Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Consider this comparison. PWC data found the percentage of CEOs who report revenue gains or cost reductions from AI is almost equal to the percentage who say they're still stuck. What separates these two groups? PWC points to a clarity issue. Even for CEOs, it's hard to tell what's AI hype, what's reality, and where this tech can make a tangible difference.
Learn where AI can actually make an impact and what successful adoption looks like at pwc.com slash us slash brew AI. That's pwc.com slash us slash brew AI.
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, why are young people so much more pessimistic about jobs than boomers?
Then, the New York Times is launching a Wordle game show. It's Tuesday, May 12th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
Good morning and happy Tuesday. Recess must be protected at all costs. And that's not just me saying it because I happen to dominate at Foursquare. A leading pediatrics group, the American Academy of Pediatrics, issued their first new guidance on recess in 13 years, urging schools to maintain unstructured time at school.
The group stressed that recess is critical for kids' growth physically, emotionally, and socially, but warned that recess time has been declining across America to prioritize test scores. Toby, what was your game at recess?
I was a big freeze tag guy, obviously. But famously, Neil, when he was on Kids Jeopardy, yes, this is a real thing, he was introduced by saying his favorite class was recess. So I know this hits very close to home for you. The only one I could get an A in. I am glad that the pediatricians are on it, though, because recess time is shrinking, like you mentioned.
Since the mid-2000s, around 40% of school districts have reduced or eliminated it, according to data from Springboard to Active Schools and the CDC. Older kids, too, generally get less time than younger ones, which brings me to my final point. Give adults recess, too. I would dominate some freeze tag. I would dominate you in Foursquare, too, right now.
Let's just have a break in the middle of the day.
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Chapter 2: Why are young Americans losing optimism about job prospects?
Sorry, Neil, were you trying to say something?
In fact, I was. Explore connectivity solutions that transform along with your growing business at att.com slash small business.
One of Wall Street's most famous short sellers is on trial this week, and the verdict could decide not just whether one man spends the next 25 years in prison... but if activist short sellers as a whole are allowed to keep doing what they do. Andrew Left is the founder of Citron Research, a short selling shop named after the lemons of the stock market.
Over the last two decades, he's targeted more than 50 companies, most famously, Valent Pharmaceuticals, but also names like GameStop, American Airlines, and Nvidia. Left's playbook is as follows. Pick a company he thinks is overvalued or fraudulent, publish a deliberately attention-grabbing Citron report, laying out the case against it,
amplify it on social media, and take a position against the stock, hoping it will fall after everyone else reads what he wrote. Prosecutors call it a kind of reverse pump and dump. They say that Left used his reads to make at least $16 million by misrepresenting what he actually held in his portfolio while quietly cutting deals with hedge funds on the side,
in timing it all around market-moving posts and TV appearances. Short sellers have long been a thorn in the side of corporate America, and as Georgetown's James Angle puts it, the SEC would, quote, love to have a short seller's scalp to show they take this seriously. Neil, this case, which started jury selection yesterday, is high stakes because the law left is charged under
Section 10 of the Securities Exchange Act is famously vague, which means a jury is essentially being asked to draw a line that has never really been drawn before. The main question here is, was left just sharing his opinion or engaging in market manipulation?
I think it's worth. doing a how it started, how it's going with short sellers because in the 2000s and the 90s, these guys were considered really cool pirates. Wall Street's Captain Jack Sparrow. They exposed fraud and overvalued stocks. They were hailed as bringing down Enron and Wirecard and warning about the 2008 financial crisis.
I mean, in 2015, there was a widely seen movie called The Big Short about Michael Burry who warned everyone on Wall Street about this impending collapse of the global financial system. So they were hailed as... essentially heroes. But then in the past few years, the reputation has completely flipped.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of Andrew Left's trial for short sellers?
And you can you also can't overlook the privacy aspect here. I mean, in 2021, BuzzFeed News found President Biden's Venmo account and all the people in his inner circle. It's just so easy to find this sensitive information on Venmo. And even now, when I go on to Venmo and I see like a public feed of people's posting who they paid and what I'm. It is baffling that people still do that.
But opting people into just the close friends setting initially, I think, fixes a big problem that Venmo has. And you can't deny the timing here. It is very notable. PayPal, which is Venmo's parent company, is now restructuring to spin Venmo off into a standalone business unit and then are giving us all this window dressing for Venmo. You wonder if they are
exploring a sale and a number of companies have pitched PayPal broadly on buying it because PayPal is not doing so well or just being buying it for parts, potentially Venmo.
Yeah, I have the numbers here. So PayPal stock is down 37% in the past year. Venmo, on the other hand, is killing it. In the first quarter of 2026, its total payment volume was up 14%. It's its sixth consecutive quarter of double digit growth. The app has over 100 million active accounts. and users visit the app more than 10 times per month.
So if you want to talk about a healthy business, even though they were walking uphill against some of the UI and UX decisions, that is a very successful app right now. So of course, PayPal, which is struggling as a company, is probably looking at cleaving it off into a more successful entity.
Okay, final question. What is the grace period that you think for reminding somebody to pay you that hasn't paid you?
I quite literally, so I had a car in college and my friends would borrow it and they would rack up a ticket here, a ticket there. I still have outstanding ticket requests to two of my friends. They just have never paid. It's unbelievable. So I think the grace period is never, the statute of limitations never ends because Will Stills owes me from a 2019 ticket he got back in college.
All right, we're gonna take a quick break and come back with Toby's trends right after this.
Neil, spring is here and I've totally refreshed my wardrobe. That's great. Have you thought about taking a fresh look at your finances as well? Will that make me more dapper? Can't hurt. Northwestern Mutual can match you with a financial professional who will work with you to build a plan based on what's important to you. That helps you grow your wealth and protect what you've worked so hard for.
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