Morning Brew Daily - One year of war in Ukraine, Bezos the NFL owner?, Cocaine Bear hits theaters

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

Episode 4: On the one year anniversary of the war in Ukraine Neal and Toby take a look back at the most staggering moments and global economic impact. Also, Jeff Bezos has hired a firm to explore a possible bid for the Commanders. The guys also share their winning stock and dog of the week, and preview the movie of the century that hits theaters this weekend - Cocaine Bear. Listen Here: https://www.mbdailyshow.com/ Watch Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Sources: One year anniversary of War In Ukraine - https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/ukraine-russia-war-putin-need-to-know FDA says Oat and Almond Milk can be called, Milk - https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2023/02/23/plant-milks-called-milk-fda-suggests Jeff Bezos Interested In Buying Commanders - https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/35721747/jeff-bezos-hires-firm-help-consider-bid-commanders Ozy Media CEO Charged with Fraud - https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/23/ozy-media-ceo-carlos-watson-arrested.html MLB New Rules - https://apnews.com/article/mlb-new-rules-changes-pitch-clock-bigger-bases-a0ff698a43baaddf84bc69a5b0cbc828 Cocaine Bear - https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/cocaine-bear-promise-of-blood-guts-and-a-bear-on-cocaine 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 brewdaily. That's aflac.com slash morning brewdaily. Good morning brew daily show. I am Neil Freyman.

And I'm Toby Howell. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday. I didn't know. You had such a beautiful singing voice. This is just a start. Oh, my gosh. I just saw the monitor.

It popped up. There's a picture of my face next to a giant birthday cake with birthday boy, Toby on it. Oh, my gosh. And now we've got the sirens going. Now they're playing sirens in the studio. Thank you, everyone. You know, it's once a year.

It's a big deal. How old you're turning 26? I'm turning 26. I'm feeling wiser, feeling a little more achy already. And it's the last year on your parents' health insurance, notably. I know. I was already off that, though. So actually, please be careful with me because I can't get hurt because I don't want to have to pay anything.

We'll be careful. You need to be careful for yourself. You're doing some extreme sports. That's true. We've got a great show for you. We're talking the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine. We're going to talk. Baseball is coming back, and it looks a little different than it used to.

And then we'll finally end on, you know, talking about our riddle yesterday and plans for the weekend. Sounds like a fun birthday show for me. It's going to be good. Let's ride. Okay, so today is a big day. It is the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine, which is the biggest armed conflict in the world since World War II. It's crazy. It's already been a year.

Actually, I can actually think back to the moment where it broke out. Actually, I remember being on Twitter and just seeing everything kind of develop. in real time. And it was wild to see a war unfold in the age of social media. But yeah, it's been a year. Yeah. So if I can't possibly summarize what's happened in the last 365 days, we need 10 weeks worth of podcast shows to talk about it.

But if I can summarize in 30 seconds, it's that Russia sent its tanks in to Ukraine, thinking that they could topple the government really quickly. That did not work out as planned. Ukraine fought valiantly back, really like David and Goliath stuff. And then once it showed initial success, Western allies swooped in with billions and billions of military aid, weaponry, ammunition, and now fighting continues in the East. Ukraine has lost a little territory, but the fight goes on. Yeah. There's a lot of things that obviously stand out about this, but we were looking through some of the economic numbers, of course. Russia's GDP actually has only dropped by 2% throughout this war.

That was the most surprising figure to me, because when the war broke out and as it progressed, all we heard about was how all these Western companies were sanctioning Russia, Europe was sanctioning Russia, and it made it sound like we were cutting them off from the global financial system, which did happen, and yet here we are looking at just a 2% GDP drop in Russia. And I know there's a lot of factors to it, maybe not the best. actual indicator of how the economy is doing. But that was what I found most surprising, like looking back over the past year. Totally. More than 1,000 multinationals have left. But, yeah, what happened really was that we realized that the U.S. and Europe were not the entire

world. Right. And Russia really embraced India and China and Turkey. We just put the stat in the newsletter this morning that the best stock market performance of the past year was Turkey. And that's really directly a result of the sanctions that the West placed on Russia because now Turkey is at the center of all of these trade flows between the Middle East, Russia, India, and China. So it seems like Russia is in a really bad place, and everyone's saying this is a terrible strategic move by Putin overall, but that the economy hasn't completely melted down like they would expect it. But there could be like a long-term detriment to Russia here because so many people left, especially in the tech sector. Right. So, like, who's to say that down the line, you know, Russia's economy won't die a slow death? Right. It's not a net positive thing, but it was just surprising to me that, yeah, because

we thought that Russia was just going to absolutely tank. And unfortunately, Ukraine's economy, their GDP plummeted by 30%. So obviously, difference in size and access to resources, but those two numbers were kind of really illustrated at the divide, I think. And we haven't even talked about the human toll, which obviously, is like the most important thing. Combined, there have been 300,000 military and civilian deaths. And this stat just, like, really stands out to me is that 8 million Ukrainians have become refugees,

and they're living in other countries now as a result of the war. That's 20% of the pre-war population. That's wild. It is really wild to me. Hopefully we don't have a year-two show that we have to go back through it. But, yeah. But there are, there is, like, this showed that there could be conflict in the world after a relative period of peace.

And now everyone's talking about what's happening with China and Taiwan. And China has been much more aggressive in its posturing towards Taiwan, which it considers its own territory. At the same time, the U.S. has pledged to intervene if China would invade Taiwan. And people are saying that could be what really is World War III. Right. We're definitely teetering on the blink. The Doomsday clock has definitely moved close.

I think it's seven seconds to midnight now. And especially that was before Putin's suspended. Russia's participation in the last remaining arms agreement with the U.S. So many layers to this, obviously. And yeah, like I said, hopefully we're not doing a year two check-in. But I'm going to pivot us to a different, I don't want to say war, but there is a battle in the milk industry that's going on. I love a good old milk controversy.

Essentially dairy companies are cranky that alternative milks like, oat, soy, almond, get to call themselves milk. So they've been pushing for the FDA to make them use a different name, like beverages. But yesterday, the FDA kind of dropped the hammer and said that those alternative milk products do actually get to call themselves milk, and milk doesn't have to come from an utter. So, Neil, I know we were kind of debating this. You wrote about it in the newsletter yesterday. Do you think that oat milk should be able to brand itself as milk? You know that I've changed my mind in the last hour, maybe 40 times. It's very controversial.

Because on one hand, oat milk is not milk. Yeah. It's simply not milk. It is oat juice. It is nut juice. It sounds horrible when you put it like that. No, but that's what it is. It's not milk.

On the other hand, I feel like the FDA wants its labels on food to be the most clear and communicative to consumers. Right. And people think that oat milk, people want to know that oat milk is oat milk. Right. So the fact, if you say it's oat juice, then I would not know what the hell is in that carton. It would be confusing. Yeah. I love this. Seems like you have a strong stance on this. I love this from the FDA because, I don't know, in so much of society now, people kind of move to the lowest common denominator in the sense that, oh, we have to educate consumers. We have to protect consumers.

And the FDA is like, no, no one thinks that oat milk is actually coming from a cow. Like, they're not confusing it. Right. So the FDA is basically saying consumers are educated enough that. we can still call it oat milk and no one will confuse it with the real milk. And then, yeah, it's also the most illustrative word you can use. Like, you are totally right. If you would not put oat juice in your cereal, you would not put oat juice in your coffee,

but you would definitely put olive oil. Yeah. Olieto. A little callback. Yeah, so I love this move from the FDA. And I do love Big Milk is such a strong, like, lobbying force that got milk campaign. So I love when they kind of get knee-capped a little bit. They're still dominating this industry, though.

Some pretty interesting stats. Refrigerated cows milk came in at $12.3 billion in sales in the last 52 weeks, and non-dairy milk is $2.5 billion. So they made them inroads. But, yeah, that's actually, I would have thought it was closer than that. And you guys, the most popular variety of non-dairy milk? I feel like it's almond, because that's the OG. Almond.

Let's go. Oat is gaining, though. I use oat, primarily, so. When you get a coffee, do you always go out? I always go out, although I found myself saying I want normal milk when I was ordering. I'm like, I'm preaching against everything that I just stood for in the previous segment. I'm whole milk, ride or die. I love that.

Okay. Next story, Toby, I want to talk about a CEO and entrepreneur who was born in 1964. I love that song. Of course I'm talking about Jeffrey Bezos. And I already sang earlier in the show, so I don't think. People need to hear me again. Thank goodness. The news is that Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon and Washington Post and Blue Argent fame

hired an investment firm to bid on the Washington Commander's NFL team, which is up for sale. So it seems like he's taking baby steps to make this purchase happen. We talked about this on yesterday's show, but if you had billionaire money, not even billionaire, sent for billionaire money, what would you do with it? And I said, obviously, buy a sports team. So I'm glad Jeffrey Bezos has finally reached the stage. He bought the yacht. He's got all the houses.

He's like, all right, got to buy a sports team now. I'm excited for it. What would you put the odds of this happening at this point? Because there have been a ton of rumors, but there hasn't been a crazy bidding war. There hasn't been a lot of media speculation. This seems like the first hammer to drop. Yeah, what would you put the odds if you're a betting man, which you are? Minus 150, which means that I think it's going to happen.

because, one, Jeffrey Bezos, Bezos has been linked to the commanders for a while now, even before this, and the fact that he's contacted this firm, which has facilitated when the Panthers were bought, previous sports teams that have been bought, I think that this is actually where there's smoke, there's fire, and I think he is probably going to do it, and I just want him to do it. It sounds way more fun than running the Washington Post. Yeah, it's so hard. Going to space, though, probably beats it down. Pretty cool. He needs to renovate that stadium. That is a dump in Landover.

But he just needs to make the commanders not as good as the Eagles. They have to stay at the bottom of the NFC East, absolutely. That's the most important part of this story. I'm putting this at 90% by the way. I think this is absolutely a done deal. He's going to look really weak if he backs out now. Okay. I hope it happens as well. Okay, let's shift gears to the media world. We both work in media. We both pay in ten. to media drama a little more than the average Joe. But there was a story in 2021 that kind of

broke free from the media circle. And that is when Aussie media's CEO Carlos Watson got into some trouble with the law, essentially. So in 2021, the COO of Aussie media jumped on a call with Goldman Sachs and Carlos Watson. They were trying to raise money from Goldman Sachs. And on that call, the CEO impersonated a YouTube executive, changed his voice, was getting fed lines by Carlos Watson in order to try to secure this investment. Really, really illegal stuff. An absolutely crazy story, too. And finally, yesterday, Carlos Watson was arrested at his Manhattan Hotel, so it's all kind of crumbling down. Neil, we love this story just because we're media nerds, but what is It is a crazy story.

I mean, from this, I want to teach you a Yiddish word. Okay. It is called chutzpah. Hutzpah. I don't know what a Lutzpah means? I've heard it before. It's sort of like audacity. Right.

Right. So Carlos Watson, after all this happened, was trying to resurrect Ozzy Media, and they state, he was planning on doing Ozzy Fest, which is their big festival that they had. Yeah. Not from Gladwell at previously. So this guy has a lot of Khutzpah, but now he's facing the law. Right. And then another thing that Ozzy Fest,

that Ozzy had done in the past was they had these YouTube channels that were getting like millions and millions of views. I'm doing air quotation marks, as I say, views, because there's probably under 100 comments on these videos. And everyone's like, we get more from our, we're getting more comments. By the way, watch this show on YouTube if you're listening to it. Help us bump those comments up. But yeah, everyone's like, you guys are just totally faking these numbers. And so they used to say that we were actually cited in this New York Times article, we meaning Morning Brew. where Morning Brew, Neil has been writing day in, day out for five years.

We're only at 4 million subscribers on the newsletter. Only? Yeah, I know. It's good. And Aussie media was saying we reached 20 million subscribers. There's no way. There's no way. That's true. There's no way.

So we'll see what happens with Aussie media. Maybe Carlos Watson in jail will try to resurrect the company again. He's a lot of Kutzpah. For sure. Let's move on to exciting news today. is spring training opens in Florida. Freaking exciting. I love baseball season, and this is a sign of spring.

But I don't get to say this often, but baseball is going to look a little different this year. Baseball's actually making changes. No, go ahead and explain the changes. I will explain the changes. So this is all to generate more offense and make the game more exciting because, yes, I admit it's baseball is boring.

Okay. So they're instituting a pitch clock, which has been long away. They're going to be much bigger bases than there used to be. The shift has been banned, and they're limiting the number of pickoff attempts per batter that pitchers can make. Okay. So what do you think these rules is going to change baseball for the better? I think overall, all of these are meant to help the ball be put and play more, and then also to speed the games up.

So those two things totally on board with. The thing I'm most interested in these rule changes is the bigger bases. on the surface, you're like, what the heck does a bigger base do? Right. But shortening the distance, they're changing the size from 15 inches to 18 inches. So it's three inches different on either side because both base is bigger. And that three inches or six inches total could make the difference on these bang-bang-bang pick-off plays. So I'm actually really curious to see if, like, steals go way up or if the plays become, like, more exciting on the base.

So I love small, subtle, real changes that have kind of second order effects. It'll be really interesting to watch. But I don't think this fix is the main problem, which is balls in play. When I watch baseball, I want to watch, like, action, somebody thrown out at home, double plays, you know, outfielders making diving catches. And this doesn't address the problem. I think they need to lower the mound. They need to change the power dynamic between pitcher and batter. Even the pitch clock, we were saying might impact batters more than pitcher.

Yeah, well, I think that some White Sox pitchers like, oh, batters are going to hate it. I actually think it's going to affect pitchers more, and I think he's doing a little posturing, but I might actually watch a little baseball this year just to see how it plays out, because I'm sure there's going to be some controversies going for. One thing we do know is that the games will take a lot less time, because there's been a pitch clock in the minor leagues, and a nine inning game used to take three hours and four minutes in 2021 on average, and that decreased a lot to two hours and 38 minutes last season.

last season. So that is huge. So that is huge. No, I'm excited. I can't wait to watch. Use your baseball team, by the way. The Rays. I'm from Tampa.

Yeah. I like him. Okay. Got a new segment to kind of cap off the week. It's called Stock of the Week and Dog of the Week. I'm going to tell you guys about a stock that performed really well, give you a little backstory behind it, and then Neil's going to tell you about a stock that didn't do so well.

How did I get dog? I don't know. We just chose it. We drew straws. So this week's stock of the week. is Nvidia. It popped yesterday on earnings, absolutely crushed earnings, went up 12%. It's up 65% on the year. Invidia's just crushing right now. And the reason why it kind of got this little boost is because we're in the age of AI right now. Everyone is building these AI large language learning models,

all these chatbots, and Nvidia's GPUs are kind of powering the supercomputers that kind of have to process these language models. So they're forecasting this huge, huge boost in chip sales, basically, to help power these massive computing loads that need to be executed by, for these models to work. This is the biggest company people don't know about. They're the seventh biggest company in the S&P 500 by market cap. Their market cap is $582 billion. This is a massive company.

It is really big. You have some familial ties to the video. I know. I just want to give a shout out. So my aunt started working there very, very early on, like 1995. My grandma, too, another shout out to my grandma, she bought shares when it went public in 1999 because she wants to support her daughter, obviously. And then my grandparents' financial advisor said, what is this Nvidia company?

Like, get rid of these stocks. Like, go into the boring mutual funds. And my grandma was like, no, let's keep them. best financial decision ever because the howls are raking in I know so shout out to grandmobie for and we should say when we talk about stocks Toby I know you've wanted to say this your entire career tell me oh okay by the way yes this is not financial advice anyone do not take any of this as financial advice we're just reporting I've always wanted to say that you really have and I'm so glad you got to say it on your on your birthday yes all right I guess I'll do dog of the week because that was that was handed to me by our team. The dog of the week is pizza delivery companies, specifically Domino's. Domino's had its worst day and more than a decade yesterday because it's burrito season and there is pizza fatigue, apparently. So demand is down and for pizza delivery. Domino's is not the only one that's

doing poorly. Papa John's also posted pretty disappointing results. Yeah, and it's also rising food costs, obviously. When we are hit by inflation, that means every other food providers also hit by inflation. So their margins are probably, they're losing a little bit on the margins because of inflation. My favorite stat, though, is like dominoes over the last two decades has been just an absolute juggernaut of a stock because it invested a ton of resources into technology, basically, and making the delivery process smooth from your phone. They have the pizza tracker. Of course I know the pizza track. This is a minor setback for a major comeback, I think, for Domino's.

Piece of fatigue can't last that long, right? Everyone likes to pizza. I've never even heard of that. Also, can you explain real quick why it's called Dog of the Week? Because I didn't know this before, but you did. Sure, yeah. So Dog of the Week, Dog of the Dow is a popular term in finance where it's like the worst performing stock on the Dow of the 30 stocks in the Dow.

So they call that the Dog of the Dow. And so we're just co-opting it. You learn something new every day. You learn something new. Yeah, Dog of the Dow. Our final story. Cocaine Bear, maybe. It's out today.

Let's go. Cocaine Bear, the movie that everyone's talking about, maybe. I know. We are talking about it. It's out today. Yeah, it's at 72% on Rotten Tomatoes. That's from critics. Pretty solid.

Audience rating is 82%. Whenever those numbers are pretty similar, I actually think that it's going to be pretty good. We don't have to spend too much time talking about it. No, but it is loosely based on a real story. And that real story is that in 1985, a drug dealer dropped 75 pounds of cocaine from an airplane along the Georgia-Tennessee border. He tried to jump out after it. His parachute failed.

He died. A few months later, authorities found a ripped duffel bag with all of that cocaine and a dead bear that tested positive cocaine. So this movie kind of imagines a world in which the bear lived and mulls everyone. I mean, what word do you need to know? The thing that actually makes me want to see it, though, is Elizabeth Banks is directing it. and I love Elizabeth Banks. She was in Pitch Perfect. And I also just kind of trust her funny bone.

At the premiere, she said that while she was introducing the movie, she said, I'm fully convinced that everything has brought me to this moment in my career, the pinnacle, the rich and deeply cerebral cocaine bear. So I think people are embracing the spirit of it. It's an absurd movie. I think I'm actually going to go see it. Yeah? Because, yeah.

Might be a good birthday present. Yeah. Banks has had just fire quotes, actually. She recalled, like, in when promoting this film, she was talking about a conversation which she had with Lauren Michaels, who's the, you know, S&L showrunner. And he told her, don't do things

unless you think they'll be part of the cultural conversation, which is, you know, pretty good. We're talking about it. We're talking about it, so pretty good advice. All right, we're going to close out the show by talking about the riddle that we gave to you all yesterday, just to remind you the riddle was this, that we gave you a sentence,

and it says, this sentence contains blank letters, and you had to fill in the blank with the number that would make the sentence true. There was actually two answers. They were 36 and 38. Shout out to everyone who got that. We have some names, Matthew, Taylor, Scott Wyatt, who wrote into our email, and a bunch of others did. So, congrats. We're going to do this every week.

We're a huge trivia riddle guys, so get pumped. But Toby, I think you had some maybe correct answers that you have some creative. creative awards. I just want to give a shout out to some people in the YouTube comments who said, at Brown Guy with the Beard said, this sentence contains multiple letters. Technically not wrong. This sentence does contain multiple letters. And then Dan Duggan Fitt said, this sentence contains English letters. So not exactly what we were looking for, but I shout out the creativity for that. And then one final shout out is to my brother, Henry, who actually wrote a code that automatically solve this riddle. Not exactly in the spirit of it, but I was really impressed by it.

So good job. Your brother. Yeah. I don't want to make the show a complete shout out to all of our family members, but this is a really interesting fact. It is my parents' anniversary today, which is not the interesting fact. But they got married on the day the U.S. men's national team won, or hockey team, won the gold medal in the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. Do you know what team they beat? Okay, so it's not the USSR. It's like Sweden, right? Or Finland. All right, well, you're good. Yeah. Yes, they beat Finland.

They actually came back that game. They were down 2-1 in the third period. But a lot of people don't know that the miracle on ice where we beat the U.S.S. was the semifinals. Was the semifinals. Everyone assumes it was the gold medal match. Then we had to play Finland, and we were down in the third period. I love that fact, too.

So it's pretty crazy. A lot of facts today. Great show. Great show. We're about to have a great weekend. I'm flying down to Florida to see a spring training game and playing golf with your dad, and you're going to do some awesome celebration, birthday celebrations before we go. Just want to give a shout out to our amazing team. In the control room,

show's producer and editor is Emily Milliron. The show's technical director is Elias Alba. Our supervising producer is Bryce Beloff, VP of Technical and Production Operations. Dan Bousa. Devin Emery is our chief content officer. Our show is a production of Morning Brew. Have a great weekend. Everybody, we'll see on Monday. All. Pay off your home. Travel for Life. Drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of The Monopoly, big board buck 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.

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