Morning Brew Daily - SpaceX for Your Cell Phone & US Debt Hits $34 Trillion

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

Episode 228: Neal and Toby discuss the court documents that were released containing names associated with Jeffrey Epstein. Plus, SpaceX launches satellites that will provide cell phone service to T-Mobile and the US Debt hits $34 trillion. Neal shares his favorite numbers and how Gypsy Rose Blanchard's release from prison highlights the business of true crime. Finally, the 13-year old that beat Tetris. 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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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the national debt has soared to $34 trillion, why some economists say it's time to start hitting the panic button. Then we'll analyze the true crime machine that has made Gypsy Rose Blanchard a social media star. It's Thursday, January 4th. Let's cry. Yesterday, if you listen to the show, we talked about a 16-year-old dart star by the name of Luke, the Newk, Littler.

Littler became the youngest player ever to reach the final of the world Darts championships yesterday and is just an electric sportsman overall. He's quickly become an MBD favorite, but Neil, you actually watched the finals yesterday. Tell the people about the experience. Are you a fan? Well, I'm a fan of darts. Unfortunately, we should say Luke lost to another player named Luke Humphreys who won the championship, but I am all in on this sport.

Formula One and pickleball. So, 2002. It's fast-paced. There's lots of d'clock. drama. I also love the mental math aspect because when you end around, these guys have to get a double to leave around. So there's a lot of mental math planning and strategy that's happening. So, I mean, the semi-final for Luke Littler gained 2.3 million viewers. That's about on par with the Stanley Cup final. Oh my God. Luke is, he's a sportsman of the year. But also, you really enjoyed the

production aspect of it, too, because it feels like the camera knew where to look where they're throwing the darts. Yeah, it was like, you know, any Mr. Beast YouTube video. There was a lot of cutscenes. They had so many different cameras on the board. So I know people are probably rolling their eyes right now, but I'm pretty bullish on darts. Bullish on darts. Before we jump into the show, we have a quick word from our sponsor, Veem.

What is Veem, Neil? Great question. Veem is the number one global leader in data protection and ransomware recovery. So it's helping protect your data from getting compromised and helping you recover it when it does. Beautifully put, they also have this idea called Radical. resilience, which means bouncing back and bouncing forward whenever mistakes do end up happening. Radical resilience, I can get behind that. Head to Veem.com today to discover more. That's VEEAM.com today. 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.S. College PC. Yesterday, a list of nearly 200 people previously known as John and Jane Doze were revealed in a release of court documents connected to the convicted sex offender and former financier

Jeffrey Epstein. This list had been breathlessly. anticipated on social media for weeks, with the expectation that more powerful business people in Hollywood types would be named in association with the disgraced Epstein, who killed himself in his jail cell while awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges in 2019. But the reality is there was not much new or pathbreaking here. Most of the information and people named in the documents had already been revealed by news organizations and other court proceedings. And the fact that people were included in the docs is not an indication of wrongdoing or

lawbreaking, just that they appear. in testimony or depositions in an old lawsuit filed by one of Epstein's accusers. Two of the most prominent people named in the documents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton have previously said they cut off ties to Epstein decades ago. Still, the release of the names and the hype around it reflects how the mythology of Epstein has continued years after his death and a reminder of how he cultivated a network of the rich and the famous to carry out his crimes. There was so much buildup to this list, unsealed list, Jane and John Doe's unmasked.

There was just tons of anticipation, but you were correct in saying that there wasn't a lot of bombshell names like some people were maybe hoping for. What was interesting to me was kind of this dynamic, though, of how the list is being used in culture today. I mean, Aaron Rogers went on ESPN and made a joke about the fact that Jimmy Kimmel might be on the list. And Jimmy Kimmel fired back and said, listen, I will sue you if you kind of implicate me with this thing. So what's interesting to me is how the list has kind of taken on its own sort of, I don't want to say, like, celebrity in the current times, but it is kind of like this boogeyman right now in popular culture and it's being like weaponized as a way to implicate people who aren't actually implicated. Yeah, that was just a conspiracy theory. But everything about Epstein is a conspiracy theory. What is not his impact on the business world?

I mean, there's been a huge fallout in the past few years of business people. who had associations with him. Leon Black is one big name. He's a huge investor. He was a co-founder of the private equity company, Apollo Global Management. He stepped down back in 2021 after his ties to Epstein were revealed. He paid Epstein a total of $158 million between 2012 and 2017 for various services. And the thing about that is Epstein was first charged and went to jail in 2008 for procuring and soliciting a minor for prostitution. Then he went to New York and tried to build out this network of rich, famous, powerful business people that he used and tried to resuscitate his reputation after that. And it seems he was successful. He had banking ties

with J.P. Morgan. He worked with Leon Black. He had meetings with Bill Gates. The Wall Street Journal uncovered his schedule of people he met with, his calendar, and it was all these big names in business like Reed Hoffman. So, I mean, Epstein somehow weaseled his way into these rich and powerful circles, and he used them to create this sex trafficking, right? Yeah, I do think that going forward, the story is more going to be about kind of narrative control around people whose names did appear on the, again, we're calling it the list, but in these unsealed court documents in saying, like, just because your name is in there, doesn't necessarily mean you were implicated.

So this whole saga is a story about narrative control and how it can often spin out of control sometimes. Okay, we've got junk in space, we've got black holes in space, and now we've got cell phone towers in space. Elon Musk's SpaceX launched its first set of Starlink satellites yesterday that can provide cell service anywhere in the world. SpaceX is partnering with T-Mobile to bring the service to U.S. customers, but you likely won't be ditching your earthly phone provider anytime soon. Direct-to-sell will only enable texting at first, but voice and data will follow in the coming years, T-Mobile said. The goal of the direct-to-sell is not to be your main cell provider, but to help get rid of those annoying dead zones that pop up in even the most developed countries,

as well as bring services to some of the more remote corners of the earth. I feel like a lot of us can get on board with this, Neil. I mean, we've all been there when it comes to those really annoying dead zones. Yeah, I mean, T-Mobile loves to show their map of connectivity, but there are still gaps, and I think it wants to use satellites to be able to cover them. I remember driving through Eastern Montana as one place that just did not have any cell towers. So for two and a half hours, you're just driving through this interesting terrain. And you can understand why they're not cell towers there because it's very remote and rocky and mountainous there. And you're just like, well, I guess I'm just on my own for now. But I think the key with this direct-to-sell satellites

is that you previously, you know, maybe you see in TV and movies when they make a satellite call, they take out this bulky phone. I think the key unlock here is that it works with a regular L-TAL. T-E phone. There's no new hardware created. So this is kind of a seamless experience for the customer to be able to get cell service in these dead zones from these satellites. Yeah, absolutely. And remember, Apple actually has satellite connectivity on all their iPhones. They partnered with this company called Link with a Y. And their CEO actually last year in September, actually not last year, it's September of 2022. That's my first mistake so far. I'm sure there will be many more to come. Their CEO said, we're years ahead of anybody else when the partnership was

announce, it doesn't look like it's years ahead at this point, because obviously, SpaceX has already kind of caught up and is offering their own service. But yeah, there's been various ways satellites have been used in cellular communications for years now. I mean, you mentioned the phone. That's a more hardware-specific approach, but what Apple does is it actually doesn't go through a cell tower. The signals are literally beamed back and forth directly between the satellite and Earth and the phone in your hand. So it is kind of getting rid of the movie trope of, yeah, the big antenna. The big antenna.

So Starlink is quickly becoming the moneymaker for SpaceX due to its internet satellites. It accounted for two-thirds of all revenue last year. And, you know, eventually SpaceX maybe wants to spin out Starlink because it has all of these internet-connected satellites. Meanwhile, SpaceX is just freaking killing it. Like, they had 96 orbital missions in 2023. That was last year, Toby. And in 2022, the previous high was 61.

They're planning a launch every 2.8 days this year. I mean, Elon wants her to be 42,000 satellites in Starlink's fleet eventually. Right now, there's around 5,000 already in orbit, and he just wants to keep sending them up there. It's going to get busy in space. Okay, the U.S. national debt keeps getting bigger and has topped $34 trillion for the first time ever, the Treasury Department said this week. The national debt was just $33 trillion three months ago. So to put it in perspective, the U.S. has borrowed $1 trillion since just the start of the NFL season.

You can't chalk it up to spending on holiday gifts. The rising debt is a result of government spending that has remained above pre-COVID levels, lower tax revenue, and crucially higher borrowing costs after the Fed jacked up interest rates. The U.S. government now spends $2 billion a day on debt interest payments alone, and in 10 years, it is projected to spend more on interest payments than on R&D infrastructure and education combined. So let's turn to the age-old question. Does it matter? Economists are split.

Some say, sure, this sounds like a huge and scary number, $34 trillion. But look at our economic growth. It's booming. We can keep borrowing as long as our economy keeps growing because we'll have no trouble paying it back. But others say the debt is an existential threat we need to take care of ASAP because not only are we paying more on interest than on programs that actually impact people's lives, but also because the debt should not be growing right now.

Unemployment is low. The economy is great. this is not traditionally an environment where deficit should widen. Yeah, for years, I mean, the economists have believed that the countries that was really not a problem, this was maybe a zero interest rate phenomenon, though. Interest rates were low, which made those payments cheap. Inflation was low, which kind of showed that maybe that wasn't hampering the economy. And if anything, that government spending had helped create jobs and helped keep unemployment

low. But you're so right, like, this is the time where technically we should be able to, lower the debt because the economy is relatively strong, unemployment is low. The interest payments are a little certainly annoying right now. But this is times of economic growth is when the debt's shrink and it's still growing. Even Paul Krugman, who's a liberal economist and has promoted deficit spending for years, said serious deficit reduction was a bad idea a decade ago, and it's a good idea now. And you see the tide start to turn because these credit rating agencies have kind of knocked

the U.S. for its debt load and this D.C. Brickmanship, which we can talk about. But last August, if you remember, Fitch cut its credit rating on U.S. sovereign debt from the AAA, the highest rating to AA plus. And in November, Moody's, which is the last credit rating agency that still has the U.S. on AAA rating, warned it could cut its rating because of these debt problems. And really, it's because the economic conditions have shifted under the U.S.'s feet with rising interest rates. It's so much more expensive to borrow money now than it used to be. Yeah, that $2 billion a day on debt interest payments alone is just staggering when you think about the opportunity of cost of what that money could be going to. Okay, before we get too stressed out about

just how big that debt number is, let's 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. $50.00,000. office select Weber 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 you home depot.com slash price match for details. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere of the crowd.

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Welcome to Neal's numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that act like an espresso martini for your brain. For my first number, it seems like you all are done with paying $100 a month for Max, Disney Plus, Netflix, Paramount, Plus, and Apple TV Plus. About 25%, one quarter of U.S. subscribers to major streaming services have canceled at least three of them in the past two years, according to analytics provider antenna. That is a big increase in cancellations from 2021, when just 15% had parted ways with three platforms.

The wave of defections come as streamers are trying different tactics to plug a hole in their gaping losses, including jacking up prices, launching lower-priced ad-supported tiers, and bundling services together to add more value. But it seems that consumers are increasingly being more choiceful, if I can use that infamous word, about which streamers they pay for. I think that this is actually maybe a potentially good sign for streamers in a sense that a lot of people are opting for their ad-supported tiers

in these lower-priced tiers. More than one-third of new U.S. Netflix customers in November opted for the ad tier compared to 11% a year earlier. So it is one of these things where people are balking at the prices combined of all these streamers. And when they see these lower tier or lower monetarily, the lower cost of these ad-supported tiers, they're opting for them instead. I mean, the highest price Netflix right now is $23 a month. That is a lot. I mean, that's bordering on cable.

I will say, just because you lose a customer doesn't mean you can't get them back. because one in four people who cancel a premium streaming service resubscribes within four months, one in three does so within seven months, and half do within two years. So I think a lot of these streamers are saying, look, maybe they canceled on us now, but if we put out a hype new show, maybe, you know, after this actors and writer's strike is over, we'll come back with a pretty fresh content slate that we can get them back. So they're probably thinking just because we lost them temporarily doesn't mean we lost them forever. For my second number, I want to talk to you about the historic year for global elections coming up.

In fact, 2024 will be the biggest election year in history, with more than 60 countries representing half the world population, about 4 billion people voting in some type of election. As the Financial Times put it, it'll be the most intense and cacophonous 12 months of democracy the world has seen since the idea was minted more than 2,500 years ago. These elections encompassing eight of the top 10 most. populous countries in the world could reshape geopolitics, economic relations, and put the essence of democracy itself to the test, given the rise of a liberalism and mistrust in institutions all over the world. I'm very curious to see the role that AI plays in this year of elections that you just subscribe, how media literate have people become, how many fake videos are going to see come out of candidates

saying something they never said. So it's going to be a stress test for democracy around the world because it truly is around the world this year. Yes, and the first one people should look out for is January 13th, and that is Taiwan's election. Of course, Taiwan has certainly been in the news with China being a lot more aggressive and threatening, making threats to invade this territory, this island that they consider their own, and the United States has pledged military assistance to Taiwan. So that is something that people will certainly be watching.

My final number is a stat I found in a New York Times column about the future of the Southwest, and maybe the reasons to be bullish on the region, even as climate change creates seemingly unlivable conditions down there. In this piece, Arizona native Tom Zolnar noted that Arizona uses 3% less water than it did in 1957, despite the state's population ballooning 555% since then. How could this be? Well, the state has made a ton of progress in the last 50 years to conserve its water supply, specifically the types of land that guzzle the most water farms have been

reduced, while technological advancements have allowed treated wastewater to be used for places we simply can't live without golf courses. Another successful strategy for reducing water is straight out of an economics textbook. Jack up prices when demand is highest in the summer. Because of an increase in price for water, the number of homes in Phoenix with front or back lawns has plunged from nearly 80% in the 70s to 10% today. So if you're okay with no lawns and 110 degree heat, maybe Arizona's, maybe Arizona is the place for you.

And maybe Arizona is. It's funny too because the much derided maybe cookie cutter communities that have rolled out all over the southwest do use a lot less water than those farmans that you described. So it is funny that the thing that symbolizes this population growth is the very thing that may have been helping them cut down on their water usage. All right, Gypsy Rose Blanchard. It's a name that I'm sure everyone has been hearing nonstop for the last few weeks. So Neil and I are going to put our true crime hats on for today.

Gypsy Rose pled guilty to second-degree murder back in 2016 after she and her then-boyfriend killed her mother. The case gained widespread attention, though, because the mother allegedly suffered from Manchausen syndrome by proxy and subjected her to years of unnecessary medical treatment for illnesses she didn't have, like leukemia and muscular dystrophy. The case gripped the nation eight years ago, debating whether Gypsy Rose should be held liable or not,

and thanks to a Hulu show about her life, the furor only grew as her release loomed. Now that she is free, her notoriety has exploded and she's done nothing to dissuade the public's interests. She's got 1.2 million followers on TikTok, 6 million followers on Instagram, and her fans just eat up every aspect of her post-prison life. You know, this is probably the perfect encapsulation of the true crime, celebrity, and social media machine that people love to obsess over.

Right. I mean, the story itself is wild, and it's understandable that people pay attention. I mean, the Green County prosecutor at the time described it as one of the most extraordinary, unusual cases we have seen. But now social media has just kind of poured lighter fluid into these true crime stories where these people who come out of jail or were convicted of crimes, especially if they're sympathetic, like a sympathetic character like Gypsy Rose and people are completely sympathizing with her, are paying up and creating a fan community around these people.

like we've never seen before, and it's just a little incongruous with the facts of the case, which are extremely gruesome, and you see these memes about it and these jokes. And I think, you know, we've seen this a number of times before with true crime. There are so many true crime personalities of just the past few years where the same kind of thing has happened where you have this gruesome crime and then you have people making jokes and creating fan communities on the internet about it. Yeah, I mean, why do we love true crime so much? We are pretty much hardwired as human beings to like it.

I mean, the danger involved in these case brings on a physiological response, which kind of pulls us in. And then kind of the open-endedness of a lot of these cases also pull us in because we're just innately curious as a species. So it's literally our own physiological reaction to these cases that make them the big deals that they are. And I mean, if we want to talk about just the true crime machine that I've mentioned, Pew Research Study of the U.S. podcast market found that nearly 25% of the top-ranked titles in America focused on. true crime stories. We actually just eat it up. Yeah, I mean, look at George Santos was charged with crimes, and now he went on cameo, and there was a

month-long media circus around him, and people were willing to pay hundreds of dollars to get a cameo or an appearance of George Santos, who was charged with crimes last year, in 2022, geez, I did it again. Who was the top, who was, what Wikipedia

page was the most viewed? Jeffrey Dahmer. People love the danger involved in these things. It is interesting, too, that Gypsy Road Blanchard is not doing anything to kind of shy away from the spotlight either. She's got a book coming out. She has a lifetime documentary about her. So this is her kind of capturing on this moment of fame. And I mean, in her defense, like the cycle of true crime moves very quickly and the cycle of celebrity moves very quickly. So she's got to-

capitalize now where there's a market. Exactly. Okay. Yesterday on the show, we talked about the 16-year-old dart phenom, Luke Littler, and we talked about him today as well. And today we're talking about another absurdly talented youngster. Willis Gibson is a 13-year-old competitive Tetris player and just became the first human to beat the game on the original NES console. Beating Tetris essentially means causing the game to crash. When you reach level 157, the game enters into a kill screen, and you cannot go any further. In doing so, he broke the human world record for overall score.

and total lines achieved. Notice I said human, because previously only an AI had beaten Tetris. One of the big innovations that allowed Willis to achieve this feat is this technique called rolling, which involves turning the controller over and kind of rolling your fingers over the back of it to press the directional pad up to 20 times per second way faster than our finger muscles can actually operate. Just a few years ago, people thought it was only possible to play up to level 29, and this kid just made it to 157.

This is like breaking the two-hour marathon for Tetris. So cool that this happened 34 years after the game came out. I know. People have been trying to do this for decades and bullish on humanity here. People just love to push themselves, push themselves physically and mentally. And the fact that this 13-year-old kid managed to do it is super cool. Just reading about how the mechanics of Tetris is super interesting as well. So you hit level 29.

And the blocks are falling faster than you can move them, essentially. So that was thought to be the most you could get. And then these people invented a completely new, it's really a technique where they flip the controller over and you can maybe explain it in a little more detail because I know you went into a Tetris hole. And then what is amazing, and we talked about fan communities on the internet in the last segment, but the fact that this technique was spread all over the world to anybody who had access to a YouTube channel, people were publicizing it.

And so it's kind of this community science project that everyone kind of works. on together to push the limits to where the Tetris code could just not handle it anymore. Yeah, they broke the game. So we've actually been through three different play styles now. The original was called the short name is Das, which is delayed auto shifts, where you just hold the directional pad down, which is the thing you use to move the blocks. That's how most people would play Tetris. You just press the button and moves over. But then hypertapping came along, which is when you tap the directional pad a bunch of times. And then finally, rolling is where I don't, maybe I'll do like ASMR on the mic right now, but you literally like

roll your, yeah, there you go. You roll your fingers across it and you're hitting your finger into the button and yeah, you can press it up there 20 times per second. So cool though that also the kid themselves, himself did an interview with the New York Times as mom said he had just finished emptying the dishwasher when he took a call for. Remember, these kids are still kids. Like we talked about Luke letter 16, this guy's 13, the kids are all right. All right, so kill screen is the name of the end, you know, the end screen where the game breaks. There's some infamous ones. It's kind of this holy grail in video gaming.

There's one famous one for Pac-Man. There's one famous one for Donkey Kong. Which game do you want to break? Oh, man. See, I don't play any of these old classic arcane games as much as I should. Although Donkey Kong, remember that documentary came out of it like 10 years ago or whatever? Fantastic documentary. They do say that potentially Tetris may have further levels, though,

because he finished the game using one line, and maybe if he finished the game creating two or three lines, the game might have kept going. So we've reached new frontiers in Tetris, which is so exciting for such an old and classic game. All right. We could talk about Tetris all day, but we have to wrap it up there. Have a wonderful Thursday, everyone.

As always, you can send your thoughts on the show or say good morning at our email address, Morningbrewerdaily at morningbru.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our editor and producer. Samantha Velas and Raymond Lue are associate producers. Yucenoa Ogu is our technical director.

Billy Minino is on audio. Vote hair and makeup 2024. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment

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