Episode 583: Neal and Toby recap the massive deal between Boeing and Qatar Airways during President Trump’s Gulf trip. Then, students are finding out their professors are starting to use ChatGPT for their coursework. Is it hypocrisy? Plus, HBO is bringing back the ‘HBO’ to its ‘Max’, and the Internet is having a field day. Meanwhile, Neal shares his favorite numbers on international travel to the US, Mt. Everest climbers, and Pope Leo’s trading card. Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Visit endthecampaign.com for more Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note 00:00 - Lead into Gold 02:30 - Boeing’s Biggest Deal 06:45 - College and AI 11:15 - Max is HBO Max... Again 16:30 - Neal’s Numbers 24:00 - Headlines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts introducing the episode and what is the date?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, everyone is using AI to cheat in college, even the professors.
Then Max played an Uno reverse card on itself and is becoming HBO Max again. It's Thursday, May 15th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
Finally, vindication for Nicholas Flamel. Alchemists everywhere are hooting and hollering after scientists announced they successfully turned lead into gold. This isn't medieval sorcery or abracadabra. It happened at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, where physicists sent beams of lead whizzing right by each other, creating an
electromagnetic field that ejected three protons out of lead atoms, turning them into gold atoms. Unfortunately, no one is getting rich off of this. According to the register, the gold transformation lasted for about a microsecond and weighed less than a fart in a vacuum.
You know who the big winner here is? It's CERN, because they are trying to build a successor to the Large Hadron Collider. And that tunnel's gonna be 56 miles long, three times the size of the current collider. And you wanna know how to get people on board with a project of that size? Turn some lead into gold. But you are right. Maybe people are thinking, oh, lead into gold.
Maybe you self-fund this billion-dollar project. No, it's going to take a while because even though the scientists created 86 billion gold atoms, that only weighs up to 29 picograms, which is about eight trillionth of a gram. So get to colliding, sir, because you got a lot of gold to make. And now a word from our sponsor, Iterable. Neil, last weekend... I went to a party. Very social of you.
But I made a terrible mistake. I trusted the group chat when they said it was a costume party. Oh, no. Yep. Showed up as Shrek. Full green face paint. Turns out it was a baby shower in a brownstone. Toby, never trust the group chat. Don't I know it. But somehow that's what brands do every day when they rely on outdated campaigns.
They think they know what the customer wants, but they're just trusting the group chat.
Iterable fixes that. It replaces guesswork with real-time data-driven engagement so every message meets the customer exactly where they are.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of Boeing's $96 billion deal with Qatar Airways?
Gifted from Qatar to serve as a temporary Air Force one despite bipartisan concerns that it would pose security risks still It's a major win for most of the parties involved Qatar because it helps cement themselves as a major player in air travel Trump who wants to secure jobs back at home and Boeing who gets a lot of money it hasn't been all sunshine and free peanut packets for Boeing though who has classed with Trump at times as
for being late in providing two new Air Force One presidential jets that they started working on on Trump's first term. But when you combine the historic order praised by Trump with a new trade thaw with China, Boeing stock is suddenly up 50% since April, totally erasing losses from its post-liberation day lows. These past few months, Neil, has made it clear that Boeing
can thrive under Trump's brand of geopolitics, but they've also shown just how risky it is to be a bargaining chip on the trade war chessboard. So a little bit of a mixed bag of nuts.
Boeing has lost money every year since 2019. This was once a manufacturing powerhouse, the gold star of United States production, our biggest exporter, and they just suffered so many crises one after another. There's a new CEO who came in last year, Kelly Orberg. He came out of retirement just like So many other CEOs turn around struggling, iconic companies.
And it seems like he's doing a pretty good job. Shares are up. Their most shares are up at their highest level in 15 months. They just landed their biggest order ever. Ortberg sitting there being like, I think I'm doing a good job. The board is probably happy with him as well.
What's the deal with this Air Force One saga, though? Remember, Boeing was awarded this $3.9 billion fixed price contract back in 2018 to deliver these two new Air Force One jets by 2024. They were going to be upgraded. They were going to have a new missile system, nuclear protection, the whole nine yards.
But now they're at least three years behind schedule, and they've already lost $2.5 billion on the deal due to cost overruns that they can't pass on to the U.S. government because of the contract's fixed price clause.
It's been a variety of things, supply chain chaos, the pandemic happened, there's been a lot of security clearance issues, but that has been emblematic of Boeing's futility over the past few years. Now, these deals are pouring in as it's being used as this trade war chip, where Trump is saying, look at this, this is an example that this Build America movement is working because Boeing is...
It still is an iconic American manufacturer. So weirdly, it's come out on top of this trade war as Trump uses it as this example of what he's trying to do.
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Chapter 3: How is AI reshaping college education and cheating concerns?
The whole point of launching Max in the first place was to shed some HBO association, which, while prestigious, made it hard for Warner Bros. Discovery to market the platform as a home for family-friendly Discovery content post-merger. Once you put HBO in the name, it's tough to convince parents that a platform that airs Euphoria is also the place their kids should go to watch Animal Planet.
But yesterday's press release contained a line that helps explain the decision to bring back HBO. No consumer today is saying they want more content, but most consumers are saying they want better content. And where does better content live? Well, if you're a fan of The Sopranos, The Wire, House of Dragon, White Lotus, Industry, The Last of Us, or Righteous Gemstones, that content lives on HBO.
So it seems like this reintroduction of HBO is... Is it a mission by Warner Bros. Discovery that maybe they shouldn't have dropped it in order to let 90 Day Fiance live side by side with Tony Soprano? Sure, it took a while to get there, Neil, but probably the right move.
If I was interviewing a comms person for my company, I'd probably use this as a case study. I'd say, okay, You know, we made the decision to go from HBO, from Max back to HBO. You know, you're going to get roasted all around the Internet. What is your game plan? How to develop a comprehensive strategy from a corporate comms perspective to make this the least embarrassing it could be? I think
HBO Warner Brothers did a pretty good job at this. They released the ultimate spin zone corporate statement to get ahead of this. They called the decision a testament to Warner Brothers Discovery's willingness to keep boldly iterating its strategy and approach, leaning heavily on consumer data and insights to best position itself for success.
And then on social media, they went in the complete other direction, kind of roasting themselves in multiple, multiple posts on X, sort of acknowledging just how ridiculous this name changing branding exercise has become.
Yeah, they definitely threaded the needle. They just got out ahead of it all on social media. They made all the jokes that we were going to make. We still made the jokes because it is a very funny process. But I do think this all kind of stems back to Netflix in a way, because Netflix has been the clear winner of the streaming wars. We've known that for a while now.
It's sitting at over 300 million global subscribers. And it was part of the reason why Warner Brothers and Discovery merged in the first place is that they were trying to compete with this end-all be-all streaming platform and make some gains and try to catch up to Netflix's subscriber numbers. And so in terms of pure output, it was a smart decision to bring it all under one unified brand.
call it Max, ditch the HBO, try to get the family, the kids to come watch on this platform. But as they've kind of gone through this process, they realized that it didn't make sense to ditch their most iconic brand. It didn't make sense to, you know, try to not draw attention to your best performing content.
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Chapter 4: Why is HBO Max reverting back to the HBO Max name?
So maybe it's a huge training aid for Sherpas who can zip up and down much more quickly. So there is a potential part of the community who does want to see it succeed because of the safety implications that it could have to make things more safe.
And you also don't want to think about what would happen if it doesn't succeed. But either way, if you're thinking of wanting to go on a trip with Zenon, it'll cost you. These guys are paying more than $150,000 each for a one-week trip up and down Everest. Good luck. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Starbucks baristas are mad at the company again.
More than 1,000 have walked out at 75 U.S. stores this week in protest of a new dress code that went into effect on Monday. The new dress code requires baristas to wear a solid black top and khaki black or blue denim bottoms, an outfit that the company says will help those green aprons stand out and create a more welcoming environment for customers going into stores.
Previously, baristas could wear a much broader range of shirts, including those with patterns. The employees who walked out say Starbucks is focusing on all the wrong things in its turnaround effort. As one in Hanover, Maryland noted, customers don't care what color our clothes are when they're waiting 30 minutes for a latte.
Yeah, Starbucks used to have a much stricter dress code. Back in 2016 and prior, they only allowed baristas to wear black and white shirts, but then they relaxed that and let them do different colors, and it became a key part of just the expressions of these individual workers.
But now, I mean, Brian Nichol has a game plan literally called Back to Starbucks, so of course he's looking back into the history to some of its more successful periods. So you can see the allure of just saying, hey, we want the coffee to be front and center. just take out every other variable. Let's make the shirts black.
But then you start getting into the nitty gritty of what this dress code actually means. They only gave two free shirts to employees. So they have multiple shifts. They're going to go out and buy clothes. And then you take a step back and go, is this actually the most important thing? But maybe everything adds up on the margin. So you can see it both ways here.
But yeah, clearly it's rubbing a certain group of employees the wrong way. Well, yesterday was a holiday for a lot of Americans as the NFL finally released the full schedules of all 32 teams. As always, the defending Super Bowl champions kicked the season off with the Neils, Philadelphia Eagles playing a game against a charity team. I mean, it's rivals the Dallas Cowboys on September 4th.
There are a record seven international games this year as the NFL continues its slow expansion towards worldwide domination.
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Chapter 6: What’s the story behind CERN turning lead into gold?
Finally, vindication for Nicholas Flamel. Alchemists everywhere are hooting and hollering after scientists announced they successfully turned lead into gold. This isn't medieval sorcery or abracadabra. It happened at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, where physicists sent beams of lead whizzing right by each other, creating an
electromagnetic field that ejected three protons out of lead atoms, turning them into gold atoms. Unfortunately, no one is getting rich off of this. According to the register, the gold transformation lasted for about a microsecond and weighed less than a fart in a vacuum.
You know who the big winner here is? It's CERN, because they are trying to build a successor to the Large Hadron Collider. And that tunnel's gonna be 56 miles long, three times the size of the current collider. And you wanna know how to get people on board with a project of that size? Turn some lead into gold. But you are right. Maybe people are thinking, oh, lead into gold.
Maybe you self-fund this billion-dollar project. No, it's going to take a while because even though the scientists created 86 billion gold atoms, that only weighs up to 29 picograms, which is about eight trillionth of a gram. So get to colliding, sir, because you got a lot of gold to make. And now a word from our sponsor, Iterable. Neil, last weekend... I went to a party. Very social of you.
But I made a terrible mistake. I trusted the group chat when they said it was a costume party. Oh, no. Yep. Showed up as Shrek. Full green face paint. Turns out it was a baby shower in a brownstone. Toby, never trust the group chat. Don't I know it. But somehow that's what brands do every day when they rely on outdated campaigns.
They think they know what the customer wants, but they're just trusting the group chat.
Iterable fixes that. It replaces guesswork with real-time data-driven engagement so every message meets the customer exactly where they are.
No more lobbing out random emails and texts and hoping they land and drive sales. With Iterable, your marketing can be always on, always in the right moment, and never showing up in green face paint. Stay relevant, stay invited. And never trust the group chat. Visit endthecampaign.com for more.
After a brutal year for Boeing, filled with door plugs flying off, production halts, and Senate grillings, the skies are finally kind of clearing. It just landed its biggest ever order, with Qatar Airways agreeing to purchase up to 210 wide-body aircraft in a deal worth $96 billion, though discounts are expected. The deal comes as President Trump is considering using a luxury Boeing 747 jet,
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Chapter 7: What challenges has Boeing faced with the Air Force One project?
Many predicted this when ChatGPT was released in the fall of 2022. Toby, you labeled it the most powerful cheating tool ever created, and it has lived up to that promise. Usage took a big dip during the summer of 2023 when kids left school, and the same pattern occurred in 2024.
College administrators and professors are miles behind the eight ball, unable to create effective policies around AI usage or enforce them when it's clear someone is cheating. An opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education warned of a quiet disaster unfolding in college classrooms around the country. Toby, this is the Wild West.
Yeah, this was very easy to see coming. When you have an all-knowing assistant in your pocket, of course students are going to utilize it. But I think what has taken some people by surprise is how professors are utilizing it as well. I mean, professors have a lot of work to do as well. you know, in addition to his students.
So maybe the sirens call of AI is something that we should have expected there as well. But this New York Times piece was filled with students noticing that some of their prompts in their lecture series that they're listening to their professor give were filled with distorted images that were clearly AI generated.
Some students actually have gone and requested refunds for their tuition because they said, I don't want to come here and be taught by AI, just like you don't want me to submit AI work myself. But then a lot of other teachers are saying like, hey, it's helped a lot because now I can develop custom custom chat bots to help aid with people who want questions but don't want to come to office hours.
They can help me develop my lesson plan. So it really has been an interesting infiltration at the highest levels of education that professors are adopting, not just students.
Numbers are absolutely growing in a national survey of more than 1,800 higher ed instructors last year. 18% described themselves as frequent users of generative AI tools. They did the survey this year again. That percentage nearly doubled. So professors are wising up to the fact that they could use AI in addition to students in order to make their lives easier.
And I'm just thinking of, you know, if I was a teacher and I wanted to see whether you read the first couple chapters of Great Gatsby, I'd probably ask ChatGPT to make a quiz that asks whether you read Great Gatsby instead of me making it. Obviously, there is a line to toe that students are, you know, very happily to blow past.
And I was kind of rolling my eyes at some of these pieces of students submitting AI work, because to me, that's just bad cheating in general. And that New York mag piece did have students saying like, mainly what I'm learning out of college is how to manipulate these systems to make them not look like they're AI generated. He says, you,
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Chapter 8: How are professors and students differently using AI tools in education?
So it seems like this reintroduction of HBO is... Is it a mission by Warner Bros. Discovery that maybe they shouldn't have dropped it in order to let 90 Day Fiance live side by side with Tony Soprano? Sure, it took a while to get there, Neil, but probably the right move.
If I was interviewing a comms person for my company, I'd probably use this as a case study. I'd say, okay, You know, we made the decision to go from HBO, from Max back to HBO. You know, you're going to get roasted all around the Internet. What is your game plan? How to develop a comprehensive strategy from a corporate comms perspective to make this the least embarrassing it could be? I think
HBO Warner Brothers did a pretty good job at this. They released the ultimate spin zone corporate statement to get ahead of this. They called the decision a testament to Warner Brothers Discovery's willingness to keep boldly iterating its strategy and approach, leaning heavily on consumer data and insights to best position itself for success.
And then on social media, they went in the complete other direction, kind of roasting themselves in multiple, multiple posts on X, sort of acknowledging just how ridiculous this name changing branding exercise has become.
Yeah, they definitely threaded the needle. They just got out ahead of it all on social media. They made all the jokes that we were going to make. We still made the jokes because it is a very funny process. But I do think this all kind of stems back to Netflix in a way, because Netflix has been the clear winner of the streaming wars. We've known that for a while now.
It's sitting at over 300 million global subscribers. And it was part of the reason why Warner Brothers and Discovery merged in the first place is that they were trying to compete with this end-all be-all streaming platform and make some gains and try to catch up to Netflix's subscriber numbers. And so in terms of pure output, it was a smart decision to bring it all under one unified brand.
call it Max, ditch the HBO, try to get the family, the kids to come watch on this platform. But as they've kind of gone through this process, they realized that it didn't make sense to ditch their most iconic brand. It didn't make sense to, you know, try to not draw attention to your best performing content.
And maybe Dr. Pimple Popper and 90 Day Fiancé wasn't ever meant to be on the same platform as, you know, these high prestige TV shows. So I do think that It was a roundabout way. Sometimes you pivot so hard you end up exactly back where you started, but it's probably the right place for them to be. Up next, we got some Neal's numbers coming your way.
Neil, you know that one friend who holds the group together? Like when you're on a trip abroad, they've checked the weather, done the research, and know the currency conversion. Without them, we'd be lost, literally and figuratively. And here's the good news.
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