Canada's Population Advantage, UPS Workers Authorize Strike & Missing Titanic Submersible

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0:38Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm still not Toby. On today's show, we're going to talk about why you should be paying attention to Canada and the races on to find a submersible that went missing on its way to survey the Titanic wreckage in the Atlantic Ocean. Yeah, Neil, we have a phenomenal show. We're also going to cover why your packages might be getting delayed in the future. And you'll never guess what Spotify exec Bill Simmons said about Harry and Meghan. Today is Tuesday, June 20th. Neil, let's ride.

1:13Airlines did not cooperate with Toby getting back to New York from Montana. So we're always grateful to have not Toby, also known as Kyle Haggy, step in for one more day hosting the pod with me. Yeah, very excited. Very excited to be here. And we also we need to talk to these airlines. Toby is VIP. Get him home safe ASAP. We should have chartered a flight. I think he's getting in right now, actually. Kyle, someone asked me this question over the weekend, and I want to throw it to you and maybe any listeners that want to use it for an icebreaker. We love a good icebreaker. Okay, so they asked, what is the color you give off to people, and what is your inner color?

1:51This is a phenomenal question. I love this. The color I give off to people, I'm going to say, is green or yellow. Okay. I feel green. I'm glad we're on the same page. We're aligned there. Like a spearmint. It's kind of welcoming. I don't know what spearmint means, but we're going to take that as a compliment. But I think my inner color is purple, actually. That's my favorite color. Interesting. Yeah. What about you, Neil? I would say Carolina blue on the outside, kind of what I'm wearing right now, this shirt, and also purple on the inside. Giving off blue and working at Morning Brew, I think, is destiny.

2:26Yeah, it's a media company. Yeah. All right, let's start today's pod with a visit to our neighbors, Canada, because the country just hit a major population milestone. 40 million people live there as of Friday. And at a time when most higher income countries aren't growing much or are even shrinking, Canada is a major outlier. So what is its secret sauce? Maple syrup, obviously. But also unreal amounts of immigration. Canada promotes immigration like the U.S. promotes high fructose corn syrup. Almost one in four people in Canada are immigrants, and 96 % of Canada's population growth last year came from immigration.

3:05And it's not just population growth for the sake of bragging rights and saying you have more people. It's an intentional effort by the government to bring in workers and bolster the labor force. As we know, there's been a shortage of workers. You've heard about it in headlines for the past couple of years all around the world. And if your population is aging and your millennials aren't having many kids, you need a refill from somewhere. And Canada thinks immigration is the answer to these problems. Yeah, this is a super interesting story. I think the number one reason immigrants cited Canada was Drake.

3:37They wanted to. I'm kidding. But this is actually like a global issue. Dwindling tax bases, shrinking budgets. We've seen in France they tried to increase the retirement age to battle this. And then all hell broke loose. Germany kind of risks having 5 million fewer workers by the end of the decade. And Japan is also facing acute labor shortages. So this is happening globally. This is Canada's kind of response to that. I think it's a really great way to, again, drive population growth, kind of revive some dying cities or dying towns in your country. And I will say this is really interesting compared to the U.S.

4:11I think this is like the biggest own goal in the history, what we're doing in the U.S. We basically get the top draft pick every single year in the immigration. And we select Marco Fultz. Yeah. And we don't let people in. We basically had no immigration processes in like the early 1900s. It was very easy to immigrate to the U.S. Now it's getting really, really tough. So here's a stat for you, Neil. 158 million adults in 2018 cited the U.S. as their number one destination to immigrate if they could permanently. and less than 1 % actually had the opportunity to do so. So it's really, really hard to get legal status here in the U.S.

4:53Canada is making it very easy, and we're going to see how it plays out. They're becoming the new melting pot. Yes. Really. I mean, the growth stats are truly wild. So by 2050, if Canada keeps up its rate, then it'll be more populous than Italy, France, the U.K., and Germany. And the province of Alberta, which is home to Calgary, is growing at 3.7%. And that may not seem like a big number, but it is tied for the fastest growth rate in the world with Niger in Africa. So they're just growing like crazy in Canada. There is growing pains, right? There has been a lot of pushback to these mass immigration policies.

5:31And the number one concern here is real estate prices. You think you're paying a lot for housing here, but Canada's real estate is through the roof. It is extremely unaffordable. I think the average selling price of a home in April was the equivalent of 542 ,000 US dollars and that rose 100 ,000 Canadian dollars in less than a year and back to Calgary home prices in Calgary are up 28 percent in the past five years so you're so the critics are saying you're bringing in a lot of people but you're not providing enough housing we're not absorbing them in in a way that is sustainable. So there are some people that want to hit the brakes, but I think overall polling shows that the majority of Canadians kind of support this immigration wave.

6:17Yeah. It was said almost 70 % of respondents disagreed with the statement. Overall, there's too much immigration to Canada, which was the highest since 1977. And I think some expert also said problems of growth are easier to manage than problems of stagnancy. So no matter what you do, there's going to be challenges. I think he believes that the problems of growth are a little easier to manage. I would agree. I think if you're stagnating, you're losing here. And you're seeing what's happening in other countries like Japan, where there's a spiral. If you don't have enough, if you don't have a big enough labor force, Japan has kind of not been in on immigration for its entire existence.

6:53And now it's dealing with some severe problems. Let's move on to some big news Now, in the shipping, logistics, and delivery industry, come August 1st, the package room at your apartment complex could be looking a little sparse. Now, why is that? UPS union members voted on Friday to authorize a strike if a contract isn't worked out with the company by end of day July 31st. Now, this is a massive deal because UPS has a large unionized workforce, 340 ,000. This would actually be the single largest employer strike in U.S. history. And so there is both a ton at stake for the labor movement in the U.S., but also just for the economy.

7:34Here's some crazy stats for you. UPS handles about one in four parcels shipped in the U.S., which is about 24 million packages a day. And an estimated 6 percent of the U.S.'s GDP goes through UPS delivery vans each year. I think you account for like 3 percent of that. Probably. So while those big brown vans are a bit ugly, OK, they're actually instrumental to the economy. And this isn't new for UPS. They went on strike 25 years ago and UPS was actually devastated, losing$600 million in business. And pretty much every other delivery service got clobbered with extra packages. So very big news. Neil, what's your take on this?

8:12Yeah, well, I just want to be clear to everyone that this doesn't mean they are going to strike. It means they authorized a strike. They gave their approval to the union saying, if you guys don't work out a contract with the company, then we are prepared to go on strike. I just want to run through what they want. So the first thing is always kind of higher pay. The starting pay for part-time workers who handle packages in UPS warehouses,$15.50 an hour. And in this time of inflation, they say that this is just simply not enough to live. They want more full-time jobs and fewer part-time jobs. They want to get surveillance cameras out of trucks.

8:46And then they want the elimination of what is called two-tier wages. and newer workers are getting paid less than older employees who do the same job. So that sort of wage gap is a big sticking point for them. One, there was progress made last week, which is really interesting. They agreed with UPS to put air conditioning in their van starting next year. And for older vans, they're going to put in more fans. And heat is a huge problem for workers. I mean, we, you know, we're lucky to work in a place that has air conditioning. But imagine if you're in this box and driving around in Houston and it gets up to 120 degrees in this van.

9:26It's very dangerous. And so the fact that they agreed to this air conditioning deal is a sign of progress that maybe they could work things out because that was one of the major points of contention. Yeah, that was wild to me. The fact that they didn't have air conditioning prior to this kind of blew my mind. And so I'm glad they are getting that because, yeah, they had many people fall sick from heat stroke in the past. So what could happen if this does, if they do strike, it doesn't seem like it would be as debilitating as in 1995 because there's been a lot of diversification in the shipping industry since then.

10:01So, you know, if you, you know, if it happens and it goes longer than a week, then you could probably see packages delayed, store shelves a little more empty and definitely higher prices. But in 1995, Amazon wasn't Amazon. Uber has a delivery service. and a bunch of companies use that as a point to diversify their logistics operations. I was actually talking with my friend Josh who runs a distribution company, and he was telling me that they used to be 100 % UPS, and then they split UPS, FedEx 50-50, just to be kind of diversified. You need to be diversified in your business, and in terms of shipping, this is the same way to prevent relying on one company that may not be so reliable going forward.

10:45So, yeah, I think even since COVID, we've many companies have gotten a little more resilient in their supply chain. Like we've had to figure this out. And so I don't think it will be as debilitating in the past. But certainly still those stats about how many packages truly go through UPS, it won't be a good thing. And look, we need our Nespresso pods getting here on time. So hopefully they can work out a deal. All right. Let's move on. There is a massive rescue operation underway to locate a submersible that went missing in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with five people aboard. This subversible is named Titan, and it was taking customers to survey the wreckage of the Titanic, which remains 14 ,000 feet down on the ocean floor more than 110 years after it sank.

11:25Here's a quick timeline of what's going on. So Titan submerged Sunday morning, and the Boston Coast Guard lost contact with it about one hour and 45 minutes into its dive. The major constraint here for keeping these people alive is the oxygen supply. Titan had a 96-hour oxygen supply when it was put out to sea at 6 a.m. on Sunday. And as of yesterday afternoon, it had about 70 hours left. So they need to find this thing by Wednesday. And we're just waiting for any news. It was located about 900 miles east of Cape Cod in a super remote part of the ocean, which makes it very tough to find. They've sent military planes.

12:02They have submarines and sonar buoys that locate that listen to underwater noise that have all been dispatched to find it in this massive search operation. But time is ticking. Yeah, I have a confession, a very embarrassing confession I should not be making publicly. And that is I've actually never seen Titanic. I just I have to get that out there. This story is my absolute nightmare. Going down under two miles in the ocean. You're squished together in the size of something that is a minivan with four other people. You're controlled with a video game remote. And I saw a video where they said they kind of have a toilet.

12:37Like, I don't need any qualifiers in front of my toilet. Like, I just need one. So this just is very scary. Also, the whole Titanic thing, just some bad energy around that, like seeing a shipwreck. There's an 8K video you can see the Titanic on on YouTube. Like, just do that. I don't need to pay$250K to go down there. So hope everyone is okay. This is very terrifying. But I think this is actually really interesting for this like new tourism we're seeing. Right. Paris, Tulum, they're not cutting it anymore. People want to go to space. People want to go to new parts of the ocean we've never explored.

13:11And so there's all these travel companies. Blue Origin is one. This company here is another where people are paying, you know, exorbitant sums of money to go to spots that you couldn't possibly go to even three years ago. And so that'll be really interesting. And Neil, I have a question for you. Yes. If you could go on any kind of crazy new tourism ride, what would yours be? Definitely space. You're going space? Yeah, totally space. I think the view would be insane. And this submersible concept gets my claustrophobia antennae going. But either way, I wouldn't be able to afford it because this costs$250 ,000 per person for an eight-day expedition.

13:51And going down to the Titanic takes eight hours. And the people who are on this thing can afford to pay. You have a British businessman named Hamish Harding. He holds several Guinness World Records related to deep sea diving and other adventurous things. He went to space on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket company, but he is on the submersible. Then you have two members of one of the wealthiest Pakistani families, a father and a son, and reportedly the CEO and founder of this company that runs this operation, Ocean Gate Expeditions, is on the submersible. Yeah. Very scary. I hope everyone gets out okay.

14:26And I think my crazy new travel idea is I want to get like submerged in a volcano in like a steel thing and shot out as it explodes. I'll pay absorbent sums of money for that. All right. We'll be back after this quick break. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast, smart move. Being financially savvy, smart move. Another smart move? Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling, just another way to save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state.

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15:45Speaking of explosive things, let's move to our segment winners of the weekend where I know it's Tuesday, but we had a long weekend. So Kyle and I read through the news and we're picking who we thought won the weekend besides me because I bowled like a 170. All right. My winner is Philadelphia. And Kyle, remember how part of I-95 collapsed in Philly last week? Well, it was initially expected to take months to repair. People were warning of a huge economic blow because so much freight travels along this highway. But on Saturday, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro made the surprise announcement that the stretch of 95 would reopen within two weeks.

16:25Shocking that we'd get good news related to U.S. infrastructure. I think that's the first time I've ever heard it. So Shapiro said that they were able to avoid a lot of the red tape that typically delays road projects and credited the union trade workers was working their butts off 24 seven to get this job done. The timeline also means Philly is probably going to be Atlanta's time for a highway repair. Very important. Six years ago, Atlanta took 43 days to reopen a section of I-85 that collapsed. Philly's could take just 20 days. My favorite part about this entire story, though, is that the city set up a live stream of the construction project.

16:59And our producer, Emily, who was in Philly this weekend, tells me they're showing it at Xfinity Live, which for people who haven't been to Philadelphia, is a huge sports bar with, you know, like a hundred foot screen on it. And people go down there before going to the stadiums for baseball games or football games. And they're showing it. So this has become a part of Philly lore. And the fact that we're doing it within two weeks only adds to it. This is incredible. A great winner of the weekend. Philly goes so hard. Like, I want to see the drinking game that they've invented around this. Like, every time a new steel beam goes up, you take a shot.

17:34Like, you could have some fun with it. So this is really great news. I was actually in Minnesota when the highway collapse happened in Minneapolis in 2007. Obviously very devastating. There was loss of life. And getting that rebuilt is really, really important. So it's cool to see that they're focusing on that and that Philadelphia has made kind of a fun game out of it. So we will move on to a completely different winner of the weekend here. Mine is someone I'd never heard of prior to 24 hours ago. I'm going with XQC, Neil. That's right. Streamer XQC is my winner of the weekend. He is a Twitch streamer, one of the most popular on the platform with 12 million followers.

18:13But he actually just signed a two-year,$100 million contract with Kik, which is a brand new Twitch competitor. XQC's move to Kik could kind of really start an exodus of unhappy streamers at Twitch leaving the platform because they've kind of introduced some new rules on what you can do on the streams. And so it's causing some unhappiness. I know YouTube has changed their partner program to try to attract more streamers as well. And this is a little Canada callback. XQC is actually a 27-year-old guy named Felix from UGAS to Canada. And let me give you two facts about this because XQC has got the bag.

18:54He just signed a two-year$100 million deal. By comparison, NBA legend LeBron James signed a two-year$97.13 million contract. So he's got more money than LeBron on the contract, which is incredible. And then Kick actually didn't launch even until this year. So he could really be the face of this. And he worked out a deal where he can still simulcast to other platforms. So whoever his lawyer is also the winner of the weekend. Got him a great deal. He is Scott Boris. Right. So XQC, congratulations. You're my winner of the weekend. Well done. I'm not. I'm definitely not in this streamer world or anything.

19:30I also hadn't heard of this guy. But it does seem like Twitch is having major, major problems. I think this other platform, what's it called, Kik, pays out 50 % to creators of their subscription revenue. and Twitch pays out 5%. So you have these upsurge and kind of taking away a lot of stuff. Neil, are we on Twitch? I think we should get Twitch or Kick. We're open, Kick. If you want to throw two years, 100 million at us, talk to our people. All right, let's move on to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. If you haven't heard about them, congratulations. I don't know how you've done it because they have been everywhere.

20:08Obviously, they left kind of the royal family. I did think that was pretty brave of them at that point. They're running into some like business troubles maybe in the U.S. or business partnerships. They're trying to be a media company. And we know that's not hard. You have to work your ass off. Yes, it is quite hard. And so the big news now is that Megan's show is leaving Spotify. Bill Simmons, who's the head of podcast innovation at Spotify, mainly known as the creator of Grantland and The Ringer, which Spotify purchased for, I believe, about$100 million, has called them grifters. quote unquote.

20:41Although Bill Simmons also tells me LeBron James getting traded to like Charlotte every year. So let's take his word with a grain of salt. However, the Wall Street Journal also reported they're not going to get the full$20 million payout because they haven't produced enough content to fulfill that obligation. So like the contract still, you know, worked out, but let's zoom out. This is not just a Harry and Meghan thing. This is actually a Spotify and podcasting thing. Earlier this year, Spotify CEO Daniel Eck admitted that the company made some mistakes. They made a$1 billion push into podcasting.

21:14And they're going to be very, he said, very diligent in kind of reviewing future deals. And if something's not working, they're going to cut it. And earlier this month, Spotify also announced it's going to make 200 job cuts in its podcasting business. Daniel Eck also said that Neil Fryman is the top performing podcast host in the world. So he seems like a pretty smart guy. Thanks, Daniel. Yeah, no, this is um they are running into some headwinds i mean they they uh took a 20 million dollar deal right and then they produced guess how many episodes of content four 13 13 oh wow okay it just shows me that you can be a create you know you can be a celebrity uh but you're if you don't make good content people are going to fall off after the first or second episode and you saw that with barack and michelle obama they also had a huge deal with spotify and they let that lapse yeah And then Esther Perel had one.

22:06Brene Brown had one with Spotify that they are letting these contracts kind of lapse. Spotify is a complete U-turn from its previous strategy of just throwing money at huge names. This did start with Joe Rogan, who they paid more than$100 million to come over and be exclusive to Spotify. And maybe that one is working out. But they are kind of getting out of this exclusive game and giving more creators tools to build this more grassroots podcasting environment. And they're putting in a major shift in strategy. They are putting their podcasts on different platforms now. So it's not just going to be exclusive to Spotify.

22:45They're going to get them up on YouTube or Apple, which is kind of our strategy just to bring in as many audience members as possible. So, yeah, Prince Harry and Meghan, you can't just not do anything. Apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal report, they weren't meeting their production targets, which kind of makes sense. But do you think their push into media is going well so far? I mean, we have a couple of data points. We have this Spotify podcasting deal. We have their Harry and Meghan documentary on Netflix. Then we also had Harry's book, which is called Spare. And I think that was like the best-selling, it remains the best-selling nonfiction book of this year.

23:22Yeah, I think, like you said, it's tough to do a lot of content that's high quality consistently. They hit 13 episodes. We're at 85 now. So, Neil, you're putting on a show. But, Neil, your alarm clock's set for 430. So it is a grind. The one thing I want to note about this is Bill Simmons also said he had a Zoom call with Prince Harry. We're just two dudes talking about podcast ideas. And I'm like, maybe we have enough of that in the world. But we need that tape. So release the tape, Bill. I want to see that Zoom. It sounds quite interesting. He said he needs to get drunk first, and then he will.

23:51But he's like, it's one of the best stories I have. All right. Let's move to our final section. We've got a short week coming up, which underratedly is the best part of long weekends. True. They lead into short weeks. Summer is officially arriving on Wednesday from an astronomical perspective. It's a summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. But on Wednesday, not to be a Debbie Downer, but that also means it's the longest day of the year. And it'll only get shorter as we go forward. Way to bum everyone out. I'm sorry. But to continue with the bumming in the southern hemisphere, winter is just starting.

24:26So y 'all can look forward to that. We have Modi visiting the White House. India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, is going for a fancy state dinner. They are rolling out the red carpet for him on Wednesday or Thursday. And the ties between the U.S. and India are growing even closer over the past few decades. You should expect a bunch of business deals to get done here. We just saw Tim Cook in India opening the first Apple store and he was a god there. So expect to see ties between these two huge democracies get even closer. And that is shown by, you know, Biden really pulling out all the stops.