Special Mailbag Episode with Neal and Toby

0:00Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers, a network of 130 million of them, in fact. You can even target buyers by job title, industry, company, seniority, skills, and... Did I say job title? See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Get started at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell.

0:34On today's pod, we are diving into your questions in a special mailbag episode, covering everything from high-speed rail to regulating dopamine. Yes, and I know we said we'll answer anything, but to the guy who asked us for feet pics, regrettably, the answer is no. It's Friday, November 24th. Let's ride.

0:57I am pumped for this episode, Neil. I hope everyone is listening to this, relaxing on their couches, full of turkey, green bean casserole, all the good stuff, not moving a muscle. This is going to be a get to know us episode. We asked you all a couple weeks ago for some burning questions you wanted us to answer. And today is the day we're going to do exactly that. To kick us off, Raven from Montpellier, Vermont, had a perfect icebreaker from Raven. I've been listening and enjoying your guys' podcast for about six months now. And while you have both become part of my workday morning routine, I realize I don't know very much about the two of you.

1:34If you're comfortable sharing, I'd love to hear you guys tell us, listeners, where you grew up, what your major was, favorite hobby, one unique fun fact about you. And if you could visit any place in the world, where would you go? Neil, care to go first? What's up, Raven and everyone else? Well, where I grew up is a town called Longmeadow, Massachusetts. It's in the western part of the state near Springfield. A lot of people don't know where that is at all. It's a very random part of the country. So if you know where UMass or Amherst College is, it's about 20 minutes south of there. And it's right above Hartford, about 20 minutes north of Hartford.

2:06So truly a random place, but I loved it. You got two hours to Boston, two and a half hours to New York. Are you paid by the Longmeadow tourism board right here? There's some depopulation in this area, so I got to drum up the excitement. My major was history at the University of Maryland. Yeah, I didn't know what else to do. I guess I should learn how to read and write. My favorite hobby, I guess I could say the basic stuff like watching and playing sports, cooking, traveling, music. I love all that. But to answer your question of my favorite hobby, I'd have to say it's plane spotting. Going to an airport early and setting up shop with a nice view of the runway, watching the planes come in, or going to my roof in Brooklyn, seeing the flights arrive into LaGuardia, trying to guess where they're coming from.

2:49I love that. I can confirm that. Anytime a plane flies over our heads when I'm with Neil, he just goes, ah, 737. And it's complete gibberish to me, but he nails it every time. Oh, and I also love trivia. And I'm especially into a game now called Tradle, which is where it shows you a breakdown of the exports of a particular country. And you have to guess what the country is. That's very fun. It's a wordle for geography nerds. Geography, but also import-export nerds as well. It combines a lot of things. And Neil is very good at that. Yeah, Toby watches me play in the morning. And while we're on the subject of trivia, I do have to say I'm hosting trivia at Pete's Candy Store in Brooklyn on Wednesday.

3:29So anyone who's in town should definitely stop by. I wrote up some questions. It's going to be a lot of fun. One. What? Go ahead. No, I was just going to say Neil has been writing trivia for Morning Brew for years now. So this is finally your time to shine. I'm very excited for you. What's one unique fact about me? I have never gotten a brain freeze. Who can verify that, Neil? What do you mean? My friends, we went to the 7-Eleven in college and I chugged a Slurpee as fast as I could. And I just didn't get a brain freeze. So that's my superpower. If I could visit any place in the world, where would I go?

3:58So many places. I'd literally just buy a one-way ticket anywhere. But one thing that has been on my mind recently is interior China, maybe Chengdu. There's some massive cities of like more than 10 million people, the size of New York, just inside China in the interior with incredible culture, incredible food. And I'd love to get there. It's a bit of a haul. Yeah, definitely a haul. Maybe we'll take the podcast on the road. Let's do an international flight pod. I'm in. All right. To me now, where did I grow up? Bradenton, Florida. That, I call it Bradentucky. It's kind of the home to a lot of strip centers in the world, but also the way I usually describe it, south of Tampa, north of Sarasota, and home of IMG Academy, too, which is this really high-end, costs upwards of$80 ,000 a year to train high school athletes.

4:46I always grew up playing soccer against them. Who were some famous people that have gone through there? Well, it started as Boletarian Academy. So Andre Agassi and then Maria Sharapova has trained there. So a lot of tennis players have gone through their soccer programs iffy because you have to pay so much money to go through it. Did you get in? I didn't. You didn't try. I didn't even try because I grew up hating them. So there you go. What was my major? I was an English major at Brown. But fun fact, Brown doesn't actually have majors. We have concentrations. So technically, I concentrated in English.

5:20which just sounds ridiculous to say, but it's true. I wanted to learn how to read and write as well. How much did you actually concentrate in class? That was the biggest question of all, and it was not very much, unfortunately. My favorite hobby, I like running, playing soccer, playing poker, other board games like chess and Catan. These are all stuff that I often do with Neil, actually, so I'm a big games guy. You're a very big games guy. I do not like playing Catan with you, to be honest. I know. That's fractured. We're going to get to a question and ask what's our biggest fight. It probably comes down to Catan for sure.

5:54And then one unique fun fact about me. I don't know what you're supposed to say to this. I'm just going to say I ran a three-hour marathon. That's always a good sub-three-hour marathon. I should say sub. And then if I could visit any place in the world, where would I go? I really want to go to Japan right now, mainly for the food aspect. I love Wagyu beef. I think it's the greatest thing on earth. And then I'm also a big sushi guy. So that's where the best beef and sushi in the world are. All right. Well, we'll see if you have a trip planned. Potentially. Oh, yeah. I mean, we'll have to see when it works for the pie, but I definitely want to get over there.

6:28OK, as we mentioned, we received a lot of questions, so we're going to break them down a little bit into categories. Up first, many of you were curious about how the sausage is made, a.k.a. what goes into bringing this show to your ears. So the first category of questions are all about Morning Brew Daily. And Richard wants to know, how long have you guys been working at Morning Brew? And how did you get to this point of having your own daily podcast? Yeah, I guess my story is a little convoluted. As I don't know how many people know this, but Neil originally hired me to be a writer for the newsletter.

6:58And that was back in 2020, just before kind of the pandemic started. And so I worked as a writer under Neil for about a year, then moved more onto the social media side of things. Then I actually left the company and only I stayed friends with everyone. Austin, Alex, the founders, and then Neil as well. And they kind of just texted me one day and said, Hey, Sam Altman. Yeah. Yeah. They, they wanted me to come back and said, we're thinking about starting a podcast. I want to come in and just do a couple of tests for it. And then they just kind of kept inviting me back. So it was a bit of a roundabout journey to this seat across from Neil, but that's kind of my morning brew origin story.

7:35My story is I've been at morning brew since the very early days in 2017, just grinding out this daily newsletter that we have. That was our flagship product for six and a half years. And a lot of readers over the years had been asking, when are you guys going to start a daily podcast? You know, I'm on a commute. I'm walking my dog. Reading a newsletter is not exactly a part of my routine. And we had just not done it for forever. And then earlier this year, we were like, maybe we should just do this. So I somehow, I don't think I volunteered. I got asked to do it. So they kind of just told you.

8:08They kind of just told me. They were testing out a lot of different people alongside you, but you were always the constant. So I thought that I had never spoken in public before. So it was an interesting choice. You're doing great. All right. This one's from Shelby. How much do you both know ahead of time what the other will say? What does your prepping look like day to day? Do you prepare a lot together or separately? We prepare separately, I think, for the most part. I like have I have my own process where I'm just doing research, pulling up a bunch of page web pages about literally the story.

8:39And I try to rope in as many different perspectives as possible. And I don't really tell Toby what my main points are going to be, because we want to have this conversation be as organic as possible. We don't want it to feel scripted. So when Toby says something, I want to be genuinely surprised by it and react organically. there are some times where we coordinate where uh you know i'll say here's what i'm talking about so i don't want you to also prepare the same exact thing so like i'll cover this in my introduction and you can go into this direction so there are times where we coordinate and i think we've been doing that a little bit more recently but for the most part i think our our prepping process has been completely separate yeah it's definitely separate the only thing we do prepare ahead of time is kind of those intros you you guys hear us read and then also we'll just determine who is doing what story but yeah it is kind of fun because i know for me personally i always try to guess like maybe what neil will try to say to me and have my response prepared i don't know it but i do try to predict it and it's always good too if you can kind of bring up a fact or an angle that maybe the other person didn't get into in their in their process so it is kind of a little bit of a game a competition if you will classic but i think it makes for a more organic and as you said uh back and forth show.

9:52Yeah. But we prepare the night before. And also we come into the studio, the office about an hour and a half early before the show to see what happened overnight and finalize everything. And so it's fresh in our minds. So it's definitely a many hour process. How much this comes from Mary Grace. Is there actually a pre-show competition? And if so, who comes up with those random ideas? Mary Grace, I'm going to plead the fifth on this one because yes, there are competitions, but I won't say exactly when they're taking place or if they're actually determining who speaks first. So I'm just going to kind of take a step back here and not reveal exactly what's going on here.

10:31But good try, Mary Grace. Okay. Maybe you can answer this one though from Richard. Why do you say let's ride at the beginning of every show? This one is actually a very complicated origin as well, because again, when I was called in to kind of test out these shows with Neil we were kind of we didn't know what the show was yet at the time and I truly believe one time after like the the intro that we do I just said let's ride and it comes from Russell Wilson from the Broncos and for anyone terminally online there was this video that went viral of him in his kind of pre-show you're supposed to do these hype videos and he kept saying like Broncos Nation let's ride and I thought it was very funny he got roasted for it We got absolutely roasted for it.

11:13So I kind of did it ironically to start, but then it just stuck. And now Let's Ride is very much a part of Morning Brew Daily. So almost to the point where a lot of people said, did you get that from Russell Wilson or is it kind of your guys' thing? So yes, the origin story is it came from a cringy Russell Wilson video, but now I feel like we made it our own. All right, the final question for Morning Brew Daily specific ones is from Grace. And she says, what do you recommend for those of us who listen to both the podcast and read the newsletter every day. You do a great job of balancing content between both, but I always find myself going back and forth whether I should read or listen.

11:49I've been an avid reader of The Brew for years now, and MBD is another fixture of my routine, and I'm willing to bet I'm not the only listener who faces this dilemma. Well, first of all, I love that this is the case. As someone who has a hand in both the podcast and the newsletter, I think it may make sense to read the newsletter first. There's just so much less real estate to go into any particular analysis. So I would read the newsletter and then listen to us. And we just have more time and more space to bring in new facts and share our opinions as well. So I think it might be interesting to read the newsletter, maybe form your own opinion about a particular news topic, because oftentimes you can only write two to three sentences on something.

12:28But Toby and I have a lot more time to go into it and explain it and offer our thoughts. So I guess that's the best order, but that's my opinion. I don't really, it's hard to say from being so on the inside. I would agree with that. I also think it has to do with your morning routines because some people, they don't have a lot of time in the morning to sit down and read a whole newsletter. They're always moving. So if you're one of those people who just likes to pop in the podcast and go about your commute or your daily routine, maybe it makes more sense to do that first. So it does come down to what your actual preferences are.

13:02in there. I love how we're really breaking this down. There's no real right answer. You're doing great. Read them both or listen to them both at the same time, but we appreciate you. What's great about the newsletter is we include so many links to other news stories. So, you know, if you're, you have that half hour where you're starting your day at work and you really don't want to check your emails and you kind of just want to learn something, the newsletter is really good for having a bunch of links that take you to a topic. You can, you can go down a rabbit hole. I still read the newsletter too, which is so - Yeah, well, it's so funny because technically I know everything that's going into it the day before.

13:35I just did a full podcast. I prepared these stories, but I enjoy it. I think the writers are absolutely hilarious. I always want to give the newsletter its due. Okay, so we asked you guys for questions and only one of you actually chose to ask about an actual business news topic and that was you, Jacob. So Jacob asks, are you bullish or bearish on an interstate railway system in the U.S.? Do you feel that the auto giants would ever let that happen? Or are we too far gone with our current highway system? Neil, you're our transportation expert here of the two of us. I'm just going to pass this one off to you.

14:12What do you think? Well, we do have an interstate railway system. It's Amtrak. It doesn't work so great. It's definitely not as cost efficient or as frequent as many other countries' interstate or interregional intercity railway systems. And I think you do have to reflect on the fact that how much the United States loves its highways. We just talked recently about how the Los Angeles freeway section that was damaged was repaired in eight days and the one in Philly was repaired in 12 days. So the United States construction apparatus bends over its back to fix highways because that is really integral to the United States transportation system.

14:55That said, there have been a bit of good news about rail recently. Specifically, I want to talk about Brightline, which is a private line that's built in Florida. It goes up the eastern coast and then it also recently opened a line from Orlando to Miami. And in October, it had a really good month. It carried more than 200 ,000 passengers, which was more than double the number from a year earlier. And it carried more people last month than any Amtrak line did monthly on average last year, other than the Northeast Regional, which is the busiest one by far. So this is a step in the right direction.

15:30I think a lot of people are concerned that it is a private company doing this. But honestly, I have to say Amtrak's not doing it better. It's carrying more people. So this is, I think, when you look at the entire landscape of rail in the United States, it's not going to be a one size fits all option. And options like Brightline that are privately funded could work alongside Amtrak and maybe even push Amtrak to have better service. Aren't we just too big as a country? Isn't that always been the argument that the United States is just too sprawling and that it's very hard to build a fully interconnected railway system across the country?

16:02Or is that overblown? Well, I think you want to invest in rail in places where people are. So the D.C. to Boston corridor, we have rail, but it's not, you know, a lot of people take it. It's the busiest one by far. But our infrastructure there sucks. I mean, there's only one tunnel that goes under the Hudson River, and that is a huge bottleneck that leads to so many delays. And another piece of optimistic news that I was going to bring up is that they're going to build another tunnel, the Gateway Project. This has been in the works for decades. And finally, they released funding. The Biden administration is pouring money into it.

16:36So we're finally going to get another rail tunnels. So, I mean, this is not going to happen for a long time because I don't know. I don't know how to build a tunnel, but it seems extremely complicated. But the fact is that there are movements in the right direction. I still think it's going to be a long time. But Brightline competing with Amtrak and maybe more options for competition. Amtrak's had a monopoly on this. So I think that could maybe move us forward. I don't think it's going to be a sea change. I think the United States is still going to be married to the car for a long time, but hopefully we can make improvements on the margin.

17:06See, we only had one business focus question, but I know Neil was going to go off on that. So thank you, Jacob, for letting Neil get on his soapbox and talk about the transportation system. We're actually going to take a quick break before Neil has any more thoughts on the rail system, and we'll be back right after this.

17:24Tonight on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozema St. John host the highly anticipated new competition show. I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life. They 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 tonight on NBC.

17:56When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp. The secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. message privately with everyone learn more at whatsapp.com let's wrap up with some miscellaneous questions caleb asks who's better at pickleball neil or toby again i'm gonna plead the fifth on this one and just say that as soon as we host our first morning brew daily pickleball meetup tournament then you guys can see who is better between the two we've never played so we wouldn't know we wouldn't know also as well but i i have to think it would be very even to be honest yeah neil grew up playing tennis but i have played more pickleball in my life so i do think it would be a pretty good matchup how fun would it be if we had a listener meetup this is a good idea we need to do it we i mean it's obviously very cold now but we're gonna do it in the spring there's no questions asked we're absolutely doing it let's go down to the warmer climes of florida and host the host one on the road all right caleb also wants to know what's a cooking recipe that you both make on a weekly basis i get bored with particular dishes.

19:12So I don't make them over and over again. I go through particular phases where I find one that I like and I make it for like two weeks and move on. I like to have a large repertoire of stuff that I cook. Right now I'm on this kick of a very easy recipe that is really delicious. It's like a turkey taco filling, but all you do is take pound of ground turkey, cut up an onion, saute it, put in taco seasoning, put in garlic, and then you put a small eight ounce jar of tomato sauce or even some salsa and just let that cook for five minutes. And then you You literally just have a gorgeous taco filling that you can dress it any way you want with cheese, sour cream, avocado, cilantro, like whatever you want.

19:48It's so easy and it's very tasty. You have been talking to me every day. You just say, oh, man, these turkey tacos the other day. They're so, so good. So I do want to try it. It's super easy. I mean, I literally just told people how to do it. Yeah, absolutely. One of my goatees is actually I have these like gluten-free noodles that I get from Trader Joe's and then I just make a bunch of beef and with kind of Asian seasoning sauces. So it's kind of like a meaty, hearty ramen-esque dish, which is really, really easy as well. It takes like four ingredients. So that's something that's very homey. It is filling, though.

20:19That's what I will say. It's a little heavy, but I like kind of the combination of those Asian flavors. Come to Neil and Toby. You won't get any vegetable. Absolutely not. But I did have a dinner last Friday night where it was all veggies. I made butternut squash soup. Oh, you hosted the dinner. Oh, nice. Butternut squash soup. What are some other veggies? Brussels sprouts, balsamic Brussels sprouts. It was very fall, very squashy, very zucchini-y. We are in squash season for sure. Okay, Walter asks, what are some books you recommend? I guess I'll go first because I think I've got the heavier books of the bunch.

20:53Interestingly, I mostly read fiction. I don't love reading nonfiction. I think it's because I read so much news and just actual things that are going on in the world every single day. And I'm like, I would love an escape. I wanted someone to tell me a story. So some books that have stuck with me over the years, and I can't really explain why, but they're just the ones that I always think about. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett is amazing. Everyone I've recommended it to has read it. It's over 1 ,000 pages. Yeah, but it goes by real quick. Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro is incredible. The Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante, they are very highly regarded and deservedly so.

21:31So if you want to just live in Naples in the 1960s with some kids, that is your go-to. It's so good. Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving is a book that I read in high school that has stuck with me. Very New England, very New Hampshire. It's pretty great. And then finally, these big American novels I really like, like Freedom and the Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. Neil, I am not going to lie. I haven't heard of a single one of those. I've heard of the authors, but these specific books themselves. These are pretty famous. These aren't like niche things. These are like pretty big books. It's not on you.

22:03It's on me for sure. I'm going to go a lot lighter and more fun than those. The Red Rising series by Pierce Brown is incredibly fun sci-fi. Again, this is stuff that it's like eighth grade reading level stuff. It's like reading a movie. Right. It's like reading a movie. But it's great. It's so fun. Yeah. I'm all about having fun when you're reading. Dune is also as good as you can ever imagine. I resisted that for a long time as a science fiction fan. But if you can get through the first 100 pages, it truly changes your life. so I love that. I just finished reading The Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yaros, which is this spicy dragon fantasy book.

22:38It's big on TikTok. Wait, spicy how? Like literally. Romance? Yeah, romance. Yeah, it's a little more adult. And then I'm also a massive Michael Crichton fan. He wrote all the Jurassic Park books, and they are so much better than the movie. They're actually so much more kind of gory, and they're more intense than the movies themselves, which is funny because Jurassic Park's really scared me growing up. And so I, as an adult, came back and read the books and kind of reclaimed that for myself. So Michael Crichton, huge fan of that. There are more than one Jurassic Park movies or books. Yes, yes.

23:12I know there are movies. Okay, this one is from Sophie. Would you rather do dishes or laundry? I mean, it's very clear. Dishes. I don't do the laundry. I love doing the dishes because it takes my mind off of things. and I, you know, you feel like you're accomplished at the end. Meanwhile, the laundry, you know, I guess the same thing with the dishes, but the laundry is I, as soon as I do the laundry, I have to go fold it. And then I'm only putting more stuff in the laundry and I have to do it again. So I don't know, just as a practice, I like doing the dishes more than doing the laundry as evidenced by the fact that I never do laundry.

23:43Right. I like doing the laundry actually, because that's when I call people because it's so much, I do let it pile up as well. So it's a lot of folding. So I'll call my mom and call my dad and just kind of check in with them. So that's why I like the laundry. Okay, Carlos asks, and Toby, I'm going to send this on to you because I cannot answer it. How do you regulate dopamine during the honeymoon phase of a relationship to help you still feel great when you're not around the person you are infatuated with? Absolutely hilarious question, Carlos, that when we ask people to ask us anything, people started getting into relationship advice, which I appreciate.