Losing Weight for Less $$$ & You Can’t Pay People to Have Kids

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0:27Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Mark Zuckerberg accused the government of censoring Facebook posts about COVID. what's behind this surprise admission? Then the Kelsey brothers are the latest podcast to land themselves a mega deal as a yapping into a microphone continues to be a very viable career path. It's Wednesday, August 28th. Let's ride.

0:55Happy Wednesday. You know, I thought I worked pretty hard, rise and grind and all of that. But then Toby, you showed me a clip of American tennis player Francis Tiafoe playing at the U.S. Open Monday night, and I felt like the laziest person on earth. Tiafoe brought 20 backup shirts with him to the match, 20 in case he sweats through the mall and needs to swap them out. I haven't gone through that many wardrobe changes since getting ready for my first party in high school. You're probably sweating as much as Tiafoe did as well. What's funny is Tiafoe is known for his shirt changing, but there's no real rhyme or reason the New York Times analyzed it and they said that he'll grab a fresh shirt out of his bag at the end of a set but maybe he'll also change multiple times during a single set so it is a superstition but it's not as regimented as you might think all tennis players are just superstitious as well I mean Rafael Nadal needs to have two water bottles by his bench positions diagonally from each other with the logos facing the court so in the grand scheme of things Tiafoe's shirt changing habits is not the weirdest thing a tennis player has done tennis is just like a challenge with yourself.

2:00Well, Tiafoe is playing again today at 1 15 PM and it's supposed to be 95 degrees out here in New York. So I wonder how many shirts he's going to bring with him. I'm setting the over under at 32. I'm hammering the over there. And now a word from our sponsor mass mutual. Neil, remember the time you decided to splurge on that fancy coffee machine? I thought I was going to be whipping up lattes left and right. Yeah. And how's that working for you? Well, I'm still a regular at the local cafe, but hey, it's about investing in yourself, right? True, but maybe put some of that energy into your financial future.

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3:05I'm not kidding when I say NFL by Abercrombie broke the internet last year, and I think this season's lineup is even cooler. And so does my wife, who keeps stealing all my hoodies. Stay fit for the season and Abercrombie's newest arrivals. Shop NFL by Abercrombie in the app, online, and in store.

3:28Some weight loss is coming to the weight loss drug market in the form of lower prices. Eli Lilly just dropped a new version of its GLP-1 weight loss drug called ZetBound for about half of its old monthly list price. It's an industry-shaking move that aims to increase access for patients while also undercutting the market for generic knockoffs. Zetbound will now set you back as little as$399 per month for the smallest dose as long as you go through its direct-to-consumer website. Compare that to the list prices of other popular weight loss drugs like Novo Nordisk's Wiggovi, which come in at around$1 ,000 a month before insurance and rebates.

4:07So, Neil, everyone from name brand producers to generic drug makers now have to respond to this new lower price or else get left behind. It's a bit of a power play from Eli Lilly. It really is. This is a move to intended intended to bolster market share. There have been a ton of these Canal Street version of of these weight loss drugs coming into play because the FDA has ruled that these drugs are in a shortage, which allows for others to get in the game and make legally these compounded versions. That's what they're called that are essentially copycats or knockoffs. and they're charging a lot less than Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, the two companies that are in the lead of this weight loss industry.

4:49And the move is saying, hey, we're going to lower prices to, first of all, undercut our biggest competitor, Novo Nordisk, and to protect ourselves against all these knockoffs that are coming into the market. And the reason why they're able to price this new version so low is that the injection system is different. So in the past, patients have had these auto-injector pens, which you can direct directly under the skin with the click of a button. You've probably seen some version of it. It's a very simple, not minimally invasive way to inject the medicine. These new system is different. You have to use a syringe and a needle to draw the medicine.

5:26It gives you a single dose vial. And so you are essentially administering it to yourself. So it differs. They say that they can create additional capacity much easier of these vials. So it's a big shift in the actual delivery mechanism, which allows them to change the price like they have. Right. And this is a card that Novo Nordisk can't play, which may give Eli Lilly a leg up here. Because when you're looking at these shortages of these of these medicines, Eli Lilly's main constraint has been the injectable pens. They can't make enough of these pens to deliver the treatment. Meanwhile, Novo Nordic's big shortage is actually the active ingredient in Wagovi and Ozempic, which is semaglutide.

6:10Eli Lilly has plenty of their active ingredient, which is terzopeptide. Well done. Thank you, Toby. I know you didn't believe me. I could do that. I saw it in your eyes, but I nailed it. So Eli Lilly, the main constraint. Yeah, it's like the injectable pens. But they found a way around that by going with these vials, which allows them to cut the price in half. I should add, this is just for the lowest two doses. there are six different doses of uh of manjaro or zep bound and this are just the lowest two doses so if you're on a bigger dose then this may not be for you right and clinical trials have shown that about one out of every three patients won't have the weight loss results that they're looking for at these lower doses so that's one pushback it's not going to be for everyone and then two the other pushback is they're still pretty expensive i mean 399 for the lowest dose that might not give you the results you're looking for is still pretty pricey.

7:01But it's good to see that more competition is coming to this market. Prices are driving lower and that these the big players are trying to make it more affordable for a lot more people. Meanwhile, shares of Eli Lilly are up 21 percent over the past three months, 64 percent this year. It is close to being a one trillion dollar company and it would be the first non-tech American company to hit a one trillion market cap. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took a break from his burgeoning fashion model career to call out the Biden administration for, quote, censoring COVID-related content during the peak of the pandemic a few years back.

7:38Yeah, this was quite a surprise and exposed a rift between Zuck and the government that hadn't been made public before. So what did he say? In a letter addressed to the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg wrote that in 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn't agree. Zuckerberg said with hindsight, he made decisions about removing posts that he regrets and would push back if something like this happens again.

8:14He also reiterated that ultimately the company made the decision to pull the content and they weren't being compelled to. The White House responded that it stood by its actions, saying that its communications with tech companies encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety. Toby, with this unexpected admission, Zuck dug up old skeletons to raise fresh questions about free speech and social media moderation policies. Yeah, if we go back to August 2021, Facebook said it removed more than 20 million posts related to COVID-19. So it was just a much different time. There was a lot of pressure coming from the White House.

8:51It is interesting, the timing, though, of releasing the letter now. Like, why is Zuck doing this? A lot of people said that he was giving maybe the Republicans a political win by publishing this letter right before an election season. But another interpretation is that Facebook has this antitrust suit that is coming, that has been looming for a while. It dates back to 2021, where they say they were illegally crushing competition. So maybe that is still top of mind for Mark Zuckerberg. So he's trying to dive, dive, ditch, and whatever the five Ds are through this election season. So maybe he's more than likely looking out for Facebook's or Meta's own instance.

9:30Seems like he's hedging his bets. Social media content moderation has never been more top of mind. This goes back to 2021. But really, just in the past few weeks, we've talked about the EU pressuring Elon Musk and X and investigating his content moderation policies, which have been extremely lax. And then just this weekend, we had Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, being arrested in France in a very dramatic episode. France is accusing him of allowing very serious criminal activity to fester on the Telegram app. So really, there's never been a more relevant time to talk about social media content moderation.

10:07I should add that what Zuckerberg is talking about with the government pressuring him to take down posts was litigated in the Supreme Court, right? There was a couple states that filed a lawsuit against the government accusing them of illegally censoring information. The Supreme Court ruled earlier this summer, as we talked about on this show, that the plaintiffs just didn't have standing to bring that case in general. What does 527 pounds of mass and a microphone add up to? Apparently$100 million if the balls of muscle speaking into the mic are NFL star brothers Jason and Travis Kelsey. The duo signed another mega podcast deal worth nine figures, this time with Amazon's Wonder Unit for their podcast New Heights.

10:53Started just two years ago, New Heights is part professional chatter about football and part pop culture debrief, thanks to the presence of a certain singer in Travis's love life. New Heights is also emblematic of this next wave of podcast growth, where the biggest shows are attracting larger slices of the audience and larger ad deals because of it. Neil, I thought we just went through a podcast boom a few years ago when Spotify bought The Ringer and handed out mega deals to the Obamas and Prince Harry and Meghan. But in the last three months, we've seen multiple$100 million deals from publishers.

11:25So things are clearly booming once again. They really are. I think I'm calling this the Podcast Wars 2.0. And 1.0 was back in 2020, which you talked about. Spotify inks Joe Rogan to that mega deal to bring him exclusive on the platform. They gave Harry and Meghan$20 million. The model of that initial land grab for podcasts didn't totally work out for these companies' favor because Harry and Meghan got paid$20 million. Meghan produced 12 episodes in total, and then they broke off the deal. Eventually, Spotify also made Joe Rogan not exclusive to Spotify and put him out across various platforms.

12:04So it seems like there's a new war model brewing business model for these podcasts where you pay a lot of money. I mean, SiriusXM just last week signed Alex Cooper to a$100 million deal. But you don't make them exclusive to your platform. You just buy up the ad rights and the merch rights. So you can monetize them, but they're also across all platforms so people can access them. and distribution is key, just getting them in as many earbuds as possible. Yeah, this time around, publishers are becoming a little bit more wiser. They're adding in a few more guardrails when it comes to these deals because they went through that really costly boom and bust cycle that we spoke about.

12:43The biggest sign though is Spotify still has a bit of a strategy shift underway. Remember, they spent a billion dollars on their first podcasting push. So these mega deals, it seems like they're pouring in thick and fast, but it really is like, They call it the power law of the internet where all the money is concentrated at the top 1 % of the 1 % of podcasts. And we're seeing that. I mean, New Heights is the number one sports podcast in the world, especially when it comes to football season, which is coming up. But you're right. It looks like exclusive distribution deals are a little bit on the outs.

13:14They want to just blast this out and just take a cut of the ad revenue. That seems to be the business model that is more in vogue these days. Also, we just got to give a shout-out to how much Travis Kelsey has been doing recently. I would be wary of drafting him in fantasy football leagues because his play on the football field is maybe the last in his list of priorities. I mean, he's got T-Swift. He's kind of a Hollywood guy. He's been tapped to host Amazon Prime's new game show, Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity? He's in talks to star in a new comedy from Lionsgate. So the man is busy, and his day job is still catching footballs.

13:49If you have any money riding on your fantasy leagues, I would maybe stay away from Travis Kelsey. He's kind of becoming like the next Dwayne Johnson a little bit, going from an athletic career to just this Hollywood celebrity. But yeah, this shows the fact that these two football players, these two brothers, are making$100 million on their podcast, that there is an alternative to life after football. from going into, if you want to go into media, the traditional route has been, all right, you got to audition on CBS or NBC or in the studio for ESPN ahead of Sunday night football or something like that.

14:22Now you can start your own podcast. And really, J.J. Redick, the basketball player, pioneered this format where he sidestepped the media and launched a podcast in 2016 offering more unfiltered personal opinions. There have been a lot more very successful podcasts and shows coming from athletes ever since. Bust in with the boys. Pat McAfee. Morning Brew Daily. That one, too. So this has been a very lucrative path for certain athletes that are more media savvy, can talk really well into a microphone. And, yeah, Jason Kelsey and Travis Kelsey are absolutely getting that back. Up next, how big of a deal is declining birth rates?

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15:43They 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 idea win! On brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere Tuesday on NBC. Cash for families with newborns. Free taxi rides. Extended child care leave. Reverse vasectomies. South Korea has tried just about everything to get its younger people having babies to reverse what has become the world's lowest birth rate. But nothing is sticking.

16:22The demographic crisis is only getting worse. And sociologists have a theory why. South Koreans in their 20s and 30s just love treating themselves, and having a baby would get in the way of their personal hopes, dreams, and purchases. Reuters spoke with a bunch of millennials and Gen Zers in the country who said they ascribe to the YOLO mentality, you only live once, and being happy right now is more important than getting married and raising a family. Much of that YOLOing involves going out shopping and dining out to boost their social status, researchers say. The share of spending at high-end department stores by South Koreans in their 20s has almost doubled in the last three years.

17:02Sales at a restaurant serving an Instagrammable all-you-can-eat strawberry dessert spiked 150 % from last winter, even after it raised prices. But travel not so far away to Australia, and 25 to 29-year-olds there are cutting their spending 3.5 % in the first quarter of this year. Toby, the young people of South Korea are prioritizing their own fulfillment over parenthood. And it seems like nothing the government can do is going to change that. Right. You have these two conflicting powers filtering through the economy right now because South Korea continues to set new records for having the world's lowest birth rate.

17:39But at the same time, even amongst these very aggressive interest rates hikes over the past three years, they haven't been able to rein in spending whatsoever. The savings rate for people in their 30s declined in the first quarter compared to five years ago. Literally for all other age groups in the same period, central bank data shows that it went up. So it really is just a specific generation that is taking the YOLO mindset. They're the biggest per capita spenders on luxury brands in the world. So it really is this cultural phenomenon where they're saying, I want to live my life. I do not necessarily want to think about having kids.

18:16If it happens, it happens. But right now I am focused on me and having a good time while I'm here. And governments around the world are scratching their heads. They're thinking we have declining birth rates. What can we do to spur, you know, to spur people to have more babies? Because this is a huge economic threat looming in the future when you have fewer workers, you have fewer people pitching into social welfare programs that support retirees. This is a this is top of mind for a lot of governments, and it must be disheartening to look at what South Korea is doing and what other countries are doing and saying and seeing that just spending money, giving people a ton of money is not working because they have money and they're spending.

18:57I mean, look at Hungary, way different than South Korea, total family subsidy spending there. So the amount of money they're spending on spurring people to have families amounts to 5 percent of total GDP or more than double what Hungary spends on defense. And they got a little bit of a tick up from one point two three children per woman in 2011 to one point five nine in 2020. But that has stagnated. So that totally isn't working anymore. Taiwan has spent$3 billion. All these other countries are spending so much money giving out all these handouts to support child care. Even those Scandinavian countries, Sweden and Norway, which are known for having very robust family leave policies, supporting parents financially, are seeing declining birth rates.

19:42So there are there does appear to be larger cultural forces like what's happening in South Korea at play that is stymieing government's efforts to spur babies. babies. Governments might just have to accept the fact that they can't control how many kids people are having and just do their best to take care of your population's needs. Just make it a better place to live in. That seems to be the only way that you can truly incentivize people planning for the future because it's very hard to do it from top down policies coming from lawmakers. A new economic indicator could signal that we are heading towards a recession and it smells a lot like pork.

20:16If you look closely at the Dallas Fed's Texas Manufacturing Outlook survey, you'll see a slight uptick in dinner sausage consumption. And according to a comment included in the report, this category tends to grow in the economy weekends because sausage is a good protein substitute for higher priced proteins. AKA when times get tough, consumers turn to sausage to stretch their budgets. The producer price index commodity category for sausage and deli meats has climbed by roughly a third since the start of 2020. So consumers are definitely hunting for more bargain brats these days. But Neil, you know how the saying goes, you don't want to know how the sausage is made, but you definitely do want to pay attention to how the sausage is being sold.

20:56Yeah, this drove a lot of conversation, but it came from just a single comment in this very random manufacturing survey. So the Fed goes to various Texas manufacturers over the course of the month. And each month, they publish several quotes from manufacturers to talk to, and they kind of dish on what they see happening in the economy. And just this one manufacturer said, as the economy weakens, we are seeing modest growth in our category of dinner sausage. This category tends to grow when the economy weakens, as sausage is a good protein substitute for higher priced proteins and can stretch consumers' food budgets.

21:31This is a phenomenon that economists call trading down, and it happens a lot of times during recessions. We've seen it happen over the past few months, too, where retailers like Walmart and Target and other companies are saying that people are not spending on those luxury items anymore. They're just replacing it with maybe the generic brand version of what they would use to buy. So that is sort of the phenomenon that's happening here. I will say certain commentators looked at the Texas Manufacturing Outlook survey and say, this is pretty anecdotal. This is anecdotal. I wouldn't take this one manufacturer's word for what's happening in the broader economy.

22:09This survey has also been sort of criticized before for hyperbole when in 2016, one company went totally off about millennials slacking at work and that they were super lazy. So that sparked a big uproar back then. So I'm not really ascribing to the sausage index, but there are a lot of other, but it does add to the pantheon of great other recession indicators that take these sales of like a particular item in the economy and try to extrapolate a lot of trends from it. I don't even think it's the best food-based economic indicator out there, though. I prefer to look at the baked bean sales indicator, which shows that it posits that the sales of baked beans increase during economic downturns.

22:49People look for more affordable, more long-lasting foods. There's also the buttered popcorn index. It suggests that during economic downturns, people go to the movies for escapism, leading to increased popcorn sales. There's all sorts of weird economic indicators out there. I mean, you can look at the grittiness, quote, grittiness of Marine Corp ads because that tends to correlate with economic challenges as well. Recruitment's easier during tough times. So pick your economic indicator, pick whichever, if you wanna be food-based or not. There's plenty to derive from even the smallest little changes in how things are priced.

23:21It is clear though that people are moving away from beef, which is increased in price, and trading down to chicken and perhaps sausage. Finally, this sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel, but things have gotten so hot here on Earth that companies are giving their employees high-tech ice packs to wear under vests so they can stay cool when working in searing temperatures. If you head to a drive-thru at a Shake Shack or a Dutch Bros in Arizona, don't be surprised to see a person taking your order wearing an ice plate, a product from the company Core Performance designed to fit neatly into vests and prevent the human body from overheating.

24:01Dutch Bros uses ice plate vests at its 29 locations in Metro Phoenix, while Shake Shack uses them at 33 drive-thru locations in 17 states. The Wall Street Journal explains that on-body cooling systems have been around for decades, pioneered by the British military and NASA. But as intense heat becomes more widespread, the ice plate and similar products have begun popping up in daily life, from fast food workers standing in the Maricopa County heat to warehouse workers to mascots at theme parks. Toby, is this dystopian or an innovative use of technology? It's definitely a little bit of both. And the first person I thought of when I read this ice vest story was Francis Tiafoe, actually, because clearly he is sweating a lot and could use this cooling system.

24:47But, yeah, these technologies have been popping up. It filtered down through the military over years to now more commercial use cases. The funniest use case, too, is so there's one version, which is actually ice packs, where it has physical frozen water within a contoured plate under a vest. But then there's also makes use some other companies make use of phase changing materials. Think about going to maybe you had in your lunchbox, those ice packs that they can make. Their big advantage is that they can become cool at a temperature that's higher than the freezing point of water. So it's a little bit more comfortable when it's close to your body.