Lordstown Motors Goes Bankrupt & Why is 'Barbie' Everywhere Right Now?!

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1:04an annoying beeping sound, a cleaning mishap, and 25 years of destroyed scientific research. It's Wednesday, June 28th. Let's ride.

1:17All right, Neil, real quick off the top of the show, we have another wildfire situation brewing. Chicago actually had the worst air quality in the world yesterday, but you honestly wouldn't even really know it from scrolling through social media. So I have two theories as to why this wasn't as big a deal as the NYC wildfire situation of a few weeks ago. But I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it. Well, go ahead. You just had two theories. All right. My theory is one, it just wasn't orange enough, which is the big thing that leads to a bunch of social media pictures. This was more of a gray haze.

1:50So we weren't getting like those those classic social media shots. And then obviously, like New York's way too obsessed with itself. And that's true. Chicago's a little more self-aware. This smoke has drifted all the way to Europe now, Portugal and France, and it's coming back to New York today, I think, and tomorrow. So you will definitely hear about it. Chicago does have something going for it, though, and that's the bear season two. Everyone is talking about the second. Have you seen this? The cooking show. The cooking show. The cooking show. I went immediately to the Chicago bear. No, no, no.

2:20The bear season two, the show about the chef. I'm just seeing amazing things about season two. It's on Hulu, so you should check it out. It's very stressful, too, right? I think the second season is less about the kitchen and more about their emotional lives, which is really striking a chord with people. So personally, I didn't finish season one, so I will have to do that. It's becoming a theme for you, by the way, with the Titanic movie. I can't finish stuff. I can finish a podcast, though, but let's start. An EV startup that was supposed to save a struggling Ohio town is now in need of saving itself.

2:55Lordstown Motors filed for bankruptcy protection yesterday after it failed in its quest to become the Tesla of pickup trucks. It's starting a process to sell its remaining assets and pursue litigation against its largest shareholder, Foxconn, which it accuses of breaching their investment contract by not plugging the company with enough money. Why is this story important? Well, just a few years ago, Lordstown was seen as the savior for an Ohio town that was down on its luck. The town, which is also named Lordstown, found itself without its largest employer when a GM factory that had been operating there for decades closed down.

3:33Lordstown said, have no fear. We are here and occupied the plant. The deal was big politically and hyped by President Trump as bringing car making jobs back to the Rust Belt. But Lordstown ran into manufacturing issues and it only delivered two of its endurance pickups to customers in the first three months of this year. Yeah, we've been talking about Lordstown for a while because, one, it was emblematic of the SPAC boom of 2020 where you could just take a company public through a reverse merger with an existing company. So that was a big thing. And then, yeah, as you mentioned, this was a symbol of Rust Belt revival for President Trump.

4:08There's a video of him with the CEO of Lordstown Motors out in front of the White House with an endurance pickup truck. So this was really – he was really hanging his hat on this. And it's been a long saga ever since. They just couldn't get these things made. And I think part of it was they were pioneering this new type of EV, which had an electric motor in each wheel. So it was like ultimate four-wheel drive. And it just never really worked out for them. And you see now it's been a long, slow decline into bankruptcy. There was a lot. Do you remember in 2020 and 2021 when there were so many EV startups going public via SPAC?

4:42I mean, I haven't heard of these companies. There was Arrival Canoe, which I do remember, actually. Lordstown, Lucid, and Nikola, which are more familiar names, they all went public via SPAC. And they're getting crushed right now. I mean, Lordstown shares obviously are down to$2.29. But at their peak in 2021, they were at$400 a share. Crazy. And Rivian is down, the stock is down 90%. These companies got crushed by the supply chain issues of the pandemic. I mean, making a car is hard enough. And then when you can't get your components and you're burning through cash and can't sell them and make any money, they just kind of ran into a buzzsaw.

5:22Yeah. And then let's talk a little bit about Foxconn, which is this iPhone manufacturer. They assemble iPhones in China. But I'm kind of not on Foxconn's side on this because they withheld some investment from Lordstown because of an agreement that said that it's a breach of contract if Lordstown's stock falls beneath$1 per share. but then Lordstown did this reverse stock split which bumped their share price up to$15 so it always felt that Foxconn was trying to wiggle out of this deal on a technicality and Lordstown was like all right if you care so much about this arbitrary number we'll just reduce the amount of shares outstanding and now our stock's higher so it was like the whole thing is slimy they were trying to wriggle out of a deal that doesn't look like it's going to pan out so Foxconn I don't thing comes out of this looking too great they also did the same thing in wisconsin kind of where they were going to build this huge uh led plant and they never created the jobs that were necessary and did not make any friends in wisconsin yeah foxconn versus the rust belt is the battle of the century um lordstown is going to be okay though because uh lordstown motors i know this gets a little confusing sold the plant to foxconn in 2021 and so foxconn has this plant and they're still making stuff they're gonna make uh cars for fisker which is another ev startup i haven't even mentioned yet um you know who comes out of this looking real good who elon musk he does always does yeah he literally started an ev company and took all the production in-house yeah and you know went through production hell which is what these companies went through and he created a giant company, but we're seeing right now just how hard it is to start a car company in this day and age.

7:09Do you see any of these competing with Tesla or making any of this crop? Eventually. If you can make a good product still, which that's the big if, but there's always room for different competitors as long as you can make something that works. You need patient investors. That's the thing. And a lot of money. Yeah. I mean, investors, they look at Elon Musk and they're just like, okay, we trust you. You built other companies before. And then these other people at Fisker and Rivian and Lucid are kind of more question marks than Elon. Yeah. All right, Neil, let's move on to our next story. You know how they say that the devil works hard, but Kris Jenner works harder.

7:44Well, Barbie's marketing team works harder than both of them. Everywhere you look this summer is Hot Pink here, Margot Robbie there, Barbie Cor here, Ryan Gosling there. It's been an inescapable and impressive marketing rollout. So I'm just going to quickly run down some of the stunts that has led to barbie taking over this summer so on monday airbnb listed a real life barbie malibu dream house that is 100 hot pink comes with a slide and is hosted by just ken uh xbox is making a barbie themed console aldo dropped some pink shoes that come in packaging that looks just like the toy forza motors which is this realistic driving game, added a Barbie car to their lineup.

8:28Homesick Candles made a Barbie-scented candle. And Pinkberry rolled out a bright pink flavor dedicated to the famous doll. That sounds good. Looks delicious. So like I said, Barbie is freaking everywhere, and it's leaking into the real world. More people are decorating their homes in the Barbiecore style, which consists of a palette that is primarily made up of hot pink. and according to the New York Times searches for Barbie aesthetic bedrooms on Pinterest jumped 1 ,135 % from May 2022 to May 2023. It's the summer of Barbie, Neil. So I was going to ask you a question. You dyed your hair, you know, blonde a few weeks after the trailer came out.

9:08It wasn't predicated. Are you participating in the Barbie summer? The only way I would feel like I am truly participating is if I went hot pink, which no you never know like i could be struck by uh after seeing the movie and go hot pink but i will say that google searches for blonde hair dye more than tripled uh after this trailer came out and when the trailer came out they also released this selfie generator that took over social media and i still see it to this day people are using this barbie selfie generator honestly this is the cultural event of the summer we haven't even talked about the songs that are on the soundtrack right didn't cardi b release a bar like a new version of barbie and then dua lipa's song and then nikki minaj and i spice oh that's it i confused cardi b they just released a song yeah called barbie kind of over the original barbie soundtrack yeah nikki minaj is like the most closely associated artist with barbie in the world so it makes a lot of sense uh i forgot this was a movie i know i i wonder if anyone's gonna actually see this movie that's the funniest part is no one knows what the movie's really about like the trailer gave away no hints so it's we're literally just being uh uh we're in on the vibes of the movie more so than like the plot and it does have a stacked cast you got will ferrell michael cera dua lipa helen mirren's in there kate mckinnon yeah i know so i'm gonna go see it for sure the other funny part is that the barbie movie is just completely tied to this other movie Oppenheimer because they come out on the same day so you're seeing these hilarious memes of like what's the Oppenheimer like marketing budget gonna do to like the Barbie dream house so which one are you seeing first Neil I am seeing Oppenheimer I have no plans to see Barbie I don't think it's gonna be like an actual movie do it for the content um but Mattel to bring it back to business uh Mattel is really hoping that all these licensing deals pay off because it is kind of in a hard spot right now.

11:06Revenue dropped 22 % in the first quarter and it lost$115 million. Things are not going great. And Barbie is its biggest line. Yeah. So it's really hoping that all of these will drive actual sales for toys. It may happen. It has to happen. It is everywhere. So I'm very bullish on Mattel and these Barbie figures. I can't wait for next year to figure out what the year over year growth is. Plus, the biggest trend in toys right now is kid-dolting. Right. Adults love the toys. We're all going back to our youth and buying toys and coloring books and Barbie. I mean, Barbie came out in 1959. Yeah. And it still has incredible cultural cachet.

11:45But it's true that kid-dolting, which is, I can't believe I'm saying this word. It's very cringy. But kid-dolts, which are people 12 and over, the biggest driver of growth in the toy industry, and they account for one-fourth of all toy sales annually. I'm getting myself a ripstick after this. I miss that thing. All right. We're moving on from Barbie, which is very difficult. But the search for the new Wheel of Fortune host is over, and it had none of the drama of Jeopardy. Maybe that's because it's a worse show, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, America's golden child, Ryan Seacrest, was named the new host yesterday, just two weeks after Pat Sajak, the show's host of more than 40 years, announced his retirement.

12:25Seacrest is joining a show that's declined from its heights, but still is a cultural tour de force. At its peak in the 1980s, Wheel of Fortune commanded a nightly audience of more than 40 million viewers, including my grandma. Now that's down to about 8.6 million, which is not too shabby, and just behind Jeopardy's 9.1 million. Plus, it goes viral every once in a while when someone messes up a solve so badly. It is hilarious. Is this a good move? I think it's a great move, mostly because Ryan Seacrest, you're like, oh my gosh, how can he do so much? But this is the GOAT of all hosting jobs. You only have to, there's reports that Pat Sajak was only working four days a month.

13:03And obviously those are probably action-packed days. But he was bringing in reportedly$15 million a year. So if I'm Ryan Seacrest, I sign up for that in a heartbeat. Like you, again, you take over this cultural institution. You're not working a whole lot more and you're getting paid a pretty penny. So I think this just is another check on Seacrest's list of greatest hosts of all time. Whoa. Greatest hosts of all time. Am I writing that down for you? Jehost. Yeah. But the T here, the best T is about Vanna White. Right. Crazy. Crazy. So Vanna White apparently has not gotten a raise in 18 years. She's being paid$3 million a year compared to Pat Sajak's$15 million.

13:41Yeah. But they joined the show at the same time. So Vanna White is lawyering up. She hired a very super high-powered lawyer, and she's trying to grab her bag. So all power to Vanna White. People freaked out when you realized. Well, deservedly so. She's more iconic, I would argue, than Pat Sajak in terms of cultural cachet, if we're talking about that. Because, yeah, she is the person that you most associate with Wheel of Fortune in my mind. Yeah, and she was honestly in the running to be the host, and a lot of people kind of wanted her to be the host. That would have been fun, honestly. Okay, here's my question for you on Wheel of Fortune I just thought of.

14:17when you say you're on the show okay would you be very conscious about how much force you were applying to the wheel to land on a particular number i've always wondered that i'm sure they get coaching that you're if we see you trying to finesse it then really yeah they'll get mad because yeah you it doesn't spin that fast and i'm sure you could like figure it out so i i'm pretty sure and my friend's dad actually went on wheel of fortune and you get like a little bit of coaching that says if we see you trying to finesse the wheel oh that's so fun i thought you could I thought there was a minimum rotation.

14:48Right, right. Stuff like that. Number of revolvers that you need, or revolutions that you need to happen. Neil would get on Wheel of Fortune to merely get kicked off for trying to spin the wheel. I mean, you've got to gain the system. That's how you win on game shows. There you go. All right, Neil. Before we jump into the next story, we're going to take a quick break. This episode is brought to you by eBay. Buying parts for your car? You'll know that. Will it work? Feeling. But on eBay, buying parts is different. eBay's free returns means if it doesn't fit or if it isn't what you expected, you just print a label, drop it off and get your refund fast.

15:23No haggling, no stress and at least 30 days to return any eligible item. Millions of parts, free returns. eBay. Things people love. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. This next one's for all you CarMax shoppers who just want to buy a car your way. Want to check some cars out in person? Uh-huh. Want to look some more from your house? Okay. Want to pretend you know about engines? Nah, I'll just chat with CarMax online instead. Want to get pre-qualified from your couch? Woo! Want to get that car? Hey, that's a beat. You want to do it your way? Want to drive? CarMax. Neil, Wall Street has had a bit of a weird year with a couple of banks collapsing in the market doing kickflips every time Jerome Powell speaks.

16:16But one integral part of the financial sector is having a banner year, interns. Median intern pay for those working in finance roles jumped 19 % of the top 16 firms, according to this site, levels.fyi. That pay bump got even higher at hedge funds, where hourly pay is up 29 % year over year. So how much would a median hedge fund internship pay a fresh-faced college intern. $111 an hour, which comes out to$4 ,400 in pre-tax earnings per week. The creme de la creme of internships that will line your pockets and your resume is actually at Ken Griffin's Citadel, where interns are getting paid$120 an hour.

17:01That led to Citadel receiving 69 ,000 applications for its 2023 internship program. I was one of them. Yeah, I actually should be. That's my next line, Neil, is that we're in the wrong career. Let's go be interns for freaking Ken Griffin. Oh, my God. This is crazy. It's huge. It's$230 ,000 a year. I think I calculated it out. Disgusting. To me, that's not an internship. Yeah. That's literally, you're basically, that's a full-time job. And that's what the whole point of this is, is that hedge funds and investment banks want to lure top talent. And even though they've had a rough year, and we know that Goldman and a bunch of other banks have laid off staff, they're still still have plenty of money to hire top talent.

17:44And even in a downturn, you still need superstars. So they've got a piggy bank stashed away to find superstar interns that could eventually become their superstar bankers and make huge deals in the next few years. Yeah. And there's definitely this kind of exodus away from tech and back into finance, because, I mean, if we go over the past year, over 200 ,000 tech workers have been laid off and they have to kind of go somewhere. So there's this renewed interest in finance as one of those prestige careers again, like for a while tech was the new finance, honestly, where like you want an internship at Meta, at Google, at these big tech companies.

18:21And now that's luster has kind of rubbed off a little bit. And so you're seeing a return to the norms of finance being like that prestige culture that you want as a college intern. It's like a value stock, right? Like McDonald's or Johnson and Johnson. It's like, it's always going to be there. It's probably going to grow. It's very stable. So when things get a little uncertain, I'm going to maybe go back to finance. But also most finance jobs now, not most, but a lot of them are tech. So it's not even your problem. You may not even be doing anything different. I mean, at some banks, 40 % of all open roles are AI roles.

18:56JP Morgan has like 3 ,500 AI adjacent roles open. So if you work at Meta, you can be like, okay, I may just do the same thing at JP Morgan. So it's not that big of a deal. I'm applying, Neil. Like just to see if I can get it. So much money. Yeah. All right. We're moving on from finance to gas. It's the end of an era in Oregon. and no, Damien Lillard is not leaving the trailblazers. Last week, the state's lawmakers ended a ban on self-serve gas that's been in place for 72 years. Now, Oregonians will be allowed to pump their own gas. Oregon was just one of two states that still required attendance to fill up your tank for you.

19:39New Jersey, of course, is the final holdout for full service. And for the rest of this story, I'm going to say gaz in solidarity with New Jersey. This was a long time coming. Fuel companies had been pushing for self-serve in Oregon for a while because of staffing shortages at gas stations. They said that half of the pumps at gas stations were closed anyway because there wasn't anyone to man them. Drivers, too, are probably ready for a change because they will no longer have to wait in lines for a pump that had no attendant. So this, to me, seems like the National League finally adopting the DH.

20:13There was just total inertia and status quo bias because it had been going on so long. So my question is, what is going on in New Jersey? I know. I see the argument. It's very hard to say, like, we want to get rid of all these. I mean, it's not a ton of jobs, but whenever you're on the side of, like, let's get rid of jobs, it's always a tough sell, which is funny, though, because 49 other states obviously got it done. But honestly, you don't want to get rid of jobs, but you also don't want to pay these gas station workers more. And so you're kind of in a rock and a hard place. Like, yes, keep the jobs.

20:45But then if you want them to still have jobs, pay them more. Then you'll have more people doing them. So it is crazy that we're in that. I think a lot of people, if they haven't gone on like a cross-country road trip, never would have known that this existed in New Jersey and Oregon. So it's kind of good that Oregon's sunsetting it, in my opinion. Full service has kind of an interesting history because gas stations originally pushed for full service in the early days because it was a profit center. because you would come in, they would pump your gas, and they would also change your tires, change your oil, wipe your windshield.

21:16It was kind of this big operation. And it was seen as dangerous, too. That's why there was a law against pumping your own gas, because gas stations in the early days, that's a flammable thing that you're putting in your car. So that was one of the reasons it was regulated in the first place. Right, and that's why there's this 1949 act from New Jersey called the Retail Gasoline Dispensing Safety Act, which is still in effect, obviously. And it cited fire hazards and exposure to toxic fumes, particularly in the case of pregnant women, as justifying full service. I'm just getting, I'm getting confused.

21:52I'm saying full service and self-service all the time. No, full service. So, but what changed was that the cars had to be serviced at dealerships. So that kind of sucked away all the profits from gas stations. And then they were like, let's just go volume, right? Like we're not going to make money on doing all of the bells and whistles. Let's just get as many people as possible into our gas stations. So that's kind of what happened. New Jersey is the final holdout. I don't think it's going to change soon because there was a recent poll said that 73 % of New Jerseyans prefer to have having their gas pumped for them.

22:24And the governor is like, I'm not touching that. That is the third rail of politics in New Jersey. It's just a part of our culture. We're just not going to touch it. But before the show, Toby and I decided to rank our top three gas station experiences for all the people in Oregon who are about to experience this for the first time. Absolutely. Well, hit me with yours first. All right. I will go. Number one, the smell. Beautiful. Oh my God. It smells so good. Don't sniff gas beams, by the way. We do not endorse that. It does smell good. And a lot of people can corroborate that. The second one is taking your finger off the nozzle at a round number.

23:01Never done it before. Really? I can't do it. It's like spinning the wheel in Wheel of Fortune. Oh, I'm really good at it. Hit me at the 20. But the problem is if you go a little over then you're just another 10 bucks. Exactly. And then the final one is the sound of the nozzle clicking when it's full. Very, it's a good feeling. Like it's right out there with taking your ski boots off at the end of a long ski day as one of the more satisfying things. Alright, Neil, that is a great gas station roundup. Let's head to our final story. It takes us to the halls of Renesler Polytechnic Institute where there's a lawsuit brewing between a research lab and a cleaner who thought he was just doing his job.

23:38So this research lab had 25 years of specimens stored in a freezer set to minus 80 degrees Celsius. So something went a little bit amiss in that freezer. So an alarm started beeping, signaling that the temperature had risen just a little bit. But this was in 2020 during the middle of COVID. So there was no way for a repair to go through in time. And so they put a note on the freezer saying, this freezer is beeping as it is under repair. Please do not move or unplug it. No cleaning required in this area. That was in all caps, by the way. But along came a cleaner who heard that annoying beeping sound and shut off a breaker that led to the freezer.

24:19By the time the scientists noticed, the temperature had risen 50 degrees and the samples were destroyed. Now the school is suing the cleaning company for failing to adequately train their employee. Whose side are you on here neil i'm on the researcher side can you imagine working on something for 25 years brutal and you hadn't seen it to completion and then someone flicks a switch and something you'd been working on for you know probably about half of your life life yeah is gone i know it's i don't know what that's like you just retire there's real money on the line here too because the researchers estimate that it'll take at least a million dollars to start to recreate the experiment and then honestly the cleaning company had a one and a half or 1.4 million dollar contract with the school and so this lawsuit has a couple million dollars on the line on either side but yeah just so you said you're on the cleaner side i know well because i'm on the cleaner side because he thought he was helping he heard a beeping noise and he he also said he thought he was turning the breaker switch on right and so he was like oh maybe the breaker's been off let me flip this on.

25:27So yeah, it's a cleaner, like they, at the end of the day, I do think they're just doing their job, but, and I, and I sympathize with someone who hears an annoying beeping noise. Sometimes all you want to do is fix it. There's nothing worse than that. As good as gas station smells, beeping noises are annoying. That is our show. Thanks for listening and watching everyone. Hope you have a great Wednesday. If you want to get in contact with us, our email is morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let us know what your favorite gas station experience is. Huge shout out to our crew who put the show together.

25:58Emily Miliron is our editor and producer. Samantha Veles and Raymond Liu are the associate producers. Yuchenawa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Hair and makeup is upset about how their longtime client Vanna White has been treated. And frankly, I agree. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.

26:26Thank you.