Hawaiian Wildfires Could Cost $10 Billion & Does America Have Bad Sunscreen?

0:28AI tools are everywhere these days, but let's be real. slash podcast. That's superhuman.com slash podcast. Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. On today's pod, we will head to the Iowa State Fair for fried food on a stick, presidential candidates wrapping M &M, and a grocery bagging competition. And a new study shows how many steps each day you really need to be healthy because it ain't 10 ,000. Then people are finally waking up to how bad sunscreen is in the US. Plus, we'll dig into how a Tesla that was totaled in America ended up in Ukraine. It's Monday, August 14th.

1:05Let's ride.

1:10All right, Neil, we both had busy travel weekends. You were in Punta Cana for a bachelor party. I was in northern Michigan visiting my mom and grandma. Give me one highlight from your travels. Just had a really big guys being dudes moment where we were on this boat and all the boats parked together in this area of shallow water and we had a foam football and I just got on the deck of the boat and everyone in the area there were hundreds of people there I was just tossing the football around to everyone and I would just like point at another boat and they would like wave their hands and want want to pass and everyone in this whole area just started throwing a football around and I was like man just give some guys a foam ball and we will entertain ourselves for three to four hours.

1:55I know a lot of people ask me like, what do you guys talk about at a bachelor party with all guys? Like, what do you do? And I'm just like, give us a ball, give us maybe some warm weather, a sun, and I will not move for 12 hours and just throw something back and forth. That is impeccable vibes. Was it one of those Nerf footballs that get waterlogged? Yeah, you could have gone it. You can just have endless entertainment. All right, what about you? What's your highlight? Mine was similar. I taught my grandmother and my mom the game settlers of Catan. We had a great time. It's a kind of in-depth board game, but I was surprised at how quickly both of them picked it up.

2:28And it did get very competitive at the end. I'm not surprised. Your family just latches onto competition like anything. And I'm sure that, you know, in a few times, your grandma and mom are going to absolutely kill you. It was so funny to see like the tension rise because Catan normally has tension in it. And so like my grandmother was like blocking me and stealing from me. I'm like, grandma, how could you? I know. All right. We're going to start our show in Maui, where the situation is pretty bleak. The death toll from the wildfire that swept through the area last week now stands at 96, which makes this the deadliest wildfire in the U.S.

3:03in more than a century. And as of Saturday, officials had only searched 3 percent of the impacted area, so that number could rise significantly. Meanwhile, residents say that the government is bungling its response, telling news outlets that volunteer groups that have sprung up organically are doing more to help relief efforts than the taxpayer-funded government. So there's this sense that they're on a literal and figurative island and have to fend for themselves like they've always done on this remote island in the Pacific. And then there's the issue of tourists. Tourism accounts for 80 % of all income generated on Maui.

3:36It's pretty much the only economic game in town. But given the devastation, Hawaiian officials and native celebrities told tourists to cancel their vacation. Actor Jason Momoa wrote on Instagram, Maui is not the place to have your vacation right now. Do not convince yourself that your presence is needed on an island that is suffering this deeply. Finally, the scale of the destruction is beginning to come into view. With 80 % of the town of Lahaina burned to the ground, federal officials estimate that rebuilding the area will cost more than$5.5 billion. My biggest takeaway from this is just the complicated relationship between tourism and the rest of the island.

4:13because, yeah, you said 80 % of its economic activities generated by tourism, four out of five dollars that are spent on the island come from tourists. And yet here's this island that has just suffered this terrible tragedy. So when is the right time to or is there a right time to like welcome tourism back? So I just think it's a really tough scene, too. People were seeing tourists swimming in like the same waters they were jumping into just a few days earlier to escape the wildfire. So it's really a tough situation. But I think tourism right now is like the furthest from from people's minds. Plus, hotels are really important in disaster recovery.

4:51I was reading because they have this built in infrastructure with lots of housing and they have backup generators that have power when a lot of the other parts of the area do not. So when you when you go and look at various disasters in history, hotels are play like a huge factor in helping relief efforts. and people like Momoa and we should also say Hawaiian officials also said tourists do not come. It wasn't just actors and celebrities. They can play a critical effort and you don't want outsiders kind of taking up necessary resources that can be used in relief efforts. Another thing that locals are really nervous about too is outside real estate developers coming in and seeing this as an opportunity to buy up land essentially on the island, which is, I mean, it's a very horrible thing to think about, like capitalizing on a tragedy like this.

5:39But the median home price on Maui is$1.2 million. If a bunch of developers come in and start building condos in the wake of where single family homes used to be, that home price will likely go up even further. So again, it's just really dangerous and critical time for just the survival of Maui as a lot of people once knew it. And those stories are just like really, really dark when you hear of real estate developers calling people, inquiring about their properties that burned down. So that's another storyline to add on to this tragedy. And then what happened? They're still trying to figure out how this fire started.

6:16And there's this utility that's coming under scrutiny, Hawaiian Electric. They've already been sued in a class action lawsuit on Saturday for not de-energizing their power grid when they knew that windy weather would come. That basically just means preemptively shutting off power. So they're being investigated for not taking the preemptive steps to know that this is going to, you know, we're going to have some really windy weather. We have all these power lines above ground and something that California utilities have done after their own wildfires in 27 and 2018 as a preemptive measure. And Hawaiian Electric didn't really have those protocols.

6:51It was so interesting, though, because Hawaii's plumbing and sewage system runs on electric power. And so turning it off was a good preventative measure. But then once the fire started, like the fire department needed access to better water pressure from the fire hydrants. And that was compromised because then they started shutting down some of the utilities. So it was this really interesting, yes, they should have shut it down before the fire started. But then once the fire started, they almost needed the electrical power back. So just kind of a cascading effect of a series of errors and something that they're definitely going to improve going forwards and then finally there's this issue of this siren system so hawaii i did not know this has the biggest outdoor integrated siren system in the world because they face a lot of natural disasters specifically tsunamis so there's this siren system that goes off once a month everyone across the the state knows about this siren system and it was silent ahead of this fire so uh residents and the congresswoman there are like this siren did not work as planned and they're just saying it's because this fire was so quick to spread and there was just no possible warning but it was you know you have residents that are asking a lot of questions about the government response and also they're asking questions about why weren't we warned they got a text alert on their phone but it was too late and not enough yeah they needed this outdoor siren system that was supposed to function and it didn't it was just so fast you definitely hit on that all right neil let's move on to our next story where the u.s's poor sunscreen game is finally getting some public attention.

8:24So over the last few days, AOC posted a video roasting U.S. sunscreen and U.S. regulators saying how far behind the rest of the world we are when it comes to sunscreen innovation. Part of the problem is that the U.S. treats sunscreen as an over-the-counter drug that falls under FDA regulation because it makes a drug claim, that claim being that it can prevent sunburn, and the FDA has been dragging its feet big time. The last time it approved a new active ingredient for use in sunscreen was more than two decades ago. So now it's come to the point where the rest of the world, specifically Korea, is lapping us when it comes to making high quality sunscreen.

9:04So Neil, how do we turn this sunscreen ship around? Well, the big problem here is you're probably like, all right, sunscreen, you know, so it's a little oily. You know, we don't have, we only have eight active ingredients approved. What's the big deal? The big deal is that if sunscreen sucks to put on, then you're not going to put it on and you're going to maybe increase your chance of getting skin cancer, which is the number one cancer in the country. So it's not just a question of like, oh, well, our sunscreen sucks. Like, oh, also like our food sucks compared to them. It doesn't matter. Like it's a much bigger deal than just saying your sunscreen is bad because if it's not good, then you're not going to apply.

9:40And that is a huge public health risk. So, yeah, what does make a good sunscreen? And a lot of it It comes down to how it feels on the skin because you're right. A lot of U.S. sunscreens are super oily. They leave that kind of white streak on your face. But Korean sunscreens are much more lightweight. They have more of an invisible cast. And they also are just better at blocking the sun. They have a more expansive range of filters that allow a broader range of formulas and whatnot in order to protect from the sun better. So I think the big thing is the less oily feel and the fact that it does it goes on with a kind of naked to the eye appeal.

10:18So I'm on board for this. Yeah, I guess I don't care because I will just slather on sunscreen and have all the white streaks on my face. I realize that other people may care about their appearance a little more than I do at the beach, but I'm just like slathering it on. I got mauled by the sun. I put on a lot of sunscreen, but apparently it wasn't enough. I needed some of that better stuff from overseas. I was just going for the United States stuff. But clearly, this is a market that could be disrupted. But the problem is it's so regulated. So you don't see so many, you know, sunscreen startups coming through because they have to go through this.

10:50It's basically like creating a new pharmaceutical. Right. It does feel like, OK, so there is a double edged sword, though, because in Korea, there's a lot less stringent regulatory environment. but they've some people have started doing independent investigations into these amazing korean sunscreen brands and one popular brand had an spf of 19 based on two independent lab studies when they've been advertising that they have an spf of 50 plus so there is some argument for saying this should be a relatively regulated industry but we do want just better sunscreen that are still safer let's get into the sunscreen okay well also a bunch of our youtube commenters have asked about your skincare.

11:28Does it include sunscreen? No, it just involves getting sunburned at elevation and then slowly turning it into a tan. That, not recommended, not doctor recommended. All right, Neil, let's move on. I want you to imagine a scenario. You're driving your Tesla to the MBD studio at 4 a.m. and you accidentally crash. You come out unscathed, but the car is totaled. Then a year later, you get a notification that your car is suddenly online again. in Ukraine. This is what happened to an executive editor at CNBC, J.E.R.O. And just before the weekend, it's opened this discourse around what happens to car parts in the wake of a crash.

12:09Neil, apparently this is a huge industry, buying total cars that can't be driven anymore in the U.S. and selling them usually overseas where the laws are less stringent. But often the data stored in the car's electronics isn't wiped and technically the new owners can access it like they did in the instance above. where Yarrow's Spotify account was still being accessed. It's kind of crazy, but also a little scary, Neil. This guy was listening to Drake. I know, in Ukraine. I really want to know who this is. He's cruising in southern Ukraine, a war-torn area, like cranking Drake on a Tesla that was totaled, so it's clearly very banged up.

12:47Yarrow can see his Spotify account being used, so they do know that whoever has a car does have a penchant for Drake. Yeah, no, this kind of is raising a lot of privacy risks that a lot of experts have been warning for a while, where if your car is connected to the internet, which every single car is now, because we treat it as our phone, we log into our Spotify account, we log into our Google account for Google Maps or Apple CarPlay. I don't know what that is. But no, so you have these, you're basically using your computer, your phone, your car as a phone or a computer. And when you're done using that thing, you need to log out.

13:23So you literally need to log out of your car. and this guy didn't have a chance and then someone basically went into his car and is using all of his internet services. It's a huge privacy risk, falls into the wrong hands. All of your data is compromised. Yeah, and it's not just a Tesla thing. As you said, every single car is connected to the internet these days, but Tesla's response to this was a little ridiculous. They were not prepared. They were not prepared. They gave him a set of instructions that involved him obtaining the new car user's information and putting that into his old Tesla account in order to shut off the car.

13:57And he's like, how in the world am I supposed to get this person in Ukraine's information? Like it's totally unfeasible. So a lot of privacy experts are saying there needs to be a remote white button, kind of similar to what Apple has for their Macs, their computers. You need to be able to slide a button and put your information and say, delete my internet history basically, because you're right, it's a huge safety risk. People were saying, imagine if you found to celebrities' cars or something. Like it could be used for blackmail or even worse because you have like the information, their destination history.

14:30So this is a real problem. And part of the problem with cars moving more towards computers than actual cars. The Ford GT sports car has more code in it than a Boeing 787. It's ridiculous. I mean, my brother just did a summer internship at Toyota as a CS major. And their computer science, their data engineering teams are huge, like bigger than maybe their real engineering teams. So shout out Toyota, shout out Henry. All right, Neil, before we jump into our next story, we're gonna take a quick break. In America, half of every dollar spent on brand medicines goes to entities who don't make them. While middlemen like PBMs and 340B hospitals drive up costs, Biopharma is investing$500 billion in new infrastructure and manufacturing here at home and helping patients buy medicines directly at lower prices.

15:25Tell Washington to end middlemen markups and put American patients first. Visit phrma.org slash middlemen. 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. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state.

16:06All right, Neil, we're back with our Monday segment, Winners of the Weekend, where you and I choose someone or something that had an especially good Saturday and Sunday. Neil, you won the pre-show thumb wrestle, so you can go first. All right. My winners are couch potatoes. So we all kind of knew this 10 ,000 step rule was BS for a while. At least I was suspicious that 10 ,000 was the golden rule for the number of steps you needed per day to stay healthy. Turns out we've all been vindicated. A study published last week found that all you need is 4 ,000 steps a day to reduce your risk of premature death from any cause.

16:43Still, that is just the lower bound. Each extra 1 ,000 steps per day you take is associated with a 15 % reduction in your overall risk of death. So the conclusion of the study is definitely get in as many steps as possible, but also 4 ,000 is sufficient as a baseline. I know that many people listen to this pod while on their morning walk, so I just want to say kudos to all of you. You're on your way to a long, healthy life, but hopefully not an infinite one. I my big takeaway from this is that I think it's a great pivot in terms of messaging for for health messaging because a lot of people saw that 10 ,000 step number and they're saying I'm not even close to that.

17:24Like I'm I don't I work a desk job. How am I ever going to get 10 ,000 steps in? And so they ended up doing nothing. So this makes that 4 ,000 numbers seem a lot more attainable. So it's not this all or nothing proposition. So I think it's very smart from a health messaging perspective that they dropped it down to 4 ,000. Well, originally the 10 ,000 was supposed to be good messaging because it's that nice round number, a lot of zeros. But apparently it was just some marketing effort from a Japanese pedometer company ahead of the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. So there's really no scientific basis for it.

17:55It just looks good. And apparently the Japanese symbol for 10 ,000 looks like a dude walking. It's unbelievable. So that just got grandfathered in over decades, and we kind of looked at it pretty uncritically. That is a great trivia to know. So everyone file that away. Yeah, well, here's how people can get 4 ,000 steps. Just take a walk, listen to Morning Brew Daily in the morning, and then just listen to it again in the afternoon while taking another step. Perfect. And there you go. We've turned it into a part. 4 ,000 is not a lot, right? Yeah, we could do that. Yeah. I think – How many minutes of walking is that?

18:29I don't know. Sorry to put you on the spot. I just assumed you do. Like 45 minutes? I'm more of a running guy. I think it is 30 to 45 minute if you walk at a decent pace. That's what the conductors of the study said. All right, Neil, let's move on to my winner of the weekend, who is all of us because it looks like our long national nightmare of having to actually entertain the idea of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg fighting each other in a cage match is over. Over the weekend, Zuck posted a thread on threads saying that Elon has continually ducked any attempts to actually set up the much-hyped fight.

19:02I think we can all agree Elon isn't serious and it's time to move on, Zuck wrote. Neil, this is my winner because I think deep down we knew this fight was never happening. And now it looks like it's dead in the water. Yeah, I mean, my takeaways are that Elon gave more fuel to critics that he's a total BS artist. Because it never seemed like he was serious about this. And Zuck came out of this looking with a lot more credibility than Elon, at least in my mind. Yeah, although there was discourse around like, oh, Elon is totally determining the stakes of the match. Of course there is. There's always either side.

19:33Yeah. I mean, any objective observer, like, I think I'm pretty objective looking at this. And I'm like, clearly, you know, I trust Zuck way more than what Elon says based on a past history of comments as well. Right. But did you see the screenshot of the text between the two? That Walter Isaacson posted? Yeah. They were saying that there's a text. It was Zuck. Elon was trying to set up this backyard sparring match with Zuck. And Zuck said, like, no, let's not do it. But one of the text messages were green. So that means someone in the two has an Android phone. Who do you think it is? Who has an Android phone?

20:04I think, I mean. I think it's Zuck. I think Zuck has an Android. Yeah. Because don't they say that like Androids are far more customizable and the tech nerds love it. He seems like that was the biggest speculation in the discourse that I was incited to engage in. It's like which one of these two has an Android. All right. Yes. I'm glad we don't have to talk about this. But it'll be fun to see them actually battle it out in the business realm. because they have two rival products for the first time, Threads and Twitter X. So that is where we should see battle. I think Zuck should just keep posting on Threads a lot because I think that'll be a good engagement strategy to get people to go over there.

20:42Because people want to know what he's saying. You're thinking, Neil. I like it. All right, let's move on. I'm not sure if people picked up on this, but I am a sucker for Americana. Just inject soft serve ice cream, John Mellencamp, and college football into my veins. I cannot get enough. Anyway, this weekend was the first big weekend of the Iowa State Fair, one of the biggest and most historic of the state fairs, just America at its best. One reason why the Iowa State Fair is so prominent is that presidential candidates go there every four years ahead of the Iowa caucuses, the first vote on the primary calendar.

21:15This year, per usual, was an absolute circus. All the Republican contenders, Trump, DeSantis, Nikki Haley, were there slinging pork chops on a stick and trying to show that they can hang with regular Iowans. Some of the highlights from the weekend, Biotech Mobile Vivek Ramaswamy rapped Lose Yourself by Eminem and Trump dropped$20 ,000 on food for fairgoers. But besides the politics, where Iowa State Fair really shines is in its agricultural exhibitions, its huge livestock shows, and its creative competitions like the grocery bagging race and a husband calling contest. I loved digging into Iowa State Fair lore.

21:53Also, I mean, it is very famous because politicians do make their appearance. And there are some rules that politicians should live by when they appear at the fair. First one is buy a ticket. Don't skip the line. Be a normal person. Don't show up to the gate and say, just because I'm a presidential candidate, I can get in. Also, don't ride around in a golf cart because you seem elitist. Put on some comfortable shoes and walk around. do buy beer because people like seeing their president presidential candidates drinking a beer because that's a huge part of the race like could i share a beer with this person and then also definitely go into the pork tent and flip some pork chops because that's an iconic thing and if you have young kids bring them too because you look like a more of a of a normal fair goer so i love that that it's become this big part of the political campaign trail and that there are these kind of golden rules to live by there are some gaffes that have been had over the years like One of the most famous one is that Romney said that corporations are people at the Iowa State Fair.

22:49So you can get a little hyped up on fried food and say some things. Plus, John Kerry ordered a strawberry smoothie instead of something fried, which was a huge scandal because you've got to get fried food there. Right. Also, you were looking into the food. The food is ridiculous. Yeah. So there's been this competition going on for the Des Moines, Iowa reporter. and right now it's a March Madness style bracket and they just crowned the winner. The number one food, according to readers, is the pork on a stick, pork chop on a stick. The final four was cheese curds, greater taters, and hot beef sundae.

23:25Hot beef sundae is kind of what you'd imagine. It is a scoop of mashed potatoes topped with hot beef and then cheese and sour cream with a cherry on top. That cherry is a cherry tomato, of course. It looks, it tastes like home to me. I'm not going to lie. When you showed me the picture, I thought it was ice cream. It's so ridiculous. But it's mashed potatoes. Yeah, it's mashed potatoes. Yeah. It makes me a little, feel a little bit better. But I'm excited for my hometown fair, which is the Big E in New England. I probably never, have you heard of it? I'd never have heard of it. It's the New England one.

23:55So it's like a little less, you know, campy, sprawling than these Midwestern ones, which like are actually major pork producers and actually do a lot of livestock. and we have the New England one where we're like, we all just sit inside all day. Fairs are huge businesses. The Iowa State Fair generated$40 million in operating revenue, which was a lot bigger than I expected. 15 million concessions. But then I was like, that's kind of what Taylor Swift does in one night. It is. Yeah, if Taylor Swift came, she is the Iowa Fair of the rest of the world, I guess. All right. Let's move on to our final segment, which is where we preview the week ahead every Monday.

24:34Retailers are in the spotlight for earnings season, which is about wrapping up. But we have this big week or two where all the big retailers report. So we got Walmart, Home Depot, Target, TJX. They're going to give us a peek into consumer spending, which drives two thirds of the U.S. economy and is the reason we haven't tipped into a recession yet. I guess I'm going to be looking for updates on back to school shopping trends and what these retailers think the impact of restarting student loan payments will have on their businesses. We know that Target specifically could take a hit since it is really popular among millennials who have a lot of student loans.

25:07Yeah, millennials and Target are the handshake emoji together. But yeah, definitely interested because, yeah, this is kind of like the lifeblood of the economy, what's been propping it up over the last couple of years. We could also get another Trump indictment in Georgia where prosecutors are expected to present their case accusing the former president of election interference to a grand jury. That's a sign that Trump could be indicted for a fourth time this week. One thing to watch in this case is that this indictment could name other powerful individuals who attempted to help Trump overturn his 2020 loss in Georgia.