The NFL Has a CTE Problem & Dolly Parton Dies at 80

Good morning, Brudalee Show, I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, a billionaire investor causes a stir by using AI to write a column. Then an ad for a YouTube golf channel went viral for all the wrong reasons. It's Wednesday, August 26th. Let's ride. [MUSIC PLAYING] When you receive tributes from Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Pitbull, Eminem, Jeff Bezos, the Empire State Building, President Trump, and the Democratic Socialist of America. And seemingly every single one of my group chats, you know you did something right. Yesterday, Dolly Parton, a uniquely beloved figure in American life, died at 80 after a brief battle with cancer. The best-selling female country music artist of all time, Dolly rose from poverty in Tennessee to sell more than 160 million albums worldwide, writing immortal songs such as 9 to 5, Jolene and I will always love you. Beyond her music, interacting, and her business ventures that included Dollywood, Parton was a prolific philanthropist, delivering more than 200 million books to kids through her imagination library, giving $1 million to Moderna's COVID vaccine research, and creating a bald eagle sanctuary among many other projects. Toby, we lost one of the greats. Perhaps the great. I'd never forget this story we did on a UMass u-gov poll from earlier this year, where 70% of Americans had a favorable view of Dolly, the highest percentage of approval by far of any person. We can't agree on anything, but most people can agree that they loved Dolly. She was twice as popular as Taylor Swift. Thankfully, we have a little more Dolly to come. She left an unreleased final song called "My Place in History" that is stored in a wooden box in Dollywood that will be opened on Parton's 100th birthday in 2046. I just hope we make it to then so we can hear Dolly's last song. - Yeah, there are so many amazing stories and videos and clips being shared. This one stuck out to me though. This was shared by Eminem, Marshall Mathers, and it went super viral yesterday, and the lesson is right to people unsolicited, just telling them how much you appreciate them, because this was a letter that Dolly sent to Eminem after he was inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame, and she wrote, "Your performance was amazing," and everybody said, "so even though I don't know a lot about rap music, I've come to know that you are the very best at it." Aside from that, I hope what I have to say will not seem weird or strange to you, but I have always felt some unexplained connection to you, like I know you somehow. Keep doing what you're doing because you do it so well, and no matter how complex your world may be, just know you are very special and touch people in ways you don't even know. - Class act. And now a word from our sponsor, American Express. Neil, I am all go. - You're what? - I am up the wall. I'm non-stop. I am busy, which is why I appreciate the American Express of Business Platinum Card. It's built for businesses that deserve more. - With a suite of statement credits on purchases with brands like Dell, ChatGPT Business, Adobe, and more, plus the ability to add up to 99 employee cards, Business Platinum helps you do more business. - So while you're focused on running a business that doesn't slow down, the American Express Business Platinum Card is built to back you every step of the way. - Learn more at go.amx/morningbrew and find out your welcome offer, which could be as high as 300,000 membership rewards points. That's go.amx/morningbrew, offer and benefit terms apply. Wall Street has spent the last week dunking on Treasury Secretary Scott Besson for his unusual intervention into the bond markets, but on Monday evening, one surprising figure jumped on the pig pile, billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller, who criticized Besson's maneuver as a serious mistake. And it's so shocking because this would be like a gust, Gusto, turning on Remi. Druckenmiller used to be Besson's mentor when they both worked at George Soros' firm in the '90s. However, Besson's drastic move to Seuth Bonds was a step too far and a widely shared Wall Street Journal op-ed, Druckenmiller argued the government should quote, let the bond market speak and describe Besson's actions as ineffectual and self-defeating. Governments, defending prices against fundamentals, always lose, he wrote. The only variable is how much they spend before conceding. But just as everyone was digesting Druckenmiller, dunking on his young padawan, another plot twist emerged that shifted the conversation entirely. Using detection software, online slew's discovered that he had used AI to write the opinion piece. And when asked about it by the site notice, Druckenmiller owned up to it saying, "Of course I used AI to write the column. Adding, I'm not embarrassed by it. I write everything using AI. Now for the same reason I use a calculator when I do math problems." So Toby, two levels of intrigue here. First, Druckenmiller going after Besson, but also a much larger conversation about the future of writing in the AIH. - Let's start with the first part because it is juicy. We were kind of discussing, yes, AIH. Should we cover this story? It's a little like insider finance, but it really has a lot of intrigue because of the relationship between Druckenmiller and Besson. And the fact that when they worked together, some of their biggest trades came from recognizing this exact situation where governments were attempting to defend or manipulate prices that the market believed was not sustainable. So if a government says the price to be this and the fundamentals say it should be this other thing, then usually the fundamentals end up winning. And that is what Besson spent his entire career exploiting. So it is such a delicious twist of irony that he's on the other side of the coin now. That is why it's got so much intrigue to this, in addition to this crazy AI subplot as well. - Yeah, just a quick recap of what he was criticizing and what Besson's move into the bond market was. Well, he doubled the buybacks from the treasury to these long-dated deals that had soared above 5.5%, but where the biggest level since the financial, before the financial crisis in order to bring down the borrowing costs across the economy, well, it took yields down for one day and then they jumped right back up, which showed that the move was ineffectual and a lot of analysts and now Dr. Miller is saying, Besson, you know that you can't really use this interventionist move, you have to, as Dr. Miller wrote, let the bond market speak, use it as a signal. And he wrote, if the 30 year must trade at 5.5% to clear, this isn't a crisis, it is an invoice, to the only thing that derbly lowers long-term yields, address the primary deficit. That was the main point of this conversation. You have to address the underlying fundamentals. You can't do this financial maneuvering in order to bring down bond yields. What you need to do is rein in government spending because that's what bonds investors are going after. - That was a perfect segue into the AI conversation because the line you just quoted is one of the lines people pointed to that showed, it's not X, it's Y, that sort of AI framing that kind of leaks its way into LLM assisted writing. So this AI subplot really has thrown this entire conversation on its head, Jason Calicanas, which is a big investor said, if you can't be bothered to take the time to write your own opinion piece, that should tell you it's not worth publishing. But then on the other side of the coin, actually you go to Chamath, which is Jason Calicanas' co-hosts in the All-In podcast. He said, "It's Stan Dr. Miller isn't embarrassed to be a meat proxy, which is a new word for the human in the loop of these AI conversations." You shouldn't be either. It's like after matches were invented, still celebrating the arduous time to rub two sticks together. So those are kind of the two camps that are forming on this AI assisted writing debate. Should you discount Dr. Miller's words because he had the assistance of an LLM? Should the Wall Street Journal have better fact checking approval processes to actually publish this opinion piece? It opened a lot of questions that actually overshadowed a lot of the policy grade. And the Wall Street Journal defended its policy here, the editorial page editor said, AI is a fact of modern life. People will use it to assist in their work in their writing, including with research, checking grammar, editing, and more. So he said, "This is fine because we just want to make sure it reflects the author's original argument." So all good on the Wall Street Journal front. I don't know if they were prepared to issue a statement on this, but they were asked and they said, "Yeah, all good with us." And then on the other side, you had the financial times. Recently, this one, Viral, there's a Harvard professor who was accused of using AI to write an opinion article for the financial times. And then when the financial times found about it, they actually said, "Uh-uh, this is not okay." They wrote a disclaimer at the top of this column saying, "It has come to our attention that AI was used to condense a longer draft of this column prior to submission to the FT in our own editorial involvement." The FT editorial code of context specifically prohibits the use of AI in the writing process. So you have Wall Street Journal over here, financial times over here and there was huge debate unfolding on social media around the use of AI. Some say in favor of this that investors and CEOs have used underlings and ghost writers to write opinion columns and books for ages. So why would AI be any different on the other camp? You said why would a opinion department at a newspaper pay a columnist to write a column using AI when maybe they could just say, and not pay the $200,000 a year and say, okay, make me an opinion piece in the voice of this particular person that reflects their arguments or opinions, super interesting debate on two levels, Druck and Miller going after his mentor, or his mentee as well as the larger conversation about what is writing in the AI age. Moving on, American workers have been exposed to a plethora of safety hazards throughout history, but one type of career might be the most risky of them all, professional football player. A major new study released yesterday in the British Medical found that at least one in four people who played in the NFL could exist. expect to get CTE a degenerative brain disease. Researchers from Mass General Brigham looked at all the football players who appeared in at least one NFL game in their careers and who died between 2016 and 2021. Their conclusion, a minimum of 25% had CTE when they died. It's an astonishing number. David Michaels, the former head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration during the Obama years, told The New York Times, "There are workers who've been exposed to high levels of a spestous exposure, which leads to a very high rate of lung disease, and certainly a lifetime working in coal mines leads to very high risk of black lung disease. But a degenerative, neurological disease I've never seen anything comparable." CTE was first scientifically linked to football 20 years ago, and since then many high-profile players have been diagnosed following their deaths, including junior say-out and Aaron Hernandez. It is a progressive neurological disease who symptoms include impulsive behavior like addiction, memory loss, and severe mood swings brought on by repeated impacts to the head. We knew it was a huge problem affecting not only football players, but other athletes and military veterans. But until this study, we didn't have an actual number to assign to it. Now we know 25% at minimum. So the NFL's response to this was a statement saying the NFL continuously strives to make the game a football safer, including by implementing strategies to reduce concussions and head impacts. But let's look at a recent rule change that came last season. Last year they changed the touchback when you kick off the ball to the 35 yard line from the 30 yard line. The idea was to incentivize teams to put more balls into play because that's more exciting for fans to watch. And that definitely did happen. More kickoffs did get put in play, but as a result, concussions spiked because kickoffs are always going to be a time where you have a lot of people running full speed at each other. And again, player safety might take back seat to the entertainment factor, which has been the criticism that has been lobbed the NFL's way for decades now. We'll see if this latest study does anything to change that approach going forward. Yeah. The lead author of the study, Dr. Daniel Doneshvar, said, we know what's causing this. Everyone knows what leads to CTE and it's repeated impacts to the head over a life cumulatively. So it is, there's a risk factor is zero if you're not getting bashed in the head all the time. He said this should be used as a call to action to address youth football leagues like let's just not have tackle football until a certain age because if we just delay the amount of times these people are getting hit in the head, then we will delay the onset of CTE. And another area of research here is diet being able to diagnose CTE before a person dies. Because right now, it's really grim. But what happens is a football player dies young after, you know, maybe showing signs of CTE. This is their spouse or their family, donates their brain to one of these brain banks, like the one that was used at BU for this particular study. And then they're able to clinically diagnose CTE now. So a new frontier of research is trying to figure out who has CTE while they're living. Because right now this is sort of retrospective. It's 2016 to 2021. We want to know what's happening in real time in the NFL right now. Let's move on. When Dick's sporting goods announced the acquisition of Foot Locker back in May of last year, analysts were puzzled. Was it a good idea for Dick's who was crushing it to spend $2.4 billion on a retailer whose sales were flagging? Was it a good idea to increase their exposure to struggling shopping malls? Well, nearly a year later, we have our answer. And it is absolutely not. The analysts were right. It was not a good idea to buy Foot Locker, whose putrid worse than expected performance in the latest quarter. Drag Dick's stock down 30% for its largest single day drop ever. The two brands are moving in totally different directions. Dick's comparable sales rose nearly 5% while Foot Lockers fell nearly 4. Dick's chairman Ed Stack told investors we're going to go through some pain. The pain it's seeing is that consumers simply aren't spending a lot of money on footwear. And if they are, they're expecting brands to discount them heavily, leading to an industry wide promotional race to the bottom. Dick's would probably pay $2.4 billion to not be in the shoe business right now because everywhere you look, it is carnage. Nike is down nearly 40% this year while shares in on and under armor are down at 20% in the past month alone. When the acquisition was announced, Dick's expected to return Foot Locker to growth by this year's a back to school season. But that timeline looks out of reach no matter how late school gets underway in the Northeast. You know, despite all of that, Chairman Stack is sticking by the decision. Right now, I'm sure some of you are kind of scratching your head, he said. So we absolutely believe long-term, this was the right thing to do. Yeah, I guess he can take solace that he is far from the only consumer company that's had a pretty rough earnings go out at Walmart had their worst trading day since 2022. They reported their weakest U.S. sales growth and more than six years, the S&P's consumer discretionary index is down 5% over the last month. Back on Friday, we had this U.S. consumer center report that was really bad dropped heavily. So all of these consumer companies are not doing, well, this earnings season, Foot Locker which combines a lot of consumer companies and sells them in a retail store, Sneakers. That's the most, maybe discretionary purchase you can get because you can always get, you know, a few more miles in your sneakers is seeing a lot of slow down and Stack chalks it up to geopolitics. He said consumers are more cautious due to the war in Iran and inflation and it's just that's what the environment we are in right now. He also said that footwear became increasingly promotional last quarter and so what does that mean is basically the shoes that Foot Locker sells are also sold other places like on the website of the brands themselves and if they start discounting them to consumers, then Foot Locker goes, well, I guess we have to discount too because you can't be buying the exact same Nike's here that are more expensive versus what you could buy them for on Nike's website and they actually made the decision to go down that promotional rabbit hole so as not to lose market share. So that is kind of why he's saying yes, it's very painful right now but over the long term we think that we're going to keep a grip on the market share we have. We're going to whether this geopolitical storm right now and on the other side we do think that we have to know how we have the scale to turn this a puppy around but I think one of the reasons why Wall Street kind of freaked out is the fact that what changed in the past 90 days, if you go back three months ago, Dix was raising guidance and sounded very optimistic. How could you be this far off? How could you tell people with a smile that hey, I think things are turning around and then you report earnings and everything goes to heck. That is why you saw Wall Street, you know, a cut, take a 30% haircut of Dix in this latest earnings call. And another trend I'm watching is we actually did this as a Toby's trend when you were out that people are shifting to more formalware and they're not wearing as many sneakers anymore. And Dix said that actually we are seeing consumers shift to brands like Ugg and Birkenstock instead of the more legacy lifestyle sneakers that that full locker sells. So pretty interesting shift is to look at, I don't know if this is, you know, how long this will last but we're certainly seeing it in the data. The broader trend of people just going to more loafers and Birkenstocks rather than wearing Nike dunks. I just look down. I'm still wearing sneakers right now. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with a story about that ill-fated golf ad right after this cyber security as we know it is dead. It's a figure of speech, but the truth is the old model was built on protection, safety nets recovery plan systems designed to withstand the last era and maintain the status quo. The AI era demands confidence that you can secure and accelerate your business operations so nothing stops your momentum. Rubric can give you that confidence. Their singular platform is designed to secure your data, control your AI and protect your identity built as one architecture, not stitched together after the fact. To learn more, head to rubric.com/mb, that's r-u-b-r-i-k dot com slash mb. When it comes to AI's value, the picture is about as clear as swamp water. Case in point, 43% of CEOs report revenue gains or cost reductions from AI, but nearly the same numbers say they're still stuck. That's why PWC advises a value over volume approach. Many companies gauge AI progress based on how many models or agents are deployed, but impact actually comes from connecting data, workflows, and decision making into a coordinated operating model. Learn about turning AI investment into results at pwc.com/us/brueai. When you think of big companies in Corp in America, you tend to believe they have their act together. They make millions, employ hundreds, and generally appear buttoned up. But sometimes things happen to remind you that there's always an egg inches away from their face. Case in point, the gigantic screw ups we've seen in the recent days. You may not have known about good, good golf, a media in a parallel brand with over 2.1 million YouTube subscribers, but after it aired, an ill-fated ad last week, it's broken containment from the golf world. Good, good. Posted a 60-second spot for its co-branded Callaway driver, but somewhere in the creative process signed off on a scene where one of the channel's male personalities shoves a woman on the roster to the ground for trying to touch his new club. It attracted immediate backlash with ex-commenters calling it "very scary" and a "generationaly stupid ad" before it was eventually taken down. It was especially shocking considering good, good-race $45 million in funding last March and is sponsoring an official PGA tour event this November. Not to mention Callaway, a billion-dollar brand in its own right was involved in the approval process. two. Both companies have since issued apologies with good good CEO clarifying that the ad was meant to parody the horror movie obsession and Callaway reiterating that it is "unequivically against discrimination, domestic violence, or threatening behavior of any kind." But Neil, the comments under this video range from horror to pure bafflement as to how it made it through multiple rounds of filming and editing without anyone saying, "Maybe we shouldn't post this." I think the key word that you just said was "apologies" because there have been multiple rounds of apologies because the first ones were extremely lame. So on Saturday, as this whole thing was blowing up, good good came out and said, "In a statement, we posted a video to our channels that ultimately depicted actions that are not aligned with our values as a brand. We've since taken that content down and sincerely apologize. Good good was always stood for making the game of golf more inclusive to all and we will continue to ensure that that is our mission moving forward." That was the apology initially and people said, "Whoa, that is not good enough. Have you seen the video?" And if you watch the video, your job will absolutely drop. Callaway also issued apology that day as well. And then in the day since they've had to issue more and individual CEOs have had to speak out, and even then those apologies have landed on deaf ears. And it works its way all the way up to the PGA tour, which is partnered with Good Good on this particular event coming up in November that, "Who knows what's going to happen?" And when asked about this particular apology initially, PGA tour CEO, Brian Roleps, said yesterday that he was not initially satisfied with it. I think what we saw was concerning and is clearly not aligned with PGA tour values, we take it very seriously. I think their initial response was disappointing. It was a bit defensive and late, but I think the responses are getting better. But you're right, the follow has lasted multiple days because in terms of PR crisis management, they've done a bad job. Yeah, I think when this first broke, I thought it was a golf world story, but it really has expanded into a bigger business story, too, because golf Galaxy has gotten involved. This is a very big golf retailer. They were an advertiser for a show that was coming hosted by Good Good called Big Break on the golf channel. They actually said, "Please postpone that debut that was supposed to happen this week because we want to remove all our branding from anything associated with Good Good. And then, too, apparently, golf Galaxy employees were told yesterday, urgent message, clear all Good Good merchandise from ourselves immediately and a lot of these store employees spent like hours pulling head covers, pulling apparel, pulling golf balls away that had Good Good branding on it. So it absolutely is spilling into the business world. The big question here is, how does something like this make it through approval processes? And some advertising industry watchers were saying, "This is what happens when you go down kind of the personality and influencer driven rabbit hole." It used to be that you had an agency that helped you with your advertising. It goes through all these rounds of things, but if you're Good Good Golf, you're used to pumping out multiple videos every single day, and maybe you just move too fast, and that's why the approval processes were not in place. It doesn't excuse what was actually posted, but that's why some people are saying, "This is just the reality we live in. It moves much quicker in advertising these days than maybe like the dawn draper days of old." Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Canada just launched its latest volley in the rapidly escalating trade war with the US, in response to Trump's tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. Canada unveiled its own tariffs on $20 billion worth of American goods set to go into effect the day after Labor Day September 8th. The list of affected items includes motorcycles, washers, and dryers, chainsaws, processed cheese, and frozen octopus, while tariffs on steel and aluminum will double from 25% to 50%. Canadian officials frame the response as protecting market share for industries that will suffer as a result of US tariffs, while other analysts claim that the tariffs are designed to disproportionately hurt businesses in Trump leaning Republican states. It's a huge gamble for Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, one of the few world leaders who has stood up to Trump while others have bent the knee. He has public opinion behind him now, but tariffs will raise costs for Canadian consumers, testing the will of the people amid this economic battle. So this debt for tat has been happening, and what did Trump threaten back more tariffs? No, he wrote on true social. The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don't expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer. The old threatened to rename a body of water approach. We saw this earlier with Gulf of America, slap America on some body of H2O, and clearly that means we're winning. So it's just a very funny that somehow, how did Lake Ontario get looped into this? But of course, it got looped into this. So the way I have to remember Great Lakes now is not going to be homes. It's going to have to be hams. Oh god. I don't know if I can do that. It doesn't roll off the tug. All right, moving on. France is going super sane. President Emanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are teeming up fusion dance style to open up a dragon ball Z theme park in France that will cost roughly $7 billion. The complex is being built north of Paris and came together because Macron and MBS apparently bonded over a shared interest in the comic and a passion for manga. Macron compared the scale of the project, which is expected to create 22,000 jobs to the arrival of the mouse in France. Nothing like this has been seen since Disneyland Paris, he said. Neil Macron is pointing to this park as an example that his choose France initiative that aims to attract investment in the country from global companies is working. But key details still need to be worked out in the construction could end up taking longer than Goku and Frieza's battle. I don't think it matters to produce area because he already booked his flight to Paris. He is so pumped about this and I'm sure a lot of other people are I think it shows just the global reach of Japanese culture. The fact that the Saudis are building a manga theme park outside of Paris because it's about Japanese comics and media. I mean, that's just pretty incredible to show how they've exported their culture to the rest of the world. It's kind of a cautionary tale though because Disneyland Paris was cited as the example of look at this investment coming in the country. But according to a Guardian report from a few months ago, Disney has still not recouped its 4.2 billion dollar investment in Disneyland Paris more than 30 years after building it. So maybe it's not going to be as big of a boondoggle as either the park owners or you know, Paris France is going to expect. All right, we close out every Wednesday show with suggestion box where Toby and I each share a recommendation to get you over the hump of the week. I'll go first if you don't mind Toby. My wreck is for all the job seekers out there. Consider including a unique hobby or two on your resume. In a world where AI is turning out generic resumes by the thousands, recruiters say showing a quirky side of your humanity could help you stand out. Kate Redder-Sheik, a partner at a global legal recruiting agency, told the Wall Street Journal that half of the associates she placed last year listed hobbies on their resumes. She chalks it up to hiring managers gravitating toward interesting people they wouldn't mind being in the trenches with instead of a wet blanket. There are a few rules though. One line at the bottom. That's it. Don't be generic. Don't say something like sports or music. Be specific like avid bird watcher or competitive crossword player and don't be totally random either include hobbies that imply office-related skills like discipline or work ethic. It feels like we're going down a slippery slope though because the same thing with college applications where you're like, oh, I did this, this, this and this and you can kind of over-inflate your credentials. I wonder if the hobby credential inflation is going to come like, oh yeah, I'm really into, you know, bird house making or metal working and then put them on the spot say, all right, show me your metal working or something like that because that's so easy to lie about. I know it's like a very pessimistic approach but I like the general concept but I feel like people might take it a little step too far. Well, this came to the foreback in January on Twitter when someone posted that they reviewed a resume that listed all the oil as an interest and then the person goes, that is not an interest. It's been hours and I can't stop thinking about it. There will not be an interview. Do you remember this and then people started talking about whether you should include something like this on your resume. There was a big olive oil pro camp saying, yeah, this is fun so I think that just speaks to a larger thing of, yeah, don't over-inflate your hobbies but maybe including a small tip that just stands out in the sea of resumes might be a good idea. I like it. All right, my recommendation is to not over-guess when your friend is telling you a story. What do I mean by that? So yesterday, for instance, our producer Ray asked, how much do you think tickets are to sit behind a bench at a warrior's nicks game next season? I knew it was going to be a big number but I guessed $3,000 and that was in order to give Ray his big moment to say $19,000. See, if I had guessed $25,000, the wind would have gone out of his sails and it kind of would have ruined the story. So my recommendation, which I think I saw in some Instagram video, is to let the storyteller have their moment always under-guess. Yeah, I love this because I have this one friend who always over-guess it because he makes you want to feel bad and just throws you for a loop. So if you come back the next morning, tell all your buddies and you say, guess how much I went at the craps table last night? He'll go like 75k and you're like, no, like 800. But I like this. I like undershooting instead of overshooting to make the person feel good when they're telling you your story, so that's something great to keep in mind. It's probably what Dolly would have done. Alright, that's all the time we have. Thanks for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Wednesday to share your thoughts on the episode or anything else. Send an email to [email protected] or DM us on Instagram @NBDailyShow. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our supervisor. producer. Raymond Lu is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham and our associate producer is Olivia Lake. Technical Direction by Nina Miller. Heron makeup is not working 9-5. Devon Emory is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.