Mailbag: Time Capsules, Weird Indexes, and Superhero Powers
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Good Morning Brew Daily show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, we have a special holiday episode for you. The Morning Brew Daily Mailbag episode. It's Monday, October 14th. Let's ride. ♪

If you get to stay home today for the federal holiday, hope you didn't forget to shut off your Monday through Friday alarm. That will get you. The Morning Brew office is closed for Indigenous Peoples Day, so we are taking a quick one-day break from the news cycle for a special mailbag episode to answer some of your questions ranging from the serious to the would you rather. You all did not disappoint, except for the person who asked why did I dye my hair blonde if it looks so bad. That of

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breakfast, specifically Wendy's breakfast. Oh yeah, there's that one on 14th Street that always comes in clutch. Okay, so hit me with your go-to order. Gotta go with the Wendy's breakfast burrito. Don't leave the people hanging. Tell them what's in it. We're talking fresh cracked eggs, seasoned potatoes, American cheese, bacon, or sausage all rolled up into a nice warm tortilla.

All right, all right. Let's get through this show because I am ready for breakfast number two. If you are looking for a delicious breakfast on the go, head to your nearest Wendy's to try the Wendy's Breakfast Burrito. Now, without further ado, Neil, what is our first question? All right, this first one is an absolute softball from Brian from Atlanta. If you could make a MBD time capsule episode that would be released in 100 years...

What would you cover in the episode? Yeah, just really easy to ease our way in here. Keeping it high level, I think the biggest thing that we will take from this era is AI. Either it's going to be one, the transformational technology that makes all of our lives look different, or it's going to be a massive bubble, the likes of which...

We'll probably make investing textbooks for a long time to come. So either way, whatever way it pans out, I think AI will make that episode. The other topic that I think could potentially make it in is AR or VR, simply because Mark Zuckerberg, who was on the show, said that he thinks wearables like glasses are

are going to replace the iPhone eventually. So if that happens, I think this will be an important period in time to document when that technology is first starting out. And then the third thing, I was just thinking about the Google antitrust trial. If Google does get broken up and it starts this mass sort of antitrust enforcement action against big tech, that could potentially make the history books because we've only really had one big trust-busting era in the U.S. so far. So if we have another and it does target big tech,

I think that could make the time capsule. So those three things, AI, AR slash VR, and potentially anti-tech. All right, so it's very focused on tech. Very tech-focused. But that's who you are. I would say so. I was thinking like banking regulations, stuff like that. But is there any industry that I'm missing that comes to mind? All of them except AI. All of them except tech.

I guess that's true. Maybe, like, yeah, airlines, like if Boeing goes down or something like that, that could happen. I did keep it a little tech-focused. That's fine. We're in the era of tech, so did you have one thing that you want to slide in there? For some reason, just Joe Flacco came to mind. Just...

I think there are so many people now studying longevity and ways to de-ageify ourselves. I know it's a lot of wealthy people, but Joe Flacco is just incredible. He's a quarterback that had just, you know, time stands still for him. So that was the first thing that came to mind. I actually love that answer. Longevity, I do think if, because, I mean, Brian Johnson's the big kind of figure who's pushing that forward. But if we do figure out how,

a way to slow down aging, then that could be... There does seem to be a big swell right now about slowing down aging. All right, I like those answers. Okay, next question. This one's from FitDaddyLane on Instagram. Okay, FitDaddy. What is your weirdest or favorite economic indicator? Okay, there is a bunch of weird ones if you look around. So I'll just rattle off a few that caught my eye that I do love to look at when maybe we're in a recession or not. One of them is...

The car salesman closing time indicator, which is the concept that the quicker salesmen are to discount cars on their lots, the weaker the economy. And if you just go back to 2008 discounts,

spiked during, obviously, the recession of 2008. Ford, GM, Chrysler had a ton of inventory. So that is the car salesman closing time indicator. Are you buying it? A lot of these are certainly not actually real. No, I think that is real, for sure. I mean, I thought you were saying, are you buying a car? I said, absolutely not, no. No, this one does seem more real.

you know, maybe legit, which is the champagne indicator, which says that when people, when champagne sales are down, that means we're in an economic recession. People are feeling down about themselves. Let's go back to, you know, the great recession of 2008, 2009. In 2006, two years before that, shipments of champagne to the U.S. hit 23.1 million bottles. Go to 2009 and shipments fell to 12.5 million bottles. So almost a cut in half.

And that one makes sense to me. You're just not partying. If you're not, if there's nothing to celebrate, then you're not celebrating. And that makes that one I'm more on board with. Yeah. And actually earlier this year, LVMH's champagne sales declined by 12%. And the guy who leads that said, maybe at the current global situation, geopolitical or macroeconomic doesn't lead people to cheer up and open bottles of champagne. So it was a direct nod to the champagne indicator. And then the final one is the Superbowl indicator, which is,

is absolutely airtight. This one comes from 1978. The theory states that if a team from the AFC wins the Super Bowl, the Dow Jones will decline in the upcoming year. And then if a team from the NFC wins the Super Bowl, the Dow Jones will rise for that year. And before you roll your eyes, at the end of 2022, the indicator had a success rate of 73%, 41 out of 56%

That would be the best batting average in the history of Major League Baseball. So tell me who we should root for to win the Super Bowl. Well, we should root for an NFC team because that means the Dow Jones is going up the next year. And what better NFC team to root for than the Philadelphia Eagles? Go Birds. I was trying to spoon that, feed you that. So I'm glad that we are rooting for Jalen Hurts, we're rooting for the Eagles. I don't think it's going to happen, though, to be perfectly honest. So we are in for a stock market bust next year. All right, Toby, what are your favorites?

Okay, one of my favorites is the Men's Underwear Index. And this was actually proposed by the former chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. He posits that men's underwear sales decline during tough economic times. And the reasoning here is that you probably delay – it is an essential purchase underwear, but it is a hidden essential purchase. So maybe you end up not going and not splurging on underwear. Okay.

You delay replacing your underwear in times of economic hardship. So if you ever are looking at if they're in a recession, just go peek in a men's underwear drawer. Don't do that unless you know the man. But that's one. And then the other one is haircut frequency. So during recessions, people probably get haircuts less. So if you start seeing people wearing their hair a little longer, if the style comes back, maybe the mullet comes back, that could mean we are actually just in a recession because people don't want to spend money on getting haircuts.

Okay, the next question, Eli on Instagram, what is your favorite episode of MBD? This was a tough one because we are almost, we're around 430 episodes deep at this point, so there are a lot to think back on. And this is a bit of a weird answer, but it was probably during like the Silicon Valley bank crisis when that news first broke because we were,

pretty early to the story. It started bubbling up on Twitter. So it felt like we were almost breaking news. We don't get to do that a whole lot. That was fun. I remember actually arguing with you at the time because you were like, no, this is just a Twitter thing. It's confined mostly to the tech world. I guess maybe I am too wrapped up in the tech world. But then it spiraled out to be a much bigger story. And that it felt like, one, I got to learn a lot about just like the banking system, banking regulations,

And then two, it felt like we were genuinely keeping people up to date on a developing story. We were helping them learn about it along with us. So just from a sheer kind of excitement level, that period of time during the Silicon Valley vein crisis, that was probably my favorite episode. My favorite episode is the next one. There you go. That's the mentality that we got to have on this podcast. All right. Raphael asks, Toby, what is your favorite part of doing MBD? This one actually has...

changed over time. In the beginning, it was just fun because there's bright lights. This is a fun studio. But then after talking to some of you guys, seeing your reader emails, my favorite part of doing it is really the fact that we are delivering news in a way that doesn't make people feel as bad about the world sometimes because you can turn on the news maybe and it can get a little depressing. Like you see a lot of these stories from more traditional media outlets and it just leaves you feeling a

But we try to bring more joy, a more upbeat attitude, a more positivity, just more interest to the stories we're covering. And that's been a really big positive for me about starting Morning Brew Daily is that it feels like it's helping you guys live your lives better. So that's been an unexpected benefit. I don't know if that fully answered your question, Raphael, but that's my favorite part about doing Morning Brew Daily is seeing you guys kind of consume it.

How long do you on average spend preparing for content on the podcast? Daniel from Instagram wants you to take us through the process, Neil, from A to Z. Okay. I don't know if I'm going to go A to Z. I may go through like J to R. Uh, the, how long do we spend? I spend too long. No,

Not too long. But I do think preparing is by far the most important thing because you can't talk about anything articulately unless you kind of know it backwards and forwards. So I would say I spend, yeah, four to six hours researching all these different stories that we talk about. And then preparing our little written intros takes a little bit longer because we try to make them kind of funny as well. And trying to be funny, I don't know if we're successful or not. You can be the judge of that.

Uh, does take a little bit longer. So yeah, over the course of the afternoon, noon to noon to five, one to six, uh, all of that time is spent, uh, researching and just do it. It's like cramming for a test each day. And then we come in about an hour beforehand, uh,

before we tape at 6 a.m. Eastern to kind of cram even some more. Yeah, I think the day is spread into two categories. One is kind of the news gathering portion of the day, which is the morning where we're just seeing what's happening. Sometimes there's a lot going on. Sometimes there's a little going on. So it's just hunting and gathering which stories you want to choose. And then in the afternoon, Neil and I go into our little holes and you do. You mentioned it's like studying for a test. It really does feel like, all right, I have an

oral presentation in the morning. I got to cram all this information, get it into a spot that I can talk eloquently about it. Um, and that process, if it's stories that we have covered before, it goes a little quicker, but if it's a brand new story, then you really do have to learn it, um, from the beginning. So yeah, it's, it's a long process, but it's a fun process. You feel like you're learning something new every day. Definitely. Uh, this one is from Kimberly Toby. Do you ever get nervous before a show? I,

I'm only going to speak for myself. I see you sweating all the time before we get into the studio. I mean, that's just because it's hot in here. In the beginning, I think I did get nervous because, again, I mentioned the lights. We do have a studio here. It feels like you're on a set of a production. And that was always like my heart rate would get up.

a little bit. Now it's a little bit less so just because, again, 430 episodes in. Inherently, it's going to get a little easier. It feels more natural. But I think go back to listen to some of those early episodes. You'll see maybe some of the nerves come out because we were a little lower energy. We weren't as confident. But now we are in the swing of things. I think you feel probably similar. I feel the same way, yeah. Okay.

Okay, this one is from Ermanno360 on Instagram. I'm getting all the Instagram questions. When did you realize that you were going to have a successful podcast? Well, I would say things were pretty slow in the first few months of things. That's primarily because we were dropping the episodes when at 10 a.m. 10 a.m. And that's not really a morning podcast. For a morning podcast, you want to be in people's

Uh, feeds in on their car radios when they're commuting, which is earlier than 10 a.m. If you're commuting at 10 a.m., then good for you. That's amazing. Well, this is also 10 a.m. Eastern. So inevitably we knew we had to make the switch to earlier, uh, which means we had to wake up earlier, but it's all good because that's really when the podcast took off is when we started putting it out between seven and 7 30 a.m. Catching people, uh,

while they were actually going about their morning routines, waking up before work. And then the podcast really took off in terms of growth. So moving just, it's a good business lesson too, just finding your product market fit. Because trying to release a morning podcast that tries to get people caught up to date in the news before they go about their work, you can't do it really at 10 a.m. and be successful. So just that little switch,

definitely helped us. I was shocked when we made that switch. I thought it'd be like this slow kind of maybe a gradual rise in downloads. As soon as it published at 7 a.m., it almost doubled like overnight because clearly it is just a much better time to release an episode. It is product market fit. So that was crazy. That was probably the biggest spike is from one month to the next going from 10 a.m. to 7 a.m. It

absolutely shot up. And then from there, it's just been this steady rise, which again is thanks to you all the listeners, because really the only way you can grow a product or a podcast is by having you tell your friend like, Hey, I listen to morning brew daily. So from there, it's been this slow and steady growth. Um, and it is a lot bigger from when we launched it. So again, shout out to you all. Cause without you, it wouldn't be what it is today. We'll be right back with more mailbag questions after the break.

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Okay, we have one from Catherine. What happens if Neil or Toby calls in sick last minute? Is Kyle, who is our super sub, waiting in the wings? This was an interesting question to think back on because we have never called in sick. That's not to say we've never missed an episode. We have weddings. We have vacations from time to time. Me more than Neil probably. But neither one of us has ever missed a show for being sick.

You can hear us right now. We are knocking on wood in the studio. 430 episodes, no sick days so far. But yes, if that were to happen, Kyle does live relatively close by. Hopefully we'd be feeling sick before we went to sleep so we could kind of say like, hey, I might tap you in. Yeah, Billy Menino on audio has said he also wants to come in. So he could be a last minute person.

We should. It's either Billy Menino or maybe Neil does the episode solo. I've always wondered, could one of us pull off a solo episode? It would be interesting. It wouldn't quite be as energetic, but I would like to try. People listening are like, nah. No, thank you. No, thank you.

Okay, this one, I actually don't know who it's from, but this is a great question. What did you think your career would look like when you graduated college, and how does it compare to what actually came to be? I am a fresh grad, a little disoriented at the moment, so what is your advice, Neil? When I graduated college, I did not know what my career would be, so I didn't think it would be a podcast or anything else. I studied history at the University of Maryland University,

did teaching for a year, went to grad school for urban planning because I'm very passionate about cities and geography, worked in that field for a little bit, and then randomly saw a LinkedIn post from Alex Lieberman, who was the founder, co-founder of Morning Brew. I read...

the Morning Brew email in 2017 when it was very early days. And I was just like, I think I can do that better than it is now. I like reading the news just on my own. I'm down to get paid for it. I like making things funny, which is what Morning Brew's newsletter style was all about. Didn't really know anything about business.

which was a problem. I didn't know like why Warren Buffett was famous or what an IPO stood for, anything like that. So it was an education to read the Wall Street Journal, but now I think I love the business world and it's super fascinating and you can just learn anything that you want, that you applied to if you're just a curious person. So I guess the answer to the question, sorry,

I did not necessarily see myself in this role, though. It was always in the back of my mind to be somewhat of a journalist or in the radio or anything like that, because as I, you know, when I grew up, I would just binge SportsCenter and I thought those anchors were the coolest people in the entire world. And my dream job was to be a SportsCenter anchor. It does feel like you can't know in the moment how your career or life is going to play out. But when you look

back. You can see the little inklings here, the little inklings there that led to us landing in this podcast chair, maybe led to you figuring out what you guys wanted to do in your careers. But it does feel like just follow your interests, take the leap if you do find something that interests you. And you don't know how it's all going to piece together, but it usually does looking back. So

You unknown fresh graduate, little disorientated at the moment. Hopefully you took something away from that. Yeah. And this one actually dovetails into that nicely because it goes into Toby's career journey. This one's from Mateo. How did we, you guys meet? How did me and you meet Toby? Uh, Neil hired me. That's our, that's our origin story is that when I was also a fresh raised grad, no idea what to do. I,

I actually originally applied to Morning Brew by trying to tell Neil that Morning Brew should launch a sports newsletter. So I actually wrote an entire Morning Brew-themed sports newsletter, sent it to him, sent it to Neil's boss. They kind of politely said, oh, this is nice, but we're definitely not going to launch a sports newsletter. Come apply for a role as a daily newsletter writer. And Neil was the editor of the newsletter. I took a bus to New York from Maine. I sat down. I wore my nicest...

I brought my resume, sat down with Neil, actually, and he interviewed me for the role. You never did ask for my resume, by the way, which I thanked you for. It's all online. It's all online. And so he hired me at Morning Brew, started as a newsletter writer under him, and then we ended up becoming podcast hosts later. That is a great story, Toby. Okay, I remember it like it was yesterday. Nicholas H. asks,

Okay, Neil was right. You guys are very passionate about the universities and colleges that you went to. So I got a lot of good emails.

And the one I actually ended up picking was Indiana because, one, they are having one of their best starts of their seasons ever. They are 6-0, best start since 1967, 3-0 in Big Ten play. They haven't trailed in any game so far, so very impressive stat. And they're an underdog program, let's be honest. Indiana's not known for their –

heavy hitting football team. They're more of a basketball school, but they got this transfer QB Curtis Roke from Ohio university. And then also, but truly the one reason I picked it is after every single game so far this year, the person who originally emailed me about Indiana has followed up and said, it's not too late to get on the bandwagon. Like we're six and oh, at this point, like it might be too late, but we're still welcoming. So for just the persistence alone, let's go Hoosiers. I'm rooting for you guys.

Okay, finally, we're going to head to our last segment, which is rapid-fire questions, which are exactly what they sound like. These are some of the more hypothetical, some of the more goofier questions you guys answered. So we're going to run through them really quickly. Neil, try to keep your answers to like one to two sentences, but I'll let it slide if you go above. First question, if you were a superhero, but your only power was that you could summon any snack instantly, what would your superhero name be? Fig Newton Man? Does that one work? Yeah.

I don't even know. I don't even like Fig Newtons, but that one just rolls off the tongue. I also thought of one that could be good. The Sour Patch Kids. Oh, I like that. You were trying to come up with ones that didn't just fall like blank man. Yeah. Yeah. So I do like the Sour Patch Kids. Yeah. And then this one was maybe more of a villain, but the Twizzler.

Oh, the Twizzler. Yeah. These are really good, actually. You shoot Twizzlers. No, I put in more thought to this answer than any other one. Okay, good, because I didn't think about it at all. I was hoping you'd come up with a good one for that, but I'm going to start calling you the Twizzler. That one's pretty good. That's good. Okay, this one's from Dan. Toby, what

fruit do you think you could throw the hardest? Okay, I went two thoughts on this. Number one that came to mind first was the apple because it's shaped like a baseball and you could just huck that thing. But I actually think maybe a lemon or a lime that is shaped like a football, a little of that aerodynamic six, maybe that like nerf football throw. Also good grip on it as well. So my answer is either like a hefty lemon or just like a nice Macintosh apple that you could really huck out there. What if I put some laces on a watermelon?

That's too big. On a small watermelon and just turn it into a football. I know. Well, I think I'd rather go lemon because being quite frankly, I have very small hands, so I don't think I could get my hand around a watermelon very well. But a lemon, this makes me really want to go out there and start testing fruits, throw my arm out. But yeah, I think a lemon, a lime or an apple. What about throwing a banana like a boomerang?

Neil really wants in on this. Well, I just like the different styles of throwing that you could possibly do and not just a baseball format. I just think banana would probably break. A ripe, an unripe banana maybe. It could do the most damage as a weapon, but maybe not get the furthest. But I like where your head's at. Okay, this one's from Michaela. If you were a font, which font would you be? Webdings because I'm hard to read. Oh.

Oh, wow, wow, wow. I thought you were just going to say like Helvetica because you're pretty basic, but... Oh, Jesus. Webding. Comic Sans because I'm goofy and no one uses me. Lord. Time's up. All right, you're just talking about yourself. I know. Sorry, sorry, sorry. That's a good answer, Webdings. This one is from Sophie. If you could put a high-speed rail between two cities in the U.S., what would you choose and why? Okay, uh...

Obviously, I'd want to connect all of the United States with high-speed rail, but the two cities that came to mind are Pittsburgh to Chicago because driving through Ohio and northern Indiana, no offense to Indiana, is so boring. That's probably the most boring driving outside of perhaps Kansas in the United States. So being able to just cruise in a train with some Wi-Fi and not having to think about stopping for gas in northern Indiana or...

Ohio. People are going to hate me from those two places. But I've driven through them, and they are, I mean, objectively pretty boring to drive through. So if you just be on a train, Pittsburgh to Chicago, I don't know why you would go from Pittsburgh to Chicago. You probably have some reason. But those would be the two cities that I could connect. What about you? What about for more personal reasons? If you didn't actually care about the good of the country, this is just like personal Neil train, what would you want to connect?

I mean, from the outside of my house to really any golf course would be amazing. The golf course train line, the Northern Golf Course. Down to Pinehurst or something. Like a direct, yeah, because. That's a good answer, honestly. Massachusetts to North Carolina. Well, here in Brooklyn, too. Up to the eastern seaboard. Yeah, just little pit stops everywhere. You're more of the public transport guy, so that's why you got that question. And I'm just going to piggyback on both of those answers. All right. Finally, this is from Sophie. What's in the mugs?

Oh, yeah. Okay. So for anyone who doesn't watch us on social media or doesn't watch the pod on YouTube, which you can if you want to see our faces, we have these two Morning Brew Daily Mugs on our desks. First of all, I think there's still some available at our store. If you go to the Morning Brew shop, you can buy these mugs. They say, let's ride on one side. You get it because that's what I say. And then also the logo on the other side. And inside the mugs is actually whiskey.

No, I'm just kidding. There's nothing inside the mugs. Although some days Kyle does do the show and I've noticed he brings coffee and fills up, fills it up with, with coffee. So we should put coffee in there, but there's a lot of expensive electronic equipment around. So we're not technically allowed to, to actually bring liquid in. But if we did, we put a nice cup of Joe in there. All right. Well, thanks for all of your questions. I think that is it. We'll definitely do this again in some upcoming holiday, but

We're just going to wrap it up here. And thanks so much for joining us on this holiday episode. Or if you have the day off, then enjoy that. If you don't have the day off, well, hope it's just a regular workday. That's not too bad. If anything you heard sparked any follow-up questions, feel free to send them to our email, morningbrewdailyatmorningbrew.com.

Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Did you really think we were going to answer any questions about hair and makeup? Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.