transcript
Speaker 1:
[00:01] Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neal Freyman.
Speaker 2:
[00:04] And I'm Toby Howell.
Speaker 1:
[00:05] Today, a potentially huge breakthrough in pancreatic cancer treatment.
Speaker 2:
[00:08] Then, Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO of Apple. It's Tuesday, April 21st. Let's ride.
Speaker 1:
[00:22] Good morning, if you haven't been watching Jeopardy, it's time to lock in. There's a contestant on a historic run. And what's more, he's the most likable guy ever. 33-year-old Jamie Ding has won 27 consecutive games, earning him more than $750,000 in one of the game's all-time winning streaks. But it's his humility and regular guy attitude that makes him so endearing to fans of the show. His chosen introduction is bureaucrat and law student because he works as an affordable housing administrator in New Jersey and is enrolled in the Weekend Law Program at Seton Hall. Maybe his best quirk is his outfit choices. His favorite color is orange and he wears it on every episode. Toby, I hope he never loses.
Speaker 2:
[01:01] We've needed a new entrant into the Goat Jeopardy debate. His bona fides, they all come from the Wall Street Journal. Of the 312 categories he's encountered, only eight have gone by without a correct response. Ken Jennings, which is also another Jeopardy Goat and the current host, had 12 at the same point of his run. In Ding's third appearance, he tied Jennings for most correct responses ever in a single game with 45. I'm happy if I just get one correct. Ding got 45 correct. He's also tried to become the only person ever to reach $100,000 in winnings in a single game, but he lost his final Jeopardy wager. I love it. Ding is a great and lovable character. I'm going to give you the clue that he did get wrong, so you guys can ruminate it on the... over the course of the podcast, and I'll raveal the answer at the end. The clue was Mark Twain wrote the quip that on this day of the year, we are reminded of what we are on the other 364. Muse on that, and we'll give you the answer at the end of the pod.
Speaker 1:
[02:01] I don't know, but I know who is the sponsor of this episode. It's On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, a host, Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights into what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio.
Speaker 2:
[02:20] Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting, and what sectors are on the move right now? You can download the latest episode of On Investing and subscribe so you never miss an episode at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's one less cook in the kitchen in Cupertino. Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO of Apple, handing over the reins to longtime hardware boss John Ternus on September 1st, the company announced yesterday. It ends a 15-year tenure at Apple that took the company from a market cap of under $400 billion to over $4 trillion. During that decade and a half, Cook brought the Mac and iPhone to new heights, oversaw the launch of AirPods and Apple Watch, turned Apple's supply chain into the envy of the world, and juiced the heck out of its services businesses like music and TV to make it one of the biggest units in the company. It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be CEO of Apple, Cook said in his statement, I love Apple with all my being. Who is in the on-deck circle? Ternus is Apple's head of hardware engineering and has spent the last 25 years in product development. His appointment is no surprise. He's long been rumored to be the golden boy to take over after Cook, after becoming the youngest member of Apple's executive team back in 2021. He looks like the man for the moment too, with Bloomberg reporting he's a strong believer in AI, a necessary bent after multiple stumbles from Tim Cook to integrate the tech. But Ternus comes with a few question marks and challenges too. Apple hasn't lost a truly new product category in years under his direction. And though Apple is in a good place, it still hasn't put forth a coherent AI strategy either. Neal, Steve Jobs left big shoes for Cook to fill. Now you can argue Cook's leaving even bigger ones for John Ternus.
Speaker 1:
[04:08] Yeah, let's take a look at his resume. So I went to his LinkedIn. Education, University of Pennsylvania, Bachelor of Science in Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, 1993 to 1997. And then he went to work as an engineer for virtual research, July 1997 to June 2001. There's only one other thing on his LinkedIn. It's Vice President Hardware Engineering at Apple, July 2001 to present 24 years and 10 months. And we have to update that with the CEO. So he has been at Apple nearly half of his life. The general reaction to this, it's like a screen pass on third and 10 going to Florida on vacation. It's not going to blow your socks off, but you know it'll be effective and won't rock the boat. If you look at the Apple's past three CEOs, Steve Jobs was the product innovator. Tim Cook was the guy who knew the nuts and bolts of the supply chain. And Ternus is the engineer. He likes to get in the nitty gritty of these products themselves and bring them to market.
Speaker 2:
[05:02] Yeah, the biggest thing that people credit Ternus with doing is reversing a decline in product quality at Apple. He basically stepped in, and as you mentioned, just was a detailed guy. Brought it, I mean, when Tim Cook took over, the iPhone 4 was out. Now we're at the iPhone 17, and all of those have been launched under the watchful eye of John Ternus. Just small things like battery life, performance, the fact that Apple moved into their own chips. These are all things that have happened under his tenure. There is some case against him though, and some stumbles that have happened under his watchful eye. I mentioned the new product category thing. Ternus is not actually a big fan of launching new products. He was not a fan of the dallying with the Apple car that never came to be. He wasn't a fan of the Vision Pro bet either. He wasn't even a big fan of the smart home speaker category when that first launched back with Amazon a few years ago. He also was a big fan of things like the Touch Bar and the Butterfly Keyboard, which have been two of the more annoying product innovations under Apple. He's not just some savant when it comes to creating new product categories. He still has his stumbles here and there, but by all accounts, he is a detailed guy and a good engineer.
Speaker 1:
[06:23] Yeah, so let's look at what is on the to-do list for him. He's managing a $4 trillion company. Number one is manage the AI transition. AI has the potential to blow everything that Apple has been doing for the past couple of decades up and is going to potentially revolutionize the tech sector. It's already doing it. You know, the tech companies that Apple was contending with a few decades ago when Tim Cook started, is not the same cohort that their rivals are today. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google has a big AI program as well. Apple seems to be lagging behind those competitors when it comes to AI. And if AI is the next big thing, it needs to figure its stuff out. Number two, develop bolder products. What is the next big thing? That is something that may have perhaps languished, that bold innovation under Tim Cook, whereas it flourished under Steve Jobs. We'll see if Ternus can bring that back. And then the third one is manage the Trump relationship. I know it doesn't sound as sexy, but this is very important for a company like Apple that has production in places like China and India and all over the world, sells also to places all across the world, has retail stores across five continents. China is its second biggest market. So something that Tim Cook did that Steve Jobs never had to do was go to the White House, go to Xi Jinping in Beijing and massage those relationships with world leaders.
Speaker 2:
[07:40] Let's give Tim Cook his flowers a little bit too, because he is stepping out after 15 years. Remember, Tim Cook, not the visionary. We've said this multiple times at this point. He came after 12 years at IBM, so not necessarily known for its innovative culture. At least at this point in its lifespan. But he turned the supply chain around. It really is one of those things that Apple is, when it went from a weakness to an absolute strength under Tim Cook. The fact that the services business is a $100 billion a year business was not something that many people had on their bingo cards going forward, because Apple was primarily a hardware company. He debuted the wearables category too. I mean, we say that he's not an innovator, but Apple Watch is now a de facto product category. It owns 25% of the smart watch market, so that is absolutely a thing that happened under Cook. AirPods brings in more revenue per year than most Fortune 500 companies, so he certainly ushered in some product categories, even if he's maybe not the charismatic Steve Jobs-esque type figure.
Speaker 1:
[08:43] I think the overarching legacy of Tim Cook will just be a very good financial steward. He made people a lot of money as CEO of Apple. He didn't maybe invent the iPhone or some of these whiz-bang products that Steve Jobs did, but he squeezed as much money as he possibly could out of them. So that will maybe be what Tim Cook is remembered for. As just being a consistent leader, it's hard to be a tech CEO for 15 years and change with the times. John Ternus will step into the hot sea on September 1st. Moving on, don't you just hate it when you put a satellite into the wrong orbit? Happens to me all the time and it happened to Blue Origin on Sunday. The rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, who knows a thing or two about delivering things, delivered an AST space mobile satellite into the wrong orbit. The direct-to-cell satellite was supposed to be plopped into orbit about 285 miles above the Earth at an inclination of 49 degrees to the equator. However, Blue Origin's New Glenn dropped it off at just 95 miles at its closest point, a much lower orbit than scheduled. AST said that this orbit was, too low to sustain operations and it will deorbit the spacecraft and recover it under an insurance policy. The Blue Origin mishap is a reminder that, for all the warm fuzzies Artemis 2 gave us, space remains very hard. It is not unusual for things like this to go wrong, especially for the new rocket the company was using, but it will have a number of ripple effects. One, the mistake won't help Blue Origin catch up to SpaceX, the reliable and dominant force in the space launch industry. Plus, it could have an impact on future Artemis missions. Remember, NASA is relying on SpaceX and Blue Origin to produce lunar landers that will take astronauts to the moon's surface in just two years. So any delay in Blue Origin's timeline will delay NASA's timeline too. Toby, certainly not a disaster, but a little embarrassing.
Speaker 2:
[10:28] I mean, who among us hasn't prematurely released our payload into an inaccurate orbit at some point or another? I saw two different reactions on social media. One from the more zealous pro space crowd was that we should celebrate a successful reflight and landing of an orbital booster for Blue Origin. After all, there's only one company, that is SpaceX, that can do this. There's no companies outside the US that can reliably do this, so that's a check in the box of the space crowd. For the more anti-space crowd, obviously they were dunking on it because the upper states did fail. Now, I would point out that this is not just a Blue Origin problem, SpaceX also boofed this at one point and at their lifespan, they deployed a satellite into the wrong orbit too. But that was back in 2012, which just shows how much of a head start it has when it comes to iterating on space.
Speaker 1:
[11:17] Now, let's talk about the SpaceX vs. Blue Origin rivalry. I mean, it's kind of like Alabama playing Eastern Tennessee State. It is not close right now. SpaceX launched more than 160 times in 2025. Blue Origin launched twice. And then in terms of this satellite business, SpaceX has 10,000 Starlink satellites up there, floating around in orbit. Amazon, which is affiliated with Blue Origin a little bit, has just a couple hundred. SpaceX is absolutely dominating this industry. And Blue Origin has this new rocket, which this failed satellite went up on, which is new Glenn. And it's attempting to compete with the Falcon 9 booster. The Falcon 9 booster from SpaceX has just such a headstart. It is the workhorse. It is so reliable. SpaceX can recycle a Falcon 9 booster for reflight in just nine days. And it can launch this thing five or more times in one week. So this is just a science for SpaceX. And Blue Origin is still getting its space legs. Moving on, at a major cancer conference in San Diego yesterday, researchers presented what may end up being a watershed moment for pancreatic cancer treatment. Of the 16 patients who were given a personalized mRNA vaccine in 2020, eight showed a significant immune response and seven are alive today, six years after the trial began. If that doesn't sound like an incredible result, just remember that pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest out there. Most patients live just a few months longer, while less than 13 percent of people live for more than five years after being diagnosed. And since there's no routine screening for pancreatic cancer, you can only really tell when symptoms show up, often at an advanced stage. The five-year survival rate for stage four pancreatic cancer is three percent. The results are another very promising development for applying mRNA technology, which was harnessed by some drug makers to create effective COVID vaccines. In this case, BioNTech and Genentech, the two companies behind the pancreatic cancer vaccine, use genetic material taken from individual tumors to create a unique vaccine personalised for each patient. Toby, this is a very small trial, just 16 patients, so it's irresponsible to draw sweeping conclusions before more studies are done. Still, you got the sense from all the doctors chiming in on social media that there's loads of excitement about this treatment and mRNA vaccines in general.
Speaker 2:
[13:28] Yeah, cancer vaccines are no doubt difficult to pull off because let's compare and contrast them to viral vaccines versus cancer vaccines. When you are targeting a virus, your body recognize that it's a virus. They recognize it's a foreign pathogen and it's much easier to teach your T-cells and teach your immune system to attack that virus. Cancer, on the other hand, is derived from your own tissue. It is you. It's just a different type of cell that is mutated. So it's very much more difficult to crack the toughest cancers when it comes to mRNA vaccines. But the fact that we're using mRNA vaccines at all is a breakthrough in and of itself. Because when looking at kind of super survivors when it comes to pancreatic cancer, they noticed that super survivors had about 12 times as many T cells. These are people that just survive beyond the normal timeline when it comes to cancer. The fact that they had all these T cells, though, were specific to them. They're not just T cells that you can put in anybody else's body. They were very much coded to their own DNA, which is why we are making these personalized vaccines. Why they think that if you take the cancer out, figure out a way to create a vaccine that targets directly the cancer within the body, that is a real breakthrough. Just a fascinating science experiment that had a lot of people, even on our timelines, celebrating that this could be a big breakthrough.
Speaker 1:
[14:51] We just talked about supply chain genius. The supply chain for this particular vaccine also is blowing my mind. First, when patients entered this trial, first they went into surgery. They had the tumor removed. Then the tumor was preserved and then sliced into pieces that are each thinner than a human hair. In less than 72 hours after the surgery, that was sent over to Germany where BioNTech is based. They turned those thin slices into a clear liquid, which is a personalized vaccine. Then they ship it back to the United States, to Memorial Sloan Kettering, which actually delivers the vaccine to the body. This is a cross-Atlantic thing. Again, it's really small, 16 patients. Seven of them are still living, so exciting. But the doctor at Memorial Sloan Kettering is going to do a much larger trial to see whether this actually has legs.
Speaker 2:
[15:41] All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Toby's trends right after this.
Speaker 1:
[15:47] Toby, would you say you're authentic?
Speaker 2:
[15:49] You know I'm the real deal, Neal.
Speaker 1:
[15:51] Well, you and iHerb have that in common. iHerb is a trusted wellness specialty store that sources 100% authentic vitamins, supplements, sports nutrition and so much more directly from brands with zero third-party sellers on the site or app.
Speaker 2:
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Speaker 1:
[16:12] Head to iherb.com for the real deal, not just a marketplace knockoff. That's iherb.com.
Speaker 2:
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Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
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Speaker 1:
[16:59] Toby, have you ever flown a friend?
Speaker 2:
[17:01] I think you mean phone a friend.
Speaker 1:
[17:03] Nope. I mean, F-L-O-W-N, flown.
Speaker 2:
[17:06] Like when the founders at unfiltered hospitality use the rewards to fly a new hire for onboarding?
Speaker 1:
[17:12] Exactly. The rewards from Capital One's Venturex Business Card redefine premium for small business owners like unlimited double miles on every purchase with no preset spending limit.
Speaker 2:
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Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[17:35] It's Tuesday, which means it's time for Toby's Trends, where I take a deep dive into the internet to emerge with a trend you should keep your eye on. And today's trend is a fashion trend because I know that's what you all come to Morning Brew Daily to hear about. But this fashion trend has a business tie in. Silicon Valley is in the middle of a CEO merch boom. A 28 year old software engineer, The Wall Street Journal spoke to, Rolled up to NVIDIA's annual conference in a $178 green sweater with a cartoon Jensen Huang on the front. Palantir sells a t-shirt with the face of its CEO, Alex Carp, on the front. The defense tech firm, Andrew, also slings the flower print Hawaiian shirt its founder Palmer Lucky is synonymous with. So why is Silicon Valley, which is famous for shunning any sort of fashion sensibilities, embracing fashion statements? It's partly ironic, putting CEO faces on clothes is kitschy, but in such an overt way that it shows you're in on the joke. But there's also certainly an undertone of hero worship too. Palantir is often compared to a cult given the mysterious and controversial nature of their business. Slapping their CEO's face on a shirt just leans into that reputation. Neal, in general, CEOs are becoming important cogs in the content machine from viral merch to viral burger taste testing videos. Their faces and personas are becoming more public than ever. So, I'm getting you a shirt with my face on it ASAP.
Speaker 1:
[18:57] All right. Well, I'll keep it in my closet until you become a CEO. Then I promise I will wear it. Why does this happen only in the tech industry? I mean, hardly any people can identify the CEOs of any other company outside of tech and let alone wear their faces. Is it just because they're so derpy? Is that why the tech CEOs has become a quote unquote fashion statement for their employees?
Speaker 2:
[19:18] Yeah, it definitely is leaning into this rebellious bro vibe. The rise of the tech bro CEO has become something that we've talked about a lot of late. I mean, Zuck has totally rebranded himself. He wears a different chain now. He has a little bit more fashion sense himself. And there is, there's actually like two vectors I wanna talk about here. There is the ironic one where you put the face of the tech CEO on your shirt. But there's also like Jensen Hwang wears a $9,000 leather jacket and is sort of making a iconic fashion statement when he wears that. So there's two sides of it here. Zuck has also like become a lot more fast, more like many people haven't talked about that. So definitely there's the ironic side, but there's also the non-ironic side of maybe they are taking more care when they're presenting themselves to the public.
Speaker 1:
[20:05] And there's no question that I know I said a lot of the other CEOs in other industries were more anonymous, but there's no doubt that they're becoming more visible. And one example is the Burger King President, Tom Curtis. Now he's been everywhere when they revamped their whopper, revamped their fries, redid their menu, redid things about their store. I mean, he was the star on a 92nd commercial. He gave out his cell phone number and received 41,000 voicemail messages, which they extended into a social media campaign. So he became the face of Burger King. People could put a face to the actual company and, you know, literally the mascot got kicked aside for the CEO. So I think a lot of PR teams and communications professionals are really debating how much to put the CEO out there now. I mean, if you're a tech company, it seems like it's a no brainer too, because you really develop a cult of personality there. But just for more regular consumer companies, I think they're seeing more success with having the CEO be the face of the company.
Speaker 2:
[21:03] I mean, you can't talk about CEOs on social media without talking about Chris Kapinski, McDonald's CEO, and that viral video where he took a very small bite of the Big Arch Burger. I will say, though, that McDonald's spokesperson has said early sales of the Big Arch Burger were beating expectations, so maybe all the hoopla around how awkward he looked on camera actually did translate into some sort of sales booth for that product.
Speaker 1:
[21:26] Yeah, I guess the going convention for trotting your CEO out is maybe don't do it until there's a crisis, and then you show you have like a steady hand on the wheel. That seems to be don't put them out there for just anything willy nilly because like the McDonald's CEO showed, these people are not great at social media, so maybe don't have them be out there all the time. But if when there's a crisis like maybe what happened with Burger King, then that's the time to strategically deploy them to the masses. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. FBI Director Kash Patel sued The Atlantic and reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick for $250 million, alleging defamation for her recent article that described Patel as having a drinking problem that could imperil national security. In the complaint, Patel claimed The Atlantic crossed the legal line by publishing a piece, quote, replete with false and obviously fabricated allegations designed to destroy Director Patel's reputation and drive him from office. In the article, Fitzpatrick cited more than two dozen anonymous sources who mentioned Patel's, quote, conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences, including that the FBI had to reschedule early meetings because of his alcohol-fueled nights. When the piece was published, the government denied the allegations, and seemingly previewing this lawsuit, Patel said in a statement, Print it. All false. I'll see you in court. Bring your checkbook. The Atlantic says it stands by its reporting.
Speaker 2:
[22:44] Yeah, this is not a first by any stretch. The Trump administration has sued a lot of media outlets. Most recently, a judge actually dismissed a lawsuit from Trump, a $10 billion defamation suit against Wall Street Journal over an article about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. It does feel a little stricend effect. We were remarking before the show that we probably, or the masses wouldn't have known about this Atlantic piece unless you sue it for $250 billion.
Speaker 1:
[23:09] We certainly wouldn't have talked about it on this show.
Speaker 2:
[23:10] It is the MBD slash stricend effect, the fact that we're even discussing it at all. Jersey Mike's is going public. The sandwich chain filed for a confidential IPO yesterday, just months after Blackstone scooped it up for $8 billion early last year. The asset manager is shooting to bring the sandwich chain public at evaluation of around $12 billion for a tidy $4 billion markup in about a year. Founder Peter Cancro bought the original Jersey Mike's sub shop in Point Pleasant, New Jersey in 1975 at just 17 years old. He spent the next 50 years turning it into a mega chain with 3,300 locations and by far the fastest growing sandwich business in the country. In terms of unit count, Jersey Mike's is the third largest sandwich chain in America. Even more impressive, same store sales have been positive for 20 straight years. And they're still expanding. The January deal will bring 400 Jersey Mike's to the UK and Ireland, which means somewhere in Liverpool right now, a scouser is about to discover what a Club Supreme Ad Banana Peppers, Make It Mike's Way, tastes like.
Speaker 1:
[24:11] I just hope Danny DeVito gets some of the proceeds from this IPO. I think he's responsible for most of the growth of Jersey Mike's, but it is growing like a weed opening. You know, 300 stores on average every year. They're going to be on every street corner before you know it. Finally, imagine a world where you don't have to make a pit stop every time you need to pee on a road trip. A Chinese car maker, Ceres, has been granted a patent for an in-vehicle toilet, the BBC reported. The contraption is hidden under the passenger seat until you need to go. When it slides out with a push or a voice-activated command. To not make a huge stink, the toilet comes with a fan and exhaust pipe to filter out the smells, but it doesn't get rid of the waste itself. You have to empty the tank manually. Toby, I prefer an empty water bottle when things get desperate, but this works too.
Speaker 2:
[24:54] I mean, I follow this account, Ramp Capital on X, and he said bring this to every sports stadium in the country immediately. You'd never miss another moment. I say bring it to the podcast studio as well. I feel like the big key here though is ventilation. They say they have the ventilation system, but what if that backs up? Remember, it happened on the recent Mission to the Moon. That is just a miserable choice. Whatever time you save from not just pulling over and go to the bathroom, I don't know if it's worth it for having a dookie sitting in your chair while you're doing a long haul drive. Absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 1:
[25:28] That is all the time we have. Thanks for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday. Okay, Toby, I've been thinking about this all show. Repeat the Jeopardy question or the Jeopardy answer, and we have to figure out the question. Can you repeat it?
Speaker 2:
[25:40] Okay. The clue was Mark Twain wrote the quip that on this day of the year, we are reminded of what we are on the other 364.
Speaker 1:
[25:49] Okay. Can you give me the month of this day?
Speaker 2:
[25:52] If I give you the months, it definitely gives you a hint, but I'll do it April.
Speaker 1:
[25:55] April, what is an April blank? Fools?
Speaker 2:
[26:00] April Fools Day. So he's basically saying that we're reminded that we're fools on the other 364 days of the year. Don't be mad that you didn't get it wrong. Ding got it wrong too. So you guys are at the same level of jeopardy gut status.
Speaker 1:
[26:12] Yeah, we are about the same. I just didn't know April Fools extended back into the 19th century.
Speaker 2:
[26:17] Mark Twain might have just invented it. Don't quote me on that either. I have no idea if that is true.
Speaker 1:
[26:22] All right. If you'd like to reach us, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com or DM us on Instagram at mbdailyshow. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our supervising producer. Raymond Liu is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham and our associate producer is Olivia Leake. Hair and makeup is always floating in the wrong orbit. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Speaker 2:
[26:42] Great survey, Neal. Let's run it back tomorrow.