do have to do fast week slow over first. Oh yes. You can't skip that. Sorry. Go ahead. All right. I was going to say it's a fast week. It's so lame at this point, but it truly was. I knew. I knew. that this long weekend was, it was like exerting a gravitational pull on the week and dragging me towards Friday. So I felt like it went back. I feel like it's the opposite because I've been counting

down the days to today and everyone knows that a watch pot never boil. Oh, exactly. So when you look at the clock, it takes a little, takes a little more slowly. All right, let's go to our first story. We know that Elon Musk may still be working out a few glitches on Twitter spaces, but he could soon put a drill into your school and sew a wire to your brain. Neurlink, Musk's brain implant startup, just received FDA approval to start human clinical trials. It's significant progress for the company that had previously and controversially only tested its devices on animals. But this is a long time coming. In 2019, Musk said that Neurolink would begin human trials at least four times.

And then it wasn't until 2022 last year that NeurLink actually applied for approval and it was initially it rejected. So getting approval now finally is an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people neurolink completed. Yeah. First of all, the classic Elon just always over-promising and potentially under-delivering. But this is actually a very big step forward because human clinical trials are on the horizon. But I just want to run through some of the things that NeurLink promises, or Elon promises NeurLink will help with, including obesity, autism, depression, sychifference. and also enabling web browsing and potentially telepathy.

So he's clearly shooting from the moon here with Nerlink. And he's very bullish. He said he's so confident the device's safety that he'd be willing to implant them in his own children. So eventually he will probably put his money where his mouth is. Oh, my God. Yeah, but hopefully it is safe. I think that's the sound of all of his children leaving the country and hiding out. Yeah. But this is a really interesting technology, and Neurrelink is not the only company that is doing it.

I think at least 42 people globally have had their brain have had implants in their brain and it's to help you know these various diseases and brain and neck injuries where you can't move and you still need to communicate So there's this one instance of this guy with ALS who was able to text just by thinking the keystrokes in his mind There's another one that using this technology he could fist bump Barack Obama with a robotic arm yeah so they're like really interesting use cases for this technology I think that the controversy and the ethics come into play when you don't use it to help people get better from something that happened to them. It's when you sort of go full Ironman mode and go up with these enhancements and you're not just like baseline human anymore. You're half human, half robot. Yeah, I do wonder because who is going to apply for the clinical human clinical trials, is it going to be someone who has a disability who wants to potentially have anurlink helping with that?

Or is it going to be an A. able-bodied person, like you said, because they haven't actually put out the call for test subjects yet. So if you are itching for to be a test subject, you're going to have to wait a little bit. I think so. I actually did see some people, some academics who are kind of bullish on this, where like, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go. I am, I certainly am not ready to go. But then you have this arms race maybe where, you know, everyone's kind of getting it. And then they become these, like, you know, superhuman robots. And then you're losing and kickball. And, you know, you're. You you're losing out in tests and stuff.

And you're like, well, I guess I have to do it. I guess I have to be one with technology. It's kind of like a smartphone. You can't, you know, most people need to have a smartphone to communicate and get on with our daily lives. I don't know if, like, being an advanced AI slash human is going to be like that. I love that you bring up kickball, though. That's the thing that. I don't like that the arms race.

Yeah, that's funny. I did read some of the possibility of what could go wrong with these human trials. That must have been a long. read. I know. It kind of is straight out of a horror movie. Here's one that I found is that there's a possibility that the implants wires migrate within the brain, which is just terrifying to think about. No, thank you. So I guess, Neil, you're not signing up anytime. I like, I want to keep my brain. You like what's going on in there. The brain is a fragile thing, but it does sound like it could have really a revolutionary breakthroughs for people who just can't move anymore. So, do you want to

move on. Let's move on. Let's jump into the weather, actually. So I did mention El Nino at the top of the show. Climate scientists are warning that there is now a 90% chance of an El Nino weather pattern taking hold through the end of this year and into the first months of next year as well. So let's put our seventh grade science hats on Neil. It's time for Science Toby to come back and refresh our audience as to what El Nino is. So El Nino is basically, I like to describe it as a climate roller coaster that happens every few years and messes with everything from the atmosphere to the ocean to the trade winds. Essentially, what is El Nino? It is this mass of warm water that is slowly sloshing across the Pacific Ocean

and piling up near the coast of South America. And this causes widespread effects. Everything from, like I mentioned, the oceans, but it also affects the economy. This is a business show after all. So a recent study from Dartmouth College estimated that El Nino, starting in 2023, could cost the global economy as much as $3.4 trillion over the next five years. That's a big number of years.

This is because of like disrupting agriculture and drought and drinking havoc on infrastructure and things like that. Pretty much anything you can mention, El Nino is going to affect. Yeah, definitely like food and weather are like the two biggest things. And this is a very interesting fact, though. You feel the effects of El Nino for a long time. So two previous very strong El Nino periods in the 80s and the 90s caused U.S. gross domestic product to be 3% lower a half decade later than an otherwise would have been.

So that means five years from now we'll still be feeling the effects of El Nino that is just about to kick off. It's like a U.S. credit downgrade. I know for the entire world, literally. It's also, it's so disruptive. I read that it leads to wars, or it is at least associated with wars. There was this research that was published in 2011 in Nature Journal that demonstrates a link between El Niño years and Civil War in 93 tropical countries. That is a crazy fact.

I wish you saved it for Neil's numbers, but that is fantastic. We got to get it now. But the most pressing concern for El Niño now is because the NOAA came out with its annual Atlantic hurricane forecast. And it forecast a very chill, normal average season because we have a lot of hot water. out in the Atlantic due to climate that's been fueled by climate change and they're kind of at record highs over there. So that would spur the formation of hurricanes. But then it's being counteracted by El Nino in certain ways that I don't quite understand,

but it basically neutralize each other. And we end up with just an average hurricane season. They think it's going to be 12 to 17 named storms. Yeah. So apparently, because I was, I read into this and was trying to figure out why does it counteract? Because you'll, you're going to start seeing headlines of like two climates. climate tightens facing off hurricane season versus Al Nino. And apparently, it's almost like too much of a good thing for hurricanes.

There's so much warm air rising over the Pacific that it actually decapitates storms because there's too much warm air too high. And so it's almost, they're becoming too powerful and they blow themselves out before they can even form into storms. So that's kind of why we're getting a normal hurricane. But even one can be bad. And you know you grew up on the west coast of Florida. they got smashed with Ian last year and in total the 14 storms last year damaged the economy by $117 billion.

And killed a lot of people too. So not great. They did come out with the list. They know the list of hurricanes this year. So if you are a Brett, a Cindy, a Don, Emily, Gert, Jose, Sean, Tammy, just pray that your storm just like stays at a tropical depression level. Wait, wait. Say Gert again? What is?

Gert. I've never heard that name. The Harold? Harold. Margo. I know. Arlene. And then also what was interesting is

Hurricanes used to be just named after female names, but they recently changed that. And the reason it was female names is because a lot of ships are named after female names. So it's kind of like aquatic. And they would name the ships and, you know, the captains would name the storms after females as well. For sure. All right. That's enough weather talk. Let's go to this story.

It's pretty bizarre. Shaquille O'Neal, who everyone knows, is the seven-foot. one NBA Hall of Famer and an analyst for TNT. He was sued last year along with other celebrities for promoting FTX, the failed and potentially fraudulent crypto exchange. As part of this lawsuit process, you need to be handed legal papers that inform you that you're being sued. Like physically, I can't email you.

I just, I need to actually hand it to you. That needs to happen. But somehow, some way, Shaq has evaded him, has evaded these servers for the last four months. The lawyer suing him spent more than $100,000 for this search, hired two dozen process servers, which are the people who deliver a paper copy of the summons to the individual. And they just couldn't corner Shaq, despite Shaq being on TV in the TNT studio in Atlanta,

like almost every night for the past couple months. We all watched him on TV. I know. They couldn't find him. But this week, it finally happened. It was pretty poetic. Shaq got served as papers after the Heat Celtics game on Tuesday night, outside of what is formerly known as FTX Arena in Miami.

Just delicious ironic symmetry right there that he's getting served in the place that used to bear FTX's name. This story is so funny because Shaq is the most conspicuous person. Maybe in the entire country, like he's 7 foot 1. He's on TV every day. How can you not find this? Right. So either they're incompetent or Shaq is the next Jason Bourne.

Yeah, he probably just has a team around him that intercepts these guys. So I did some the details of this just keep getting better So the process server who actually eventually got to Shaq Had to buy a ticket to the game Oh so he actually had to come in through the main door Dressed probably as like a normal fan And he snagged Shaq as he was coming off the platform That he was on commenting on the game

And then this is the best part too Is Shaq immediately got him kicked out of the arena too So he got served and then he's like security Get this guy out of there What is Shaq's game like why this seems like you have to go through so much effort to block these guys from getting to you and you know it's going to come eventually. Yeah. I mean, because if you avoid it, like, you are technically avoiding the problem. The lawsuit can't kick off without getting. I just would not want it over my

head. Yeah. But the other, the lawyer, Adam Moskowitz, who's representing the people suing these celebrities, was like, I've never seen anything like it. Like the other 10 celebrities, He's Larry David, Steph Curry, Naomi Osaka. Like, we're Tom Brady, we're very compliant. And he's like, in my 30 years, I have no, I've never seen anything like this. Like, he's on TV every day. We can't get near him. It's insane.

I love it. I also did some digging because at the center of this lawsuit is Shaq's promotion of FTX. And everyone knows Shaq is like the goat promoter. I was trying to figure out exactly how many products or companies he's been associated with over the years. couldn't find the list because it's too big. I actually found a 2015 Sports Illustrated article ranking the top 50 product. Top 50. That's the right reaction because if you have a top 50 list, that means there's more than 50.

And so I looked through the list and the top one was actually the Burger King Shack Pack. And then the second one was the triple double Oreos, which is a fantastic proportion. I don't remember that. But I know he's on the board of Papa Johns now, right? Yeah, he owns a bunch of Papa Johns and Pizza Huts around the country. Actually, I think it's Pizza Hutts, not Papa John's. And then my favorite Shaq promotion, though, is that he's a Buick spokesperson, which is just an hilarious thing because you know Shaq is not folding his seven foot one frame into like a Buick sedan. And he's always getting out of these tiny cars in the commercials.

And you're like, I don't buy that for a second. I know what Shaq drives because in the Framingham, Massachusetts parking lot, or Natick, I saw his Shaq mobile, which is like a tractor-trailer, cab with a pickup truck attached to the back and it has the Superman logo and it's like a shackmobile. And I saw that. He was like eating at California Pizza Kitchen. And we're supposed to expect that he's folding himself into a Buick. Yeah, right. All right, Neil. Before we jump into our next story, we'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 three burner gas grill or get $50 off a select Webber. 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. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the unreal college deal, everything you need to study and play with select

Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 premium and a year of Xbox GamePass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last ends June 30th, terms at AKA.m.m.m.m.m. All right, Neil, let's jump into our Friday segment, Stock of the Week and Dog of the Week, where we tell you all about one stock that outperformed the market and one that didn't. I call dibs on Stock of the Week, so I'll kick us off. But first, as always, we are just humble podcasters. So do remember that none of what you are about to hear is financial advice.

So, Neil, for Stock the Week, have you ever been able to smell a stock chart? Yes, I said smell. because our stock of the week this week is Aberconvy and Fitch. Low-rise jeans and shirtless male models Abercrombie and Fitch. Overpowering smell of Cologne and dark stores Abercrombie and Fish. But honestly, this version of the iconic retailer, or that version of the iconic retailer, is dead and gone. Under new CEO, Fran Horowitz, Abercrombie has totally changed up its brand. Its clothes are legit fashionable now.

I see them all over TikTok, which is how you know that they've made it. and consumers have totally embraced the shift. Same source sales grew 3% last quarter, even as the broader retail segment has struggled, and they raise sales expectations for the years ahead. All that combined to send the stock up 30% after the reported earnings and over 20% overall for the week. Good for Abercrombie.

I was never cool enough to shop there. I was way too intimidating, so I would always skip by there in the mall and, you know, pass to something more boring like that. It was intimidating, wasn't it? Yeah, that's the whole point. Like you want to be this hot freaking 14-year-old. It's so messed up what they were doing.

And like they got in trouble. Like they got sued for a bunch of stuff. But yeah, totally new Abercombe. And I actually, I truly love their stuff. Wait, do you buy it? I have one of their polos that, like, it's just like a very good summer shirt. So let's do a little online shop. I'm definitely less intimidated.

Let's go to the dog of the week, which is Kathy Wood. And this is not for anything that happened this week, but for something that happened a few months ago. So she's a famous investor and her flagship fund, Arc Innovation, dumped all of its shares of Nvidia in early January right before the stock went to the moon and gained $560 billion in market value, including its $200 billion surge this week that we talked about in the show yesterday, and it's now very close to $1 trillion. So she basically sold the dip instead of bought it, which is kind of the inverse of what you

want to do. I just want to explain who Kathy Wood is and why she matters. She's the head of the investment firm, Arc Investment, which is in St. Pete's, by the way. Oh. And then she became this rising star picker and potential successor to Warren Buffett during the pandemic. Wood is now known for betting on stocks in these emerging industries like Tesla, Coinbase, Roku, Nvidia, Zoom, Draft Kings. But if that portfolio also sounds like your cousin's Robin Hood account, that's kind of the problem.

While these stocks popped during COVID and turned Kathy into a household name, It's a much different story now with higher interest rates, kind of taking the wind out of the tech sales. And so this is kind of a big miss for her. I know. And you know what's so funny is when I was writing for the Brew Newsletter, I wrote an article calling like Kathy Wood issued the new Oracle of, I guess, St. Pete. And I swear, I timed the top with that article. Because ever since then, ARC has kind of been on a slow, actually not even slow, a rapid decline.

And this Nvidia news is just one more notch in the. the belt of one more L for Kathy Wood, if you will. All right, that was our stock of the week, dog of the week. Let's move on to Starbucks. Neil, we have some big news for the ice chure in your life. Everyone has an ice cooler. Mine is my older sister, so listen up, Hannah. Starbucks is moving away from bulky ice cubes and replacing them with nugget ice that is softer and more compressed. So that's the kind of ice that you find at Chick-fil-A and yes, Sonic. So real ice chewers know that Sonic is the goat when it comes to ice. Starbucks is finally giving the people what they want here, Neil. No, the goat ice chewers don't want those

small nugget or pebble ones because those are too easy. Those are flaky and crumbly and brittle. And I want like, give me a cube. No. That if you ask any ice, ice chewer, they love the crunchiness. The sonic ice is the gold standard of ice. But maybe you just have like really strong. I don't operate in those circles. But this is also a very big deal for Starbucks because ice drinks make up about 75% of all Starbucks sales. So this was actually, it is not a small thing that they're making this shift because everyone gets ice in their drink. It's powered Starbucks over the last decade. And they want to cut their water usage by half by 2030.

And they say that these new ice machines will help them get there because they use less ice. But I put together some, I think a lot about ice. And it's very interesting. Ice matters a lot to Americans more than any other country. Like you just went to Spain. Did they, did you get ice anywhere? They laugh. They literally like, look down at you if you asked for ice.

First of all, I've never been more proud to be American. I know. At this moment. I love ice. So I did a little taxonomy of ice and like which type of ice goes with what drink, because I think that's important. I don't think you should put, you know, the same type of ice in every drink. Water, I think you want that classic Crescent cube.

That sounds right to me. I'm on board. Ice coffee. I'm down with Starbucks's shift to pebble ice. That's good. Most iced tea, we're going back to cubed. Okay. But there's one exception.

That's sweet tea in the South. And you need crushed ice for that. That's not even a question. Now that you're saying all these, I do have strong feelings on ice because I agree with all those. I know. This is right. I'm the authority. Soda, I'm going mostly cubed.

But again, there's going to be a carve-out for the South. We got cherry Coke with a side of hush puppies. You got to go crush there. Whiskey, big blocky cube, obviously. And then beer. No, I'm just kidding. What about milk? What about milk?

All right, so that is my taxonomy of ice. Let me know if you also have strong thoughts on ice. Obviously, the Starbucks thing is dividing the internet, but I think it'll be fine going forward. Because, you know, I think the nugget ice for ice coffee works well. You put your straw in and you get the nice sound. of the ice and the little resistance as well. All right, I'm sure everyone is itching to finish the day.

Let's get into the Memorial Day weekend mindset. We put together some quick economics-oriented preview of the holiday so you can be insufferable and drop some stats on your friends and family at the get-together this weekend. First, a check-in on gas prices on the busy travel weekend. After the huge spike in gas prices last year, they've settled down to more normal levels, so you're not going to be filling up for $100 on your road ship this weekend unless you have like a 2005-era Hummer. The average gallon of gas cost $3.57 in the U.S. right now, about a dollar lower than last

year at this time. Still, it's higher than Memorial Day weekend in 2019, 2020, and 21, which is because inflation is still rising at 5%. I'm excited for you because you ran into car for this weekend. So gas prices finally affect you. We always comment on gas prices, even though we never own a car. Okay, thanks for the travel preview, Neil. I'm taking the food preview, and inflation is still ripping, as Neil mentioned.

So I wanted to know what the most cost-effective Labor Day barbecue meal you eat. You just skip through summer, dude. I always do that. Memorial Day weekend. Give it my summer. So the headlines that is 44% of Americans are planning on barbecuing. And so if you want to save money, here's what you should eat. Ground brief prices are actually 2.1% lower than last year.

So you can have beef, but do not put sauce on it because Kraft Heinz prices are 15.2 percentage points higher than the same time period last year. Also, definitely no dessert. Cookies alone are up a whopping 15.9 percent. But also, if you don't want dessert, eat your veggies. Fresh vegetable prices were up just 1.4 percent. So borderline flat. But again, definitely no sauces or salad dressings on that because salad dressing prices are up 14.8 percent year over year. So putting that all together, you can have one ground beef patty with one piece of lettuce on it, no sauces, no dessert. Great opportunity to make your own dressing. That's a good point. Although we know olive oil prices are also up. Never mind.

That's kind of the base. Finally, for this Memorial Day segment, you can't talk about Memorial Day without backyard games. So for many this weekend is definitely about firing up the grill and playing something in your backyard. I also think a lot about backyard games. So just like ice, so I also listed my top five here. And I want Toby's reaction. I want your reaction as well. I'm going to start with five go to one for a little dramatic effect.

Number five is horseshoes. Number four is badminton. Number three is cornhole. Number two is can jam. And number one is catch. The age old game of games. The goat catch. I actually...

Just throwing a ball back and forth. I will give you props for kind of mixing in some older games in some newer games. Canjams, definitely one of the newer games. But I have to say, what the heck is horseshoes doing on this list? I have never, where are you playing horseshoes? Yeah, very rarely. And, you know, you go to some place where they have horseshoes and you're like, wow, I never

see them. I'm going to try it. And it's fun because you don't practice it ever. And the weight in your hand feels really good. And it's a really unique technique that you don't use anywhere else. So when you see it, you have to play it. And that's why it's on the list. Okay.

It feels redundant with Cornhole. though, because cornhole is essentially just horseshoes with being... No, what are you talking about? It's a completely different mechanism by which you have to flip it or spin it. It's underhand tossing. That's like 90% of backyard games is underhand tossing. I do like catch as number one, but my one downside of catch is that, have you ever started playing catch with someone and no one knows how to end it?

And so you're just stuck in an infinite loop. Like, no one wants to be the person to say, like, you are, you are. to be done. And so it's just like truly like an awkward moment. But I do, I do love to. Just be demonstrative about when you want to end the edge. You can just blame it on your arms. Like off arms getting sore. Yeah. All right. That is our show. I can't wait for the weekend. I hope you're all excited as well. Feel free to email us. I feel like we offered a lot of hot takes today with the ice and the catch and the neural link. Anyway, definitely write in with any of your thoughts at morning brewdaily at morning brew.com. We could, you know, feature it on air. And all

Always a huge shout out to our entire crew who made this possible. Samantha Velas and Raymond Liu are the associate producers. Ubru Batista is the assistant to the associate producer. Uchena Wa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. Hair and makeup is long gone for the long weekend. Devin Emery is our chief content officer. Our show is a production of Morning Brew.

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