Russian Turmoil's Impact On The Global Economy & The Fruit States Crop Crisis

0:00What should you invest in? And how often? Making investing decisions is easier with Fidelity. With their step-by-step experience, you can find investments based on your goals and comfort level. And if you'd like, you can decide how much and how often to invest with recurring investments that happen automatically. Ready to make your next investing decision? Head to fidelity.com slash trading. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC, member NYSE SIPC. Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I am Neil Freiman. And I am Toby Howell. On today's Monday Morning Pod, Russia had an eventful weekend, to say the least.

0:40We will catch you up on what happened and what it all means going forward, and the pilot training regulation that has senators telling each other they'll have blood on their hands. Then, Neil, we'll explain why you might be seeing higher prices when buying orange juice these days before finishing up by checking in on the rocket man himself, Elton John, who just played his last show ever in England, concluding one of the most lucrative careers in all of showbiz. It's Monday, June 26. Let's ride.

1:12Toby, I have big news. I watched Titanic for the first time this weekend. Wow. Just felt like the right time to dive in. Yeah, why'd you do that? I don't know. Titanic was in the news. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. So it was freaking good. Yeah, what's your... It totally, totally deserves all the accolades it got. Amazingly epic, tragic story, stunning visuals, very hokey love story. What's your favorite part? Give me your favorite scene. Okay, I have an admission. Okay. I didn't watch The Last Hour. Okay, that's fair. You don't need the... You know what happens. Oh my God, I thought you were going to be like, how did you not watch The Last Hour?

1:50No, you know how it ends. The love story is more fun in my opinion. Exactly. I was like, I know these people are going to die. The water is about up to their waist right now. It's soon going to be up to their heads. Yeah. I know it's crashing and sinking. So I was like, you know, I'm going to go to bed right now and I don't need to see, you know, thousands of people die. I'm glad you're. I did not know you were going to be so receptive to that. Neil, I'm always receptive. The problem with the dialogue. The dialogue is super cringy. Leo. They just say each other's names like for half of their lines.

2:17It's like Rose, Jack, Rose, Jack. Neil, so do we. That's true, but we're on a podcast. We're allowed to. All right, let's get to the news. There was almost a civil war in Russia this weekend. That was pretty wild. Here's the TLDR. The leader of Russia's private mercenary army, Evgeny Progozhin, blew a fuse against the country's leadership, which he has not been shy in criticizing in the past, and accused them of bombing his own Wagner troops. He then told his soldiers to turn their tanks around from fighting Ukraine and instead march on Moscow. They got two thirds of the way there and took over one major Russian city before the two sides agreed to a surprise truce.

2:59Prigozhin was exiled to Belarus and his troops stopped their advance on Moscow. But while the rebellion was more of the Pixar animated short version of a coup, it still represented the most significant threat to Putin's rule since he took charge of Russia more than 20 years ago. and it could destabilize the Russian government even more as it's what has already been a mess of a campaign against the Ukrainians. Instead of Putin focusing on repelling the Ukrainian counterattack, he's now having to look over his shoulder to see if any of his other deputies are plotting to stab him in the back. So you want to sign that Russia has been weakened from this?

3:32Just look to the markets. The ruble fell up to three percent against the dollar today to its lowest point since Russia launched its invasion last year. But Neil, we got to talk about who Prigozian is because he has an insane bio. So he was arrested two times for robbery in his early years. Then he got out and started a hot dog stand in a flea market. I didn't know they like hot dogs in Russia. I know, I guess so. And then he turned that hot dog stand into kind of this Russian empire. Some of the restaurants have been described as a little kitschy, but we won't, we won't, we won't pass judgment on that.

4:05And then he also became a close confidant to Putin. Then he started the private military group, Wagner Group, and he actually seeds that group with convicts from Russian jails. That's where he kind of populates the group with. And then he also was the financier of the Internet Research Agency, which is what the Department of Justice called a Russian troll farm in this 2018 indictment about interference in the 2016 election. And then now he did this coup attempt. So what a LinkedIn bio for this guy. What a LinkedIn bio. crazy hot dog stand to coup in in the span of one lifetime his name yeah he's he's known as putin chef right because yeah he catered he has these huge catering contracts with the russian i guess that leads you to become a mercenary leader he's a millionaire he's this like oligarch yeah but yeah honestly very confusing time to kind of be a western nation watching this unfold because a lot of people are like whoo like coup attempt right then they're like wait a second this Pogosian guy, not good news at all.

5:05Like you definitely don't want him kind of running the country at all. So everyone was on Twitter. And when you were talking to people over the weekend, you're like, is this a good thing or not? So it was just, it was just a weird time to be observing this unfold. So did you talk to people about this? Cause I was at multiple social events, like we were not, you know, we were just hanging out watching golf or whatever. And people were like, did you hear what's happening in Russia? Like, are you, do you see what's happening? they've taken rostov and i'm like i honestly have not been following because it's my one day off from checking twitter uh but i will read up tomorrow and tell you on the podcast but i was like obviously following but it literally came up at parties and things yeah that people were very plugged into this they completely forgot about the submersible and we're all in on this coup right that was the joke all weekend it was like the experts in deep sea uh titanic diving pivoted to russian like politics expert in the span of 24 hours but yeah definitely and then if we want to just check in on what Ukraine thought about all this.

6:03President Zelensky said that the march from Pogosian shows that the bosses of Russia do not control anything, nothing at all, complete chaos. So obviously Ukraine is saying that this shows weakness from the Russian side. And Russia has been using Wagner, did I say that right? Wagner, Wagner? I don't know. Really, they've been relying on them heavily in Ukraine in the past, starting in 2014. and Wagner has been very active, not only in Russia, but in Syria and in Africa, kind of advancing Russian soft power in like sub-Saharan Africa. It's very kind of shady stuff. It's James Bond villain level stuff.

6:42So that's your breakdown of the Russian situation. Hopefully when someone asks you if you've been following it, you can say, yeah, I listen to Morning Boo Daily. I know what's going on. All right, Neil, our next story brings us down to the Peach State and the Sunshine State where things aren't actually so peachy or so sunny. A combination of weather and disease has demolished the harvest of oranges in Florida and peaches in Georgia. So for Florida, it was the one-two punch of hurricanes in the fall and then something called greening disease, which is this disease that makes oranges a little greener, which makes them taste bitterer, less juicy, less orange.

7:18And then for Georgia, it was a combination of cold weather in all the wrong times of the year. We'll get into that. In total, Florida is staring down a season where they've only harvested 18 million boxes of oranges compared to a peak of 250 million in the early 2000s. While Georgia is looking at a year where 95 % of their peach crop has been destroyed. That's wild. Just a brutal time to be in the citrus industry. There is literally no, and the stone fruit industry. Right. There's no, yeah, I got to flex my fruit. I got to flex my fruit knowledge. But these are not so equal to compare because for Florida, the orange and orange juice industry is massive.

7:57They are the number one producer of juice oranges in the country. And that industry is worth six point nine billion dollars. So as you know, you can tell us from growing up in Florida how big a deal oranges are for Florida. Meanwhile, Georgia for peaches, it's more of a branding exercise. And they've somehow become associated with peaches because it is the peach state. But it's not really a big economic factor for Georgia. I think they only bring in like$34 million a year from peaches compared to other cash crops like cotton, which brings in$1.4 billion. This is kind of like a small thing. And obviously the farmers of peaches are definitely impacted.

8:36But it seems like there's only three big companies that operate in this one single area in Georgia that produce 95 % of the entire state's crop. Yeah, I mean, good branding exercise for Georgia. You're totally right on that. But I also want to get in and put my science hat on, science hat Toby, because why the peach crop failed in Georgia is very interesting. So peaches actually require a certain number of chill hours to allow the plants to go dormant. And a lot of scientists say dormant is like plants sleeping. Basically, it gives them time to recharge. So there weren't enough chill hours in the winter months of the year.

9:14It was too warm during that time. But then come March, Georgia got hit with a ton of cold weather, which is not when you want it, which froze the plants. So it was a combination of too much warm weather when it needed to be cold and then too much cold weather when it needed to be warm. And it ends up, yeah, 95%. Climate change is not going to be good for Georgia peaches. Meanwhile, orange juice, you said it's going to taste bad. Right. Or bitter. Right. And so you're probably going to get orange juice from Florida and you're just going to be like, this does not taste good. even if you don't brush your teeth beforehand.

9:46Oh my God. So right now, I mean, and it's going to be super expensive. A gallon of orange juice is already above$10 and this, you know, this crop, this lack of supply is definitely going to drive it even higher. So it's sad for me because a core memory of growing up in Florida is smelling Tropicana burning the orange peels because I lived near a Tropicana factory. And so waking up in the morning, going to school, you'd smell like this burnt orange. It's not necessarily a good smell, but it's just a core smell from my memories. All right, so you're going to have to lay off the orange juice this winter, and Justin Bieber is going to have to get his peaches from somewhere other than Georgia.

10:22That is our takeaway here. All right, let's move on to our next story. There is a nasty fight brewing in Congress over pilot training regulations, and I promise this is really fascinating once you dig into it. The Senate is about to vote on a major aviation policy bill, But Kristen Sinema, the moderate Democrat whose approval is necessary to push bills through, is stalling the vote because she wants what's known as the 1500 hour rule for pilots loosened. This requirement mandates that pilots log 1500 hours of flying time before they can become first officers on a commercial airline. And there was a specific event that led to this creation.

11:00A Colgan air jet crashed in western New York in 2009, killing 50 people, and that spurred lawmakers to take action to improve airline safety. So they bumped up the number of training hours from 250 to 1 ,500, a massive increase. And analysts and airline execs cite this rule as the cause of the pilot shortage that's plaguing the industry right now. They say it's a major barrier to entry into the pilot profession. So bringing it back to the current day, Sinema wants this rule eased up. But Tammy Duckworth, another Democratic senator who lost both of her legs when her Blackhawk helicopter was attacked in the Iraq war, ripped into cinema last week, saying that she'd have blood on her hands if she got her way.

11:39Duckworth said now is not the time to put corporate profits ahead of the lives of our constituents who may want to board a commercial flight. It's very tough to argue against the 1500 hour rule. You can say it's excessive, but like no one wants to be on the side of loosening airline regulations because the argument can only be, oh, you're trying to make air travel less safe. We've just entered the most safe period of airline travel in our history. But then you look at the pilot shortage and you do think that maybe if we loosened it up a little bit, some of these like American Airlines has grounded some regional flights because they just simply don't have enough pilots on the roster.

12:17And so I can see like this this debate. But I if I had to pick a side, I don't think it's going to get repealed or lowered anytime soon just because, again, it's tough to argue against. Andrew Leff, who's this aviation industry expert who everyone looks to, says it's actually less safe because of the 1500 rule. Because basically what you need to do is just log time. So you can go in your single seat aircraft and just like fly in sunny days when you have time and you're not actually gaining real world experience. So you're not actually prepared. It's like going to, you know, it's like you're a basketball player and you go to the gym and you're just jacking up threes without a defender in your face.

12:57Are you going to actually be better unless you play like scrimmages? You're preaching to the choir. Practice with purpose, Neil. You're right. Right. So that's the whole point. They're saying you're not practicing with purpose. You're just kind of logging hours when it's not consequential or anything. And it only is, you know, you only make the pilot profession available to wealthy people. Right. So you're limiting diversity because who has time, if you're working one or two jobs to feed your family, to go 1 ,500 hours in a plane on joy rides? Yeah, and people look at the, you mentioned the Colgan flight, air flight, that kind of precipitated this change.

13:32Both those pilots actually had over 1 ,500 hours in training already. So people are like, okay, well, didn't even present the disaster that predicated the rule that we made. Did I convince you? Neil, you always convince me. You're a convincing fellow. We know this. All right. We're going to get into the second half of the show where Neil can convince me even more. But right now, we're going to take a quick break.

14:22amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. So you want to start a business. You might think you need a team of people and fancy tech skills, but you don't. You just need GoDaddy Arrow. I'm Walton Goggins, and as an actor, I'm an expert in looking like I know what I'm doing. GoDaddy Arrow uses AI to create everything you need to grow a business. It'll make you a unique logo. It'll create a custom website. It'll write social posts for you and even set you up with a social media calendar. Get started at GoDaddy.com slash ARO. That's GoDaddy.com slash A-I-R-O. All right, Neil, today is Monday, which means it's time for our post-weekend segment, Winners of the Weekend.

15:04That's where we both pick out someone or something that had an especially great weekend. Neil, kick us off first. Who is your winner of the weekend? All right, my winner is Mr. Beast because he is not dead. Good for him. The YouTuber was apparently offered an invite on the Titan submersible that imploded last week, killing all five on board. We know this because yesterday morning, Mr. Beast tweeted, I was invited earlier this month to ride the Titanic submarine. I said no. Kind of scary that I could have been on it. Can you imagine? Okay, the media frenzy was huge to begin with. Yes. Imagine if Mr.

15:43Beast was on this thing. Heaven and earth would have been moved for sure. But wait, take us through the controversy of the screenshot that he posted. Okay, so I'm not so well versed in iPhone message colors because I'm an Android guy, very famously. But apparently people were saying that it was a blue text, which means that he sent it. So everyone was kind of questioning, not everyone, but some people were kind of questioning the veracity of whether he actually was offered this. Right. He was saying, I was invited, but then they're like, wait a second, this is a text that you sent. But then other people came to his defense and saying this was probably a screenshot from the person who sent the text.

16:18So I don't know. It was, I mean, what? It makes sense that he was offered this. Yeah, absolutely. And you know what was funny, too, is that when it was happening, people were making these jokes saying, like, fake Mr. Beast headlines. I invited five friends on the Titanic. Now it turns out he was actually invited. So, yeah, I mean, good on his claustrophobia, I guess. It's a lesson that you can just say no to invites. Yeah. Someone asks you to go somewhere, you can just be like, no, I'm too busy or no, I don't feel like going. Protect your calendar. Yeah. All right, Neil. My winner of the weekend is an Indiana high school student who announced on Friday that he committed to play college golf at Ball State.

16:55Good school, good golf program. But why is he my winner? Well, his name is Happy Gilmore. Yes, a kid named Happy Gilmore is going to play D1 golf. You literally cannot make this up. And of course, Happy Gilmore is the name of the 1996 Adam Sandler film about a golfer who hits the ball really far. And the real Adam Sandler saw the real Happy Gilmore's tweet and congratulated him on Twitter. And I do have a little backstory on his name, too. So apparently, Happy Gilmore's real name is actually Landon Gilmore. But he's gone by Happy since he won a long drive contest at nine years old. So I think it fits.

17:34If you got the name Happy from a long drive contest, that's pretty epic. I think it would be even better if his name was Happy Gilmore by birth, and then he wasn't necessarily a golfer, and then he just happened to be a good golfer. Yeah, but that would have been too on the nose from the parents of naming him Happy Gilmore, so I'm glad he came to it through organic means. So I'm on team, it's good that he was a long drive contestant at nine, so unbelievable though, like Twitter blew up around this, and the guy milked it for everything he's worth. So I'll be following Happy Gilmore's career at Ball State.

18:05I wonder if he putts with a hockey stick. He's actually a good player, too. He got seventh in the state tourney, and he shot 66 at a U.S. junior amateur qualifier recently. I looked into his backstory, too. So the kid can play. All right, Neil. Our next story takes us across the pond where Elton John has played what many believe is his last ever show in England over the weekend in Glastonbury. It's sad for a lot of Brits because Elton is one of them. Elton, whoa, Elton is one of their own and an absolute tour de force. So I did a little digging just to run through some of the figures that shows just how big of a tour de force he actually is.

18:41Despite all our talk about Taylor Swift and Beyonce's tours this year, it's actually Elton John's Farewell Yellow Bick Road Tour that is the highest grossing tour of all time. It's grossed more than$887 million across 300 shows in 20 different countries. Just a quick quiz, Neil. Do you know who has the second highest grossing tour of all time? I mean, I have it copied in my... No. Yeah, I do. It's Ed Sheeran. It's Ed Sheeran. Ed Sheeran, the ginger songbird of our generation. He's number two. So, yes, Neil, Rocketman might be hanging up his sparkling cape here soon in a minute. But what a career for him.

19:17Also, this tour has been going on since 2018. When do you say this is actually two tours or three tours? I mean, you could just go on one tour for your entire career and rack it up and get to the top of the list. I don't know. Well, he is at the top of the list. He's actually the highest grossing solo act of all time. Grossed over 200 or nearly 200. 2 billion. 2 billion, not 200 billion. I also have that written down. 2 billion dollars, 20 million ticket sales. The guy just is amazing. And he started this tour in Allentown, Pennsylvania. And I had to be, I was thinking, I've been to Allentown.

19:49I don't know if I would start my, you know, farewell tour in Allentown, Pennsylvania. So I was kind of digging around why he's starting in Allentown. with no offense to anybody who's from Allentown up here. But apparently it's close to a stage production company that makes the stage. So for some reason he was like, we're going to reduce logistics cost here and get the stage just popped over on IAD here. I also did some digging because his performance for that Glastonbury, which is this huge festival in England. And a lot of people were like, okay, the performance was electric. He crushed it. But they were a little disappointed in the guests that he brought out because apparently the buzz all weekend was that he was bringing Britney Spears out because to perform her version of Tiny Dancer with Elton John.

20:33And so when people found out that she wasn't coming, like the quotes were hilarious of like, Elton was great. Like I loved being there, but like no Britney was a little disappointing. So that's your glass and berry tea for anyone. All right, so Elton John's finishing up his tour and where else but Stockholm, Sweden on July 8th, where he's expected to jump on Beyonce and drive up inflation even more. So poetically elegant. What's your favorite Elton song before we go? Rocketman. I absolutely love it because there was a cover that came out recently. Elton's very active in the current music community too, so I absolutely love Rocketman.

21:11It's different for sure. And Billy Joel's hanging up the cleats in Madison Square Garden. All of our little childhood pop idols are going into retirement. All right, let's quickly go into our week ahead. It is a big week heading into July 4th weekend. Supreme Court, everybody is watching them this weekend or this week because they're going to wrap up their term. And they have some major rulings that we've been talking about. Student loan debt forgiveness, race conscious college admissions policies, LGBTQ rights are all in the docket. So expect some really big news out of the Supreme Court. And the first half of the year concludes.

21:48June 30th, so might be time to check in on your accounting department or review your New Year's resolutions to see how well you're doing. Or not, if you have not been doing well like me. Coming to screens, we got a new season of The Bachelorette today. That was the talk of our control room. The Witcher season 3 on Thursday, and then the final Indiana Jones movie of Harrison Ford's career is on Friday. We're losing Harrison Ford. We're losing Harrison Ford. There's a famous quote back from 2009 where He goes, nobody's going to be Indiana Jones. Don't you get it? I'm Indiana Jones. When I'm gone, he's gone.

22:21It's easy. Love that for Harris. And Chris Pratt, who wanted to be Indiana Jones, was like, scared off. He's like, no, I'm not doing this. He got Mario instead. All right, what else do we got? LSU and Florida play for the College World Series in a winner-take-all game tonight. It's been an electric atmosphere. This event is only growing each year. It makes me like baseball. I don't watch a ton of baseball outside of the College World Series, but electric factory. It's very fun. They use metal bats, so they just crank homers all the time. One of the buzziest new museums in the U.S., which is the International African-American Museum, opens in Charleston, South Carolina tomorrow.

22:55That is a big deal. Hollywood actors could strike if a labor deal is unreached by Saturday, in which case the actors and the writers would be on strike. The directors agreed to a deal, so it's not going to be this trio of work stoppages. Neil, we're the only entertainment on these days. It's kind of good for us. And then finally, the Tour de France starts on Saturday. And Lance Armstrong got ratioed this. Did you see that? I didn't see that. Oh, no. He's launching a series talking about fairness in sports and talking about transgender rights. And everyone kind of lit into him saying, do you think, sir, you are the one to talk about fairness in sports?

23:31Underrated sporting event, though, Tour de France. No, it's fun. But is it a good TV sport? Yeah, it's great. The announcers are super informed. And I absolutely love watching it. Yeah, no. I know some people who swear by watching it. It's a slow burn, but it's good. Yeah, it is fun. The landscapes are cool, too. And just watching them go up these inclines. Superhuman. Superhuman. All right. That is our show. Thanks for joining us to start off the week. Happy Monday. Remember, we will read your emails and eventually reply to them. So if you want to get in contact with us, our email address is morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com.

24:03Let's roll these credits. Big shout out to Emily Milliron, our editor and producer. I'm sure she was not happy with my Allentown slander Samantha Veles and Raymond Liu are the associate Producers, Yuchenna Waogu is our Technical Director, Billy Bonino Is on audio, hair and makeup has been Exiled to Belarus after we squashed their Rebellion, don't try that again 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

24:36we'll see you next time.