Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, markets are reeling after Trump starts a trade war over Greenland.
Then, after saying they wouldn't, Chachapiti is adding ads. It's Tuesday, January 20th.
Chapter 2: What trade war is Trump threatening over Greenland?
Let's ride.
Greetings from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where the Morning Brew Daily team is recording podcasts and interviews and social media content all week. It's only been 48 hours on the ground, and as we're about to get into, there are a lot of world economic issues swirling that are going to be hashed out here. What are my impressions as a first-time Swiss Alps visitor?
Chapter 3: How is OpenAI planning to monetize ChatGPT with ads?
Thanks for asking. The mountains are indeed stunning. I need to get on cross-country skis ASAP, and the Swiss hot dog game is on point. Toby, what are your observations from Davos so far?
Yeah, I had a totally incorrect impression of what Davos is. When I heard conference, I thought one big building, convention space, everyone meets kind of at a central location. Not the case whatsoever. The whole conference is sort of distributed throughout downtown where brands and even countries take over retail locations as they're homes for a week. And some of these houses are wild.
USA House is in this big old church on the corner. It's rather ominous looking.
Chapter 4: What are the impressions from the World Economic Forum in Davos?
Palantir's House looks like a Malibu sushi restaurant. Lightspeed House, where we're recording from, is kind of this retro futuristic space. That's sandwiched between the South African delegation and an Italian restaurant. So it's all got this sort of chaos energy running beneath the surface that you get when you cram so many businesses and nations together. into a tiny Swiss mountain town.
And we're recording right in the middle of it, which is pretty cool. But first, a word from our sponsor, Indeed. Neil, I'm in the mood for fondue.
Well, what's the occasion?
Not that I need a reason to drink melted cheese, but it's because we're here at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week.
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You go away for a three-day weekend, and what do you come back to? A potential fully-blown trade war, not to mention diplomatic crisis. between the U.S. and Europe over who controls Greenland.
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Chapter 5: How are European countries responding to Trump's tariff threats?
So don't get it twisted. This thing is still a very big economic project. My big question is, can this work not in Vegas because Vegas is a tourism destination. It makes sense for residencies to take up place in Vegas because you get a new crowd every single night because there are constantly tourists flowing in and out of Las Vegas. That's kind of its main appeal.
That is not true for Washington, D.C. Are you going to be able to have, convince an artist to come down and stay there for a few months or something. Like, is U2 going to do a residency in D.C.? Does it have the tourism to support that sort of residency? That's the big question mark I have.
Your anti-Terp bias is showing. You clearly haven't been to National Harbor. Well, okay, National Harbor, for people who don't know, is basically this... Yeah, it's like a mini Vegas, a little south of DC on the Potomac. There's an MGM casino that they kind of just built a city. There's an MGM casino there. There are restaurants. There's a huge Ferris wheel.
And they do think that they can bring huge acts like you two or Zach Brown or Kenny Chesney there. And DC is a big tourism city. And But the thing is, it's going to be a little outside D.C. and PG County, Prince George's County, where if you haven't noticed, I've made a lot of Maryland references. I went to the University of Maryland, which is in Prince George's County.
That's suffered a lot of setbacks recently. There was going to be a huge FBI headquarters going to be that was going to be located there. Now it's not. They lost the commanders, which are going back to Washington, D.C. So they really have National Harbor to hang their hat on. So to a T, every local politician there is saying, this is so great.
And it's so interesting to contrast that with other places around the country, like New York City, or even the world like London that have pushed back against the sphere. It's really bright. You know, if you are located, if you live next to the sphere, it's probably a huge negative externality, like you probably can't sleep.
But National Harbor is away from most residential areas that they think that this is going to be a big local economic development win that they're willing to put forth $185 million in tax incentives to get it there.
Meanwhile, the Sphere is doing very well. Sphere stock, Sphere Entertainment Co., it's up 134% over the last year. It's profitable now in Las Vegas, which looked a little dicey for a while, but it made $150 million in net income in the quarter that ended June 30th. So this is a money-making machine. Now they have a mini money-making machine. in Maryland.
Yeah. The wizard of Oz has been doing really well. Remember they did this huge judged up a wizard of Oz. That's apparently generating $2 million a day. And they're hoping that it can drive the number, the share of people that go to Las Vegas to the sphere over 10% currently 7% of everybody who visits Las Vegas goes to the sphere. And they're hoping to just raise that percentage.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of Trump's tariffs on the US and European economies?
Unfortunately, it seems like Netflix also got that same advice and is bringing that repetitive energy to its own content. And it's something I want to talk about on today's edition of Toby's Trends. Matt Damon has a new movie out on Netflix right now called The Rip. And as part of his promo tour, he went on Joe Rogan's podcast to talk about the state of entertainment today.
In one soundbite that is going viral, he acknowledges the fact that more people are watching movies at home these days. And those home viewings usually involve a lot more distractions than a movie theater. Kids running around, lights on, pots boiling. And downstream of that distraction-filled environment are shifts in the movie-making business.
Big action sequences that used to hit in the third act have been dragged to the first five minutes to try and wrangle people's attention. But the biggest change is that Netflix is encouraging verbal repetition of plot details. According to Damon, filmmakers now get explicit guidance that it wouldn't be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue.
Once you realize Netflix is doing this, you can't unhear it. So Neil, at this set in Davos where we are recording a podcast episode, do you want to open your mouth and respond to me about this narrative phenomenon?
I would love to. Okay, quick defense of Netflix. Stating the plot of the movie is not necessarily new. We were watching A Mission Impossible last night. And we were absolutely cracking up at the amount of exposition that they were talking about.
But I think Damon is hitting on something here that people who are watching the last season of Stranger Things noticed a ton, which is that these characters were reiterating the plot and saying what happened and what they were about to do. Literally every five minutes, every single episode, they took out props and just essentially explained, you know, the plot of Stranger Things.
And this is apparently, according to Damon himself, coming from on high at Netflix and shows how, yeah, movie watching, TV consumption is changing. We're not in the theater anymore where we're essentially captives to a big screen. We're in our houses with a million different distractions. And Netflix is armed with more data than we know of.
So they know exactly how people are consuming their content when they're turning it on, when they're turning it off. So, you know, maybe they know something that we don't. Not maybe, they definitely know something that we don't.
Yeah, you can roll your eyes and blame Netflix for putting out what you might describe as slop, but actually look inwards and blame yourself because they do know that you are watching with your phone in front of your face. And I feel like everyone has experienced this where you want to show a movie to one of your friends and you look over and they have their... Oh, that's the worst.
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