The Weekly Listen: How ChatGPT will change our 2025 future, the impact of the snippet generation, and more

On today’s podcast episode, we discuss which group of folks ChatGPT will affect the most next year, a social media ban for young people in Australia, how the “snippet generation” are influencing our world, what to make of this new group of “subscription pausers,” movie theatre etiquette around throwing popcorn, and more. Tune in to the discussion with Senior Director of Podcasts and host Marcus Johnson, Senior Analysts Ross Benes and Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf, and Vice President of Content Paul Verna.

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Episode Transcript:

Marcus Johnson:

Hello, everyone, and thanks for hanging out with us for the Behind The Numbers Weekly listen, an EMARKETER podcast made possible by LiveRamp. This is the Friday show that, Ross, I think you'll appreciate this, saw a guy wearing a WWE wrestling championship belt on the street and was a little bit jealous. Wow. Was it you, Ross? He was just walking down the street with it on. But the thing is, my first thought-

Ross Benes:

I don't wear the belt. I hold it above my head as I walk.

Marcus Johnson:

My first thought wasn't even, "That looks weird." It was, "He must have just won WrestleMania." That was my first thought. Maybe you did. Who knows? Anyway, I'm your host, Marcus Johnson. In today's show, how will Chat GPT change the future in 2025?

Paul Verna:

So I think if you bring that kind of science into it or that kind of processing power into harnessing different data sets or connecting dots, which often don't get connected by the medical profession, I think that could really be a game changer.

Marcus Johnson:

What do we make of a social media ban for kids in Australia?

Ross Benes:

If entertainment is primarily used by children, it is the devil. It drives them to evil. All these societal ills get blamed on it until that young generation grows up and they're the ones making laws. And everything, in retrospect, seems kind of silly.

Marcus Johnson:

What will be the impact of the snippet generation?

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

That's life's way of teaching us attention, and humans have innovated our way into a shortcut for alleviating boredom. But it turns out boredom has a purpose.

Marcus Johnson:

What's the most important thing to note about The Subscription Pauser? And I have some stats about movie theater etiquette.

Join me for this episode. We have three people.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Oh, no.

Marcus Johnson:

Let's meet them. What's wrong?

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Is that about Wicked?

Marcus Johnson:

Is that about Wicked? No. Why? What did you do?

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I didn't do anything. We'll talk about it later.

Marcus Johnson:

Okay. We'll talk about it. Yes. Towards the end of the show, we'll see why Evelyn probably got kicked out of the movie theater. I have my suspicions, but we joined by the very person on today's show. She's our senior analyst covering everything digital advertising and media based in Virginia. It's Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Howdy everybody.

Marcus Johnson:

Hi Evelyn. We're also joined by someone else who is the same title show, covers the same thing, but he's based just above New York City. It's Ross Benes.

Ross Benes:

Hey Marcus.

Marcus Johnson:

Hey fella. And finally, we are joined by our vice president of content, covers media, advertising and everything pretty much, and he now lives in Maine. We refer to him as Paul Verna.

Paul Verna:

Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Marcus Johnson:

Hey champ. All right folks. We've got the story of the week for you. We'll play a game in the middle. We end with some random trivia, but let's get to it. We start, of course, with the story of the week.

How will ChatGPT change the future in 2025? So Megan Morrone of Axios writes that Gen AI has yet to make a profound difference in how we live our lives, but it has already changed the future. She cites Axios's chief technology correspondent Ina Fried who says, "ChatGPT has probably changed your life the most if you are a high school or college student, if you work in customer service, or software development, coding, or if you're trying to become a prolific poster on LinkedIn. For many of the rest of us, Gen AI is still largely in the novelty curiosity space, despite the giddy prophecies and billions invested."

So Evelyn, I'll start with you. There was a few groups of people mentioned there, software people, customer service people, student people. Which group of people do you think ChatGPT will affect the most next year, 2025?

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I think that customer service workers and coders will see the most immediate effects from ChatGPT and other Gen AI tools and resources. And then, of course through various feedback loops, will therefore exert the most influence over the tech. But I think students, and particularly those in high school and college that were called out in that quote, that are supposed to be sharpening their writing and analytical skills will suffer the most in the long run from the implementation of this tech as it stands because I think there are just a lot of... It'll take a while to see how those effects will come to play when they do enter the workforce, when they maybe try and go to grad school, whatever they want to do after they're out of college. But we just have to wait and see on that front. So I think the biggest implications are for the students, but the most immediate implications in 2025 will be for those customer service workers and coders.

Marcus Johnson:

I did think it was interesting. There was a note in the piece saying or suggesting that teachers could be a group of people who are affected by this, whether it's next year or the year after. I'm not sure. But in terms of maybe adding AI classes or focusing more on AI, because Miss Morrone was writing that while students are regularly using Gen AI, teachers are not. Education Week recently found that educators' use of AI tools in the classroom has barely changed in the last year. I wonder if we're going to see more, whether that's specifically designed AI literacy classes, whether that's AI being taught within the realms of science or English or whatever, maybe more college classes popping up at a quick Google search earlier. You can take AI classes at Harvard or Oxford or a bunch of other places. So I wonder if teachers are going to take it on board a bit more perhaps. Ross, which group of people do you think ChatGPT will affect the most?

Ross Benes:

Well, I don't know if it was included in the options, but content marketers come to mind, if you're doing a lot of content marketing. And it doesn't even have to be for an advertising company. Just in general. They're often having to splice up different information, whether it's white paper or a blog post, saying the same sort of stuff but here it's in 500 words, here it's in 1,000 words. It'd be very easy to do that quickly using an AI tool to repurpose your own stuff and self-edit quicker. If you could give it, "Here's 3000 words of something I wrote, but I got to turn into 500 words," ChatGPT could probably help you do that pretty quickly. I could see that being useful for a content marketer.

Paul Verna:

Yeah, I agree that both content marketers and customer service professionals will definitely find new ways to use ChatGPT. And I also think in the education realm, the author brings up some interesting points about the gap between students who are already using it and teachers who are not. That gap may start to close, but where I see the most far-reaching effect on society is in the medical field, which was also singled out here. These statistics about how ChatGPT beat doctors at diagnosing illnesses, including doctors who use ChatGPT to help them is very telling. And particularly, when you combine it with a couple of other trends, one is that there don't seem to be a lot of primary care doctors who are taking new patients these days.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Yes. Oh my goodness.

Ross Benes:

Yeah. It's tough.

Paul Verna:

So that's a big factor that I don't hear a lot talked about it, but in my own experience, in my family's experience, and because we recently moved, we're confronting it head-on. And then the other thing is that there are a lot of chronic illnesses starting with long COVID that are not easily understood. There aren't professionals who are just devoted to treating these conditions. A study by Nature Medicine estimated that there are 400 million people in the world who have long COVID, and that's just one of many poorly understood conditions. So I think if you bring that kind of science into it, or that kind of processing power into harnessing different data sets or connecting dots which often don't get connected by the medical profession, I think that could really be a game changer.

Ross Benes:

Yeah.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Let's hope that those models don't absorb the biases that are present in today's medical system-

Paul Verna:

Absolutely.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

... like against women and-

Paul Verna:

Absolutely

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

... people of color, yeah.

Paul Verna:

Yeah, yeah.

Ross Benes:

Or that they don't get used for the exclusive use of a big healthcare system.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Oh my goodness. Yeah. We get charged.

Paul Verna:

Yeah. These are the inherent risks charged in all of AI, right?

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Right, yeah.

Paul Verna:

But in this case, it could be life or death. So even more critical.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Right.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. Paul, I think that's a really good point, and that's something that caught my eyes well. That quote saying it unveiled the research, unveiling that doctors sometimes unwavering belief in a diagnosis that they had made even when a chatbot potentially suggested a better one. And as you cited there, a small study that said that ChatGPT plus had beat doctors are diagnosing illnesses and also beat doctors who had diagnosed it and then also used ChatGPT. That point as well, I think is a good one about folks trying to get an appointment with a new doctor. There's a study, which I remember Rajiv Leventhal mentioning, he covers healthcare for us, Marriott Hawkins, they did a survey and they were saying it now takes an average of 26 days to schedule a new patient physician appointment.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

26? It took me months when I moved here to Virginia.

Marcus Johnson:

Well, on average, on average. And that's in the 15 of the largest cities in the US. That 26 days is up from 24, about seven years ago, and it used to take about 21 days two decades ago.

Paul Verna:

What we're getting is just a flat out no. We've called medical practices that have hundreds of doctors on the roster and literally they do not have a primary care physician. So it's not even like, "Oh, we'll put you on a waiting list." It's just, "Nope, go somewhere else."

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. Wow. Go on, Russ.

Ross Benes:

I hope AI is used by insurance companies to improve their registry of in-network doctors, because a lot of times, those numbers are outdated or the person isn't even working there. So-

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Oh my gosh.

Ross Benes:

... you can go on your healthcare registry and pull up, "Here's all the people in my area that are in network for primary care," and good luck reaching them when you call those numbers.

Marcus Johnson:

Ross, are you using this podcast as a suggestion box?

Ross Benes:

If anyone at Cigna, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield wants to get in touch, I'm here.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Consulting services by Ross.

Marcus Johnson:

Well, to wrap this segment on Miss Morrone with Axios's writing, I thought was a really good point that two years of living with ChatGPT, because it's about two years old, and still haven't shown us the perfect use case for Gen AI, but they have proven that technology is a law and that will drive the industry to keep looking till it finds a killer app. That's what we've got time for the story of the week. Let's move now folks to the game of the week. Today's game, fill in the blank.

How does it work? It's painfully self-explanatory. So let's do it. Round one, let's start. We-

Paul Verna:

Sorry, Marcus. Before we start the game.

Marcus Johnson:

Yes, fella.

Paul Verna:

So back in the way bygone days of the weekly listen, we used to give a championship belt and I wonder if today we can give a WWE sweatshirt for the winner of this game. Or are we still doing championship belts? What's the payoff here?

Marcus Johnson:

Who's paying for this? You know how long it took me to get a championship belt? We just went down to Party City in the end and bought it myself, I think, because Mark Dolliver made me, that wonderful menace.

All right. You'll get really nothing to be honest, but we could pretend that we're going to ship you something. Let's pretend that we're going to send you something if it makes you try harder.

Paul Verna:

It does.

Marcus Johnson:

Sweatshirt it is that for everyone. Probably no one. Round one. We start with Evelyn. A social media ban for children under 16 passed the Australian Parliament on Friday in a world first law, announced the Associated Press. The new law will make platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to $33 million US for systematic failures to prevent kids under 16 from holding accounts. Exemptions apply for health and education services, which will include YouTube, Messenger Kids, WhatsApp, and others. The AP notes that platforms have one year to work out how they could implement the ban before penalties are enforced. But Evelyn, this ban, this social media ban in Australia for children under 16 is blank.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

It's a case study. It is the first national law of its kind, and it's sure to be examined very closely by other governments. Over the last few years in the US, states have taken some action in this realm. California passed its Age-Appropriate Design Code Act in 2022, and then in 2023, Utah and Arkansas have passed laws banning social media use for children and teens under a certain age. And those laws are currently blocked from implementation as they make their way through the court system. But they do signal that protecting minors against perceived harms of social media is a bipartisan issue. Congress is considering a couple of related bills and the Surgeon General is weighing warning labels for social media. So the US is on the precipice of broader action to protect minors, and the EU and UK has some related provisions from the Digital Services Act and the Online Safety Act respectively that we'll start to see come to fruition next year.

But a nationwide ban is a totally different beast, and platforms are not allowed to require users to prove their age by providing government issued identity documents for this. So legislators and regulators will be paying attention to whether the law holds up to any challenges and if it does, how exactly the platforms confirm the age of users. If they do so, if the penalty is enough to incentivize that kind of behavior and then what the consequences are. There's a lot to watch here.

Marcus Johnson:

Very good. Ross, what's your word phrase?

Ross Benes:

Moral panic. It reminds me of everything they've said about movies, comic books, TV shows, video games. If entertainment is primarily used by children, it is the devil. It drives them to evil. All these societal ills get blamed on it until that young generation grows up and they're the ones making laws. And everything in retrospect seems silly. We had national hearings in the early '90s on video games being the causal factor for all sorts of violence. Now it's social media companies.

Marcus Johnson:

And finally, Paul.

Paul Verna:

Well, I think this is different from those previous panics. I think this is well-intentioned, but I also think it's an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle, and like all such attempts, I'm afraid it's not going to succeed in doing what it's meant to do. I don't mean to be cynical about it. And maybe this could work in Australia to a greater extent than in the US where I just don't see it happening.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, great arguments, folks, real quick summary here of people who support it and people who aren't too happy with it. Supporters of the bill happy that it demands that social media companies take responsible steps to identify and remove underage users from their platforms, especially ones who have been preyed upon, young people who've been preyed upon online. However, critics of the bill think the legislation was rushed without adequate scrutiny, and that a ban would isolate kids and deprive them of the positive aspects of social media and that it undermines, this bill undermines the authority of parents to make decisions for their children.

All right, story two. We'll start with Ross. We're talking about the snippet generation was the title of a piece by Axios's Erika Pandey. She writes that long form entertainment is out and snack sized media is in for the next generation of kids, teens and young adults.

Bonnie Nagel, a behavioral neuroscientist at Oregon Health and Science University says, "Boredom comes much easier now." Ms. Pandey notes number of examples of the snippet generation, English professors say college students are struggling to finish books according to a report from the Atlantic. Instead, assigning poems and short stories. Kids shows are also getting shorter with episodes of Bluey now just seven minutes long on average, Vulture was noting, and pop songs are simpler, shorter, and more repetitive to give them a better chance of going viral on TikTok and Instagram in snippet form according to a Forbes report. But Ross, the main takeaway from this article about the Snippet generation is blank.

Ross Benes:

Kids probably should have less screen time, especially in school settings. You wanted it quick, right?

Marcus Johnson:

That was, well, a brief, not instant coffee.

Ross Benes:

Okay.

Marcus Johnson:

I'm looking for something-

Ross Benes:

[inaudible 00:16:28].

Marcus Johnson:

... like brew it little bit longer.

Ross Benes:

I don't think that they should be banned from devices or any platforms, but it's unhealthy to use them as extensively as some people do use them. And there does seem to be evidence that a lot of school districts have locked away devices. They've given kids keys to their device, so they know their phone is there and they can get it when they need it, but they don't have it throughout the day. And the teachers overwhelmingly report this has improved classroom discussion, kids paying attention, retention of information. So just not having your phone with you all the time I think would be a good thing because clearly it has detrimental impact on attention spans.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. Paul.

Paul Verna:

ICYMI, TLDR, WTF? SMH.

Ross Benes:

That was even shorter than mine.

Marcus Johnson:

Please don't let that be all you've got.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

There were so many letters.

Marcus Johnson:

I have no idea what you just said.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I know.

Ross Benes:

I lost them after the third acronym.

Paul Verna:

In case you missed it, too long, didn't read, what the? WTF? Shaking my head.

Marcus Johnson:

Anything else, Paul?

Paul Verna:

Yeah. It's true that everything in our society has become compressed by the fact that screens have really shortened all of our attention spans and we focus a lot on kids, but I think it's true of everyone. Let's be honest, it's true. Any marketer, our reports have shrunk over the years, but it is a fact of life. I don't know that we can expect anything to change in terms of attention spans being what they are. So it's really just more something that we have to accept as a society and work with it.

Marcus Johnson:

It's a great point in terms of a lot of the times, the focus is on kids, but there is that Pew Research report saying that actually, kids notice it more and they're more annoyed that their parents are on their devices more so to a larger extent than parents who are annoyed that their kids on devices. So yeah, it's not just the younger people. Evelyn.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Yeah, I think it's all about education, and I feel the same way about AI. I don't want to place more of a burden on teachers because they already do way too much and get paid way too little, at least here in the US. And I know at-home enrichment on parents' parts is not easy, but I think it's a good place to start. In addition to things like limiting device time in the classroom as well, paying attention is a skill that needs to be cultivated and nurtured the same way reading is. And kids might be taught to read at school, but being a book lover is as much a function of the home environment.

When it comes to attention these days, being bored is more easily avoidable. It's very easy to passively engage with something that occupies your brain without requiring any real focus, but being bored and having to figure out a way to alleviate that boredom by playing with your friends or playing with your siblings or using your imagination to play with yourself, reading a book, watching a movie, that's true for adults as well. That's life's way of teaching us attention. And humans have innovated our way into a shortcut for alleviating boredom, but it turns out boredom has a purpose. So I think if parents make sure kids and parents are bored at home, we might stand a chance at mitigating the erosion of attention in the classroom and elsewhere in life.

Paul Verna:

Bring back boredom.

Ross Benes:

That could be a TED talk there, that boredom has a purpose.

Paul Verna:

I just hope when you give that TED talk, Evelyn, people aren't scrolling their phones and [inaudible 00:20:00].

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

And nodding off.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. I thought these was really good points. One of the takes I had, or takeaways was that you, it's been brought up before, but you can prove correlation, but causation is much harder. And Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia was saying, "We know that kids and teens willingness to pay attention for long periods of time is dwindling. We know that, but the research doesn't show, nor is it likely, that kids are any less able to focus than the parents or grandparents. And I think part of the solution here is more longitudinal studies to help learn more about technology's effect on causation, not just correlation.

All right, let's move to round three. We're starting with Paul. And the topic is a new streaming customer has emerged. They're called The Subscription Pauser. So customers have formed new habits of regularly pausing subscriptions and returning to them within a year, writes Sarah Krause of the Wall Street Journal. She explains that as subscription prices rise and streaming-centric home entertainment becomes the norm, families are establishing their own hierarchies of always on services versus those that come and go with seasons of hit shows or sports. The share of folks who are subscription pausers, defined as the monthly median percentage of premium streaming video subscribers who rejoined the same service they had canceled within the prior year. So basically people who had subscribed to something, left and came back within a year, 34% in the first nine months of 2024. That is up slightly from 30% in 2022. So from 30 to 34% in the last two years. But Paul, the thing to note about The Subscription Pauser is blank.

Paul Verna:

Well, this capability has always existed with streaming services and it was one of the selling points of moving away from the cable bundle into the streaming era. I think what's making the numbers rise now is just simply the rising prices of these services, and people looking a little bit more closely at their budgets and realizing that yes, they can pause some of these services for in some cases months at a time. The entrance or the focus on sports by some of these services could both help and hurt. This trend could help streaming services in the sense that they have more content that people need to watch for a long stretch at a time. But it also could encourage people to just sign up for a service for say, the football season or the basketball season. So it cuts both ways, but I think it's another one of those things where it's just built into the way that type of content is delivered now.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, Evelyn?

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Yeah, I think the thing to note about The Subscription Pauser is that they are the norm. Just because the term is somewhat new doesn't mean this is a new phenomenon. Like Paul mentioned, it's built into the delivery mechanism these days. And I think it's also important to understand that consumers have a limited budget for entertainment. They always have. I think maybe platforms might have lost sight of that because of, the pandemic drove just insane numbers of subscribers and time spent with media because people didn't really have much else to do. But we're going into another period of austerity here in the US. Tariffs are likely to constrict discretionary spending even more. So there's a high likelihood that this kind of behavior will just continue unabated as people try and make sure that their budgets are not stressed unduly by having 17 subscriptions to different services just for entertainment purposes.

Marcus Johnson:

And finally, Ross.

Ross Benes:

There is a consumer benefit here from streaming over linear TV and that you do have the option to continue to do this even though it can be expensive to add up all the streaming services, but the streaming services are going to fight this habit by giving more annual discounts, more bundling so that while you do have the option and the freedom to cancel and come as you go, there will be inertia placed on you, especially if you take any of those discounts to do so.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

And the click to cancel rule that you just put out there might also come into play here. We'll see-

Ross Benes:

It could.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

... if it survives.

Ross Benes:

The streaming services have been a little better than the digital publishers about that at least. The New York Times makes you call a number. At least if I cancel Hulu, it's three clicks.

Paul Verna:

Yeah.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Calling people. Gross.

Marcus Johnson:

Right. Right. It's the latter.

Paul Verna:

But it's an interesting point you bring up, Ross, about how the streaming services are not going to make it easy. It's a little bit like with password sharing, where for a long time, it just wasn't on the radar. And then when they started having to look at their own expenses, then it suddenly got on the radar and they started rolling out these password sharing restrictions that were, at least I felt that it was more than I expected to see at least so quickly. So yeah, they're going to get wise to this and I think we're going to see more ways that they're going to make it not necessarily difficult in the logistical sense, but they're going to make it more attractive to stay on as opposed to drop in and out.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Carrots instead of sticks.

Paul Verna:

Yeah.

Ross Benes:

Yeah.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. My question is, have you really lost a customer if they come back within a year? And thinking differently about churn, and in this article, Sarah Krause was noting that the habit of pausing and resuming services means that the industry-wide rate of customer defections, which has risen over the past year, is less pronounced than it appears. You were saying the average rate of US customer cancellations among premium streaming video services reached 5.2% in August. But after factoring in resubscribers, that rate dropped, that rate of defectors was lower, 3.5%.

All right folks. Excellent answers to all three rounds, but there is only one winner. And this week that winner is, drum roll, Evelyn is this week's winner of the game with nine points. Ross and Paul tied on eight. An excellent performance for all of you, but mainly Evelyn because you won. You get the championship belt that you can either hold up above your head or wear down the street around your waist. Maybe it was practical, maybe it was holding up his jeans.

Ross Benes:

I tried to paste a TAMU link for a sweatshirt for Evelyn because it's the cheapest.

Marcus Johnson:

That's what you were doing this whole time?

Ross Benes:

Their website has a 1500-character URL. I can't paste it in the Slack-

Marcus Johnson:

Good.

Ross Benes:

... because it says that you can only have so many characters.

Marcus Johnson:

Because we're not getting it anyway.

Ross Benes:

So if you want Evelyn, I can DM you the link.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Oh, thanks Ross. I appreciate it.

Marcus Johnson:

Please don't.

Ross Benes:

And Marcus can mail you the shirt. It's-

Marcus Johnson:

Perfect. Yeah.

Ross Benes:

It's very classy.

Marcus Johnson:

I'll reach it to the [inaudible 00:26:33]. All right folks. That's all we've got time for the game of the week. Congratulations to Evelyn. She's this week's winner. She gets the championship belt and apparently, a sweatshirt that I have to buy her. Let's move now to dinner party data.

This is the part of the show where we tell you about the most interesting thing we've learned this week. We start with our champion of the game for this week, it's Evelyn.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Well, I was going to dedicate my win to DayQuil as that is my current savior at the moment. And in light of my current predicament, I brought some facts about the common cold from the American Lung Association. I did regretfully pick this up during my Thanksgiving travels, and I'm humbled and reminded to savor the sensation of breathing through both nostrils. So please everyone take a deep breath and remember how lucky you are.

So colds can be caused by more than 200 different respiratory viruses. They tend to last about a week, though some can last longer, especially in children, the elderly and those in poor health. Adults get an average of two to three colds per year, mostly between September and May. So if an adult gets three colds a year, each lasting a week, that means they spend about 6% of their year sick with a cold. And children suffer from more colds per year than adults, which is unsurprising. I feel like every time I encounter a kid, they have a cough. I don't know.

Marcus Johnson:

I don't know what it is about the air in America, but I've had one cold in the last 10 years.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Did you move to America 10 years ago? Is that what you're saying?

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, roughly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Maybe it's just coincidence, but I don't ever get colds, which is not a popular thing to say because people get them.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I know. How dare you?

Marcus Johnson:

... are livid

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

In my time, my time of tragedy here, Marcus?

Marcus Johnson:

I know. Can't relate at all. No. Feel better, and they're very interesting stats. Let's go to Ross.

Ross Benes:

So it's college football transfer season right now because the regular season just ended and it's in between bowl games. So there's a lot of weird things going on right now that's going to lead to more transfers than have ever happened in the history of this sport. So just to start out with, there's about 18,000 division one football players in the United States right now. We're just talking D1 here. There's 134 teams. The NCAA has, due to the payers finally being able to get paid, there used to be unlimited rosters. You could have 150 people on a roster if you want. Next year, you could only have 105. So the number of players that are on rosters is going to decline quite a bit. There's only going to be about 14,000 players. Next year we're going to see a drop of about 4,000 people and you have the transfer portal opening. With this happening, there's a lot of guys losing their spots. So more are going into the portal. Not everyone's going to find a home.

Now, for some context on this transfer portal stuff, in 2021, there were 800 players that hit the portal in D1. And that was a significant increase over the years previous, but last year, there was 3,300 more than four times the amount in 2021. This year is going to blow last year out of the water. The portal isn't even open and there's ready about 500 players in it right now. By the end of the spring when the second portal season happens, there will probably be 5,000 players who will transfer. So D1 football is going to go from 18,000 players to 14,000 players, and 5,000 of them are going to change teams. So that means more than one-fourth of players on a college football roster right now will not be on the team that they were on this year.

Many of them will get cut and not find a home or they'll go to division two or division three. But it is absolute chaos that the sport has never seen due to rule changes, the portal being open, you have unlimited transfer windows, you could be paid openly and you have the COVID year still happening. Players were granted an extra year of eligibility in 2020. Some of those players still use their red shirt that that has not phased out. There's more people from more time frames playing than there ever had been. It's just a massive mess with more players in the sport being condensed with all the transferring and all the payment going down.

Marcus Johnson:

So Ross, why did they cut the roster from 150 to 105?

Ross Benes:

Well, it was an NCAA thing. It's basically saying there used to be a scholarship limit of 85, but you could have your rosters big as you want.

Marcus Johnson:

Got it.

Ross Benes:

So a lot of teams have huge walk-on programs. Now the walk-ons are mostly going away. You can give as many scholarships as you want, but it's set at 105. It's like how the NFL has a roster cap. Now that we're paying players, we're going to cap it at this right here because it's that... The Atlanta Falcons can't have 50% more players than the New York Giants on the roster.

Marcus Johnson:

Right, right.

Ross Benes:

Now that it's not amateurism and you're paid, there's a roster cap.

Marcus Johnson:

Interesting. Okay. Wow. Something to watch. I wasn't aware of that at all.

Ross Benes:

It's an absolute mess if you want to be a D1 athlete right now. Very tough.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. That's bad.

Ross Benes:

Or a college athlete in general.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Dang it.

Ross Benes:

Because this is going to trickle down.

Marcus Johnson:

Evelyn, so close.

Ross Benes:

Too late, Evelyn.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Foiled again.

Ross Benes:

Just think if you're playing D2 or D3 and you're trying to get a scholarship, there's going to be hundreds of kids who are just at D1 schools who can't land at another D1 school and they're going to go down. And it's harder to play D3 than it was years ago.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah, it was already hard. And-

Ross Benes:

And that's all sports football just has the most players and makes the most money. So I used it.

Marcus Johnson:

Yeah. Yeah. It's already hard to try to get into any school to play football, let alone the pros. So this seems like it's making it even harder.

Ross Benes:

Paul.

Paul Verna:

A lot of these kids are going to get addicted to DayQuil. I can just see it.

Marcus Johnson:

Paul, what have you got for us?

Ross Benes:

There's NIL opportunities there.

Paul Verna:

For sure. I have a number, which is $2.66 trillion.

Marcus Johnson:

US?

Paul Verna:

US dollars. That is the combined net worth of the 20 wealthiest individuals in the US.

Ross Benes:

Jesus.

Paul Verna:

For context, that is considerably larger than the GDP of Italy. So if these 20 people decided, "Hey, let's start a country," or, "Let's secede from the US," they would control wealth greater than all but the seven top nations in the world by GDP. Just saying.

Ross Benes:

What?

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Ouch.

Paul Verna:

And what I haven't done yet, this would have to be like a bonus edition of the weekly listen where I have hours of time to crunch data, but it would be interesting to see how that has trended over a long period of time. The net worth of the top 20 earners compared to the country's GDP.

Marcus Johnson:

What's insane is that folks like Elon Musk are going to be in that group, top of that group probably.

Paul Verna:

Yeah. He is at the top-

Marcus Johnson:

And his net-

Paul Verna:

Sorry to interrupt, but as of today, this is from Forbes which updates the list in real time, he is a third of the way to being a trillionaire.

Ross Benes:

Wow.

Paul Verna:

So net worth $332 billion.

Marcus Johnson:

What's insane is that he was worth $22 billion in 2019.

Paul Verna:

Yep.

Marcus Johnson:

Five years ago, he was worth around 20 billion and now it's 300 billion in just five years. Shocking. All right. I've got one for you real quick. Let's see what we've got. Movie theater etiquette.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Oh yeah.

Marcus Johnson:

All right, Evelyn, here we go. So we've got movie theater etiquette stats from YouGov. One, the most unacceptable movie theater behavior is, [inaudible 00:34:14]-

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Singing along with a musical.

Marcus Johnson:

I knew that's what you did. I bloody knew it.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

No. I hate it.

Marcus Johnson:

That's why you were thrown out, isn't it?

Paul Verna:

No.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I'm so against it.

Ross Benes:

No, I'm thinking about [inaudible 00:34:22]. Yeah.

Marcus Johnson:

Against it?

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I am very much against it. Yes.

Marcus Johnson:

Okay.

Paul Verna:

But the number two worst thing is bringing a flask of DayQuil in your jacket into the movie theater, and that is what Evelyn did.

Marcus Johnson:

Hip flask of DayQuil. 40-

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Might have caught this cold when I saw Wicked. I don't know. I didn't have it yet.

Marcus Johnson:

47% of people say it's unacceptable to sing along to music in the movies versus 33% who think it's acceptable. That however was 12th or 13th on the list. So it was way, way down. Number one actually was video chatting on your phone.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Oh, okay. [inaudible 00:34:57].

Ross Benes:

Wow.

Marcus Johnson:

Well, 90% of people said this was unacceptable. More shockingly than that is that 4% of people actually think it's acceptable to video chat.

Paul Verna:

How many percent do it? That's what I want to know.

Marcus Johnson:

Oh, good question. Yeah. I didn't have that, but it's probably pretty high.

Paul Verna:

Yeah.

Marcus Johnson:

This behavior was seen as more egregious than people who reveal plot points before they happen whilst you're in the movie. Number two, the most likely reaction to unacceptable movie theater behavior is what would you do if you saw someone video chatting on their phone?

Ross Benes:

Pick it up, throw it down on the ground and stomp on it six times. That's acceptable.

Marcus Johnson:

That wasn't on my list.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Throw popcorn.

Marcus Johnson:

That was on the list. So most people, most civilized people, Ross and Evelyn, will get an employee to address the problem, 43%. 7% of people think you should glare silently. They're probably English. And 1% of people think the answer is to throw popcorn at them to get them to stop. How much? I don't know. Number three, surprisingly common movie theater experiences, 40% of Americans have fallen asleep during a movie. That felt high.

Paul Verna:

Guilty as charged.

Marcus Johnson:

That's an expensive way to... yeah, Paul's in that category.

Paul Verna:

Well, watching a movie at home for sure. In the theater, not so much.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Oh, for sure.

Marcus Johnson:

Theater. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 31% of people watched multiple movies in the theater in one day, which I'm absolutely going to be doing from now on. Although I feel like that was a common... My parents always talk about that being a common thing. People go to the movies for the day and they would see multiple films. And then finally-

Paul Verna:

Boredom.

Marcus Johnson:

There you go. Americans favorite movie snack was of course-

Ross Benes:

Popcorn.

Marcus Johnson:

Popcorn, 73%. M&M's were a distant second at 32%, Reese's had 23%, and then there was a long tail of other choices.

Paul Verna:

So speaking of popcorn, with the throwing of the popcorn at people who are video chatting, I would assume that applies if they're in front of you, not behind you. Because tossing popcorn behind your back and having them see who's doing it, maybe not so effective.

Marcus Johnson:

I thought people were going to aim. I don't know. Ask Evelyn. She's the one who's doing it.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

I have never done that in my life, but-

Marcus Johnson:

She bought a slingshot [inaudible 00:37:10].

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

If you're trying to get them to shut up, then I don't know. But maybe it's not such a bad idea for them to see.

Marcus Johnson:

If anyone's at the movie theater, and someone's throwing popcorn at you, it is probably Evelyn. Okay. So go up to that person and say, [inaudible 00:37:21].

Paul Verna:

M&M's are a little more projectile like.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

It'll hit you.

Marcus Johnson:

Please don't throw anything, people. We don't endorse that. Anyway, that's all we've got time for for today's episode. Throw things if you have to. Thank you so much to my guests for today. Thank you to Ross.

Ross Benes:

Thanks Marcus.

Marcus Johnson:

Thank you to Evelyn.

Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf:

Oh, thank you. It's the DayQuil. Thank you, Marcus.

Marcus Johnson:

Evelyn, for you folks who can't see because this isn't a video episode, she fell asleep.

Paul Verna:

Evelyn was just bored.

Marcus Johnson:

Just like Paul in the movie theaters. Thank you to Paul.

Paul Verna:

Always a pleasure.

Marcus Johnson:

Thank you to Victoria who edits the show, Stewart runs the team, Sophie does the social media. Lance, who typically runs our video podcast, even though this one isn't one. Thanks to everyone for listening in. We hope to see you on Monday. We're Behind The Numbers daily: an EMARKETER podcast made possible by LiveRamp. Happiest of weekends.