Morning Brew Daily - Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

Episode 499: Neal and Toby talk about the sudden closure of famous (or infamous) short-seller firm Hindenburg Research. Then, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has officially entered the space race as it send...s its first rocket into orbit. Meanwhile, MBAs are looking like they’re losing their prestige as even Harvard MBAs are having a tough time landing a job post-college. Plus, Nintendo is the Stock of the Week, while UnitedHealth Group is the Dog of the Week. Finally, Scott Bessent, Zyn, Tubi, and Duolingo are in the headlines.  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. Checkout public.com/morningbrew for more Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for US-listed, registered securities, options and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA & SIPC. Cryptocurrency trading services are offered by Bakkt Crypto Solutions, LLC (NMLS ID 1890144), which is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the NYSDFS. Cryptocurrency is highly speculative, involves a high degree of risk, and has the potential for loss of the entire amount of an investment. Cryptocurrency holdings are not protected by the FDIC or SIPC.  Alpha is an AI research tool powered by GPT-4.  Alpha is experimental and may generate inaccurate responses.  Output from Alpha should not be construed as investment research or recommendations, and should not serve as the basis for any investment decision. Public makes no warranties about its accuracy, completeness, quality, or timeliness of any Alpha out. Please independently evaluate and verify any such output for your own use case. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:01 Consider this comparison. PWC data found the percentage of CEOs who report revenue gains or cost reductions from AI is almost equal to the percentage who say they're still stuck. What separates these two groups? PWC points to a clarity issue. Even for CEOs, it's hard to tell what's AI hype, what's reality, and where this tuck can make a tangible difference. Learn where AI can actually make an impact and what successful adoption looks like at
Starting point is 00:00:26 pwc.com slash U.S. slash brew AI. That's pwc.com slash us slash brew AI. Good morning brew daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, more MBA grads are on the job hunt months
Starting point is 00:00:42 after graduation. Has the degree permanently lost its luster? Then the founder behind the infamous shortseller Hindenburg Research is shutting the firm down. It's Friday, January 17th. Let's ride. We lost a couple of
Starting point is 00:01:01 legends yesterday. Visionary director David Lynch died at 78. He was beloved for his surrealist eerie depictions of American life in works like Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, and Blue Velvet. Many have tried to copy his style, but as our colleague Jen Walsh put it so eloquently, no one has matched his freak since. Lynch's family announced his death on Facebook, writing there's a big hole in the world now that he is no longer with us. But as he would say, keep your eye on the Donut and not on the whole. Toby, last year I started watching Mulholland Drive because it is considered one of, if not the best movie of the last 25 years of the 21st century. 20 minutes in, I was spooked. I turned it off. Maybe it's because I was by myself. It was late at night.
Starting point is 00:01:48 So maybe we can watch it together because I do hear amazing things about that movie. Either that or his version of Dune, which is also iconic, albeit for different reasons. It's become a little bit of a cult classic because of just how we. and over the top it does. But yeah, David Lynch, an absolute legend. We also lost Bob Euker, the iconic announcer known as Mr. Baseball, who was the voice of the Milwaukee Brewers for over 50 years. He was 90 years old. Even if you never tuned into a brewers game, you likely know Yucer for his iconic cameos in sports cinema. His just a bit outside call from Major League is as quotable as they come. Norm McDonald thought Yucer was one of the funniest men he
Starting point is 00:02:31 ever met. And I encourage you all to go look up his appearances on the Johnny Carson's Tonight Show to corroborate Norm's claim. They will never quite be a Mr. Baseball like him. Now a word from our sponsor, public.com. Neil, you ever use any LLMs or AI chatbots? I'm kind of an AI Luddite for the most part, although I will pull one up to prove my brother wrong every once in a while. Well, maybe you just haven't found the right one yet. Public's AI assistant Alpha is just like your typical chat bot like ChatGBT, but specifically for investing. So instead of just making my brother look bad, I could ask about market trends and get real insights. Exactly. Want to know why a specific stock is moving? Ask Alpha. Curious about a company's most
Starting point is 00:03:15 recent earnings call? Ask Alpha. And considering public gives you access to stocks, bonds, crypto, and options all on one platform. Sometimes you need a little help navigating all of those choices. Check out public.com slash morning brew and get some alpha from Alpha. Paid for by public investing, full disclosures in podcast description. 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.
Starting point is 00:03:50 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. Our first story goes out to all the short kings out there, and I'm not just talking about height. Nate Anderson, the man behind the famed short-selling firm Hindenberg research, tossed in the towel, saying he was closing his firm due to the stresses of the job. Hindenberg made a name for itself by going after the giants of the corporate world. including the Indian conglomerate Adani Group,
Starting point is 00:04:28 the once high-flying hydrogen truck startup Nikola, and household names like Carvana, Icon Enterprises, and Jack Dorsey-owned Block. Between Block, Adoni Group, and Icon Enterprises, Hindenberg's deeply researched reports knocked as much as $173 billion off their market value. It's not easy to destroy that much value admits one of the best bull runs U.S. equities have seen in decades,
Starting point is 00:04:53 but Hindenberg's approach created a loyal following that allowed it to a punch above its weight. Not all of its shots hit its target, though. Since publishing a report about Roblox in October, the children's game platform has seen its stock rise 50%. And shares of its most recent target, Carvana, have recovered and are up about 5% this month. Still, it's going to be weird living in a world without a Hindenberg report, randomly dropping from the clouds and causing a ruckuskneal, and shows that activist short-sellers are increasingly becoming a dying breed. So our first thought when this news hit the wires on Wednesday was that financial regulators
Starting point is 00:05:32 are knocking at his door because short selling is not for the weak stomach. He launched this firm in 2017 and immediately was sued by three of the firms that he was targeting. There are legal challenges facing other shortsellers as well. Andrew Left, who's a very prominent shortseller, is now was indicted for Menloyal. manipulating stock. So I don't, I'm not speculating at all. It's just this is the first thing that came to everyone's mind here at Morning Brew because short sellers are operating in a legal gray area. And many of them have just hung up the cleats in recent years because they say it's not worth it. Hindenberg guy says it's because he just has a terrible work life balance.
Starting point is 00:06:13 Yeah. I mean, as for a long time, short sellers have been advised by their lawyers that as long as your reports that you issue contain no material inaccuracies in our knowledge. not based on inside information, you're pretty much in the clear. But again, they are these destructive forces in the financial world. So of course, some of the companies that are the targets of short sellers do start to push back, do sue, do try to pursue legal action against them. So they aren't loved, nor are they very well understood. But Hindenberg kind of bucked that trend a little bit. I think it's because its big break was taking on Nikola Motors, which this was just kind of emblematic of that time, is that 2020, 2020, 2021, Air.
Starting point is 00:06:52 out where these spacks were these high-flying companies. Hindenberg looked under the curtain of, looked under the hood of Nicola Motors and found that in a lot of their videos, they weren't even powering their trucks via the ways that they were supposed to be powered. They were rolling them down hills. And those sort of revelations kind of endeared people to Hindenburg because then they were seen as this small upstart firm going after these potentially fraudulent companies, which is why it created sort of this cult following,
Starting point is 00:07:21 just emblematic of that quote following. Nate Anderson signed off by sending his team this link to a deep house set by this British DJ in Bali. It's this very nice video. But if you go and look at those top comments, most of them are mentioning Hindenberg saying RIP, Hindenberg, like we loved you. So that sort of kind of love for a short seller is not something you see very often. It was unique to Hindenberg. No, especially in 2021 with the GameStop fiasco. If you remember what that was all about, you had these Redditors trying to push up the stock of GameStop because it was being shorted by a hedge fund, Melvin Capital, and they wanted to put the quote unquote squeeze on the short seller, Melvin Capital. Melvin is no longer with us. It is defunct after that GameStop rise in share price. But a number of short sellers in recent years have just said, this is not worth it. Bill Ackman had that very, very prominent short on herbal life, and he lost billions of dollars on that.
Starting point is 00:08:21 So he's like, I'm not doing that anymore. Citron is another guy who's like, he had a $6 billion short fund. And he's like, I'm just not doing this anymore. So we may see a decline in short sellers. They may be going extinct after Hindenburg is gone now. And some would celebrate that. They think that short selling is illegal and it causes all sorts of chaos in the market. And people can manipulate stocks that way because they are making money on their betting that the stocks will go down
Starting point is 00:08:50 after they issue these reports. And then others say, no, actually, shortsellers are an important part of our markets ecosystem. It's important to have a check on market euphoria. So, you know, I just, the future for short sellers does look extremely cloudy. The billionaire space race is officially on. Jeff Bezos's space company, Blue Origin, successfully launched its new Glenn rocket into orbit for the first time early Thursday. it's a huge step for the world's second richest man to begin competing in space
Starting point is 00:09:21 against the world's first richest man, Elon Musk, whose SpaceX holds a near monopoly on rocket launches. This launch has been a long time coming. Bezos founded Blue Origin 25 years ago, only six years after he launched Amazon with the goal of enabling millions of people to work and live in space. But in the years since, Blue Origin
Starting point is 00:09:42 has only managed to send people up to the edge of space, certainly not orbit, and a small rocket named New Shepard. And the launch of this big rocket, the towering 322 foot tall New Glenn, was initially slated for 2020 before delays pushed it back five years. Meanwhile, SpaceX launched rockets 134 times last year alone is valued at $350 billion and has built out a Starlink satellite internet service
Starting point is 00:10:08 that's set to raken nearly $12 billion in revenue this year. So as it stands now, Musk has built a commanding lead over. Bezos. Let's call it 28 to 3. Toby, can Bezos pull off a Patriots-level comeback and present the first real challenge to SpaceX? Who knows? There was a lot of reasons to doubt Blue Origin before this because they literally had not gotten anything up into orbit in 25 years. It is kind of wild to think about how much kind of airtime we've thought about Blue Origin, but how little they'd actually accomplished. So this did silence a lot of those initial doubters because even though, Blue Origin has been lagging behind. NASA is counting on New Glend to actually deliver two spacecraft
Starting point is 00:10:51 into orbit around Mars, so it has a contract with them. The U.S. Military also has a few contracts with Blue Origin as well. Blue Origin has also poured a ton of money into getting its ambitions off the ground. They've put $1 billion into New Glent's launch site. It's near historic Cape Canaveral. So there's a lot on the line here. They needed to get something into orbit, and they finally got it off the ground. Mission didn't go perfectly. They weren't able to land the booster like SpaceX has done in the past, but they did have a successful orbital mission,
Starting point is 00:11:23 which is really the main purpose of this latest launch. And Bezos has been entranced by space since a young age. He appeared at the Deal Book Summit last year, and he said, I think it's going to be, this, he's talking about space, blue origin. He's going to be the best business that I've ever been involved in, but it's going to take a while. might I remind you that he's been involved in another big company, Amazon.
Starting point is 00:11:46 So he's pretty bullish on space. And I just kind of want to take a step back here. We used to talk about the space race in terms of U.S. versus Russia versus China. And now we have the new space race here in 2025 is between the two richest people on Earth, Elon Musk and SpaceX against Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos. It's just an entirely different thing that's going on. and NASA is relying on these private companies to deliver payloads into orbit and take it, take into its new frontier.
Starting point is 00:12:17 Maybe that's another way of America establishing its soft power. And we did have a little bit of a frenemy moment or just a friendly moment between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Elon Musk did congratulate Blue Origin that he wrote, congratulations on reaching orbit on the first attempt. And then we had some nice parallelism as well because SpaceX launched its starship yesterday. it was a little bit of a mixed bag. They actually lost communication with Starship,
Starting point is 00:12:43 which led to it breaking up in orbit, which also led to some really cool pictures. It looked like a full-on meteor shower as this Starship broke up, but they did end up catching their heavy booster with the chopsticks again, which is just always a very cool thing to watch. So it was almost the perfect, you know,
Starting point is 00:12:59 antithesis to the new Glenn launch, which successfully completed their orbital mission, but wasn't able to catch their booster. SpaceX did the exact opposite. So maybe if you're nasty, you're like, well, in aggregate, we had a pretty good day here. There was a time when a Harvard MBA was a first class ticket to, well, a first class ticket. But times are changing in this rough market for white collar workers. According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly a quarter of job seeking Harvard MBAs who graduated last spring are still on the hunt for work three months after leaving school.
Starting point is 00:13:32 That's up from 20% the year before and way up from 10% in 2022. And I'm not just going to pick on Harvard. This NBA recession has impacted all of the top B schools. Wharton at Penn, Stanford's grad school of business, NYU Stern. They all saw lower job placements last year than at any point in modern history, the journal wrote. I'll give you one more number to put a point on it. The share of 2024 MBAs still on the job market months after they graduated has more than doubled at most elite business schools over 2022. The big picture, even though the economy continues to add jobs,
Starting point is 00:14:07 a rapid clip. Demand is just not strong for white-collar high-wage employees who come out of places like HBS. The big four consulting firms are slimming down. Tech has adopted Mark Zuckerberg's year of efficiency model. And of course, AI replacing human jobs is always in the back of your mind. Toby, the thorny question here. Is this a blip or more of a permanent trend of MBA's declining in status?
Starting point is 00:14:31 Yeah, I mean, there's definitely cycles when it comes to hiring. I mean, after the big tech bubble popped, saw the share of MBA grads going into tech drop precipitously. So it is a cyclical industry and a cyclical business. And also, just because you have a fancy MBA and a fancy degree next to your name, doesn't mean you're completely immune to the difficulties experienced in this job market right now. It still is a pretty, even though we have had great jobs data coming out, it is not necessarily the most gangbusters job market that we've seen. So of course, they're going to feel a little bit pressure just like every other person trying to get a job is feeling. It's a two-sided marketplace,
Starting point is 00:15:10 too. If Amazon, if Google, if the McKinsey's, if the Baines of the world don't want to hire people, if they are cutting back, of course, you're going to see people lagging on the job market as well. So I don't know if it's an existential threat or if it's just a cyclical thing, but whatever's happening, less MBAs are getting hired. That was the big conversation on social media. Paul Graham, the venture capitalist, said, this is a secular trend when quoting this article. And he said, and by that he is implying that this is more of a permanent downward trend in the fact that demand for MBA specifically are just going down. And I do want to talk about AI. I think that is maybe the chapot elephant in the room here. Google said it's already writing 25% of its code
Starting point is 00:15:54 using AI. A new report from Bloomberg found that global banks are going to shed 200,000 jobs in the next three to five years due to AI. And I don't know how much of this MBA downturn people can't find jobs is companies already using AI to replace workers. But, you know, it's certainly something that, you know, we'll have to watch. Because when you're talking about this kind of AI, we've talked about automation for centuries, replacing human jobs. But in the past, it's been blue collar work, manufacturers, let's get a robot to build this widget instead of a human. It's a lot safer and more efficient. This kind of AI that we've seen this AI revolution of the past few years
Starting point is 00:16:36 is really going after white-collar work, knowledge workers. So that's where this white-collar recession could come from. And MBAs are perhaps on the front line of that because they're very expensive. Meanwhile, chatbots mostly free. So I think AI, if it's not a part of this story now, will be one in the coming years. Let's take a quick break. After it, we're going to Stock the Week, Dog the Week. Today we helped a
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Starting point is 00:18:03 It's Friday, which means it is Stock of the Week. Dog of the Week time where Neil and I pick one stock. that is struggling with prolonged flu-like symptoms, and one stock that has had a clean bill of health. Neil, you fought hard, but I won the pre-show chess boxing match, so I'm up first, and my stock of the week is Nintendo because the Japanese video game maker finally has a new console coming out. After eight long years, Nintendo unveiled the successor to its popular Switch console,
Starting point is 00:18:31 the Switch 2. Set to launch later this year, the hybrid console will feature a 7-inch screen and redesign controllers that attach to side ports magnetically instead of sliding in mechanically like the original model. The Switch 2 is a big deal for Nintendo, but also the wider gaming industry. The first edition of the device is the second best-selling console of all time behind just the PlayStation 2.
Starting point is 00:18:55 It propelled Nintendo to its most profitable era ever, but it's been out since 2017 and momentum in sales are lagging, causing Nintendo's profits to hit a banana peel. So analysts are hoping that the Switch 2 can power comeback both in the hardware and in the game sales divisions. The switch will be looked at as a remarkable console. It's a hybrid of a home console and a handheld one. And it was home to some legendary games that Nintendo put out.
Starting point is 00:19:24 Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild, Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart 8, deluxe. Some very legendary games here all came out on the Switch. And people who are looking to get the new Switch should know that these will be compatible on the new device as well. So, I mean, yeah, you're right. Like, the Switch sold, like, gangbusters for its first four to five years.
Starting point is 00:19:48 But actually, over the past few years, I mean, it has been showing its age. Nintendo's profits have declined for five straight quarters. So it really needs this new Switch to give gin up sales. And they are taking a safer approach than Nintendo has in the past because they are using a familiar silhouette. They're kind of just updating the Switch one instead of. redesigning a whole new form factor, which in the past the company has definitely done. It has had some big swings and some big misses.
Starting point is 00:20:15 What comes to mind is the Wii, the Nintendo GameCube as well. Both were flopped compared to their predecessors. So maybe in an effort to just say we need to revive sales a little bit, let's go with what we know works instead of trying to redesign an entirely new gaming system like they have in the past. Okay, what's your favorite Nintendo console? Well, the Wii. That was the only console I had growing up.
Starting point is 00:20:37 I didn't have an Xbox and we didn't have anything. My parents weren't big video games people, so they fell for the propaganda of, oh, they're going to be moving while they play it. So I'm a huge wee guy. My dog of the week is United Healthcare Group, the owner of the health insurance company whose CEO, Brian Thompson, was fatally shot in December, sparking a national debate around the industry. United Health stock fell 6% yesterday after dropping its first earnings report since that
Starting point is 00:21:04 assassination, notching record revenues of $400 billion for the full year, but missing profit estimates which sent the stock tumbling. Net income for 2024 plunged 35% from 2023, as the company took a big hit from a massive cyber attack, one of the worst ever, on one of its subsidiaries last February. Its costs have also jumped from greater demand for health care under Medicare plans for older adults lowering profit margins. Financials aside, everyone on the earnings call wanted to hear what CEO Andrew Whitty would say after the shooting of his direct report shined a spotlight on his company's tactics and put the entire health insurance business on the defense.
Starting point is 00:21:43 Whitty praised Thompson as a leader who dove into projects passionately and also acknowledged that the health system needs to function better and lower costs for everyone. Yeah, there was definitely a magnifying glass on this latest earnings call for the reasons that you just described, but also because there is right now a lot of pressure on the healthcare industry as a hold United Health's annual medical cost ratio, which is actually the percent of premiums, it pays out for medical care. That hit 85 percent this quarter. It's usually the industry average is around 80 percent historically. So that highlights the problem that a lot of these healthcare companies are beginning to face, and that is higher medical costs due to more demand
Starting point is 00:22:24 from aging Americans, more Americans utilizing these Medicare plans. So there's definitely some nervousness around the industry right now as these, you know, medical cost ratio continued to creep upwards. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Donald Trump's pick for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bassett, had his confirmation hearing before the Senate yesterday. The billionaire hedge fund manager defended Trump's plans to enact sweeping tariffs and extend deep tax cuts from 2017, which is important because as Treasury Secretary, Hull be in charge of carrying out those policies. Democrats are less enthused than Republicans over Besant's nomination, expressing concern that the tariffs will lead to inflation and the tax cuts will benefit rich people and companies
Starting point is 00:23:06 more than the middle class. Still, he's expected to sail through the nomination process and replace Janet Yellen as the president's top fiscal policy advisor and manager of the national debt. Yeah, Besant stuck pretty closely to the preferred talking points. Trump's preferred policies, his big, you know, kind of things that he spoke about were the 2017 tax cuts. He called extending those the single most important economic issue of the day. And he warned that failing to extend him would represent a huge tax increase on a lot of Americans. He says, he called it the largest tax increase in history on Americans. So definitely tariffs is going to be a talking point.
Starting point is 00:23:45 But then these tax cuts are probably going to be some of the storylines that will be swirling around. assent as he kind of eases in, assuming he gets approved, the nomination gets approved, as we ease into these first hundred days of the Trump administration. Zinn lovers rejoice, your favorite lip pillows aren't in danger of getting taken off the shelves anytime soon. The FDA formally authorized the nicotine pouches yesterday after conceding they were safe through testing. The big finding that went in Zin's favor is that they posed a lower risk of cancer and
Starting point is 00:24:17 other health conditions when compared to cigarettes and smoke. tobacco products. Not only are they better, but the evidence also showed that Zins could help smokers quit the habit as well. Neil, this was a big win for Zinn and a big win for everyone who loves a cheeky little upper decky from time to time. Yeah, this is huge. You have to balance two things to get the FDA's green light for this nicotine product. You have to show that your products will reduce disease among adult tobacco users. So you have to show that they will come over to use your products and that it won't lead to an uptick in bad health outcomes. At the same time, you can't be attracting teens and adolescents.
Starting point is 00:24:56 And this is what Chuck Schumer last year went after Zinn for marketing towards youth with with a lot of Zin influencers online. The company says that it does not pay these influencers to target the youth. And the FDA said, sure, I believe you. So right now, Zin did fulfill those two check marks. and it does have data to back up the fact that kids, you know, like actual kids are not using this. Fewer than 2% of American high school and middle school students used nicotine pouches last year. If you are a cord cutter but still want to watch the Super Bowl next month, you'll be able to stream it for free for the first time ever.
Starting point is 00:25:34 Fox, which is broadcasting the Super Bowl, said it's going to stream the game live on Tobe, its ad-supporting streaming service. To be as a history with the Super Bowl, if you remember that viral ad two years ago, where it seemed like someone had hijacked your remote and interrupted the announcers, that was Tooby. Now it's preparing for its time in the spotlight, and you know what? I think it's ready. Fox bought Tooby for $400 million in 2020. Now it's bringing in $1 billion in revenue. Monthly active users have spiked 25% over the past year to 97 million. By getting the big game, it's hoping to juice those numbers even more. Tobey is way bigger than I thought. Nearly 100 million monthly active users is a size.
Starting point is 00:26:15 sizeable figure. And yes, this is the Super Bowl coming to the streaming era. The one caveat that needs to be mentioned here is that you do need to make an account if you want to stream the Super Bowl. So you won't be able to just tune in online or tune in on your TV. You have to have
Starting point is 00:26:31 a tube. Get that fake email ready. Or yeah, whatever you're, I think I just have the throwaway email that, you know, you sign up for all the accounts with. But yeah, this is no longer just a linear TV story streaming. era has definitely come to the Super Bowl.
Starting point is 00:26:47 And yeah, if people are having flashbacks to that one ad, everyone was like, is my TV broken? What's going on here? So, Tobe is kind of, uh, occupies some, some headspace in a lot of sports fans' minds. For our final headline, remember we talked this week about the rise of the Chinese TikTok-like app Red Note? Users flock to it as this semi-ironic protest of TikTok's potential ban running willingly into the embrace of the Chinese-owned platform.
Starting point is 00:27:14 But they also ran right into an app interface that is entirely in Mandarin, which has proved to be a boon for Duolingo. The language learning app has experienced a 216% surge in new Mandarin learners in the U.S. driven by Red Notes rise. Duo Lingo isn't complaining, though. It also saw a 36% rise in U.S. downloads and has cashed in with some seriously viral posts on X2 with run reading, oh, so now you're learning Mandarin, getting 15 million impressions. Neil, what is TikTok's loss is Duolingo's gain? How good is Tuolingo's social media team, just capitalizing on this,
Starting point is 00:27:52 unleashing a series of extremely viral posts, building on the momentum. They're so good at taking, you know, something that just happened to them, right? And they got lucky, but then they built on that to maybe establish a more direct relationship with these new users that are coming in to learn Mandarin.
Starting point is 00:28:09 So, you know, hats off to you, that you did a great job. And now it's rising up the top. It's not, you know, at the level of Red Note, which is number one, lemonade, number two. But it wasn't the 40 top 40s for the top app store. Now it's 22, number 20. So it has seen a climb. I've never used Duolingo.
Starting point is 00:28:29 Either have I, but those, my brother and his girlfriend use it. And those like, it's a very, you know, recognizable tone. I hear it on the subways, too. So it's one of those things that once you start using it, it's a very viral and a sticky app because you want to keep your street going. So once you kind of make the plunge learning language, I do think it kind of captures you. Let's wrap it up there.
Starting point is 00:28:50 Thanks for starting your morning with us. Have an amazing Friday and an even better weekend. Eagles do not let me down this Sunday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to Morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the show, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with friends, family, coworkers, anyone who's looking for a quick, fun news roundup in the morning.
Starting point is 00:29:11 and don't worry if you're drawing a blank. Toby, as always, has a sharing suggestion for you. I want you to share today's podcast with someone who wants some long weekend listening as well. Monday is MLK Junior Day, and we recorded a special holiday interview episode with Phil Andrews from Maxonomics. We talked about everything from autonomous vehicles to tariffs to why Chipotle could overtake McDonald's soon. So share this episode with your friends so they get to listen to that wonderful episode as well. All right, let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Loo is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Yucheno is our technical director. And for the final time. This is so sad. Billy Minino is on audio. This is Billy's last day working on the pod. Thank you for everything, Billy. Best of luck on your new adventures. And I'm so excited for you to be able to sleep in. Thanks for making us sound good, Billy. Hair and makeup is learning Mandarin Zsao Shang-How.
Starting point is 00:30:11 That means good morning. Zowshang Howe Brew Daily show. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our shows of production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well. All. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari.
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