The Weekly Listen: How bad is "serial churning", new sports tournaments, and can Perplexity's "search engine" threaten Google?

On today's podcast episode, we discuss how bad "serial churning" has gotten and how to fix it, whether inventing new sports tournaments can work, if Perplexity's "search engine" will threaten Google, the use case for AI computers in your ears, where you can see 16 sunrises and sunsets every day, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our forecasting writer Ethan Cramer-Flood, forecasting analyst Zach Goldner, and director of forecasting Oscar Orozco.

Subscribe to the “Behind the Numbers” podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, YouTube, Podbean or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow us on Instagram.

Episode Transcript:

Marcus Johnson (00:00):

This episode is made possible by a win. Unlock the full potential of the creator economy with a win's influencer management solutions and partnerships. Leverage the platform's best in class technology and award-winning expertise in end-to-end influencer program and campaign management to your brand's advantage and drive impressive results. Go to awin.com/emarketer for more information. Hello everyone and thanks for hanging out with us for the behind the numbers Weekly Listen and e-Marketer podcast made possible by Awin. This is the Friday show that could have its roof blown off at any moment, right Zach? It's getting pretty bad there.

Zach Goldner (00:42):

When it's stones in May, it makes you reconsider where you want to live.

Marcus Johnson (00:46):

These are your choices. We have no sympathy. I'm your host Marcus in today's episode. What comes after serial churning? Will inventing sports tournaments work? Does perplexity answer engine threaten Google? Will computers on your ears catch on? And I have some facts about the International Space Station. Join me for this episode. We have three people. Let's meet and we start with our senior forecasting analyst based in Colorado. It's Zach Goldner.

Zach Goldner (01:20):

Hey Marcus, glad to be here.

Marcus Johnson (01:22):

Hey fella. We're also joined by principal forecasting writer based in New York City. Is Ethan Kramer Flood?

Ethan Cramer-Flood (01:28):

It's springtime in New York. What's up?

Marcus Johnson (01:34):

That was too much. And finally we have someone else in New York as well. Senior Forecasting director. It's Oscar Roco.

Oscar Orozco (01:42):

Hello listeners. Happy to be here. It's been a while.

Marcus Johnson (01:45):

Hey Chap. So gents, what do we have in store? We're going to start by talking about the state of serial churning. How bad will it get already? Pretty rough. We then move to our middle segment. The debate of the week is what we have in store for you there. And then we move to dinner party data, which is our dessert for the evening and we will be talking about some random trivia, but we start of course the story of the week.

Marcus Johnson (02:14):

So what comes after serial churning, if anything? Our colleague, senior director of briefings, Jeremy Goldman, just wrote that streaming service loyalty wanes as Americans are rapidly canceling and switching streaming services, a phenomenon known as serial churning. He points out that there's some antennae research showing that about a quarter of us subscribers that's 29 million people, so a lot of people, quarter of people have canceled three plus streaming services in the past two years. A stark contrast to the days of cable. He says an also notes that 40% of new and canceled subscriptions last year, 40% of them involved serial churns and one third of those serial churns resubscribed to a service they previously canceled within six months. The point being lots of folks are serial churning and it's getting worse and worse and pose a significant challenge to traditional media companies moving from cable bundles to streaming in terms of making money. But gents, talking about what we make of the state of serial churn, let's start with why are so many folks moving from bouncing around, moving from one to the other? What are some of the main reasons?

Zach Goldner (03:35):

I think it's simple. Have you looked at your bill lately? Prices are increasing every year and I'll tell you what, there's so much content on every platform and your time is limited in today's world, A CTV user, someone watching connected TV and your subscription programs, you're spending roughly three hours a day of time on video and watching different content. When you have that much time, it's not going to be increasing very much more from that. So you've a certain amount of content and people are just choosing what to watch on a daily basis and they'll switch it up from month to month.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (04:14):

Yeah, I think price increases are the proximate cause, but there's a more complex, maybe not more complex, more nuanced reason, which is that people are churning because they can. It's just too easy. So as long as the system that is in place right now stays in place, people will do it for the heck of it. This is, we all know now, right? Everyone's been trained, so even if the prices don't keep going up and we know they will or even if they go down, I don't think this behavior is going to change given how these systems operate right now.

Oscar Orozco (04:45):

Yeah, I would say I was recently equating it a little bit to the serial coupons. There used to be a show on this I think, right? So it's kind of gamified. It's something people enjoy bragging about a little bit, saving a couple bucks here, a couple bucks there, and I think that's the big topic. It's really how you can cut down on the streaming services at the moment. And it gets back to what Zach said as well. I mean there's just so much original content out everywhere. We're talking about the AVOD platforms as well, talking about sports. So there's just so much out there that people can kind of cut and sign back on. It's easy and that's why we're seeing it

Zach Goldner (05:29):

And I think this problem has been around longer than we Apache thought as we were to go back to the times of Game of Thrones being released on HBO wanted the original time to people watching the show as is being released than cutting their HBO subscription. It's nothing new coming more to light now they're more subscription platforms and more people watching this content than ever before.

Marcus Johnson (05:57):

Just folks adding subscriptions, but those prices going up, folks having to spend more on the same amount of services. Basically there was a Deloitte report showing folks are spending, folks spending on four streaming services went from 48 bucks to 61. It doesn't seem like a lot. It's 13 extra dollars, but it's a 27% increase from last year to this year primarily because of those price increases. The number one reason Americans cancel their streaming subscription by a long shot is because the service increased pricing according to a November, 2023 TransUnion survey, and according to a bango estimate, Americans average yearly expenditure on streaming is close to a thousand dollars. So when you total it up over a year, that's a lot of money that people are having to spend or choosing to spend on these services. Part of this though, gens is that streaming companies, they're doing this on purpose A to make more money from those users, but B, to nudge people towards their ad supported plans because Netflix, Disney plus Paramount plus Max and Peacock all found revenue per user is higher on ad supported plans versus ad free according to the Hollywood reporter. So these companies know what they're doing, it seems to be working,

Ethan Cramer-Flood (07:13):

But that doesn't help with the churning balance. So you can add them balance to the ad supported and that's all well and good for your arpu, but they're still going to quit as soon as their show is over.

Marcus Johnson (07:24):

They have a lot of runway if they can hold onto those folks. Only 20% of Netflix and max signups respectively, both of them are ad supported, 31% for Paramount plus 36% for Disney plus quantum antenna. So a lot of folks they could convert from ad free to ad supported, but to Ethan's point, yeah, you can't put the price up too much then people just leave entirely. Also, part of the problem seems to be finding good relevant content and the fact that that hasn't improved drastically. Maxwell Zeff of Gizmodo wrote in courts, the folks are upset with video streaming algorithms that have not gotten much better. Citing Deloitte Research that said, over 50% of younger people figure out what to watch from social media rather than streaming services recommendations.

Oscar Orozco (08:12):

We've said it before, Netflix, that's really where they shine, right? And why reading a few of the articles you sent over and Marcus, a lot of consumers, they're willing to give up pretty much on any other service. Disney Plus is a pretty popular one because of kids, but Netflix is the one that they cannot touch and I think a lot of it has to do with that personalization you can do and the content seems to be more relevant. But yeah, I think we're seeing a lot of these platforms try to set themselves apart more differentiation. So we've talked about it before, but content around sports to or different parts on the platform, live sports as well. So that's one of the main things that I think they're doing, but of course it's cost prohibitive as well, so that happy medium is key.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (09:07):

I mean, but all this is very unpredictable, right? It's hard to ensure you have great content. They're all probably trying to have great content, some more than others. You don't know whether or not you're going to have a hit. So more important strategy is to figure out how to reduce the churn regardless so that you have guaranteed and predictable revenue streams that used to exist with the cable bundle that allows you to know what your resources, what your assets are so that how much you can then reinvest into producing that good content that will hopefully have the virtuous cycle. So they got to stop the churning and then the obvious, there's low hanging fruit here, the answers are very simple and we will just repeat them. It's bundling is going to come back. Bundling has to come back because then when your show on streaming service X ends, you face a penalty for canceling it because you've bundled your subscription with some other service and that other service maybe does have a show right now that you want to watch.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (10:06):

So you're not going to cancel one because you lose the other and then you cycle back in the other direction, two or three or four of them have bundled up and then you are less likely to cancel one because you lose them all. And then the other low hanging fruit is long-term contracts at more attractive price point. So it's just the cable thing again, so I actually do this with Disney plus. Disney plus feels a lot cheaper if you sign up for a year, the monthly fee is much lower so they can all start to do this. You put a year long contract in front of someone that looks like a really good deal. Maybe they take it, you put a bundle, they take it and then we just end up back at cable and that's why cable worked so well for so long. People stuck with it and then all those companies knew what the revenue was going to be

Zach Goldner (10:48):

All coming around full circle

Oscar Orozco (10:51):

And I have a controversial opinion, here we go. I think that they need to listen up, listen up. I think the platforms might need to be quick. I think they might need to think about taking away some of that flexibility or making it a little bit harder to cancel and resubscribe, hear me out here for example, with the platform shifting to sports so much, what about tailoring these subscriptions around the sports seasons calendars? So maybe people can't unsubscribe in the middle of the sports season, things like this, but they might have to do that.

Zach Goldner (11:26):

Oscar, don't give them any thoughts. I just want to give we cut out one more thought on this. To Ethan's point about how bundling will become more important than ever. We're already starting to see that. We can talk about a handful of streaming services have already implemented that in the Disney bundle. Then you have Amazon Prime who have bundled their streaming service with e-commerce, got Thursday night football just now, they're going to have the NBA in upcoming years. It sounds likely, you see that with Max being HBO and Discovery plus they're trying to bring in more content to have less churn moving forward.

Marcus Johnson (12:08):

Yeah, the big question here for me is what's the ceiling there on churn? Because it got bad quickly serial churning in 2019, only 3% of folks were called serial churners. And I like this term from Josh, sorry, from John Coblin of the New York Times. He calls them nomadic subscribers. And so it's gone from 3% in 2019 to now basically a quarter of folks. I think it's like, was it 23%? And so what's the ceiling there in the next couple of years? Does it continue to rise? It's starting to flatten out. Can you get that number down? We shall see. Alright gents, we head two, the second segment for today, time for the debate of the week. Today's segment make the case

Marcus Johnson (12:56):

Where Zach, Oscar and Ethan give the best for and against arguments for each question based on three news stories. Two people face off per question and these takes don't necessarily reflect the analysts personal views. Their job is to present the best case and offer objective analysis. For the first question we've got Ethan going up against Oscar. We're talking about whether inventing sports tournaments will work. FIFA is said to be closed to a TV deal with Apple for a new tournament rights. Tarek Panger, the New York Times the deal gives Apple worldwide rights to a month long World Cup style competition played every four years between top teams set to start in the US next summer. Apple has been interested in soccer rights for a while, signing a 10 year 2.5 billion deal for the global streaming rights to the MLS Major League soccer in 2022. The new events tentative name, which translates from French into a club World Cup. The question is, will inventing sports tournaments work? Ethan is arguing inventing sports tournaments will work 60 seconds on the clock, make the case.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (14:07):

Yeah, I mean I think it will work as long as they do it and as long as the scale is appropriately impressive and made for TV sports events kind of have a bad reputation right now because you often think of sort of ridiculous, maybe like a boxing exhibition between Logan Paul and Mike Tyson or these one-on-one golf tournaments that are just for TV and they don't really have any stakes. But the kind of tournaments that we're talking about here are pretty legit, right? The stakes are high, the scale is large. This is directly, this example that you brought up is a direct partnership with fifa. You're talking about club teams from all over the world. I immediately thought about the NBA in season tournament that they concocted on their own that now might get doled out to an individual streaming platform. That was a huge success, right? When you have the real teams, the real players doing something that really counts and seems to be big in the eyes of the viewer, this seems like a no-brainer to me. I think they could win as long as they choose. Well,

Marcus Johnson (15:10):

Oscar inventing sports tournaments won't work make the case.

Oscar Orozco (15:14):

I'll give even some credit there that the in-season tournament for the NBA has worked, but I was doing a little bit of research looking at not just defunct tournaments, which there have been many, but even competing types of leagues league, because this is kind of what it is. It's competing against the Champions League, for example, for any football fans out there and they haven't typically worked. I mean think about leagues, the U-S-F-L-X-F-L arena football hasn't worked in soccer. The now defunct confederations cup, the Wafa Cup winners cup, they last for a little bit and then there just isn't enough time in people's days and calendars for this to really have set some sort of legacy and tradition and go long term. So fans are too smart, they can spot that this is just a cash grab really, and players have even been against it. There's too many games in the season and there's a beauty to the off season as well. So I just don't see this working long term. Maybe the last a few years.

Marcus Johnson (16:17):

That last point was a good one, Mr. Tarka, the New York Times, making it as wow that the tournament we played in the summer and the end of a long European season, traditionally a time when there's no major events, so players can take the time off and rest, but players unions are annoyed because they weren't consulted by FIFA before they announced the events or soccer. The season's already pretty long, so it seems a bit unfair to make them to also participate in this at least obviously the top teams. And the second thing here is FIFA is asking for a fair amount of money from this new tournament basically as much as they ask for sponsorships for this tournament as they're for an 84-year-old World Cup tournament. So they might want to bring the asking price down for what they're trying to get for some of the ad slots at least until they can get the thing off the ground. Alright, gents,

Zach Goldner (17:04):

Marcus. I'll say one other thing too. Hello. If the sport isn't innovating, then it's falling behind. When you have different leagues that have too long of a season, then fans lose interest. If you can spark some interest and for people to tune into their tv, I think it's a win-win for both the league and for the audience.

Marcus Johnson (17:25):

Bonus take, think about it. Oh yeah. Let's move to question two. Ethan going up against Zach. Does perplexity answer engine threaten Google? Well, what is perplexity? For starters, the Economist explains that perplexity is a gen AI generative AI startup valued at 1 billion that provides fast Wikipedia like responses to search queries. The company's founder, Arin brings up disruption theory to explain why Google's search business could turn from a gift to a curse. The Economi article notes that it costs Google almost nothing when users click on its links leading to huge profits. But that gen AI shifts the model because one, the results cost more because AI q and a uses more computing power than search. And number two, they provide answers, not links. So if Alphabet were to abandon search for a perplexity, like product costs would rise and revenues and margins would fall, and investors would get angry with Google, enter perplexity with no profits to jeopardize. The question is, does perplexity answer engine threat in Google? Ethan is arguing that it does make the case.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (18:33):

Yeah, it does. And I can speak to this from experience because I'm actually a perplexity user and I don't want to give anybody any free pub. I'm not being sponsored here or anything like that, but frankly, it's a pretty good experience using perplexity. I use it almost every day. And the reason that I think it's a threat to Google is because it is such a much more pleasant way to conduct your online searching or to get answers to your questions. Whereas Google has become this advertising hellscape where you never quite know how hard you're going to have to work to find what you need. Perplexity has this simple and elegant landing page and it gives you the answer to the best of its abilities. Now, I should caveat all this the same way any responsible person would caveat anything related to ai, which is that you don't want to use any chat bot, any AI chat bot in existence if getting the answer to the question is extremely important that it has to be absolutely accurate, any better at being good at that than anything else. But for casual inquiries to get you on the right track to just find a very simple answer, it's a better experience. So I think people are going to, if they discover they're going to start to use it and just by definition that puts pressure on Google, Google will then have to respond with its own. I'm sure it will, but that's going to hurt its ability to generate the same type of ad revenues that it's generating.

Marcus Johnson (19:47):

Zach is arguing perplexity answer engine doesn't threaten Google, make the case,

Zach Goldner (19:52):

Marcus. We're using the term thread in here and when we look at Google, we're picturing a 800 pound behemoth in the room. Google is pretty much synonymous with internet search. The company is worth, I want to say its market cap is $2 trillion and the article, it references how perplexity is valued at billing dollars. So big difference right there. Maybe perplexity is able to dig up some of that big pie that is digital search, but right now Google makes up 92% of global search engine market share. So it's not just about being popular, but Google is, it is really ingrained in the fabric of our society. And other couple of things to mention too with this is that no one has really been able to disrupt Google even despite the DOJ bringing up lawsuits against Google here in the us. People still want to use it as their default search engine. I don't think we've seen that change whatsoever, but people consider it to be the better product and they stand by it until another competitor shows that to the better products. I don't think that we'll be seeing Google News's market share anytime soon.

Marcus Johnson (21:07):

It's a good point. It's going to be interesting to see what happens with this antitrust case, which should get ruled on in the next couple of weeks or months is what I saw in terms of a timeline that could change things for sure. Alright, let's move to our final question of this segments Zach against Oscar for talking about AI computers on your ears Ina free de Axios writes that IO one are a new wearable computer with two large custom fit earbuds that use an AI powered voice controlled OS smartphone free. So folks could make calls, play music, search for things set timers and more just by asking their headphones to do it for them. They explained that IO was spun out of alphabet's X moonshot and plans to ship the product this winter with the wifi version expected to cost $600 and the cellular one 700. But with that one you'd have to also pay a monthly phone bill as well. The question is will computers on your ears catch on? Zach is arguing that they will make the case.

Zach Goldner (22:12):

Yeah, I don't know about this one bow, I'll play along.

Marcus Johnson (22:16):

He has no choice. He has to

Zach Goldner (22:18):

All these zero buds might not be it. I think that we're in the start of a new tech era, we're going to have a lot of new inventions occur, some there'll be a fair share of winners and a fair share of losers as well. I think, Marcus, you mentioned here the cost of it $600 and that's not including the trip you have to take to get these professionally fitted, but I'm going to continue on with this product. I think that we're going to see it being very innovative. People are already using their earbuds in all daily routines, whether it's being at work, there's walking a dog, et cetera. People are always having their earbuds in. If you can have new AI tech features to these earbuds, like being in a foreign country and having the language around you being automatically translated, it's really cool ideas that if they came to fruition and worked well, I could see a lot of great use cases. I'm not saying that this isn't going to work, but I think we're going to see future iterations of a product similar to this really take off in the coming years.

Marcus Johnson (23:20):

Wasn't expecting that. That was a very compelling argument. You almost believe him. Yeah, nearly. But Oscar, yeah, to his point, everyone's already always wearing at least two, at least one single headphone, let alone two over time. Make the case for why computers on your ears won't catch on.

Oscar Orozco (23:40):

Well done Zach. Well done. Sums it up pretty perfectly. Rugo is the creator has a long to-do list, including building the cellular version of the product, finding a top tier music service and finalizing the design. Is that all? You bet he has a lot to do. He has a ton to do. Yes. I, I'm sorry, I tried. I did a bit of research on it on this product and it really just feels kind of like an expensive toy for maybe techy geeky type of individuals. Millennials, gen X, something like that. The main issue is the price point, right? Hundred $700 as Zach pointed out. But I would also say how it goes with other tech products really. There's a lot of competition. They talked about going smartphone free, but who really wants to do that? Also consider smart speakers and smartwatches and VR headsets and XR headsets and all of this. And this type of headset would be sort of competing with these products, which are all cheaper aside from smartphones really. So I just don't see it

Zach Goldner (24:53):

Props. The CEO here though, he doesn't have farfetched dreams of where this first product is going to go. He said that success would be selling 10,000 units or so, or a few 10,000. So it's going to be a niche market. Who knows? Maybe the idea takes off further, there's more venture capital that goes in. Maybe we'll see second or third generation really take off with more features and establish operating system, which

Oscar Orozco (25:19):

I don't think has right now. That amount was a bit low, right? As well. I think it was 21 million so far in an investor venture capital fund. So yeah, long ways to go.

Marcus Johnson (25:28):

Trying to get folks to leave their smartphone at home I think is going to be really challenging, which is why I can see Apple coming along and saying now the new AirPods, I think that's what they're called, have AI and folks will

Zach Goldner (25:42):

Exactly a hundred

Ethan Cramer-Flood (25:43):

Percent if any of this hits, the big guys will just immediately copy it and provide it with what you already are spending your money on.

Marcus Johnson (25:50):

They're also more subtle. These were pretty, they're pretty big. They're pretty big. And yeah, if you can get it down the piece, I think it was either in this Axios piece or another piece I was reading, maybe it was a verge piece saying if you can get it down something the size of an AI assistant earpiece, like in the movie her and you might be onto something because all those things do, it would be nice to walk around and just say, where's that coffee shop or answer call or play music. And you can kind of do some of that stuff, but you can't do it as frictionlessly as perhaps this new company is. Envisioning the release date here is interesting as well. End of the year is when they're planning so they can have it ready as a Christmas gift. So I see what they're trying to do with the timing, but that does seem ambitious considering we're already in May and basically have seven, eight months. Eight months will be past Christmas, so not a lot of time. Very compelling gents, great arguments. Well played for the middle segment. We move of course to the last one. It's time now for dinner party data.

Marcus Johnson (26:59):

It's the part of the show where we tell about the most interesting thing we've learned this week. Let's start with Zach, because you picked last because you were last to get to the front of show and you came up with a very compelling argument. I like the idea of the headphones and being able to speak to people in foreign languages. That was very clever. So let's start with you for dinner party data.

Zach Goldner (27:18):

All right, we were talking about streaming earlier and considering the NBA playoffs are going on, I want to talk a little about with NBA negotiating its rights for the next 10, 11 years with this new current contract that they're negotiating for. They're in talks with Amazon Prime, which is very interesting. It's always been historically on linear tv, but now the NBA is looking to go digitally as well. So currently the NBA is making roughly 3 billion per year on this. Broadcasting agree this new deal could bring up their broadcasting rights to roughly $7 billion. So it's closing the gap with

Marcus Johnson (27:59):

All

Zach Goldner (28:00):

Per year. So I think it's a 11 year deal worth 76 billion. And this is all rumored, but this is what I've seen news articles talk about, but that'd be huge. That'd mean that Disney and Amazon would be the two main players with maybe Comcast coming in as well to put that 7 billion into perspective. Back in 1989 when the NBC acquired broadcasting rights, it was roughly 150 million a year or 380 million in today's dollars. So really big. But the NBA still has a ways to go as the NFLI want to say is at roughly 10 11 billion a year. So I'm rooting for the NBA love what Adam Silver's doing, and we'll see where they get from there.

Marcus Johnson (28:49):

Nice. I saw the WNBA trying to report to the double there. It takes I think 50 million and they're trying to double it to Kathy Engelbert, I believe is commissioner trying to double it there as well. So yeah, when you sign these contracts for so long, it seems like a lot to double 3 billion to seven or more than double. But given that you're not going to sign a new one for another decade, if that makes

Ethan Cramer-Flood (29:13):

Sense, can you imagine what this is going to do to player salaries?

Oscar Orozco (29:16):

Oh, I was just thinking that the 12th man is going to make a hundred million over three years. They have

Ethan Cramer-Flood (29:21):

Such a good union. I mean this money goes to the players, to their credit as it should. And it's like we get shocked when we see 50 million a year to the big guys right now. And that's, yeah, the mediocre guys are going to be making 50 a year.

Zach Goldner (29:34):

Brian's gre, he's got a fist in the air and a hang at what he could have been making if he was in today's NBA.

Marcus Johnson (29:42):

Ethan, you're up.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (29:44):

Well, I'll segue off that because I am sitting here in New York and I'm extremely excited about what the Knicks are doing in those NBA playoffs and that I wanted to have some synergy here. So I went over to Perplexity to see what it could do since I knew that I was going to get forced to provide dinner party data. And this is always the worst part of the segment for me. Every always thinks I'm bored, everybody thinks I'm boring.

Marcus Johnson (30:08):

That's so only reason people chew in.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (30:10):

Yeah. Oh, they want to hear about trees from you, Marcus.

Marcus Johnson (30:14):

It was one times.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (30:17):

So the Knicks are killing it, right? So I'm like, let me just ask Plexity some questions, but first of all, the Rangers are also killing it. When was the last time the Knicks and the Rangers were both in the second round at the same time? According from Plexity

Marcus Johnson (30:30):

1857,

Ethan Cramer-Flood (30:32):

No, 20, 20 12, 20 13, which is already more than 10 years ago. So it was more than 10 years since the Knicks and Rangers were in the second route at the same time, which is bad enough. I expected a lot of these answers to be bad. When was the last time the Knicks got the two seed? That was also 2013. That's that team with Carmello Anthony at all the one time the Knicks were good. Really in the last forever. When was this? The last time the Knicks had a series lead in the second round, the year 2000, 24 years since they had a lead in the second round.

Marcus Johnson (31:04):

Wow,

Oscar Orozco (31:05):

That's tough. Is that lj? That's

Marcus Johnson (31:07):

Tough.

Oscar Orozco (31:07):

Four point.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (31:09):

It might've been. No, I think that I, that was the after that, and then the last one was like, all right, when's the last time the Knicks actually had the one seed? Because I couldn't even really think of that in my memory. 1989, the last time the Knicks had a one seed. So even though those grade nineties teams were never the one seed thanks to PY in Chicago, I can't remember his name. So now if any of what I just said is wrong, that's what you get from perplexity. So it's on them

Marcus Johnson (31:36):

Fact check. No, that sounds about right. That sounds about as bad as the Knicks have been since forever, since the beginning of time. Very good.

Oscar Orozco (31:44):

Here's my dinner party data. How many rings do the bulls have and how many do the Knicks have? Okay, sorry. Sorry, I'll stop there with the trash talking.

Marcus Johnson (31:53):

You're from New York, it makes no sense.

Oscar Orozco (31:56):

Grew up with Jordan Marcus, what can I say? He's a god. Alright, let's move on to something entirely different, which my dinner party day is on sleep. So yeah, I came across this new survey from Gallup. Whenever Gallup speaks, I definitely listen, but according to Gallup, I mean it shouldn't be a surprise, but Americans are just not sleeping well for the first time in 23 years. More than half, way more than half. 57% said they would feel better if they got more sleep, but only 42% said that they get the sleep they need. And fewer and fewer talking to the amount of average time we sleep in a day, fewer and fewer Americans are getting the recommended eight hours a night. So just 26% said they get that much sleep on average. That's down from 34% to just a decade ago. That's pretty significant. And Gallup has been asking this, this is why I love them since 1942.

Oscar Orozco (32:53):

So 1942, it was 59%, 59% versus 26 that said they got the eight hours a day and now the last that 20% say they get five hours or less. And in 1942, that was 3%, 20%, that's one in five people. Way too many people are not sleeping enough. They speculate that it's because of stress and more so women than men that show worse numbers. I'm sure electronics don't help either. So pretty crazy numbers. I think we need to try to lay off the coffee and then do a little bit more with our sleep, even if it's on the weekends.

Marcus Johnson (33:30):

Oscar, you probably get a good 12, don't you?

Oscar Orozco (33:32):

I do like my sleep, Marcus, but yeah, I wish I, I could tell maybe on an occasional weekend.

Marcus Johnson (33:39):

Very nice. Alright, I've got one for you real quick. So on Monday's episode I talked about the most expensive manmade object ever created according to Guinness World Records and it was International Space Station or IS for short costing 150 billion to develop and build and then four additional billion per year for NASA to operate. What is it? What is this International Space Station? It's basically a big science lab used for experiments in microgravity and space environments and to test spaceship systems and equipment for Mars and Moon missions. We've got a few facts for you about the ISS courtesy of the Kennedy Space Center. So number one, it's only 260 miles above the earth, which is the distance from New York to dc, but up. So I would've thought it would've been further up. Number two, at dawn or dusk, you can see the space station as it moves across the sky. It is the third brightest object and you can actually, as a website, you can track it and look up in the sky, try and find it. Number three, international Space Station travels. This one is insane. Travels at 18,000 miles per hour. That feeds the Space Station, orbits the earth every hour and a half.

Oscar Orozco (34:56):

That's terrifying.

Marcus Johnson (34:56):

Wow. It goes around the whole earth, which means the crew gets 16 sunrises and sunsets every day. I can't even know how to comprehend that one. Yeah,

Ethan Cramer-Flood (35:10):

That seems dizzying. That seems like that would

Marcus Johnson (35:12):

Be a challenge. It seems like it's moving too fast to be just 200 miles away from the surface of the planet.

Oscar Orozco (35:18):

What about those pictures of Earth? And they usually come where I would think from the Space Station, but it seems too close.

Marcus Johnson (35:25):

Surprised they're not blurry given that speed. It's a lot of happy hours from end to end. It's about as long as American football field or a soccer field in terms of living space. It's bigger than the six bedroom house. In November, 2020. The International Space Station celebrated 20 years of humankind permanently occupying the Space Station. And then a few more for you. The average astronaut mission length is six months as of September, 2023. There were seven folks up there. It's a partnership between five space agencies representing 15 countries provided for and operated by, sorry, 15 countries that provide for and operate the Space Station. US Russia, Canada, Japan, and countries in the European Space Agency. And finally, NASA's next step is for space exploration. Sorry, next step for space exploration is to set up a permanent base for humans to live on the moon. I'm trying to get one of those rooms.

Oscar Orozco (36:24):

No thank you. No thanks. Yeah, I'll

Marcus Johnson (36:25):

Pass. That's fine. Yeah, that's

Oscar Orozco (36:29):

I'm always wondered quick thing, if they've already researched what kind of impact that has on people's health when they come down from there. I don't know. Lots of thoughts, but all terrifying. Yeah, I couldn't do it.

Marcus Johnson (36:40):

Living on the moon, just being up the Space Station station for six months or six months or just the same six people

Ethan Cramer-Flood (36:46):

With your muscles atrophy a little bit.

Oscar Orozco (36:48):

No, I mean, are they having heart issues or things like that is what I was referred to.

Marcus Johnson (36:54):

Well,

Ethan Cramer-Flood (36:54):

It's been decades, so I think they're okay.

Marcus Johnson (36:57):

Probably. It's hard enough being with just you three on this podcast for half an hour. Same six people for six months. Are you kidding me? That too.

Oscar Orozco (37:03):

Thank you. That alone.

Marcus Johnson (37:04):

Anyway, that's what we've got time for. Thank you so much to my guest of just consulted. Thank you Dos.

Oscar Orozco (37:09):

Thanks for having me. Marcus.

Marcus Johnson (37:10):

Thank you to Ethan.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (37:12):

I'm going outside. It's 75 degrees.

Marcus Johnson (37:14):

Thank you to Zach, who's furious about that fact. I'm staying inside. It's very cold. Need a blanket. It's very cold where he is. Thank you to the whole crew Victoria, who edits the show. Stuart runs the team. Sophie does social media, and Lance runs our video podcast. Thanks everyone for listening in. We hope to see you on Monday for the Behind the Numbers Daily. That's an eMarketer podcast made possible by Awin Happy Weekends.