Morning Brew Daily - Special Mailbag Episode with Neal and Toby

Episode Date: November 24, 2023

Episode 199: Neal and Toby gather questions listeners submitted over the last two weeks. Topics they discuss include the process behind making an episode of Morning Brew Daily, what Neal thinks of American transportation and Toby even shares some relationship advice. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow The 2024 Money with Katie Wealth Planner is now live—grab yours at moneywithkatie.com/wealthplanner. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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pwc.com slash U.S. slash brew AI. That's pwc.com slash us slash brewaI. Good morning, Brew Daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. On today's pod, we are diving into your questions

in a special mailbag episode covering everything from high speed rail to regulating dopamine. Yes, and I know we said we'll answer anything, but to the guy who asks us for feet picks, regrettably, the answer is no. It's Friday, November 24th.

Let's ride. I am part. for this episode, Neil. I hope everyone is listening to this relaxing on their couches, full of turkey, green bean cassero, all the good stuff, not moving a muscle. This is going to be a get-to-know-us episode. We asked you all a couple weeks ago for some burning questions you wanted us to answer. And today is the day we're going to do exactly that. To kick us off, Raven from Montpellier, Vermont, had a perfect icebreaker from Raven. I've been listening and enjoying your guys' podcast for about six months now. And while you have both become part of my workday morning routine, I realize I don't know very much

about the two of you. If you're comfortable sharing, I'd love to hear you guys tell us listeners where you grew up, what your major was, favorite hobby, one unique fun fact about you, and if you could visit any place in the world, where would you go? Neil, care to go first. What's up, Raven, and everyone else? Well, where I grew up is a town called Longmeadow, Massachusetts. It's in the western part of the state near Springfield. A lot of people don't know where that is at all. It's a very random part of the country. So if you know where UMass or Amherst Colleges, it's about 20 minutes south of there. And it's right above Hartford, about 20 minutes north of Hartford.

So truly a random place, but I loved it. You got two hours to Boston, two and a half hours to New York. Are you paid by the Long Meadow tourism board? There's some depopulation in this area, so I got to drum up to the excitement. My major was history at the University of Maryland. Yeah, I didn't know what else could do. I was like, I guess I should learn how to read and write. My favorite hobby, I guess I could say the basic stuff like watching and playing sports,

cooking, traveling music. I love all that. But to answer your question of my favorite hobby, I'd have to say it's plane spotting, go to an airport early and setting up shop with a nice view of the runway, watching the planes come in, or going to my roof in Brooklyn, seeing the flights arrive into LaGuardia, trying to guess where they're coming from. I love that. I can confirm that any time a plane flies over our heads when I'm with Neil, he just goes,

Ah, 737, blah, blah, blah. And it's complete gibberish to me, but he nails it every time. Oh, and I also love trivia, and I'm especially into a game now called Tradle, which is where it shows you a breakdown of the exports of a particular country, and you have to guess what the country is. That's very fun. It's a wordle for geography nerds. Geography, but also import-export nerds as well.

It combines a lot of things, and Neil is very good at that. Yeah, Toby watches me play in the morning. And while around the subject of trivia, I do have a little bit of it. to say, I'm hosting trivia at Pete's Candy Store in Brooklyn on Wednesday, so anyone who's in town should definitely stop by. I wrote up some questions. It's going to be a lot of fun. One, what, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, Neil has been writing trivia for Morning Brew for years now, so this is finally your time to shine. I'm very excited for you. What's one unique fact about me? I have never gotten a brain freeze. Who can verify that deal? What do you mean? My friends, we went to the 7-Eleven in college,

and I chugged a slurpy as fast as I could, and I just didn't get a brain-free. So that's my superpower. If I could visit any place in the world where would I go? So many places. I'd literally just buy a one-way ticket anywhere. But one thing that has been on my mind recently is interior China, maybe Chengdu. There are some massive cities of like more than 10 million people, the size of New York, just inside China in the interior with incredible culture, incredible food. And I'd love to to get there. It's a bit of a hall. Yeah, definitely a hall. Maybe we'll take the podcast on the road. Let's do an international flight pod. I'm in. All right. To me, Now, where did I grow up? Bradenton, Florida.

That, I call it Bradentucky. It's kind of the home to a lot of strip centers in the world, but also the way I usually describe it, south of Tampa, north of Sarasota, and home of IMG Academy, too, which is this really high-end costs upwards of $80,000 of year to train high school athletes. I always grew up playing soccer against them.

Who were some famous people that have gone through there? Well, it started as Bullittary Academy, me. So Andre Agassi and then like Maria Sharpova has trained there. So a lot of tennis players have gone through there. Their soccer programs, iffy, because you have to pay so much money to go through. What did you get in? I didn't, I didn't try. I didn't even try because I grew up hating them. So there you go. What was my major? I was an English major at Brown. But fun fact, Brown doesn't actually have majors. We have concentrations. So technically I concentrated in English, which just sounds ridiculous to say, but it's true. I wanted to learn how.

at a read and white. How much does you actually concentrate in class? That was the biggest question of all, and it was not very much, unfortunately. My favorite hobby, I like running, playing soccer, playing poker, other board games like chess and Catan. These are all stuff that I often do with Neil, actually, so I'm a big games guy. You're a very big games guy. I do not like playing Caton with you, to be honest.

I know. That's fractures. We're going to get to a question and ask what's our biggest fight. It probably comes down to Catan, for sure. Sure. And then one unique fun fact about me, I don't know what you're supposed to say to this. I'm just going to say I ran a three-hour marathon. That's always a good, or sub-three-hour marathon, I should say sub. And then if I could visit any place in the world, where would I go? I really want to go to Japan right now. Mainly for the food aspect, I love Wagyu beef. I think it's the greatest thing on Earth. And then I'm also a big sushi guy, so that's what the best beef and sushi in the world are. All right. Well, we'll see if you have any trip planned. potentially. I mean, we'll have to see when it works for the pie, but I definitely want to get over there. Okay, as we mentioned, we received a lot of questions, so we're going to break them down a little bit into categories.

Up first, many of you were curious about how the sausage is made, aka what goes into bringing this show to your ears? So the first category of questions are all about Morning Brew Daily, and Richard wants to know, how long have you guys been working at Morning Brew, and how did you get to this point of having your own daily podcast? Yeah, I guess my story is a little convoluted. As I don't know how many people know this, but Neil originally hired me to be a writer for the newsletter. And that was back in 2020, just before kind of the pandemic started. And so I worked as a writer under Neil for about a year, then moved more onto the social media side of things. Then I actually left the company and only, I stayed friends with everyone, Austin, Alex, the founders, and then Neil as well.

And they kind of just texted me one day and said, hey. Very Sam Altman. Yeah, they wanted me to come back and said, we're thinking about starting a podcast, want to come in and just do a couple of tests for it. And then they just kind of kept inviting me back. So it was a bit of a roundabout journey to this seat across from Neil. But that's kind of my Morning Brew origin story. My story is I've been at Morning Brew since the very early days in 2017,

just grinding out this daily newsletter that we have. That was our flagship product for six and a half years. And a lot of readers over the years had been asking, when are you guys going to start a daily podcast? You know, I'm on a commute. I'm walking my dog. Reading a newsletter is not exactly a part of my routine. And we had just not done it for forever. And then earlier this year, we were like, maybe we should just do this.

So I somehow, I don't think I volunteered. I got asked to do it. So they kind of just told you. They kind of just told them. They were testing out a lot of different people alongside you, but you were always the constant. So I thought that was funny. I had never spoken in public before, so it was an interesting choice. You're doing great.

All right, this one's from Shelby. How much do you both know ahead of time what the other will say? What does your prepping look like day to day? Do you prepare a lot together or separately? We prepare separately, I think, for the most part. I like have my own process where I'm just doing research, pulling up a bunch of web pages about literally the story. And I try to rope in as many different perspectives as possible.

And I don't really tell Toby what my. main points are going to be because we want to have this conversation be as organic as possible. We don't want it to feel scripted. So when Toby says something, I want to be genuinely surprised by it and react organically. There are some times where we coordinate where, you know, I'll say, here's what I'm talking about. So I don't want you to also prepare the same exact thing. So like, I'll cover this in my introduction and you can go into this direction.

So there are times where we coordinate and I think we've been doing that a little bit more recently. But for the most part, I think our prepping process has been completely separate. Yeah, it's definitely separate. The only thing we do prepare ahead of time is kind of those intros you guys hear us read and then also we'll just determine who is doing what story. But yeah, it is kind of fun because I know for me personally, I always try to guess like maybe what Neil will try to say to me and have my response prepared. I don't know it, but I do try to predict it. And it's always good, too, if you can kind of bring up a fact or an angle that maybe the other person didn't get into in their process.

So it is kind of a little bit of a game, a competition, if you will. Classic. But I think it makes for a more organic and, as you said, back and forth show. Yeah. But we prepare the night before and also we come into the studio, the office, about an hour and a half early before the show to see what happened overnight and finalize everything. And so it's fresh in our mind. So it's definitely a many-hour process.

How much... This comes from Mary Greene. Grace, is there actually a pre-show competition? And if so, who comes up with those random ideas? Mary Grace, I'm going to plead the fifth on this one because, yes, there are competitions, but I won't say exactly when they're taking place or if they're actually determining who speaks first. So I'm just going to kind of take a step back here and not reveal exactly what's going on here. But good try, Mary Grace. Okay, maybe you can answer this one, though, from Richard. Why do you say, let's ride at the beginning of every show?

This one is actually a very complicated origin as well because, again, when I was called in to kind of test out these shows with Neil, we were kind of, we didn't know what the show was yet at the time. And I truly believe one time after like the intro that we do, I just said, let's ride. And it comes from Russell Wilson from the Broncos. And for anyone terminally online, there was this video that went viral of him in his kind of pre-show. You're supposed to do these hype videos. And he kept saying, like, Broncos Nation. Let's ride. And I thought it was very funny.

He got roasted for it. He got absolutely roasted for it. So I kind of did it ironically to start, but then it just stuck. And now let's ride is very much a part of Morning Brew Daily. So almost to the point where a lot of people said, did you get that from Russell Wilson? Or is it kind of your guys' thing? So yes, the origin story is it came from a cringy Russell Wilson video. But now I feel like we made it our own.

All right. The final question for Morning Brew Daily specific ones is from Grace. And she says, what do you recommend for those of us? us who listen to both the podcast and read the newsletter every day. You do a great job of balancing content between both, but I always find myself going back and forth whether I should read or listen. I've been an avid reader of the brew for years now, and MBD is another fixture of my routine, and I'm willing to bet I'm not the only listener who faces this dilemma. Well, first of all, I love that this is the case. As someone who has a hand in both the podcast and the newsletter, I think it may

make sense to read the newsletter first. There's just so much less real estate to go into any particular analysis. So I would read the newsletter and then listen to us and we just have more time and more space to bring in new facts and share our opinions as well. So I think it might be interesting to read the newsletter, maybe form your own opinion about a particular news topic because oftentimes you can only write two to three sentences on something. But Toby and I have a lot more time to go into it and explain it and offer our thoughts. So I guess that's the best that's the best order, but that's my opinion. I don't really, it's hard to say from being so on the inside.

I would agree with that. I also think it has to do with your morning routines because some people, they don't have a lot of time in the morning to sit down and read a whole newsletter. They're always moving. So if you're one of those people who just likes the pop in the podcast and go about your commute or your daily routine, maybe it makes more sense to do that first. So it does come down to what your actual preferences are in. I love how we're really breaking this down. There's no real right answer. You're doing great.

both or listen to both at the same time, but we appreciate you. What's great about the newsletter is we include so many links to other news stories. So, you know, if you're, you have that half hour where you're starting your day at work and you really don't want to check your emails and you kind of just want to learn something, the newsletter is really good for having a bunch of links that take you to a topic. You can go down to rabbit hole. I still read the newsletter, too, which is so... You better. Well, it's so funny because technically I know everything that's going into the day before. I just did a full podcast. I prepared these stories, but I enjoy it. I think the writers are absolutely hilarious. I always want to give the newsletter. It's due. Okay, so we all,

we ask you guys for questions, and only one of you actually chose to ask about an actual business news topic, and that was you, Jacob. So Jacob asks, are you bullish or bearish on an interstate railway system in the U.S.? Do you feel that the auto giants would ever let that happen, or are we too far gone with our current highway system. Neil, you're our transportation expert here of the two of us. I'm just going to pass this one off to you. What do you think? Well, we do have an interstate railway system. It's Amtrak. It doesn't work so great. It's definitely not as cost efficient or as frequent as many other countries interstate or inter-regional intercity railway systems. And I think you do have to reflect on the fact that how much the United States love

its highways. We just talked recently about how the Los Angeles Freeway section that was damaged was repaired in eight days and the one in Philly was repaired in 12 days. So the United States construction apparatus bends over its back to fix highways because that is really integral to the United States transportation system. That said, there have been a bit of good news about rail recently. Specifically, I want to talk about Bright Line, which is a private line. line that's built in Florida. It goes up the eastern coast and then it also recently opened a line from Orlando to Miami. And in October, it had a really good month. It carried more than 200,000 passengers, which was more than double the number from a year earlier. And it carried more people

last month than any Amtrak line did monthly on average last year other than the Northeast Regional, which is the busiest one by far. So this is a step in the right direction. I think a lot of people are concerned that it is a private company doing this, but honestly you have to say Amtrak's not doing it better. It's carrying more people. So this is, I think, when you look at the entire landscape of rail in the United States, it's not going to be a one-size-fits-all option. And options like Bright Line that are privately funded could work alongside Amtrak and maybe even push Amtrak to have better service. Aren't we just too big as a country? Isn't that always been the argument that the United States is just too sprawling and that it's very hard to build a fully

interconnected railway system across the country, or is that overblown? Well, I think you want to invest in rail in places where people are. So the DC to Boston corridor, we have rail, but it's not, you know, a lot of people take it. It's a busiest one by far. But our infrastructure there sucks. I mean, there's only one tunnel that goes under the Hudson River, and that is a huge bottleneck that leads to so many delays. And another piece of optimistic news that I was going to bring up is that they're going

to build another tunnel, the Gateway Project. this has been in the works for decades. And finally, they released funding. The Biden administration is pouring money into it. So we're finally going to get another rail tunners. So all, I mean, this is not going to happen for a long time because I don't know, I don't know how to build a tunnel, but it seems extremely complicated. But the fact is that there are like movements in the right direction.

I still think it's going to be a long time. But Brightline, competing with Amtrak and maybe more options for competition, Amtrak's had a monopoly on this. Yeah. So I think. that could maybe move us forward. I don't think it's going to be a sea change. I think the United States is still going to be married to the car for a long time, but hopefully we can make improvements on the margin. See, we only had one business focus question, but I know Neil was going to go off on that.

So thank you, Jacob, for letting Neil get on his soapbox and talk about the transportation system. We're actually going to take a quick break before Neal's has any more thoughts on the rail system, and we'll be back right after this. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill three-burner gas grill, or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor to your backyard. Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together.

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Thank you. One size, absolutely does not fit all. Get a quote or find an agent today at thehartford.com slash small business. Let's wrap up with some miscellaneous questions. Caleb asks, who's better at pickleball? Neil or Toby? Again, I'm going to plead the fifth on this one and just say that as soon as we host our first Morning Brew Daily Pickleball Meetup Tournament, then you guys can see who is better between the two of us.

Well, we've never played, so we wouldn't know. We wouldn't know also as well. But I, come on. I have to think it would be very even, to be honest. Yeah, Neil grew up playing tennis, but I have played more pickleball in my life. So I do think it would be a pretty good matchup. How fun would it be if we had a listener meetup? This is a good idea.

We need to do it. I mean, it's obviously very cold now, but we're going to do it in the spring. There's no questions asked. We're absolutely doing it. Let's go down to the warmer climbs of Florida and host one on the road. All right, Caleb also wants to know what's a cooking recipe that you both make on a weekly basis? I get bored with particular dishes, so I don't make them over and over again.

I go through particular phases where I find one that I like, and I make it for like two weeks and move on. I like to have a large repertoire of stuff that I cook. Right now, I'm on this kick of a very easy recipe that is really delicious. It's like a turkey taco filling, but all you do is take pound of ground turkey, cut up an onion, saute it, put in taco seasoning, put in garlic, and then you put a small eight-ounce jar of tomato sauce or even some salsa and just let that cook for five minutes. And then you literally just have a gorgeous taco filling that you can dress it any way you want with cheese, sour cream,

avocado, cilantro, like whatever you want. It's so easy and it's very tasty. You have been talking to me every day. You just say, oh, made these turkey tacos the other day. They're so, so good. So I do want to try them. It's super easy. I mean, I literally just told people how to do it. Yeah, absolutely. One of my go-teachie. These is actually, I have these like gluten-free noodles that I get from Trader Joe's, and then I just make a bunch of beef with kind of Asian seasoning sauces. So it's kind of like a meaty, hearty, ramen-esque dish, which is really, really easy as well. It takes like four ingredients.

So that's something that's very homey. It is filling, though. That's what I will say. It's a little heavy, but I like kind of the combination of those Asian flavors. Come to Neil and Tovey. You won't get any vegetable. Absolutely not. But I did have a dinner last Friday night where it was all vegetables.

I made butternut squash soup. Oh, you hosted the chair. Oh, nice. Butternut squash soup. What are some other veggies? Brussels sprouts, balsamic, Brussels spouts. It was very fall, very squashy, very zucchiniy. We are in squash season for sure.

Okay. Walter asks, what are some books you recommend? I guess I'll go first because I think I've got the heavier books of the bunch. Interestingly, I mostly read fiction. I don't love reading nonfiction. I think it's because I read so much news and just actual things that are going on the world every single day and I'm like I would love an escape I wanted someone to tell me a story so some books that have stuck with me over the years and I don't I can't really explain why but

they're just the ones that I always think about pillars of the earth by Ken Follett is amazing everyone I recommended to has read it it's a thousand pages yeah but it goes by real quick remains of the day by Kazu Isiguro is incredible the Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferranti they are very highly regarded and deservedly so. If you want to just live in Naples in the 1960s with some kids, that is your go-to. It's so good. Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving is a book that I read in high school that has stuck with me. Very New England, very New Hampshire.

It's pretty great. And then finally, these big American novels I really like, like Freedom and the Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. Neil, I am not going to lie. I haven't heard of a single one of those. I've heard of the authors, but these specific books themselves. These are pretty famous. These aren't like niche things.

These are like pretty big books. It's not on you. It's on me for sure. I'm going to go a lot lighter and more fun than those. The Red Rising series by Pierce Brown is incredibly fun sci-fi. Again, this is stuff that it's like eighth grade reading level stuff. It's like reading a movie. Right.

It's like reading a movie. But it's great. It's so fun. Yeah. I'm all about having fun when you're reading. Dune is also as good as you can ever imagine. I resisted that for a long time as a science fiction fan. But it is, if you can get through the first.

100 pages. It truly changes your life. So I love that. I just finished reading the fourth wing by Rebecca Yaros, which is this spicy dragon fantasy book. It's big on... Spicy how? Like literally... Romance? Yeah, romance. There's, yeah, it's a little more adult. And then I'm also a massive Michael Crichton fan. He wrote all the Jurassic Park books, and they are so much better than the movie. They're actually so much more kind of gory, and there's more intense than the movies themselves, which is, funny because Jurassic Parks really scared me growing up. And so I, as an adult, came back and read the books and kind of reclaimed that for myself. So Michael Crichton, a huge fan of that.

There are more than one Jurassic Park movies? Or books. Yes. Yes. I don't know. I know. There's multiple. Yeah. Okay. This one is from Sophie. Would you rather do dishes or laundry? I mean, it's very clear. Dishes. I don't do the laundry. I love doing the dishes because it takes my mind off of things and I you know you feel like you're accomplished at the end meanwhile the laundry you know I guess the same thing with the dishes but the laundry is I as soon as I do the laundry I have to go fold it and then I'm only putting more stuff in the laundry and I have to do it again so I don't know just as a practice I like doing the dishes more than doing the laundry as evidence by the fact that I never do laundry right I like doing the laundry actually because that's when I call people

because it's so much I do let it pile up as well so it's a lot of folding so I'll call my mom I'll call my dad and just kind of check in with them. So that's why I like the laundry. Okay, Carlos asks, and Toby, I'm going to send this on to you because I cannot answer it. How do you regulate dopamine during the honeymoon phase of a relationship to help you still feel great when you're not around the person you are infatuated with? Absolutely hilarious question, Carlos, that when we ask people to ask us anything, people started getting into relationship advice, which I appreciate. So, Carlos, I say don't even regulate it. The honeymoon face is meant to be the most fun stage of the relationship.

And if you start guarding yourself and trying to say, oh, man, I don't want to get too attached to this person, I say go all in on it. I enjoy it a lot. And I feel like I've been with my girlfriend for over four years now. And I still feel like we're in the honeymoon phase. So there's no need to rain it in, Carlos. Just dive head first. Can you just go a little bit quickly into the concept of regulating dopamine?

Because I'm sure a lot of people listening to this have no idea that this is even a thing or why someone would want to regulate it during the honeymoon phase of their relationship. Oh my gosh, this turned into a Huberman Labs podcast for sure. But yeah, dopamine is the kind of, it floods your system when you're feeling good about someone. And so when you are in the early stage of relationship, you might be flooded with a lot of dopamine

and it can almost become addicting. And so I think Carlos is saying, like, is it bad to feel these good feelings about this person and tie those good feelings to a single person too much? And I mean, again, yeah, you can... What are some tactics to regulate it? And why should they say you do it? Well, you spend time apart and become your own person and live your own life too, which, okay, it is healthy.

So it's not like getting more sleep or like doing particular things. It's literally just not seeing the person. Yeah, I think that's the easiest way to reduce the amount of dopamine your feeling from that person is to not tie your good feelings or your ability to feel good to that person. So I think that is what Carlos is getting out here. This got real deep, real quick into... kind of our physiology as well. All right, that was super fun, Neil, but I think we have to wrap it up there. We hope everyone has a very relaxing post- Thanksgiving slumber or shopping

spree, whatever floats your boat. We had a lot of fun answering your questions. Neil, only thing left to do is hit him with those credits. I'll do that. Emily Milliron is our editor and producer. Samantha Velas is our associate producer. Yuchenoa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. Hair and makeup is about to dive into the those leftovers. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great. Show today, Neil. I wish you all well. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th,

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