Morning Brew Daily - The NFL Has a CTE Problem & Dolly Parton Dies at 80

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

#919: A new study finds that 1 in 4 NFL players that have passed away within the last decade suffered from CTE. Stanley Druckenmiller, a hedge fund legend, slams Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on hi...s latest move to calm bond markets, but…it was written by AI? Golf brands Good Good Golf and Callaway are in hot water after releasing an ad that features a woman being shoved to the ground in an attempt to be “scary.” And Target apologizes for a kid’s Halloween costume that evoked Blackface. Dick’s Sporting Goods stock falls after missing expectations. Finally, a Dragon Ball Z theme park? Hell yea. Learn more at https://go.amex/morningbrew  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. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note⁠⁠⁠  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:01 Are you sucking wind from trying to keep up with AI and its impact? Take a breather and tune in to the Intelligence Shift. Morning Brew's new podcast with PWC. It bridges the gap between big picture AI concepts and what it actually means in practice. Host Dan Priest is joined by expert guests to discuss AI's role in sports, music, HR, and more. Listen to the Intelligence Shift wherever you get your podcasts. Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell.
Starting point is 00:00:29 Today, a billionaire investor causes a stir by using AI to write a column. Then an ad for a YouTube golf channel went viral for all the wrong reasons. It's Wednesday, August 26th. Let's ride. When you receive tributes from Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Pitbull, Eminem, Jeff Bezos, the Empire State Building, President Trump, and the Democratic Socialists of America, and seemingly every single one of my group chats, you know you did something right. Yesterday, Dolly Parton, a uniquely beloved figure in American life, died at 80 after a brief battle with cancer.
Starting point is 00:01:10 The best-selling female country music artist of all time, Dolly rose from poverty in Tennessee to sell more than 160 million albums worldwide, writing a mortal song such as 9 to 5, Jolene and I Will Always Love You. Beyond her music and her acting and her business ventures that included Dollywood, Parton was a prolific philanthropist delivering more than 200 million books to kids through her imagination library. giving $1 million to Modernus COVID vaccine research, and creating a bald eagle sanctuary, among many other projects. Toby, we lost one of the greats, perhaps the great. I'll never forget this story we did on a UMass, UGov poll from earlier this year, where 70% of Americans had a favorable view of Dolly,
Starting point is 00:01:53 the highest percentage of approval by far of any person. We can't agree on anything, but most people can agree that they loved Dolly. She was twice as popular as Taylor Swift. Thankfully, we have a little more Dolly to come. She left an unreleased final song called My Place in History that is stored in a wooden box in Dollywood that will be opened on Parton's 100th birthday in 2046.
Starting point is 00:02:18 I just hope we make it to then so we can hear Dolly's last song. Yeah, there are so many amazing stories and videos and clips being shared. This one stuck out to me, though. This was shared by Eminem, Marshall Mathers, and it went super viral yesterday. And the lesson is, write to people unsolicited, just telling them how much you appreciate them
Starting point is 00:02:37 because this was a letter that Dolly sent to Eminem after he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And she wrote, Your performance was amazing, and everybody said so. Even though I don't know a lot about rap music, I've come to know that you are the very best at it. Aside from that,
Starting point is 00:02:52 I hope what I have to say will not seem weird or strange to you, but I have always felt some unexplained connection to you like I know you somehow. Keep doing what you're doing because you do it so well. And no matter how complex your world may be, just know you are very special and touch people in ways you don't even know. Class Act. And now word from our sponsor, American Express. Neal, I am all go. You're what? I am up the wall. I'm nonstop. I am busy, which is why I appreciate the American Express Business Platinum card. It's built for businesses that deserve more. With a suite of statement credits on
Starting point is 00:03:27 purchases with brands like Dell, chat GPT business, Adobe, and more, plus the ability to add up to 99 employee cards, business platinum helps you do more business. So while you're focused on running a business that doesn't slow down, the American Express Business Platinum card is built to back you every step of the way. Learn more at go.m.mx slash morning brew and find out your welcome offer, which could be as high as 300,000 membership rewards points. That's go.mx slash morning brew, offer and benefit terms apply. Wall Street has spent the last week dunking on Treasury Secretary Scott Besant for his unusual intervention into the bond markets, but on Monday evening, one surprising figure
Starting point is 00:04:09 jumped on the pig pile, billionaire investor Stanley Drucken Miller, who criticized Besant's maneuver as a serious mistake. And it's so shocking because this would be like August Gusto turning on Remy, Drucken Miller used to be Besant's mentor when they both worked at George Soros. firm in the 90s. However, Besson's drastic move to soothe bonds was a step too far. In a widely shared Wall Street Journal op-ed, Drunken Miller argued the government should, quote, let the bond market speak and describe Besson's actions as ineffectual and self-defeating. Governments defending prices against fundamentals always lose, he wrote.
Starting point is 00:04:44 The only variable is how much they spend before conceding. But just as everyone was digesting Druck and Miller dunking on his young Padawan, another plot twist emerged that shifted the conversation entirely, using detainees. protection software, online sleuths discovered that he had used AI to write the opinion piece. And when asked about it by the site notice, Drucken Miller owned up to it saying, of course I used AI to write the column, adding, I'm not embarrassed by it. I write everything using AI. Now, for the same reason, I use a calculator when I do math problems. So Toby, two levels of intrigue here. First, Drucken Miller going after Besson, but also a much larger conversation
Starting point is 00:05:20 about the future of writing in the AI age. Let's start with the first part, because it is juicy. of discussing yesterday, ah, should we cover this story? It's a little like insidery finance, but it really has a lot of intrigue because of the relationship between Drucken and Besson and the fact that when they work together, some of their biggest trades came from recognizing this exact situation where governments were attempting to defend or manipulate prices that the market believed was not sustainable. So if a government says the price should be this and the fundamentals say it should be this other thing, then usually the fundamentals end up winning, and that is what Besant spent his entire career exploiting. So it is such a delicious
Starting point is 00:06:01 twist of irony that this is the, he's on the other side of the coin now. That is why it's got so much intrigue to this, in addition to this crazy AI subplot as well. Yeah, just a quick recap of what he was criticizing and what Bessence's move into the bond market was. Well, he doubled buybacks from the treasury to these long dated deals that had soared above 5.5%, which were the biggest level since the financial, before the financial crisis in order to bring down borrowing costs across the economy. Well, it took yields down for one day and then they jumped right back up, which showed that the move was ineffectual.
Starting point is 00:06:37 And a lot of analysts and now Drucken Miller is saying, Besson, you know that you have to, you can't really use this interventionist move, but you have to, as Drucken Miller wrote, let the bond market speak, use it as a signal. And he wrote, if the 30 year must trade at 5.5% to clear, this is a. in a crisis, it is an invoice, do the only thing that durably lowers long-term yields address the primary deficit? That was the main point of this column saying, you have to address the underlying fundamentals. You can't do this financial maneuvering in order to bring down bond yields. What you need to do is rein in government spending because that's what bonds investors
Starting point is 00:07:11 are going after. That was a perfect segue into the AI conversation because the line you just quoted is one of the lines people pointed to that showed it's not X, it's Y, that sort of AI framing that kind of leaks its way into LLM-assisted writing. So this AI subplot really has thrown this entire conversation on its head. Jason Calacanis, which is a big investor, said, if you can't be bothered to take the time to write your own opinion piece, that should tell you it's not worth publishing. But then on the other side of the coin, actually, you go to Chamath, which is Jason Calacanus's co-host in the All In podcast.
Starting point is 00:07:47 He said, is Stan Druckin Miller isn't embarrassed to be a meat proxy, which is, a new word for the human in the loop of these AI conversations. You shouldn't be either. It's like after matches were invented, still celebrating the arduous time to rub two sticks together. So those are kind of the two camps that are forming on this AI assisted writing debate. Should you discount Druck and Miller's words because he had the assistance of an LLM? Should the Wall Street Journal have better, you know, fact-checking approval processes to actually publish this opinion piece? It opened a lot of questions that actually overshadowed a lot of the policy.
Starting point is 00:08:21 And the Wall Street Journal defended its policy here. The editorial page editor said, AI is a fact of modern life. People will use it to assist in their work in their writing, including with research, checking, grammar, editing, and more. So he said this is fine because we just want to make sure it reflects the author's original argument. So all good on the Wall Street Journal front. I don't know if they were prepared to issue a statement on this, but they were asked and they said, yeah, all good with us. And then on the other side, you had the Financial Times. recently, this went viral.
Starting point is 00:08:52 There was a Harvard professor who was accused of using AI to write an opinion article for the Financial Times. And then when the Financial Times found about it, they actually said, uh-uh, this is not okay. They wrote a disclaimer at the top of this column, saying it has come to our attention that AI was used to condense a longer draft of this column prior to submission to the FT and our own editorial involvement. The FTA editorial code of conduct specifically prohibits the use of AI in the writing process. So you have Wall Street Journal over here, financial times over here, and there was huge debate unfolding on social media around the use of AI.
Starting point is 00:09:27 Some say in favor of this that investors and CEOs have used underlings and ghostwriters to write opinion columns and books for ages. So why would AI be any different? On the other camp, you said, why would an opinion department at a newspaper pay a columnist to write a column using AI when maybe they could just say and not pay the $200,000 a year and say, Okay, make me an opinion piece in the voice of this particular person that reflects their arguments or opinions. Super interesting debate on two levels, Drucken Miller going after his mentor, or his mentee, as well as the larger conversation about what is writing in the AI age. Moving on, American workers have been exposed to a plethora of safety hazards throughout history, but one type of career might be the most risky of them all, professional football player. A major new study released yesterday in the British Medical Journal found,
Starting point is 00:10:20 that at least one in four people who played in the NFL could expect to get CTE, a degenerative brain disease. Researchers from Mass General Brigham looked at all the football players who appeared in at least one NFL game in their careers and who died between 2016 and 2021. Their conclusion, a minimum of 25 percent had CTE when they died. It's an astonishing number. David Michaels, the former head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration during the Obama years, told the New York Times, there are workers who've been exposed to high levels of asbestos exposure, which leads to a very high rate of lung disease, and certainly a lifetime working in coal mines leads to very high risk of black lung disease, but a degenerative neurological disease
Starting point is 00:11:02 I've never seen anything comparable. CTE was first scientifically linked to football 20 years ago, and since then many high-profile players have been diagnosed following their deaths, including Junior Seow and Aaron Hernandez. It is a progressive neurological disease whose symptoms include impulsive behavior like addiction, memory loss, and severe mood swings brought on by repeated impacts to the head. We knew it was a huge problem affecting not only football players but other athletes and military veterans, but until this study, we didn't have an actual number to assign to it. Now we know 25% at minimum.
Starting point is 00:11:33 So the NFL's response to this was a statement saying the NFL continuously strives to make the game of football safer, including by implementing strategies to reduce concussions and head impacts. But let's look at a recent rule change that came last season. And last year, they changed the touchback when you kick off the ball to the 35-yard line from the 30-yard line. The idea was to incentivize teams to put more balls into play because that's more exciting for fans to watch. And that definitely did happen. More kickoffs did get put in play.
Starting point is 00:12:04 But as a result, concussions spike because kickoffs are always going to be a time where you have a lot of people running full speed at each other. So, again, player safety might take backseat to the entertainment factor, which has been the criticism that has been lobbed the NFL's way for decades now. We'll see if this latest study does anything to change that approach going forward. Yeah, the lead author of the study, Dr. Daniel Doneshwar, said, we know what's causing this. Everyone knows what leads to CTE and its repeated impacts to the head over a life cumulatively. So it is, the risk factor is zero if you're not getting bashed in the head all the time. And so he said this should be used as a call to action to address youth football leagues like, let's just not have tackle football until a certain age because if we just delay the amount of
Starting point is 00:12:50 times these people are getting hit in the head, then we will delay the onset of CTE. And another area of research here is being able to diagnose CTE before a person dies. Because right now it's really grim, but what happens is a football player dies young after, you know, maybe showing signs of CTE. And what happens is their spouse or their family donates their brain to one of these brain banks, like the one that was used at BU for this particular study, and then they're able to clinically diagnose CTE now. So a new frontier research is trying to figure out who has CTU while they're living
Starting point is 00:13:23 because right now this is sort of retrospective. It's 2016 to 2021. We want to know what's happening in real time in the NFL right now. Let's move on when Dick's sporting goods announced the acquisition of Foot Locker back in May of last year, analysts were puzzled. Was it a good idea for Dix who was crushing it to spend $2.4 billion on a retailer whose sales were flagging. Was it a good idea to increase their exposure to struggling shopping malls?
Starting point is 00:13:49 Well, nearly a year later, we have our answer, and it is absolutely not. The analysts were right. It was not a good idea to buy Foot Locker, whose putrid worse than expected performance in the latest quarter, dragged Dick stock down 30% for its largest single-day drop ever. The two brands are moving in totally different directions. Dix comparable sales rose nearly 5% while Footlockers fed. nearly four. Dix Chairman Ed Stack told investors, we're going to go through some pain. The pain it's seeing is that consumers simply aren't spending a lot of money on footwear, and if they are,
Starting point is 00:14:23 they're expecting brands to discount them heavily, leading to an industry-wide promotional race to the bottom. Dix would probably pay $2.4 billion to not be in the shoe business right now because everywhere you look, it is carnage. Nike is down nearly 40% this year, while shares in On and Under Armour are down 20% in the past month alone. When the acquisition was announced, Dix expected to return footlocker to growth by this year's back-to-school season, but that timeline looks out of reach no matter how late school gets underway in the Northeast. You know, despite all of that, Chairman Stack is sticking by the decision.
Starting point is 00:14:56 Right now, I'm sure some of you are kind of scratching your head, he said, but we absolutely believe long-term this was the right thing to do. Yeah, I guess he can take solace that he is far from the only consumer company that's had a pretty rough earnings go out at Walmart had their worst trading day since 2022. They reported their weakest U.S. sales growth in more than six years. The SMP's Consumer Discretionary Index is down 5% over the last month. Back on Friday, we had this U.S. Consumer Center report. That was really bad. It dropped heavily. So all these consumer companies are not doing well this earning season. Foot Locker, which combines a lot of consumer companies and sells them in a retail
Starting point is 00:15:37 store sneakers, that's the most maybe discretionary purchase you can get because you can always get, you know, a few more miles in your sneakers is seeing a lot of slowdown and stack chocks it up to geopolitics. He said consumers are more cautious due to the war in Iran and inflation. And it's just, that's what the environment we are in right now. He also said that footwear became increasingly promotional last quarter. And so what does that mean is basically the shoes that Foot Locker sells are also sold other places. like on the website of the brands themselves. And if they start discounting them to consumers,
Starting point is 00:16:13 then Foot Locker goes, well, I guess we have to discount too because you can't be buying the exact same Nike's here that are more expensive versus what you could buy them for on Nike's website. And they actually made the decision to go down that promotional rabbit hole so as not to lose market share.
Starting point is 00:16:29 So that is kind of why he's saying, yes, it's very painful right now. But over the long term, we think that we're going to keep a grip on the market share we have. We're going to weather this geopolitical storm right now. And on the other side, we do think that we have the know-how. We have the scale to turn this a puppy around. But I think one of the reasons why Wall Street kind of freaked out is the fact that what changed in the past 90 days, if you go back three months ago, Dix was raising guidance and sounded very optimistic. How could you
Starting point is 00:16:58 be this far off? How could you tell people with a smile that, hey, I think things are turning around and then you report earnings and everything goes to to heck. That is why you saw Wall Street, you know, a cut, take a 30% haircut of Dix in this latest earnings call. And another trend I'm watching is we actually did this as a Toby's trend when you were out that people are shifting to more formal wear and they're not wearing as many sneakers anymore. And Dick said that actually we are seeing consumers shift to brands like Ugg and Birkenstock instead of the more legacy lifestyle sneakers that foot locker sells. So pretty interesting shift to look at.
Starting point is 00:17:37 I don't know if this is, you know, how long this will last, but we're certainly seeing it in the data, the broader trend of people just go into more loafers and Birkenstocks rather than wearing Nike dunks. I just looked down, I'm still wearing sneakers right now. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with a story about that ill-fated golf ad right after this.
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Starting point is 00:18:19 It's your shares. It's your voice. It's easy. Vanguard investors own shares of their index funds, and those funds own shares of the companies they invest in, Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor. Cybersecurity, as we know it, is dead. It's a figure of speech, but the truth is the old model was built on protection. Safety nets, recovery plan systems designed to withstand the last era and maintain the status quo.
Starting point is 00:18:43 The AI era demands confidence that you can secure and accelerate your business operations so nothing stops your momentum. Rubrik can give you that confidence. Their singular platform is designed to secure your data, control your AI, and protect your identity built as one architecture, not stitch, together after the fact. To learn more, head to rubric.com slash mb. That's r ubrik.com slash mb. When it comes to AI's value, the picture is about as clear as swamp water. Case in point, 43% of CEOs report revenue gains or cost reductions from AI, but nearly the same number say they're still stuck. That's why PWC advises a value over volume approach. Many companies gauge AI progress based on how many models or agents are deployed, but impact actually
Starting point is 00:19:33 comes from connecting data, workflows, and decision-making into a coordinated operating model. Learn about turning AI investment into results at pwc.com slash US-Brew AI. That's pwc.com slash US-Brew AI. When you think of big companies in corporate America, you tend to believe they have their act together. They make millions, employ hundreds, generally appear buttoned up. But sometimes things happen to remind you that there's always an egg inches away from their face. Case in point, the gigantic screw-ups we've seen in recent days.
Starting point is 00:20:07 You may not have known about Good Good Golf, a media and apparel brand with over 2.1 million YouTube subscribers. But after it aired an ill-fated ad last week, it's broken containment from the golf world. Good Good posted a 60-second spot for its co-branded Callaway driver, but somewhere in the creative process signed off on a scene. where one of the channel's male personalities shoves a woman on the roster to the ground for trying to touch his new club. It attracted immediate backlash with ex-commenters calling it very scary and a generationally stupid ad before it was eventually taken down. It was especially shocking considering Good Good Race $45 million in funding last March and is sponsoring an official PGA tour event this November.
Starting point is 00:20:52 Not to mention Calloway, a billion-dollar brand in its own right, was involved in the approval process. too. Both companies have since issued apologies with good, good CEO clarifying that the ad was meant to parody the horror movie obsession and Callaway reiterating that it is quote, unequivocally against discrimination, domestic violence, or threatening behavior of any kind. But Neil, the comments under this video range from horror to pure bafflement as to how it made it through multiple rounds of filming and editing without anyone saying, uh, maybe we shouldn't post this. I think the key word that you just said was apologies because there have been multiple multiple rounds of apologies because the first ones were extremely lame.
Starting point is 00:21:32 So on Saturday, as this whole thing was blowing up, Good Good came out and said in a statement, we posted a video to our channels that ultimately depicted actions that are not aligned with our values as a brand. We've since taken that content down and sincerely apologize. Good Good was always stood for making the game of golf more inclusive to all. And we will continue to ensure that that is our mission moving forward. That was the apology initially. And people said, whoa, that is not good enough. you seen the video and if you watch the video, your job will absolutely drop. Calaway also issued
Starting point is 00:22:02 apology that day as well. And then in the day since they've had to issue more and individual CEOs have had to speak out and even then those apologies have landed on deaf ears. And it works its way all the way up to the PGA Tour, which is partnered with Good Good on this particular event coming up in November that who knows what's going to happen. And when asked about this particular apology initially, PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolap said, yesterday that he was not initially satisfied with it. I think what I think what we saw was concerning and is clearly not aligned with PGA tour values. We take it very seriously. I think their initial response was disappointing. It was a bit defensive and late, but I think the
Starting point is 00:22:41 responses are getting better. But you're right, the fallout has lasted multiple days because in terms of PR crisis management, they've done a bad job. Yeah, I think when this first broke, I thought it was a golf world story, but it really has expanded into a bigger business story, too, because Golf Galaxy has gotten involved. This is a very big golf retailer. They were an advertiser for a show that was coming hosted by Good Good called Big Break on the Golf Channel. They actually said, please postpone that debut that was supposed to happen this week because
Starting point is 00:23:14 we want to remove all our branding from anything associated with Good Good. And then, too, apparently Golf Galaxy employees were told yesterday, urgent message, clear all good good merchandise from ourselves immediately and a lot of these store employees spent like hours pulling head covers, pulling apparel, pulling golf balls away that had good good branding on it.
Starting point is 00:23:36 So it absolutely is spilling into the business world. The big question here is how does something like this make it through approval processes? And some, you know, advertising industry watchers were saying this is what happens when you go down kind of the personality and influencer driven rabbit hole. It used to be that you had an agency
Starting point is 00:23:54 that helps you with your advertising. It goes through all these rounds of things. But if you're good, good golf, you're used to pumping out multiple videos every single day. And maybe you just move too fast. And that's why the approval processes were not in place. It doesn't excuse what was actually posted. But that's why some people are saying this is just the reality we live in.
Starting point is 00:24:13 It moves much quicker in advertising these days than maybe like the Don Draper days of old. Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Canada just launched its latest volley in the rapidly escalating trade war with the U.S. In response to Trump's tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods, Canada unveiled its own tariffs on $20 billion worth of American goods set to go into effect the day after Labor Day, September 8th. The list of affected items includes motorcycles, washers, and dryers, chainsaws, processed, cheese, and frozen octopus, while tariffs on steel and aluminum will double from 25% to 50%. Canadian officials frame the response as protecting market share for industries that will suffer as a result of U.S. tariffs, while other analysts claim that the tariffs designed to disproportionately hurt businesses in Trump-leaning Republican states. It's a huge gamble for Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, one of the few world leaders who has stood up to Trump while others have bent the knee. He has public opinion behind him now, but tariffs will raise costs for Canadian consumers,
Starting point is 00:25:10 testing the will of the people amid this economic battle. So this debt for tat has been happening in what did Trump threaten back more tariffs? No, he wrote on true social, the United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don't expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer. The old threatened to rename a body of water approach. We saw this earlier with Gulf of America, slap America on some body of H2O, and clearly that means we're winning. So it's just a very funny that somehow, how did Lake Ontario get looped into this? But of course it got looped into this. So the way I have to remember Great Lakes
Starting point is 00:25:51 now is not going to be homes. It's going to have to be hames. Oh, God. I don't know if I can do that. It doesn't roll off the tug. All right, moving on. France is going super saying. President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are teaming up fusion dance style to open up a Dragon Ball Z theme park in France that will cost roughly $7 billion. The complex is being built north of Paris and came together because Macron and MBS apparently bonded over a shared interest in the comic and a passion for manga. Macron compared the scale of the project, which is expected to create 22,000 jobs
Starting point is 00:26:26 to the arrival of the mouse in France. Nothing like this has been seen since Disneyland Paris, he said. Neil, Macron is pointing to this park as an example that his Choose France initiative that aims to attract investment in the country from global companies is working, but key details still need to be worked out and the construction couldn't end up taking longer
Starting point is 00:26:47 than Goku in Friza's battle. don't think it matters to producer, Ray, because he already booked his flight to Paris. He is so pumped about this, and I'm sure a lot of other people are, I think it shows just the global reach of Japanese culture, the fact that the Saudis are building a manga theme park outside of Paris, because it's about Japanese comics and media. I mean, that's just pretty incredible to show how they've exported their culture to the rest of the world. It's kind of a cautionary tale, though, because Disneyland Paris was cited as the example of, look at this. investment coming in the country. But according to a Guardian report from a few months ago,
Starting point is 00:27:24 Disney has still not recouped its $4.2 billion investment in Disneyland, Paris, more than 30 years after building it. So maybe it's not going to be as big of a boondoggle as either the park owners or Paris, France is going to expect. All right. We close out every Wednesday show with Suggestion Box, where Toby and I each share a recommendation to get you over the hump of the week. I'll go first if you don't mind, Toby. My rec is for all the job seekers out there, consider including a unique hobby or two on your resume. In a world where AI is turning out generic resumes by the thousands, recruiters say showing a quirky side of your humanity could help you stand out.
Starting point is 00:28:03 Kate Redder Sheik, a partner at a global legal recruiting agency, told the Wall Street Journal that half of the associates she placed last year listed hobbies on their resumes. She chocks it up to hiring managers gravitating toward interesting people they wouldn't mind being in the trenches with instead of a wet blanket. There are a few rules, though, one line at the bottom, that's it, don't be generic. Don't say something like sports or music. Be specific like avid birdwatcher or competitive crossword player. And don't be totally random, either include hobbies that imply office-related skills
Starting point is 00:28:32 like discipline or work ethic. It feels like we're going down a slippery slope, though, because the same thing with college applications where you're like, oh, I did this, this, this, and this. And you can kind of over-inflate your credentials. I wonder if hobby credential inflation is going to come. Like, oh, yeah, I'm really into, you know, birdhouse making or metalworking. And then put them on the spot and say, all right, show me your metalworking or something like that. Because that's so easy to lie about.
Starting point is 00:28:57 I know it's like a very pessimistic approach. But I like the general concept, but I feel like people might take it a little step too far. Well, this came to the foreback in January on Twitter when someone posted that they reviewed a resume that listed olive oil as an interest. And then the person goes, that is not an interest. It's been hours and I can't stop thinking about it. There will not be an interview. Do you remember this? And then people started talking about whether you should include something like this on your resume.
Starting point is 00:29:23 There was a big olive oil pro camp saying, yeah, this is fun. So I think that just speaks to a larger thing of, yeah, don't overinflate your hobbies. But maybe including a small tidbit that just stands out in the sea of resumes might be a good idea. I like it. All right. My recommendation is to not over guess when your friend is telling you a story. What do I mean by that? So yesterday, for instance, our producer Ray asked,
Starting point is 00:29:46 how much do you think tickets are to sit behind the bench at a Warriors' Knicks game next season? I knew it was going to be a big number, but I guessed $3,000. And that was in order to give Ray his big moment to say $19,000. See, if I had guessed $25,000, the wind would have gone out of his sales, and it kind of would have ruined the story.
Starting point is 00:30:07 So my recommendation, which I think I saw in some Instagram video, is to let the storyteller have their moment always underguess. Yeah, I love this because I have this one friend who always overguess it because he makes you want to feel bad and just throws you for a loop. So if you come back the next morning, tell your buddies and you say, guess how much I went at the craps table last night? He'll go like 75K. And you're like, no, like it's like 800.
Starting point is 00:30:32 But I like this. I like undershooting instead of overshooting to make the person feel good when they're telling you your story. So that's something great to keep in mind. It's probably what Dolly would have done. All right, that's all the time we have. Thanks for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Wednesday.
Starting point is 00:30:46 To share your thoughts on the episode or anything else, send an email to Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com or DM us on Instagram at Embeddaily Show. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our supervising producer. Raymond Lou is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham, and our associate producer is Olivia Lake.
Starting point is 00:31:03 Technical direction by Nina Miller. Hair and makeup is not working 9 to 5. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.

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