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cover of episode Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze

Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze

2025/4/17
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Neil Fryman
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Toby Howell
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Toby Howell: 我讨论了美国政府对向中国销售先进芯片的限制如何严重影响英伟达的收益,特别是其为中国市场专门设计的H20芯片受到新的出口管制,导致股价下跌。英伟达CEO此前与特朗普会面,对H20芯片销售预期落空,这突显出该公司在美中贸易战中面临的困境。H20芯片并非英伟达的顶级芯片,但其无法销往中国市场仍然是一个重大打击。英伟达认为自己已经满足了所有条件,但仍然受到芯片禁令的影响,这反映出美国政府将向中国出售半导体用于人工智能模型视为国家安全问题。美国政府出于国家安全考虑,限制对中国的芯片销售,以赢得人工智能竞争。 Neil Fryman: 我关注的是哈佛大学与特朗普政府的冲突,哈佛大学拒绝政府的要求,这标志着高等教育机构与政府之间对抗性关系的升级。政府冻结了哈佛大学22亿美元的研究经费作为回应,这可能对波士顿地区的经济产生重大影响。哈佛大学拥有巨额捐赠基金和良好的信用评级,能够应对资金冻结的影响,但捐赠基金大部分资金用途受到限制,无法直接用于弥补资金缺口。美国政府长期以来一直资助大学进行研究,这是一种互惠互利的合作关系,政府资助大学研究,以促进经济发展和人才培养。哈佛大学可以通过出售债券等方式来应对资金短缺,但政府与哈佛大学的冲突可能对科研产生长期影响,甚至可能影响到哈佛大学的免税地位。 此外,我还讨论了中国网红在TikTok上推广DHgate应用的情况,这些视频声称可以在该应用上以更低的价格购买奢侈品牌商品,DHgate允许消费者直接从中国工厂购买商品,价格更低廉。一些TikTok视频宣称,可以在DHgate上以极低的价格购买到与奢侈品牌同品质的商品,但通过DHgate购买奢侈品牌商品的低价商品可能并非正品。TikTok上的贸易战相关内容激增,成为新的贸易战场和舆论战场。一些品牌否认TikTok视频中所述的生产情况,许多品牌与其中国代工厂签订了保密协议,因此视频中的说法可能不属实。“dupe”文化在中国兴起,人们更关注商品质量而非品牌,“dupe”文化代表着消费者从追求品牌转向追求高质量商品的转变。 Neil Fryman: 我还分享了三个数据:越来越多的年轻人选择加入家族企业,这可能与就业市场竞争加剧和人工智能自动化发展有关;曼哈顿28%的房屋是通过信托购买的,这反映了财富转移的趋势,富有的父母帮助子女在曼哈顿购买房产,这反映了财富转移的趋势,在曼哈顿购买房产需要大量的资金,这使得富裕家庭的子女更有优势,“财富大转移”正在加速进行,这体现在房产交易中,父母通过信托购买房产,可以避免税收问题并保持交易的私密性,信托是一种常用的财富转移工具,可以避免税收和保持交易的私密性;3月份,价值20亿美元的iPhone从印度空运到美国,以应对潜在的关税,苹果公司空运iPhone是为了应对潜在的关税,这显示出企业应对关税不确定性的策略,苹果公司空运iPhone的举动,显示出企业为应对关税不确定性而采取的策略,消费者也在提前购买商品,以应对可能上涨的价格,许多企业都在囤积商品,以应对关税不确定性。

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Spotify experienced a major outage, impacting podcast listeners. The outage drove some users to YouTube, revealing differences in the commenting cultures of the two platforms.
  • Widespread Spotify outage from 6:20 a.m. to nearly noon Eastern.
  • Outage impacted podcast listening and music streaming.
  • Users migrated to YouTube, highlighting differences in commenting cultures across platforms.

Shownotes Transcript

Get ready to spring into action and into style with Lee. Lee's got all the classics from shorts and tees to carpenters and cargos, pastels and prints that can't help but pop, and selvedge denim, crop tops, and barrel-cut jeans to set the trends for spring and beyond. It's all stitched with the tried-and-true craft Lee's been known for since 1889 and you've loved since day one. So, ready?

set denim and get yourself over to lee.com spring good morning brew daily show i'm neil fryman and i'm toby howell today the gigantic economic stakes of the harvard vs white house feud then chinese tick tockers are slinging luxury goods directly from factory floors but are six dollar yoga pants legit it's thursday april 17th let's ride

Tap, tap. Is this thing on? Can you hear me? Okay, just checking because yesterday was a different story. Spotify suffered a widespread outage from about 6.20 a.m. Eastern to nearly noon, frustrating all of us who wanted to listen to podcasts or our day list in the morning. I'll say it, Toby. I was pretty much useless without my obsessed Pink Pilates princess early morning jams.

It was very funny to see all the Spotify listeners come over to YouTube. It was like two different MBD tribes making contact for the first time, and it was mostly peaceful. Some said, hey, it's kind of nice over here. I think I'll stay. So that was a nice byproduct of the outage. It's also two different commenting cultures, I've noticed. There's this core group of YouTube listeners who just want to be the first one to post a comment in the morning, so it's always just

First, second, third, ah, nice try. And then over on Spotify, there's this core group of listeners who just comment on audio quality a lot, which makes sense because it's an audio platform. Apple Podcasts, no idea what's going on over there because there's no comment section at all. But we love you all equally. Thank you for listening no matter what platform you do it on. And sorry again for the outage.

And now a word from our sponsor, Planet Oat. Neil, I was playing kickball over the weekend, classic rec league tilt, and it hit me just how important it is to have that one player who can do it all. The mythical utility player they can pitch, catch, sprint to first without pulling a hammy. It used to be me, but now the hamstrings are getting a little dicey. Anyway, when it comes to breakfast, you want Planet Oat on your team, and it's not just

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In the extended poker game that is this global trade war, another chip has been played, and it literally involves chips. Earlier this week, Nvidia disclosed in a filing that the Trump administration's clampdown on sales of advanced chips to China will impact earnings to the tune of $5.5 billion. That number comes from the fact that its H20 chip inventory now falls under new restrictions.

The H20 is a watered-down version of Nvidia's higher-powered H100 and H200 chips, one that was created specifically for markets like China where full-power chips are restricted. Earlier this month, the US government paused its restrictions on the sale of H20, but when you don't like your hand in poker, you have to exert pressure in other ways. I'm also realizing, Neil, that this poker metaphor is getting mighty confusing with all the chips flying around, but we persevere, and so will Nvidia, who had H20s

a rotten day in the stock market, falling just over 7% and bringing the entire chip sector down with it. The new export controls are an especially tough pill to swallow because Nvidia is fresh off announcing a $500 billion investment that will go towards building two supercomputer factories in the U.S., right in line with Trump's America-first manufacturing policies.

All in all, an annoying turn of events for the chip maker who has suddenly found itself as the biggest U.S.-China bargaining chip. Every single day, there's a new company that's caught in the crossfire of this trade war. Yesterday, we led the show with Boeing. Now it's NVIDIA. This is a much, you know, bigger player, much bigger bargaining chip. By all accounts, this was a big surprise for NVIDIA. Jensen Huang, the CEO, went to Mar-a-Lago earlier this month, had dinner with Trump and

It talks about that $500 billion investment. He was under the impression that these H20s that they made specifically for the Chinese market were going to be exempt from all of the trade war chaos. So they went to all their Chinese clients like Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent, said,

don't worry about it. We're still going to get you your age 20s. This has all been cleared up. And then earlier this week, they were completely blindsided by this new ban. And that's why, you know, the stock tanked. It surprised investors as well. And Nvidia stock, after soaring more than 200 percent this year, is down, you know, about 20 percent this year. It's just been been rough sledding so far in 2025. Yeah, that's 200 percent last year that it soared. But it looks like half a trillion dollars only goes so far these days because an

escalating trade war isn't just a great backdrop for any of a high-tech good to go towards China. NVIDIA did design this chip specifically for this purpose, and it's not like this is a top-of-the-line chip. I mean, Morgan Stanley analysts say that H20's performance is about

75% below Nvidia's H100 family. And even since that note came out, they've released a Blackwell chip that even exceeds the performance of the H100. So this is not a top-of-the-line chip by any stretch of the imagination. So this inability to sell even low-performing chips into the Chinese market is

is just a bit of a business scrambler if you are NVIDIA at this point. And NVIDIA is definitely going to be peeved too. I mean, they've done everything right there. A spokesperson said that, hey, look at the taxes we pay. We have a US-based workforce. We are a technology leader. Heck, our exports...

actually help the U.S. fix its trade deficit with China, which is the whole point of the tariffs is to bring that deficit downward. So they're just sitting here saying, I thought we checked every single box, crossed our T's, dot our I's, and yet here they still are. But the problem is the U.S. government considers the sale of semiconductors to China in order to power their AI models, a national security concern. This ban on chip

did not start with the Trump administration. It started with Biden back in 2022 when they curbed the sale of the highest end chips to China because we had this thing like deep seek earlier this, uh, earlier this year where this AI model performed as good as chat GPT or other American made models, uh,

on a lot less firepower they probably it seems that they trained them on the h20 so from the u.s government's perspective whether it was a democratic or republican administration they're saying sorry nvidia i know you know you are going to have your business curd but this is a national security priority for us because we need to win the ai race against china

The country's wealthiest university and the White House are locked in a knock-down, drag-out fight, and the economic stakes could not be higher. On Monday, Harvard University made the surprise decision to reject the Trump administration's demands that it change how it operates, saying that appeasement would compromise its educational mission and overall independence.

Other schools like Columbia, who have been targeted by the government this year, have given in to the demands so that Harvard took the gloves off was somewhat of a landmark moment signaling a more adversarial approach. Retribution came fast with the Trump administration responding that it would freeze $2.2 billion in funds that had been awarded to the school for research. Now the two sides are digging in for a potentially long legal conflict over the $9 billion in total the government directs toward Harvard.

Depending on how long it lasts, the showdown could have significant repercussions for the economy of greater Boston, where Harvard is based and along with other research universities. There is the primary economic engine of the region. Harvard is the fourth largest employer in the entire state of Massachusetts.

And a funding freeze would deal a blow to sectors like life sciences and biotech that have flourished in Boston because of all the talent and research breakthroughs cultivated at the colleges. So Harvard is in no doubt feeling the financial squeeze with $2.2 billion and potentially more cut off. But Toby, it has been preparing for this moment for years. True. It has a pretty massive rainy day fund. It's long hoarded cash and built up its budget to withstand, quote unquote, shocks, thundershocks,

Some of those shock absorbers are, one, obviously the $53 billion endowment, the most of any school. Two, it's got a pristine AAA credit rating. And three, it's actually got an annual budget surplus of about $45 million. So all that affluence and prior planning makes it pretty well situated to weather this storm. But how long can it rely on its endowment? It's definitely a temporary thing, even though that number sounds very big. There's

pretty strict rules over what you can actually use an endowment for. About 80% of the funds are restricted to specific purposes like financial aid, like professorships and scholarships. And most of the federal funding that it was receiving was tied to this academic and scientific research. So you can't necessarily just

Like for like plug that two billion dollar hole that you now have because these funds are restricted and, you know, deemed towards certain purposes. Yeah. So this when people were learning about this story and I was too, I was wondering, well, I thought this was a private school. Why? Why is the government sending seven nine billion dollars toward Harvard? And, you know, it sends a lot of money toward other research institutions.

institutions as well. And it goes back to World War II. The U.S. government said, you know, I think maybe we should outsource this whole research and development and innovative thing. Maybe colleges and universities do this better than we do. So it started funding schools for research purposes. That grew over the course of the past few decades to the point where schools are now getting billions of dollars in funding. And it's sort of a I scratch my back, you scratch

I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I'm going to outsource all this R&D to you by giving you billions of dollars in order to conduct research and create companies through all that research and innovation. At the same time, you are going to produce really high-level talent and people with skills

so that they can create companies and breakthroughs that will lead to the overall growing of the U.S. economy and local regions to flourish in the greater Boston area. So it's this partnership, this symbiosis that has worked for the past few decades. Now we're seeing some major fissures here in 2025. Yeah, and Harvard has some options available to it, too, to shore up, even though it

it's already sizable, rainy day funds. Some of those are selling debt for short-term funding. A lot of colleges have recently sold taxable bonds. Harvard did so last week. They sold $750 million worth. It's a pretty easy market for colleges to access. And so they have a lot of flexibility around how they can use those funds. And it goes back to stuff that Harvard did in the

They made themselves much more resistant to big shocks like this. The AAA credit rating is a big part of that, too, because they have all these lines of credit that they can now tap into. So Harvard specifically will be probably all right. The long-term ramifications of politics

causing research on things like AIDS research or cancer research or organ transplants. That's where people say, we probably won't see the shocks now, but maybe down the line when that research isn't taking place, that's going to affect a lot of things and a lot of part of the really entire US economy as well. Right. The two things to watch here are whether other universities follow in Harvard's footsteps, showing defiance to the Trump administration, which might lead to more funding cutoffs and also the status of

of Harvard as a tax-exempt entity. Yesterday, it was reported that the administration is moving to revoke its tax-exempt status, which is given to charities, churches, universities, so they don't have to pay federal income or property tax because they're in this umbrella of a nonprofit where you're conducting things that are for the greater good. So they give you tax-exempt status. And now the Trump administration is looking to revoke that, which would be a huge escalation and lead to even

longer legal battles. A Chinese e-commerce app is attracting a lot of American dollars, but it's not Xi'an or Timu. Driven by a string of viral videos posted on TikTok, the little-known app DHgate surged to the top of Apple's free app charts and is now sitting in second place as of this morning. DHgate's sudden popularity came from videos posted by Chinese influencers pulling back the curtain on global supply chains.

In the videos, the influencers expose luxury fashion brands from Hermes to Lululemon, purportedly showing how these name brands are actually being made in Chinese factories. Apps like DHgate allow global consumers to capitalize on this by buying direct from Chinese factories

at much more affordable prices and without the branding. One video that has racked up 10 million views shows a woman boasting that the yoga pants she's offering are made out of the same material and with the same craftsmanship as Lulu, but can be bought for just five to six dollars.

So even after tariffs are applied, they're still less than what Lulu would charge you. Another video shows a man in a factory showing off a Louis Vuitton-style bag for only $50, again making the claim that they're the same manufacturer as the real deal. Now, is a Louis bag for $50 or leggings for $5 too good to be true?

Probably Louis Vuitton has repeatedly emphasized that they don't make any of their goods in China, while a Lulu spokesperson clarified that only 3% of its products are manufactured in China. Still, Neil, these videos are the latest in the surge of trade war TikTok content that's been blowing up ever since Trump rolled out the new tariffs. It's a new battleground when it comes to trade, but also when it comes to just public opinion. Yeah, the trade war has moved to TikTok. I think you're right to pour a little cold water on TikTok.

this. A number of brands have come out like Lululemon saying that the videos are just not real. This guy said that, hey, I'm looking at the Lululemon factory in this town in China. And they're like, we don't make anything in those factories.

many of these brands have NDAs with their contract manufacturers in China. So if a manufacturer is saying that they work with Lululemon or Louis Vuitton or Hermes, they're probably lying because they're under contract to not disclose that. So I would say if you're using DHgate, go ahead, but you are probably just buying a dupe, not a real thing. Well, there's actually a little bit of

nuance between what a counterfeit is and what a dupe is. Because counterfeits are just like, you're trying to pass it off as a real thing, but it's just made of much worse materials. Dupes are just de-branded versions of high quality goods. And dupe culture has actually taken on a name of its own over in China. It's called

Ping T and Gen Z use it to reflect the popularity of people moving from label loving to saying, I just want high quality stuff. So there's been this big market that is not the counterfeit market, but it is the dupe market of people saying, maybe I don't need that brand.

that logo on my Hermes bag or whatever, or my Lululemon leggings. Maybe I just need high quality goods. And that's been a massive culture shift that's been percolating over the last year or so. So there is a slight difference between dupes and counterfeits. Make sure though, if you are buying anything, you want to fall in the dupe category. You don't want to fall in the counterfeit category. Special edition of Toby's Trends on Thursday. Seriously, you get them. I can't stop trending. That's just the name of the game.

All right, let's take a quick break and hand it over to Neil for his numbers right after this. Taking your business international can feel like sailing through a sea of red tape, regulations and unpredictability. Is attracting global business worth the global hassle? Wise business can help. Your wise account has everything you need to operate your global business. With wise business, you can process payments, get paid and manage your money internationally.

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Start at public.com slash morningbrew. That's public.com slash morningbrew. Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in podcast description. Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will give you a lot to talk to your parents about. Just a little preview. For my first number, a growing share of youngsters are pulling a Saxon from White Lotus and joining up with the family business.

The share of small businesses that employ a young adult child of an owner is up 13% year over year in January and has doubled since 2018, according to HR firm Gusto. They analyzed 400,000 payrolls to find companies where the last name of an owner over 50 years old matched the name of an employee under 30, purposefully excluding the 100 most common names in the U.S.,

It's a sign that the cooling demand for entry-level jobs and the threat of AI automation has young professionals embracing the familiar environment of the family biz, despite the historical stigma that may come with it. It's also an indication that Baby Boomer and Gen X business owners are thinking seriously about succession as they plan their

their retirement parties. While the share of small business owners who employ their own children is still a small slice of the overall pie, the movement is significant, Augusto Economist told the Wall Street Journal. Yeah, it's definitely a reversal from just recent decades because you're right, there was this

around joining the family biz because it just seemed like the easy path and our generation of entrepreneurial or just wanted to set off on their own. They didn't want to join the boring old business that mom or dad ran. But now they're staring down just an economic reality that makes that job seem a lot more appealing because COVID upended the...

the beginning parts of most young people's careers. Then there's been this huge AI boom. That's a massive disruptor. So maybe working in a steel fabrication plant seems a little more AI-proof than working a cushy marketing job somewhere in New York City. And then you just toss in the trade war as well. And so all of a sudden, of course, you're going to phone up mom and dad. And mom and dad are probably happy too because they're looking to pass down these businesses too. They don't want to work forever. They want to

ensure it's in good hands. And so if your kid comes calling, then of course it becomes this appealing avenue for them as well. So just kind of a fascinating shift that we have been seeing maybe accelerated by recent economic conditions. It's kind of an interesting game to play in the political office environment. You know, like where do you put your kid when they come in? Do you put them in the, you know,

in the trenches or are they management track? So, you know, it gets a little tricky. Yeah. A lot of career coaches say that a lot of parents make the mistake of turning their kids into executives right when they came out of the gate, which doesn't even make sense for the kid either. They're not prepared to be an executive. Obviously it leads to some weird office politics as well. If you see, you know, suddenly you're reporting to a 22 year old when you've been working there for many years. So there's a right way to do it. And it is a little testy. There's no perfect way to do it, but yeah, definitely something that we're seeing happening.

especially in the face of just the current reality. My next number piggybacks off my first. Not only are parents passing down businesses to their kids, they're also buying them super duper expensive real estate. Consider this, 28% of all

all Manhattan homes were purchased through a trust last year, a big jump from 17% three years ago, according to a new report from real estate analytics firm Adam. New York brokers told Bloomberg that wealthy parents helping their kids flex on their friends was the primary driver of the jump.

This highlights a couple of trends. Number one, at this point, you probably can't afford to buy a Manhattan property, especially in a desirable neighborhood without generational wealth. In 2024, the median sales price in the borough was $1.1 million, with all cash sales accounting for 60% of purchases.

and number two that the great wealth transfer is picking up steam as we learned in the previous story about family business succession plans the great wealth transfer is what economists have called the exchange of 124 trillion dollars from boomers to their kids over the next two decades and it's playing out in real time in the west village which is being invaded by nepo babies right and a lot of

The vehicles that these parents are using to transfer these houses to their kids are trusts. One luxury broker told Bloomberg that as much as 60% of sales last year involved parents buying for their kids, and 40% of those used a trust.

Trusts are good for, one, avoiding tax ramifications. They kind of skirt some of these wealth taxes or estate transfer tax rules. But then, two, they're also discreet. You don't have to disclose who's behind the trust versus who's behind it.

an LLC, for instance, you have to attach your name to. So people are really digging trust as a vehicle. I mean, you've heard of like trust fund kids. This is kind of an invasion of trust fund kids into certain areas of New York because they're just really good vehicles for passing down that wealth when it comes to housing. My final number is $2 billion, which is the value of iPhones that were airlifted to the U.S. from India in March.

If that sounds like a lot, it is. The iPhone shipments marked an all-time high for a single month and roughly the same as the total number for January and February combined. At least six cargo jets were used in Operation Beat the Tariffs. Because that's what this rush was all about, President Trump had signaled on April 2nd he would be imposing reciprocal tariffs on the U.S.'s trading partners, so Apple wanted to get ahead of whatever was announced to make sure enough iPhones were

on us soil. Turns out it was a savvy play because Trump hit India with 26% tariffs and eventually 145% tariffs on China. The two countries where Apple makes iPhones later on smartphones were exempted from Chinese tariffs for now. And India tariffs were also rolled back, but the Apple iPhone airlift shows how companies are scrambling to stockpile inventory in the U S given all the uncertainty around tariffs. Yeah. We've talked about the fact that, uh,

Apple consumers were also rushing into stores to try to buy iPhones before maybe prices rised. And we're seeing that kind of play out across the broader economy as well. We got consumer spending numbers for March yesterday, and they actually came in higher than expected, which shows maybe this rush to buy stuff before prices went up. So all this front-loading, all this

bringing in a ridiculous amount of product in terms of Apple seems to be the move that a lot of businesses are taking and consumers are reacting by kind of meeting that demand with spending of their own. Yeah, another indication of this is the pharmaceutical industry. We've talked about it on the show that there might be pharma tariffs coming. Pharmaceutical products imported to the U.S. in January and February was $37 billion compared to $31 billion during the same period last year. So if you're on a plane from San

China or India or Europe to the United States, there's probably a lot of freight alongside you. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. What is this? A smuggling ring for ants? Why, yes. Yes, it is. On Tuesday, two Belgian teenagers pleaded guilty to the illegal possession and trade of wildlife in Kenya after they were accused by authorities of trying to smuggle thousands of ants out of the country to sell as pets.

The 19-year-olds were arrested earlier this month after being found with more than 5,000 ants packed in test tubes stuffed with cotton wool that would allow the ants to live for months. One of them asked for leniency, saying, we did not come here to break any laws by accident and stupidity. We did. The Kenya Wildlife Service has called it a landmark case that shows how the wildlife trafficking trade has shifted from larger trophy animals to smaller organizations.

more exotic species. Toby, these aren't your standard ant farm ants. They had a street value of $7,700. Yeah. The giant African harvester ant is a highly sought after species. They are prized by collectors because one, they're very big. Like the Queens can reach almost an

inch long. So these are, I know that we're talking about smaller animals are becoming more popular, but in terms of the ant kingdom, these things are sizable. And a lot of it is because you, it's very hard to find this specific species. Uh, if you, if you're an ant collector on any websites, I mean, two of the biggest are ants HQ and ants are ants are you S and

It sounds like, oh, ants are us. Sorry, geez Louise. It's like toys are us, but ants are us. And they barely have any of these species listed on their sites. And if they did, they're sold out right now. They sell them for $131 and $226. So you can see why this specific species was targeted by these Belgian teens because yeah, they had some serious street value.

If you thought Fyre Fest was bad, wait till you hear about this experience that Mr. Beast cooked up. Diehard Mr. Beast fans who paid $1,000 for a Vegas experience that was supposed to be unforgettable were left trying to forget and get a refund after the event titled The Mr. Beast Experience was an abject disaster.

Resorts World Las Vegas advertised the experience as something that included a three-night stay at the hotel, a mystery bag full of exclusive merch, meet and greets, photo ops, mini games, and even a $10,000 voucher for a lucky fan. Unfortunately, we didn't get any of that, said one fan who flew from Arizona to attend.

Instead, guests posted pictures of the exclusive package that they were supposed to be receiving that ended up containing some chocolate bars and about $9 worth of merch that you can get in the clearance section of Mr. B's website. The YouTuber tried to make things right by personally inviting everyone affected by the experience to his actual studio. But still, Neil, a very tough look for him. The biggest problem was he wasn't even there. I mean, one fan posted,

who did go told a Las Vegas news outlet, when I go to the Tom Brady experience in Boston, Tom Brady's there. And so they were wondering where Mr. Beast was. And when you're not there, you can't sort of directly, you don't have control over the experience. So you get things like a miserable goodie bag. You have one, one, one traveler complained of a $63 cocktail.

which sounds outrageous, but when you think about it, Las Vegas, that could happen there. So overall, a miserable experience for these people. Very much a Mr. Beast fire fest and a PR debacle that he's trying to clean up. I love that this one fan clearly is an experienced person because who's going to the Tom Brady experience, the Mr. Beast experience? They just love the experiences hosted by anyone and everyone.

Finally, for our last headline, scientists announced they discovered alien life yesterday. And that's all the time we have. Great show, Neil. Kidding. No, but seriously, a team of researchers announced they found the strongest indication of extraterrestrial life yet on a massive planet 120 light years away from Earth known as K2-18b.

Thanks to these super strong observational abilities of the James Webb Telescope, analysis of the exoplanet's atmosphere showed that there's a high concentration of a particular molecule also found on Earth that has only one source, living organisms. It's called dimethyl sulfide. It's made of sulfur, carbon, and hydrogen, and is a common byproduct of marine algae. Last year, after the first reading came in from the telescope, the team of astronomers conducting the study spent an enormous amount of time trying to get

rid of the signal, but a second, even stronger reading led them to conclude that K2-18b may in fact harbor about a thousand times as much dimethyl sulfide as ERCH, which suggests it sees could be teeming with life.

I'm not screaming aliens, said Nicole Lewis, an exoplanetary scientist at Cornell University, but I always reserve my right to scream aliens. Neil, I am not an exoplanet scientist at Cornell University, so I'll just scream it. Aliens. Well, they said that they're either looking at a new chemical process that no one has ever seen before, or they're witnessing the first signs of biological activity outside of Earth. So kind of mind-blowing to think about. It also makes me think that, you know,

we've hyped up this first encounter between humans and aliens, and it's probably not going to look like it does in the movies. Unfortunately, they probably won't descend from a UFO. It'll probably look a little more like this, like a peer reviewed report in the astrophysical journal letters. Uh, so, you know, that is just something to look forward to whether, whenever, uh, we conform or deny this alien report. Yeah. It's probably not going to be like, welcome to earth people. It's going to be like amoebas or something like that, but still like

This is a lot of dimethyl sulfide, so I'm bullish. More dimethyl sulfide than I've ever seen for sure. Okay, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. We want to hear all your alien theories.

Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup welcomes our alien overlords. Devin Emery is our president. And our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.