AI Actor Sparks Outrage in Hollywood & McDonald’s Monopoly is Back

0:00Tuesday on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozma St John host the highly anticipated new competition show. I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life. They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands. This is a huge opportunity. This is the battle for the next big idea. This is not play play. We're spending millions of dollars. I'm so excited to embark on this adventure with all of you. Make the best I do win! On brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere Tuesday on NBC.

0:35Good morning for your daily show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, a government shutdown is coming. So why are stocks going up? Ben, what's the 996 grind set work schedule that is sweeping the startup world? It's Tuesday, September 30th. Let's ride.

0:55Have you ever tried to create an Excel spreadsheet based solely on Vibes? Probably didn't turn out great. But soon it's going to get a lot easier because yesterday, Microsoft said it was launching Vibe working in its office suite, a play on Vibe coding, which is when you generate code by typing in a text prompt to an AI program. Similar thing is coming to Microsoft programs where you type in plain language what you want to see, and it'll generate a complex Excel spreadsheet, Word document, or presentation-ready PowerPoint. Essentially, anyone can become a first-year consultant. I mean, what's next, Vibe?

1:28Cooking, Vibe parenting? We're in a bit of a Vibe bubble right now, Neil. That being said, this is a risky vibe for Microsoft because you do not want to mess too much with Excel. A few spreadsheets underpin the entire global economy, so you do not want that agent screwing up, which it still does a fair amount, by the way. It got a 57 % on Spreadsheet Bench, this benchmark for judging an AI model's ability to edit spreadsheets. That places it first amongst most of its competitors, but behind the human accuracy of 71%. So first-year consultants, you're probably safe-ish for now. And now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads.

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2:46That's linkedin.com slash mbd. Terms and conditions may apply. The government is barreling toward a shutdown on Wednesday after discussions between President Trump and top congressional leaders failed to produce a breakthrough. You wouldn't know it from the action on Wall Street with all three indexes closing in the green yesterday. But one corner of the market did react significantly, as it has all year. Gold. Gold notched a new record, topping$3 ,800 per ounce on Monday morning. The medal is on a historic run in 2025, up 47 percent already. It's on pace for its best year since the Iranian revolution upended the global economy in 1979.

3:25Gold is a classic safe haven play has been since the kingdom of Lydia began cranking out coins in the 6th century BC. When times get hairy, investors flock to gold as a store of value. That's been happening in a big way in 2025. A primary driver has been concern over U.S. debt levels, which something could spiral into a government funding crisis. simmering geopolitical tensions trade wars and the fed's interest rate cuts are also fueling a run on gold it's led to a bonanza for gold investors including the u.s treasury the u.s has the biggest gold hoard in the world totaling about 261.5 million ounces and half of which sits below the army base in fort knox kentucky yesterday after gold reached its new record the value of all that gold hit one trillion dollars toby let's break down a couple things a what's behind this gold surge and also B, why the government shutdown isn't spooking stocks?

4:17I mean, gold is essentially the big red panic button trade. Every time Washington is, you know, stumbling towards a shutdown, investors kind of turn to themselves and say, what can I own that won't get dragged down with the dollar, what won't get dragged down with the stock market or won't be affected by the Fed's, you know, confusion going forward. And historically, that answer has always been gold, which is why we're seeing it run up once again. But it is fascinating to look at, you know, the shutdown economy and how the economy actually reacts to government shutdowns. And historically, it's been very muted.

4:50The economy basically shrugs them off. You go back to the 2018-2019 shutdown. That was the longest ever, 35 days. It had basically no impact on long-term GDP, unemployment, or markets in general, mainly because when we see a shutdown, workers are furloughed. They're not laid off. and furloughed workers behave much like workers with jobs because they still know they have a paycheck that's about to come. So they continue to spend, which doesn't impact GDP that much. This time around could be different though because of what Trump has been floating that the workers won't be furloughed, they'd actually be layoff.

5:25That's why people are a little bit more nervy this time around. Yeah, typically economists have likened shutdowns to natural disaster or a hurricane where there's a short-term economic hit, but all of that is reversed later when things get rebuilt and the people who didn't spend during that storm start spending again. But the stock market just always shrugs these things off because of that lack of long-term hit to the economy. Since 1976, the S &P 500 has averaged zero change during government shutdowns. And even in late 2018, 2019, during the longest one we've ever had, the S &P actually went up by 10 % during that shutdown.

6:03So the stock market is kind of doing what it has been every single time there's been a shutdown, which is either stay the same or go up. Another unique risk this time around, though, is the fact that economic data might get delayed. This could delay releases like Friday's September jobs report, inflation reading. So if the Fed is flying blind going into these all important rate cut decisions or rate decisions, then maybe that's why this could be a potentially more damaging shutdown long term. Because if you can't judge the labor market, you can't judge where inflation's at. How can you create monetary policy going forward?

6:40So the firing threat along with this flying bind threat, that's why potentially this could be a little bit more of a damaging one. But you're right. All the index hit all-time highs, even though Polymarket is showing an 85 % chance of government shutdown. So maybe they think the layoff threat is just bluster and not actually a real threat. Or it's just they've looked at historical data and said, like, hey, typically things go pretty all right. We think they're going to go all right this time around as well. Yeah, yesterday I did the week ahead preview and I said the jobs report is coming on Friday, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics came out and said that, well, if the government is shut down, we can't produce this report.

7:17So there may not be a jobs report on Friday if this shutdown happens, which looks likely. And the longer it lasts, the longer these economic reports get delayed, we're looking ahead to this big inflation report that's going to determine the Fed's next interest rate decision. And that could also get delayed depending on how long this shutdown lasts. So a lot of implications here. We will keep tabs on how negotiations go, but all signs point to a shutdown right after midnight on Wednesday morning. Moving on, have you heard of this actress, Tilly Norwood? She hasn't appeared in any movies yet, but she's reportedly getting swarmed by talent agents and expects to sign with one soon, which is going to set off an earthquake in Hollywood.

7:58And that's because Tilly Norwood isn't human, she's an AI. At a panel event in Zurich over the weekend, actor and technologist Aline Vanderbilt then stunned the entertainment world by announcing that Tilly Norwood, a product of her new AI talent studio, was fielding offers from agents and she'll be revealing which agency is going to represent Norwood in a few months. Actors fearful of AI replacing them did not respond well to this. Lighting up social media with outrage and scorn, Melissa Barrera of In the Heights and Scream wrote, Hope all actors repped by the agent that does this drop their ass.

8:31How gross, read the room. Toni Collette posted a string of screaming emojis, and Lucas Gage added with a wink, she was a nightmare to work with. Van Der Velden responded to the backlash, writing on social media that Tilly Norwood is not a sub for a human being. She added that, quote, I see AI not as a replacement for people, but as a new tool, a new paintbrush, just as animation, puppetry, or CGI opened fresh possibilities without taking away from live acting. AI offers another way to imagine and build stories. Toby, it seems like Pandora's box has been open when it comes to AI in the movies. If Norwood gets signed, she'll be one of the first AI-generated actresses to get representation with a talent agency who have historically worked with human performers.

9:13Vandervelden has said that, hey, audiences don't actually care if actors or actresses have a pulse. They actually just care about good storytelling. So why would Tilly be any different? As long as we are telling good stories, audiences will come out and see it. But we have seen a shift in industry attitudes towards AI. You remember when the SAG after strikes were happening in 2023, a big sticking point was the use of AI in the industry. And it was basically taboo to ever admit that any of your movie productions or people were going to work with AI in any way. Now we have agents kind of under the table going like, all right, we're interested in this.

9:49We're interested in the economics of this because obviously AI actresses are a lot cheaper than real life human ones. So fascinating to see both the industry shift and obviously the industry pushback from a lot of actors. Yeah, it is so much cheaper. So OpenAI is backing this movie that's coming out next year called Critters with a Z. It's a feature film animation. And most of this movie is going to be made using AI tools from OpenAI. And if you look at just the math here, they think it's gonna take nine months to make this movie versus three years. And the budget of Critters is going to be less than$30 million, far less than what animated films typically cost.

10:33And, you know, this is a huge test to see what the appetite is for mostly AI-generated filmmaking. We'll see whether Van Der Velden is right and that audiences may not care if the actors had a pulse or the people making it or animating it had a pulse, or if they do care and the human touch, the human actors is still really important. It does feel like we are moving into the synthetic influencer celebrity phase of this world because we're already seeing it on Instagram. Little McKella is a massive Instagram influencer who is completely AI generated. We also see hologram pop stars over in Japan.

11:09So it's happening in other aspects of the entertainment world. Why wouldn't it come to movie stars and the movie industry as well? So I don't know. I think it all comes down to if it's actually good or not because, again, animated movies, like you could say like, oh my god, they're replacing humans as well. But people love those movies because they tell very human stories. Maybe if you're using AI as another tool to tell very human stories, then audiences will like it or it will just be very uncanny valley and people will hate it. I don't know, but I will probably try to watch. McDonald's is pulling out all the stops to get customers back through its doors, announcing the return of a fan favorite this week.

11:46albeit one with a shady pass. Seeing how excited its customers got for the humble McRib and the nostalgic characters like Grimace, McDank's is dusting off its infamous Monopoly game after a 10-year hiatus to inspire some similar mania. Starting next Monday, when you order an item for the Monopoly menu at McDonald's, you'll get a Peel to Play sticker on your food, which you'll use to collect properties and redeem prizes within the McDonald's app. Those prizes include anything from free food all the way up to an all-expenses vacation or even a$1 million cash prize. The fast food chain put out a statement saying, this game is a core memory for so many customers, and we're excited that those memories can now be shared across generations.

12:28But a lot of those core memories might also be tied to the so-called McMillions scandal, where the person in charge of distributing the winning tickets across the country ended up stealing them for himself and his family members. In total, over$24 million in prizes were taken, leading to the FBI getting involved, eight arrests, and an HBO docuseries released back in 2020. Neil, we know nostalgia plays with fast food customers, so this has a chance to become a cultural phenomenon once more. But do you remember the original scandal? How bad was it? It was pretty insane. So in 2001, the FBI received an anonymous tip that a bunch of these million dollar winners from the original Monopoly game were actually related to each other.

13:11So they did this major sting operation and found that the ringleader of this massive scam was a guy named Uncle Jerry. Well, his name was actually Jerome Jacobson, but he was known as Uncle Jerry. He was the director of security for a company called Simon Marketing, which was the company that handled the distribution for these Monopoly game pieces, specifically the high value ones. So instead of shipping those out to stores as he should have or as his job directed, he actually took those for himself, distributed them amongst a close group of people, his family, friends and other people related to organized crime.

13:47And essentially what they did was they recruited fake winners to pose as these huge winners, go on TV, do a whole huge media circuit and then kind of split the winnings amongst them. And they built McDonald's out of twenty four million dollars. He was sentenced to three years in prison. And if you go watch that HBO documentary, it kind of explains this whole very elaborate, very intricate scam. That was a huge egg on the face for McDonald's at the time. It was an egg on the face, but it was a sales driver. So it was kind of a bummer that they had to kind of sunset it for a decade because when they reintroduced it last in 2013, they said the sales jumped 5 % in the quarter that followed and they attributed it directly to that.

14:28and McDonald's has been trying to stage a comeback with some of these big promotions. They have this big Minecraft deal that drove sales. Finally, they had sales growth in the last quarter, two and a half percent after many quarters of flat or declining sales. So they are kind of rifling through the history books right now and going, all right, what other levers do we have to pull right now? Let's bring back Monopoly. They feel like they've gotten a little bit more buttoned up. There's no more Uncle Jerry figures anymore and a lot of it is centered around the app as well. And I do think that's a huge motivator for bringing this back as well is as long as you can bring more people into the McDonald's app, build that loyalty program more.

15:06That is a huge priority for McDonald's CEO right now. Loyalty members tend to visit a lot more than non-loyalty members. It is accounts for 25 percent of their business at this point. So a lot of good things are happening because you can play on nostalgia and you can also get people in the app ecosystem. That is definitely a win win for McDonald's. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Toby's Trends. Toby, have you ever gotten ads for products that are totally unrelated to you? Absolutely. There was a solid week where I got ads for 55-plus senior living communities in the Midwest.

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16:18That's linkedin.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. toby i want to talk to you about exposure oh you mean like that reoccurring nightmare where i show up for the podcast in my underwear it's actually nothing like that at all because i'm talking about exposure to the nasdaq 100 index using micro index options oh well that's totally different nasdaq 100 micro index options xnd offer precise and manageable exposure to the nasdaq 100 index at a smaller notional value. The smaller notional value can make it an attractive option by allowing retail investors to participate in options trading with lower capital requirements.

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17:39And today's trend is all about the newest work schedule sweeping Silicon Valley called 996. Gone are the days of Dolly Parton's 9-5 work anthem, because apparently that is no way to make a living anymore. Instead, if you want to get ahead, you have to be working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week, hence 996. The work schedule from hell originally came to the U.S. by way of China, which has an equally demanding tech scene. It eventually led a Chinese court to ban employers from compelling their employees from grinding out 72-hour weeks. But these days you can scroll X and find plenty of a U.S. startup founder openly glorifying workaholism again.

18:19Some companies are even putting it in writing with job descriptions that spell out expectations of 70-plus hour weeks. And it's not just talk. The expense management platform Ramp noticed that corporate card use in San Francisco on Saturdays is up compared to past years, which they take as a sign that people are grinding through the weekends. Neil, are we 996-ing? How many hours did you log last week? So many. I mean, I don't actually want to count. But yeah, there's something in the water here in San Francisco in the Bay Area. Nap pods are out and energy drinks are in. Last month, a startup founder, Dax Gupta, told The Standard that the prevailing attitude in San Francisco right now among the young techies is, quote, no drinking, no drugs, 996, lift heavy, run far, merry early, track sleep, eat steak and eggs.

19:07And it's remarkable the turnaround that we've seen from just five years ago during, you know, the height of the pandemic when the focus was on flexibility and work-life balance and not putting everything into your work. And now that has completely changed, at least in San Francisco. It may not be happening in other cities. But, you know, the reason is, is probably AI and people see these young tech people see, you know, once in a generation opportunity to put your foot in the door and say, well, I built a massive company because there's this huge technological revolution going on. I think the question here, though, is does it work?

19:41Does it actually lead to better outcomes for company builders? And it is a little bit of a mixed metaphor because startups definitely get more done in the short term. If you're working all the time, six days a week, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., of course you're going to get more work done. But you have to think long term as well. Studies suggest that working more than 55 hours a week can create health risks. They can diminish productivity. It basically is, do you want to sacrifice short-term gains for potentially the long-term health of yourself and your business? But I also think this idea of just never drinking, never doing anything fun just is no way to live.

20:17Maybe it is a way to live. It's how they're choosing to live. But it is fascinating to see all the rest that comes with it is basically you have to just sideline your entire life in order to devote everything you have to this business. Maybe they see$10 billion outcomes on the horizon, which is why they're doing it. but fascinating that it's got this label, it's got this moniker, and a lot of people are adopting it. I mean, it's a little personally for me. I know you joked about me working a lot, but in the early days of Morning Brew, when there were just three or four of us back in 2017, 2018, and this went on for five years, like I was doing nine, nine, six, or even 10, 10, or 11, 11, six.

20:54And from my perspective, to build a startup from the ground up, which we were doing, that was the kind of only way to do it. You had to put in the hours. And the big key here that, you know, reflecting on this moment in our lives was that none of the people working in this early stage startup had sort of any other responsibilities. We didn't have kids. We didn't have partners. We didn't have other, you know, we weren't caring for anybody else. And because of that, we were allowed to pour everything into this. So N of one, just from my personal experience, but to build, you know, a lot of these VCs and tech people who say this, this is the only way you can build a startup that's actually worth any sort of money and won't fail.

21:35Like in some sense, I do sympathize with that just from my personal experience, but it's only for such a select few people. And that's why I think a lot of the, a lot of the folks doing 996 in San Francisco right now are just a very narrow group of people that can actually afford this particular lifestyle. I do think what you said is true. Some, if you are building a company and it's just a necessity to do 996, like that is just what you had to do. Like the newsletter had to get out the next day, you had to finish it. And so you had to be working. That is one thing. But then the people who are cosplaying as 996 where they're sleeping in the office, they're never doing anything social, but they're building an AI agent for Uber or whatever.

22:15I don't know. Something not necessarily that you need to be working that many hours. That's where you get pushback of the people who are kind of faking it because that's what they're supposed to do rather than actually having to use that time to build the company that they want to build. But either way, these young tech workers that have flocked to San Francisco because of AI are actually transforming the city and it looks nothing like it did two or three years ago. Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. It's official. Electronic Arts will become the biggest leveraged buyout in history.

22:44Yesterday morning, the maker of Madden and The Sims agreed to be taken private by a group of investors in a deal that values the gaming company at roughly$55 billion, topping the previous buyout record set by a power giant nearly two decades ago. Once the deal closes, potentially in 2027, it'll be up to the new owners, which includes Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and Jared Kushner's investment firm, to find new avenues for growth in an industry that's stagnated since the pandemic boom times. The good news is they've got a strong hand to play because EA has some of the best IP in the biz.

23:16The challenge will be figuring out a business model that works. I do think that they're looking at the fact that they probably need to shift a little bit more resources towards mobile. Maybe they need to do some more free-to-play games, take some risks here. And the fact that they were a public company, you have to report to shareholders. We've talked about this, about how quarterly reports make you have to basically be like maybe a little less risk taking. And so the fact that now they can plan these longer term strategic shifts if they're a private company without having to respond to shareholders on a quarterly basis could make sense.

23:49There's also a national security dimension to this as well because this buyout actually has to pass review by CFIUS, which is the U.S. body that screens foreign deals for national security risks. Saudi Arabia is involved here. So that's maybe one final question mark as well, especially because video game companies collect a lot of data on their users. So a couple of question marks, but right now all signs are pointing to this being a really big old buyout. Next, OpenAI just announced Instant Checkout, a new feature that lets ChatGPT users buy products from Etsy sellers directly in chat without ever having to leave the app.

24:26That means if you ask ChatGPT what a good birthday gift is for your fiance, not only will it surface ideas for a necklace or a bracelet, it will also give you the option to purchase them within the chat. The launch quickly rippled through markets. Etsy shares jumped nearly 16%, while Shopify climbed more than 6 % on news that a million Shopify merchants, including Skims and Glossier, were going to get integrated soon as well. Instant checkout is free for users, but OpenAI will collect a fee on each completed purchase, introducing a potential new revenue stream at a time when the company is still burning cash faster than a Mr.