Morning Brew Daily - San Francisco's Robotaxi Problem & The FDA vs. Logan Paul's Prime Energy

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

Episode 99: Neal and Toby explain why safe street activists in San Francisco are disabling robotaxis with traffic cones. Plus, the telecom companies that have left behind a network of toxic lead cables strewn across America and Senators call for the FDA to investigate Logan Paul's Prime Energy Drink because it has the caffeine equivalent of... Eight Coca-Colas!? Then the guys share their winners of the weekend and explain why the NBA is adopting a midseason tournament. Finally we look forward to a huge week ahead which includes the return of earnings season and President Biden's NATO trip. 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

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pwc.wc.com slash U.S. slash brew AI. That's pwc.com slash us slash brew AI. Good morning Brew Daily show. I'm Neil Freyman.

And I'm Toby Howell. On today's show, we'll teach you how to disable a robotaxie, if that's something you want to do, and the MBA borrows a page from European soccer. Then we'll talk about

how America has a secret lead cable problem that telecom companies don't want you to know about. Before digging into prime energy, the drink started by YouTubers that has Congress worrying for the safety of the kids who drink it.

It's Monday, July 10th. Let's ride. All right. What's up, Toby? How's it going? Back on Monday. We got a great show. But first, I think we need to give people our review of Subway.

Oh, yeah, we went. We got some sliced deli meats from... We talked about this on the show last week. That Subway put in fresh slicers, and they're going to be slicing up meats over the course of the day. And we passed on, we were like, we had to go in and try it. Yeah, I was underwhelmed because they didn't do the slicing in front of you, which, again, they said they would slice periodically throughout the day. We got a turkey sandwich.

It was a little lighter. It was a little, like, paper thin, I would say. But overall, it didn't really change the vibe too much. And we left saying, like, I can see why subway struggling a little bit. Yeah, no, it was very mediocre, very mediocre. Okay. Let's start this show in San Francisco, where vigilantes fighting against Waymo and Cruise Robotaxies are taking matters into their own hands. An activist group figured out that you could disable autonomous vehicles by putting orange traffic cones on their hoods.

So they've been going around town doing that and posting instructions on social media to encourage others to do the same. They're calling the action weak of cone. It's meant to draw attention to the robotaxies swirming around San Francisco. Ahead of a major hearing this week that could authorize them to expand paid services to all parts of the city and go 24-7. It basically allow Waymo and Cruise to operate similarly to Uber and Lyft just without human drivers. There has been a strong emotional reaction to this cone hack. These videos have gone extremely viral, and it seems to be because San Franciscans are extremely frustrated with these robo-taxies malfunctioning and blocking traffic. and in general driving like 14-year-olds without their learner's permit.

They feel like they're guinea pigs in another tech experiment they didn't sign up for. So what's your take, Toby? And I just want to just have a disclaimer. We are not going to say San Fran and make anybody mad in this podcast going forward. I probably will say it. So that is my disclaimer. Yeah, I mean, I see both sides of this, honestly, because these cars just don't perform very well on the edge cases. So the fire chief is saying that they run over.

fire hoses and they block emergency vehicles, which is a big problem when seconds count when you're fighting a fire. And then if a construction worker is holding up a stop sign, they might stop in the wrong place. And then once the construction worker stopped it, they don't know what to do about it because there's no driver they can instruct. And then there's just, yeah, there's a lot of these situations that fall just outside normal traffic laws that if a Waymo or Cruz gets confused, it's very hard to then move the car because there's no one in there. You can't be like, hey, what's up? You can't lock on the window.

Right. So I see why it's very frustrating to have a much larger rollout when these edge cases haven't been fully addressed yet. Yeah, I was talking to someone who lived in San Francisco for the past couple years. If you don't live in San Francisco, you may not know that this exists there. But I had no clue. I was like, I thought this was very limited rollout. But apparently she was like, yeah, you can see these everywhere.

And they come up to intersections. and they don't really know exactly where to go if there's like a slight turn. Right. And all that being said, though, humans are certainly worse. So much worse. Humans are awful drivers. And so the critics of robotaxies have been called anti-progress. And there were so many deaths last year.

I mean, they just came out with this study a few weeks ago about how many pedestrians were killed by cars. 7,500 pedestrians were killed by human drivers last year in the United States. That is the highest number. in more than 40 years, 20 people, 20 pedestrians a day are getting hill by human drivers. And so, I mean, when you look at the long term of this, you're like, okay, maybe autonomous vehicles that don't have to check their techs and they're not drunk and they're not, you know, eventually this is probably going to be ultimately saved many lives.

But I think you're seeing a lot of frustration from the people of San Francisco who are in this tech environment. And they've been guinea pigs for so many tech experiments. whether it's, you know, contactless payments or Amazon stores, I guess that's in Seattle, but you get the idea where it's like whenever a tech company has something that they want to experiment, they're like, oh, well, in our backyard, it's San Francisco. And these people are like, God, another, like, traffic jam caused by autonomous vehicle, another tech innovation that is experiment that I have to work out.

And there's surveillance issues, too, because these cars have tons of cameras on them. And San Francisco police has already solved a few cases using footage that access from the cars. So there is a very real like data or privacy and surveillance issue. But you also mentioned kind of the long-term view on these things and that maybe down the line it will be seen as safer because I did some digging too about when the debate when cars first came onto the scene, you heard a lot of the same talking points of these will scare the horses. Like are we going to allow these things go everywhere? Look how dangerous they are. So it does feel like the natural evolution of this debate, which has been raging since cars literally first existed.

So it's a nothing is new. Nothing is new. But this is big for these companies. Waymo and Cruz. Waymo obviously came out of Google. And if they can prove that their cars can function on San Francisco roads, which are incredibly hilly, incredibly difficult, then that is good to take to other cities and say, look, we can do, you know, our cars can perform well.

San Francisco. They'll certainly perform well on your, on your turf. If you can make it in San Francisco, you can make it. They've always said that. Yeah, absolutely. All right, Neil, let's jump into our next story, which reads a little bit like it's from the Clue board game. It was AT&T with the lead cable near millions of Americans. So what am I talking about? The Wall Street Journal published this massive piece of investigative journalism over the weekend that found America has a hidden lead cable problem. There are over 2,000 lead

covered cables left over from old telecom carriers that are criss-costing bodies of water running through the ground and hanging above heads that are potentially contaminating the environment and the people around them. So just a few examples. At one fishing spot in Louisiana, lead levels were 14

and a half times the level the EPA allows for where kids play. In New Jersey alone, more than three 150 bus stops are located near lead cables hanging in the air, and roughly 80% of sediment samples taken next to underwater cables, which the journal tested showed elevated levels of lead. The piece also found that through reviewing internal documents and talking to former employees, carriers like Verizon and AT&T kind of knew about this lingering lead cable problem and chose not to act for a variety of reasons that we'll get into.

But Neil, this is one of those stories that you read and wonder why it might not be bigger news than it is. Because it takes a lot of work. And this is what this is really cool about journalism is because there was this massive team of Wall Street Journalists, Wall Street Journal, journalists that just took it upon themselves to go and investigate what they probably got a few tips about. They're like, hey, I think we have lead pipes near this playground. Like, can you go check it out?

And then they sent this sprawling team of reporters out. They sent, they tested soils and sent it to university labs. And what was crazy reading the story was that all these experts that they interviewed said, we had no idea that this was a problem. Right. Because there's a bunch of, you know, we've known about lead in other products like paint and gasoline and water pipes and things like that. But a lot of the experts who study this for their living were like, we had no idea that telephone lines were encased in lead and they're still around. Right.

After decades of just sitting there not being used anymore, they're sagging, you know, below bus stops and playgrounds and schools. Yeah. So it's a little alarming. They're definitely relics from a bygone era. So when American telephone and telegraph, which I actually didn't know, that's what AT&T stands for, they kind of had a monopoly in the early days from the 1800s all the way till the 1960s. They were building out America's telecom infrastructure. And they use lead because it's great for insulating the copper wires and protecting it from erosion. But now those are all still there, and there's a lot of issues actually with removing them.

So some former telecom execs told the journal that sometimes it's safer to leave the lead in place because you risk contaminating the people removing them if you try to remove them. So it's not exactly such an easy fix as just go in and strip them all out. And then also Verizon in a statement to the journal said that there are many of the lead sheet cables that actually still provide critical infrastructure and access to 9-1-1 calls and stuff like that. So, again, it's not as simple as, why don't they just go in and remove these things?

Some of them are still being used. Yeah. I know. It's a rock and a hard place. But we should be clear that lead is very bad for you. I think doctors say you can't, like especially children, you can't safely ingest or inhale any amount of lead. And it leads to some serious adverse side effects,

including, you know, curbing your mental development. So we were reading this study right before the show that, you know, when you go to a gas station that says unleaded gasoline, that's because there was lead in gasoline until, I think the last one was phased out in 96. Right. And so there was a study that showed that Americans born before 1996 when lead was phased out of gas may have a lower IQ by three points than people born after. So lead is a serious. Yeah, neurotoxin. It's not good for you in any way.

That IQ stat is kind of crazy for sure. So the hidden lead cable problem, again, it's something that we didn't know about. No, it's cool to see journalists doing important work. Check one for journalism right there. Okay, Neil, our next story actually deals with another dangerous substance entering the body. But in this case, that substance is the prime energy drink founded by two YouTubers, Logan Paul, that guy who box Floyd Mayweather, and KSI, who was kind of the British version of Logan Paul. Over the weekend, Senator Chuck Schumer called on the FDA to look into Prime for two reasons.

One, Prime has an absurd amount of caffeine in it, 200 milligrams per 12 ounces, to be exact, which is the same as about six cans of Coke or nearly two Red Bulls. And two, the youths absolutely love Prime. It comes in these brightly colored cans and bottles, and I've seen stories of kids literally trading them like currency at lunch, which isn't good when the level of caffeine, when inside Prime has been linked to anxiety and heart problems for kids. To Prime's credit, they do label their energy drink as not recommended for children under 18, but the issue that Schumer and Congress has with Prime is it actually has two drinks,

one that has no caffeine and one that does, but they market the two drinks too similarly for Congress's liking. So, Neil, what do we think about the government's sudden interest in prime? I mean, I didn't. I think it's sort of like a wake-up call kind of thing to get this on people's radar because maybe if you're not, you know, maybe if you're like a Gen X or you're a parent or somebody and you're like, my kid is whenever we go into the supermarket, they're like, I need to go get prime right now.

And you're like, what is that? I probably should know about this. Right. So, and I think it's mainly also about the marketing like you're talking about because they do have two drinks. one is the caffeine one, one is the not caffeine one, and the caffeine one, they say, like, should not, I've never seen that. You should not drink this if you're under 18.

I mean, I look at the board games and they're like, you can't do it over age six. But this is 18. I mean, that's kind of like a high threshold which shows you that I kind of want to cover their butts with this caffeine level. One is in a bottle and one is in a can. One is clearly prime energy. So I do think it's a little overblown. I know the kids know the difference.

They're not drinking one thing, it's the other. So I don't know. I'm speculating a little bit there. But one is they're in totally different shapes. So I could see Prime's argument for saying that, no, we've covered our bases here. But I do just want to talk about what an absolute juggernaut prime is. It did 250 million in gross retail sales in its first year of existence, which was last year. And then in January of this year, it did $45 million alone.

And that's worth a mention because that was when they, became the official beverage partner of UFC, which I also want to mention, Prime is just crushing its partnership game. So they're the official drink sponsor of the UFC, plus the LA Jargers and FC Barcelona. And then they also struck a deal with Bates Sports Group, which puts on more than 60 youth sporting events.

So they are definitely going after this, the crowd of kids, because they know that this is something that has really struck a chord with kind of the audience that watches YouTube, that knows who Logan Paul and KSI are. So they're buying this because, not necessarily because of the drink, but because they want to be seen as, you know, loyal followers of these famous YouTubers.

Yeah, but it's also, it comes in colored bottles, and so it's like a big deal to have the purple bottle versus the yellow bottle. So it is like a status symbol among kids, which is a real thing. Like the lunch table economy is a real thing. Yeah, I haven't gotten to school in a while. But you could see this being taught in like Harvard Business School in 10 years down the road as maybe the best example of a sort of a creator founded brand influencer that absolutely crushed it. They knew exactly their market. They did the perfect branding.

They've been going ham on marketing on their own YouTube channels doing various stunts. Didn't he do, didn't he like bring up a prime thing when he was in Logan Paul when he was doing WrestleMania in Los Angeles? So these guys know exactly what they're doing and they're executing it perfectly. Yeah, Neil, we should launch. Let's launch a little beverage, man. Morning. Well, what do you think like our audience would want? I think of morning, something to wake you up in the morning.

So a little coffee. Maybe caffeine with six kill cans. Let's do 400 milligrams. Okay. But Celsius that we talk about has the same amount. Yeah. I mean, I think it's per different amount per ounce. Or is it the exact same amount?

Celsius has 12 ounces and 200 milligrams of Kempel. caffeine. The kids aren't drinking. Yeah, exactly. I was thinking, well, why isn't Schumer going after Celsius, which is this big other brand that's been growing in the energy drink market? It's the kids, Neil. It's the kids.

Yeah. All right, before we jump into the next story, we're going to take a quick break. As the Krispy Chicken Sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always call me loud. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm crispy. Did you expect me to whisper? If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like, I know I'm a handful.

I'm bold, I'm juicy. throw some pickles and barbecue sauce on me and baby I'm a home meal and with seven rewards I'm just $4. Quiet, no. Krispy, saucy and $4? Very. Only at 7-11. Valley through 62326

participating stores only while supplies lastly app for full terms. Paradey present Ojos with Alerga and pickasone contra the gardener. And the winner is Paradey extra-fuerte to alleviate.

Actua more rapid and supera Claritin and Flownays at 1 at 24 hours. Parade. All right, Toby, it's Monday. So let's hit our winners of the weekend. I've got a couple winners, but they're all connected. These winners are the Hilton Garden Inn in Texarkana, Texas,

the Comfort Inn in Plattsburgh, New York, and the Drury Inn in Carbondale, Illinois. Each of these places are charging at least $500 for a standard hotel room on April 8th, 2024. And I can assure you that they cannot charge these prices at any other time. Plattsburgh's fine, but it's in the middle of nowhere. So the question here is, what is going on next April 8th that is allowing these hotels to charge five times as much as they typically do? I'll give you a second to hit pause on the podcast now if you want to try thinking of what it could be. So hit pause.

Well, we don't have to do that because I was thinking about that. They can just hit pause. Okay. All right. So the answer is that is when the next solar eclipse is going to take place. And for the first time since 2017, the total eclipse is going to be visible in the lower 48 states along a narrow stretch from South Texas to Maine. So places that are within this total eclipse viewing area have already been swamped with travelers making reservations to come next spring. And this is going to be the last one for a while, too.

The next eclipse viewable in the U.S. won't be until 2044. So we got this huge eclipse economy emerging next April. I'm not an eclipse guy I don't see the the craze around it because I just like aren't you not supposed to even look at them you have to have a special

Maybe that's what we should launch Prime energy glasses Prime energy glasses But are you an eclipse guy Would you travel to go to like the ideal I would certainly not travel But I would look I think that's the total eclipse viewing area

Even if you're outside of it You can see it kind of cool Lee. I like the concept. I don't know if I care about the eclipse itself, but I like the concept of everyone in the world kind of doing, like talking about the same thing and coming together because I remember back in 2017, I will always associate the last eclipse with like the really early days at Morning Brew and we're in a we work. And I remember it happening during that day. And everyone in the financial district in New York kind of left their offices and went outside. And there was this there was this camaraderie going around and Trump had that viral pick where he, when you look at that. That's what I assume is. Yeah, so maybe we'll get Biden looking, you know, doing something stupid and looking at the eclipse. But I am, it lasts four minutes. Yeah.

Hey, best four minutes of your life, maybe. All right, Neil, my winner of the weekend is Zuck's side project, Threads. Remember, threads is the ultra-fast growing new tech-based social media platform under the meta umbrella. That is Zuck's answer to Twitter. It's my winner for a couple of reasons. First, Zuck posts on Friday that it crossed 77 million. users. But that probably is an undercount because, according to data aggregator, quiver quantitative, it could be pushing 98 to 100 million users by the time this podcast comes out.

Also, the other big story of the weekend is that Zuck is kind of mocking Elon by replying to post on threads in the same way that Elon responds on Twitter, which is by saying, concerning to anything and everything. Of course, Elon has fired back at Zuck by calling him a cuckold among other things. If you don't know what that is, look it up, I guess. This war of words between the two billionaires is escalating. And honestly, at this point, it's very hard to understand if they're just joking around still or if they are genuinely developing this weird sort of rivalry.

Oh, I think they hate each other. Yeah. Oh, there's no doubt they hate each other. But they'll even hate each other even more. Or Elon will hate Zuck if Threads is the Twitter killer, which it increasingly is likely to be. Right. Except for there's one aspect of where I think the platforms could kind of diverge and carve out their own niches.

And that's because Adam Masary, who is the head of Instagram, said on Friday to a reply to a journalist saying that threads won't prioritize news or political content because he's saying basically it's just not worth the headache. And it was a mistake they made in the early days of Facebook by promising too much. They're not going to downrank it. They're just not going to prioritize it. whereas Twitter kind of lives in that instant news bubble. That's what you tune into to get news and to talk about some ongoing situation. So I could see them kind of two past diversion in the woods, and one is towards the news side.

One is towards the more feel-good side. So that's a point of departure between me down. Put you down for threads. All right, there you go. All right, Neil. We have some news out of the NBA this offseason, and no, it's not about how Victor Wembenyama is definitely a bus. you can quote me on that.

Let's keep the receipts on that one. We finally have the details around the NBA's long-awaited mid-season tournament. So for those who aren't NBA fans out there, the NBA operates like most U.S. sports. There's a regular season that spends 82 games and a postseason where teams are seated based on the regular season performance. Well, after years of teasing it, there's now a new mid-season NBA Cup up for grabs,

which pits all 30 teams against each other in a tournament with 500,000 per player to the winning team on the line. The idea behind this tournament is to add some mid-season spice to the middle of the year before the playoffs start. It also closely resembles a much more European approach to the game where knockout tournaments are a staple of competitions in both basketball and soccer. The best way I can describe it to any Premier League fan out there is that this is basically the FA Cup for the NBA.

I think it's a great idea for the game. Oh, I think it'll be fun. I think the NBA execs are right in saying that traditions take a while to build. And there needs to be some sort of prestige around it. The FAA Cup has been, what, around for over 100 years in England. So this is going to take a while for the NBA Cup to actually mean something besides $500,000 to the player. I think it also cements Las Vegas as like the center of the NBA. They're holding the Summer League there right now.

And they're going to hold the final four of the NBA Cup there as well. And so just the center of gravity in the NBA is in Las Vegas, especially with that sphere going on. So I think it'll be successful. I think they probably have to do some sort of, you know, twist or bring in European teams or like have, you know, UNC or have like the best team in college play against the worst team in the NBA. Like some sort of thing to make it more than just NBA teams playing against each other because I think that just may get a little boring after a while. So one final note on this one. So they named it the NBA Cup, which is funny because a lot of people thought it was going to be named after David Cern, who is the late commissioner. But then they admitted that they might change it if a sponsor comes in.

So right now it's the NBA Cup, but maybe eventually it's like the Coca-Cola Classic or something like that. So they left the door open. They want prestige. But they're like, oh, yeah, we also might change the name if a sponsor. Is the Champions League like sponsored by any brand? I mean, it's sponsored by Heineken, but it's not. Right. It's the champions.

They don't have the name sponsorship. All right. So that would be fun this summer. So if your team sucks in the regular season, then they have a chance, right? That's the whole point. All right, let's do a quick rundown of what's happening in the week ahead. Biden is heading to Europe for a NATO summit. NATO had this very big sense of camaraderie after Russia invaded Ukraine.

After all, it was formed to provide like a bulwark against the Soviet Union. There's a little disagreement now over things like whether Ukraine should join or whether the U.S. should have sent cluster bombs over there. So Biden's going to have to sort of like do a kumbaya moment and rally the troops. But that's like the biggest thing in politics. We have earnings season is back. So for all of listeners who desperately want us to talk about things like EPS and forward guidance, you are lucky.

So big banks usually kick that off. And that's going to happen on Friday. Not much juicy stuff. There's always something. There's always something. But, you know, there isn't like necessarily an overall. overarching theme besides Fed interest rates again. So we'll see what happens.

The biggest thing will probably be major stock swings in certain directions. But yes, there's always interesting things. Tom Cruise going to try to pull off his biggest stunt yet, which is saving this slumping summer box office with Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning 1. Coming out on Wednesday, it's expected to take in over 300 million in its debut. The box office is hurting right now. I mean, Indiana Jones was a flop. Fast X was a flop.

Little Mermaid did not meet projections. We're entering like the murder's row. We got Dead Reckoning Part 1 and then Barbie Heimer coming nine days from that. I think I'm going to the movies that Friday, but I'm seeing Mission Impossible. Yeah, you are big, am I? I think it's going to be sick.

It's going to be a billion-dollar movie. We have a couple other things tying up some loose ends. Amazon Prime Day is tomorrow and Wednesday. The MLB Home Run Derby is. tonight. The All-Star game is tomorrow. That is always super fun. Wimbledon is entering its final week. Bastille Day is on Friday, and so that

happens in France, but France is kind of on edge right now after all of those mass protests, so they're banning fireworks for Bastille Day. It's going to be another scorching week here. I feel like we say that every week, but there's going to be probably some record broken in Southern Florida and in the Southwest U.S. where

Phoenix temps are going to hit 115 degrees. It's hot. Too hot. Jesus Christ. And then on Thursday, there's Another meteorological event, if you don't want to wait for the solar eclipse, says Americans in 17 states should be able to see the northern lights because of this weird storm. New York? New York? I don't think so.

Oh, dang it. I've never seen the northern lights. All right, that is our show. Pretty packed, Toby. It's going to be a good week. I have this give you a shout out. Yeah, I do want to give a shout out to my mom. It was her birthday yesterday.

So if the YouTube, if you've listened this far on YouTube, toss her a comment, say, Happy birthday to Mama Howell. All right, Neil, roll those credits. All right, let's roll the credits. If you want to send us a note, our email address is Morning Brew Daily at MorningBrew.com. Huge shout out to our crew who puts the show together. Emily Milliron is our editor and producer.

Welcome back. It was also her mom's birthday yesterday. Oh, really? Happy birthday, Mama Miliron. Samantha Velas and Raymond Lou are the associate producers. Euchenna Wa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. Hair and makeup needs to be bailed out of jail

after getting caught disabling a robotaxie. David and Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today meal. Let's run it back tomorrow.