Is Sports Betting the New American Investment Plan? & Candy Crush Keeps Crushing It

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Are you sucking wind from trying to keep up with AI and its impact? Take a breather and tune in to The Intelligence Shift, Morning Brew's new podcast with PwC. It bridges the gap between big picture AI concepts and what it actually means in practice. Host Dan Priest is joined by expert guests to discuss AI's role in sports, music, HR and more. Listen to The Intelligence Shift wherever you get your podcasts.

**Raymond Liu** (0:24)
Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Raymond Liu.

**Kayla Lopez** (0:27)
And I'm Kayla Lopez.

**Raymond Liu** (0:28)
Today is sports betting the new American investment plan.

**Kayla Lopez** (0:31)
And why McDonald's secret sauce may have nothing to do with its food. It's Friday, August 14th. Let's ride.

**Raymond Liu** (0:41)
Kayla, it's good to have you back on the pod today. Can an emoji tell you how old you are? Well, the New York Times gathered tons of data from Google and Reddit and analyzed which emojis were the most popular in 2025 and which emojis were the most used among each generation. Now, in an audio format, this is going to sound a little awkward, but the top, Loudly Crying Face, which ranked number four in 2024 and is now number one in 2025, which surpassed Rolling on the Floor Laughing, which now sits at number two.
Teenagers, of course, particularly teenage girls, are at the forefront of which popular emojis are used in today's text chains, group chats and Reddit forums. Teenagers would use the fire emoji where older people would use 100 and are more likely to use folded hands or prayer hands depending on how you look at it instead of a thumbs up. In fact, a thumbs up could tell how, is a big tell of how old you are nowadays. But some of the fastest growing emojis are the wilted flower, which can depict sadness or heartbreak. And their finger heart emoji, popularized by K-pop. Kayla, how self-conscious are you gonna be now with emojis?

**Kayla Lopez** (1:47)
Well, I'm already self-conscious about emojis. I do not use emojis with my younger colleagues because I'm afraid that they are laughing at me behind my back. That being said, I do really love the melting face emoji, which is one I use often. But my favorite part of the article is the thumbs up. Basically, it's a boomer emoji.
But now apparently, it's being used by a younger generation in a post-ironic way. So if you see me using the thumbs up, it is because I am ironic, not because I'm old, and not because I'm being passive aggressive.

**Raymond Liu** (2:16)
Of course, of course. And now a word from our sponsor, Rubrik. Kayla, what comes to mind when you hear intentionally engineered?

**Kayla Lopez** (2:23)
Well, those robots with buzz saws that hit each other.

**Raymond Liu** (2:25)
Sure, but maybe think about Rubrik. Their platform helps you keep going by securing your data, controlling your AI, and protecting your identity built as one architecture, not stitched together after the fact.

**Kayla Lopez** (2:36)
The old cybersecurity model was built on protection, safety nets, recovery plans, systems designed to withstand the last era and maintain the status quo.

**Raymond Liu** (2:44)
The AI era demands confidence that you can secure and accelerate your business operations so nothing stops your momentum. Rubrik can give you that confidence.

**Kayla Lopez** (2:52)
To learn more about how Rubrik rewrote the industry rulebook, head to rubrik.com/mb. That's rubrik.com/mb.

**Raymond Liu** (3:04)
Remember tariffs? Yeah. Well, refunds have started rolling into many US companies where over 40 S&P 500 companies say they received $9.6 billion in refunds in the past quarter, including at least $2.1 billion in cash. In total, the government is on the hook to pay back a total of roughly $166 billion.
Among the biggest refunds are going to companies like Apple with $2.2 billion, Ford with $1.3 billion, Nike $986 million, FedEx, which gets $800 million, and Amazon $640 million. Now, what do they plan to do with all that money? Well, that depends. Apple's Tim Cook said it plans to use it to expand its manufacturing footprint here in the US. Amazon said it's going to refund some customers only if they can trace back specific import charges passed on to them. And in some cases, it's just contributed to their quarterly earnings. How did this all happen again? Well, back in February of this year, the Supreme Court rejected Trump's broad-based tariffs, which he tried to impose under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Refunds were ordered and a government site opened up in April for companies to apply for their refunds.
Many thought this whole process was going to be slow and messy, but it's actually happening a lot quicker than expected. Kayla, I recently got a message from HR saying, our payroll overpaid me by a few hundred bucks because of a system error, which I had to pay back. Imagine if I had to send back a hundred billion dollars.