TikTok Ready to Fight Ban in Court & The $20M Sporting Event at the Sphere

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0:28Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the Ig Nobel Prizes were handed out to the wackiest science experiments. Did you know that dead fish can swim? Then the U.S. government and TikTok are heading to court today to see if that ban you've been hearing about for years now will actually happen or not. It's Monday, September 16th. Let's ride.

0:59If you can believe it, today marks 100 days until Christmas. 2024 has absolutely flown by. This is also a good reminder that Spotify Wrapped is coming down the pike, and there is nothing worse than broadcasting to the world. You are an unsophisticated music listener. So if you don't want Burlington, Vermont to be your sound town again, maybe listen to a little less Noah Khan over the next few weeks. Toby, where do you expect your sound town to be this year? So last year I got Scottsdale, which no hate to Scottsdale, but isn't exactly known for its sonic innovation. Part of the reason is I got really into music soundtracks last year.

1:38So my top song was from a Bollywood film. So Spotify didn't know what to do with me. This year, I've been curating very tastefully a lot of underground stuff too. You got to check out this one act I found. You probably haven't heard of her. Sabrina Carpenter? Who's that? Yeah, I knew it. I'm literally cutting edge on all this stuff. So all that to say, I hope Spotify doesn't do Sound Towns again because that was the most embarrassing week of my life. Now, a quick word from our sponsor, Wise. Neil, you could probably guess this, but making international payments is truly a pain. there are always inflated exchange rates and hidden fees, and sometimes you even got to open an overseas bank account.

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3:34All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. Well, it's probably been a minute since you've thought about TikTok's fate in the U.S., but the social media company is back in court today fighting a law signed by Biden way back in April that would require it to divest within nine months to a non-Chinese company. To recap, TikTok thinks the law is unconstitutional, saying that trying to effectively ban the app infringes on the First Amendment rights of people who use it to express themselves. The U.S. government, on the other hand, thinks TikTok's data collection and potential manipulation of the app's algorithm poses a clear national security threat.

4:16To make things even more complex, a lot of the information the government has regarding TikTok's national security concerns is classified. So it faces an uphill battle, convincing the court to accept a ban based on info that TikTok's lawyers can't even see. So a lot of this case comes down to if these murky national security risks are so great that they override TikTok's First Amendment claims? Neil, this has been looming over TikTok for a long time now. What are you looking at as these oral arguments kick off today? Yeah, these classified documents are very interesting because the government's entire argument rests with them, but they're entirely redacted.

4:54And in a novel legal procedure, they're not even allowing TikTok to review them. You're supposed to allow your opponent in a legal case to review the evidence. One of the most glaring examples of this is there is a document published by an assistant director of national intelligence, Casey Blackburn, that the government is presenting as evidence. There's an eight-page section called ByteDance and TikTok's History of Censorship and Content Manipulation at PRC, direction PRC being the Chinese government. There's just one problem with that. It's almost entirely redacted. So there's just no way for the public or anyone else to know exactly what the U.S.

5:32government has on TikTok. We know the philosophy and big picture theory behind this. They think that the Chinese government could compel TikTok and its owner, Bydance, to hand over user data on American users to the Chinese government. They also think that the Chinese government could tell TikTok to change its algorithm to promote its interests and push Americans or anybody out around the Americans, mostly, content that could sway public opinion around the Chinese government. We just don't know exactly how they do that. I think the U.S. government is also saying just because there isn't a risk now doesn't, or just because they haven't done it in the past doesn't mean there is a risk going forward.

6:12So national security concerns have to override the First Amendment on this issue. Right, they're saying that China could be pre-positioning here just because they haven't doesn't mean that they won't. Another weird legal wrinkle to this case is that Congress's decision to single out a single company like this is very unique. TikTok also is arguing that it's not just unique, it is unlawful. The Constitution itself actually prohibits what are known as bill of attainder laws, which are when you single out a single individual or a company without due process. But what Congress did to get around this is that the bill they passed to force this divestment, they named some criteria that companies have to meet if they are controlled by foreign adversaries, foreign adversaries that theoretically any company could meet, but in reality, only TikTok is the one named in the bill and only TikTok could satisfy those criteria.

7:05So that's another thing that legal experts are looking at this and saying, not only is it an uphill battle to push back against First Amendment rights, which are obviously extremely important in the United States, but now you have this other constitutional aspect that is making it hard. So just a very complex case with a lot of redacted, a lot of blacked out sentences in the government's case. So it'll be interesting to see how they kind of put it together. Yeah. Meanwhile, 170 million Americans are using TikTok, including two presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and former President Trump. And Trump used to, he tried to ban TikTok while he was in office.

7:41He's reversed course and said he no longer supports a ban. Meanwhile, there's been recent polling on whether, you know, Americans support a TikTok ban and support for it actually continues to decline. This poll was taken by Pew in August, and the share of Americans who support the U.S. government banning TikTok stands at just 32 percent, which is down from 38 percent last fall and 50 percent in March 2023, and 28 percent oppose a ban, which is up from 22 percent in March 2023. So it seems like most Americans don't really want this ban. And meanwhile, the U.S. government is saying this is not a ban.

8:19We want TikTok to stay. We want it just to be sold to an American entity. But I haven't heard anything on that front. I know as soon as this law was passed in April, there were a bunch of American companies and American individuals putting together groups to buy TikTok. But I don't think there's been any movement. Meanwhile, this deadline is January 19th for this ban or divestment to take place, which is one day before Inauguration Day. It looks like this case will reach the Supreme Court before then. Your fit checks might be getting a little more expensive in the coming months because the Biden administration just proposed new rules that would force fast fashion purveyors like Shein and Timu to pay tariffs on their products for the first time.

8:59Since the 1930s, there's been this loophole in the tax code known as De Minimus that allows low cost imports, a.k.a. anything under 800 bucks, to pass through customs without additional fees or scrutiny. The idea is to not bog down customs with checking every small knickknack that flows into the country. But the loophole has also paved the way for companies like Shein and Temu to overuse and abuse the import tax, allowing them to sell their wares very cheaply in the U.S. So the aim of this new rule is to reduce the amount of packages entering the country under the exemption because it is a lot.

9:34Ten years ago, about 140 million packages entered the U.S. under day minimus. Now that number has jumped to over$1 billion. Neil, plugging up the De Minimis exemption definitely throws a wrench into Teemu and Sheehan's business model. And just like the U.S. government is not directly mentioning TikTok and its recent ban of the platform, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce also is not explicitly mentioning Sheehan or Teemu. They say she said Gina Raimondo said American workers and businesses can outcompete anyone on a level playing field. But for too long, Chinese e-commerce platforms have skirted tariffs by abusing this exemption.

10:14So it's kind of a wink and a nod to Xi and Nandaymi, which have driven a large amount of that increase from 140 million per year to 1 billion over 10 years. The U.S. government also thinks that by this surge in lower cost imports coming in, the customs authorities are just kind of missing more important things like fentanyl or other drug trafficking, that they just can't check everything. So that's another reason why they want to stem the tide of all these fast fashion things coming to the United States. Right. There's a lot of reasons behind this. One of them, too, is that they just want U.S.

10:52fashion retailers to be able to compete because right now Shein and Taimu are just so incredibly cheap. I mean, if you look at the average price of a dress on Shein as of June 1st, it was$28.51. Compare that to H &M, which is another low-cost retailer. Their average dress price is$40. Zara is$79. So you just see how much Shein can undercut the prices of even its closest competitors who also deal in so-called fast fashion. It would be a big effect on consumers as well, though, because any time you pass a tariff, inevitably those costs do get passed on to consumers. But again, the U.S. government is saying that as long as we are protecting consumers and protecting them from potential goods that don't meet health and safety standards, it's also helping business compete.

11:40Like we're okay with maybe having consumers pay a little bit more in this specific case. Right. I mean, there are estimates that it's possible Shein's prices because of if this loophole were to get closed, that they would rise by 20%, which would certainly put it more on parity with other e-commerce companies. Meanwhile, other e-commerce companies are also trying to adopt this model of what Shein and Temu are doing, which is bypassing bulk shipments that go to warehouses and then to your front step. And what they do is just ship it straight from China to your doorstep. And that's how they get through this loophole.

12:16But, you know, it takes a lot longer, but they're like, well, you don't have to pay a lot. Amazon is reportedly exploring a discount arm that goes straight from the manufacturer in China straight to you. So there is a lot of pressure being applied on these two e-commerce platforms from all directions. Temu is already a public company, or it's owned by a public company, PDD Holdings, whose revenue grew by 90 % over the past fiscal year. Sheehan is trying to IPO. It's trying to go public. It is a massive company. Took in more than$30 billion in revenue. It wanted to go public over the past year in New York.

12:51That seems like it's DOA based on all of the pressure from the White House and NDC on them. So now they're trying to make this happen in London. But this has been a long and fraught IPO process for Shein, even though it would be one of the biggest in years. Two of the biggest forces in entertainment joined up Saturday night when UFC held its UFC Noche event at the Las Vegas Sphere. UFC president and CEO Dana White went all out, spending$20 million to produce what he predicted would be the, quote, greatest sporting event of all time. Was it? No. It wasn't even the greatest sporting event of the weekend, which was my five-set spike ball match.

13:31Still, it represents a new frontier for live sports productions, showing how futuristic venues with massive video screens like the Sphere can support the on-the-court action through storytelling. For UFC, the night was definitely a financial success. It brought in ticket sales of$22 million, the highest skate in UFC history, and it broke its all-time record for merch sales at an event. It was also an important milestone for the$2.3 billion sphere to show off its versatility. Remember, until now, the venue has hosted only concerts such as U2, the Eagles, and Dead & Co. It also puts on a movie and hosted the NHL Draft.

14:08But this was its first time hosting live sports, and the UFC fight brought in the most ticket revenue of any event it has hosted. I don't think it will be the last. I don't think—well, it might be the last, actually, because— For UFC. Yeah, for UFC. Interestingly enough, UFC does have this exclusive venue partner in Las Vegas, MGM's T-Mobile arena, but they double booked themselves. And so this one time scheduling era allowed the UFC to kind of go try out the sphere, which Dana White, as soon as he saw it, called up like the VP and said, like, hey, we got to have an event here because it truly was a spectacle in every sense.

14:45just to show how much maybe the sphere was the star of the show rather than the fights. Tickets in the nosebleed section where you could have a better view of the actual screen were selling better or sometimes more expensive than floor seats close to the action. So if that doesn't show how much the actual venue was maybe the main draw here rather than the actual fighting itself, then I don't know what does. Right. I mean, they also tried to leverage that massive video screen, 160 ,000 square feet to try to support the fights because there's a lot of dead time in between fights at a UFC event. And the night was really a love letter to Mexico.

15:21UFC Noche on Independence Day, Mexican Independence Day, is today. And Mexico has a wonderful tradition of combat sports. So they told these stories. They showed these movies, highly produced movies, on the screen in between fights. And Dana White said it was his love letter to Mexico because UFC has such a large Hispanic following. So you're starting to see how certain live events and live sports will leverage these venues with massive video screens to support the actual on the ground action. I don't know whether this is going to lead to a sea change in how UFC or live sports in general will be produced.

16:02But it certainly as a one off event was very much a spectacle. Up next, the Emmys weren't the only award show to happen this weekend. eczema isn't always obvious but it's real and so is the relief from ebglyss after an initial dosing phase about four in ten people taking ebglyss achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks and most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing ebglyss librikizumab lbkz a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema.

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17:12Tuesday 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 Tuesday on NBC. Welcome back to Winners of the Weekend, the segment where Toby and I picked two things that popped many bottles of bubbly.

17:50I won the pre-show burping the ABCs competition, so I get to go first. And my winner is the TV series Shogun, because it took home the most Emmy Awards ever by a show in a single year. At last night's Emmy Awards, FX's saga about feudal Japan won Best Drama, Best Actor in a Drama, and Best Actress in a Drama, extending its total Emmy count to 18, which has never been done before. It's a milestone moment for foreign language series overall because nearly 70 % of the show's dialogue was in Japanese. Some other foreign language series have won Emmys before, such as Squid Game, but none has ever brought home hardware in a top category like Shogun did.

18:30Elsewhere at the Emmys, the biggest surprise of the night was in Best Comedy, where the max show Hacks defeated the juggernaut The Bear. That The Bear was even included in Best Comedy had already stirred controversy given its serious subject matter. Eugene Levy, who hosted the show with his son Dan, said in the opening monologue, in the true spirit of The Bear, we will not be making any jokes. Toby, what stood out to you on TV's biggest night? I mean, it was the categories were a bit of a mess this year because it is so ironic. One of my favorite things about The Bear being a comedy is people will find clips within it that are like, what are you talking about?

19:03Of course it's funny, even though most of it is just like people shouting at each other. If you've ever worked in a kitchen, then you're probably saying, how is this a comedy at any sense of the word? But yeah, it was a good show overall. I mean, there was definitely some viral moments. John Oliver got played off while he was talking about his dead dog, and he dropped an F-bomb and saying like, you don't play me off during that. So it was funny. It got kind of some of that buzz that these award shows have been missing for a little bit. But some people got mad because there was this weird sort of ad break in the middle of the show where they did an ad for a whiskey brand in the show themselves.

19:44And everyone's like, is this an ad or is this a sketch or anything like that? But overall, I think the night went pretty smoothly for the Emmys. But they need more people because the last Emmys had just over 4 million viewers, which is not a lot. It's the lowest ever recorded. and this is actually the second Emmys within a year because those were in January because of the strike. So there's been two Emmy Awards in the last nine months, so I'm not necessarily bullish that more people tuned in this time around because we literally just had it a few months ago. Right, it was confusing too because the Bear already has a season three out, but this was honoring the season two show.

20:22So very confusing overall. Also, when Shogun was nominated for all of these awards, I was like, all right, come on, Toby. You got to do your two gilligens here and watch it. Still haven't seen it. So it's literally the most nominated and most awarded show ever. So I think this is a sign. It's a great show. My winner of the weekend is the silliest of serious scientific award shows, the annual Ig Nobel Prizes. The prestigious ceremony honors the achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think, according to the website of the Nobel Prize Parody Show. This year, some of the winners included an experiment to see if putting live pigeons inside missiles could guide their flight pass, that one in the peace category.

21:04A test to see if people's hair swirls differently in different hemisphere. Spoiler alert, it does. And findings that confirmed a coin flip is not exactly 50-50, but it's instead more likely to land on the side it starts on when you flip it. All in all, a fun show, but before you go dedicating your career to trying to win an Ig Nobel Award, just know that the prize is a transparent box that is almost impossible to open and a worthless$10 trillion Zimbabwean dollar banknote that is selling for $22 on eBay right now. Neil, apologies to the Emmys, but this was the award show of the year. Absolutely.

21:39No, this is always so much fun. I love when this comes around. One experiment that I think a lot of people here might be very interested in is, because we talked about it on the show, Blue Zones, which are these regions of the world that are supposed to have a lot of centenarians, a lot of people who live longer. We're supposed to learn a lot from these places like Mediterranean climes where people eat a lot of vegetables. There's a strong sense of community. And it's been this huge push among even real estate developers in the United States to say that their new developments are part of a blue zone or have a blue zone sensibility that will promote living longer.

22:19But one of the awardees of the Ig Nobel was Saul Justin Newman, who's a scientist at Oxford University. And he's been on this crusade to show that blue zones are just completely bunk. And the reasons why we see so many older people in these regions is straight up pension fraud because these people are actually dead. But they are alive on paper because their family members want to collect their pensions. So in Japan, which is considered part of it, which is considered a blue zone, according to Newman, 82 percent of the 100 year olds turned out to be alive on paper, but dead in reality. And then he found out that the world's oldest man a few years ago actually had three birthdays.

23:01So he just discovered that there's rampant fraud in these areas of, you know, just manipulating documents to show that people are older, alive when they're old. in fact, when they're dead. So it kind of dispels the notion of Blue Zones, which had been this massive cottage industry to show how you can live longer. And he says, you know, there's no such thing. Just to zoom out here, though, the Ig Nobel Awards does award real scientific experiments, but it is a satirical news show, or not an award show. So what is funny, too, is that if you go on a little longer in your acceptance speech, a kid will come out and say, I'm bored.

23:35And instead of playing you off, they'll just have a kid whine at you. So it is all in good fun, even though these are real scientists conducting real experiments. I mean, you mentioned at the beginning of the show that a dead fish can swim. And that's because the experiment that this researcher conducted was that fish are so efficient at conserving their energy that when they're swimming in a stream, mostly they're just current surfing, not actually swimming. So they just toss a dead fish and they're a dead rainbow trout. And it maneuvered the river in the same way a live fish did. So it just shows that if you thought you were lazy, you are not quite on the level of a fish swimming at the same cadence that a deceased fish is.

24:13It is Monday. So here is your preview of the big events of the upcoming week. For the U.S. economy, there's really only one question that matters, 25 or 50. The Fed is pretty much guaranteed to cut interest rates after its meeting on Wednesday, but the size of the rate cut, 25 basis points or a meteor 50, is still uncertain. Either way, it's going to be a historic moment that will reverberate across the global financial system. The Fed hasn't lowered interest rates since the early days of the pandemic in 2020, and the cut is a sign Jerome Powell is getting a little worried by a slowing labor market and wants to avoid a recession.

24:52I feel like I'm sitting down in the barber chair and the barber says, what do you want? And I'm not sure. Do I want a lot off the top? Do I want a little? It's a confusing moment right now. But yeah, this has been one of the most aggressive inflation fighting campaigns since really the 1980s. So we're in times that we haven't seen in a long time now. There are three more meetings for the rest of the year, including the one on Wednesday. So we could go 25, 25, 25. We could go 50, 25, 25. Those are probably the most likely outcomes, but people are saying penciling in pretty much 100 % chance of rate cut.