Waymo’s Are A Lot Safer Than You Think & Meet Italy’s ‘Berkshire Hathaway’

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0:40Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, how Spotify Raps got its groove back. Ben, who are these mysterious Italians buying up old internet companies? It's Thursday, December 4th. Let's ride.

0:58Spotify Raps took over the world yesterday, but we're not here to ask you your number one song and why it was ordinary. As a podcast on the other side of the data curtain, we got a glimpse of how many of you listened to the show this year on Spotify, and it was a lot. I got the stats for you, Neil. In total, 511 ,000 different people listened to the pod with 240 ,000 new listeners joining this year, so I hope you choose to stick around. Here's a number that's hard to wrap your head around. You guys listened for 286 million minutes, which translates to spending 544 years with Neil and I. That is too much time.

1:35Go hang out with someone in the real world. But here's a stat that really blew us away. We were a top five show for 239 ,000 of you and number one for 87 ,000 of you. That's enough to fill an SEC football stadium and we could definitely start a moderately successful cult. Something to think about. So thank you to everyone who listened this year, including on all the platforms not named Spotify. We see you and we appreciate you all. And now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads. Toby, what's the best return on spend you've ever gotten? It can be anything, anything at all. All right, might sound crazy, but easily the life-size portrait of Dorian Gray hanging in my attic.

2:13How so? Do you see any wrinkles on this face? Yeah. Anyway, for the highest B2B return on ad spend of all online ad networks, look to LinkedIn Ads. They have a network of over one billion professionals and 130 million decision makers. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority skills, company revenue, so you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. Spend$250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash mbd. That's linkedin.com slash mbd. Terms and conditions may apply. After pulling the plug on electric vehicles, President Trump just dug his key into their side.

2:51Yesterday, he announced the U.S. would slash federal fuel economy rules for passenger vehicles, gutting a Biden-era rule that incentivized EV production. The administration touted the plan, which will go into effect next year, as a way to drive down car prices when the cost of new vehicles crossed$50 ,000 for the first time ever in October. Under Biden's measure, carmakers needed to average about 50 miles a gallon for vehicles by model year 2031. Trump's plan cuts that to just 34. The oil industry and automakers celebrated the move, evidenced by the fact that the CEOs of Ford and Stellantis flanked Trump at his announcement at the White House.

3:26They considered Biden's rules overbearing and out of step with market reality, forcing them to roll out EVs and hybrids that consumers haven't taken a fancy to. Environmentalists had the complete opposite reaction, saying the lowering of fuel economy standards will lead to more gas-guzzling cars on the road and force consumers to pay more at the pump over the lifetime of their vehicles. Other critics noted this means the U.S. is basically waving the white flag in the global EV race against China. Toby, gas is so back. What this means for automakers is that they are probably going to go back towards the siren's call of the auto industry, which are more pickup trucks and more SUVs.

4:01These are the cars that unsurprisingly sell very well in the United States. They're also great for automakers because you can make more money on them because they're more expensive. under the Biden administration rules. They were forced to put a lot of money towards building out their EV operations because to reach that 50 mile per gallon marked by 2031, that's a blended number. So it's not like gas combustion engines are suddenly gonna be getting Prius level miles per gallon numbers. It was the fact that if you sell more EVs, that drastically increases your miles per gallon that you're getting as a whole company.

4:35Now that that has kind of been rolled back a little bit, you can start selling these gas guzzers again, which is going to be difficult to resist. A lot of CEOs, Mary Barra, came out and said that, hey, we're going to still commit to our green energy vehicles, our electric vehicles. But if you see what they're actually going to start selling, it's hard to resist the fact that let's sell the big, inexpensive vehicles that customers clearly like. Yeah, she's the CEO of General Motors. Here's the risk, though. this makes them vulnerable to a big price shock in gasoline. And we hit a milestone this week in terms of the price per gallon of gasoline in the United States.

5:14It fell to$2.99, so below$3. It was just a few years ago where it topped$5. That was the highest price ever for gasoline. So right now, the Trump administration can definitely make this big play into gas because gas is really, really cheap. What happens when the oil market gets shaken up? oil prices go back up, gasoline prices go back up, then the consumers of these gas guzzlers or non-EVs or hybrids are going to be saddled with a much higher bill at the pump. And that's what you see critics, environmentalists pointing out with this particular plan that Trump has rolled out, that this will actually cost more over the long term of your vehicle.

5:51Because if you just look at how much you're going to pay in fuel costs or energy costs from an EV to an internal combustion vehicle, then if gas prices are higher, then you're going to pay a lot more at the gas station. But the counter argument to that is that these new standards are just reflecting real demand. If gas prices do go up, if there is a shock, like you mentioned, then maybe people will start buying more electric vehicles again. It just is letting the market show where the demand actually is going to fall. But car sales in the United States are stagnant. So I would anticipate people going towards the larger SUV and pickup trucks.

6:27The final risk here is that the top 20 % of households are basically keeping the market afloat right now. They pay the top dollar for these SUVs and trucks, but there's a limit to how much the market can actually rely on them. So if you said a squeeze happens or any shock happens, that's where maybe this whole theory kind of bottoms out a little bit. If it's a small amount of people buying expensive cars that no longer buys those cars, then the auto market is in trouble. Ah, Spotify wrapped. The time where you have to pretend to be interested as your friend shows you. He was a top 1 % listener of Drake.

7:02Again. A time where you have to confront the reality that you really did listen to Manchild 57 times in the span of one week. As the 11th edition of Wrapped dropped yesterday, the usual data insights were there, like your most listened to song and favorite artists. But some new wrinkles this year included showing just how many times you listened to each of your favorite songs. Mine was 23, which apparently is low. There was also a collaborative wrapped mode where you could compare stats live with a friend to see who listened to that Lily Allen song more. But probably the standout feature that got people talking was the listener age Spotify assigned people based off the eras of music they were most fond of.

7:39Neil, I won't spoil yours yet, but dude, I am begging you to join us in this century. Overall, the design aesthetic boomerang back towards analog after last year's techie theme and AI intrusions missed the mark for a lot of people. This year, the vibe was hand-drawn and doodly, where everything was meant to invoke a personal CD decorated for a friend, which got positive reviews. Neil, this thing is a tour de force that is going on 11 years now, even if you have the listening habits of a non-anajarian. Stop. We'll get to that. Spotify rap, let's talk about that in general as a marketing tactic.

8:15It is so back. It went back to the basics, collecting a ton of data on your listening habits and slapping you with a random metric that no one understands, but it's provocative and makes you want to share it with your friends. I'm talking about listening age. And if you didn't know where your listening age was derived from, here is the methodology. It analyzes the five-year span of music that users engage with more than others in their aged group. Now, if you're talking about my listening age, I didn't know this was a thing, but my listening age was 92. 92. I think it was the highest of anybody I ever saw yesterday.

8:46Everyone was asking each other what their listening age was. Mine was 92, and I think it's because I listened to quite a bit of classical music or opera that was published or released, these recordings, in the 40s and the 50s, because those are some of the best recordings out there, and that's why I have 92. Tell them who your top artist was, too. Wolfgang. Wolfgang Amadeus. You hear that new Amadeus that just dropped? What was your listening age? my listening age was 67 actually which was on the older side mainly because i listen to billy holiday when i'm cooking in the kitchen so i think that did a lot of the heavy listening one thing i found interesting about this year's rap as well other than the design aesthetic that people generally liked they changed from a stories feature where you used to tap through like an instagram story now they switched to a vertical feed resembling something like a tiktok i didn't see that talked about very much but i think it's a sign of the times that we're moving towards you know vertical video this is just the de facto ux that people know now so i thought that was an interesting design shift as well so along with the personal stats and what you consumed uh during the year in spotify they also released their top artists and albums and let's just run through those the top the most played artist globally for a fourth time dethroning taylor swift was puerto rican superstar bad bunny he was the most stream artist globally in 2025 he was there over the early 2020s, and then Taylor Swift came in 2023 and 2024, was the most popular, and now Bad Bunny is back.

10:14He also had the most streamed album globally, DBTR, Musphotos, followed by K-pop Demon Hunter's soundtrack. In the U.S., the most streamed album was Morgan Wallen's I'm the Problem. And then the most streamed song anywhere in the world last year was Die With a Smile, Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga. That song was everywhere last year. This year, it is the biggest song in the world. And again, shout out to everyone who posted us on their Instagram stories yesterday. It's a rite of passage when your rap comes out. People love, you know, showing what they are listening to, but I tried to respond to as many people in the Instagram DMs as possible.

10:50But if I miss you, because there were a lot of you, I try to toss everyone a little bit of a let's ride. But again, shout out to you all and we see you. Moving on, I got to tell you about these guys over in Italy who are buying up a bunch of internet companies from a bygone era. Think names like AOL, Vimeo, Evernote, WeTransfer, all part of the portfolio. The new addition as of this week is the events platform Eventbrite, which they shelled out$500 million for. The company goes by the name of Bending Spoons, a tech conglomerate that thinks it's stumbled upon the next great PE roll-up strategy.

11:24Bending Spoons was born 12 years ago after the founders of a failed scrapbooking app pivoted to acquiring online businesses and completely rebuilding them. The process goes like this. Identify a business with solid name recognition and cashflow, but that's no longer growing. Buy that business on the cheap. Eventbrite, for instance, was valued at$1.76 billion after its IPO in 2018. Then lay off most of their existing workforce, bring in your super team of young Italian coders, start shipping features like crazy, and hopefully restart the wheels of growth. Reclusive CEO Luca Ferrari, yeah, that's actually his name, has told reporters that Bending Spoons looks to find the, quote, unexpressed potential of unsexy businesses left for dead.

12:06And he's not in it for a quick buck either. The company invests in long-term growth, aiming to hold forever, and has yet to sell any of its acquisitions. So, Neil, they are building a sort of internet-era Berkshire Hathaway in Milan, Italy, to extract value out of names that others had long ago cast to the bargain bin. And Bending Spoons, sick name, interesting concept. My first question was, where are they getting the money from to buy these companies? And the answer is Andre Agassi. So they have a weird mix of investors, including celebrities like Andre Agassi, Ryan Reynolds, and The Weeknd, along with Google's former leader, Eric Schmidt.

12:45They raised$270 million in a recent funding round that valued them at over$11 billion. So they are one of Europe's most valuable startups. They also raised$2.8 billion in debt financing. So it seems like they have a lot of big players betting on them to make acquisitions and do their whole Italian coding thing and then make these companies and put these companies back into growth mode. Let's talk about what they would do at a particular company and why they would buy any company. Let's go into AOL. Or actually, I'm going to go into Evernote because that's a note-taking app that I grew up using actually a little bit.

13:18When they bought Evernote, they fired more than half of its staff immediately. then they raised prices steeply, 63 % increase on personal plans. They shut down all US operations and moved operations over to Europe. And then they rebuilt the tech literally from the ground up. They said they rewrote every single line of code. And it depends on who you ask how this went. The actual former Evernote co-founder said, hey, I'm still a daily user. They did make good features. I'm glad to see them putting investment back into the platform. If you go to Reddit, a lot of people are very mad because obviously when a personal plan jacks their price up 63%, you're gonna have some annoyed users.

13:56But CEO Luca Ferrari said, you're never gonna hear from satisfied users. So we basically just ignore the noise. We try to see what the actual price ceiling is. And by all accounts, it's been a pretty successful rebrand and rewriting of the code. So that gives you a glimpse into what they try to do on most of their businesses. Maybe it's successful, maybe it's not, but they're making a lot of bets. Finally, a note on the name Bending Spoons, You're like, what does that refer to? Well, it's that scene from The Matrix where they use the power of the mind to bend spoons. So that's what they were calling you.

14:28I don't exactly know how it goes, how it relates to the business world. You're changing reality, I think. Changing reality. I thought it was going to be, you know, the parlor trick where you breathe on a spoon, you go, and then you stick it on your nose. When you asked me that, and you're like, no, it's from The Matrix. So much cooler origin story right there. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Neil's Numbers. toby how do you make ai work for you easy i keep asking it to make my arms look bigger in photos and man do all three of them look good well if you're a business asking the same question look no further than net suite net suite by oracle is the number one ai cloud erp that over 43 000 businesses trust to future-proof their business it's a unified suite that brings your financials inventory commerce hr and crm into a single source of truth that connected data is what makes your AI smarter.

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16:36Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will make you feel 19 again, at least in Spotify years. For my first number, a technological innovation is potentially ushering in the biggest public health breakthrough in decades. I'm talking, of course, about self-driving cars, eliminating traffic deaths as a top cause of mortality in the United States. In a widely shared piece in the New York Times, neurosurgeon Dr. Jonathan Slotkin presented some astonishing safety facts about Waymo's self-driving cars. In data covering 100 million driverless miles in four American cities, Waymo's autonomous cars were involved in 91 % fewer serious injury or worse crashes than human drivers on the same roads.

17:17Waymo's were involved in 80 % fewer crashes causing any injury and a 96 % lower rate of injury causing crashes at intersections. Slotkin says in the trauma bay, he's seen firsthand the quote, staggering amount of suffering and loss of human life we accept from car accidents. More than 39 ,000 Americans died in car crashes last year, more than homicide, plane crashes, and natural disasters combined. And it's the second leading cause of death overall for young adults and children. Toby, this was a call to action for politicians to support and not resist the self-driving transition, since robots that don't get drunk, check Instagram, or feel tired could save tens of thousands of lives on the road.

17:55Yeah, Slokin framed it in terms of a medical trial. In clinical trials, you stop a study early for two cases. One, there's unexpected harm or two, there's overwhelming benefit, meaning continuing it becomes just unethical because there's so much benefit showed by one side of the equation. So his argument is that Waymo's results are overwhelmingly beneficial. If this were a pill or something, they would call off the trial right now and say, all right, we need to stop doing the placebo, which is driving people, driving cars. We need to move over to this treatment, which is Waymo's because it's just saving so many lives.

18:29So when you frame it that way, it seems like a public health no-brainer that you should push people towards self-driving cars. Now, something funny that's been going on with Waymo as well in San Francisco is they had this reputation of being extremely cautious drivers, maybe even too cautious. But now they've tweaked the software to become, quote, confidently assertive. So people in San Francisco are seeing Waymos crisscrossing each other in tunnels and changing lanes in places where no human driver would. So they're becoming a little more aggressive, driving a little more like human drivers. Waymo's executives say this is actually safer because sometimes you need to cross a double yellow or else you're going to create a lot of traffic.

19:08And maybe we were too cautious before. But now you're seeing them getting a little jazzy on the roads. A little brazier with it. Confidently assertive, though. Kind of how I try to live my life. So good advice for everyone out there. Be a little bit more confidently assertive. For my next number, the Patriots might be the only thing worth celebrating up in Beantown, where the real estate market has gotten very soft. The average asking rent in Boston fell to about$3 ,000 in October, according to RealPage, which is the first decline since 2021. Vacancies, meanwhile, have risen to their highest rate since the pandemic.

19:42Yes, this is good news for renters who are paying some of the highest housing costs in the country in Boston, but it's also a clear sign of the city's recent economic struggles. Boston's economic engine is powered by, one, the biotech industry, and two, its elite colleges, but both are facing significant headwinds. After a cash influx in COVID times, biotechs have seen funding dry up in the era of high interest rates. And as for colleges, the Trump administration's immigration crackdown has resulted in 17 % fewer international students this fall, taking a financial toll on universities like BU and Northeastern.

20:15It all amounts to landlords scrambling for tenants by lowering prices, allowing pets, and even doing the unthinkable, accepting undergrads. Yeah, there was this Bloomberg piece that dove into it and it profiled one landlord who said, I'm willing to do basically anything to fill it, which was so funny that undergrads was tossed out in the same sentence as that. The other thing to consider is supply. Whenever you see rents dropping, you say, well, did supply increase? This is something that we've seen in boomtown cities like Austin, where they just put a lot of housing on the market and that pushed rents down.

20:46And Boston has seen a moderate shift in the supply. The Boston Metro added 8 ,600 units in the past year. That is 20 % above their long-term average, but it's still not enough to justify the price decreases that we are seeing because so many other factors are contributing to it. I mean, for renters, this has been a long time coming because Boston is just absurdly expensive. A quarter of renters there were spending more than half their salaries on housing. So you're basically paying New York City prices for Boston and no shit on Boston. I think it's an amazing city, but the housing costs were extremely elevated.

21:21If you're a renter there, you're probably pretty excited to see rents come down a little bit. My final number is 78 minutes or 1.3 hours, which is how much you travel on the typical day. And by you, I do mean all of you, humanity. A new international study looked at personal and work-related travel across 43 countries, representing more than half of the world's population and found remarkably that populations, no matter where they live or how rich or poor they are or what mode of transportation they use, travel about 78 minutes a day, plus or minus 12 minutes. That's probably caused by the desire to get where you need to be or see your surroundings without spending too much of your day going from point A to point B to back to point A.

22:00Besides just being an interesting stat, the 78-minute rule has significant implications for policymakers and people who think about how communities are arranged like urban planners. According to author Eric Galbraith, the most important finding is that people don't travel less when speed or efficiency increases. Instead, they travel farther. You saw this with the growth of the suburbs after the automobile came along. People could commute faster in a car than a trolley, so they moved further away from the workplace. So you think this holds true for you? 78 minutes on the move. Well, I'm a little closer to the office.

22:31Thank goodness for that. But a lot of this can be described by an idea that goes by the Marchetti constant, which is everything about urban life has always been dictated by whatever technology enables a 30-minute commute. Go back to 800 BC all the way to the 1700s. Most people were walking around, so cities were capped at about two miles in diameter because you could walk about a mile in 30 minutes. Then when railroads came, a steam train could cover 10 miles in 30 minutes, which led to railroad suburbs. Add in streetcars and bicycles. You can cover four miles in 30 minutes, which led to suburban expansion.

23:09Bring in subways. That's eight miles in the 30 minutes. It allowed the working class to finally live further out from the cities, but it also led to very dense downtowns. And then, of course, as expressways and freeways came in, now you see these mega cities that are 1 ,000 square miles because you can go 20-plus miles in 30 minutes. So it almost explains every single thing about urban expansion over the course of humanity. where it kind of reaches a point though, is that we have, we can't really innovate and there's no more new transportation at tech. We've hit a technology ceiling. So we might not be widening, freeways doesn't solve anything.

23:46So we might have reached, you know, peak urban expansion at this point, unless, you know, like flying cars becomes a thing and then we can expand once more or Mars becomes a thing and we expand solarly. We can commute 30 minutes to space and back, then the Marchetti constant holds true. All right, thank you for that urban economic, lesson, Toby. I learned more just in your spiel than I did for my entire master's degree in economic development and urban planning. Okay, let's run to the finish with our final headlines. The search is on again to resolve one of the greatest mysteries of the 21st century.

24:18Later this month, marine robotics company Ocean Infinity will scan the depths of the Indian Ocean, hoping to locate Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that inexplicably disappeared more than a decade ago in 2014. There have been signs of the plane in the years since, with small pieces of debris washing up on the shores of Eastern Africa. But the full wreckage of the aircraft, a Boeing 777, has eluded both government and private investigators adding to the riddle. The contract between the Malaysian government and Ocean Infinity is a no-find, no-fee structure. If they don't find MH370, they get paid zilch.