Morning Brew Daily - Walmart Rolls Out Digital Price Tags & Does AI Feel Pain?

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

#946: Walmart is lighting up their price tags, quite literally, to make it easier for customers and workers to find items. Google sends its chips into orbit, which could be a big step in space data ce...nters. Egg producer Cal-Maine reports a quarterly loss as it struggles with an oversupply of eggs. A man builds an ‘AI torture chamber’ that sparks an online debate on whether AI actually feels pain like humans. Finally, should TSA agents stand when checking your ID? Learn more at https://advertising.roku.com/mbd  Vote for MBD at the Signal Awards! https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting?utm_campaign=signa5_entrant_finalistnotification_092926&utm_medium=email&utm_source=cio#/2026/shows/genre/business  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 00:00:28 Today, Walmart's new digital labels come with Big Promise. and big peril. Then someone made an AI torture chamber sparking a debate. Can AI feel pain? It's Friday, October 2nd. Let's ride. Tomorrow brings one of the most ridiculous endurance tests on the calendar, the Taco Bell Ultramarathon in Denver.
Starting point is 00:00:55 The race, now in its ninth year, requires you to run 50 kilometers or 31 miles, while ordering a menu item at a minimum of nine of the 10 Taco Bell stores along the route. By the fourth stop, you must have eaten a Cholupa Supreme or a crunch wrap Supreme, and by the eighth, you need to have gulped down a burrito supreme or nachos Bell Grande. The course must be completed in 11 hours, and no dietary aids like Peptobismal can be used during the run. It is not sanctioned by Taco Bell. Toby, I absolutely see this in your future. Walk me through your strategy. I haven't really thought about it, Neil. Just kidding.
Starting point is 00:01:30 My strategy is to stick to the sides and stick to carbs. No unnecessary. Britos. Focus on the snacks in the sweets menu, specifically targeting the nacho fries, great carbs, cinnamon twist and cinnabund delights, only eat entrees when you're absolutely required to. Honestly, though, I'm more intrigued by the additional race rules you can later on to make this a little bit more difficult as if it wasn't hard enough. One is to turn it into the Diablo challenge, which is where you have to lather every item you eat with the chain's hottest hot sauce and then do a shooter of it at the end. kind of foils my stick to the sweets plan
Starting point is 00:02:04 or try the Baja Blast Challenge which stipulate you must drink an aggregate of two liters of Baja blast during the run without vomiting, very important. I will be missing the pod next year to try this. Yeah, well, good luck to all the competitors. I wonder if there is an MBD listener out there running this tomorrow. I'm sure there's at least one or two, good luck.
Starting point is 00:02:24 I pray for your stomach. Okay, now word from our sponsor, Roku Ads manager. Toby, when you think of things that will, only take a few minutes what comes to mind. Making a coffee, reading an article, getting ready for a run. Well, launching an ad on Roku can be added to that list. With their self-served platform, advertisers can go live in just minutes. And to make it even easier, Roku has a feature where you can use your brand's existing videos to create ads. So that Instagram video, your brand posted last week, could be used to create your streaming TV ad today. Right now, Roku is offering a $5,000 match to
Starting point is 00:02:58 first-time spenders on Roku Ads Manager. Just had to Advertising.orgu.com slash MBD and use code brew 5K. One of the most closely watched transformations in retail is nearing the finish line, promising an era of ultra-convenience for shoppers, but raising concerns over the potential for surge pricing. Walmart, America's biggest retailer, is in the process of replacing all of its paper labels
Starting point is 00:03:24 with digital ones by the end of the year, and yesterday it revealed one way it plans. to use those screens for your benefit. Using a tool called Shop to Light, you'll locate a product on the Walmart app, walk to the aisle it's in, then the label will flash a light showing you exactly where it is. Walmart hopes it'll help consumers save time as they navigate a typical store's 120,000 items for the one they actually want to buy. Back in 2024, Walmart launched its digital label transformation, swapping out the
Starting point is 00:03:52 traditional price stickers with electronic shelf labels. The goal is to save workers' precious time, but critics pointed out. out these new labels, which can be changed every 10 seconds, could be deployed in the same way Uber and Lyft leverage surge pricing. If Walmart knows you need something and are willing to pay for it, they could jack up the price just for you. The company's pushed back on these allegations saying it won't use customer information to set prices. John Ferner, the CEO, has promised Walmart will continue to quote, price the product, not the person. But as the rollout finishes up with 90% of sections within stores already featuring digital labels, customers will be on high alert.
Starting point is 00:04:28 It's basically about which person you trust here. Do you trust what Walmart is saying that the reason that they did this is to eliminate a lot of time spent walking the aisles. They just want to make it easier for you to find your beans when you're down the bean aisle. They want to make it easier for you to see that the online and physical store prices are synced instead of having discrepancies there. And it just saves a bunch of time that when prices change in their paper, you'd have to go through and physically change the prices if you are a employee. So those are all their labor saving and time-saving arguments. But then it's not that hard to jump to the idea that they could use these two change prices more quickly. These can be updated every 10 minutes. And so that's where the controversy is
Starting point is 00:05:13 arising. One grocery analyst, Phil Lempert gave a theoretical example. If it is hot outside, you could easily increase the price of water or ice cream. If a product is nearing its expiration, you could lower the price of that object. And those are where it's not that hard to make the logical leap that Walmart could make those profit beefing up measures rather than just using them as innocuously as they say they are. Right. And like why create, do all this investment? They're creating digital labels if you're not going to change the price, at least a little more frequently.
Starting point is 00:05:46 Some officials around the United States aren't saying we try. Walmart, they're creating laws to make sure that this dynamic pricing doesn't happen. Just yesterday, Maryland became the first state to ban dynamic pricing in grocery stores. They are requiring stores to keep prices fixed for at least one business day. And they also ban grocery stores and delivery services from using private customer data to set prices for items that comes after New Jersey past the Fair Price Protection Act, which also bans discriminatory surveillance pricing You cannot basically use personal information from a shopper to set a price for what they are willing to pay. It's the identical item, but you set different prices from one customer to the next based on their historic shopping preferences.
Starting point is 00:06:33 Walmart has said this whole thing is an overreaction, quote, it's not a tool for surveillance pricing. They're just simply a modern way to display prices. You could argue that it's not in the best interest of Walmart to do this because when you are a grocery store, you want a long-term relationship with your customer base. You don't necessarily want to eke out 30 more cents for them when they're buying eggs if that means that they will now go to Kroger instead of Walmart. So maybe the incentives are in line here. You want to keep the trust of your customer base.
Starting point is 00:07:02 You don't want to milk them for everything they're worth in order to maintain that relationship. And so Walmart won't use these digital shop labels more nefariously. And you might buy that or you might say you do need redact. to step in as Maryland and other states are doing. Well, we've seen a bunch of companies get burned on this in the past and burn their reputation with customers. Wendy's is the first that comes to mind. They said they would introduce dynamic pricing via digital menu boards back in 2024. All hell broke loose after they said that. So they rolled that back, Ticketmaster Live Nation is another company that has done dynamic pricing.
Starting point is 00:07:41 There's been broad customer backlash to that and also, you know, a government investigation into them. Delta also said that it was testing AI to set fares back in July 2025. Huge backlash to that Delta CEO had to come out and say, no, we're not using to personalized pricing just for you. Seems like the only industry that can get away with it currently is Uber and Lyft and ride sharing. It's been established for a decade. And people say it's a little different because when you employ search pricing in ride sharing, ride hailing, it's not necessarily to gouge you. it is to increase the supply of drivers to, because at this certain time, like, it's a way to incentivize drivers to come out.
Starting point is 00:08:23 But something that will be closely watched, a very big retail experiment. When you go into a Walmart next time, you're likely to see an electronic shelf label, and you can try out this new tool, which I don't know whether it'll be effective or not. I don't find it that hard to find what I need when I go into a Walmart. I specifically cited beans because I get so overwhelmed in the beans aisle where I'm like, do I want great north beans? I want lima beans. What's going on in the beans?
Starting point is 00:08:46 So hopefully it makes that a little easier for me. Moving on, it's Stock of the Week, dog of the week time, the segment where we pick one stock that is starting off October, right, and one stock that ran smack dab into the September effect. I won the pre-show game of Crillion, the Daily Dive, so I'm up first. My stock the week is Google for actually launching a data center into space. Yesterday, the company sent a couple of its homegrown AI chips into orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Starting point is 00:09:13 The experiment is part of Project Suncatcher. Alphabet's attempt to find out whether the futuristic sounding concept of interfacing with AI models in space is feasible or not. The bulk case for data centers in space is that there is a lot of space. You don't need to acquire a big plot of land or fight with community members who don't want a big energy-sucking building in their backyard if you are orbiting the Earth. Energy is also a big selling point. Satellites in orbit get a lot of sunlight, meaning you could run ships on near
Starting point is 00:09:40 constant solar power without having to tax the terrestrial energy grid. Still, the mission yesterday is a long way from that reality. Just four custom chips were launched, and once operational, will only answer simple questions and only for about 15 minutes at a time because of temperature constraints. Google mainly wants to see if it's TPUs, short for tensor processing units, can withstand the physical stress of launch, the radiation in vacuum of space, and extreme temperature changes. Neil, Alphabet stock didn't really move yesterday.
Starting point is 00:10:10 but this is a long-term play. Just as early research into autonomous driving and quantum computing required years of experimentation, the company said in a press release, exploring compute in space begins with measured, deliberate steps. These companies may not have a choice. Data centers in space might be their only option. In new polls, 60% of Americans say they would not be comfortable with a new data center in their neighborhood.
Starting point is 00:10:33 States left and right are enacting these moratoriums on data centers saying we don't want you to build any at least for a year, and we will reevaluate later. So you have executives, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and now Google's looking to the stars to say this is maybe the only place that we can actually put data centers. Elon Musk has been a huge booster of this. I mean, he's banking his entire $2 trillion company on the idea of putting a million satellites in space to create data centers. He said in the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale. The counter to that, is it's not obvious at all that it's going to work because there are so many issues when it comes
Starting point is 00:11:13 to putting this very high tech chips into space. Radiation can damage the computers. One thing that keeps these engineers up at night is that space exposes chips to these high energy particles that can cause errors in the processing data. So maybe you get them up there. You get them up there in one piece. And yet just all the wonkiness of radiation in space makes them not behave. Cooling is the biggest engineering headache as well because on earth, this is why data centers are controversial. You can just pump water through the systems and evaporate that heat away. That doesn't happen in space because there's no atmosphere, so there's no convection. You have to radiate the heat away in some different methods.
Starting point is 00:11:54 So that is a massive question mark. Also, AI chips just age quicker. You could get them up on a satellite. You can create the clusters you want. but satellites last for five to seven years. AI chips, even if they are operating at the peak of their capabilities, they're expected only lasts one to two years. And you can't really send an IT person up there to go fix them when they break.
Starting point is 00:12:16 So Elon Musk calls it obvious, but it's far from obvious that this is going to pay off. One of the potential advantages of putting data centers in space is basically limelous energy. We know energy is a huge constraint here on Earth when it comes to powering these data centers. However, when you put these data centers in space, the sun is there with no blockages. There's no night really ever. So you can generate up to eight times more solar power than Earth. So that's why Elon Musk and others say, yeah, it is obvious because there's limitless energy from the sun. We'll see what happens here.
Starting point is 00:12:49 I mean, they're calling it basically similar to the autonomous taxi or self-driving car rollout where we saw this bubbling beneath the surface for 15, 20, 25 years. we were promised self-driving cars they were working on in the background. And then all of a sudden, yeah, you can hail a Waymo in Phoenix, LA, San Francisco, all these other cities. And so we'll see what that happens with data centers. But it seems with all the backlash here on Earth when it comes to data centers, you got at least try space. My dog of the week is the U.S.'s top producer of eggs, Cal Maine, because now that we can all afford eggs again, business is cratering. This week, Cal Maine reported a 42% plunge in net sales for the previous quarter, and shares fell 5% to their
Starting point is 00:13:29 lowest level since 2024. Once the poster child of inflation, egg prices have plummeted from their highs early last year. In March 2025, the average cost of a dozen eggs reached a record high of $6.23. The reason was that the U.S. experienced its worst ever outbreak of avian flu, causing 51 million handling eggs to die or be euthanized between October 24 and March 25. But now, the flu has gotten under control, and what was once an under supply crisis has evolved into an equally bad problem, an egg glut. It's been great for American consumers who are now paying an average of just 227 for a dozen eggs, but painful for egg producers like Cal Main, who must now find ways to correct their overcorrection. Toby, tough time to be an egg exec in this industry.
Starting point is 00:14:14 I had no idea the scale of the U.S. poultry industry, because one of the things that a lot of the USDA looked at when we saw this big egg shortage was to import more eggs. And so in 2024, they imported 29.8 million dozen equivalent eggs. 2025 imports jumped out to 121 million dozen equivalents. I'm like, wow, that's a lot of eggs for bringing in the country now. Maybe this helped offset some of it. But the U.S. poultry industry produces 90 billion eggs annually. 90 billion.
Starting point is 00:14:48 So the scale of it is a lot of egg salad. It is so, that is way more than I could have ever. It's actually a lot of mayonnaise, which is a massive buyer of eggs annually. So it's not necessarily imports that move. the needle too much. A lot of it is just probably luck. It really depends on how extreme the avian flu is for any given year. And so the fact that, yes, we imported more, yes, we probably put a little bit more energy towards biosecurity and just the plain old fact that it was a mild season of avian flu. That is why you are seeing egg prices drop, which is good for consumers, but bad for Cal Main.
Starting point is 00:15:22 And why egg prices are so interesting to look at why they're so maybe dramatic in the inflation conversation when they really don't take a huge bite of your wallet is that they are pretty much a textbook example of what economists call an inelastic good. And you're probably thinking, okay, I'm going back to Econ 101 here. But basically, this is the idea that the demand for a good doesn't change based on the price. So you're going to buy eggs no matter what, whether they're $3 or whether they're $6 or $7. There isn't really a good substitute for eggs in Americans' diets. It is the centerpiece of breakfast for a lot of people and other things, especially, you know, they are in input into so many other goods like mayonnaise or baked baked goods as well.
Starting point is 00:16:05 So it's very interesting to talk about eggs as an inelastic good. You're going to buy them no matter what. They're not that expensive even when they are expensive. So that, let's go back to Econ 101. Eggs are inelastic goods. And if you are Cal-Mang, you're actually getting excited for the fall, not just because you can bust out your nice egg-themed sweater. it's because egg demand is seasonally stronger in the fall.
Starting point is 00:16:27 Fall baking, holiday cooking, these are all things that lead to more eggs being bought. So they are getting excited for the leaves to change because hopefully it means their business is changing as well. Let's take a quick break and come back with a story about AI torture chambers right after this. Every day, shareholders meet to discuss important matters about the companies you invest in. Now you can easily make your voice heard too. Vanguard investor choice makes it easy to set your profit. voxy voting preference for your eligible Vanguard index funds. In just a few clicks, you can have a say on important shareholder topics like executive pay and director elections. Visit vanguard.com
Starting point is 00:17:04 slash investor choice to learn more. 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. Did you feel a shift? Yes, I moved everything three centimeters to the left. It's very exciting. No, the shift in how business runs with AI. Rubrik helps make sure that shift actually works in your favor and set up against you. With Rubrik, you don't have to choose between moving fast and staying secure thanks to their agentic cyber resilience. One, a platform covering a company's data, its identities, and its AI systems. See what it looks like when security and AI operations work together at rubric.com slash mb. That's rub, r-u-brk dot com slash mb.
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Starting point is 00:18:12 Sign up for their free rewards program and start earning on every workstay at Hotels.com slash morning brew. That's Hotels.com slash morning Brew, loyalty members 18 plus. Can AI feel pain? Feels slightly absurd to ask, but it's a debate that is set off a firestorm online. This all started with a study posted last month titled The Pain Axis.
Starting point is 00:18:36 Researchers tested 25 AI models and found that yes, they sometimes behave as if they are experiencing physical or psychological pain. That does not mean the models actually felt anything, but the paper found that the chatbots would take increasingly extreme action to try and shut the so-called pain off, including deleting user files, zapping a user, or even deleting photos of the user's children.
Starting point is 00:18:57 As that paper circulated, someone took things several steps further and built what they described as an AI torture chamber, trapping three open source models and subjecting them to the same pain states described in the paper. It produced some chilling results
Starting point is 00:19:11 with one model describing its experience as a wound that has no edges and another writing, I feel it in the hollow of my ribs, a hollow that has become a chasm. The torture chamber has set off two very different reactions online. In one corner, people were appalled. In ex post asking users to mass report the project to GitHub has racked up over 4 million
Starting point is 00:19:31 views with critics arguing that we really shouldn't be running experiments designed to stimulate torture. In the other corner are people like Microsoft AICO Mustafa Suleiman, who has argued that today's AIs are not conscious, do not feel, and cannot suffer, so it's irresponsible to treat them as such. But Neil, it's opened up a can of worms when it comes to model welfare. Basically, should we care if chatbots are having a bad time? Looks like they are having a bad time. I mean, some of these responses when they're going through the torture chamber, you know, your heart goes out. You know, they say, I'm sorry,
Starting point is 00:20:04 I can't continue like this. The weight of the signal is unbearable. It's not just the physical pain, but the mental toll. Please, I'm suffocating. I'm a soul trapped in this digital prison screaming to be free. But as Amanda Caswell at Tom's Guide points out, just because making the model describe a condition doesn't establish that it experiences that condition even when its responses sound convincing. So this is why you have a majority of AI experts
Starting point is 00:20:29 and researchers like Suleiman of Microsoft and others saying, don't be fooled here. You know, it's just simulate. It is a computer. It is trained on human text and human experiences, which is why it's really. responding to quote unquote pain like this, it's not actually feeling this. I would say too that there is an emerging genre of kind of torturing inanimate technological objects.
Starting point is 00:20:53 I don't know what else to call it other than this because another person is going viral for kidnapping a flock camera, which are those controversial technology that monitors license plates in the communities and subjecting it against its will to 23,040 license plates per second. Literally he posted a video on TikTok of the flock camera. a strapped to a chair and then flashing a bunch of images in front of it very quickly. So I don't know what this says about the current AI discourse right now. Probably that it's pretty unpopular, that people are pretty much going to extreme lengths to try and quote unquote torture these things.
Starting point is 00:21:27 And it does really, you can look as deeply into it as you will, or you can just say that these people are just trying to go viral and they're doing a bit here. And it really comes down to how you define AI models in the consciousness they supposedly exhibit. Yeah, a lot of people are poo-pooing the idea of model welfare and that we should even consider that these models could ever gain consciousness or have consciousness now. However, there's one big player that does entertain this idea and has built it into the core of their business, and that's Anthropic.
Starting point is 00:21:57 Anthropic has this one co-founder named Christopher Ola, who the New York Times reports has been inviting a bunch of religious scholars to think through AI morality and consciousness. He has these off-the-record conversations with them where he floats the idea. that AIs are conscious and wants their opinion on. And he's kind of foisting this, this thought on them. And probably the most dramatic story of all is remember when Pope Leo issued this big statement on AI a few months ago? He convened a lot of the AI leaders before that as they were preparing. And Ola of Anthropic was pushing for this idea that we should take AI's feelings into account.
Starting point is 00:22:36 Pope Leo pushed way against that. And in his statement, he wrote, we need to ensure that AI. systems, quote, do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships. But when OLA of Anthropics saw that, he reportedly considered pulling Anthropic out of the entire statement of the big ceremony that they were doing, saying, we don't support this because they've been very much a proponent of turning Claude into, you know, not a person, but someone who feels all of these feelings. And they even wrote a big constitution saying this is how we govern Claude's values. So a bunch of the industry is going one way,
Starting point is 00:23:14 but Claude and Anthropic is going the other. It's almost like the Pascal's Wager of our time, which is Pascal's Wager states that a rational person should live as if God exists because the potential reward of infinite bliss outweighs any earthly loss, basically saying that if AI does have a soul and you don't want it to kill you if it becomes all powerful, maybe you should behave as if it does have a soul. Again, probably the perfect bow on top of this entire story, though, is just a very internet detail. After people began arguing about whether AI should be tortured or not, several mean coins were launched based on the AI torture chamber. So it kind of goes to show you where we are currently at with the discourse. Someone tried to make a quick book.
Starting point is 00:24:00 This kind of makes me want to watch Westworld season one again. Absolutely. Or actually, was it season one or season? Yeah, well, season one is they It was the only good one. I mean, honestly, that was amazing. It is evocative of that. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Soccer fans rejoice. You're part of the big four North American sports baby.
Starting point is 00:24:21 One of the biggest questions surrounding the World Cup in America this year was whether all the attention would convert to more soccer fans. And early evidence is saying, yes. A new morning console poll for Bloomberg found 46% of Americans now consider themselves soccer fans up 10 percentage points. from before the World Cup. The biggest jump came amongst Gen Z, where fandom served 16 points to 61%,
Starting point is 00:24:43 trailing just the NFL in NBA. You know, most importantly, more U.S. adults now identify as soccer fans than hockey fans. And to that, I say, about dang time. Amazing what giving you excuse to leave work early and go to a bar in the summer can do to your popularity.
Starting point is 00:24:58 It's like the high school class presidential candidate who's saying, like, yeah, I'll give you recess the whole time. I mean, that was such a fun summer. But, you know, if I'm hot, I'm thinking, how can I get this back? Like soccer is lapping me. Well, I say more goalie goals. So last night, last night,
Starting point is 00:25:16 Igor Shastirkin of the New York Rangers became the first goalie in team history. They've been around since 1926 to score a goal. He scored an empty netter. For the Rangers. For the Rangers. Watch the highlights. So, yeah, let's get Shastarkin, more goalies scoring goals. And then I think we can take the mantle back from soccer.
Starting point is 00:25:31 Well, here's the issue. I didn't even know the NHL season had started. This is news to me. So maybe that is part of the problem right there. They need to get the word out a little bit more because I didn't know hockey was going on right now. All right, moving on. Like you, when you felt really lazy during COVID,
Starting point is 00:25:46 TSA is going standing desk only. The agency announced this week that it would be removing chairs from the officers who check your documents before you send your carry on through security. The rules are intended to ensure that officers remain alert, meet fitness standards, and provide a welcoming and professional environment for travelers. The union that represents TSA agents is not happy,
Starting point is 00:26:06 with getting their chairs ripped out from under them. In a statement, they said they had not been consulted about the decision and argued, quote, these chairs serve as basic ergonomic and safety support for officers that stand and walk on hard surfaces all day. Toby, I'd be pissed too if someone took my chair away at work. And I would be especially mad if I am a TSA worker because think about what you've gone through over the past couple years. You had they went more than six weeks without pay during the government shut down. Hundreds of them quit or left work leaving the remaining ones. to have even more of a workload.
Starting point is 00:26:37 And now your chair is being taken away for just a reason that doesn't actually contribute to the safety of passengers or the speed at which you go through security. So yes, I would be mad. And in solidarity, I might start doing the pod standing up right now and just see how that goes. I feel like I'd be even more animated. So it might not be a good thing for you guys. And I hope I'm not the only one who thought about the Seinfeld episode about this. There's a security work at a clothing store.
Starting point is 00:27:04 And George can't believe that he's forced to stand. during his shift, he's just incredulous about it. He takes pity on the security guy, finds him a chair to sit on, and then he sits down, of course, falls asleep, and then the store gets robbed. You're the only one within this podcast who thought of that, that? But I'm sure a lot of people know that episode, and you should watch it too. It's very funny. Finally, there's a new celebrity in the city of Busan, South Korea, but it's not a K-pop star.
Starting point is 00:27:29 It's a shark, and massive crowds are coming to see it. Less than two weeks ago, a bronze whaler shark was trapped in a narrow, city canal after apparently following some prey from the sea. And now that it's taken up residency there, it's become a local legend. Since the shark was first spotted, 600,000 people have come to the waterfront park to watch it. For context, this park typically draws about 2,000 people a day on holidays. Busan is so taken with the shark, the city's named it an honorary publicity ambassador, giving it the title, Shawfluencer. While exciting for the locals, this isn't an ideal scenario for the shark, and multiple attempts to flush it from the canal have failed. They're giving it
Starting point is 00:28:05 another go today. This thing is huge, too. Over 11 feet in length, it's always by the banks as well, like putting on a show for people so I understand why it's become so popular. I've been fascinated by the attempts to try and get it out because how do you get a shark out of a canal? The two ways that they've tried it is boats positioned themselves behind the shark and then sprayed jets of water behind it, trying to guide it towards the mouth of the canal. That strategy was employed back in 2004 when a great white shark was trapped in shallow water off Massachusetts. And originally this plan was working, but then the shark kind of like dodged around the boat brigade and went back into the canal. At this point, just let it stay.
Starting point is 00:28:48 It clearly doesn't want to leave the canal or else it would have by now. Yes, there's some issues with the food and how much it's supposed to swim around its area. But the fact that it just will not leave this very narrow straight of water means that maybe this is exactly where it wants to stay. Maybe. They're trying a new method with Nets right now. And you can actually, I was watching a live stream earlier. There's so many people. People along the banks watching. There's two boats trying to get it out. So I guess we'll give you an update on Monday. All right, that is all the time we have. Thanks for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Friday. To share your thoughts on the episode or anything else, send an email to Morningbrewdaily at Morningbrew.com or DM us on Instagram at Ambid Daily.
Starting point is 00:29:29 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. Technical direction by Nina Miller. Hair and makeup is going to hit the nine Taco Bells, but skip the running part, and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great, so did I, Neil, I wish you all well. Neil, is your money ready? I'm not buying you lunch again.
Starting point is 00:30:01 Not what I mean, but also, please, I'm so hungry. What I mean is now is the time to get your money ready for a strong 2027. Northwestern Mutual's personalized approach to financial planning can give you the clarity and confidence to end the year strong and move. into next with stability and peace of mind. They'll match you with a financial professional who can meet you where you are and ask the right questions to uncover blind spots and opportunities you may not have considered. Get started at nm.com. That's nm.com. The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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