Neuralink Approved for Human Trials, A Game of Shaq & Mouse, & Starbucks' Cold War

0:00Stocks? ETFs? Or what about mutual funds? Choosing your investments is easier with Fidelity. Our step-by-step experience can help you pick out the right investments for you. Plus, with recurring investments, you can decide how much and how often to invest. Lastly, there's 24-7 help if and when you need it. To find your next investment, head to fidelity.com slash trading. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC. Member NYSC SIPC. Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I am Neil Freiman. And I am Toby Howell. On today's show, Elon Musk's dream of putting a wire in your brain is getting even closer.

0:40And we will review Catch Me If You Can, the sequel, Shaq edition. Then we'll talk about how El Nino is going to be El not good for the economy before Neil and I will no doubt get into a spirited debate about the new Starbucks ice cubes that aren't actually cubes anymore. Neil, it's Friday, May 26th. Let's ride.

1:05Neil, today is the Friday before a long weekend. I wonder how much work is getting done across the city right now. Negative. Yeah, negative work. I'm going to venture to say not a lot. It's a long weekend because Memorial Day is on Monday, which means you and I will not be jumping in the studio. But luckily for you all, we did plan ahead. We recorded a special holiday episode for you all. Should we spoil the surprise, Neil? Yeah. Let's do it. I can't. I'm always a person who gives people their birthday presents early. Okay, so we're almost 70 episodes into the show now, and a lot of you guys have no doubt spent a lot of time with us in your ears.

1:43It feels like we're all friends now, but we want to let you guys get to know us a little better. And so we actually sat down, Neil and I, sat down and interviewed each other, kind of like a newlywed game meets interview podcast, just so you understand who Neil and Toby are, your hosts. And so we could understand ourselves. I know. It was a very, very therapeutic. I'm still a mystery to myself. So if you're missing your morning brew daily fix on Monday, tune in because we will have an episode for you guys. So it will pop up in your feet. And yeah, let's get in the show. Definitely give it a listen.

2:17We do have to do fast week slow week first. You can't skip that. Sorry. Go ahead. All right. I was going to say it's a fast week. It's so lame at this point, but it truly was. I knew that this long weekend was, it was like exerting a gravitational pull on the week and dragging me towards Friday. So I felt like it went by quickly. I feel like it's the opposite because I've been counting down the days to today and everyone knows that a watch pod never boils. Oh, exactly. So when you look at the clock, it takes a little more slowly. All right, let's go to our first story. We know that Elon Musk may still be working out a few glitches on Twitter spaces, but he could soon put a drill into your skull and sew a wire to your brain.

3:06Oh, gosh.

3:27Approval now, finally, is an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people Neuralink tweeted. Yeah. First of all, the classic Elon just always over-promising and potentially under-delivering. But this is actually a very big step forward because human clinical trials are on the horizon. But I just want to run through some of the things that Neuralink promises or Elon promises Neuralink will help with, including obesity, autism, depression, schizophrenia, and also enabling web browsing and potentially telepathy. So he's clearly shooting from the moon here with Neuralink and he's very bullish.

4:03He said he's so confident the device's safety that he'd be willing to implant them in his own children. So eventually he will probably put his money where his mouth is. Oh my God. Yeah, but hopefully it is safe. I think that's the sound of all of his children leaving the country and hiding out. Yeah. But this is a really interesting technology and Neuralink is not the only company that is doing it. I think at least 42 people globally have had their brain have had implants in their brain. And it's to help, you know, these various diseases and brain and neck injuries where you can't move and you still need to communicate.

4:37So there's this one instance of this guy with ALS who was able to text just by thinking the keystrokes in his mind. There's another one that using this technology, he could fist bump Barack Obama with a robotic arm. So they're like really interesting use cases for this technology. I think the controversy and the ethics come into play when you don't use it to help people get better from something that happened to them. It's when you sort of go full Iron Man mode and go up with these enhancements. And you're not just like baseline human anymore. You're half human, half robot. Yeah, I do wonder because who is going to apply for the clinical human clinical trials?

5:18Is it going to be someone who has a disability who wants to potentially have Neuralink helping with that? Or is it going to be an able-bodied person, like you said, because they haven't actually put out the call for test subjects yet. So if you are itching for to be a test subject, you're going to have to wait a little bit. I think so. I actually did see some people, some academics who are kind of bullish on this. where like, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go. I am, I certainly am not ready to go. But then you have this arms race maybe where, you know, you're, everyone's kind of getting it. And then they become these like, you know, superhuman robots.

5:52And then you're losing in kickball and you're losing out in tests and stuff. And you're like, well, I guess I have to do it. I guess I have to be one with technology. It's kind of like a smartphone. You can't, you know, most people need to have a smartphone to communicate and get on with our daily lives. I don't know if like being an advanced AI slash human is going to be like that. I love that you bring up kickball though. That's the thing. I don't even like kickball. That's the arms race. Yeah, that's funny. I did read some of the possibility of what could go wrong with these human trials. That must have been a long read.

6:25I know. It kind of is straight out of a horror movie. Here's one that I found is that there's a possibility that the implants wires migrate within the brain, which is just terrifying to think about. Thank you. So I guess, Neil, you're not signing up anytime. I like, I want to keep my brain. You like what's going on in there? The brain is a fragile thing, but it does sound like it could have really revolutionary breakthroughs for people who just can't move anymore. So do you want to move on? Let's move on. Let's jump into the weather, actually. So I did mention El Nino at the top of the show. Climate scientists are warning that there is now a 90 % chance of an El Nino weather pattern taking hold through the end of this year and into the first months of next year as well.

7:08So let's put our seventh grade science hats on, Neil. It's time for Science Toby to come back and refresh our audience as to what El Nino is. So El Nino is basically, I like to describe it as a climate roller coaster that happens every few years and messes with everything from the atmosphere to the ocean to the trade winds. Essentially, what is El Nino? It is this mass of warm water that is slowly sloshing across the Pacific Ocean and piling up near the coast of South America. And this causes widespread effects. Everything from, like I mentioned, the oceans, but it also affects the economy. This is a business show after all.

7:46So a recent study from Dartmouth College estimated that El Nino starting in 2023 could cost the global economy as much as$3.4 trillion over the next five years. That's a big number. Just because of like disrupting agriculture and drought and wreaking havoc on infrastructure and things like that? Pretty much anything you can mention, El Nino is going to affect. Yeah, definitely like food and weather are like the two biggest things. And this is a very interesting fact, though. You feel the effects of El Nino for a long time. So two previous very strong El Nino periods in the 80s and the 90s caused U.S.

8:24gross domestic product to be 3 % lower a half decade later than it otherwise would have been. So that means five years from now, we'll still be feeling the effects of El Nino that is just about to kick off. It's like a U.S. credit downgrade. I know, for the entire world, literally. It's also, it's so disruptive, I read, that it leads to wars, or it is at least associated with wars. There was this research that was published in 2011 in Nature Journal that demonstrates a link between El Nino years and civil war in 93 tropical countries. That is a crazy fact. I wish you saved it for Neil's numbers, but that is fantastic.

8:59We got to get it now. But the most pressing concern for El Nino now is because the NOAA came out with its annual Atlantic hurricane forecast. And it forecast a very chill, normal, average season because we have a lot of hot water out in the Atlantic that's been fueled by climate change. And they're kind of at record highs over there. So that would spur the formation of hurricanes. But then it's being counteracted by El Nino in certain ways that I don't quite understand. but it basically neutralized each other and we end up with just an average hurricane season they think it's going to be 12 to 17 named storms yeah so apparently because i was i read into this and was trying to figure out why does it counteract because you'll you're going to start seeing headlines of like two climate climate titans facing off hurricane season versus el nino and apparently it's almost like too much of a good thing for hurricanes there's so much warm air rising over the Pacific that it actually decapitates storms because there's too much warm air too high.

10:01And so it's almost, they're becoming too powerful and they blow themselves out before they can even form into storms. So, so that's kind of why we're getting a, a normal hurricane. But even one can be bad. And you know, you grew up on the West coast of Florida. They got smashed with Ian last year and in total, uh, the 14 storms last year, uh, damaged, uh, the economy by$117 billion dollars so and killed a lot of people too so not great that they did come out with a list they know the list of hurricanes this year so if you are a brett a cindy a don emily gert jose sean tammy just pray that your storm just like stays at a tropical depression wait wait say gert again what is gert i've never heard there's a herald herald yeah margo i know arlene and then And also what was interesting is hurricanes used to be just named after female names, but they recently changed that.

10:54And the reason it was female names is because a lot of ships are named after female names. So it's kind of like aquatic. And they would name the ships and, you know, the captains would name the storms after females as well. For sure. All right. That's enough weather talk. Let's go to this story. It's pretty bizarre. Shaquille O 'Neal, who everyone knows, is the 7 '1 NBA Hall of Famer and an analyst for TNT. He was sued last year, along with other celebrities for promoting FTX, the failed and potentially fraudulent crypto exchange. As part of this lawsuit process, you need to be handed legal papers that inform you that you're being sued.

11:31Like physically, I can't email you. I just I need to actually hand it to you. That that needs to happen. But somehow, some way, Shaq has evaded him, has evaded these servers for the last four months. The lawyer suing him spent more than$100 ,000 for this search, hired two dozen process servers, which are the people who deliver a paper copy of the summons to the individual. And they just couldn't corner Shaq, despite Shaq being on TV in the TNT studio in Atlanta, like almost every night for the past couple months. We've all watched him on TV. I know. They couldn't find him. But this week, it finally happened.

12:07It was pretty poetic. Shaq got served his papers after the Heat Celtics game on Tuesday night outside of what is formerly known as FTX Arena in Miami. Just delicious, ironic symmetry right there that he's getting served in the place that used to bear FTX's name. This story is so funny because Shaq is the most conspicuous person maybe in the entire country. He's 7 '1", he's on TV every day. How can you not find this man? So either they're incompetent or Shaq is the next Jason Bourne. Yeah, he probably just has a team around him that intercepts these guys. So I did, the details of this just keep getting better.

12:44So the process server who actually eventually got to Shaq had to buy a ticket to the game. So he actually had to come in through the main door, dressed probably as like a normal fan, and he snagged Shaq as he was coming off the platform that he was on commenting on the game. And then this is the best part too, is Shaq immediately got him kicked out of the arena too. So he got served and then he's like security, get this guy. What is Shaq's game? Like what? This seems like you're going to have to go through so much effort to block these guys from getting to you. And you know, it's going to come eventually.

13:17Yeah. I mean, because if you avoid it, like you are technically avoiding the problem. The lawsuit can't kick off without getting. I just would not want it over my head. Yeah. But the other, the lawyer, Adam Moskovitz, who's representing the people suing these celebrities was like, I've never seen anything like it. Like the other 10 celebrities, Larry David, Steph Curry, Naomi Osaka, like we're Tom Brady. We're very compliant. And he's like, in my 30 years, I have no I've never seen anything like this. Like he's on TV every day. We can't get near him. It's insane. I love it. I also did some digging because at the center of this lawsuit is Shaq's promotion of FTX.

13:55And everyone knows Shaq is like the goat promoter. I was trying to figure out exactly how many products or companies he's been associated with over the years. Couldn't find the list because it's too big. I actually found a 2015 Sports Illustrated article ranking the top 50 products. 50? Top 50. That's the right reaction because if you have a top 50 list, that means there's more than 50. And so I looked through the list, and the top one was actually the Burger King Shack Pack. Yeah. And then the second one was the Triple Double Oreos, which is a fantastic proportion. I don't remember that. But I know he's on the board of Papa John's now, right?

14:30Yeah, he owns a bunch of Papa John's and Pizza Hut's around the country. Actually, I think it's Pizza Hut's, not Papa John's. And then my favorite Shaq promotion, though, is that he's a Buick spokesperson, which is just an hilarious thing because you know Shaq is not folding his 7 '1 frame into a Buick sedan. And he's always getting out of these tiny cars in the commercials. And you're like, I don't buy that for a second. I know what Shaq drives because in the Framingham, Massachusetts parking lot or Natick, I saw his Shaq mobile, which is like a tractor trailer cab with a pickup truck attached to the back.

15:07And it has the Superman logo. And it's like a Shaq mobile. And I saw that he was like eating at California Pizza Kitchen. And we're supposed to expect that he's folding himself into a Buick. Yeah, right. All right, Neil, before we jump into our next story, we're going to take a 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.

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16:17Sign up for your$1 per month trial at shopify.com slash special offer. All right, Neil, let's jump into our Friday segment, Stock of the Week and Dog of the Week, where we tell you all about one stock that outperformed the market and one that didn't. I call dibs on Stock of the Week, so I'll kick us off. But first, as always, we are just humble podcasters. So do remember that none of what you are about to hear is financial advice. So Neil, for Stock of the Week, have you ever been able to smell a stock chart? Yes, I said smell. Because our Stock of the Week this week is Abercrombie & Fitch. Low-rise jeans and shirtless male models, Abercrombie & Fitch.

16:57Overpowering smell of cologne and dark stores, Abercrombie & Fitch. But honestly, this version of the iconic retailer, or that version of the iconic retailer, is dead and gone. under new CEO Fran Horowitz, Abercrombie has totally changed up its brand. Its clothes are legit fashionable now. I see them all over TikTok, which is how you know that they've made it. And consumers have totally embraced the shift. Same-source sales grew 3 % last quarter, even as the broader retail segment has struggled. And they raised sales expectations for the years ahead. All that combined to send the stock up 30 % after the reported earnings and over 20 % overall for the week good for Abercrombie I was never cool enough to shop there I was way too intimidating so I I would always skip by there in the mall and you know pass to something it was intimidating wasn't it yeah that's the whole point like you had to be this hot freaking 14 year old like it's so messed up what they were doing and like they got in trouble like they got sued for a bunch of stuff and but yeah totally new Abercrombie and I actually I truly love their stuff.

18:01Wait, do you buy it? I have one of their polos that like, it's just like a very good summer shirt. So let's do a little online shopping. I'm definitely less intimidated. Let's go to the dog of the week, which is Kathy Wood. And this is not for anything that happened this week, but for something that happened a few months ago. So she's a famous investor and her flagship fund, ARK Innovation, dumped all of its shares of NVIDIA in early January, right before the stock went to the moon and gained$560 billion in market value, including its$200 billion surge this week that we talked about on the show yesterday.

18:36And it's now very close to$1 trillion. So she basically sold the dip instead of bought it, which is kind of the inverse of what you want to do. I just want to explain who Cathie Wood is and why she matters. She's the head of the investment firm ARK Investment, which is in St. Pete's, by the way. And then she became this rising star picker and potential successor to Warren Buffett during the pandemic. Wood is now known for betting on stocks in these emerging industries like Tesla, Coinbase, Roku, Nvidia, Zoom, DraftKings. But if that portfolio also sounds like your cousin's Robinhood account, that's kind of the problem.

19:12While these stocks popped during COVID and turned Cathy into a household name, it's a much different story now with higher interest rates kind of taking the wind out of the tech sales. And so this was a kind of a big miss for her. I know. And you know, what's so funny is when I was writing for the brew newsletter, I wrote an article calling like Kathy would, is she the new Oracle of, of, I guess, St. Pete. And I swear I, I timed the top with that article because ever since then, arc has kind of been on a slow, actually not even slow, a rapid decline. And this Nvidia news is just one more notch in the belt of, of one more L for Kathy would, if you will.

19:50All right. That was our stock of the week, dog of the week. Let's move on to Starbucks. Neil, we have some big news for the ice chewer in your life. Everyone has an ice chewer. Mine is my older sister. So listen up, Hannah. Starbucks is moving away from bulky ice cubes and replacing them with nugget ice that is softer and more compressed. So that's the kind of ice that you find at Chick-fil-A and yes, Sonic. So real ice chewers know that Sonic is the goat when it comes to ice. Starbucks is finally giving the people what they want here, Neil. No, the goat ice chewers don't want those small nugget or pebble ones because those are too easy.

20:30Those are flaky and crumbly and brittle. And I want like, give me a cube. Neil, no. That, if you ask any ice chewer, they love the crunchiness. The Sonic ice is the gold standard of ice. but maybe you just have like really strong. I don't operate in those circles. But this is also a very big deal for Starbucks because ice drinks make up about 75 % of all Starbucks sales. So this was actually, it is not a small thing that they're making this shift because everyone gets ice in their drink. It's powered Starbucks over the last decade. And they want to cut their water usage by half by 2030. And they say that these new ice machines will help them get there because they use less ice.

21:11but I put together some I think a lot about ice and it's very interesting ice matters a lot to Americans more than any other country like you just went to Spain did they did you get ice anywhere they laughed they literally like what look down at you if you ask for ice first of all I've never been more proud to be American I know at this moment I love ice so I did a little taxonomy of ice and like which type of ice goes with what drink because I think that's important I don't think you should put you know the same the same type of ice in every drink uh water I think you You want that classic Crescent cube.

21:42That sounds right to me. I'm on board. Iced coffee. I'm down with Starbucks' shift to pebble ice. That's good. Most iced tea, we're going back to cubed. Okay. And then, but there's one exception. That's sweet tea in the South, and you need crushed ice for that. That's not even a question. Now that you're saying all these, I do have strong feelings on ice, because I agree with all those. I know. This is right. I am the authority. Soda, I'm going mostly cubed. But again, there's going to be a carve-out for the South. We got cherry coke with a side of hush puppies. You got to go crush their whiskey big blocky cube, obviously And then beer now.

22:18I'm just kidding What about milk? What about milk? All right, so that is my taxonomy of ice Let me know if you also have strong thoughts on ice Obviously the Starbucks thing is dividing the internet, but I think it'll be fine going forward first You know, I think the the nugget ice for iced coffee works Well, you put your straw in and you get the nice sound of the ice and a little resistance as well. All right. I'm sure everyone is itching to finish the day. Let's get into Memorial Day weekend mindset. We put together some quick economics-oriented preview of the holiday so you can be insufferable and drop some stats on your friends and family at the get-together this weekend.

22:55First, a check-in on gas prices on the busy travel weekend. After the huge spike in gas prices last year, they've settled down to more normal levels. So you're not going to be filling up for$100 on your road trip this weekend unless you have like a 2005-era Hummer. The average gallon of gas costs$3.57 in the U.S. right now, about a dollar lower than last year at this time. Still, it's higher than Memorial Day weekend in 2019, 2020, and 21, which is because inflation is still rising at 5%. I'm excited for you because you rented a car for this weekend. Hell yeah, I'm getting out of here. Gas prices finally affect you.

23:32We always comment on gas prices, even though we never own a car. Okay, thanks for the travel preview, Neil. I'm taking the food preview. And inflation is still ripping, as Neil mentioned. So I wanted to know what the most cost-effective Labor Day barbecue meal you eat. Memorial Day. You just skip through summer, dude. I always do that. Memorial Day weekend. Give me my summer. So the headline stat is 44 % of Americans are planning on barbecuing. And so if you want to save money, here's what you should eat. Ground beef prices are actually 2.1 % lower than last year. So you can have beef, but do not put sauce on it.

24:09Because Kraft Heinz prices are 15.2 percentage points higher than the same time period last year. Also, definitely no dessert. Cookies alone are up a whopping 15.9%. But also, if you don't want dessert, eat your veggies. Fresh vegetable prices were up just 1.4%. So borderline flat. But again, definitely no sauces or salad dressings on that because salad dressing prices are up 14.8 % year over year. So putting that all together, you can have one ground beef patty with one piece of lettuce on it. No sauces, no dessert. Great opportunity to make your own dressing. That's a good point. Although we know olive oil prices are also up.

24:48Never mind. That's kind of the base. Finally, for this Memorial Day segment, you can't talk about Memorial Day without Backyard Games. so for many this weekend is definitely about firing up the grill and playing something in your backyard I also think a lot about backyard games so just like ice so I also listed my top five here and I want Toby's reaction I want your reaction as well I'm going to start with five go to one for a little dramatic effect number five is horseshoes number four is badminton number three is Cornhole. Number two is Can Jam. And number one is Catch. The age old game. The goat catch.