Hey guys, it's Toby. Couldn't be here today because I'm at yet another wedding, but I come with an ask for you guys. Neil is running his first ever New York City marathon. His first ever marathon this Sunday. And since I can't be there to support him because I'm out of wedding, I want you guys to make as many signs as possible. So when he is running, he feels the love from the M.B.D. Faithful. I'm talking hundreds of thousands of signs if possible. So this is my call to you. Make Neil's first marathon special by making him a lot of signs. Thank you so much. And let's ride and let's run. Good morning, Brood Daily Show. I'm Neil Freeman. And I'm Olivia Lake. Today, the sudden collapse that's sending shockwaves across big law. And horror bookshops are the new hot hangout. It's Friday, October 30th. Let's ride. Happy Friday. Today, associate producer, Olivia Lake is stepping into the co-pilot seat, subbing in for Toby who I promise you this is not a joke is back upstate for another wedding. Halloween weekend wedding, fun or diabolical, not quite sure. Anyway, live, what are you being for Halloween? Well, it is kind of an inside joke on our team that I resemble Erling Holland a little bit. So I think I'm going to go as him. I think it it makes sense for this year. Yeah, he's the he's the soccer player who who went viral in the World Cup. I'm not going to be anybody. Thanks for asking. I'm taking a low key this weekend because on Sunday, I'm running the New York City Marathon. So I guess I'm going as a marathon runner. There you go. If you happen to be in the New York City area and want to come out and show your support on Sunday, I would appreciate it because I was thinking about this. I've never done something that I can remember that I am so uncertain about. I have no idea how this is going to go. Toby is a runner who's done many marathons. I am mildly athletic, but not a runner at all. So we're going to see what happens. I haven't really talked about it at all because I don't know what's going to happen. But if I do okay, then on Monday, I probably will dedicate the whole show. But yeah, if you are in the area, your support would mean the world. Yeah, I'm definitely coming out and I'm stealing one of those fat heads from the office of your face. And now a word from our sponsor, Liberty Mutual. You know, guess who is in my dream last night? Me. Nope, even better. I'll give you a hint. It rhymes with Liberty. Liberty, Liberty? Yep. That warm, fuzzy yellow guy who reminds you that it feels great to get great coverage and savings on your insurance. Oh, I know that feeling. Like when Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance to save you money. That's right. They go above and beyond to make sure you're not overpaying for your car insurance. Sounds like a dream. All right. Start your quote at Liberty Mutual.com. That's Liberty Mutual.com. DoorDash already delivers your dinner and now it's buying the company that delivers the groceries to cook it. DoorDash is acquiring Instacart for $17 billion the company's announced Thursday. The pitch is a bigger shopping network. Instacart users will get access to roughly 50,000 more stores on top of the nearly 100,000 already on the platform and people with both Instacart Plus and DashPass will only pay for one membership instead of two. It also makes the biggest player even bigger. Bloomberg data shows DoorDash handled about two-thirds of US food delivery volume in 2024. Investors seem to like the move with DoorDash shares up more than 9% in pre-market trading, despite the stock falling about a third over the past year on rising costs. Instacart, meanwhile, has been stuck. Its stock has barely moved in two years since Amazon and Walmart cut into its business. The savings from combining the companies would likely come from terming corporate staff and splitting expenses, but it's not clear if it would be enough to ease customers' worries who are already complaining about delivery prices. You know, whether you're ordering the whole meal or just the ingredients, DoorDash is now hoping you'll pay them either way. The big question is, will this deal go through? Because this is the largest grocery delivery app in Instacart and it's the largest restaurant takeout or delivery app as well in DoorDash. We're already seeing some backlash. Zoran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, posted this tweet or post on X saying, "Just last month DoorDash can seem to find the money to pay their deliveries, does until our administration force them to give back $131 million in stolen wages and penalties. This week, they managed to find $17 billion to acquire one of their main competitors. Corporate consolidation means higher prices, harsher exploitation, and greater economic inequality for New Yorkers. We've stood up to these giants before that doesn't stop now." And he's referencing a recent settlement paid by DoorDash. It was $131.5 million after underpaid or failed to pay over 260,000 delivery workers. He can get on X and post about this. I don't know how much power the New York City mayor has over a big corporate deal. That will probably lay in the federal administration, the Trump administration, has been far more lenient in allowing takeovers and mergers than the Biden era. That's why I think DoorDash and Instacart are trying to do this now because they're looking at the calendar. We've got the midterms coming up and then two years there might be a change in administration. So they want to get this through while they think they can in terms of an antitrust challenge. Yeah. And this deal has actually been a long time coming. The Wall Street Journal reported that Instacart's founder approached DoorDash about a merger in the summer of 2021. And they also went to Uber as well and neither companies bit. And Instacart's pandemic boom was already kind of fading by then. But at that time, Instacart was valued at about $39 billion. And the rivals weren't interested at that price. And so now DoorDash is buying it for $17 billion. So that's less than half of the old version. Yeah. So it reminds me of playing Pokemon on my Game Boy because when you would go to get a Pokemon, right, you would battle it and then wound it and then capture it. And that's exactly what DoorDash is doing with Instacart. DoorDash has been expanded. It's not just a restaurant delivery platform anymore. They've expanded into retail. You can get stuff from Macy's and Costco and they've done this big push also into grocery. And when they said they were going to go into grocery, Instacart's value plummeted. And so you said they probably didn't like a price of $39 billion. But that fell ultimately to $14 billion in part because of what DoorDash was doing and everybody's expanding into grocery delivery because this area, it's a very tough economics business, right? Like restaurant takeout and delivery, very low margins. And we already seeing DoorDash got a lot of pressure on its stock price because of that. But grocery delivery, I mean, you're ordering 50, 100, $150 a pop. It's much more profitable. So that's why DoorDash was moving into this space. That was spooking Instacart investors to begin with. And then now it got it at a much cheaper price. So yeah, if you want to make the metaphor about how it acquired Pokemon, I guess it's trying to catch them all. Yeah. And I mean, it's maybe a more profitable business model grocery ordering, but it's kind of tough to get right. Tony Shue, the chief executive of DoorDash, he said grocery is one of the hardest things to get right online. Someone has to pick a ripe avocado, find a substitute, you choose for yourself and get the ice cream to you before it melts. So they're kind of hoping that this merger will use the resources that DoorDash has and just make that experience better. But I've ordered groceries a couple of times when I'm deathly sick and I just cannot move. And it's tough. Like when you order dinner online, you know you're just going to get whatever the restaurant cooks for you. But if you are ordering produce or whatever, that's something you kind of want to feel or smell or see yourself. And it's a lot of work to put in every single replacement that you would want and hope that they get it right and hope that the things don't melt while they come to you. So we'll see if this merger kind of makes grocery ordering better as a whole. Yeah, that's why I think DoorDash is not doing it on its own to try it. And he's like, it's really hard. So why don't we just buy the company that started doing it pretty good already? Moving on, the U.S. economy received its report card for the third quarter. And by golly, it looks like mine the one semester I tried at school straight A's. Gross domestic product, the value of all the goods and services produced in the United States, search 3.4% last quarter, crushing pretty much everyone's expectations. It shows that economic growth is only accelerating and Q1 growth was 2.5%. The second quarter, 2.2%, and now we're putting up 3.4% the biggest jump in a year. I'm handing out two game balls, one, two AI and the other two consumer spending, which both put the team on their back last quarter. Whether you prove or not, the data center build out is juicing the economy. Thanks to companies shelling out for components and hiring construction workers, business investment rose nearly 13%. The biggest pops in 2020, and equipment spending surged 21%. The other bright spot was shopping. Despite a rebounded inflation, the Warren Iran and gloomy sentiment, regular Americans continued to add things to their car and then throw in another for good measure. Consumer spending rose a robust 3.8% led by purchases on hotels, restaurants, and healthcare. I know people may not be feeling it in their lives and we can talk about what that is, but on paper, this is a rip-roaring economy that's only growing faster. Yeah, and we should talk about how that spending is still going strong. When overall, we kind of feel the vibe that everything's too expensive and people are worried about prices, but spending is still so strong. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index just hit its second lowest reading on record this month. And I&G also points out that real household incomes are barely growing in a low-higher, low-fire economy. So why is that spending still so strong? Basically, it's because most of the spending is coming from higher income households. The CNN site's
data showing the top 20% of households account for about 40% of all spending. So it's that thing we've talked about multiple times. It's the K-shaped economy. The people closer to the top are really putting all of that consumer spending on their back. Yeah, I mean, I just looking at a lot of the earnings reports from more consumer companies. The past couple of weeks earnings season has just started. Royal Caribbean posted rising profits. People are paying for vacations and cruises if they're not getting stranded in Cambodia. Airlines said this too. We know that airline prices have been skyrocketing, but to a T they're all saying, yeah, people are still flying. Even Chipotle and Starbucks two consumer companies that have really been in the dumps the past few years reported strong results and their turnarounds are gaining pace. So even while inflation is eating at people's paychecks and we should say the average real income for Americans is negative for six straight months. That means inflation is outstripping wage gains. People are still spending and maybe that's where we see these two factors that are driving economic growth come into one because what's happening is AI is driving up stock prices. Not if you look at the stock market this morning, actually, everything is kind of collapsing. But over the past year and two years, if you have money in the stock market, you're doing really well and you're feeling flush because all these AI names have been going ballistic and that in turn makes you more confident to spend. So maybe these two things do have something in common, but I think the bottom line here says we approach the midterms is that while people aren't feeling it at least on paper, this US economy is one of its strongest it's been at least in a year if not even longer. Now it's time for stock of the week. Dog of the week where live and I pick one stock that got tricked and another that's a treat. I won the pre-show mummy rap race so I get to go first and my dog of the week is big law, which is reeling after the shocking collapse of one of its leading lights. This week, while gotchal and mangees, one of the most prominent and celebrated firms on Wall Street, said it was going to shut down its operations and move that left jaws on the floor at every legal office across the country. Because by all accounts, while gotchal was doing perfectly fine financially, you can even say strong. It has no debt, few liabilities and is the 15th most profitable firm in the United States. This is not a business you would typically associate with on the brink of going bust, especially with its pedigree while gotchal led the restructuring's of some of the biggest bankruptcies in history, like Lehman Brothers, Anron, and General Motors. But law firms, they're not like other businesses, relying disproportionately on their partners, the human talent to drive sales. And that talent was jumping ship. Since mid-September, almost two dozen partners got poached by bigger rivals, creating an accelerating downward spiral that spurred others to snag the last lifeboat off the Titanic. Other issues surfaced too, like a bungled succession plan to replace the top leader, and a failed merger whose purpose was to bulk up and stem the bleeding. What's really freaking out the legal world is that while gotchal could be a canary in the coal mine for an impending wave of collapses. If one of the most profitable legendary firms can get eaten by bigger predators, who else stands a chance? Yeah, there was a Bloomberg opinion piece that argued that while collapse kind of shows overall how the law industry and law firms now work a lot like banks. In the sense that they have these huge paychecks and destabilizing runs, top partners, they can make as much as $40 million a year. And that's kind of created a market where everyone's chasing the same few big stars. A legal recruiter told Bloomberg that the elite firms serving private equity may actually be more vulnerable now because the more rain makers you have with clients who will follow them if they leave, the more risk that is concentrated in just a few people. And so a couple of, if a couple of them leave, it can snowball into this run on the partnership even when the business underneath is strong and profitable. If you lose that human talent, like you said, the business can itself collapse. Yeah, everyone's basically, or at least if you are at the top echelon of this, you are a mercenary and you're probably getting calls all the time saying, here's a $20 million paycheck. Do you want to leave? And you're like, well, nothing's keeping me here exactly. They don't have non-compete in this world that like they do in other industries. And there is a little bit of irony about while not on the verge of filing for bankruptcy and going belly up because that was where it cut it. See, that was what it was known for. In 2008 and 2009, this business was going gangbusters with all the companies going bankrupt. Lehman Brothers, General Motors, Macy's was another one where it worked on. But then after the financial crisis where it did so well, it kind of rested on its laurels. So while the other law firms, the bigger ones got even bigger and reinvested those profits. The big comp here is Kirkland Analysis, which is a huge law firm that has been also poaching a lot of its talent. So while's revenue grew from a little over $1 billion in 2015 to just over $2 billion this year. Meanwhile, Kirkland Analysis revenue went from $2 billion in 2015 to over $10 billion this year. So that's what's really spooking the legal world here. The people who work for the tier of law firms that is while Godchell is that there's lay them in Watkins, there's Kirkland Analysis, these are the bigger law firms. They are becoming good at everything. They can hand out these lavish paychecks and they might send your firm into collapse if they call it the partners and you get this run on the partnership that's very similar to a run on a bank. Yeah. And you kind of mention it really quickly, the non-competed agreements. That's a thing in other industries here in America. But in the law industry in the UK, they have non-competed agreements. In the US, they don't. So if a partner gets a better offer somewhere they can leave and they can take their whole team and the clients with them. So I mean, even while's own co-managing partner told the financial times that he doesn't think job hopping is healthy. But Bloomberg says that it's hard to resist it if everyone's kind of doing it. Up next, why horror bookshops are absolutely killing it. If you're an e-commerce owner, your morning probably starts with a lot of tabs and make your brain start screaming. 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With AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with eligible trading. It has the most advanced iPhone camera ever and a big leap in battery life, so you can turn this deal into a long-lasting connection, connecting, changes, everything. Requires trade-in of $230 or more in eligible plan, terms and restrictions apply, subject to change, visit an AT&T store for details. My stock of the week is horror book shops because business for them is absolutely boo. Ming. Did I get you? Mm-hmm. Fewer Americans are picking up a book for fun these days, but horror is the exception. According to Serkana Book Scan, horror book sales are up roughly a third this year through August, and the genre now sells more than twice as many copies as it did in 2020. Shops built around it are opening up across the country with new ones in Washington State, Virginia, and Kansas since August, and another plan for Denver by the end of the year. They're hangouts as much as stores, with cult horror, VHS tapes, and the windows, book clubs, author readings, and theme drinks like a killer lumberjack latte. Owners told The New York Times a big draw is community, especially for women. Lauren Comer, who runs the twisted spine in Brooklyn, thinks readers like having a safe way to face how scary the real world can feel. Not only are the customers happy, but Comer says her bookkeepers are thrilled about all the business. Neil turns out people love the wholesome vibe of community mixed with share terror. Yeah, my horror book journey began and ended with Goosebumps. Shout out Arles Time, but that freaked me out. I still think about the one book where there was a plant in the basement, and it grew, and maybe ate everybody, but I still think about that, even when I read it when I was five. So I will not be visiting this, even though actually I might, because it does sound interesting, just to see what's going on there. The twisted spine is right down the street for me in Williamsburg, and I think you nailed it. This is not just a bookstore, especially these niche bookstores, like horror, like romance. They just are third places. People are looking for third places outside of the office, outside of their home, to meet other like-minded people. They have events. They have movie screenings. They have discussion clubs. There is a cafe typically. So these are places where you can find your community, and I think that's a huge reason for their success. And also they just have awesome names, right? Like the twisted spine is in Williamsburg, but you got the inked page and Overland Park Kansas that came online. The infernal annex in Olympia, Washington, the cursed page, and Stirbridge Mass Parallel Universe in Cleveland. So there's just a whole aura around these things, and they're absolutely crushing it right now. Yeah, and horror as a genre in general is thriving across mediums. We saw that with obsession.
and back rooms, the horror movie genre is great. And then also these, like, fright night experiences are doing well too. So it makes sense that now it's going into that bookstore realm. But it is interesting about who shops there and who the shop owners thought would be their customers versus who actually is their customers. Many owners said that they kind of expected it to be goth people or people who are into more dark things or present that way. And a lot of people are saying it's a lot of women. It's a lot of just regular people you wouldn't expect. I mean, one of the shop owners-- he said that when the store opened, there were a lot of closeted horror friends that had no outlets. And he assumed that his customers would be young men, maybe goths. But it actually was mainly young women who were coming to shop. So it's interesting to see how the genre kind of appeals to a larger audience. And again, we're seeing that in movies as well as books. And we're just seeing the rise of overall niche bookstores. So we're seeing horror, boom, and also the other twin genre that's also doing really well in terms of fiction sales is romance. Over the last two years, we went from having two dedicated romance bookstores in the United States. Now there are 20. And you can be sure there are more. So this is a pretty cool slice of an independent booksector that's doing really well right now. Last year, over 600 new independent bookshops opened across the United States, which is an 87% increase year over year, some of which were horror. Let's bring to the finish with some final headlines. Well, this is a wild story developing overnight. The largest crypto ice in history. Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, said that $6.3 billion worth of funds were affected, and it had suspended all withdrawals as it works to clean up the mess. Binance founder, Cheng Ping-Zao, said that all user funds are safe, and the company will cover all losses. We have a pretty good sense of who was behind the heist North Korea. Cybersecurity research firm said they had a high degree of confidence that the country's elite hacking unit Trader Trader was the culprit, a group that has pulled off some of the other major crypto heist in recent years. The details of this hack are still coming out, but one thing's clear, this is another embarrassing setback for a crypto industry that is still trying to appeal to the mainstream. Yeah, Binance's initial investigation suggests that the security incident may involve a compromised engineer's laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit an authorized withdrawal transaction. So that's just a friendly reminder to everyone out there to do your fishing training, because you do not want to be that engineer who's laptop got compromised. Right, because this is not just the largest crypto heist in history. This is being called the largest bank heist in human history, $6.3 billion stolen from Binance. Up next, a new Dune movie is coming out, which means it's the return of the weird-looking popcorn buckets. According to Variety, AMC just unveiled two collectible buckets for Dune Part Three. One is a sandworm thumper with a working version of the device the from and use to lure sandworms out of the sand. The other is a double sandworm with two worms on it, which AMC says makes the popcorn easier to share. It's a big sequel to a bucket that went viral in 2024 for looking, well, suggestive, and ended up in a Saturday night live sketch. Prices haven't been announced, but the Dune Part Two bucket cost $24.99 plus tax and per variety sold a lot more on resale sites. This is a serious business for AMC. Variety reports at CEO Adam Aaron projects more than $100 million is here from Theemed Buckets, a lineup that included a Trojan horse for the Odyssey and a sperm whale for whale fall. Neil, are you more of a thumper or a double sandworm guy? Well, I order everything family style. That's what I prefer. So I think I got to go with what is it called the double sandworm? They have to know what they're doing with the way this looks. I mean, they denied it the first time, but if you've seen a picture of this, they're like, you can't have put this out to the world in not knowing what kind of jokes people are going to make. But yeah, it's a huge business and pretty much every movie now comes with its own collectible collection as part of it because that's just a huge money maker on top of the box office receipts. And A24 just yesterday, I don't know if it was a coincidence or not, but they also released their own popcorn bucket. If you buy a ticket on their website too, you can see everything, which is the Nathan Fielder documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. And this is not suggestive at all. It's literally just like a clear bucket. And it just ties into the whole theme of the movie or the title, which is you can see everything. Man, I'm excited for Doom Part 3 though. I mean, I think that's gonna be a massive movie. I still haven't seen Doom Part 2. Toby is a big doon head, but I have seen Doom 1 and it was incredible. So I'm kind of holding out to see if they're gonna put Doom 2 in theaters because it's one of those movies you have to kind of see on the big screen. But if not, I will watch it at home and then I will absolutely be going to the theaters for Doom Part 3, whether that's with a double thumper or a double sandwich or whatever it is. I'll probably get it. All right, finally, my alma mater, the University of Maryland isn't having the best football season, losing five consecutive games and experiencing major attendance issues. So they're getting a little creative to keep students in the stands this weekend. For tomorrow's home game against Illinois, the school said that students who stay until the fourth quarter will be entered into a drawing to win free tuition for the spring 2027 semester. The award is capped at the equivalent of in-state tuition, but that still comes to $5,500. Live personally, I think this is a sad state of affairs for my school, but would the chance at free tuition convince you to spend your Saturday afternoon watching a miserable college football team? - Absolutely. College is so expensive these days if I could like bring my knitting or a book. I would just sit in those stands and write it out. I do feel bad for the players though. I feel like this is like, when your mom tells your siblings that they'll get like extra dessert if they come watch your talent show, like I can't imagine being that player being like the only reason these people are watching me is because of chance for money. - Yeah. - Yeah, it is a little sad. I sent this to all my friends and being like, look how low we've come. But, you know, hey, you got to get creative when people are leaving. I left in half time a lot of the times because it wasn't an amazing product to watch, even though if there was the promise of $5,500, probably would stay because it's a Saturday afternoon and it's probably gonna be a nice fall day down in College Park. So, I hope this works and the Terps fans show up and we get a win because, yeah, it's not going well. All right, that is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend to share your thoughts on the episode or anything else. Send an email to
[email protected] or DM us on Instagram @ambydallyshow. Let's roll the credits. Emily Millarne is our supervising producer. Raymond Lu is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham and our associate producer. And co-host is Olivia Lake, technical direction by Nina Miller, her make up is looking forward to an extra hour of sleep this weekend and our show is a production of MorningBrew. - Great show today, Neil. Have a great weekend. (upbeat music)
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